The Double Standard for Muslims and Christians

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I’m sure you’ve already seen the unfolding controversy. It seems that country singer Toby Keith agreed to sing for a gathering of the Christian group Promise Keepers. It’s an all-male group. In the name of fostering “comradeship,” the organization planned to restrict attendance to men. That’s what sparked the outrage.

Major articles appeared in Vanity Fair and the New York Times. They denounced the concert as “misogynist” and “transphobic.” Feminist groups condemned Promise-Keepers as “patriarchal woman-haters” who “use the rhetoric of theocracy and male control over women’s bodies.” The National Organization for Women threatened to launch a boycott of the state of Alabama.

Leading Alabama legislators asked state regulators to look into prohibiting the conference. The state’s Chamber of Commerce chimed in to support a ban. It warned of the need to “protect the business atmosphere here for future jobs and investment.”

Priests from the local Jesuit college, Springhill, sponsored a campus-wide “teach-in.” The topic? Female empowerment and the need for more headline female country singers, plus women in the Catholic priesthood.

Spin magazine ran a piece by the head of Toby Keith’s record label. It warned of canceling Keith’s upcoming album.

At last, within 48 hours of the concert being announced, Keith pulled out and apologized. Organizers might cancel the conference itself. Antifa protestors from colleges across the country and leaders of Black Lives Matter warned on social media that they would show up and “disrupt Promise Keepers, disrupt Trump!” Several prominent business leaders on the board of Promise Keepers have withdrawn from membership. Social media protests had targeted their companies’ shareholders and customers.

Okay, Kidding!

Now, strictly speaking, none of the above is true. Not a word.

But did you find it implausible? Or didn’t it seem exactly the way that cultural coercion plays out in today’s America — when conservatives or Christians are involved?

In fact what is happening is this: Mr. Keith is performing at an all-male concert, all right. But it is in Saudi Arabia. The concert coincides with Donald Trump’s state visit to that theocratic absolute monarchy. CNN reported on the concert. It didn’t even mention that women can’t attend. Excluded. CBS News did note the ban on both women and beer. But it didn’t seem to consider either exclusion controversial. It just noted the female ban deadpan, as if reporting on the weather. Spin magazine weighed in, but only to snark about Keith’s apparent fondness for Donald Trump.

I was only able to find one prominent voice criticizing the concert for keeping out women. Washington Post blogger Alyssa Rosenberg wrote a piece. She complained that the concert is “segregated.” She noted briefly that the Saudi government oppresses women. But even she spent more than half her column sniping at Keith for his right-leaning views.

Strict Scrutiny for Westerners, Whites, and Christians

Isn’t that funny? Why are mostly white, Western or Christian institutions subject to the strictest scrutiny? Progressives weigh their every policy against the latest list of tender sensibilities. Their every choice goes under a microscope. Does it offend one of an ever-expanding (updated hourly) list of “marginalized” groups? Any violation will be punished with maximum savagery, innocent bystanders be damned.

Muslim Autocracies Are Just Exotic and Cool

But whole countries like Saudi Arabia get a pass. Meanwhile, their record of abusing women is staggering and inhuman. Rape victims in Saudi Arabia can be flogged for committing adultery. The only loophole? If they can produce four adult male witnesses to testify that the sex was non-consensual. There is no law forbidding marital or statutory rape.

Saudi women miss out on a lot more than Toby Keith concerts. They cannot drive cars. The reasons I’ve seen listed for that vary according to the Islamic cleric cited. They range from dangers to women’s reproductive systems, to that well-known side-effect of riding over bumpy roads: insatiable sexual arousal.

Saudi Arabia regularly executes homosexuals. And Muslims who announce they are leaving Islam. Indeed, that country is one of the most aggressive on earth in employing the death penalty for a wide variety of offenses. Child marriage is common. Likewise forced marriages imposed on women by their fathers and brothers.

Christian churches, bibles, and symbols are totally prohibited. They’re even denied to the thousands of enserfed foreign workers who toil in Saudi households. Even embassies (technically foreign soil) come under the ban. Female genital mutilation is widespread in parts of the country.

None of this stopped Hillary Clinton from recruiting Huma Abedin as her “body woman” and likely chief of staff (had she won). Abedin worked with her family on a Saudi-founded and funded journal promoting Saudi-style sharia around the world. None of this stopped Georgetown University from accepting $20 million from a Saudi prince in 2008 to fund its Islamic studies program. Flashback to 1978: Would Georgetown have taken that kind of money from the Republic of South Africa, for a program on race relations?

Treating Muslims Like Mischievous Pets

There’s a powerful double standard at work. It comes to us via multiculturalism. We only hold white, Western, and especially Christian institutions to fully human standards. We treat Muslims in particular as if they were lovable, mischievous pets. The same progressives who denounce Christian churches as “patriarchal” damn critics of Islam as “Islamophobes.” That’s deeply degrading to Muslims as human beings. Much more importantly, it is dangerous to us.

Since I believe that Muslims and country singers are equally human, I’ll say it: I don’t think Toby Keith should sing in Saudi Arabia. I don’t think President Trump should visit that hell on earth, or that the U.S. should pretend that the country is an ally. Instead it is the Comintern for the new face of totalitarianism — a country that exports jihad and jihadists, that accepted zero refugees from Syria but spent millions building them mosques in Germany and Sweden, that keeps a fragile peace in its unjust society by projecting discontent outward: into the West, where we are the victims. (For more from the author of “The Double Standard for Muslims and Christians” please click HERE)

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Is Trump Under Spiritual Attack?

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Do I wish that President Trump would exercise more self-restraint in what he says? Yes, indeed. Just so, as a student I wished that my garrulous mailman dad wouldn’t insist on telling “hilarious” ethnic jokes at Yale parent nights.

Republicans are burning up massive energy defending, explaining, or even mastering the facts about Trump’s free-wheeling statements. It could be better used on almost anything else. Think of all the crucial points of policy that are going unaddressed.

The Trump White House came up with a fine executive order defending religious liberty. Then it apparently caved under pressure, and gave us the leaf without the fig.

Trump promised to back the First Amendment Defense Act, which would have written those same protections into law. No sign of the White House pushing for it in Congress.

Replacing Obamacare with something that’s actually better deserves many hours of time on the part of the president and his staffers. It didn’t get it.

Defunding Planned Parenthood might happen, or it might not, depending on some backroom legislative noodling.

The wall he promised on our country’s chaotic southern border. Will it get built? It’s anybody’s guess.

The president could use his bully pulpit and majority in two houses of Congress to make real progress on all these fronts. But he’s too busy right now disputing overblown charges that he obstructed justice by hinting that General Michael Flynn shouldn’t be prosecuted for making a harmless phone call to a Russian diplomat, then firing FBI director James Comey for a weird and changing list of reasons — all of them valid, but he really should have settled on one.

Hate Housefires? Stop Drinking Flaming Shots.

Let’s say you need to rewire your house and install a new heating system. It’s hard to focus on that when you’re too busy rushing back and forth pouring water on little housefires. But you just seem to keep on setting them, because of your habit of drinking flaming tequila shots on the couch. Aw, shucks, it happened again.

Never-Trump Republican John Podhoretz wrote a fine column in the New York Post. In it, he warns President Trump that he needs to zip his mouth and gird his loins. Or else he’ll face a presidency that history will mock as a sputtering failure. It’s written in the spirit of a boxing coach. Think of Burgess Meredith in Sly Stallone’s corner in Rocky. He’d berate the bull-headed boxer not to drop his guard or lead with his chin. Rocky didn’t see that kind of advice as hostile, and neither should Trump.

Given his real business successes, I cannot really believe that Trump is the kind of onion-skinned narcissist who demands that his fans back even his self-defeating mistakes. That’s the kind of uncritical, unconditional love that liberal Christians demand from God. They will surely be disappointed. So will any politician. This isn’t North Korea, and conservatism isn’t a cult.

Trump Is Under Attack. And Not Just By Humans.

Given the profound evils that Trump has promised to confront, from Islamic terrorism to Planned Parenthood, from the persecution of Christians to the chaos on our country’s borders, we should not be surprised that he is being assaulted. No, I don’t mean by liberals, misguided people whose policies are poorly reasoned or based in raw emotion.

I mean by principalities and powers. By the spirits who (in the words of the prayer to St. Michael the archangel) “roam the earth, seeking the ruin of souls.” If you think (and you’d better) that your soul matters enough to Satan that he will bother to send you a tempter, just imagine the horde he dispatches to batter the president. They goad him to say foolish things, make rash decisions, and most of all to cave on his core principles — then fight like a tiger over trivialities.

Our president has too much power. As conservatives, we know that. But here we are. One man has the authority to:

Launch a nuclear holocaust;

Invade foreign countries without Congress’s say-so;

Issue executive edicts that distort the meaning of laws; and

Direct an army of unaccountable bureaucrats to skew their reading of tens of thousands of regulations, crippling businesses or citizens who disagree with him.

That’s a ludicrous pile of power for one man’s shoulders. And power is what the Enemy sniffs after like a jackal who scents some bacon.

America on the Knife Edge

This is a crucial watershed in American culture and history. We are teetering on the knife edge between a normal, functioning country where the Church is permitted to preach, and something much darker and uglier: a post- and anti-Christian Leviathan.

Look at the profane hysteria, the toxic boiling hatred that Trump and his voters provoked among progressives. That’s true even when they support policies to the left of President Bill Clinton’s on most crucial issues. That tells us just how far the “mainstream” has slid down the hill toward madness. You also know how divided our nation is. How fragile is public order?

Centrist speakers can’t even take a microphone at major universities, for fear that hooded militants will attack them and their audience with flagpoles. Police and firefighters get shot by racist extremists. Academic feminists sue to use the federal government to silence their colleagues on campus. College students alternate, schizophrenically, between ultra-fragile snowflakes who will crumble at untoward opinions — and hordes of brick-throwing, outraged insurgents.

Just Because the Media are Biased Doesn’t Mean Trump Isn’t Making Mistakes

Journalistic standards, never immune to liberal bias, have virtually collapsed. So we really shouldn’t be shocked when newspapers grossly distort and exaggerate the president’s behavior. When they cast him as a lawbreaker who needs to be impeached — for behaving in just the same ways that Barack Obama did (in between penning yet another auto-hagiography, and collecting a Nobel Prize simply for showing up). When they act as if normal back-and-forth and influence trading in the White House is evidence of “chaos at the top.”

We should also avoid the temptation of dismissing any criticism of the president, simply because so much of it is foolish, overheated, or grounded in evil motives. The fact that liberals will lie, or distort the truth, to harm President Trump, doesn’t mean he isn’t making some real mistakes.

Trump, Find Your Inner Coolidge

His greatest mistake, I think, is giving so much credence to people who clearly despise him. Not just him, but the millions of “deplorable” voters who put him in office. He keeps trying to beat the media and political elites at their own game by being clever on Twitter, or tweaking them in speeches. What he needs to do is find his inner Calvin Coolidge and ignore them.

He should drill down on the issues that drove voters to put him in office, and doggedly push them forward. That means building a wall, protecting religious liberty, promoting more pro-life policies, and a long list of other things that would outrage our nation’s elites, while actually accomplishing something. That means listening to people like Steve Bannon, who helped him get elected, rather than Jared Kushner, whose sister is selling U.S. visas in China.

Yes, the left will wail and gnash their teeth, but they’re doing that already. They couldn’t hate Trump any more than they already do. He needs to see how liberating that is.

What we need to do is step back from panicking over the president, or desperately defending him in futile Tweets and Facebook posts. Instead we should see the deeper stakes of the battle at hand. And that should drive us daily to pray for the president: that God grant him the virtues of temperance, justice, prudence and fortitude, for the toughest job on earth. That’s the only real power we have. It’s quite enough. (For more from the author of “Is Trump Under Spiritual Attack?” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

To Dean Obeidallah: If You’re Right, Then Debate, Don’t Run

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In response to my article “The Liberals’ Misguided Love Affair With Islam,” radio host and columnist Dean Obeidallah tweeted, “Hey @DrMichaelLBrown U win award award [sic] for dumbest article of the day — be proud. #moron.”

This was not the first time Mr. Obeidallah attacked me, offering rhetoric without substance, so I responded: “Let’s have a public, civil debate about the issue. You’ve challenged me before, but never with substance. Let’s deal with facts. Shall we?”

Some of his followers chimed in with their own mockery, and I responded to each one, wanting to move beyond the invective. Can we interact about specifics? Can you tell me what is factually inaccurate about my article? With one exception, I was greeted with either silence or further insult.

I then tweeted Mr. Obeidallah again: “Sir, please be kind enough to point out any factual errors in my article. I assume you read it carefully, correct?”

He responded: “Ur a joke — I just give ur views sunlight to destroy the BS — now go run along to Pam Geller.”

Actually, I don’t need this gentleman to give my views “sunlight.” By God’s grace, I have lots of internet exposure, with my articles posted on numerous websites. My Facebook page has more than 530,000 likes, I have a daily, syndicated radio show, an active YouTube channel, and three TV shows, two of which air internationally. So, he has his fine platforms and I have mine.

Unfortunately, Mr. Obeidallah’s attitude is typical of the condescending, “progressive” left: “We will ridicule and mock you because you are unworthy of our time.”

I replied to his tweet more forcefully: “You provide the perfect example of someone who has no facts to support his views: You mock and ridicule, devoid of substance.”

I also posted (to Mr. Obeidallah and one of his Twitter followers): “I call on peace-loving Muslims to join me in standing against radical Islam. You respond with mockery and insult. This is tolerance? Sad.”

Mr. Obeidallah then responded to my call to debate: “The answer is I don’t debate punchlines. Ur a joke.”

I answered: “The truth is you bring no substance, only insults, and your ideas would be instantly exposed in a civil, academic debate. Don’t run.”

He did not reply to me.

Was I surprised? Not in the least. I’ve seen the same thing happen time and again, and if anything, this approach suggests that the mocker is not ready to defend his viewpoint. Why not have your ideas challenged? Why not allow your viewpoints to be cross-examined? And if I am so wrong, why not expose me?

In the course of just three tweets, Mr. Obeidallah ridiculed my article as “the dumbest” of the day; used the hashtag #moron to describe me; then twice called me “a joke,” also accusing me of writing “BS.” And he did this without pointing out a single error in my article. Ah, the voice of tolerance!

Perhaps my esteemed critic can tell me if my Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University was a joke. Or if my three years of studying Classical Arabic was a joke. Or if my public debates at schools like Oxford University and Ohio State University, or outreach lectures at schools like the Hebrew University in Jerusalem or USC or Yale University, or scholarly papers delivered at schools like Harvard University were a joke.

Or am I “a joke” because I claim that radical Islam can trace its roots back to the Quran? Or that I believe that Robert Spencer should not have been shouted down when he tried to quote violent Islamic texts at the University of Buffalo?

The Needed Discussion

A colleague of mine in Australia pointed out that

The annual Freedom of Thought report published by the International Humanist and Ethical Union found that 13 nations punish apostasy with the death penalty.

The 13 countries are all Islamic: Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Says the report, “All of these countries, except Pakistan, allow for capital punishment against apostasy, while Pakistan imposes the death penalty for blasphemy — including a disbelief in God.”

Does Mr. Obeidallah deny that these countries are Islamic? Does he claim that what they are doing is in violation of the Quran and of Sharia Law?

He might say that their practices are abhorrent, that enlightened Muslims reject this, that as a Muslim himself he believes the Quran is being twisted. All that is fine and good, and that’s part of what we can discuss.

I am not one of those who believes a true Muslim is always a radical Muslim, and I often take flak from some on the right who believe that Islam is always murderous. That’s why I use the adjective “radical” before the word “Islam.” At the same time, I get flack on the left from those (like Mr. Obeidallah, apparently) who believe that radical Islam is not Islam at all.

That’s why I invite Dean Obeidallah to have a civil, moderated, public debate. We could debate the question, “Is Radical Islam True Islam?” Or, “Is the Left Giving Islam a Free Pass?” (Or, perhaps something else that is related. I’m open to possibilities. I would even come on his radio show, where he controls the mic, or he could come on mine.)

Whatever the format, for the sake of truth, for the sake of those affected by radical Islam, for the sake of our nation, we should hash the issues out.

And on a personal note, Mr. Obeidallah, when you respond with mockery and disdain, you make yourself look bad, not your opponent. Surely you can do better than that. (For more from the author of “To Dean Obeidallah: If You’re Right, Then Debate, Don’t Run” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

White House Staff Around Trump STILL Don’t Get Islamic Threat

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Well, it appears that another campaign promise bit the dust. The Jerusalem embassy move went the way of repealing Obamacare, rescinding Obama’s amnesty, building the wall, undoing the Paris climate accord and Iran nuclear deal, and protecting religious liberty. All for the purpose of preserving the PLO peace process — because nothing says “drain the swamp,” understanding Islam, and “America-first” like the Oslo peace process.

The collapse of this White House administration’s foreign policy under the leadership of National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster stems from one source: the refusal to recognize the insufferable nature of unreformed Islam.

Throughout the presidential election, both President Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, consistently hit Obama and Hillary for refusing to even name the enemy and recognize its threat doctrine. After all, if you refuse to identify who the enemy is, how can you place our soldiers in harm’s way, craft diplomatic relationships, and strategize any outcome in the Middle East?

Donald Trump clearly recognized this point in a seminal foreign policy speech he delivered on Sept. 7, 2016, when he declared, “We now have an administration, and a former secretary of state, who refuse to say ‘Radical Islamic Terrorism.’”

Promising a realist approach recognizing the Middle East and Islam as it exists — and not as we want it to exist — Trump delivered somewhat of a doctrine that night in Philadelphia, which clearly resonated with many of the voters that propelled him to the Oval Office: “In a Trump administration, our actions in the Middle East will be tempered by realism. The current strategy of toppling regimes, with no plan for what to do the day after, only produces power vacuums that are filled by terrorists.”

Trump further promised that a new moral clarity will help us “make new friends, rebuild old alliances, and bring new allies into the fold.”

The recognition that radical Islamists are the source of the problem is what dictates immigration policy, decisions over military action, the so-called “Israeli-Palestinian” conflicts, and our views toward Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the Muslim Brotherhood. The expectation of many supporters of this president were that he’d move us in the opposite direction of the Obama administration on all aforementioned fronts.

In comes H.R. McMaster, who refuses to even recognize the enemy by adamantly declining to even talk about radical Islamic terrorism, which in itself, “terrorism” is somewhat of a euphemism for the problems endemic in sharia-adherence. Everything else has gone downhill from there, and it was on full display Tuesday.

The consequences of willful blindness on the Islamic threat is the source of McMaster’s desire to get us further entrenched in Syria and Afghanistan, bring in more refugees, kowtow to the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey, and throw Israel under the bus. After all, if we are walking on eggshells in the Arab world with our troops strung out precariously throughout the various theaters refereeing Islamic civil wars, we wouldn’t want our support for Israel to harm them.

Consider the following observations:

Throwing Israel under the bus: Both McMaster and White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer refused to affirm that even the Western Wall is part of Israel. This echoes Obama’s policies and comes on the heels of the White House refusing to allow Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to appear with the president at the Western Wall. It further accentuates the growing push within the administration to embrace the PLO. It doesn’t help that the intel Trump leaked to Russian officials was reportedly from Israeli intelligence services.

Embracing Erdogan: In another throwback to Obama’s policies – embracing enemies and alienating allies – Trump hosted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. This man is an Islamo-fascist and the Sunni equivalent of the Iranian Mullahs. He stands at the nexus of Sunni Islamic supremacism and is an enemy of the American people. Yet, he has been allowed to fund the construction of the largest Islamic Center in the country just outside Washington, D.C. Rep. David Brat, R-Va., has a bill (H.R. 5824) that would prohibit a foreign national of a country that limits the free exercise of religion in that country from making any expenditure in the U.S. promoting a religion. Yet, I doubt Trump’s meeting was about that.

Meanwhile, Erdogan’s bodyguards beat anti-Erdogan protesters outside of the ambassador’s D.C. home … on American soil!

Further involvement in Afghanistan: There is growing momentum within the administration for McMaster’s plan to further entrench us in the Afghanistan quagmire by sending more troops. The 15 years of utter failure in Afghanistan is not President Trump’s fault. But if he doubles down on the failed strategy without either forging a new path or getting out, he will own it just as much. McMaster is continuing the strategy of “placing our brave soldiers into an Islamic civil war first, ask questions about national security interests and strategy later.”

The question is how can we get our soldiers further involved when we don’t even understand the threat doctrine of the enemy?We have nothing to show for our efforts but over 1,800 military deaths, 20,000 wounded, and the Taliban controlling more territory than ever before – all to establish a sharia-compliant government with a constitution (set up by U.S. officials) which fosters the type of Islamic supremacism we are at war with. If this White House administration is going to saddle up to Erdogan and the PLO, why exactly would we send our troops into another Islamic theater to fight for … what?

According to the recent “Worldwide Threat Assessment” presented to the Senate by Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, the “situation in Afghanistan will very likely continue to deteriorate, even if international support is sustained.” The report further notes that “Kabul’spolitical dysfunction and ineffectiveness will almost certainly be the greatest vulnerability to stability in 2017.” Thus, even if we temporarily beat back the Taliban, for whom will we hold the ground without the need for a substantial troops presence forever?

This Trump administration’s Middle East policy will never succeed until it speaks with one clear voice and identifies the nature of our enemy. That will not happen until H.R. McMaster, Dina Powell, Jared and Ivanka Trump are kept out of the decision-making process. (For more from the author of “White House Staff Around Trump STILL Don’t Get Islamic Threat” please click HERE)

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Repelling an Alien Idea: Marriage, Life and ‘Gender’ Aren’t Really Real

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There’s an old science fiction short story that begins when a human lands on an alien planet and meets an obviously intelligent life form. He points at a rock and says “Rock.” The alien looks at the man, then at the rock; the man points and repeats, “Rock.”

At this point the author tells us what the alien is thinking:

This creature must not be intelligent. He gave it the same name twice. He thinks it’s still the same thing! If he knew anything, he would have recognized how many changes it’s gone through: all its constant subatomic internal changes, and that’s been altered through the heat and chemicals and radiation around it. This stupid creature thinks what was ‘rock’ before is still ‘rock’ now. He’s too dull to notice the differences.

This is an unintelligent life form. Therefore I shall eat it.

Now, I probably got some things wrong in that story. I don’t remember who wrote it, since it’s been at least forty years since I read it. (Maybe someone will recognize it and tell me where to find it again.) It contains a whopper of a logical fallacy,* which might bother you if you caught it, but doesn’t matter. I’m only using it to illustrate a lesson — one that helps explain how a once-familiar world has turned so dramatically alien in the last few decades.

An Alien Idea Taking Root

The fact is we’ve allowed an alien idea to take root among us: that things aren’t what they are; they’re always too busy becoming something else.

For example: marriage isn’t what marriage is. Marriage is one thing today, something different tomorrow and even something else across the state line. Sex isn’t what sex is; it’s “gender,” and gender can be “fluid.” Morality isn’t what it is, it’s whatever people think it should be — which evolves from day to day and is never the same from country to country. Humanness isn’t real, at least as far as the unborn humans are; what matters instead is some abstract idea of “personhood” that magically changes from week to week.

This way of thinking is called “progressive.” Just as the alien thought it was more intelligent than the human, progressives think they’re smarter than conservatives. Here’s the huge problem with that, though: the alien doesn’t know what a rock is. It doesn’t even have a word for it.

Rocks Are Real

That’s a real problem for the alien. Rocks are real. Their reality consists in more than the sum of their protons, neutrons and electrons. Rocks have an enduring, continuing reality of rock-ness to them, despite all the changes going on inside every second. That reality lasts a very long time for rocks, until erosion finally grinds them down to sand.

Granted, there are some philosophers who wonder esoterically if rocks are technically “real.” Even those thinkers’ problems with the reality of rock-ness, though, don’t go so far as denying use the same word for rocks from one moment to the next. And they will agree that rocks are rocks, and that they stay that way (as I’ve already said) for a very long time.

Marriage is Real

Marriage stayed what it was for a very long time, too, until there came a moment in the dark, distant past — almost ten or twenty years ago, if you can imagine that! — when some thought it was time for it to change. Marriage was, well, marriage. Its meaning had been dinged in the late 20th century by the sexual revolution and damaged even more by no-fault divorce, but it still was what it was: the committed union of a man and woman.

Marriage was real. Just as a rock has real rock-ness to it, marriage had a real marriage-ness to it; and any union that didn’t have that marriage-ness couldn’t be called marriage. Now we can call anything marriage. We’re as confused on marriage as the alien was on “rock.”

Human Life Is Real

Human life used to be what human life was, too. To be human is a real thing, or so we once thought. It was easily definable — even for the youngest unborn child — in terms of parental lineage, genetic structure and so on.

But progressives prefer to kick humanness off the table. They want the abortion debate to be about “personhood.” Personhood for them isn’t a matter of being but of somehow becoming. It’s an abstract quality that a fetus gradually acquires along the way — and who knows when it’s really real? Maybe (per Peter Singer) it isn’t even real until sometime after the child is born. So whatever that thing is inside the womb, until some magic event happens to finally make it a “person,” it’s an it, and it’s okay to kill it.

Progressives Have Lost Track of What’s Real

Abortion wouldn’t even be a debate if we could focus on what’s solid and real: the unborn child’s humanness. Obviously, though, progressives have a stake in keeping our eyes on this wispy, changing, indefinable concept of personhood. Just as the alien doesn’t know what a rock is, they’ve lost all knowledge of what a human is. They’ve lost track of what’s real.

I could say similar things about “gender fluidity,” but what I’d have to say about that would be too obvious to spend time on. You can see for yourself how it would go: we know sex well enough when we see it in bonobos and bumblebees, but we don’t even think it’s real in humans. At least that’s the progressive viewpoint; and like the alien, they think they’re more intelligent for thinking that way.

But also like the alien, progressives are confused and stunted in their knowledge. The alien may not know what a rock is, but rocks are still real. (For more from the author of “Repelling an Alien Idea: Marriage, Life and ‘Gender’ Aren’t Really Real” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

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.

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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5 Things Ann Coulter Got Wrong About Donald Trump

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Is Ann Coulter about to dump Trump? Is the outspoken author of In Trump We Trust about to take a giant step in the opposite direction?

Coulter was certainly ahead of most pundits in putting her money on the winning horse (she was way ahead of me in that respect), and she identified many of Trump’s strongest qualities. She also understood why his message resonated with many Americans. But she made a big mistake when she put so much trust in him, as if he could single handedly fix the nation. No human being can do that, not even the man who wrote Art of the Deal.

As the Daily Caller noted, “She wrote In Trump We Trust and proclaimed that she worships him like the ‘people of North Korea worship their Dear Leader — blind loyalty.’”

Putting Coulter’s evident hyperbole aside, and understanding her penchant for the provocative, it seems that she did, in fact, put way too much trust in a frail human leader. Now she’s feeling let down and even betrayed, and Coulter’s worship could soon become Coulter’s wrath.

Over-hyped Power, Underestimated Distractions

What did she get wrong along the way? Here are some suggestions.

First, it appears that she got caught up in the Trump hype, as if he alone of all the candidates could deliver on all his promises, as if he alone of all the candidates was not a consummate salesman as well.

To be sure, there are some values on which the president stands, and he is certainly a true patriot. But as to his guiding, non-negotiable, principles, the political and moral hills on which he is prepared to die, some of that remains to be seen. In that regard, he is still a work in progress.

Second, it appears that Coulter failed to realize that Trump’s bombastic style would create a never-ending cycle of media distractions, taking the president’s eyes off the prize. It’s one thing to have the mainstream media against you, which Trump seems to thrive on. It’s another to create an unnecessary cycle of firestorms that obscures your message and mission.

Third, it appears that she underestimated the influence of Ivanka and Jared. In oversimplified terms, they are pulling Trump to the left while he was elected by voters leaning to the right. But this is hardly a new revelation. The dueling viewpoints in the Trump camp were evident long before he was elected, along with his deep family loyalty. Perhaps Coulter underestimated just how impactful Ivanka and Jared would be?

She said, “I have from the beginning been opposed to Trump hiring any of his relatives. Americans don’t like that, I don’t like that. That’s the one fascist thing he’s done. Hiring his kids.”

Did she not see this coming?

Dense Swamp, False Savior

Fourth, it appears she underestimated the degree of compromise in Washington — in other words, the depth and density of the swamp.

On the one hand, she is indicting Congress directly, saying:

I do, of course, blame Congress most of all. They are swine. They only care about their own careers. Who knows how much of it is corruption and how much of it is pure stupidity? … They are the opposition party to Donald Trump. This is really something we’ve never seen before. The president stands alone, it’s his own political party, he’s Gary Cooper. All we have is millions of Americans behind him, but he doesn’t have anybody in Washington behind him.

But is this such a new revelation (even if somewhat overstated)? Was she unaware of this too when she effused about what Trump would do? And could it be that the president’s divisive style has hindered his ability to get more of Washington behind him?

I too fault Congress for many of the bumps in the road so far, and I also hoped (and still hope) that Trump would be able to take on the Washington establishment. But it’s possible that a more experienced, less controversial, deeply conservative president could have been more successful to this point.

Fifth, and most importantly, it appears that Coulter made Trump bigger than life. (Let’s give him credit for selling himself as well as any person in our time. The Trump name now adorns the White House.)

She said to the Daily Caller:

I got to tell you when I wrote Adios America I thought there was a 10 percent chance of saving the country. On the evening of November 8, I thought, “Wow we have a 90 percent chance now, this is a chance that comes a long once every thousand years, we can save America now.”

Really? Someone like Trump comes along once in a thousand years? With him at the helm, America’s chances for survival from 10 percent to 90 percent? This is completely unrealistic, almost guaranteeing disappointment and, worse still, bitterness and anger.

Trust in God. Pray for Trump.

Only God can turn around a nation like that, and that’s why America’s greatest need is a great revival in the Church that will become a great awakening in the society. As I argue in Saving a Sick America, due out later this year, the darkening state of the nation affords an incredible backdrop against which God’s people can rise and shine. We are certainly very sick, but with the Lord’s help, radical change can come.

That’s also why President Trump needs our prayers and support and encouragement. He is a flawed human being, like the rest of us, with the weight of the world on his shoulders, surrounded by sharks and serpents (metaphorically speaking), with genuine intentions to do good.

We do him a disservice by putting disproportionate trust in him. (For more from the author of “5 Things Ann Coulter Got Wrong About Donald Trump” please click HERE)

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Let’s Hit Left-Wing Colleges Where It Hurts

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Parents, taxpayers, and donors have little idea of the levels of lunacy, evil, and lawlessness that have become features of many of today’s institutions of higher learning.

Parents, taxpayers, and donors who ignore or are too lazy to find out what goes on in the name of higher education are nearly as complicit as the professors and administrators who promote or sanction the lunacy, evil, and lawlessness.

As for the term “institutions of higher learning,” we might start asking: Higher than what?

Let’s look at a tiny sample of academic lunacy.

During a campus debate, Purdue University professor David Sanders argued that a logical extension of pro-lifers’ belief that fetuses are human beings is that pictures of “a butt-naked body of a child” are child pornography.

Clemson University’s chief diversity officer, Lee Gill, who’s paid $185,000 a year to promote inclusion, provided a lesson claiming that to expect certain people to be on time is racist.

To reduce angst among snowflakes in its student body, the University of California, Hastings College of the Law has added a “Chill Zone.” The Chill Zone, located in its library, has, just as most nursery schools have, mats for naps and beanbag chairs.

Before or after a snooze, students can also use the space to do a bit of yoga or meditate.

The University of Michigan Law School helped its students weather their Trump derangement syndrome—a condition resulting from Donald Trump’s election—by enlisting the services of an “embedded psychologist” in a room full of bubbles and play dough.

To reduce pressure on law students, Joshua M. Silverstein, a law professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, thinks “every American law school ought to substantially eliminate C grades and set its good academic standing grade point average at the B- level.”

Today’s academic climate might be described as a mixture of infantilism, kindergarten, and totalitarianism. The radicals, draft dodgers, and hippies of the 1960s who are now college administrators and professors are responsible for today’s academic climate.

The infantilism should not be tolerated, but more important for the future of our nation are the totalitarianism and the “hate America” lessons being taught at many of the nation’s colleges.

For example, led by its student government leader, the University of California, Irvine’s student body voted for a motion, which the faculty approved, directing that the American flag not be on display because it makes some students uncomfortable and creates an unsafe, hostile environment.

The flag is a symbol of hate speech, according to the student government leader. He said the U.S. flag is just as offensive as Nazi and Islamic State flags and that the U.S. is the world’s most evil nation.

In a recent New York Times op-ed, New York University Provost Ulrich Baer argued:

The idea of freedom of speech does not mean a blanket permission to say anything anybody thinks. It means balancing the inherent value of a given view with the obligation to ensure that other members of a given community can participate in discourse as fully recognized members of that community.

That’s a vision that is increasingly being adopted on college campuses, and it’s leaking down to our primary and secondary levels of education.

Baer apparently believes that the test for one’s commitment to free speech comes when he balances his views with those of others.

His vision justifies the violent disruptions of speeches by Heather Mac Donald at Claremont McKenna College, Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of California, Berkeley, and Charles Murray at Middlebury College.

Baer’s vision is totalitarian nonsense. The true test of one’s commitment to free speech comes when he permits people to be free to say and write those things he finds deeply offensive.

Americans who see themselves as either liberal or conservative should rise up against this totalitarian trend on America’s college campuses.

I believe the most effective way to do so is to hit these campus tyrants where it hurts the most—in the pocketbook. Lawmakers should slash budgets, and donors should keep their money in their pockets. (For more from the author of “Let’s Hit Left-Wing Colleges Where It Hurts” please click HERE)

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The People of the Bubbles

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Imagine you are flying over an American suburb in Middle America, say in Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, or Pennsylvania.

You hover over a cul de sac, where kids ride tricycles and Moms share a glass of wine after work and chauffering their charges around to soccer practice.

In fact, you can see that most of the homes are inhabited by two-parent families. If you asked the parents’ primary motivation for living in suburbia, most would tell you they’ve moved for the K-12 education the local school district affords.

These families have also moved for a certain quality of life, mobility and access to grocery stores and malls. Life for many is relatively easy. Certainly there are worries: how to pay for college 10 years hence or how to fund the roofing contractor who says he can fix the worsening leak in the family room.

For good or bad, these families are living in a bubble of our society’s creation. Problems in this bubble are those of the First World.

Now imagine you are soaring over an inner city, the south side of Chicago, for example, or downtown Newark, or the east thirties in Indianapolis.

Life is harder in this bubble, where homicide is an everyday occurrence and gangs of both domestic and illegal alien lineage dominate black market commerce. Grocery stores are few and far between; liquor stores, payday loans, and bail bonds are the growth industries.

For the depressed neighborhood over which we are poised, single-parent families make up the majority of households. The single-parent route is an easy choice to make for many, incentivized as it is by government child care payments, food stamps, and WIC vouchers.

Inhabitants of the first bubble, those of suburbia, seldom cross over the perimeter of the second.

And the ability of those residing in the second bubble to permeate the membrane into the first is hampered by a lack of family support, a restricted ability to choose schools best suited for a particular student, and a societal fabric rooted in the life style of criminal gangs, drug abuse and violent crime.

With that said, residents of the second bubble can also be said to be extraordinarily wealthy compared to most.

Because if the second bubble can be thought of as an outer concentric ring to the first, it’s worth imagining that there is a third bubble outside the second.

The third circle consists of the vast majority of the world’s population. Water, basic sanitation, food and shelter are constant concerns. Disease and tribal violence have reduced the lifespan of the average third-bubble resident by a decade or two or three.

The third bubble consists of billions of people, and their plight is largely invisible to residents of the first and second circles.

Poorly educated in civics, first- and second-circle residents take for granted the magnificent compact and civil society that surrounds them with life’s every convenience. The most difficult decision some first- and second-circle residents will make on a daily basis is which of the 1800 television channels to watch at 8pm.

Our complex legal system, rooted in thousands of years of human experience, manifested itself in two magnificent legal documents that charted the course for the most successful republic in human history.

And yet there is little — and for many, no — appreciation by residents of the first and second bubbles for the masterful work of art that our nation’s highest law represents.

Demagogues of all political persuasions, men and women lacking in virtue, have placed the priorities of their party, their ethnic group, or their ahistorical social constructs, over country and principle.

Which brings me to the fourth bubble, a circle within the first. Call it the zeroth bubble.

In it are the self-proclaimed elites of government and media. The residents of the zeroth bubble reside in coastal enclaves and surrounded by elaborate systems that protect them from those who live in the first, second and third bubbles.

The residents of the zeroth bubble often secure permanent employment in the form of government sinecure or job-hopping between government, media, academia, lobbying, and public relations.

Their personal security is assured by heavily-armed forces that offer many of them around-the-clock protection.

There is little crossover from the zeroth bubble to the first. And certainly less still between the zeroth and the second.

It’s also safe to say that the device has yet to be invented that can measure the empathy that the elites feel for the residents of the third bubble.

Which helps explain why illegal immigration — from human- and drug-smuggling to MS-13 — is of no concern to the Chamber of Commerce, or your typical Senator, or Thomas Friedman of The New York Times.

The zeroth bubble people wouldn’t ever see the results of the open borders policies they espouse and support, nor can they even countenance them.

In fact, they’re sufficiently disconnected from the residents of the first bubble that they missed the entire Trump phenomenon.

The eponymous Z Man has popularized a simple dichotomy of two worlds in which the coast elites (“the cloud people”) rule over the largely invisible rabble (“the dirt people”) in flyover country.

But this view is insufficient, in my opinion.

One way to explain our country’s polarization, its angst, and its current squabbles is by imagining a set of four concentric circles, or bubbles.

Residents of each bubble lack a sufficient understanding that the other bubbles exist, and are thereby blinkered, unsympathetic, and — most of all — ungrateful.

The zeroth bubble — that of the elites — is apoplectic over its increasing and irreversible irrelevance, which explains the daily attacks on the President intertwined with its unflagging support for flatly illegal or extra-constitutional activities when the President is a Democrat.

As each bubble has become less porous and more opaque, empathy and apprecation for our society’s blessings are in very short supply.

Recognizing that the four bubbles exist is, perhaps, a step in the right direction. (For more from the author of “The People of the Bubbles” please click HERE)

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