Scientists Take Big Step Toward ‘Artificial Womb’ to Save Premature Babies

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Doctors could use “artificial wombs” to save premature babies, according to new research published by scientists with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

The study, published Tuesday, successfully kept unborn lambs alive in an artificial womb with nutrient-rich liquids. Lambs raised using the artificial wombs were normal in every way scientists could measure. Baby lambs developed to the age equivalent of 23-week-old human babies.

Scientists say the technology can be used to keep more premature babies alive. Scientists plan to begin trials on human babies within three to five years.

“This system is potentially far superior to what hospitals can currently do for a 23-week-old baby born at the cusp of viability,” Dr. Alan Flake, a fetal surgeon at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who led the study, said in a press statement.

“These infants have an urgent need for a bridge between the mother’s womb and the outside world. If we can develop an extra-uterine system to support growth and organ maturation for only a few weeks, we can dramatically improve outcomes for extremely premature babies,” Flake said. (Read more from “Scientists Take Big Step Toward ‘Artificial Womb’ to Save Premature Babies” HERE)

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College Sued for Banning Student’s Preaching as ‘Disorderly Conduct’

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Sure, you can preach here, Georgia Gwinnett College told an evangelical student, right over there — on two spots making up just 0.0015 percent of the campus. Oh, also, the “public forum areas” are only open 18 hours a week and not on the weekends. And you have to ask permission three days in advance. Which we don’t have to grant.

Forced Out

Chike Uzuegbunam complied. Then the administration told him to stop doing it at all. A campus law enforcement officer told him that “people are calling us because their peace and tranquility is being disturbed.” His witnessing was “disorderly conduct.” That’s any expression “which disturbs the peace and/or comfort of person(s).” That means almost anything someone wants to complain about and the Student Affairs office wants to ban.

The college’s Freedom of Expression Policy says “the Student Affairs official must not consider or impose restrictions based on the content or viewpoint of the expression.” But the college doesn’t seem to mean it when the content or viewpoint are Christian.

The officer told him to stop preaching. He said Uzuegbunam could only speak one on one with students. He told him to use the methods of other religious denominations to relay his message. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (“LDS”) regularly get approval to visit the GGC campus.

There was no claim that that Uzuegbunam caused any damage or behaved violently. He did not block anyone passing by or cause congestion. He did not use a microphone or carry a sign.

After he was told to stop preaching, Uzuegbunam went to speak with Aileen Dowell, GGC’s Director of the Office of Student Integrity. She said that it is a violation of GGC policy for anyone to express a “fire and brimstone message” on campus, even within the free speech zones.

The Lawsuit

The Alliance Defending Freedom sent a letter to GGC objecting to its policy three years ago. GGC never responded, so the ADF filed a lawsuit last December on Uzuegbunam’s behalf against the college. The complaint contends that the policy discriminates against religion, because non-religious students are accommodated. The ADF is asking the court to suspend the policies.

Handing out tracts and evangelizing is part of Uzuegbunam’s Christian faith, the ADF asserts. The school has “created and enforced a heckler’s veto.” Anyone who is offended or discomforted by students engaging in free speech can use the college’s policy to silence them. The school’s disorderly conduct policy is overly broad.

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of religion. It applies to public places, including public colleges like Georgia Gwinnett College. The ADF lawsuit contends that Uzuegbunam is engaging in religious speech, protected by at least two clauses in the Constitution.

ADF Legal Counsel Travis Barham said, “a state college … has the duty to protect and promote those freedoms.” He went on, “Students don’t check their constitutionally protected free speech at the campus gate.” He ridiculed the school for hypocritically “touting commitments to ‘diversity’ and ‘open communications.”

The U.S. has a rich history of street preachers. It’s doubtful the college will prevail in ending this tradition, especially if the case makes it up all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote on the court, tends to side in favor of religious freedom. (For more from the author of “College Sued for Banning Student’s Preaching as ‘Disorderly Conduct'” please click HERE)

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Doctor’s Arrest Brings Attention to US Female Circumcisions

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Zehra Patwa only learned a few years ago that during a family trip to India at age 7, she was circumcised, which is common for girls in parts of Asia, Africa and the Middle East . . .

The recent arrest of a Michigan doctor accused of performing the procedure on two 7-year-old girls from Patwa’s own Shiite Muslim sect, the Dawoodi Bohra, highlights how female genital mutilation is alive and well in parts of the Western world where its adherents have migrated and formed communities.

Depending on the culture, female circumcisions are performed on girls of various ages and by various methods, and they are seen as a way of controlling a girl’s sexuality, maintaining her purity or even making her more fertile as she grows into adulthood. Critics, though, say it can cause complications during childbirth, make intercourse painful and eliminate any pleasure a woman can derive from sex. (Read more from “Doctor’s Arrest Brings Attention to US Female Circumcisions” HERE)

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America’s House Is Divided Over Faith. What Can We Do About It?

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New research confirms yet again what many Americans already knew: The divide between Left and Right in America is widening even further.

A post entitled “Don’t Bet On The Emergence Of A ‘Religious Left’” from the Public Religion Research Institute’s research director, Daniel Cox, highlights how the American Left is becoming less religious at a much faster rate than the Right.

Cox explains:

Nearly four in 10 (38 percent) liberals are religiously unaffiliated today, more than double the percentage of the 1990s, according to data from the General Social Survey. In part, the liberal mass migration away from religion was a reaction to the rise of the Christian right. Over the last couple decades, conservative Christians have effectively branded religious activism as primarily concerned with upholding a traditional vision of sexual morality and social norms. That conservative religious advocacy contributed to many liberals maintaining an abiding suspicion about the role that institutional religion plays in society and expressing considerable skepticism of organized religion generally. Only 30 percent of liberals report having a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in organized religion. Half say that religion’s impact on society is more harmful than helpful.

Of course, these numbers should be taken with a grain of salt, if one takes seriously the research in Rodney Stark’s 2015 book “The Triumph of Faith.” In the book, Stark – a sociologist at Baylor University – looks at the inherent flaws in a great deal of similar research and how its missed nuances skew the numbers away from a more accurate and detailed understanding of religious belief in the U.S.

But this research does indeed speak to an apparent truth to even the most casual observer: Religion on the Left is dying out. Furthermore, it also suggests that while organized religion on the American Right has also diminished over the past few years, the chasm between the faiths of the two poles of American political life is growing wider.

Even more, the philosophical frameworks in which we debate the issues of the republic are growing more and more different from each other, leading us to effectively talk past each other, not debate, on issues like religious freedom, marriage, abortion, and others.

It’s nearly impossible to deny that the Left is becoming not only less religious, but more anti-religious. A lot of this can be attributed to the fact that liberal churches have been dying for some time while conservative denominations thrive.

This divide is evident most of all in how political coalitions have changed over the years. Cox says “religious liberals who once operated in the center ring may now have to come to terms with working outside the spotlight,” and he appears to be right.

While the Democrat Party and the greater political Left used to have a space for religious progressives, this wiggle room has all but disappeared. One need only look at the remaining handful of pro-life Democrats in Congress or the dramatically altered landscape regarding conscience rights between the 1993 passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and today to get a glimpse of a much larger picture.

The other side of this is where religious conservatives should take the most heed. While the increasingly irreligious Left may be out of political power, at least until 2019, it has cultural cachet in spades. This will naturally prompt a different kind of public engagement paradigm from that seen in past generations – ones that Rod Dreher, Anthony Esolen, and R.R. Reno seek to outline in recent books – the former two of which I am still digesting.

One thing is certain: In the present and future political landscape, culture and community will indeed have to be the new watchwords of political engagement for those who still hold fast to the classical triad of the true, the beautiful, and the good.

One clear implication for both sides of the divide, however, is a need to return to the tenets of our original federal system.

We have never in recent memory been more divided in our worldviews as fellow citizens. Ironically, we have also never in recent memory been so in need of a federal system that allows for different societies in this union to govern themselves while debating issues that affect us in the public square, and we have never been farther from it. In an era of such contrast among fellow citizens, good fences are necessary to good neighbors; it’s high time we mended them. (For more from the author of “America’s House Is Divided Over Faith. What Can We Do About It?” please click HERE)

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Lesbian Teacher Bans Cross Jewelry, Plasters Class With LGBT Propaganda

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The Christian religious liberty defense group Liberty Counsel sent a demand letter to the Hillsborough County Public Schools on Thursday to protest a lesbian activist teacher who allegedly banned some of her students from wearing Christian jewelry and turned her classroom into an intolerant, pro-LGBTQ propaganda zone.

Lora Jane Riedas, a math teacher at Riverview High School in Tampa, placed LGBT “rainbow” stickers on her students’ notebooks and decorated her classroom with décor that “blatantly promotes a pro-LGBT agenda,” according to the letter from Liberty Counsel attorneys Richard Mast and Mary McAlister to Hillsborough County schools Superintendent Jeff Eakins.

“I need you to take your necklace off,” Riedas allegedly said to one student wearing a cross necklace. The student, Liberty Counsel’s client, asked “Why?” Then Riedas refused to explain, stating “That’s disrespectful; you have to take it off,” according to the demand letter.

“Our client did not want to be disrespectful, so she took it off, but she felt bad because she felt she was being forced to deny her faith,” said the letter. “All of our clients are afraid to openly wear their cross necklaces in [Riedas’] class anymore.”

Riedas has prohibited at least three students from wearing Christian cross necklaces in her classroom, claiming they are “gang symbols,” according to the Liberty Counsel press release. One of the crosses, a tiny crucifix worn by Liberty Counsel’s ninth grade client, is less than an inch long. (Read more from “Lesbian Teacher Bans Cross Jewelry, Plasters Class With LGBT Propaganda” HERE)

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Harvard: Gender Changes Daily. Disagreement Is Violence

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Harvard University is using tuition dollars to tell students that “there are more than two sexes” and that “gender is fluid and changing.” The school is also telling students gender can change daily —sometimes depending on what people choose to wear. If you disagree with those statements, you are promoting “systemic violence.”

The office of BGLTQ Student Life has released a guide promoting delusions instructing students to “fight transphobia” and “get the facts about gender diversity,” Peter Van Voorhis reports for Campus Reform.

The guide, which was distributed to students on campus, declares that “there are more than two sexes” and that “gender is fluid and changing,” adding that someone’s gender identity “can be affirmed and/or expressed in many ways,” and can even “change from day to day.”

Yes, that’s right. As Voorhis reports, “the flyer tells students that ‘for many people—cis and trans—gender expression, identity, and self-understanding can change from day to day,’ noting that gender can be expressed through one’s ‘speech, mannerisms, clothing,’ and more.”

Gender identity can fluctuate daily now?

How are you supposed to write a law that protects against gender or sex discrimination if a person’s “gender identity” can change daily? James Madison might’ve said something important about “mutable” or constantly changing government and “incoherent” laws once.

Pointing out the land of confusion into which the LGBT-rights movement is forcing us to descend could get students into trouble, however.

As the flyer reads, “Transphobic misinformation is a form of systemic violence.” What your kids are being taught, at Harvard University and likely elsewhere, is that traditional understandings of the roles of men and women the distinctions between male and female are “violence.”

If you follow this line of thinking then when, for example, Jesus says in Matthew 19, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” — that’s violence.

Or, in Harvard’s terms, “Fixed binaries and biological essentialism, manifest in gendered language, misgendering someone, and the policing of trans bodies, threaten the lives of trans people.”

Some students are not happy their tuition dollars are being used to deny biological reality to make other students more comfortable with their mental delusions.

Campus Reform reports that several outraged students were upset school funds were used for this campaign, but declined to comment on for fear of “potential repercussions from the school.” One wonders if Harvard’s administration has paused to consider whether they are providing a safe space for students who think that men are men and women are women.

This is the sad state of affairs at colleges and universities. Traditional values are called violent. Mob violence to silence free speech is called justice. The same places that claim to create safe spaces for the liberal students are too dangerous for alternative points of view.

When will enough be enough? (For more from the author of “Harvard: Gender Changes Daily. Disagreement Is Violence” please click HERE)

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The Insane Punishment a School Gave a Teen Over a Water Gun

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What is the appropriate punishment for a high school student found on campus in possession of a water gun?

The Autauga County Board of Education, which covers communities near Montgomery, Alabama, decided that a 16-year-old girl with a water gun was in violation of the board’s firearms policy. So Sara Allena “Laney” Nichols received a one-year expulsion.

According to a report in the Montgomery Advertiser, Laney explained that she acquired the water pistol “as a joke” from a male classmate in a school hallway at Prattville High School.

The school’s security cameras captured footage of Laney holding the toy gun, but not of the male student holding it at any time. He received no punishment.

Laney said she put the water pistol in her backpack and then, the same day, on the back seat of her car in the school parking lot. It went unnoticed by the principal and school officials until a classmate reported to the administration a few days later that Laney had a gun.

Prattville High officials, following proper procedures, questioned Laney. She told them that the purported gun was really a water gun and was in her car, parked on school grounds, at that time. Confirming that Laney, in fact, possessed a harmless piece of plastic, school officials successfully cleared the threat.

Laney’s mother, Tara Herring, says her daughter got a 10-day suspension. Herring conceded that the black water pistol may have looked like a real gun at first glance, but is made of plastic and clearly distinguishable the second someone touches it.

That could have been the end of the story, but the school board decided to hand down a one-year expulsion for Laney’s violation of the Parent/Student Code of Conduct, which classifies possession of a weapon as a “major offense” punishable by expulsion.

The board’s Policy Manual prohibits students from possessing firearms on school grounds, including cars parked in the school lot. “Any student who violates this policy shall be expelled for a period of one year,” it says.

The Policy Manual, however, also provides that the superintendent of schools “may modify the expulsion requirement on a case-by-case basis.” Thus far, Superintendent Spence Agee has declined to comment on the incident, although if he has any common sense, he’ll modify this draconian penalty.

Also at issue is whether Laney’s water pistol even qualifies as a prohibited firearm under school board rules. The Code of Conduct broadly defines a firearm as an object that “is designed to, or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive charge or by compressed air or by spring action.”

A water gun could fall under this broad definition of a firearm only if water qualifies as a projectile and the plastic toy uses compressed air or a spring mechanism to release it. Surely, the board did not envision a harmless water gun when it adopted its firearm prohibition.

The Policy Manual provides an even stricter definition by adopting the definition of a firearm provided by federal law (18 U.S.C. § 921). Under the statute, a “firearm” is “any weapon (including a starter gun) which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive.” Notably, not a water gun.

As the New Jersey State Supreme Court once reasoned, the statute is “talking about a real gun capable of discharging a projectile of some sort, not talking about a toy gun, not talking about a water gun, not talking about a plastic gun that can’t fire a projectile” (State v. Gantt (1986).

Laney’s water pistol is not a firearm under the adopted definition of Autauga County schools’ Policy Manual.

Education officials are understandably hypersensitive to threats of guns on campus, but the danger posed by real guns at school should not allow for a gross overreaction that could derail a student’s academic career.

Conflicting standards, overly broad definitions, and vague policies plague the criminal justice system with the possibility of absurd results. The same is happening here.

In this case, Agee should yield to reason, if not compassion, and use his discretion to modify the expulsion or yield to the statutory definition of a firearm to reduce the level of Laney’s offense.

Laney’s family has hired a lawyer and is threatening to sue if the school board does not act to remove the “scarlet letter E” (expulsion) from Laney’s record. It should not take a lawsuit to determine that a water pistol is not a firearm.

A 16-year-old girl deserves more from America’s public education system than a one-year expulsion for possession of a water gun. (For more from the author of “The Insane Punishment a School Gave a Teen Over a Water Gun” please click HERE)

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New Jersey Cardinal Welcomes Gay Activists to His Cathedral

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One of the more forgettable comedies of 2011 was Cameron Diaz’s farce, Bad Teacher. It wasn’t actually funny. Its efforts at wild irreverence seemed desperate and strained. The sequence that led me to hit Stop and eject the DVD was this one: Diaz was working against her will as a teacher in a high school. Hung over and apathetic, she over and over again blew off giving a lecture. Instead, she popped in a movie of dubious relevance and left the kids to watch it as she napped.

That didn’t make me chuckle. It made me livid. I’ve had some amazing teachers, and a few really bad ones. I know how important the devoted ones can be. They can change your life. And the rotten ones do grave harm. A highly educated person who’s being paid to pass on his learning to you sends a message. If he takes the material seriously, he teaches you it’s important. If he shrugs and waves it off, young impressionable people get that message too: This topic is so bogus, not even the teacher cares about it.

I still remember with bitterness a cynical high school religion teacher. His blasé, sarcastic attitude toward core Christian doctrines made my teenage blood boil. I learned he later went off to peddle suburban homes. I hope he took them more seriously.

Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark: Bad Teacher

Which brings us to the Catholic Archbishop of Newark, New Jersey, Joseph Tobin. Recently boosted by Pope Francis to cardinal, Tobin will be one of the tiny group voting on who the next pope will be. He leads a flock of millions, in the New York metro area, with a major Catholic university, Seton Hall right in his city. In fact, Seton Hall is one of the small group of Catholic schools which have seen a resurgence of Catholic identity. That depends in large part on Tobin’s good will. Which is really a shame for Seton Hall. Because like Cameron Diaz’s character in the movie, Tobin is a bad teacher.

The role of a bishop is first and foremost as a teacher. His authority in his diocese is similar to the pope’s over the whole church. He’s considered an heir of the apostles. He is meant to do for (let’s say) Newark what St. James did for Jerusalem: serve as the primary evangelist of the faith of Jesus.

On crucial moral issues, Tobin is snoozing through the class. In this he is like far too many bishops around the world. Worst is that that faction of bishops which Pope Francis seems to favor and promote: social justice activists, who go way beyond the church’s actual teaching on political issues in fashion with the left. But on topics that might bother Caesar, or anger elites, they shrug and go back to sleep. Or worse, with a wink and a nod they give aid and comfort to the enemies of our faith.

Gay Activists at the Cathedral

The man who called Tobin’s abuses to our attention is Joseph Sciambra. Once sunk so deep in the homosexual lifestyle that he acted in pornographic films, Sciambra was granted the grace to escape. Now he bares his soul and braves the scorn of angry activists, defending the Gospel’s teaching on chastity and repentance. If I had to name one person alive today whom I expect someday to be canonized a saint, Sciambra would be that man. On his blog, Sciambra reports that Cardinal Tobin is sponsoring the following event:

An LGBT Pilgrimage and Mass to the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark, New Jersey. According to a flyer for the event, the Pilgrimage and Mass are taking place: “With the blessings and best wishes of His Eminence Joseph Cardinal Tobin, C.Ss.R., Archbishop of Newark …”

Mass will be offered by Rev. Francis Gargani, C.Ss.R. Gargani frequently offers retreats to LGBT Catholics, one of which was advertised by the gay-affirmative Open Hearts GLBT Ministry located at St. Patrick – St. Anthony Church in Hartford, Connecticut. The Open Hearts group recently read a book which celebrated the “Queer Christ.” According to a description for the retreat:

Through ritual prayer, reflective input sessions, shared discussion, personal time for prayer and quiet, and social gatherings, this retreat offers a special opportunity for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons to celebrate their identity and deepen their experience of community in the living God.

Not a word about chastity or repentance. Sciambra dug deeper and learned about the organizers of the event. They work closely with pro-gay activists who reject Christian moral teaching outright. And Tobin is hosting them at his own cathedral.

Silencing Faithful Priests

But don’t let it be said that Tobin is always asleep at the switch. When it comes to enforcing conformity with liberal politics, his diocese swings into action. As LifeSiteNews reported:

The Archdiocese of Newark says it will crack down on an outspoken pro-life priest after a hit piece on a local news site against him.

On Wednesday, NJ.com published a scathing article about posts made by Father Peter West on his Facebook page.

The article says West “has repeatedly railed against Muslims,” voiced “strong support for the president’s travel ban” and “assailed millennials as ‘snowflakes’,” among other accusations.

The article suggested the priest has violated the Johnson Amendment by being so political on Facebook and worried that West’s “withering attacks … run counter to the statements and philosophies of his own leader, Newark Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, and his ultimate boss, Pope Francis.”

James Goodness, a spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Newark, told NJ.com that the archdiocese is “concerned about Father West’s comments and actions, and will be addressing them according to the protocols of the Church.”

….

West is … vocally supportive of Catholic moral teaching on his social media. He has 8,494 Facebook followers. More than 200 people have signed a recently-launched petition asking the Archdiocese to condemn the “false, inaccurate” hit piece on him.

West said his posts about radical Islam were made “on what you might say are feminist grounds.”

He said he was troubled by “the fact that they don’t treat women as equals, that one man can have up to four [wives], that a woman is treated as an article of property, that in many of these Muslim countries, they practice female genital mutilation.”

“Eat My Sheep”

Why were gay activists invited to Newark’s cathedral? Why was a faithful New Jersey priest silenced for taking sane stances on social media? Is Tobin catering to social justice leftists while kicking moral conservatives to the curb?

That’s what you call a bad teacher. (For more from the author of “New Jersey Cardinal Welcomes Gay Activists to His Cathedral” please click HERE)

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If Freedom Hurts Your Feelings, College Crybabies, Watch out for This Truth Grenade

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It’s getting rather difficult to write headlines and lede paragraphs for these sorts of things, since the same tripe keeps bubbling up over and over from the septic tanks of the American academy.

A college president must profess that freedom of speech is oppressive and objective truth is all a “myth,” according to the demands of an open letter from a group of students at one California college.

It has been over a week since conservative scholar Heather Mac Donald was chased off the campus of Pomona College by the illiberal ilk of the same whiny thugs who mobbed Charles Murray at Middlebury College earlier this year.

“This is not just my loss of free speech,” Mac Donald told Fox and Friends afterwards. “These students are exercising brute force against their fellow students to prevent them from hearing me live.”

A few days prior to the incident, the university’s outgoing president, David Oxtoby, sent an email that reiterated the college’s commitment to “the exercise of free speech and academic freedom.”

Now, with all the trappings of a modern-day witch-burning, a trio of underclassmen graduating in 2019 and 2020, along with some 20-plus signatories, have demanded that Oxtoby formally recant in the form of a revised email “apologizing for the previous patronizing statement, enforcing that Pomona College does not tolerate hate speech and speech that projects violence onto the bodies of its marginalized students and oppressed peoples …”

The letter was first reported by the Claremont Independent, an independent student paper at the Claremont Colleges. According to the outlet’s story on Monday, the signatories have demanded a response by Tuesday, April 18.

But the recant is not enough for Pomona’s heretic hunters; These kids want some scalps. They are demanding that Pomona College and the Claremont system “take action against the Claremont Independent editorial staff for its continual perpetuation of hate speech, anti-Blackness, and intimidation toward students of marginalized backgrounds.”

Such tittles, of course, are all typical battle streamers one should aspire to accrue when writing anything that drifts slightly right of center on a college campus these days.

Most of the eight-paragraph letter remainder reads as a semi-coherent mini-screed articulating what appear to be this month’s most recent intersectionalist shibboleths. For those of you who may not be familiar with the latest liberty-hating campus fad-philosophy, Andrew Sullivan has a worthwhile synopsis at New York Magazine.

“On the surface, it’s a recent neo-Marxist theory that argues that social oppression does not simply apply to single categories of identity — such as race, gender, sexual orientation, class, etc. — but to all of them in an interlocking system of hierarchy and power,” he explains. “It is operating, in Orwell’s words, as a ‘smelly little orthodoxy,’ and it manifests itself, it seems to me, almost as a religion,” the enforcement of which is reminiscent of New England Puritanism.

But it gets better. As if the entire exercise were not rich enough, the authors of intersectional bull then turn their attention to the concept of truth.

“Your statement contains unnuanced views surrounding the academy and a belief in searching for some venerated truth,” the letter continues.

“Historically, white supremacy has venerated the idea of objectivity, and wielded a dichotomy of ‘subjectivity vs. objectivity’ as a means of silencing oppressed peoples. The idea that there is a single truth–’the Truth’–is a construct of the Euro-West that is deeply rooted in the Enlightenment, which was a movement that also described Black and Brown people as both subhuman and impervious to pain. This construction is a myth and white supremacy, imperialism, colonization, capitalism, and the United States of America are all of its progeny.”

One wonders how often the professors who indoctrinated these kids have asked them to cite their sources. I’m not sure if we’re talking about the same Enlightenment, because it sounds like they have a philosophical movement focused on human liberty and empirical truth confused with a weird racist version of Marvel Comics’ Luke Cage.

There are two great ironies here. The first one is that those doing this disparaging of the concept of a universal truth as being “deeply rooted in the Enlightenment” don’t realize how being free to pursue that truth without coercion is itself an Enlightenment principle, or that the rejection of this liberty is typically what leads to real oppression. [See: Fascism, Stalinism, Maoism, Sharia supremacism, etc.] If freedom hurts your feelings, I don’t really know where else to send you, since you clearly also can’t handle true oppression.

The concept of an objective truth isn’t rooted in one philosophical movement; Rather, philosophy itself is rooted in the search for truth, which is rooted in human nature. The difference between those who believe in ‘oppressive’ Enlightenment concepts like free speech and those who don’t is that the former are far more likely to engage in debate than brute-force tactics and toddler-esque demands.

The second irony here is that the letter goes on to espouse a metanarrative of history right after disparaging the concept of objective truth altogether. That’s a flag on the play. You don’t get to call a narrative absurd — or have the audacity to make someone recant their beliefs — when just a moment before you removed the framework that lets you claim one set of beliefs is greater than another. A freshman logic class should remedy this.

Claims like these are best met with philosopher Roger Scruton’s famous quip: “A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.” (For more from the author of “If Freedom Hurts Your Feelings, College Crybabies, Watch out for This Truth Grenade” please click HERE)

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Children of Murdered Man Extended Forgiveness to Father’s Killer Hours before His Suicide

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The nationwide search is over for Steve Stephens, the man who police said killed Robert Godwin, Sr. and posted a video of the crime on Facebook. After a brief pursuit Tuesday by Pennsylvania State Police, Stephens shot and killed himself. His death comes less than a day after Godwin’s children offered a remarkable testament of forgiveness and love to the man accused of killing their father.

“I just want him to know that God loves him,” Godwin’s daughter Tonya Godwin-Baines told CNN. “We love him. Yes, we’re hurt, but we have to forgive him because if we don’t forgive him, the Bible says your Heavenly Father won’t forgive you.”

He Lived What He Taught

Robert Godwin, Sr., 74, lived what he taught, his children said. “The one thing I would take away the most from my father is he taught us about God,” said Godwin-Baines. “How to fear God. How to love God. And how to forgive. Each one of us forgives the killer. The murderer.” “We want to wrap our arms around him,” she added.

“My dad would be really proud of us, and he would want this from us, and he would say, ‘Tonya, forgive him, because they know not what they do.’”

But even through the horror and hurt, Godwin wanted her father’s killer to know that God loves him. “I just would want him to know that even in his worst state, he’s loved, you know, by God, that God loves him, even in the bad stuff that he did to my dad. And that he has some worth while, even though he’s gonna have to go through many things to get better, there’s worth in him.”

She added, “As long as there’s life in him, there is hope for him too. I do believe that.”

Godwin said that the killer was a “sick individual,” but she held no hard feelings toward him because she knows God. “If I didn’t know Him as my God and my Savior, I could not forgive that man. And I feel no animosity against him at all. Actually, I feel sadness for him. I do.”

Godwin-Baines spoke to the killer directly in an interview with FoxNews. “To the young man who murdered my daddy, I ask that you please surrender. I forgive you, and love you but most importantly, God loves you. God can heal your mind and save your soul. PLEASE!”

Pennsylvania State Police posted on Twitter Tuesday morning that Stephens had committed suicide after a brief chase. Although Stephens had boasted on Facebook about having committed a dozen murders, no other victims have been found and Cleveland officials said Stephens had no prior criminal record.

(For more from the author of “Children of Murdered Man Extended Forgiveness to Father’s Killer Hours before His Suicide” please click HERE)

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