Trump’s Expansion of Mexico City Policy Is a Major Victory in Protecting Life

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Someday, future generations of Americans will look back on us and wonder how and why such a rich and seemingly enlightened society, so blessed and endowed with the capacity to protect and enhance vulnerable human life, could have instead so aggressively promoted death to children by abortion—both here and overseas.

They will note that we prided ourselves on our commitment to human rights, while precluding virtually all protection to the most persecuted minority in the world today—unborn children.

And they will demand to know why dismembering a child with sharp knives, pulverizing an infant with powerful suction devices, or chemically poisoning a baby with any number of toxic chemicals failed to elicit in so many so much as a scintilla of empathy, mercy, or compassion for the victims.

Abortion is violence against children, and hurts women.

This week, the Trump administration announced the implementation of the new Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance policy—a significant reiteration and expansion of President Ronald Reagan’s Mexico City policy.

Announced by Reagan at the United Nations Conference on Population Control in Mexico City in 1984—hence its name—the policy was and is designed to ensure that U.S. taxpayer money is not funneled to foreign nongovernmental organizations that perform or promote abortion as a method of family planning.

Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush embraced the policy, while Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama nullified it.

Thirty-two years ago—in July of 1985—I authored the first of several successful annual amendments on the floor of the House of Representatives to preserve the Mexico City policy.

Significantly, the old Mexico City policy only applied to family planning funds—over half a billion dollars.

The new policy establishes pro-child safeguards—benign, humane conditions—on about $8.8 billion in annual global health assistance funding appropriated to the U.S. Agency for International Development and the departments of State and Defense.

This funding includes not only family planning, but other global health assistance such as maternal and child health, malaria, and HIV/AIDs.

Also of significance, the new pro-child, pro-woman safeguards do not reduce funding for global health assistance by so much as a dollar.

According to State Department guidance, the policy only applies to foreign NGOs as grantees or subgrantees. Other potential recipients of global health assistance grant money—including national and subnational governments—are exempt, as are refugee and migration assistance programs.

President Donald Trump’s Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance policy includes three abortion exceptions—for rape, incest, and to save the life of the mother. Nothing in the policy prevents foreign NGOs from treating injuries or illnesses that were caused by any abortion.

For years, pro-abortion organizations have used U.S. taxpayer funds to weaken, undermine, or reverse pro-life laws in other nations and systematically destroy the precious lives of unborn children.

Scores of countries throughout the world have been besieged by aggressive and well-funded campaigns to overturn their pro-life laws and policies.

The Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance policy will significantly mitigate U.S. taxpayer complicity in global abortion.

U.S. foreign policy—and the foreign entities we fund with billions of dollars in grant money—should consistently affirm, care for, and tangibly assist women and children.

We must increase access to maternal and prenatal care, and ensure access to safe blood and better nutrition.

We must also expand essential obstetrical services, including skilled birth attendants, while improving transportation to emergency care facilities to significantly reduce maternal mortality and morbidity—including from obstetric fistula.

Prioritizing programs that ensure adequate nutrition and supplementation for moms and children during the all-important first 1,000 days of life—from conception to the second birthday—are among the most transformative, life-enhancing commitments that can be made.

Expanding these measures make women and children healthier, stronger, and more resilient to disease and disability while reducing death and injury.

No one is expendable or a throwaway. Every human life has infinite value. Birth is merely an event, not the beginning of the life of a child.

The new Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance policy is inclusive of all people, regardless of their age, race, sex, disability, or condition of dependency—especially the weakest and most vulnerable. (For more from the author of “Trump’s Expansion of Mexico City Policy Is a Major Victory in Protecting Life” please click HERE)

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Feminism Drives People to Deny Basic Facts

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The number of foolish statements made by men and women who consider themselves feminists is essentially equal to the number of people who strongly identify as feminists.

I write “strongly identify” because if asked, “Are you a feminist?” most women will say yes.

They will do so for two reasons.

One is that there is no social price paid for saying that one is a feminist, while there can be a huge price paid—on a college campus, for example—for saying that one is not a feminist.

The other is that a great number of women define feminism as “belief in women’s equality.” And by that definition, who isn’t a feminist? I certainly am.

Intelligence varies among these women and men as much as it does among members of any group of people; there are both brilliant individuals and dummies who say they are feminists.

But the women today—I am not talking about suffragettes in the early 20th century—whose identities are wrapped up in being a feminist are nearly all dummies.

That doesn’t mean they all lack brainpower. There are many people with a fine brain who are fools. Indeed, such individuals dominate our universities.

This realization occurred to me again when reading a CNN column written last week by Jill Filipovic, one of CNN’s feminist writers. (Does CNN employ a non-feminist female writer?)

The column was about Australian Sen. Larissa Waters, who breast-fed her child in the parliamentary chamber while Parliament was in session. The CNN writer, as would be expected, lauded the parliamentarian: What could be more beautiful or natural than breast-feeding in Parliament?

Among the writer’s arguments defending Waters was one in which she said, “Yes, for many people, breasts are sexually alluring or arousing—but so too are lips and hands, and having those out in Parliament doesn’t bring on sexual chaos.”

This was similar to the argument advanced by the highest court in the state of New York in a 1992 ruling that said women could go topless in public because men can, and there is no difference between a man’s chest and a woman’s.

In the court’s words, the law that prevented them from doing so “discriminates against women by prohibiting them from removing their tops and exposing their bare chests in public as men are routinely permitted to do.”

Now back to our feminist at CNN who compared the sexually alluring and arousing nature of visible lips and hands with visible breasts.

It is difficult to overstate the foolishness of that comment.

For one thing, the only inference to be drawn is that women in parliament and all other public spaces should uncover their breasts just as they do their lips and hands.

But what is truly absurd is the equation of seeing women’s breasts with seeing their lips and hands.

Is the author unaware of the fact that men pay to enter “topless” bars in order to look at women’s breasts wherever on Earth it is permitted?

Now, why is that?

Some will say it’s only because women’s hands and lips are visible, while their breasts are covered. If all women were to wear gloves in public, the argument goes, men would pay to see women’s bare hands.

I trust that most readers find such an argument risible.

Men from Saudi Arabia, where women’s lips are regularly covered, go to the West and pay to see women’s breasts, not their lips.

Why?

Because in virtually every society, heterosexual men have found the female breast a particularly sexually alluring part of a woman’s body.

Evolutionary psychologist Carole Jahme, a science columnist for the left-wing pro-feminist publication the Guardian, summarized a whole host of academic studies. She wrote:

The full, plump bosom seen in the human ape is an anomaly. No other primate has a permanent breast. … The sex appeal of rounded female buttocks and plump breasts is both universal and unique to the human primate.

So, then, the sole purpose of women’s breasts is not for nursing babies. It is also to attract and arouse men.

Yet, whoever argues that women’s breasts are there to arouse men, not just to provide a baby with milk, is dismissed by feminists as a sexist heterosexist patriarchal pig, a product of a sexist culture that renders women and their baby-feeding mammary glands sexual objects.

But it turns out that science, not just common sense, rejects the feminist argument.

So, how does a CNN columnist, along with myriad other feminists, not know this? Why did my grandmother, who never went to high school, know this, while a vast number of graduates of our universities do not?

The answer is that today’s universities—especially women’s studies and gender studies departments—generally make people stupid.

The only remaining question is: Did anyone at CNN find this column absurd? I suspect not.

And that’s more than absurd. That’s frightening. (For more from the author of “Feminism Drives People to Deny Basic Facts” please click HERE)

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Who Wins and Who Loses Under These 8 Big Government Policies

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It’s clear that many big government policies are creating winners and losers in America.

The story has been the same for decades. Government makes friends with a company or an industry, blocks out the competition with regulation, and in some cases gives the company subsidies.

Such cronyism is bad for innovators and for consumers. But fewer people realize that it’s also bad for the poor.

A recent report from The Heritage Foundation detailed 23 of these big government policies that hurt the poor, and provided concrete ways to address them.

Winners and losers from big government policies are not always clear. And yet for some crony policies, the winners and losers are very clear.

The winners are a small group of identifiable government cronies, while the losers include people of little or no influence with the government.

Here is a look at eight big government policies from the report that benefit government cronies at the expense of other groups of people, including the poor.

1. Renewable Fuel Standard

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandated that renewable fuels be mixed into America’s gasoline supply, primarily by using corn-based ethanol. Then, the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Acts significantly increased the amount that must be mixed in.

This mandate is known as the Renewable Fuel Standard. It forces the use of higher levels of biofuels than the market would otherwise bear. The result has been higher food and fuel prices.

Who Wins: Corn farmers, soybean farmers, and biofuel companies.

Who Loses: Consumers of gasoline, consumers of food, and farmers that rely on feedstock and restaurants.

2. Federal Sugar Program

The federal government tries to limit the supply of sugar that is sold in the United States.

This federal sugar program uses a combination of price supports, marketing allotments that limit how much sugar processors can sell each year, and import restrictions that reduce the amount of imports.

As a result, the price of American sugar is consistently higher than world prices.

Who Wins: Sugar growers and sugar harvesters.

Who Loses: Workers in sugar-using industries, and consumers of food (including bread) that contains sugar.

3. Catfish Inspection Program

As a result of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s catfish inspection program, the USDA inspects catfish while the Food and Drug Administration inspects all other seafood.

This creates duplication because seafood processing facilities that produce both catfish and any other seafood will have to deal with two different types of seafood regulatory schemes instead of just one.

This program also creates a non-tariff trade barrier that will make it extremely difficult for foreign catfish exporters to export to the U.S., likely reducing competition for the domestic catfish industry.

Who Wins: Domestic catfish producers.

Who Loses: Domestic catfish consumers.

4. The Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (the Jones Act)

The Merchant Marine Act—nicknamed after Sen. Wesley Jones, R-Wash.—requires the use of domestically built ships when transporting goods between U.S. ports. The ships must also be U.S.-owned, and mostly U.S.-crewed.

Who Wins: The U.S. domestic shipping industry.

Who Loses: The U.S. military, automobile drivers, users of propane and heating oil, and anyone benefitting from the trade and transportation of goods between U.S. ports.

5. Occupational Licensure

Licensure laws create government requirements for being allowed to practice a profession. These requirements exist even though the market would produce certification options if consumers desired such information.

Who Wins: Workers who have already obtained licenses.

Who Loses: People wanting to work who can’t because they don’t have a license, and consumers who have to pay higher prices for services.

6. Economic Development Takings

On June 23, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Kelo v. City of New London that the government can seize private property and transfer it to another private party for economic development.

This type of taking was deemed to be for “public use” and ruled a proper use of the government’s eminent domain power under the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Who Wins: People who successfully lobby the government to seize other people’s property for financial gain.

Who Loses: Property owners who have their property seized.

7. Home-Sharing Regulations

Local governments sometimes ban or excessively regulate home-sharing—that is, renting out one’s home to accommodate travelers, such as through Airbnb.

When this happens, consumers have less choices of where to stay when traveling, hotels can charge higher prices, and homeowners and renters can’t make full use of their legally possessed homes to earn income for themselves.

Who Wins: Hotel employee union lobbies, and the hotel industry.

Who Loses: Homeowners and renters.

8. Ride-Sharing Regulations

In some state and local jurisdictions (such as outside Portland, Oregon; Alaska; and Austin, Texas), the government bans or heavily regulates ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft.

These companies are popping up all over because they meet consumers’ needs, but they are being held down in certain cities where the government backs the establishment industry.

Who Wins: Traditional taxicab companies.

Who Loses: Uber, Lyft, and drivers looking for low barriers to entry; taxicab customers; customers who want to go in or out of certain neighborhoods that traditional taxi drivers avoid; and users of public transportation seeking to complete the “last mile” of their trips.

When industries or groups win special favors from politicians at the expense of ordinary Americans and the poor, it is an affront to freedom—especially to the economic freedom of the poor.

Policies that drive up prices—especially of commodities—are harder to absorb if you are poor.

The policies listed above can block off the only escape route that poor people have from poverty, preventing them from doing what they are good at for a living, for example, or from renting out their home or other property.

All Americans should have the same opportunities open to them. But when government cronyism rears its ugly head, they don’t.

Those who fall on the losing side of cronyism are more likely to agree with President Ronald Reagan when he said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” (For more from the author of “Who Wins and Who Loses Under These 8 Big Government Policies” please click HERE)

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The Establishment’s Jihad Against Trump Intends Impeachment; Don’t Be Surprised if it Results in Civil War

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The Establishment’s war against Trump has reached a fevered state. CNN has been producing stories on an almost daily basis claiming that the President has committed felonious offenses. The disgraced ex-head of the Deep State’s intelligence network, James Clapper, disgustingly claimed the authority of the Founders in attacking Trump for “assaulting” institutions of democracy. Pundits are abandoning him in droves. And Republicans of all stripes are attacking the supposed incompetency of the Trump Administration. Trump isn’t getting relief from any quarter.

It’s a set up for impeachment. And maybe civil war.

An exaggeration, you say? Not even close. The vomitous “fake news” regurgitated daily from the Establishment media – sometimes even Fox – is transparent to everyone. Whether it’s stories about how Trump unfairly got two scoops of ice cream or it’s reports on how the 2016 election was hijacked by the Russians, everyone knows a scam when they see it. And this garbage in the media is nowhere close to the quality of past propaganda like the Kennedy assassination or TWA 800. No, this is overt, over-the-top shysterism. Even a grade-schooler can see the gross bias.

It’s expected that the Deep State bureaucrats will regurgitate this crap. But when politicians of all stripes seem to adopt talking points drawn from this obviously fake narrative, the People start to contemplate that maybe, just maybe, their representatives are no longer working for them. Perhaps they’ve been leveraged by the Deep State like so many others who have abandon the People for the Establishment – like 90% of Republicans who were elected to reverse the size and scope of the federal government but continue to vote to fund it. The People lose faith in this type of “leadership,” especially when it’s tainted by corruption and pedophile scandals.

Why was Trump elected? Try single-digit approval ratings for Congress. Total disgust for the direction of government. A sense that globalists who don’t give a damn for the ‘average Joe’ are directing trade policy. Growing realization that the endless war policies of the neocons kill our best and brightest while transferring hundreds of billions to corrupt crony-capitalists. And increasing understanding that immigration policy is being used to enrich the multinational corporatists while leaving the working class poorer than ever.

Polling shows a nation more divided than any time in prior history, including the Civil War. It’s a struggle between those who value rugged individualism and natural rights versus those who see themselves as part of a globalist, communistic society where the “greater good” justifies all sorts of evil.

Will patriots stay silent in the face of this attempted coup? Many voted for Trump as a last resort, seeing one last effort to rescue the Republic. They’re sick of the perverted elites shoving their immorality down their throats. They’re tired of losing income and assets year after year. They’re done with being totally ignored when policy decisions are made in DC. And they can’t stand the thought of their nation being subverted to an international system that cares nothing for them and their families.

Let’s hope Trump outsmarts everyone and drains the swamp. But we’re sitting on a powder keg, perhaps an intended one that will, once and for all, destroy the nation’s foundation of liberty. Globalists will celebrate as the Great City on the Hill topples into the dustbin of history leaving a void only tyranny will fill. Or maybe – just maybe – the Tree of Liberty will be refreshed, giving our children an opportunity to live in freedom for another generation.

Deep State Cover-Up? DNC Staffer Seth Rich Spoke to WikiLeaks Prior to Murder; Police, Feds Told to Stand Down

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Seth Rich, the Democrat National Committee staffer murdered last summer on Capitol Hill, was speaking with WikiLeaks before he died, according to new reports.

Not satisfied with the pace or direction of the D.C. police investigation, the Rich family hired private detective Rod Wheeler to seek answers. That Rich was in touch with WikiLeaks is just one of the explosive claims Detective Wheeler has made.

The as-yet unsolved murder has been characterized as a botched robbery by D.C. police, even though evidence doesn’t actually point to a robbery. Rich was shot on July 10, 2016 after an apparent struggle, but his wallet, credit cards, cellphone and wristwatch were not taken.

Rich’s mother said, “There had been a struggle. His hands were bruised, his knees are bruised, his face is bruised, and yet he had two shots to his back, and yet they never took anything.”

She questions the claim that her son was working with WikiLeaks. “They took his life for literally no reason. They didn’t finish robbing him, they just took his life,” Rich said. “They hurt the community, and they hurt the long-term possibility of what he could have done.”

But Wheeler is standing by his story and he is getting backed up by the feds.

A “federal source” told Fox News Channel that the FBI generated a forensic report regarding Rich’s computer within 96 hours of his death. The report indicated Rich was in contact with WikiLeaks through the late Gavin MacFadyen, an American investigative reporter, documentary filmmaker, and WikiLeaks official who had been living in London at the time.

The Fox report continues:

“I have seen and read the emails between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks,” the federal investigator told Fox News, confirming the MacFadyen connection. He said the emails are in possession of the FBI, while the stalled case is in the hands of the Washington Police Department.

The revelation is consistent with the findings of Wheeler, whose private investigation firm was hired by a third party on behalf of Rich’s family to probe the case.

“My investigation up to this point shows there was some degree of email exchange between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks,” Wheeler said. “I do believe that the answers to who murdered Seth Rich sits on his computer on a shelf at the D.C. police or FBI headquarters.”

The federal investigator, who requested anonymity, said 44,053 emails and 17,761 attachments between Democratic National Committee leaders, spanning from January 2015 through late May 2016, were transferred from Rich to MacFadyen before May 21.

On July 22, just 12 days after Rich was killed, WikiLeaks published internal DNC emails that appeared to show top party officials conspired to stop Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont from becoming the party’s presidential nominee. That controversy resulted in Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigning as DNC chairperson.

Meanwhile, police have not revealed if the victim was able to identify his attackers or provide any information before he died in a hospital. A surveillance video shows Rich being followed by two men, but police have not made that video public.

After the shooting, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange claimed he had been working with Rich and implied he was murdered because he was the source of the hacked DNC emails. Assange has offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the killers. D.C. police are offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of Rich’s murderer. Republican lobbyist Jack Burkman is offered a separate $130,000 reward.

Assange’s claims and allegations of a DNC cover-up were widely dismissed as “conspiracy theories.” But Wheeler says FBI sources tell him that Rich was working with WikiLeaks, “absolutely, and that’s been confirmed.” Wheeler’s clear implication is that the DNC or some other political organization or individual could be involved.

“I want to find out who caused that man’s death, so we can put them behind bars. But if there’s somebody in politics, somebody in government – whether it’s the mayor’s office or anywhere else in this city that’s involved, you better believe they’re gonna be dragged in and questioned.”

Wheeler claims something is being deliberately hidden. Local police and the FBI “haven’t been cooperating at all. I believe that the answer to solving his death lies on [Rich’s laptop] computer, which I believe is either at the police department or either at the FBI. I have been told both… I have a source inside the police department that has looked at me straight in the eye and said, ‘Rod, we were told to stand down on this case and I can’t share any information with you.’” Wheeler says.

“I don’t think it comes from the Chief’s [of police] office, but I do believe there is a correlation between the mayor’s office and the DNC, and that’s the information that’s gonna come out tomorrow [i.e. Tuesday],” Wheeler said yesterday. (For more from the author of “Deep State Cover-Up? DNC Staffer Seth Rich Spoke to WikiLeaks Prior to Murder; Police, Feds Told to Stand Down” please click HERE)

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This Latest Trump-Russia Leak Smells Like a Coup Attempt

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There is, indeed, a bombshell of a story coming out of the news that President Donald Trump revealed sensitive information during his White House meeting with Russian officials last week. But it’s not that President Trump committed any crime. The really alarming news is that the duly-elected President of the United States appears to be the target of a political coup.

First, let’s be clear: President Trump has been sloppy, arrogant, and just plain misguided plenty of times during his short tenure in office — including the way he handled the firing of FBI Director James Comey and the hiring and firing of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. And if he did unnecessarily compromise the source of the sensitive information he shared with the Russians, shame on him.

But a president cannot be removed from office for arrogance and sloppiness. The Constitution sets specific grounds for impeachment. They are “treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors.” To be impeached and removed from office, the House and Senate must find that the official committed one of these acts.

Here’s what I think is the bigger scandal: Someone at the highest levels of government has leaked information to the news media about President Trump’s discussions with Russian officials. That’s potentially a serious crime. And, this wasn’t the first time. (Read more from “This Latest Trump-Russia Leak Smells Like a Coup Attempt” HERE)

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Transgender Conundrum: Massive Genetic Differences Between Men and Women Uncovered in Recent Study

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Men and women differ in obvious and less obvious ways – for example, in the prevalence of certain diseases or reactions to drugs. How are these connected to one’s sex? Weizmann Institute of Science researchers recently uncovered thousands of human genes that are expressed – copied out to make proteins – differently in the two sexes. Their findings showed that harmful mutations in these particular genes tend to accumulate in the population in relatively high frequencies, and the study explains why. . .

[The scientists] looked closely at around 20,000 protein-coding genes, sorting them by sex and searching for differences in expression in each tissue. They eventually identified around 6,500 genes with activity that was biased toward one sex or the other in at least one tissue. For example, they found genes that were highly expressed in the skin of men relative to that in women’s skin, and they realized that these were related to the growth of body hair. Gene expression for muscle building was higher in men; that for fat storage was higher in women. . .

Less obvious locations included genes that were found to be expressed only in the left ventricle of the heart in women. One of these genes, which is also related to calcium uptake, showed very high expression levels in younger women that sharply decreased with age; the scientists think that they are active in women up to menopause, protecting their hearts, but leading to heart disease and osteoporosis in later years when the gene expression is shut down. Yet another gene that was mainly expressed in women was active in the brain, and though its exact function is unknown, the scientists think it may protect the neurons from Parkinson’s – a disease that has a higher prevalence and earlier onset in men. The researchers also identified gene expression in the liver in women that regulates drug metabolism, providing molecular evidence for the known difference in drug processing between women and men. (Read more from “Transgender Conundrum: Massive Genetic Differences Between Men and Women Uncovered in Recent Study” HERE)

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President Trump, Vice President Pence Raise Pastor Brunson’s Case Three Times With Turkey’s President

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I just received a call from the Vice President’s office. President Trump and Vice President Pence raised the case of American Pastor Andrew Brunson three times today with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

This is exactly what we asked the President to do and is a major sign of significant progress toward bringing Pastor Andrew home.

Pastor Andrew – a U.S. citizen – has been wrongfully imprisoned in Turkey for more than seven months because of his Christian faith. Today, Turkish President Erdogan met with President Trump at the White House. Last week, I urged the President and the Vice President when I met with them in the White House to raise Pastor Andrew’s case with Turkish leaders. Today, they did just that, raising his plight directly to President Erdogan. (Read more from “President Trump, Vice President Pence Raise Pastor Brunson’s Case Three Times With Turkey’s President” HERE)

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School: Praying for a Colleague Is Unacceptable

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A school worker in Augusta, Maine was ordered to stop using religious phrases like “I will pray for you” and “You were in my prayers” because such language is not allowed inside a public school building — even in private conversations with coworkers.

The Augusta School Department launched an investigation of Toni Richardson after they alleged she “imposed some strong religious/spiritual belief system” towards a coworker.

Now, imposing your religion on someone is a serious allegation. Was Ms. Richardson forcing her coworker to convert to Christianity? Did she attempt to baptize him against his will?

It turned out to be nothing of the sort.

According to an official memorandum from the school district, Ms. Richardson had told a colleague that she was going to pray for him. It just so happens that Ms. Richardson and the colleague attended the same church. (Read more from “School: Praying for a Colleague Is Unacceptable” HERE)

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Are Western Apologists for Islam Today’s ‘Useful Idiots’?

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Every day, in little ways and big, each of us faces the choice: Between illusion and truth. Comfort and courage. Between getting patted on the back or looking yourself in the mirror.

The French have made their choice. Confronted with monthly terror attacks, large sections of major cities “no-go” zones for police and women not wearing hijabs, and agents of ISIS infiltrating “refugee” groups, the voters of France overwhelmingly chose … surrender.

They rejected an imperfect candidate, Marine Le Pen, with a plausible and moral plan for containing the cancer of radical Islam. Instead, they picked Emmanuel Macron, an off-the-shelf crony socialist who favors open borders and denies that “French culture” exists.

That nation’s largest Catholic newspaper, La Croix, endorsed Macron, and the head of the French church welcomed his election. Meanwhile, Catholics in Iraq and jihadist-occupied Syria face burned and blackened churches, and life in refugee camps.

Just Cowards and Fools?

What’s the difference between Islam as seen by French Catholics, and by Iraqi ones? Are Christians who believe that Islam is a “religion of peace” simply … cowards and fools?

It’s a tempting conclusion. It easy to think the same of Western liberals who defend “Marxist theory” while squirming at Communist crimes. Indeed, Communists themselves used to call such people “useful idiots.” Both timidity and stupidity surely play their part.

But even those evils need something to work with. In the case of Communism, Westerners who sneered at “primitive anti-Communism” would insist that the “idealistic” Karl Marx was betrayed by Communist movements. Blood-soaked rulers like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot or even Lenin. … They were never real Marxists at all.

Yes, every single time Marxism has ever been tried in the real world the results are the same: Famine, tyranny and slaughter. But that doesn’t disprove the theory. Go back and read the early writings of Marx, when he sounded like a liberal. Look at the vaporous utopia he promises. Why, it doesn’t even have a State! That “withers away” at some point, right about the time that everyone willingly gives up his private property. Then he works hard every day just for the common good. Then the chorus of “Kumbaya” breaks out from grateful billions. And everybody’s happy. No need for secret police, gulags or psychiatric prisons. Or even for “opiates” like Jesus.

That’s the real Marxism. You know, the one Marx daydreamed about before he even led a movement. Which only ever existed inside his head. The version millions lived through, out in the grubby world of actual people and places, which tyrannized half the planet. … That was the illusion. Okay? Have you got that, students? It will be on your final exam.

Doublethink on Islam

The same kind of doublethink prevails concerning Islam, and it’s equally hard to fathom. Apart, that is, from cynical explanations like faint-heartedness and folly.

But we do know what materials this self-delusion works with. That comes courtesy of a prominent Jesuit Catholic priest, Father Henri Boulad. Unlike the bishops of France, Fr. Boulad has lived for decades in a majority-Muslim country, Egypt. In fact, he was the leader of all the Jesuit priests in Egypt.

According to Agenda Europe, Fr. Boulad has responded to the elections in France and the rise of Islam in Europe … by seeking citizenship in Hungary. That country’s conservative president Viktor Orbán, has refused to accept Muslim refugees — to the loud condemnation of leaders in the EU and the Church. As Agenda Europe reports:

With accepting Hungarian citizenship, he wanted to “signal that the country has made the right decision on the issue of the migration crisis that threatens the existence of Europe,” said Boulad. “I would like to (…) fight for the future and for the Christian values on the side of Hungary and Viktor Orbán.”

Cherry-Picking the Quran

Boulad explained in his comments the source of Western self-deceptions over Islam, especially in Catholic circles. Essentially, those who wish to think the best of Islam, whose fear of “xenophobia” overpowers their rational faculties, have plenty of material to work with. They can draw on the part of the Quran that Muhammad supposedly received while he lived in Mecca. At that point, he was still a marginal, little-heeded mystical preacher, surrounded by pagans. And his message was one of tolerance, and peaceful coexistence among Muslims, Christians and Jews.

It was only later, once he ruled the nearby city of Medina as an absolute monarch, that Muhammad starting hearing very different messages. Now they told him to “slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them.” Now the messages began to include harsh condemnations of non-Muslims. They called for Islamic wars of conquest. Now Paradise was the reward for those who died in the course of jihad, while those who lived could keep the goods and the women whom they captured. Yes, plunder and sex slaves. As ISIS points out: It’s right there in the Quran.

Much more appears in the Hadith, dubious collections of supposed verbal traditions going back to Muhammad, which Arab scholars compiled centuries later. These filled in all the details of law, government and social control that were missing from the Quran — an infuriatingly vague and hard-to-understand document, whose first written versions only appeared long after Muhammad’s death. For useful, approachable books on the murky origins of Islam, see Tom Holland’s In the Shadow of the Sword, or the more provocative Did Muhammad Exist? by Robert Spencer.

We Are All Sufis Now

Wherever Islam really came from, or whatever happy visions danced in the Prophet’s head while he was still powerless, we know what happened next. Likewise, we know what came of Karl Marx’s youthful social justice fantasies. But if you want to avoid conflict, or seem more sophisticated than the “bigots” or “Bourgeois” around you, you can latch onto the early stuff. That is a religion of peace, just as Marx’s early scribblings talked a lot about “freedom.”

This cherry-picking is what most Christian clergy seem to be doing, Fr. Boulad warned. Except, of course, for Christians in Muslim nations, who oddly have a very different view of Islam. You know, the way the Polish Karol Wotyjla (later Pope John Paul II) had a different take on Marxism than lefty priests living in Paris.

In fact, Fr. Boulad even traces the etymology of Christian self-delusion over Islam. Boulad cites as the main source of Catholic Islamophilia,

French Islamologist Louis Massignon (1883-1962), for whom mystical Sufism had meant the essence of Islam. Islam, however, historically chose not the “Meccan,” but the “Medinian,” path that still determines it: “The suras of the Koran that threaten so-called unbelievers with violence and jihad, are from the Medina period, while the more tolerant, mystic suras stem from the Mecca period. Rome does not understand this, and the Christians of the East, who know Islam from the inside, are not asked, they are put to the side” [Boulad said].

Peaceful Muslims living in Western countries probably do the same thing in their heads that Massignon did. They focus on the early stuff, and shrug off its ugly sequels. We should be grateful for that. But the more time their kids spend in Saudi-funded mosques, or on the Internet, the more likely they are to find out the truth about Islam, at least as it’s preached by all its major religious authorities, in every Muslim country. Just like Marxism, by its fruits we shall know it. (For more from the author of “Are Western Apologists for Islam Today’s ‘Useful Idiots’?” please click HERE)

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