Cosplay Christians Are at it Again

In the “Anything Goes” Gnostic dream world of Progressive Christianity, one can dress up their politics to pose as a Christian persona for emotive performance art . . .

Woke Christian Leaders Issue Letter Against Rise of ‘White Christian Nationalism’

Michael Austin at Gateway Pundit writes:

A coalition of left-leaning evangelical Christians issued a new open letter against the Trump administration and what they claimed is a rising tide of “white Christian nationalism.”

In recent years, legacy media outlets and Democratic leaders have linked a rise in distinctly Christian conservative political engagement to “Christian nationalism,” denouncing the notion that America is an historically Christian people and country.

The “open letter”, with its condemnations and call to resistance expressed in Christian-speak, is an implicit denunciation of ICE, the Trump administration, and any notion of Christianity that hasn’t bowed the knee to the many flags of Progressivism. It comes with an appeal to join the troupe of Cosplay Christianity. You can add your name to a list of those who have bowed the knee.

The website: A Call to Christians in a Crisis of Faith and Democracy | Stand for Justice & Faith — Act Now

From the coalition’s Why We Write:

We are facing a cruel and oppressive government; citizens and immigrants being demonized, disappeared, and even killed; the erosion of hard-won rights and freedoms; and a calculated effort to reverse America’s growing racial and ethnic diversity– all of which are pushing us toward authoritarian and imperial rule.

What confronts us is not only an endangered democracy and the rise of tyranny. It is also a Christian faith corrupted by the heretical ideology of white Christian nationalism, and a church that has often failed to equip its members to model Jesus’s teachings and fulfill its prophetic calling as a humanitarian, compassionate, and moral compass for society.

Therefore, as Christians in the United States, representing the breadth of Christian traditions and one part of our nation’s religiously plural society, we are compelled to speak out more boldly at this time.

~~~

I am compelled to boldly reply. So I’ll start by addressing reality and what these posers have willfully ignored: what has been cruel and oppressive:

Millions of foreign invaders have entered our country illegally. They have been allowed to do so under the globalist open borders Biden Regime. They have been allowed to enter without vetting, vaccines, health monitoring, and financial means of support. U.S. citizens – our neighbors – have been forced to bear the brunt of this invasion. This, while there has been a legal means to enter the country especially if you needed political asylum from persecution, e.g., white South African refugees.

The effects of the mass invasion of opportunists, per Matthew Dickerson, Director of Budget Policy:

“This surge has imposed a significant human cost, with communities across the United States grappling with the consequences of human and drug trafficking.

“A substantial financial price has also been paid by American taxpayers. Many illegal aliens become eligible for taxpayer-funded welfare programs, costing billions of dollars annually.”

Is the Cloward-Piven strategy being used to overthrow the system?

In 1966, sociologists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven developed a political strategy aimed at creating a crisis in the welfare system by encouraging mass enrollment. The manufactured emergency sought to overload welfare agencies, crash the system and trigger a crisis that would expose its inadequacies and force the U.S. government to implement guaranteed income and create a more “equitable” society.

Most of the invaders are on taxpayer-funded welfare. Because of this and other free stuff, Democrats expect them to vote for Democrat candidates and more Big Government dependency. The Democrat’s corporate donors expect cheap labor.

This is the coalition’s inversion of the Good Samaritan story. Rescue 20+ million invaders from ICE and then have them pay you back with votes and cheap labor. Of course, the coalition doesn’t want you to know this. They want focus to be on big bad ICE and on Christians who say “Stop.” The coalition’s list of cosplayer signatories shows who approves of such.

Minnesota Elections Official Finally Admits What We All Knew About Illegals Voting

What has been cruel and oppressive for our neighbors has been the invasion of M.S.13 affiliated narco-gangs that are selling drugs and recruiting new members. Fentanyl deaths and overdoses have followed in the wake of the invasion. Our vulnerable children are being trafficked, pimped, and killed. The coalition would have us focus our compassion, our “Christian” empathy, on the “stranger in our midst” and not on what the “stranger in our midst” is doing to our children.

What has been cruel and oppressive for our vulnerable neighbors: the “strangers in our midst” have committed fraud, robbery, sexual assault, exploitation of a minor, aggravated assault, manslaughter, rape, and murder.

Recently reported:

Illegal alien Israel Flores Ortiz, 19, is facing nine counts of assault and battery for groping girls at a Fairfax County high school he was attending. Victims and parents have alleged that Ortiz approached about 12 girls from behind in crowded hallways, grabbed them between the legs and groped their private areas, . . .

I doubt that you will hear or read anything bad about the foreign invaders via MS NOW, CNN, NYT, WaPo, The Atlantic, and legacy media. The propagandists want you to believe that the foreign invaders are victims of “cruel and oppressive” law and order deportations. The “vulnerable”, the coalition implies, are the foreign invaders and not our U.S. neighbors who are being demonized, disappeared, and even killed by the foreign invaders.

Here’s a reality check for the cosplayer Christian: Arrested: Worst of the Worst

What has been cruel and oppressive are the non-citizen truck drivers who don’t speak the language and don’t know the rules of the road and are on the highway maiming and killing our vulnerable neighbors.

Another Illegal Alien Trucker Leaves a U.S. Citizen in Critical Condition.

What has been cruel and oppressive: those who have been radicalized by anti-ICE indoctrination biting the dust. Renée Good and Alex Pretti died putting up resistance to ICE that so many on the Left and the coalition of cosplay Christians have advocated for.

Good, armed with a Honda Pilot SUV and main character syndrome, drove into an ICE officer. Pretti brought a military-grade handgun to a protest. Instead of remaining calm and standing back to protest, they came armed and ready to fight the criminal-removing ICE agents. 

~~~

Let’s move on to another of the coalition’s absurd claims:

What confronts us is not only an endangered democracy and the rise of tyranny. It is also a Christian faith corrupted by the heretical ideology of white Christian nationalism.”

Progressive Christianity is heretical. Even AI knows this:

“Progressive Christianity is a modern movement within Christianity that emphasizes social justice, inclusivity, and a re-interpretation of traditional doctrines. It seeks to align Christian beliefs with contemporary values and often draws from various theological perspectives, including feminist and liberation theologies.” (Emphasis mine.) AI left out gender theology, eco-theology, and prosperity theology.

Progressive Christianity, a mix of theo-ideologies under the cover of Christianity, seeks political power to “overcome” any form of Christianity that says “Stop!” Its methodology is not much different than the religion of Islam.

Islam uses fear as a motivator to bring about submission to Islam. The Gnostic religion of Progressivism uses fear to bring about submission to woke social issues and a never-ending desire for top-down change.

Fearmongering is essential to Progressivism’s conversion therapy. Deconstructionist sermonizers use “cruel and oppressive” “endangered democracy and the rise of tyranny” “white Christian nationalism” “extremist” and “right-wing” to scare those (diagnosed as) Trump obsessed and deranged. They soon take possession of them and keep their boot, the administrative state, on their neck. The Biden/Harris regime gave us insight into that tyrannical rule. And so did the days of COVID.

See the pattern of manufactured threats to produce doomsday frenzy leading to submission:

How could we forget the constant scare tactics during COVID? The media dashboards of COVID cases, hospitalizations, and deaths? How could we forget the cruel and oppressive authoritarian rule accompanying the propaganda that mandated masks, lockdowns, social distancing, church closures, and vaccines? How could we forget the consequences if we didn’t bend the knee to “the science”?

Pandemic politics was used as a test to see if people would submit to the tyranny of Progressivism’s one rule scientism. Progressives Anthony Fauci, Francis Collins, and Rochelle Walensky were the primary mouth pieces for COVID scientism (and of so much deceit about mitigation, natural immunity, Ivermectin, and COVID origins).

With the likes of charlatans and false prophets with climate models, we have been subjected to doomism and the pressure to submit to the narrative (and the globalist wealth transfer schemes required to ‘mitigate’ warming and bring every country under one imperial globalist rule)?

MS Now and CNN voiced 24/7 “Democracy!” alarmism during Trump’s presidential campaigns. The talking heads wanted their viewers to be scared out of their minds about Trump. The talking heads now want their viewers to be scared out of their minds about ICE and Christian Nationalism and people looking into the 2020 election fraud and any law that would stop Progressives from taking over and telling us what to do.

NBC News reports Progressives’ latest attack on basic common sense:

“The SAVE Act is nothing more than Jim Crow 2.0. It could disenfranchise millions of American citizens,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said last week.

This, while the Save Act’s “Support now includes 71% of self-identified Democrats, 83% of independents and 76% of Black voters.”

Pattern recognition tells us that The Call to Christians in a Crisis of Faith and Democracy is more of Progressives’ histrionics – this time dressed up in the cloaking of Christianity. The call is meant to persuade people to see the moral world as inverted – law and order bad; lawlessness, ad hoc justice, lawfare, chaos, and “Anything Goes” Christianity as good. Ergo, people are to hate Trump, his administration, ICE, and Christians who are not Progressive.

There are dark forces at work to deconstruct the U.S. by diluting its historically Christian history and people with invaders and to colonize Americans under One World globalism. The deep state, CIA, George Soros and others – know how to dress up deception for their purposes.

~~~

My replies to the coalition’s (in bold) “points”:

The government-sponsored cruelty and violence we are witnessing stands in total opposition to the teachings of Jesus.

First of all, notice how the coalition wants the focus to be on deportation efforts and not on the government-sponsored cruelty and violence we are witnessing that came about with the invasion of millions of foreign invaders under their Joe Biden. (MS NOW, CNN and the rest of liberal media do not report what the invaders are doing to people, so cosplayer Christians never hear about it.)

The religious leader’s statement above is meant to stir up an angry mob just as what happened when an angry mob shouted for Pontious Pilate to arrest and crucify Jesus because of his growing influence – his cruelty to the religious leader’s narrative. Jesus was a threat to the power of the influencers. He was doing violence to their lock on truth and practice.

Did you ever hear Jesus tell his disciples to rise up against Roman authority? No. Did you ever hear Jesus tell his disciples to rise up against Pax Romana? No. Did you ever hear the apostle Paul tell Christians to rise up? No. They spoke of spiritual warfare and cautioned about false teaching. (And, so will I.)

Pax Romana (27 BCE to roughly 180 CE) established a stable government, reformed the military, and created a system of laws that maintained order across the empire. Military power was used to suppress revolts and ensure loyalty among the provinces, promoting peace through strength. Rome’s power created a political and cultural order in which people could trade, travel, and thrive in relative safety. But contentious Jews did rise up. They did not want Roman authority over them in any form.

The Jews’ Great Revolt against Rome in 66 CE led to one of the greatest catastrophes in Jewish life. During the summer of 70 AD, the second temple was destroyed. It is estimated that as many as one million Jews died in the Great Revolt against Rome. Jesus and Paul had taught that the kingdom of God is not brought about by political power but by the gospel’s power to transform lives.

Now we find cosplayer Christian zealots inciting revolt against ICE and the Trump administration that are responding to the voter mandates of restoring law and order and safety to American citizens. Both are working to clean up the disastrous, chaotic, and dangerous mess the Biden regime created. They are working to bring stability to our country. Why won’t these religious leaders work with them? Because they did not want any authority over them except their own.

What good are the coalition’s intentions if the real effects that they have will be considered moral in their Gnostic dream world have an entirely different effect on people’s lives?

Why didn’t the coalition talk about government-sponsored cruelty and violence when Biden acted like a petulant child and undid President Donald Trump’s immigration policies from his first term? Biden opened the border and flooded the country with illegal invaders, many of whom kill, maim, rape, and drug to death our neighbors? Arrested: Worst of the Worst

During 2022, the huge spike in inflation created during the Biden regime, mostly by federal spending, caused many to suffer. Would Jesus approve of placing such a burden on the poor and vulnerable? Did the coalition speak out then? No. Taxpayer money was supporting “Anything Goes” Progressivism around the world.

Freedoms and rights once assumed to be secure are being stripped away, redefined, or selectively applied.

They say that “Decades-old civil rights protections are being dismantled.” You mean your invention of “the constitutional right to abortion” being dismantled? You mean Obergefell v. Hodges being over turned? You mean the right to define reality, e.g., gender?

This same coalition, under the banner of “Anything Goes” love, no doubt supports abortion on demand, gender ideology, LGBT-ism, critical race theory, George Floyd-worship, crisis environmentalism– every Woke issue their deep state CIA masters tell them to empathetically support.

They say that “Governance is being hollowed out and replaced with corruption, intimidation, and the normalization of lawlessness.” Look to Democrat run states and cities for corruption. Look to Democrat-appointed AGs and judges for loyalty tests, intimidation, and the normalization of lawlessness. Look to rogue judges who work to usurp the executive branch and the will of the people. They accrue power unto themselves. I would have no doubt the coalition’s cosplayer Christians are OK with these abuses of power. Political power is their end game and that end justifies their means.

They say that “The architecture of democracy and the rights secured by the separation of powers are being eroded from within, while we are told to accept it as “law”, “order,” or “God’s will.”

See the above response. “God’s will”? It’s the U.S. Constitution’s and the people’s will.

Foreign invaders do not have U.S. citizen rights, so they can’t be taken away.

Foreign invaders can leave on their own with dignity or we can deport them with dignity, as CBS News reports:

The federal government is now paying $2,600 to undocumented immigrants to self-deport if they use the Customs and Border Protection Home App. That’s up from $1,000 when the initiative started a year ago. On top of that stipend is a free flight to their home country.

Freedom and rights are being stripped away from legal citizens when laws are selectively applied to favor the foreign invader and not our citizen neighbors.

Freedom and rights are being stripped away when laws are selectively applied to favor the criminal and the not victim. Is the coalition OK with ad hoc justice, i.e., justice that sidesteps the law to achieve a certain supposed ideal outcome (equality, say) for the criminal? Is the coalition OK with ad hoc justice that releases criminals back into society to commit heinous crimes? Will the ideal outcome cause others to suffer?

Economist Thomas Sowell, in his book A Conflict of Visions, writes about the “unconstrained vision.”

This is the belief, based on the Rousseauian Theory of “Natural Goodness” that human nature is essentially good and that ideal solutions exist for every problem. Proponents of this vision have a distrust of traditional institutions and advocate for significant changes to achieve a perfect society. Compromise is viewed as unacceptable.

Judges of the “unconstrained vision” believing that human nature is essentially good and that ideal solutions exist for societal problems will use direct ad hoc individual decision making to seek an ideal outcome regarding a criminal or illegal migrant person before them. Their perspective often results in a disregard for the complexities and trade-offs involved in human nature and the cost to society at large

Is the coalition OK when judges release repeat criminals to go free so they can commit more harm to the vulnerable?

As reported:

DHS Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis stated, “This activist, Obama-appointed judge RELEASED Carlos Antonio Flores-Miguel, a criminal illegal alien from El Salvador and MS-13 gang member, from ICE custody.”

And

Family goes after Soros-backed prosecutor for allowing illegal to murder their daughter…

Obama Judge Orders Release of Four-Time Deported Illegal Alien MS-13 Gang Member with History of Rape | The Gateway Pundit | by Cristina Laila

No doubt, the coalition is OK with the massive lawfare campaign waged against Trump and his administration because they are working to deconstruct their avenues of political power in the deep state. When the don’t get their way, Progressives lash out. But WWJD?

Their statement says that they oppose unjust laws. But does the coalition oppose the unjust application of laws and the two-tier justice system of the last several years meant to persecute political opponents?

Sadly, the crisis is not only political—it is one driven by a moral and spiritual collapse showing up in alarming levels of polarization. Our faith is being tested. Christians cannot pretend otherwise and must make a decision to act.

Polarization? Faith being tested? The majority of Americans not having faith in your Gnostic dream world? If you had faith in God you would go to your knees and pray for those in authority, and make supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. Instead, you rise up.

Act? You mean by any means necessary?  You mean throw away your lives like Renée Good and Alex Pretti?

We choose to resist, calling forth the righteous demands of our faith rooted in the teachings of Jesus.

“Righteous demands”? When you call people and laws “cruel and oppressive”, “extremist” and “right-wing”, you shut down discussion. Jesus (and Charlie Kirk) discussed. You demand.

You mean a faith rooted in the obtuse morality of Progressivism, don’t you?

You mean a faith rooted in your liturgy of resistance and Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky, don’t you?

You mean a faith in “a comprehensive national civic uprising”, the communist revolution that NYT op-ed columnist and Christian cosplayer David Brooks alludes to?

As Christians, we must never preach nationalism as discipleship, confuse American and Christian identity with whiteness, or mistake allegiance to modern-day Caesars for faithfulness to Christ.

No one but you, cosplayer Christians, think this way. No one but you, cosplayer Christians, confuse Christian identity with whiteness. No one but you, Christian cosplayers, disciple people for allegiance to DEI.

Their statement is interesting given the fact that white Christian nationalists developed the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and settled this country. Is Progressivism to be the new ultra-nationalism?

A Christian loving their country, their home, and their rootedness is not wrong. Why speak of “a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey?” Read Leviticus 20:24 and Exodus 3:8.

Therefore, we commit to: Protect and Stand with Vulnerable People

Will you protect the vulnerable who are now afflicted by illegal invaders committing horrendous crimes? There is no mention of that in your cosplay performance.

Will you protect the vulnerable who are hurt by those released with no bail or jail time? No. There is no mention of that in your cosplay performance.

Or, are you, who are dressed up as ‘principled’ Christians, protecting your own vulnerable political power? You see your political power endangered by the current administration. You saw what happened in the 2024 election. You see the current administration looking into the corrupt voting practices that occurred during the 2020 election. The 20+ million invaders represent to you a ready-made voting base.

Catherine Salgado, at PJ Media:

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries basically admitted that the Democrats’ disgusting shutdown theatrics are all about fury over Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) preventing illegal aliens from taking American jobs and blocking them from voting in our elections.

 . . . Illegal immigration sure looks like the [Democrat Party’s] solution to Republicans taking away their slaves. And illegal immigration is their solution to having no policies that appeal to American voters.

(Emphasis mine.)

Democrats, of course, are fear-mongering about the Save America Act so they can continue to defraud and disenfranchise their American neighbors with non-citizen votes.

Top Democrat Accidentally Reveals What Her Party Really Fears in the SAVE Act – PJ Media

Americans support SAVE America Act’s photo ID requirement, but Democrats reject it

It wasn’t that long ago that these same Democrats wanted everyone to wear a mask, to stand six feet apart in a line, to stay out of a church, to be isolated in COVID camps, and to get a vaccine passport. Now, they do not want voters to have to ID themselves as American citizens. We know why.

~~~

“We will always stand in solidarity with those who are most vulnerable among us.”

I wonder. Did any of these cosplayers denounce the assassination attempts on President Trump or the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Were they silent? Are they selective in their compassion and mercy?

I wonder. Do they stand with those who have been hurt by the foreign invaders?

I wonder why London Buses Must Now Be Equipped With Stab-Kits | ZeroHedge. Who are the vulnerable?

~~~

Another cosplayer Chrisian, this time dressed as a Catholic Cardinal – Illinois’ Cardinal Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago – presided over an outdoor Ash Wednesday mass and a community procession.

His performance, acknowledged by the Left’s narrative monger MS NOW, was done “in solidarity with the immigrant communities being ruthlessly targeted by the Trump administration.”

“God does not need papers to know who or where you are,” Cupich told attendees. “The world may look at your legal status, but God looks at your heart.”

I wonder. Did Cardinal Cupich one day decide to be a Catholic Cardinal or was there a process that made him a cardinal? Was there a process to become Catholic?

Jesus knew what was in man’s heart. He said that what comes out of the heart are evil intentions—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. So, the Cardinal’s “heart” statement is a call to be sentimental about the foreign invaders, some of whom are now living out their evil intentions.

I wonder. Would Cardinal Cupich consider Jesus ruthless when he separates the sheep and the goats and separates the wheat and the chaff? Have some people made themselves vulnerable on the last day?

~~~

More Catholic cosplayers: U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) 

 S.A. McCarthy at the American Spectator: The Bishops’ Misplaced Priorities: Immigration eclipsed abortion as the central political concern of America’s Catholic leadership.

A U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) spokeswoman cited by [The Atlantic’s Francis X.] Rocca stated that “human dignity and national security are not in conflict.” That’s true. Stringent immigration enforcement is in line with the perennial teachings of the Catholic Church and is, in fact, in accord with the virtue of justice. The arrest and detention of those who have violated the law (in this case, federal immigration law) is not a violation of human dignity, nor is returning foreigners who have abused U.S. hospitality and services to their home countries. In fact, it’s something of a merciful move.

Regarding the foreign invaders – the wolves, McCarthy writes

Shepherds ought to protect their flocks from wolves. Instead, we find them demanding that the wolves share our pastures. (Emphasis mine.)

I’ve heard the “human dignity” defense used to approve of all kinds of unholy things. See S.J. James Martin.

~~~

This coalition of Progressive cosplayers want you to think they are above politics with their holier-than-MAGA posturing. But they are not apolitical. Their version of Christianity is “Anything Goes” with a will to political power. They want to be Caesar.

We were warned about them and their antics by Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James:

For certain intruders have stolen in among you, people who long ago were designated for this condemnation as ungodly, who pervert the grace of our God into debauchery and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. . . these dreamers also defile the flesh, reject authority, and slander the glorious ones.

This coalition of Christian cosplayers subordinate the claims of Scripture to the values of secular progressivism (DEI) and call the result “faith rooted in the teachings of Jesus.”

I am reminded of the Pharisees when they, in the same hyper-spiritual way, added a set of rules (values) about the washing of hands before eating above scripture. Their focus was on the exterior performance of ritual and not on the evil intentions coming out of the interior.

This outward manifestation of ritual purity, enforced by the Pharisees, allowed someone to focus on the practice and not on the evil intentions lurking inside. Jesus denounced them, calling them hypocrites, for focusing on the pretense of spirituality and abandoning God’s word which would expose their intentions. Mark 7: 1-23

This coalition of cosplayer Christians is beating the academic world ‘s drum of globalism, cosmopolitanism, postcolonialism, DEI, and open borders advocacy. Their deconstructionist formulations declare all hierarchies unjust save their own which is they see as required to self-righteously denounce all authority but their own.

This coalition of Progressive cosplayers de-centers scripture to have people focus on “the poor little foreigner in our midst.” They subordinate the claims of Scripture to the moral machinations of secular progressivism (DEI) and call the result ‘the gospel.’

Isaiah: They honor God with their (virtue signaling) lips but their hearts are from Him. All in vain they seek to Worship God. All they teach is human commands.

This coalition of cosplayer Christians focuses not on the laws that have been broken and the invasion of millions of unvetted people who do not share our values, who will not assimilate, and who will use America for their own benefit. They focus on a platitude-contrived issue.

Isn’t it something how this coalition is very concerned about Christian Nationalism and authoritarianism but not at all concerned about theocratic and authoritarian Islam taking over areas of our country and creating no-go zones in our land.

Christopher Hitchins Barely Touched Upon Islam’s Predations – American Thinker

See how women are treated in Iran and Afghanistan under Islam. 

The MSM and the press have spent years talking about “Christian Nationalism,” often using the phrase to target Christians who are Trump supporters. But the same media runs cover for Islamic attacks, the latest being a man who yelled “Allahu Akbar” and threw bombs into a crowd of anti-Islamic protesters outside Gracie mansion. The protestors were protesting against what they described as the “Islamic takeover of New York City.” 

This cosplay Christian performance is one of projection. They accuse some Christians of wanting to destroy democracy with Christian nationalism. They blast deportation as unchristian. But they want to do away with democracy by keeping millions of non-citizens around to vote so as to establish their authoritarian government run by elites.

I wonder . . .

Do these cosplay Christians, who so care about others, willing to denounce Zohran Mamdani’s wife, Rama Duwaji, for liking posts on Instagram that supported Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7? Do they support Jihadi socialism?

Is declaring the rising tide of “white Christian nationalism” just another application of the victim -oppressor power dynamic narrative that so many seem to accept as a given?

Are the signatories also people who would see the Minnesota Somalis fraudsters as vulnerable and in need of billions of taxpayer money. Do they think that laws and the system are unjust so being fraudulent is necessary? Is stealing taxpayer money just a given these days because there are unfair things in the life? Is it really OK to steal from taxpayers by allowing in 20+ million invaders who mooch off the system and send money back to the country of origin? Isn’t such wealth transfer back door socialism?

Is this coalition against remigration – immigrants returning to their home country? The members could pray over them and send them back home with their blessing. Would these who pose as “principled Christians” let that happen?  Would they claim the concept of encouraging people to go back home is somehow based in right-wing extremism so as to keep their imported voters and low-cost workers here for their use?

Don’t be duped. Naïve Christians will eat up Christian sounding words and phrases. But this ploy is meant to induce hatred toward Trump and the majority of Americans who want the invaders to go back home.

~~~

It’s no secret. Progressives love to dress up and show the world they care.

It is of no matter to these performance artists that Jesus said “Beware of practicing your righteousness before others in order to be seen by them, for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven” and “when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (Matt. 6: 1-6)

~~~

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Another Christian Cosplayer: Texas’s Democrat senatorial candidate James Talarico

Stephen Soukup, writing at American Greatness, asks Is James Talarico Really a Christian X-Ray?:

David French’s praise for a progressive Christian candidate reveals a deeper problem in modern moral thinking: feelings and intentions now outweigh doctrine, truth, and the consequences of policy.

In the article . . .

Consider, for example, French’s declaration that Talarico is a good man and a good candidate for public office because “he acts like a Christian.” He has “his heart right,” spreads “hope,” and says that he’s tired of “being pitted against” and being “told to hate” his neighbor. That, apparently, makes Talarico a good—or at least properly acting—Christian. . .

 . . .French declares that Talarico “acts like a Christian,” he never explains how, never provides any examples of his Christian behavior, or explains how they might be more “Christian” than the good deeds of his Republican opponents. French thinks Talarico is a good and decent man, not because of any acts he can relay to us, but because of a feeling he has. French likes Talarico. French feels good about him and his religious expression, which again makes Talarico the real Christian in American politics.

(Emphasis mine.)

From Even in Texas, Democrats Can’t Leave Woke Behind: James Talarico is too woke for conservatives and too white for liberals.

Because of his religious acting credentials, David French endorses Talarico:

“Talarico is one of the few openly Christian politicians in the United States who acts like a Christian, and by acting like a Christian he reveals a profound contrast with so many members of the MAGA Christian movement that’s dominated American political life for 10 years,” Never Trumper David French fawningly wrote in the New York Times.

Such statements—which depict Talarico as a normal, middle of the road “Moses”—contrast sharply with his beliefs from just a few years ago.

On race, Talarico sounded exactly like a white Ibram X. Kendi.

Richard Kirk at Townhall: Talarico, With His Left Hand on the Bible: Calling Texas’s Democrat senatorial candidate James Talarico, even derisively, a “bible-banger” is a disservice to bible-bangers. 

Talarico’s forays into theology are prime examples of Nietzsche’s atheistic critique, “The text has disappeared under the interpretation.”

Talarico clearly criticizes Christians (smeared as Christian Nationalists) more than any other group. The state rep even vilified this largely conservative cohort for using the bible (plus, I would add, common sense and reliable science) to oppose sex changes for minors. Those who did so in the state capital, he thundered, not only harmed children, they also dishonored scripture for the sake of a “hateful amendment.” Stated without leftist distortion, Talarico believes Christians harm children if they oppose their mutilation. Instead, he embraces the faux science of propagandists who inundated our culture with the bizarre notion that even pre-teens are capable of evaluating the lifelong medical and psychological consequences of transition decisions. In short, Talarico inverts biblical teaching and slanders Christians who seek to protect “little ones” from the ravages of a mass delusion.

Joseph Chalfant at Townhall writes in his article James Talarico Quietly Deletes Endorsement Page Showcasing His Most Radical Supporters

An archived version of Talarico’s site showed that he was proudly backed by groups like Houston LGBTQ+ Political Caucus, the 134 PAC, Stonewall Democrats, and Mothers Against Greg Abbott. . .

The groups who have backed Talarico have espoused a radical, pro-transgender agenda for children as young as seven-years-old, promote “drag queen story hours” for kids (which are subject to prosecution in Texas), and have pushed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies on Texans. Another group fighting for Talarico, the Stonewall Democrats, set out on an agenda of “holding candidates accountable” should they not toe the line of far-left transgender ideology.

The Waco chapter of Indivisible has also backed Talarico, which has called ICE operations to remove dangerous criminals from American communities a “Terror Machine” and labeled the Minneapolis surge as an “invasion.” 

~~~

I never use the term “Social Justice.” Justice is always social. Modifying “justice” with “social” is a contrivance of Progressivism to have you focus on their designated woke issues and not on what is going on behind the scenes to negate democracy.

If you are an enabler of progressivism’s values, an SJW, and a virtue signaler, then you serve a purpose for Progressivism. Otherwise, you are just a “right-wing extremist.”

~~~

Added 3-28-2026:

Dr. Malone warns there’s a dangerous ‘mole’ working inside the CDC… – Revolver News

The Inside Out Story

Evil intentions come from inside, out of people’s hearts.”-Jesus

In the world you will have . . . the content of their character, coming out as . . .

Cruel, intolerant, intimidating, subversive, disruptive, antagonistic, rude, lazy, overindulged, abusive, deceitful, corrupt, amoral, unlawful, power hungry, confederate, self-deceiving, addled, mentally and emotionally stunted, neurotic, narcissistic, manipulative, antisocial, psychotic, borderline psychotic, unruly,  destructive, evasive, duplicitous . . . as persecution.

These traits aptly describe what comes out of the Lord-of-the-Flies Left in all of its manifestations – Democrats, Progressives, Democratic Socialists of America, ANTIF, BLM, NGOs, NGO paid protestors, MSM, and Globalists. These characteristics also describe a good many Islamists. The most recent examples of what comes out of the Left has been exhibited by Democratic governance in Minnesota, by ICE protestors, and by Somalis.

What Comes Out of Them is Deliberate Deception:

Don’t buy what comes out of the MSM (CNN, MSNOW, NYT, WaPo, ABC, CBS, NBC, etc.) about the ICE protestors and the Somali fraudsters. The so-called journalists on these ‘news’ sites are wanna-be script writers who push the content of their character onto everyone with their narrative. And like street gang members, they have a no-snitch code for their comrades in arms who go about breaking the law at every turn. It seems that the MSM’s purpose these days is to make the world bleed so it can lead with the story.

The media will deceive by framing both the law and the good guys as bad. Instead of taking in what comes out of MSM, see what you see.

And, don’t go by what comes out of the mouth of Democratic pols (Waltz, Frey, Ellison). With the aid of mother media, they cover their asses just like anyone under investigation on the real-life crime shows.

To wit: Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, on ABC’s “This Week” characterized the violent confrontations – the riots, assaults, and lawlessness – targeting federal immigration agents in his city as an expression of “love.”

Minneapolis. January 7. Renee Nicole Good, as an expression of “love” and encouraged by what came out of the mouth of her lesbian lover, directed her vehicle into an ICE agent. She was shot as the agent defended himself against being crushed. (MADD would certainly agree that a vehicle is a deadly weapon.) Sponsored activist mob mayhem followed as an expression of “love.”

Minneapolis. Sunday, January 18th. More organized mayhem. A mob, led by Black Lives Matter organizers and encouraged by a video posted on social media, stormed into an area church during a service. Inside the sanctuary of Cities Church, agitators loudly chanted “Justice for Renee Good.”

See what you see when Don Lemon and ‘Sanctuary City’ Radicals Invade Minneapolis Church.

On Sunday, Don Lemon and a group of radical, anti-ICE left-wing extremists stormed a Minneapolis church. They barreled into a house of worship while families with young children were praying and proceeded to harass and intimidate congregants based on supposed “intel” that someone connected to the church had ties to ICE.

WHOOPS: Don Lemon’s live stream is a goldmine of evidence against him… – Revolver News

With displays of ersatz moral sanctimony, the Machine politics of Left destroys people and their place in the world and their past and their sacred space, their house of prayer. What comes out of the Left is not “love”. What comes out of the wild boar Left is grunting, posturing, and bristling followed by picking fights to see who is the stronger.

What Comes Out of Them is Stupid

When the Pharisees confronted Jesus about his disciples eating with unwashed hands, he responded to their desire to harass him and his disciples about the performative ritual purity they were so concerned with. He got under their skin when he said . . .

“What makes someone unclean,” Jesus went on, “is what comes out. Evil intentions come from inside, out of people’s hearts – sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, treachery, debauchery, envy, slander, pride, stupidity. These evil things all come from inside. They are what make someone unclean.”  Mark 7:20-23

Note that stupidity is on the list of evil intentions. The stupid act without sense. In the matter at hand, the stupid ramp up their violence-instigating rhetoric because they simply are not able to discuss or persuade – they lack sense. Force is all they have left, and they will use it. And so it is that the NGO paid army of activists, agitators and provocateurs – useful idiots all – descend into savagery that a mayor describes as acts of brotherly “love.”

Rory Miller, “a corrections officer and sergeant working booking, maximum security, and mental health units” and “trained corrections and enforcement officers, primarily in force-related skills… and force policy” wrote in his book Force Decisions: A Citizen’s Guide that . . .

If you have to be defiant, don’t be stupid about it. Argue, if you absolutely have to, but show the officer your hands. If the officer says, “Show me your hands!” and you say, “No,” you have given the officer no choice but to assume that you have a weapon ready to deploy. This is so stupid—right up there with checking for gas leaks with matches—it shouldn’t even need to be said, but it happens. Being defiant about something stupid can escalate a verbal situation to deadly force for childish, immature ego.”

“If the officer ever uses the magic phrase, ‘For your safety and mine, I need you to…’ do it. That is a solid signal that the officer perceives this as an issue of safety, and the officer will absolutely use force if you do not comply.” (Emphasis mine.)

A Citizen’s Guide to Violence in Minneapolis › American Greatness

What Comes Out of Them is Lawlessness

Richard Lawson at The Free Press writes Sanctuary Cities are Built on Shaky Law:

Federal law makes it a crime to “encourage” illegal immigration, which is exactly what Tim Walz and Jacob Frey are doing.

The Supreme Court recently clarified that federal law is violated when a person provides “assistance to a wrongdoer with the intent to further an offense’s commission.” It is also unlawful to knowingly act in support of illegal aliens residing in the U.S., or even to conspire to help them remain here.

(Emphasis mine.)

Democratic governors and mayors in Minnesota, Oregon and Illinois have gone so far as to actively enable the chaos by withdrawing police protection.  And, Dem Leaders Move to Block Funding for ICE, DHS.

Fools escalate violent rhetoric:

Dem AG Suggests People Can Shoot Masked ICE Agents Under Stand-Your-Ground Laws.

April 17, 2025, Columnist David Brooks of the NYT wrote an opinion column openly and explicitly called for a mass uprising alluding to a Communist revolution.

Headline USA writes:

“Agitators aren’t just targeting our officers. Now they’re targeting churches, too,” the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency stated. “They’re going from hotel to hotel, church to church, hunting for federal law enforcement who are risking their lives to protect Americans. (Emphasis mine.)

The ordained reverend “Nekima Levy Armstrong, who participated in the protest and leads the local grassroots civil rights organization Racial Justice Network, dismissed the potential DOJ investigation as a sham.

“When you think about the federal government unleashing barbaric ICE agents upon our community and all the harm that they have caused, to have someone serving as a pastor who oversees these ICE agents, is almost unfathomable to me,” said Armstrong.

ICE should not back down one iota no matter the threats or moral posturing against them. All illegal invaders must go home. President Trump will be justified to invoke the Insurrection Act.

The Trump administration is working to clean up the horrible mess the four years of the illegitimate Biden regime created. That mess includes the 20-30 million illegal invaders that are taking jobs and taxpayer money and bringing in the content of their character.

Understand, the invasion was done on purpose to destroy the U.S. There is much more going on here than meets the fixated eye. You won’t get this understanding from the talking heads of MSM. They are in on it. The immigrants were sent here to destroy the U.S.

Read the newly published The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon by  Peter Schweizer.

No Christian should be swayed by MSM or by Progressive Christianity’s “Welcome the stranger” social justice tactics. No Christian should be muddled in their thinking about legal mass deportations.

~~~

In the world you will have . . . the content of their character – fraudulent Islamists enabled by Democrats.

The amount of fraudulent billing in Minnesota’s Medicaid programs could be as high as $9 billion, Assistant United States Attorney Joe Thompson said Dec. 18.

The ADL’d – the Machine combine of America and Democracy Last – don’t seem to care that the Minnesota Somali fraudsters stole billions of taxpayer dollars to spend on themselves and to send to Somalia. The Somalis were enabled by Democratic governance with its (purposeful?) lack of oversight in Minnesota and other Blues states.

What struck me most about the Minnesota case was not only the scale of the theft but the silence surrounding it. The fraud appears to have operated in plain sight within tightly knit circles, yet few people spoke out. . .

According to federal indictments, the stolen money flowed through networks bound by kinship and loyalty. The theft was large, coordinated, and sustained. What stood out was not only who took the money, but who stayed silent. In societies with strong civic norms, whistleblowing is often praised, or at least protected. In tightly bound clan systems, speaking out can mean punishment.

High-trust societies solve this dilemma by extending cooperation beyond family and tribe. Laws, institutions, and norms reinforce the idea that cheating ultimately harms everyone, including oneself. Low-trust societies work differently. Trust is reserved for kin. Outsiders are assumed to cheat. In that environment, cheating is not necessarily immoral. It is often rational, expected, and even applauded.

Somalia And The High Cost Of Low Trust | ZeroHedge

Senseless people vote for senseless people. That’s how Minnesota has tanked under Waltz, Frey, and Ellison.

Senseless people voted in NYC for a Democratic Socialist Jihadi Shia Muslim deeply critical of Israel who wants to “globalize the intifada.”

And citizens of Virgina will now suffer because the senseless elected Abigail Spanberger as its governor and reps who encourage lawlessness and impose tyranny. This New Virginia Law Helps Illegals Vote for Democrats

Out of them comes taxes, more taxes and more oppression:

~~~~~

Concerned about the content of his older brother’s character, Russian playwright, short-story writer, and doctor Anton Chekhov (26), wrote a letter of advice to Nikolai (28), a talented painter, writer, and alcoholic. In 1886, Chekhov writes:

“To my mind, civilized people ought to satisfy the following conditions:

1. They respect the individual and are therefore always indulgent, gentle, polite and compliant. They do not throw a tantrum over a hammer or a lost eraser. When they move in with somebody, they do not act as if they were doing him a favor, and when they move out, they do not say, “How can anyone live with you!” …

2. Their compassion extends beyond beggars and cats. They are hurt even by things the naked eye can’t see. If for instance, Pyotr knows that his father and mother are turning gray and losing sleep over seeing their Pyotr so rarely (and seeing him drunk when he does turn up), then he rushes home to them and sends his vodka to the devil….

3. They respect the property of others and therefore pay their debts.

4. They are candid and fear lies like the plague. They do not lie even about the most trivial matters. A lie insults the listener and debases him in the liar’s eyes. They don’t put on airs, they behave in the street as they do at home, and they do not try to dazzle their inferiors. They know how to keep their mouths shut and they do not force uninvited confidences on people. Out of respect for the ears of others they are more often silent than not.

5. They do not belittle themselves merely to arouse sympathy. They do not play on people’s heartstrings to get them to sigh and fuss over them. They do not say, “No one understands me!” or “I’ve squandered my talent on trifles!” because this smacks of a cheap effect and is vulgar, false and out-of-date.

6. They are not preoccupied with vain things. They are not taken in by such false jewels as friendships with celebrities, handshakes with drunken Plevako, ecstasy over the first person they happen to meet at the Salon de Varietes, popularity among the tavern crowd….

7. If they have talent, they respect it. They sacrifice comfort, women, wine and vanity to it….

8. They cultivate their aesthetic sensibilities. They cannot stand to fall asleep fully dressed, see a slit in the wall teeming with bedbugs, breathe rotten air, walk on a spittle-laden floor or eat off a kerosene stove. They try their best to tame and ennoble their sexual instinct…

And so on. That’s how civilized people act. If you want to be civilized and not fall below the level of the milieu you belong to, it is not enough to read The Pickwick Papers and memorize a soliloquy from Faust. It is not enough to hail a cab and drive off to Yakimanka Street if all you’re going to do is bolt out again a week later.

You must work at it constantly, day and night. You must never stop reading, studying in depth, exercising your will. Every hour is precious.”

Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends (public domain | public library)

~~~~~

Why are poets and storytellers being drawn towards Christ? In this bonus episode Justin Brierley speaks to two adult converts to Christianity whose stories overlap in remarkable ways. 

Celebrated poet and author Paul Kingsnorth, and mythologist and storyteller Martin Shaw, both had unexpected conversions that have led them into the Orthodox church.

Paul Kingsnorth & Martin Shaw: A poet and mythologist convert

Episode 9 – Paul Kingsnorth & Martin Shaw: A poet and mythologist convert – Justin Brierley ⬩ Think Faith

Royce White, a Voice from the Belly of the Beast Minnesota:

https://americasvoice.news/video/1L3WPrlAlN0ouni/

https://americasvoice.news/playlists/show/the-royce-white-show/

https://www.youtube.com/@pleasecallmecrazypodcast

~~~~~

Marginalia:

See what you see here: Arrested: Worst of the Worst | Homeland Security

In past articles I have tried to plead with conservatives to recognize that these activists are NOT sincere fellow citizens engaging in legitimate protest. They are a mercenary army paid to go to war. I’ll say it once again: WE ARE AT WAR. We need to start acting like it.

When there are no consequences for bad behavior, bad behavior will escalate into violence and chaos. It’s important to understand that the political left is made up largely of people who are emotionally stunted. They are toddlers trapped in adult bodies. And, like spoiled children, they act the way they do because they have never been spanked.

Maybe It’s Time For Conservative Patriots To Rally In Minneapolis | ZeroHedge

Approximately 3,000 federal agents are currently deployed in Minnesota, as part of an immigration operation dubbed “Operation Metro Surge.” The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced on Monday that the operation has resulted in the arrests of 3,000 criminal illegal aliens, “including vicious murderers, rapists, child pedophiles, and incredibly dangerous individuals. (Emphasis mine.)

Walz, Ellison, Frey’s Offices Served Grand Jury Subpoenas › American Greatness

~~~~~

Amelia:

So, what was already disturbing now looks downright corrupt. It turns out that one of the men caught on video inside the church, pumping his fist while terrified children cried, isn’t some random left-wing extremist. He actually works for the local (Soros-backed) prosecutor’s office.

Shocking new evidence shows just how deep and dark the MN church Ambush goes… – Revolver News

The insurrection, the color revolution is upon us

Wayward Christian Empathy

Want to see what Christian empathy tends to look like?

No. This pop-project isn’t satire. The Church of England, so obsessed with its moral performance, really did cover the interior of the oldest cathedral in England in graffiti in order to represent themselves to the world.

As reported by The Independent,

The installation created by poet Alex Vellis is designed to contrast with the ancient, traditional architecture in the church to offer new interpretations of faith and worship. 

Per the partnered gay priest and dean of Canterbury, David Monteith, “There is a rawness which is magnified by the graffiti style, which is disruptive. There is also an authenticity in what is said because it is unfiltered and not tidied up or sanitised. Above all, this graffiti makes me wonder why I am not always able to be as candid, not least in my prayers.

“This exhibition intentionally builds bridges between cultures, styles and genres and, in particular, allows us to receive the gifts of younger people who have much to say and from whom we need to hear much.”

“Mr Vellis said the language of the graffiti was “of the unheard”.

He added: “By temporarily graffitiing the inside of Canterbury Cathedral, we join a chorus of the forgotten, the lost, and the wondrous. People who wanted to make their mark, to say ‘I was here’, and to have their etchings carry their voice through the centuries.”

Reading the motivation behind the Church of England’s self-vandalizing approach to empathy, one has to wonder, as with many decisions made in our times, – where are the adults? And what is next on the empathy checklist? Will the CoE leaders, in order build “bridges between cultures, styles and genres” and to “welcome the stranger,” get tattoos and piercings? Hand out drugs and needles? Perform a satanic mass?

The understanding, resonating, and self-differentiating human voices of previous centuries are becoming the “chorus of the forgotten, the lost, and the wondrous,” the voices “of the unheard” in the Church of England, throughout Europe, and the U.S. Those voices are deemed non-empathetic and must be shouted over with graffiti.

Those who, with ancient wisdom, made their mark of truth, beauty, and goodness, must now be overwritten with graffiti.

The desire to look like the world, like walking in another’s shoes, as inclusive and pluralistic, is beneficial for the state and its open borders immigration policies which deface homelands and cultures with graffiti.

Per Olivia Murray at American Thinker,

“Canterbury Cathedral, a sixth-century English church—making it more than 1,400 years old—has gotten a paint job…in graffiti. And as it turns out, this act of vandalism wasn’t an act of street delinquency, it was actually commissioned by the church’s stewards. . ..”

“Call me crazy, but this seems counterproductive. Real Englanders, Brits by blood and spirit, with an undying love for their culture and home, are beyond fed up with what the Dean of Canterbury calls “marginalized communities.” These “marginalized communities” are parasitic, they’re destroying the cohesion of England and the nation’s society, and they’re given preferential treatment by the government, that’s ostensibly, representing the English people.”

Murray continues:

“Progressives really have an extraordinary ability to turn something unbelievably precious and beautiful into utter trash—how can you make Canterbury Cathedral look like a derelict warehouse in an inner city, or resemble a dirty freight train car?”

~~~

Christian empathy tends to be wayward, moving away from truth, beauty and goodness and toward a seamless identity with what those in the world think they need and want – a trait that Jesus never had.

Christian empathy tends toward a desire to be seen as acceptable to the world so that the world would, by virtue of such, respond – a trait that Jesus never had.

As we read the hymn in Philippians 2, we learn that Jesus made himself accessible to the world.

As we read in gospel according to John 2:13-25, we learn of his distinctiveness from the world, from what those in the world thought they needed and wanted.

When the Court of the Gentiles within the temple ground, the place designated for believing Gentiles to pray and worship became cluttered with the clink of coins, the braying of animals, and the sounds of commerce, Jesus, “Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, with the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.

Note in the above accounts of the desecration of the cathedral, the SJW go-to descriptor ‘marginalised communities’. This indicates the current naming convention that paints humans in the Marxist graffiti of “oppressed” and “oppressor” while avoiding terms that speak of repentance and redemption.

~~~

It is easy to snicker in utter disgust at the perversion of an ancient cathedral, but what are Christians doing with what they have been given? Are Christians preserving the good, the true, the beautiful that has been passed down? Are Christians adding or subtracting to what we’ve been given. Are Christians looking at screens all day?

Should Christians continue to build churches that look like commercial buildings? It seems that after the reformation, Protestants decided that beauty wasn’t utilitarian so why bother with it.

Are we composing music that goes beyond the folksy and often cloying church worship music? Are we writing operas, symphonies, fugues, sonatas? Hymns with actual embedded theology?

Are we creating works of art and literature that draw people to them or are we on screens and social media all day looking at and posting pictures? Early Christian art showed the immanence of God—his closeness to us—and his transcendence, his otherness. The Chosen is not art. It is redux sentimentality akin to watching a rerun of a Billy Grahm crusade or using crayons to color a Jesus picture.

Are we writing poetry that examines life – the wounding, the good, the true and the beautiful? Or, is that the purpose of MSM? Knowing God involves both spiritual and sensory engagement. Poetry can express both.

None of the above prompts are utilitarian and instantly beneficial. Hence, some will avoid a second thought about them.

From stained glass to straining for attention, the graffiti installation recognizes the ego in rebellion to the good, the true and the beautiful while virtue signaling empathy. Not only is the installation profane, it is an act of profound laziness. Evil is lazy and does not promote the spiritual growth of another.

The church of England, the dancing daughter of Herodias, offers its beguiling movements to please guests and the reigning authority. This while John the Baptist, who called people from all strata of society including King Herod to repentance, sits tied up in jail, his head to be removed with the axe of “Silence!”

Want to see what Christian empathy tends to look like?

The Brave New World’s Arch-Community Songster of Canterbury

There is an intense irony here that gets to the heart of the self-inflicted problems of the Church of England today. Sarah Mullally has been very clear on the kind of Church she believes in – she’s a supporter of LGBTQ+ rights and activism, she has strongly backed asylum and migration, she is a self-declared feminist, and she is both politically and it seems religiously progressive. As Bishop of London, she boasted about representing a diverse and multicultural city, and put her experience in handling diversity as one of the key qualifications and evidence of positive experience she could bring to being the Archbishop of Canterbury. (Emphasis mine.)

“The Church of England has lost 80 per cent of Anglicans on the planet” « Quotulatiousness

Added 10-18-2025:

Helen Andrews | Overcoming the Feminization of Culture | NatCon 5

Helen [Andrews] argues that the rise of “wokeness” wasn’t born from Marxism, academia, or even Obama-era politics. That in itself had people shocked. Helen theorizes that it actually came from something way simpler… the quiet but steady feminization of America’s most powerful institutions.

Somebody finally figured out how ‘wokeism’ started – and no, it wasn’t Obama or Marxism… – Revolver News

Helen Andrews wrote in The Great Feminization | Compact

“Wokeness is not a new ideology, an outgrowth of Marxism, or a result of post-Obama disillusionment. It is simply feminine patterns of behavior applied to institutions where women were few in number until recently . . .

Everything you think of as wokeness involves prioritizing the feminine over the masculine: empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition . . .

“The threat posed by wokeness can be large or small depending on the industry . . . The field that frightens me most is the law. All of us depend on a functioning legal system, and, to be blunt, the rule of law will not survive the legal profession becoming majority female. The rule of law is not just about writing rules down. It means following them even when they yield an outcome that tugs at your heartstrings or runs contrary to your gut sense of which party is more sympathetic. 

“The problem is not that women are less talented than men or even that female modes of interaction are inferior in any objective sense. The problem is that female modes of interaction are not well suited to accomplishing the goals of many major institutions.”

~~~~~

“THE EIGHT PRINCIPLES OF UNCIVILISATION

1. We live in a time of social, economic and ecological unravelling. All around us are signs that our whole way of living is already passing into history. We will face this reality honestly and learn how to live with it.

2. We reject the faith which holds that the converging crises of our times can be reduced to a set of ‘problems’ in need of technological or political ‘solutions’.

3. We believe that the roots of these crises lie in the stories we have been telling ourselves. We intend to challenge the stories which underpin our civilisation: the myth of progress, the myth of human centrality, and the myth of our separation from ‘nature’. These myths are more dangerous for the fact that we have forgotten they are myths.

4. We will reassert the role of storytelling as more than mere entertainment. It is through stories that we weave reality.

5. Humans are not the point and purpose of the planet. Our art will begin with the attempt to step outside the human bubble. By careful attention, we will reengage with the non-human world.

6. We will celebrate writing and art which is grounded in a sense of place and of time. Our literature has been dominated for too long by those who inhabit the cosmopolitan citadels.

7. We will not lose ourselves in the elaboration of theories or ideologies. Our words will be elemental. We write with dirt under our fingernails.

8. The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop. Together, we will find the hope beyond hope, the paths which lead to the unknown world ahead of us.”
― Paul Kingsnorth, Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Manifesto

Why I’m Taking Music & Art Lessons – Margarita Mooney Clayton

The Satisfaction of Making Art – Margarita Mooney Clayton

~~~~~

From St. Augustine’s Confessions (Book 10, Chapter 27). St. Augustine reflects back on his own conversion from a life of profligacy to one of love and intimacy with God.

Chapter XXVII.-He Grieves that He Was So Long Without God.

Too late did I love Thee, O Fairness, so ancient, and yet so new! Too late did I love Thee For behold, Thou wert within, and I without, and there did I seek Thee; I, unlovely, rushed heedlessly among the things of beauty Thou madest. Thou wert with me, but I was not with Thee. Those things kept me far from Thee, which, unless they were in Thee, were not. Thou calledst, and criedst aloud, and forcedst open my deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and chase away my blindness. Thou didst exhale odours, and I drew in my breath and do pant after Thee. I tasted, and do hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for Thy peace.

https://orthodoxchurchfathers.com/fathers/npnf101/npnf1027.html#P1660_683954

~~~~~

The Ghent Altarpiece (Adoration of the Mystic Lamb) (1432) by Jan van Eyck

Two Visions Three Questions

Next year is America’s 250th anniversary. By then I will have lived 70+ years of America’s independence history. Born of the USA I now say that the American experiment has been successful.

I’ve experienced the independence, responsibility, adaptations, and hard work required to flourish in America. I have benefitted from the good that others before me have established and I am grateful.

My 70+ years as an American have not made me an optimist nor a pessimist nor an end of-history utopian. I am an American realist. I see things as they are and work from there. I don’t whine and complain and blame others and demand change (except for positions held by representatives in the political realm) to make my life better in some way.

Two Visions in America

I have viewed life with a “constrained” vision – one of two basic visions defined by Thomas Sowell in his book A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles.

The “constrained” vision and the “unconstrained” vision of the “self-anointed” discussed in the book are summarized here. (Along with my Christian understanding of man’s sinful nature, this book aided my understanding of what fosters the political divide in our country.)

As an American realist I decry the “unconstrained” vision of Progressivism and all its hideous tyrannical ‘solutions’ working to fashion new people with its socialist ideology, top-down programs, control of information, and now with AI.

If you view America with an “unconstrained vision” you likely don’t think the American experiment is a success. You’ll likely be dissatisfied with things and think the whole ‘thing’ has to come crashing down and be rebuilt with state institutions that dole out equity, i.e., a communist system of government.

Here are a few quotes from A Conflict of Visions:

“There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.”

“While believers in the unconstrained vision seek the special causes of war, poverty, and crime, believers in the constrained vision seek the special causes of peace, wealth, or a law-abiding society.”

“The greatest danger of the concept of social justice, according to Hayek, is that it undermines and ultimately destroys the concept of a rule of law, in order to supersede merely “formal” justice, as a process governed by rules, with “real” or “social” justice as a set of results to be produced by expanding the power of government to make discretionary determinations in domains once exempt from its power.”

“In the constrained vision, each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late. Their prospects of growing up as decent, productive people depends on the whole elaborate set of largely unarticulated practices which engender moral values, self-discipline, and consideration for others. Those individuals on whom this process does not “take”—whether because its application was insufficient in quantity or quality or because the individual was especially resistant—are the sources of antisocial behavior, of which crime is only one form.”

“In short, attempts to equalize economic results lead to greater—and more dangerous—inequality in political power.”

“Whenever A can get B to do what A wishes, then A has “power” over B, according to the results-oriented definition of the unconstrained vision… But if B is in a process in which he has at least as many options as he had before A came along, then A has not “restricted” B’s choices, and so has no “power” over him, by the process definition… characteristic of the constrained vision.”

Three Questions the American Experiment Requires

Thomas Sowell (born June 30, 1930) is an American economist, economic historian, social philosopher and political commentator. A onetime Marxist turned conservative economist and commentator, Sowell has argued that most causes of the left can be dismantled with three simple questions.

As nothing happens in a vacuum, context is important in understanding the outcomes you desire and perhaps voted for. Promoting any issue or candidate should be evaluated by the answers to these three questions:

1. Compared to what?
2. At what cost?
3. What hard evidence do you have?

One Example:

The Biden regime, the globalist left, and the “welcoming the stranger” Christian orgs didn’t ask Sowell’s three questions regarding an open border policy that let in 20-30+ illegal immigrants.

Open borders policy compared to what alternatives? Compared to controlled legal immigration with background checks and that promotes assimilation of American values. Societal integrity. Safety. Sanity. Sovereignty.

Open borders policy at what cost? The cost of more crime. More disease. More fentanyl and drugs. More gangs. More death. More chaos and dysfunction. More missing and trafficked children. More government. More taxes. Serving the interests of the Democratic party and their wealthy donors who need cheap labor. Overwhelming the healthcare system. (Cheap lettuce is not worth overpriced healthcare.) “Fundamentally transforming” the country into a third world country ripe for globalist dominance.

Victor Davis Hanson writes about The Immorality of Illegal Immigration and The Labyrinth of Illegal Immigration, where the truth is always more complex — and can reveal self-interested as well as idealistic parties.

Employers have long sought to undercut the wages of the American underclass by preference for cheaper imported labor. The upper-middle classes have developed aristocratic ideas of hiring inexpensive “help” to relieve them of domestic chores.

Listen, if a Christian pontificates that love does not consider the cost, understand that the “no cost” part is the individual’s cost of discipleship, and not your family’s, your neighbor’s, your community’s or your country’s.

Immigration laws are for the benefit of the American people — not for the benefit of people in other countries who want to come here. And sabotaging those laws to benefit your need to do something with your empathy or for crops or for domestic help or for anything else is illegal.

What hard evidence do you have that an open borders policy is a good decision? Your feelings? Your empathy? Any talk about “welcoming the stranger” in the abstract is not hard evidence in support of an open borders policy. Is the evidence your need for cheap labor? Democrats Once Again Concerned About Who Will Pick Their Crops

No cities announce that they will provide “sanctuary,” so that American shoplifters, or even jay-walkers, will be protected from the law. But, in some places, illegal immigrants are treated almost as if they were in a witness protection program. – Thomas Sowell, Immigration Sophistry

Sowell notes that times have changed: “When I was growing up, we were taught the stories of people whose inventions and scientific discoveries had expanded the lives of millions of other people. Today, students are being taught to admire those who complain, denounce, and demand.”

The three simple questions the left poses today:

Compared to yesterday, what can I complain and protest about today?

What can I denounce and destroy today without costing me anything?

Will you show me evidence of your affirmation of my “unconstrained” ways . . . or else?

~~~~~

“When the anointed say that there is a crisis this means that something must be done —and it must be done simply because the anointed want it done.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Vision Of The Annointed: Self-congratulation As A Basis For Social Policy

Mike Rowe: Salena Zito was four feet from President Trump when the shots rang out in Butler, PA, nearly one year ago. She was immediately thrown to the ground by security and caught up in the ensuing chaos. I was watching on TV when it happened and recognized the lady face down on the ground by her signature boots, as did many others.

The Fight For America’s Heartland | Salena Zito #442 | The Way I Heard It

~~~~~

Lest anyone think that I am an “ignorant hillbilly” and can be known by my smell (Peter Strzok), lest anyone think that I am a rube and an uncaring Christian xenophobe nativist, and lest anyone think that I haven’t traveled outside my shire and am not cosmopolitan, know that I have traveled to many parts of the world and have met and worked with many different people during my 70+ years. I am not a misanthrope.

My travel, mostly for engineering work, included a trip to Seoul South Korea and within five miles of the DMZ, to Dhahran and Jubail Saudi Arabia and the oil fields worked by Saudi Aramco, to Warsaw and Bialystok Poland, to England during the Queen’s silver jubilee, to Rio De Janeiro, to Mexico  – Tuxpan and Tampico, Mexico City, and Sonora state, to many of the provinces of Canada, including Saskatchewan when it was 40 degrees below zero, and to most of the U.S.

I did love coming home to the U.S. after each trip to some distant place.

Snakes Alive!

A countryman returning home one winter’s day found a snake by the hedge-side, half dead with cold. Taking compassion on the creature, he laid it in his bosom and brought it home to his fireside to revive it. No sooner had the warmth restored it, than it began to attack the children of the cottage. Upon this the countryman, whose compassion had saved its life, took up a club and laid the snake dead at his feet.

Aesop’s The Countryman and The Snake

~~~~~

The foolish take pity on snakes. Thinking to help creatures out in the cold cruel world, they bring them home and the creature’s true nature is revealed. Suffering follows.

The foolish do not take care to bestow their benevolence upon proper objects. And so, not having yet been bitten, the foolish continue to empathize with snakes.

Snakes on the Brain

The foolish take pity on and work to bring home MS-13 gang members, wife abusers, and human traffickers e.g., Abrego Garcia.

The foolish bring home a false premise of multiculturalism believing that all cultures are equal in some undefinable sense.

The foolish bring home DEI creatures and their true nature is revealed in the sorry outcomes.

The foolish bring home, with ad-hoc justice and zero-bail policies, criminals who are not fit to live in a community. Repeat offenders reveal their true nature.

The foolish take pity on unvetted (legally and health wise) invaders and bring them home by creating “sanctuary cities” and alerting them to the approach of the countryman, and by hiding them.

The foolish take home Hamas sympathizers and warm them by the fires of Marxist/critical theory/anticolonialism ‘higher education’. Thus embraced, their true nature is revealed. Their “freedom of expression” is to bite those empathizing with them.

The foolish take pity on invaders and rally behind rogue district court judges appointed by Biden and Obama who act unconstitutionally to block deportation of the invaders.

The foolish take pity on CCP snakes by letting them purchase U.S. farmland where they can breed.

The foolish take pity on and want to hold on to government programs of waste, fraud, and abuse that produce more snakes and snake bites, including “sex changes, LGBT activism, a “DEI musical,” a transgender opera, and birth control,” and terrorism, e.g., USAID.

I have known some as bad as the Snake.

Those with no sense will not only take a snake to their bosom, they will also take fire to their bosom, as Proverbs 6:27-35 tells us.

Disorder in the House

The foolish order their Mr. Rogers neighborly affections with Progressivism’s morally-relativistic calculus that breeds chaos, injustice and societal harm.

In the current cultural milieu given to Marxist victim-oppressor ideology, taking pity on a snake, a lowly creature, can provide a feeling of dominance and power. It can also make the snake-pitier feel virtuous. Benevolence upon improper objects follows: take pity on snakes, say nothing of their bite, and virtue signal your empathy to the world.

It helps Progressive sensibilities that the deep state media doesn’t show the consequences of snake-pity and holds snake-pitiers innocent of any biting consequences and that social media “Likes” flow with snake-pity empathy, and there are handshakes after sermons that wrangle scripture to have it mean that bringing a snake home is a loving thing.

And why not. Doesn’t the Good Book tell us to love? Isn’t that the Jesus way? And isn’t that the Woodstock way e.g., “Love the one you’re with?” Isn’t that the abstract universalist platitude way, e.g., “All You Need is Love?” Isn’t that the sentimentalist way, e.g., “love is love?” Isn’t that the social justice way, e.g., “Love is picking winners and losers?”

Prudent people bestow their benevolence upon proper objects. Prudent people focus on ordering their loves and not on joining fools who take snakes to their bosom. Here, I address the latter group, Progressive Christians who misplace empathy and disorder their love.

Empathy that cedes wisdom and objective reality for acts of trendy “social justice”, love so disordered will come back to bite them and the ones they love and those who go on to live with the consequences of their ‘empathy’!

Should we prioritize the foreigner above our family, our community, and our church? Isn’t the well-being of those closest to us more important than the migrant pursuing opportunism by crossing the border illegally? (Many illegals wave the flag of the country they left behind.)

Oh, I forgot. Many SJWs ‘exist’ on social media and in pulpits but don’t live in the communities affected. Snake bites – the raping and killing and stealing and fentanyl deaths and the zapping of community resources – Deep State Media doesn’t mention consequences of snake pity. Instead, Deep State Media is focused on vilifying snake deportations. (No pearl-clutching, please.)

A state government using taxpayer dollars to pay for housing, medical, legal and other expenses for the invaders is not on your radar – yet. Empathy that results in rape, murder, harm, and loss to your family, your community, your church, and your country – that snake hasn’t bitten you yet.

The Progressive snake preys on the naïve, on the sentimental, on those lacking wisdom and discernment. Figures in Christianity have brought home that snake and its dangerous nature. The result: moral relativity; prioritizing political correctness over truth; prioritizing the foreign over the familiar, the stranger over kin; abstract humanitarianism over the concrete needs of one’s community; disordered ordo amoris.

Disordered love is the basis of much confusion and chaos and corruption today. Disordered love can result in political disarray, protests, cultural demise, and a moral relativity that abstracts reality to gain social credit.

The breakdown of ordo amoris (order of love) explains benevolence upon improper objects It explains bringing home a snake. You cannot claim to love “the world” if you harm those closest to you in the process. And closing one’s eyes to the consequences of mis-placed empathy isn’t loving.

Order in the House

Imagine you are invited to a symphony orchestra concert. The program features atonal music.

 The music lacks a tonal center or key. It sounds off, as it does not conform to the ordered system of tonal hierarchies and harmonious structures that characterize classical music.

The vagueness and generality of the sound is annoying. Dissonant and jarring, it is characterized by disorder – pitches in new combinations and familiar pitch combinations in unfamiliar settings.

By the end of the first movement, you’ve heard enough and walk out.

~~~

The new pope Leo XIV, the first Augustinian Pope, criticized J.D. Vance’s views on the Catholic teachings on caring for others, as well as President Trump’s immigration policies.

This past February, then-Cardinal Prevost challenged Vice President JD Vance on X, repeating a headline from The National Catholic Reporter: “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”

I find such criticism rather strange and out of touch with the Order of St. Augustine that Prevost joined in 1977. The criticism sounds like Progressive politics that appropriates Jesus because it has no moral authority its own.

St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas said that love must be ordered. One must love God first, then family, then nation. (The following summaries are from The Order of Love by Sean Ring. Document below.)

Augustine’s hierarchy of love can be summarized as:

God above all – The highest love is due to God, as He is the source of all good.

Self properly ordered – We must love ourselves rightly, seeking salvation and holiness rather than selfish pleasure.

Family and kin – Natural obligations to parents, spouses, and children take precedence over others.

Community and nation – A just love of one’s people and homeland follows from natural bonds.

Strangers and humanity at large – Charity extends to all, but not at the expense of higher obligations.

St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica says that love should be given according to moral proximity, explaining that natural law thru justice and governance dictates a preference for those closest to us:

We owe special care to our families because they are an extension of ourselves.

The common good of a nation is more relevant than abstract global concerns.

Charity is universal, but obligations are graded, meaning the duty to kin and community is stronger than to distant strangers.

Ordo Amoris

Put God first – Moral order flows from divine truth.

Prioritize family and community – Nations and families are not arbitrary constructs but natural hierarchies of love.

Exercise prudent charity – Helping others should not come at the expense of justice or the destruction of one’s people.

Reject false universalism – Love for all does not mean an equal obligation to all.

~~~~

Today’s education system is focused on a Marxist victim-oppressor ordering.

Christian education should focus on Ordo Amoris, the order of affections. Children must be taught the order of priorities: what is most important and what is least important. This isn’t to say a given item is bad, but that it’s not as high in our affection (or priority list) as something else.

Teaching that involves such wisdom and discernment would be a guide to relationships and moral obligations and a protection against the modern sentimentality that distorts true love.

C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man:

“St Augustine defines virtue as ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind of degree of love which is appropriate to it. Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought. When the age for reflective thought comes, the pupil who has been thus trained in ‘ordinate affections’ or ‘just sentiments’ will easily find the first principles in Ethics; but to the corrupt man they will never be visible at all and he can make no progress in that science. Plato before him had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting and hateful.”

The apostle Paul: “So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all and especially for those of the family of faith.” Gal. 6:10

Charity begins at home. Societies thrive when love is ordered correctly. ​ But fools bring snakes home.

In pity he brought the poor Snake
To be warmed at his fire. A mistake!
For the ungrateful thing
Wife & children would sting.
I have known some as bad as the Snake.

Aesop’s The Farmer and The Snake

The apostle Paul: “So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all and especially for those of the family of faith.” Gal. 6:10

~~~~~

The Budget Savvy Travelers@thebstravelers

A Danish man—just a regular guy—gets confronted in his own country by a group of migrants who flat-out tell him: “This isn’t Denmark anymore. We’re taking over.”

That’s not integration or assimilation. That’s demographic conquest. These aren’t whispers in the back alleys—these are bold, open declarations: “We have 5 children, you have 1. In ten years, you’ll be gone.”

You’re not going to hear this story on CNN, MSNBC, or from the latte-sipping globalists at the UN—but this is what’s REALLY going on in Denmark right now.

While the mainstream media distracts you with puff pieces about Trump trying to “buy Greenland”—like that’s some kind of planetary emergency—the REAL crisis is happening on the streets of Europe. The globalist experiment is unraveling, and the social engineers want you asleep at the wheel.

Let me break this down for you—this is not immigration, this is replacement. It’s part of a globalist plan, and they’ve been cooking this up for decades: flood sovereign nations with unvetted mass migration, break down cultural identity, dilute national pride, and then centralize power in unelected bureaucracies like the EU and the World Economic Forum.

And yet—what’s the big scandal on the evening news? “Trump wanted to buy Greenland!” Give me a break! That’s not a scandal, that’s strategic resource acquisition! But they don’t want you thinking strategically. They want you guilty, distracted, docile, and outbred.

This is a warning. This is a five-alarm fire for Western civilization, and they’re telling you it’s a candle flickering in the wind. Denmark is the canary in the coal mine. What happens there will echo across Europe and the West if people don’t wake up, reclaim their identity, protect their borders, and stand up for truth, sovereignty, and survival.

WAKE UP, BEFORE YOU’RE ERASED.

~~~~~

Why, in a land that prides itself on welcoming migrants, are so many gang members from migrant communities? And is it Swedish society that is the ultimate culprit, or the migrant communities themselves?

How Sweden’s multicultural dream went fatally wrong

~~~~~

Added 5-14-2025:

THE MATT GAETZ SHOW EXCLUSIVE: FIRST LOOK INSIDE CECOT’S TREN DE ARAGUA WARD

~~~~~~

At The Still Point

Scientific, philosophical, and theological inquiries have their limits. Each pursuit provides head knowledge, but the interior life requires more – to understand with the heart spiritual reality beyond the habitual binary thinking that feels safe but limits our ability to see the truth of things in the wholeness of reality.

The continual practice of prayerful contemplation at a still point will support the interior life. A passionate pursuit of the Real will involve our imagination which is more important than knowledge. For, our imagination can take us on a journey beyond the pedantic to places of mystery, wonder, suffering, truth, and beauty.

Do you want a faith that sees beyond terrible reality? A faith that takes on a Giant named Despair[i]? Practice prayerful contemplation continually.

Poetry can help us contemplate the Passion of Christ – what I call, using T.S. Eliot’s words, “the still point of the turning world”[ii]

 The Agony by George Herbert invites us to a garden and then a cross to fathom the depths of sin and of love.

The Agony

Philosophers have measur’d mountains,
Fathom’d the depths of the seas, of states, and kings,
Walk’d with a staff to heav’n, and traced fountains:
But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behove:
Yet few there are that sound them; Sin and Love.

Who would know Sin, let him repair
Unto mount Olivet; there shall he see
A man so wrung with pains, that all his hair,
His skin, his garments bloody be.
Sin is that press and vice, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruel food through ev’ry vein.

Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that juice, which on the cross a pike
Did set again abroach, then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine.

Crucifixion – Nicolai Ge

[i] The Pilgrim’s Progress: Part 1: Giant Despair and Doubting Castle

[ii]  “At the still point of the turning world, there the dance is… Except for the point, the still point, there would be no dance, and there is only the dance.” – T. S. Eliot (Burnt Norton). https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/11/18/t-s-eliot-reads-burnt-norton/


~~~~~

A selection from the chapter Gethsemane, in the “The Lord” by Romano Guardini:

After saying these things, Jesus went forth with his disciples beyond the torrent of Cedron, where there was a garden…” (John 18:1) “According to his custom” adds Luke.

And they came to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, ‘Sit here, while I pray.’ And he took with him Peter James and John, and began to feel dread and to be exceedingly troubled. And he said to them, ‘My soul is sad, even unto death. Wait here and watch.’ . . .

Jesus’ consciousness of the world’s corruption is not grounded in the world and therefore the prisoner of existence. It springs from above, from God, and enfolds the whole globe, seeing as God sees: around existence, through existence, outwards from existence.  Moreover, Jesus’ divine consciousness, before which everything is stripped and lucid, is not extrinsic, but intrinsic, realized in his living self.  He knows with his human intellect, feels the world’s forlornness with his human heart. And, the sorrow of it, incapable of ripping the eternal God from his bliss, becomes in Christ’s human soul unutterable agony. From this knowledge comes a terrible and unrelenting earnestness, knowledge that underlies every word he speaks and everything he does. It pulses through his whole being and proclaims itself in the least detail of his fate. Here lies the root of Christ’s inapproachable loneliness. What human understanding and sympathy could possibly reach into this realm in which the Savior shoulders alone the yoke of the world? From this point of view Jesus was always a sufferer, and would have been one even if men had accepted his message of faith and love; even if salvation had been accomplished and the kingdom established alone by proclamation and acceptance, sparing him the bitter way of the cross. Even then, his whole life would have been inconceivably painful, for he would have been constantly aware of the world sin in the sight of a God he knew to be holy and all love; and he would have borne this terrible and inaccessible knowledge alone. In the hour of Gethsemane its ever-present pain swells to a paroxysm.

*****

Do you have Empathy for Real Victims? Or, has your “empathy” become toxic – aligned with the lawlessness and ‘anything goes’ morality of Progressivism? Are your loves disordered? Are lesser things loved above greater things (e.g., strangers over kin), leading to personal and societal decay?

The mother of Rachel Morin, the Maryland mom of five brutally raped and murdered by an illegal alien in August of 2023, on Wednesday joined a White House briefing to urge the media to share her daughter’s story.

“Tell the truth,” Patty Morin said. “Tell like how violent it really is.”

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt Briefs Members of the Media with a Special Guest, Apr. 16, 2025

‘Tell the truth’: Mother of Maryland woman slain by illegal alien urges media to share her story

~~~

As Democrats work themselves into hysterics over Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a now-deported El Salvadoran man (aka, ‘Maryland Man’) at the center of an intense court battle, several new details about ‘St. Abrego’ have surfaced in the last several days – most recently that the Biden administration flagged him as a ‘suspect alien’ who was potentially involved in “human smuggling/trafficking” following a traffic stop hundreds of miles away from his Maryland home, according to DHS records reviewed by Just the News.

Human Trafficking Too? Biden Admin Flagged Deported El Salvadoran As ‘Suspect Alien’ | ZeroHedge

What deep state media (MSNBC, CNN, NYT, WaPo, The Atlantic, et al) won’t tell you:

Wife of Abrego Garcia in court documents — My husband beat me many times.

Violent restraining order filed against Garcia.

Barrier to Entry

“In 1982 there was a crisis. A depraved madman had laced many Tylenol capsules with potassium cyanide. The ensuing deaths and shock at such a malicious and evil act swiftly brought an industry and FDA forces to action and together started enforcing strict guidelines for tamper-evident packaging.”

What is Tamper-Resistant Packaging?

By now, June 2023, you are used to tamper-proof and tamper-resistant packaging making packaging physically harder to open. Current regulations require that all OTC human drug products be packaged in tamper-resistant packaging. Requirements of the tamper-resistant packaging (TRP) regulations covering most OTC products were published by FDA in the FEDERAL REGISTER of November 5, 1982.

Per the Code of Federal Regulations CFR § 211.132 :

“A tamper-evident package is one having one or more indicators or barriers to entry which, if breached or missing, can reasonably be expected to provide visible evidence to consumers that tampering has occurred.”

If you have children, you are also aware that . . .

“Child-resistant (C-R) packaging, also referred to as “special packaging,” is used to reduce the risk of poisoning in children via the ingestion of potentially hazardous items including certain prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) medications, pesticides, and household chemicals.”

Child-Resistant Packaging | Consumer Healthcare Products Association (chpa.org)

“Barriers to entry” promote product safety, i.e., no disastrous events, and the integrity of the product, i.e., quality control.

In 2021 there was a crisis. Depraved madmen began lacing humans with mRNA-altering-aborted-fetal-cell permeated vaccines. Tampering with human subjects had occurred.

The clinical trials for the mRNA jabs were shut down after two months. The FDA approved the mRNA jabs even though long-term risks and complications hadn’t been properly assessed. The ensuing deaths and lack of shock at such a malicious and evil act swiftly brought an industry and FDA forces to action and together they doubled down and began recommending boosters shots, shots for pregnant women and shots for children. (The effects of the vaccines are being properly assessed now by others not tied to Pfizer and Big Pharma.)

The Biden regime mandated the COVID-19 vaccination tampering for a large swath of the American workforce who told to take the jab or wear a mask and be continually tested. If you were in the military, you were told to take the jab or be relieved from duty. Religious exemptions were not allowed.

(In 2021 I worked for a major engineering company that was a federal contractor. The Biden regime mandated via OSHA that any federal contractor with over 100 employees had to impose the jab on their employees or make them wear a mask and be continually tested. I put in a religious exemption. I would not take the jab or wear a mask or be tested. I didn’t want to be tampered with. My company wisely allowed me and others to work from home.)

Remember the concerted push to break through the barrier to entry, the tamper resistance, so that humans could be laced with the untested mRNA-altering-aborted-human-fetal-cell permeated vaccine?

The Great Awakening – Global Premiere & Livestream – June 3, 2023 – From The Creators Of Plandemic (rumble.com)

We agree based on trial that a “barrier to entry” promotes product safety, i.e., no disastrous events, and it promotes the integrity of the product, i.e., quality control for OTC medicines, household chemicals and food products. But what about “barriers to entry” to protect the life and integrity of the nation and its citizenry beyond packaging? What about “barriers to entry” that protect Americans from anyone wanting to tamper with America?

For the common good, shouldn’t there be a barrier to entry at our southern border? Why is our southern border porous? Why is the Biden regime lacing our country with fentanyl that poisons and kills Americans? Why did the Biden regime end rapid DNA testing at the border? Why was this “barrier to entry”, which protected immigrant children from abuse, removed?

And why is the Biden regime allowing in the criminal element from other countries? Why is the safety of Americans and integrity of America being tampered with? Because depraved madmen – globalists all – want to lace our country with low-cost workers (and supposed Democrat voters) and with immigrant women and children to be used for sex trafficking. Because depraved madmen do not care about the safety of American citizens nor about the integrity of the U.S.

Why are our children being tampered with in public schools? Because depraved madmen want to lace our children with poisonous indoctrination. Because depraved madmen want to break through the parental “barrier of entry” that protects children from all manner of societal evil. Because depraved madmen want to groom children and traffic them for sex.  Because depraved madmen want them to grow up and become useful idiots for the gospels of CRT and climate change.

Why are the Biden regime and many of our representatives willing to turn over U.S. sovereignty, a “barrier of entry” that protects our nation’s integrity, to the World health Organization and the World Economic Forum? Because they are depraved madmen who want to lace Americans with the poison of a New World Order. Depraved madmen will forcibly break through any tamper resistance to their ideological programs.

Tell me. Are you hearing anything in the media or from your representatives about the coming National Digital Health ID being implemented by the Federal Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology? It looks like the “barrier of entry” to our health privacy will be smashed even though the HIPPA Security Rule defines “confidentiality” to mean that e-PHI (electronic protected health information”) is not available or disclosed to unauthorized persons. Depraved madmen want their way with you.

Dr. Robert Malone says the National Digital ID System: It is Already Here (substack.com)

Tell me. Are you hearing anything in the media or from your representatives about the World Health Organization taking over the sovereignty of the U.S.?

World Health Assembly Cites Need to ‘Restrict Personal Liberties’ and Expand WHO’s Emergency Powers • Children’s Health Defense (childrenshealthdefense.org)

Pandemic Treaty: One Step Closer to Control Over Global Health Emergencies – UncoverDC

WHO Launches Digital Health Partnership With Europe | USSA News | The Tea Party’s Front Page.

Tell me. Are you hearing anything in the media or from your representatives about the World Economic Forum pushing digital ID systems (built on the premise that certain entities need to know who they are dealing with)?

What is a ‘vaccine passport’ and will you need one the next time you travel? | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)

Leah Wilson Interviews Alison McDowell | Vaccine Passports Aren’t About Vaccines At All | Stand for Health Freedom

Georgia’s WEF Puppet Governor Brian Kemp Rolls Out Digital IDs for All Citizens | The Gateway Pundit | by Guest Contributor

Most U.S. Citizens have no idea of what is being tampered with under the guise of public health safety and “for a new era of global responsibility and cooperation”? Why are these things not talked about openly? Why are these things off of the radar of our representatives?

Why do our representatives in Congress protect everything except our Bill of Rights? Our right to privacy? Our right to free speech? Our freedoms? Our Constitution?

What I’ve learned over 70 years and especially since 2020 is that you cannot trust the government, the media, many judges, and some political candidate to maintain our Constitution’s “barrier to entry” that protects our free speech, our privacy, our due process, and our freedoms. Each of these has had their integrity “barrier to entry” broken through. They are all compromised. But these must know, in no uncertain terms, that you will not be compromised, that you will not be tampered with.

Here’s Christine Anderson, a member of the European Parliament, with words you must heed:

Tell your representatives by email, letter and phone repeatedly that you want nothing to do with the following:

Environmental and social governance (ESG) for your state’s finances. (I told my retirement funds financial consultant that I do not want any of my funds invested in any ESG funds. She said that many of the clients have stated the same thing.)

Digital currency replacing physical currency

A National Digital Health ID System

The World Health Organization. Trump had pulled us out of WHO control, and the Biden regime put the U.S. back under WHO’s thumb. Tell your rep that you want the U.S. out from the WHO.

The World Economic Forum (Dear God, save us from elites – “omnipotent moral busybodies”.)

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” – C. S. Lewis

As individuals within a family, a church, and a community, we must become Tamper-proof and Tamper-resistant. Say “NO!” to digital IDs, to digital currency, to the WHO, and to the WEF. So “NO!” to the media – turn it off. (I stream Home – Real America’s Voice News (americasvoice.news) for the signal, not the noise.)

We must not become porous, letting in the lacing influences of depraved men. Depraved men? G.K. Chesterton makes it clear: “Take away the supernatural and what remains is the unnatural.”

We must champion freedom of choice and bodily autonomy.

We must champion parental rights (we do not co-parent with the government).

We must champion and protect data privacy – health, financial, location, etc. – no matter how much pressure is forced upon us to break through privacy’s “barrier to entry” with the ploys of public health safety and a climate change crisis. Resist. Resist. Resist.

2023 and there is a crisis. Depraved madmen are attempting to lace our lives with their madness. Be the barrier to entry.

*****

I believe the main reason for the lies about the novel virus is a desire for total predictability and control, with the clearly articulated intention of transforming society; beginning by dismantling the financial system through lockdowns and furlough, while the immediate practical goal of lockdown was to provide the causus belli for injecting as many people as possible with materials designed not to induce immunity, but to demand repeat inoculation, to cause injury and death, and to control freedom of movement. I’m sure they’re pretty content with getting at least one needle into 6,000,000,000 people. . . .

As I always say, I cannot know much for sure. I don’t have a copy of the script of this, the greatest crime in history. But, whatever Covid actually is, I don’t believe that what was called influenza disappeared conveniently in early 2020. It’s another lie. It’s what they do. It’s all they do. –Dr Mike Yeadon 

Why I don’t believe there ever was a Covid virus – OffGuardian (off-guardian.org)

*****

Informed Dissent:

MRNA Technology Inventor Dr. Robert Malone Warns Parents: Vaccines Could Permanently Damage Children’s Critical Organs. – www.HNewsWire.com

New: Another Study Identifies High Rate of Severe Myocarditis Cases Post COVID Vax (substack.com)

Pfizer Documents & Official Real-World Data prove the COVID Vaccines are already causing Mass Depopulation – The Expose (expose-news.com)

Dr. Sherri tenpenny: “On Tuesday, June 8, 2021, I gave testimony at the Ohio Legislature Health Committee in support of HB 248, a bill that supported freedom of choice and bodily autonomy. During that testimony, I was asked by Representative Dr. Beth Wagner Liston, “Have you observed any abnormal side effects?””

It Came to Pass … – by Dr. Sherri Tenpenny (substack.com)

Wildfire… Is Climate Change to Blame? – The Heartland Institute

*****

Be advised:

Microsoft PowerPoint – WEF – A Blueprint for Digital Identity – Final Draft.pptx (weforum.org)

The Buy In . . .

*****

Podcast:

health-care-news-podcast – Milton-Friedmans-vision

Medicare will run out of money in 2028. Social Security will run out of money in 2034. Neither the recent debt ceiling bill nor the $1.7Tn Omnibus bill before it was the answer to their solvency. PFA has an answer.

“Milton Friedman was a staunch advocate for privatizing Medicaid and Social Security, relying on the free market to regulate healthcare. The ‘Plan for America’ (PFA) is a proposal to bring this vision to life.”
Milton Friedman’s Vision: A ‘Plan for America’ and the Future of Entitlements – The Heartland Institute

*****

A Sense of Place or a Senseless Place

“I’ll paraphrase the phrase of my old neighborhood: The rest of the countries, the world is not a patch in our jeans, if we do what we wanna do, we need to do,” Joe Biden.

On or off script, Joe Biden, the head of the Democrat party, speaks from a stage of decline that often veers into irrationality as he verbally searches for self among memories real or imagined. His disjointed stream of consciousness monologues reminds me of the unnamed protagonist in Samuel Beckett’s final novel in his trilogy: The Unnamable.

Where now? Who now? When now? . . .

I’ll make myself a memory, I have only to listen, the voice will tell me everything, tell it to me again, everything I need, in dribs and drabs, breathless, it’s like a confession, a last confession, you think it’s finished, then it starts off again, there were so many sins, the memory is so bad, the words don’t come, the words fail, the breath fails . . 

Beckett, Samuel (1958). Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable.

Thank goodness we don’t have to live in Biden’s unnamable world. Or, do we? Are we being driven from home and a sense of self? Are we being driven into madness?

The following quotes, from Scrutonian Oikophilia: Antidote to Oikomachia (eighthdayinstitute.org), shed light on the challenges we face becoming conscious of who we are and where we belong:

 “[Philosopher Sir Roger Scruton’s] concept of oikophobia, which he defines as an “educated derision that has been directed towards historical loyalties by our intellectual elites, who have tended to dismiss all ordinary forms of patriotism and local attachment as forms of racism, imperialism or xenophobia of which it accuses the world.” He goes on to say that he means more than mere fear (Gk. phobia) of home (Gk. oikos), but repudiation of home. I [Erin Doom] suggested that instead of calling it oikophobia, we should call it oikomachia: not just fear of home but fighting (Gk. machia) home. We don’t just live in a secular age, one in which Christianity is just one option among many (and often the most difficult option), but also in an age of oikomachia, one that is fighting against the local home, family, and nation in favor instead of transnational institutions and “enlightened universalism against local chauvinism. . ..”

At the most fundamental level, then, building our own “home” is synonymous with building our self. And the construction of a holy self inevitably leads to the construction of a good and beautiful community, to little platoons [Edmund Burke] . . . “

Restoring a Sense of Home and Community

There are those who are concerned about the loss of a sense of home and community, as am I.

Sir Roger Scruton, referred to above, was one such person who strongly advocated for a sense of Oikos and Attachment.

Swedish conservative and think tank (OIKOS) founder Mattias Karlsson is working to restore OIKOS in Sweden.

“I know that there is a Swedish culture. I know how it feels to grow up in a homogeneous society, where everyone has the same identity. And when people say, ‘it’s never been like that, Sweden has always been multicultural, that’s all just imaginary,’ I know they’re lying.” – Mattias Karlsson

Sweden Democrats: Trump was right | Fox News

Rediscovering Conservatism in Sweden | Karl Gustel Wärnberg | First Things

Sweden conservatives to form new government after narrow election win | News24

Here’s a Dutch woman speaking to an OIKOS gathering. She is assessing the situation in the Netherlands:

And Poland rejecting the Left:

Currently, the U.S. is undergoing a massive invasion through our southern border. This, while Washington sends taxpayer money to Ukraine and other countries so they can defend their borders and nothing to defend our southern border.

The dilution of our country by the invaders is purposeful. It is meant to weaken any united resolve for home, country and Americanism. It is also meant to furnish a multitude of low paid workers to produce profits for global corporations and Democrat voters to produce more of the same. The Democrat collective loves worker bees and proles. Corporations love consumers.

My friends, please, don’t be naïve about what is going on. Our homeland, our OIKOS is being destroyed by Not-Americans with Joe Biden mindsets.

*****

Identity issues, I believe, are at the core of our fragmentation as a nation, a culture, and as individuals. Identity is being usurped, handed over, and traded.  And with each alteration, identity loses ground and becomes less sure and schizophrenic as it devolves into the Unnamable self.

*****

The Biden Admin Is Paying To Bus Illegal Migrants To New York City | The Daily Caller

Dem Governor Will Start Transporting Illegal Immigrants To New York City, Mayor Says | The Daily Caller

Informed Dissent:

From my previous post . . .for the military-industrial complex to financially survive it must produce and sell weaponry . . . and war. For the bio-medical complex to financially survive it must mass produce new serums and pandemics to sell.

Repurposed drugs like Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin are not money makers. Of course, the politicians and media who support the military complex and/or the bio-medical complex and not the repurposed drugs are rewarded.”

Ivermectin is trending

Massachusetts State Police Releases Statement Following the Sudden Deaths of Three Officers Within Four Days (thegatewaypundit.com)

Schizophrenia shows:

2 + 2 = 5:

The Church of Lord LGBTQ+

I like science. Not scientism:

Radical Secularism Won’t See Us Through

 

“If we are so troubled and perplexed, if we search for the right words and bite our tongues, this is because these three elements are constitutive parts of our situation and the great fact of Islam that is at the center of our struggles, for Muslims and for non-Muslims, together or separately.” Pierre Manent, Beyond Radical Secularism

 

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Manent, in his book Beyond Radical Secularism, suggests that the Islamic phenomenon presents three distinct and yet interdependent elements which must be addressed by Europe and, I suggest, ultimately by the U.S.: Muslim immigration, Muslim settlement and mosques financed by Gulf States, and Islamic terrorism.

How do we as a nation begin to address the three elements? Do we call others “Islamaphobic” or “Xenophobic” and content ourselves with pointed fingers and huffing? Do we act like a Jesuit I know and parse out isolated Scripture from the Bible to push the Progressive notion that to be a good country one must have Open Borders and welcome all comers with no conditions placed on refugees/immigrants while hoping things will all work out, while not taking into account the unintended consequences for both parties and without accruing any personal cost? Or, do we as a people living within the Kingdom of God on earth address the complex issue at hand? Do we acknowledge who we are as a nation and our Christian heritage and also acknowledge Muslims?

 

I suggest Manent’s Beyond Radical Secularism is a good place to begin looking at the matter before us.

Several months have passed since I read though Pierre Manet’s twenty essays, essays encapsulated in his book Beyond Radical Secularism. Before too much more time passes I wanted to record what I learned from the essays along with my reflections.

This is not a book review. Rather, this post is me trying to understand the Islam situation facing the U.S. and doing so through the eyes of French academic and political scientist Pierre Manent whose own country of France is having to come to terms with the Muslims. My thoughts are interspersed with Manent’s words.

From the book’s Introduction by Daniel J. Mahoney:

“In this, his latest book (originally published in France as Situation de la France), Manent brings together his considerable theoretical and practical concerns with rare spiritual depth. He reveals the failure of Europe’s humanitarian civil religion and pleads for a restoration of prudent judgment, rooted in a searching exploration of the theological-political problem. He reveals just where the de-politicization and de-Christianization of Europe has led the continent and his native France. Refusing to despair, and not content with literary politics and facile criticism, Manent lays out a practical philosophy that shows Europe and the West that deliberation and action remain as available to us as they were to Pericles and St. Paul.” (Emphasis mine)

 

As noted above, Manent writes from a French perspective. Yet, his home turf insights can provide significant direction for U. S. immigration policies addressing the “three elements” noted above.

In Manent’s assessment of the current political situation, he sees both France and the West looking weak:

“As rich as we still are in material and intellectual resources, we are politically without strength. Doubtless this has not escaped the attention of those who now attack us.” (From the Preface)

France and the West, Manent points out, are capitulating to radical secularism–a stripping of the national landscape of political and Christian milestones, earmarks and boundaries. Both are refusing to either fight their enemies or to love their enemies. Both are handing out subjective rights which further divide the nation state into individuals against one another. In so doing, the political regime

“…makes every constraint appear to be useless and arbitrary, in a word vexing, whether civic or in private life. As each letting go justifies and calls forth the next, governments are motivated to tout themselves no longer by the guidance and the energy they give to common life, but by the “new rights” they grant to individuals and to groups.” (From the Preface)

 

Though not mentioned by Manent in his book, it seems to me that the French philosopher Foucalt’s deconstructionism has gone a long way in educational circles toward emptying words and historical narratives of the meaning they once held. This vacating of meaning has led to intellectual and moral paralysis. We no longer know what to do because we no longer know what to think, Manent posits.

At the end of his Preface, Manent elaborates:

“Our irritated and vacant souls are full of a jumble of historical references, positive or negative, which our experience no longer shifts or orders, and of which we make use in the most frivolous or self-interested manner.”

Later, in essay seven, he writes about France,

“The major fact of our situation, one that has important consequences in all domains that concern us, is the radical loss of authority by the main and decisive instrument of modern politics, that is, the State, or if you will, in the specifically French context, the Republic. One might say, in the language of political physics that the republican State no longer has the power either to reduce the constituent groups of France to citizen-individuals, those primordial elements of modern politics, nor to offer these individuals something to hold in common substantial enough to allow them to be true citizens, that is, members of a larger whole…we tend to return to the pre-modern situation… One of the distinctive features of the situation was the absence of any border between the interior and the exterior.”

 

Here in the U.S. Barack Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of America was by many accounts a proclaimed and implied look-down-his-nose disdain for America’s history, its Constitution and its ways of life. Obama even apologized to other nations for America’s ‘faults’ as he saw them. As we are finding out, Obama’s administration didn’t just disparage America it also colluded against America and its ally Israel with a South American drug cartel to help Iran advance their nuclear program. Obama along with the likes of Noam Chomsky and a host of “intelligentsia” sought to shame and deconstruct America and to remake it in their own Progressive promise-of-the-future image. Enter a carnival mirror reflection.

Donald Trump comes along and promotes an uber-nationalist fundamental retransformation after his own ribald image. But neither administration has addressed the Muslim situation other than making polarizing comments.

 

Manent, as he views France, sees their common life dissipating from the loss of State authority due to the people’s lack of faith in government’s trustworthiness and also a loss in faith in Providence, a special concern for a nation with a Christian mark. Add to these weakening influences globalization–the absence of borders within and without, the purposeful loss of historical meaning and context, the placation of individuals and groups with subjective rights by the government, and the neutralizing of the mark of Christianity on a nation. All such effects of degeneration on the common life undermine “a stable and coherent disposition” toward Muslim immigration. You shouldn’t welcome someone into your common life if your common life is on life support. More degeneration occurs.

Our own common political life is being redefined as the ‘indeterminate and limitlessness of individual rights” and interests, just as Manent described France’s political life. Our nation, already fragile, is questioning its identity as it sees itself through the media lens of “fundamental transformation” pushed by Progressives. Our education systems, Progressivism’s training grounds, focus on identity politics and refuse to reinforce a national common life, seeing it as a formulation of power structures from the past that must be done away with.

We are weak and getting weaker and we are inviting in a people, some of whom are at war with us.

 

Manent talks about the effects of the transformative “equality”, values” and “secularism” criteria in his own country:

“I have emphasized repeatedly… — that our political regime has progressively brought about its own paralysis by the ever narrower and more unilateral way it has understood its principles. The rights of man have been separated radically from the rights of the citizen and, instead of freeing members of society in order to make them capable and desirous of participating in what is common, they are now supposed to suffice to themselves, and public institutions are nothing more than their docile instrument. We are probably the first, and we will surely remain the only people in history to give over all elements of social life and all contents of human life to the unlimited sovereignty of the individual.”

 

 

A solution and warning;

Manent writes that France has the tools to deal with the influx of Islam: a history of a neutral secular State coupled with a people with a “Christian mark.” Yet, France and the Europe Union are in depoliticizing mode with their eager acceptance of globalization and open borders. Even more debilitating, they are negating, via radical secularization, all religion from public life and particularly Christianity. Manent warns that these divesting actions will cripple and paralyze any proper response France must take in accepting Islam into the common life of France.

 

Manent talks of a “politics of the possible” between French Muslims and the civic body. Two principles would apply. First, Muslims are to be accepted “as they are” without seeking to modernizing them or conforming them to others in the society.

Second, preserve and defend the sanctuary of secular government and the characteristics of its regime which holds them as citizens first, Muslims second.

 

For a shared life Manent suggests that acceptance of Muslims into French society would need to be balanced by elements of France’s “ancient constitution” in order to prevent a Muslim transformation of France. And this acceptance must not advance as “secularism.”

There is a need to address who we are when speaking to those who a seeking to live with us. There is also a need to address Muslims as who they are and then to go forward together, each recognizing the other.

Beyond the foundation and bulwarks of an “ancient constitution” Manent suggests that France (rightfully) impose two restrictions on entering Muslims: no polygamy and no burqa. Such parameters, he posits, would protect the social fabric of the nation and the political freedoms in place.

For the U.S. I would impose the same restrictions along with not allowing sharia law to become law. Muslims immigrants must submit to the laws of our republic. They must not ‘rule’ themselves separately in opposition to a common life. They also must understand that we are a nation with a Christian mark and one which does not impose its Christian beliefs onto others via the government. Here, the individual is self-governing within the full extent of the law. Here the Christian influences government but is not authoritarian, despite Leftist characterizations to the contrary.

 

As I see it, we must define our relationships beyond individual rights. We must define who we are in common. A neutral secular State will support groups which support the common life of the State. It will respect each group and allow each group to function on its own without imposing laws specific to a particular group.

 

A Radicalized secular state, on the other hand, will, by its vacuous nature, delegitimize its people and their religion. But don’t expect Muslims to become secular and that tensions will float away. They won’t (though many Progressive Christians have) and the tensions won’t magically dissolve because you opened your borders. Radical secularism pretends that we are just citizen-individuals with nothing to offer but our individuated ‘diverse’ presence. The State only has authority and powers we give it. If we give it nothing but demand only rights we suck the life out of our common life.

An open border de-politicized nation will continue to splinter off. A de-Christianized nation will have no means to influence and support the neutral State. And, Christianity has for centuries fostered and supported secular authority. But Islam, as you know, is theocratic in its politics. To live in common, Islam must separate political and religious life in its citizen contract with the State.

And that State? I see the government’s primary responsibility as promoting the common good by maintaining the rule of law, and preserving basic duties and rights. A neutral secular government offers protection, security and the motivation for the common good. A radicalized secular nation has nothing but individual ‘rights’ to offer a people who then become increasingly alienated.

With more than just rights to offer, a shared life in the U.S. is possible–and desirable–if we remember and “they” learn who we are and why we are – a nation with a Christian mark seeking a common and secure life. It is within this context that the Islamic phenomenon’s three distinct and yet interdependent elements must be addressed.

 

I recommend Manent’s book, Beyond Radical Secualrism to you. 

Pierre Manent is a French political scientist. Or, as they say in France…

Pierre Manent est directeur d’ etudes a l’ Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales, membre fondateur de la revue Commentaire.

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English philosopher Sir Roger Scruton also has something to say about the above:

https://twitter.com/Scruton_Quotes/status/942682334209478658

https://twitter.com/Scruton_Quotes/status/942683659500425216

https://twitter.com/Scruton_Quotes/status/942681842834202625

https://twitter.com/Scruton_Quotes/status/942687422252449792