A coalition of agitators

By Cathy Keim

The cancelled Trump rally in Chicago last week has caused many people to worry about what lies ahead in the months leading up to the Presidential election. As one friend put it, “It has that 1968 feeling.”

For their part, Cleveland police are preparing for a contentious GOP convention:

Both parties’ conventions are eligible for $50 million in federal spending for event safety. The news website Cleveland.com reported that the city’s police will call on suburban forces to boost staffing to about 5,000.

(snip)

City officials on March 9 opened bidding for the purchase of 2,000 sets of riot-control gear, including batons, upper-body and arm protectors, shin guards and reinforced gloves.

A look at Craigslist job ads in Cleveland today showed this interesting new employment opportunity:

Cleveland screen shot

That sounds like somebody in Cleveland is getting ready for political action.

Next we have Breitbart’s Aaron Klein reporting on “Democracy Spring”:

With little fanfare and almost no news media attention, some of the same radical groups involved in shutting down Donald Trump’s Chicago rally last week are plotting a mass civil disobedience movement to begin next month.

Klein adds that “the group is backed by numerous organizations, including the George Soros-funded groups MoveOn.org, the Institute for Policy Studies, and Demos.” The Democratic Socialists of America and the AFL-CIO also support the group.

In addition, CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood affiliated groups are jumping on the bandwagon by pledging to join Black Lives Matter, Hispanics, and other people of color. Watch this video clip to see Khalilah Sabra, the Executive Director and Project Developer for Muslim American Society Immigrant Justice Center, ask the audience why can’t we have that revolution in America?

The protests that started with the Occupy movement morphed into the Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, Missouri. Now we are seeing protests coalescing around the Trump rallies. While Donald Trump has been more vocal in his comments about immigration than other candidates, it is probably his position as front runner that is adding to the attention he is receiving. If Cruz is able to grab the lead from Trump, I believe that the protests would just shift to Cruz rallies. Indeed, no matter who wins the position of Republican candidate for President at the convention in Cleveland, he will be faced with ongoing protests as long as the groups feel that it is worth their while to stir up trouble.

Sheriff David Clarke of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, makes the case that:

Friday night in Chicago, at the site of the Donald Trump rally, we were awakened to what America will be like if we continue to kowtow to the radicalized left and their violent intimidation tactics to shut down Constitutionally protected speech. Theirs is not a protest movement. It is pure anarchy.

Please read his whole piece as it is right on target with what we need to do to stand our ground. The protestors in Chicago were jubilant when they succeeded in shutting down the Trump rally. It is not surprising that many of the protestors were students from the University of Illinois at Chicago on whose campus the rally was scheduled to be held.

Haven’t the students at universities across the nation been shutting down guest speakers that they disagreed with by screaming and interrupting them until they gave up trying to give their speech? Even better, they have protested and successfully forced their college administrators to cancel the speakers before they could even get on campus.

Our First Amendment rights to free speech have already been seriously curtailed on colleges across the country. The students at elite universities have to have safe spaces where they are protected from hearing anything that might upset them.

Political correctness is causing people to self-censor for fear of retribution or social alienation (shunning). If that is not sufficient, then there are also classes offered by employers to re-educate the employees into the correct attitudes. If an employee is sufficiently contrary, they can be forced into anger management remediation to help them overcome their anti-social behavior.

The most violently enforced censorship is that of sharia where a joke about Mohammed can result in your execution. While we are not at that point in the USA, there are plenty of groups pushing for speech codes about all things Muslim.

Our right to freedom of speech is only there if we continue to exercise it. Sheriff Clarke adds:

Law-abiding Americans must not and cannot back down to these freedom-squashing goons. It is time for all of us to understand just what our enemies want to achieve – chaos and fear — and to rally around the fundamental truths of the Constitution.

Get ready for a long, hot campaign season. Brace yourself for what is coming. The anarchists, CAIR, unions, Black Lives Matter, and assorted other groups will not back down unless forced to do so. If we equivocate and wobble, then the next step to losing our freedom of speech will be taken.

David Horowitz explains:

Battles over rights and other issues, according to Alinsky, should never be seen as more than occasions to advance the real agenda, which is the accumulation of power and resources in radical hands. Power is the all-consuming goal of Alinsky’s politics. This focus on power was illustrated by an anecdote recounted in a New Republic article that appeared during Obama’s presidential campaign: “When Alinsky would ask new students why they wanted to organize, they would invariably respond with selfless bromides about wanting to help others. Alinsky would then scream back at them that there was a one-word answer: ‘You want to organize for power!'” In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky wrote: “From the moment an organizer enters a community, he lives, dreams, eats, breathes, sleeps only one thing, and that is to build the mass power base of what he calls the army.” The issue is never the issue. The issue is always building the army. The issue is always the revolution.

We had better get this concept in our minds, because our opponents most certainly have.

Sharia, gay marriage, and the First Amendment

By Cathy Keim

On May 20, 2015 I received an email from the American Freedom Defense Initiative announcing that they are buying ads on Washington, D.C. buses and train dioramas.

AFDI President Pamela Geller said in a statement:

Because the media and the cultural and political elites continue to self-enforce the Sharia without the consent of the American people by refusing to show any depictions of Muhammad or showing what it was in Texas that had jihadists opening fire, we are running an ad featuring the winning cartoon by former Muslim Bosch Fawstin from our Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest in Garland, Texas.

The attack on the event drew a lot of criticism aimed not at the jihadists, but at Pamela Geller and AFDI for hosting such a “provocative” contest. In this convoluted way of thinking, the jihadists could not be held responsible for their attack because they were provoked into it!

Here is the ad so that you can see for yourself what the fuss is about.

While this controversy is important in its own right, the following quote from Pamela Geller made me think of another first amendment issue that we are facing:

Putting up with being offended is essential in a pluralistic society in which people differ on basic truths. If a group will not bear being offended without resorting to violence, that group will rule unopposed while everyone else lives in fear, while other groups curtail their activities to appease the violent group. This results in the violent group being able to tyrannize the others.

The progressives have been very eager to push gay marriage on the American people. The Supreme Court ruling that many expect to legalize gay marriage in every state should come down this summer. If or when that happens, do not think that this is over. The gay marriage fight is really not about gay marriage at all: it is about destroying marriage and the family unit and replacing it with the government.

If it were only about being able to be with the partner of their choosing, then why do we have the vindictive attacks on Christian photographers, bakers, and florists that decline to participate in gay marriage ceremonies? Why is this issue being pushed so hard?

The gay mafia has not resorted to chopping off heads, but it has put many Christian business people through a hellish experience resulting in fines and losing their business because they did not want to participate in gay marriage ceremonies.

As a reminder, the First Amendment says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This is true whether the speech is politically correct or not.

Americans are facing tough choices on First Amendment topics. If we do not resist the onslaught to demonize any open discussion of what Sharia requires of Muslims and how that is not compatible with the Constitution, then we will soon be silenced on any topic when threatened. For example, besides saying that you cannot draw Mohammad, Sharia law says that women are not equal to men. It allows men to have four wives. It also says that if you convert from Islam, you are to be killed. Now how can that be reconciled with our Constitution?

Yes, we can draw pictures of Mohammad in the USA and we have an obligation to do so to show that we will not back down on our First Amendment rights.

Christians have the obligation to state the Biblical position on marriage. Marriage is only between one man and one woman. If the Supreme Court declares marriage to be something else, then the religious freedom that we have known will be gone because rather than choosing another baker, photographer, or florist, the gay mafia will seek to destroy and intimidate anyone that does not fall into line and state that gay marriage is as good or better than heterosexual marriage.

Tolerance in both situations is a one-way street. If you do what the bully says, then he will tolerate you. If you do not toe the line, then he will seek to destroy you.

Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, states:

Religious liberty is under direct threat. Just days ago the Solicitor General of the United States served notice before the Supreme Court that the liberties of religious institutions will be an open and unavoidable question. Already, religious liberty is threatened by a new moral regime that exalts erotic liberty and personal autonomy and openly argues that religious liberties must give way to the new morality, its redefinition of marriage, and its demand for coercive moral, cultural, and legal sovereignty.

The totalitarian impulses behind Sharia enforcers and erotic liberty advocates both result in the same end: the loss of personal freedom. Our country was founded on the belief that all men are created equal and this came from the Biblical worldview that all men are created in the image of God. This profound concept is what led to the birth of our country.

If we walk away from this truth, then we also walk away from America as we know her.

Mohler points out: Human rights and human dignity are temporary abstractions if they are severed from their reality as gifts of the Creator. The eclipse of Christian truth will lead inevitably to a tragic loss of human dignity. If we lose religious liberty, all other liberties will be lost, one by one.

So draw a cartoon and support marriage between one man and one woman or soon you may find that you can do neither. If everybody draws a cartoon and all Christians stand up for marriage, then it will be much harder for the jihadists to kill all of us or for the gay mafia to destroy every business that doesn’t agree with them, but if we are cowed by the threat of violence, then the First Amendment may still be in the Constitution – but it will not be relevant.

Make the case for the First Amendment

by Cathy Keim

Last Sunday I was flying home from the west coast and happened to sit by a professor from a major university whose specialty was First Amendment Studies. I usually immerse myself in an exciting book to make the time pass, but this trip the book was not so compelling and he ran out of LA Times crossword puzzles that he had apparently collected for the trip. When we got around to owning up to what we did, he demurred from being quoted on a blog, but was happy to discuss issues off the record.

Since he teaches courses on the First Amendment, I had to inquire about the Charlie Hebdo massacre in France. He assured me that we are very different in America and would not back down over cartoons, adding that he had shown them to his classes. I pointed out that many American media outlets refused to show the cartoons, saying that they were offensive. I also brought up the previous Danish cartoon riots in 2006. Despite his assurance that things were different in America, I had to mention that Yale University Press published a book in 2012 about the Danish cartoons, but would not include the cartoons in the book! That doesn’t come off as a profile in courage.

So, how are we to handle speech or art that is offensive to others? As a Christian, I would prefer that we all love our neighbor as ourselves and refrain from antagonizing them. That sounds like self-censorship – and it is – but it is done out of respect, not fear.

Political correctness is the opposite of self-restraint due to respect for others. Political correctness is bending to a powerful coercion that will punish you if you resist. We have seen this take place when people lost their jobs for not having the politically correct view on marriage.

Once decisions are being made to restrain our speech or art due to fear of reprisal, then the only way to combat this is to increase free speech. The professor was adamant that when ideas are pushed underground due to fear, then they only bubble up later.

If all the media stood shoulder to shoulder and ran stories showing a picture of Mohammed, then the point would stand that in the West, pictures can be published. The media did not have to all publish the same picture. It could be a tasteful portrait instead of the cartoon if you did not find satirical cartoons your style.

At the same time that we were flying across the US having our discussion, thousands of Muslims were protesting in London over the Charlie Hebdo cartoons.

A leaflet issued by the Muslim Action forum (MAF), who organised the rally, said recent republishing of cartoons, caricatures and depictions of Muhammad by satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and other publishers is a “stark reminder” that freedom of speech is “regularly utilized to insult personalities that others consider sacred.”

We need to have an open discussion of this idea. This is not a time for self-censorship, but rather it is time for each of us to publically speak up. Political correctness has brought us to the point of not being able to accurately address the situation. The only cure is to let free speech increase.

The professor encouraged people to consider the political cartoons that have been present in America from it very beginnings. They were not timid, nor respectful of their targets. We have a long history of making points with satire and humor.

The First Amendment is under attack on many fronts. The LGBT movement, the Muslims, feminists, and the IRS are among a few of the groups trying to stifle free speech. When the IRS refused to grant 501 (c)(4) status to conservative groups, they effectively throttled their ability to speak out in the public forum by intimidating these groups and reducing their fund raising efforts which were to be used to advance their political ideas.

How many conservative activists have been called racists, bigots, haters, and homophobes for pointing out that our federal government is a bloated monster that exceeds its constitutional restraints repeatedly?

Rather than replying in anger, or getting defensive, instead go on the offense by presenting Judeo-Christian based Western Civilization in an appealing way. Know your narrative. Remember that if you cannot change the liberal dominating the conversation, then you may well present some new ideas to the other people in the social setting. Fight bad ideas with good ideas. We have the advantage of telling the truth. Make the case for liberty.

A cross as a sign of the times

For over 90 years, the Bladensburg Peace Cross has stood on property which is now public land. Two years ago, the American Humanist Association asked the memorial to World War 1 veterans be removed from its site, saying it “sends a message that Christianity is preferred by the government.” Since it’s still there, the AHA has filed a lawsuit against the Maryland – National Capital Park and Planning Commission, which controls the plot of land near a heavily traveled intersection. The suit cites a “violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, as applied to Maryland by the Fourteenth Amendment.” Yes, it’s the old saw that the sign of the cross is the establishment of religion. I find it interesting that thousands of crosses and other religious symbols have been erected as tombstones or prominently featured on them in public and private cemeteries around the country, yet because of the location and visibility of the Bladensburg Cross, the AHA has chosen to sue about this one.

But the reason I heard about this was a voice of resistance:

Given the wave of revisionist lawsuits intended to dismantle battle monuments and other sites important to ordinary Americans since the 1960s I suppose it was only a matter of time until the Bladensburg Cross came under attack. But perhaps the attackers have bitten off more than they can chew.

I attach the complaint, and want to organize resistance. I think “Task One” will be to make sure the Maryland National Capital Parks and Planning Commission (the named defendant) does not roll over and decide to default.

If you are concerned about this assault on historical memory, kindly consider pushing this news out to your networks and contacting your representatives in the Maryland General Assembly.

I will go to the Courthouse today to see about getting more info.  I realize that not everyone reading this note will agree with me on this.  I respect your opinion, so please let me know if you would like to be removed from further mailings.

These are the words of former U.S. Senate candidate Richard Douglas, who passed on a run for Attorney General here in Maryland but may be interested in this case.

Yet this somewhat local push to eradicate a so-called religious symbol from the landscape comes at a time when the faithful in and around the country are under assault from all directions – witness the firestorm of protest, including a threat to relocate Super Bowl XLIX from the state, which surrounded an Arizona bill which would have allowed business owners to follow their conscience when it came to service gay or lesbian couples. The measure was vetoed by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, who called it “broadly worded.” Other states, such as Texas, Utah, and Virginia, have seen their gay marriage bans thrown out by activist federal judges.

In Maryland the judiciary seems to be a little more conservative than the general population, but this is going before a federal court so all bets are off.