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6 Ways Leftism Acts Like A Religion By Robby Starbuck

https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/13/6-ways-leftism-acts-like-a-religion/

Leftism has transformed from an obscure cult into a dominant religion in our country. The progressive promised land is here now.

Conservative commentators have been mocked for years for describing leftism as a new religion of sorts. Since 2016, it has become clear that the modern left was determined to prove us right.

What we have witnessed unfold in this country over the last few years, and have seen increase exponentially as the 2020 election comes near, especially with regard to the Black Lives Matter movement, is an expression of religious zealotry so widespread, unforgiving, and violent that it might have made the Puritan governors of 17th-century Massachusetts worry they were being outdone.

Leftism is not a political ideology anymore. It is a full-fledged religion complete with tithing, penance, forced confessions, iconoclasm, internet inquisitions, public rituals, excommunication, heavily policed virtues, sacred texts, seminaries, and online auto-de-fes.

The proof is too plentiful to ignore. 

Here are the signs that we’re truly confronting a theocracy of totalitarian religious extremists.

1. Conformity, Strictly Enforced Virtues, and Excommunication

Throughout history, religious nonconformists and dissenters of theocracies like the one we’re now confronting have been denied political and civil rights. Those who fail to express their undying loyalty to the Church of Leftism and participate in its public rituals are marked as heathens and “canceled” faster than you can say “due process.” Those who dissent publicly from their established doctrine are routinely censored, humiliated, shunned from certain schools or organizations, and even deprived of their livelihoods.

In this religious system, heretics and apostates are ruthlessly suppressed and denied the full benefits of participation in the body politic. Even if you’re silent, the media choir will call it violence and demand you be shamed and unfollowed. If that’s not enough puritan madness, the choir will also instruct you on how to be sufficiently woke. The New York Times recently ran a piece suggesting you must demand your family and friends donate to left-wing causes or threaten them with excommunication.

Penn Museum to remove Morton Cranial Collection from public view after student opposition By Komal Patel

https://www.thedp.com/article/2020/07/penn-museum-morton-cranial-collection-black-lives-matter

““Just as these remains were transformed into objects through their collection, they must now be uncollected, [and] recognized as persons,” Mitchell said. “Approaching this ethical challenge is as complex as it is crucial.” 

Penn Museum will remove the Morton Cranial Collection, a collection of about 1,000 crania with some belonging to enslaved individuals, from public view after students called for the crania to be repatriated. 

The collection is the work of Samuel George Morton, an 1820 Perelman School of Medicine graduate who used the skulls of enslaved people to argue that there are inherent differences between the brains of people of different races.

Morton, who is from Philadelphia, was an active participant in the medical and scientific community in the early 19th century.

During the Penn & Slavery Project’s 2019 symposium, students presented findings that the Morton Cranial Collection includes 53 crania belonging to enslaved individuals from Havana, Cuba and two crania belonging to enslaved Americans. A portion of the collection is currently in public view in a Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials classroom in the Museum. 

BLM, ‘Back the Blue’ protesters clash in Bay Ridge

http://www.news12.com/story/42359319/blm-back-the-blue-protesters-clash-in-bay-ridge

Black Lives Matter protesters and demonstrators who support the police came face-to-face in the streets of Bay Ridge.

Protesters marched 20 blocks towards the 68th Precinct.

Supporters of BLM say they are fighting for peace and equality that is long overdue.

However, ‘Back the Blue’ demonstrators say it is time they took a stand after weeks of protests around the nation calling to defund to the police.

They waved American flags and held signs showing support for President Donald Trump.

Many protesters were shoved to the ground and some American flags were burned in the streets.

BLM Anti-Police Hate-Fest Comes To Small-Town America This is what a cultural revolution looks like. Dawn Perlmutter

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/blm-anti-police-hate-fest-comes-small-town-america-dawn-perlmutter/
Yardley Borough is a small river town in Bucks County, Pennsylvania located on the Delaware river across from Trenton, the capital of New Jersey. The town has a total area of one square mile and according to the last census has a population of 2,434 of which 2,224 are white. It is known for its beautiful historical district that includes 18th and 19th century buildings that contain homes, shops, restaurants, and offices on Main Street. It is the site of the second oldest Quaker meeting house in Pennsylvania. Quakers were significantly active in the abolition movement against slavery and Yardley was an essential station for the Underground Railroad. In the past few weeks, it has become the unlikely scene of Black Lives Matter protests.

On June 19th in the guise of a Juneteenth celebration a Black Lives Matter anti-police hate fest descended upon Main Street surrounding people at outdoor restaurants and blocking traffic. Protesters were chanting “No Justice No Peace, No Racist Police” in front of local officers whom many have known their whole lives. The protesters were predominantly high school and college students and self-loathing affluent white middle-aged women attempting to show how woke they are. Many brought their children and grandchildren who held handmade signs with popular BLM and anti-police slogans.

A previous rally was held on June 4, 2020 and over a thousand people showed up. At that protest Black Lives Matter activists led a humiliation ritual in which the white townsfolk bowed down to BLM organizers in a solemn prayer like vigil. They somberly repeated the names of black men who were described as killed by the police. They also engaged in gestures and slogans such as “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” and “Say His Name”. Thoughts of Jonestown and other cults were running through my mind as I watched men and women willingly debase themselves. Many of the white women genuinely feel guilty about their privilege because they never worked a day in their life. Kneeling in submission while reverently repeating anti-police affirmations and apologizing for being white was a form of expiation, an atonement ritual. For these spoiled hypocritical women, the BLM protest was a method for them to assuage their guilt for having black women clean their toilets and take care of their elderly parents. The largest part of the crowd were high school and college students who have been taught to hate their country, schooled in revisionist history, made to feel shame for being white and conditioned to disrespect the police.

These men, women and students are the result of years of indoctrination by academia, the media, radical Marxist and black nationalist organizations whose primary strategy is to make white people, corporations and the entire next generation feel guilty for their ‘white privilege’. BLM’s goal is power, money and a totalitarian revolution. It may be one of the biggest shake downs in American history.

The BLM organizers stood in front of the small Yardley Borough Municipal Hall that houses the towns offices, post office, police department and public meeting room. Although the protests were along the entire length of Main Street, they chose to make their stand in front of the town Hall to symbolically challenge local government. It was there that BLM organizers led the humiliation ritual where white townsfolk kneeled before them. They seemed to take pleasure in degrading the white residents of Yardley. Who is oppressing whom? The submissive town folk bowing to them had the blissful look that all brainwashed useful idiots have right up until they realize they have been conned.

Although Yardley was a longtime Republican town it now has a largely Democrat town council with one independent. The new Council President is an activist with no roots in the community and ambitions to fundamentally transform the town that was founded in 1682. In his short time on council he introduced and passed a gun control resolution, an LGBT ordinance, took a moment of silence against police violence and recently made Juneteenth a recognized holiday. The Vice President of Council is a young millennial mom whose primary accomplishment is virtue signaling. She often publicly apologizes for her white privilege, but it is just a pretense for her political ambitions. She posted after the protest that “I weep with my black brothers and sisters for the systemic and institutional racism that has infiltrated and consumed our communities, our governments, our police forces and our very souls. Yesterday was a day of mourning in Yardley Boro for all the lives gone too soon because of racism. It was a day to reflect, as an elected official, how I can do better to be fair and compassionate, balanced and inclusive.”…… “To use the platform and privilege of our affluent town to elevate the voices of the oppressed.”

After the first BLM demonstration the town council complimented each other on how the peaceful protest went, they neglected to disclose that a 12 year old girl wearing a Trump t-shirt was harassed and a small group of counter protesters were spit on. While the town council sugarcoats the anti-police hatred and racist rhetoric that occurred at the protests, they have gone out of their way to cover up anti-Semitic hate crimes in Yardley even though the only school in the small town is a private Hebrew Academy.

While the council embraced the Black Lives Matter protests Covid-19 was used as an excuse to cancel the three biggest annual events in the small community. They canceled the Memorial Day Parade, a long tradition that honors local veterans where neighbors make floats, veterans are honored, and kids ride their bikes at the end of the procession. The same day they voted to make Juneteenth a recognized Yardley Holiday the annual longtime September tradition of Harvest Day was canceled. The October 2020 Yardley Beer and Wine Fest was also canceled. The symbolism was clear we are canceling your culture, your history and your traditions and replacing them with the holidays that Black Lives Matter dictate. If the message of BLM fascism wasn’t clear enough, in front of the Memorial Plaque on the Municipal Hall that lists the names of the towns fallen soldiers someone wrote in large letters BLM and Blacks killed by Cops then wrote names including George Floyd, Mike Brown, Trayvon Martin and many more. This was an obvious mockery of the memorial to the towns fallen heroes who died in WWI and WWII. Soon these plaques will either be vandalized or just removed by the town council who will declare them symbols of racism.

Knowing that residents were not happy after the first protest, the town council deliberately did not officially inform any of the businesses or residents of the second protest. However, the Chief of Police who understands how thin the blue line is that separates chaos and order, put into effect crowd control protocols. Almost every officer in town and over a dozen from nearby communities and a Major Incident Response Team (MIRT) were on duty for the “Juneteenth Peaceful Protest For Justice”. Fortunately, Yardley has a Chief of Police who understands how a protest can turn violent with just one brick. Unfortunately, when the Chief of Police was asked at a council meeting if any tickets were given when the BLM protesters blocked Main Street, a major State road, he said “No violations were issued, you cannot ticket a thousand people”. Not surprising since Yardley Borough Council votes on his contract which expires the end of next year.

Business owners who just reopened after the Covid 19 lock downs closed their shops and stood in front of their stores guarding them from potential looters. One restaurant owner had to cordon off his sidewalk tables with caution tape to protect his customers from the crowds. A long-time Yardley friendly couple that regularly sit on their front porch on Main Street were visibly armed as the protesters marched in front of their home. There are a lot of residents who are not happy about having an anti-police hate fest walking down Main Street blocking a state road and forcing businesses to close.

One of the saddest sights were the faces of the young people who are ashamed of their country and have been so thoroughly indoctrinated into believing that police are racist. Ironically, Washington’s Crossing is just four miles up the road from Yardley and although they were raised here, they have no concept of their own country’s history or how men younger than them fought and died for their freedom. Their teachers, parents and community leaders have failed them by filling their hearts with hatred and lies. BLM exploits the anger they inculcated and now have an army of deluded young white activists who they are using to destroy their own futures. The few bright students that see through the lies are bullied and ridiculed into silence.

Soon after the protests residents started taking down their American flags and putting up Black Lives Matter signs on their lawns. This is either the result of fear of being ostracized, a deterrence against looting or just virtue signaling in actual support. This is what a cultural revolution looks like, a small towns history is eradicated, town leaders sell out, useful idiots bow down, cowards acquiesce and the few patriots that are left load their weapons. In the spirit of Yardley’s original brave abolitionists local officers continue to protect our freedoms even when they are being called racists and killers.

No more pandemic panic, please By Jeffrey I. Barke, M.D. *******

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/no_more_pandemic_panic_please.html

As expected by most observers, the number of cases of Covid-19 continues to increase across the country. There are primarily three reason for the spike in cases:

More testing is being performed
People are moving about as the economy opens up
Massive protests and riots across the country

The next statistic that will be used to frighten the American people will be the increase in hospitalizations that will follow the expanded number of cases. Days or weeks after hospitalizations grow in number, even more deaths are likely to arise.

What will not be reported in the gloomy news roundups is the fact that we now have effective treatments for Covid-19. More appalling, many doctors and hospital systems are refusing to use these effective therapeutics.

Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, a New York family medicine physician, has pioneered a treatment strategy that works well but is still shunned by most of the medical profession and ignored by the mainstream news media. Dr. Zelenko said this on The Dennis Prager radio show of July 10, 2020:

I don’t care what ‘they’ say anymore, I would rather speak directly to the American people and tell them I have some very good news for [them].  We have an answer to the terrible infection, we have a very effective way of treating it. In the high risk groups there is a 99.3% survival [rate] and a 84% reduction in hospitalizations. There is also a 100% survival rate in low risk patients when [our] treatment is started in the first 5 days [of the onset of] an infection.

FLORIDA DOESN’T COP OUT

‘Red, White, and Back the Blue’ Car Parade in Florida Honors Local Law Enforcement https://www.breitbart.com/local/2020/07/05/red-white-back-blue-car-parade-in-florida-honors-local-law-enforcement/?

Back the Blue demonstrators march through Jupiter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwtNl6pwPjQ

Ayaan Hirsi Ali blasts Ilhan Omar over call to remake US, says ‘I don’t think we need a revolution’ Charles Creitz

https://www.foxnews.com/media/ayaan-hirsi-ali-ilhan-omar-no-revolution

Human rights activist asks, ‘Why flee from Mogadishu … and do all your best’ to turn US into Mogadishu?

Somalia-born human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali criticized Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Friday over recent comments in which the lawmaker called for “dismantling the whole system of oppression wherever we find it.”

In remarks this week, Omar — who was also born in Somalia — specifically called out America’s political and economic systems, which she said “prioritize profit without considering who is profiting [and] who is being shut out”.

“She’s in Congress — the United States Congress,” Ali told “The Daily Briefing” host Dana Perino, “and she is saying ‘Why don’t we dismantle the whole thing?’ … It makes you wonder.”

“Why flee from Mogadishu, why flee from anarchy, why flee from oppression — and then come to the United States and do all your best to turn Minnesota and the U.S. into Mogadishu?” Ali continued. “It’s one of the things I’d like to ask her.”

Ali, who fled to The Netherlands from Somalia in the early 1990s and became an American citizen in 2013, told Perino that Omar should recognize that no nation is more free and less systemically discriminatory than the United States.

Demoralizing the Police As cops become objects of derision and scorn, violent crime soars in American cities. Jack Dunphy

https://www.city-journal.org/demoralizing-the-police-crime-soars

The police officer occupies a distinctive position in American life. Dressed in his uniform and driving his distinctively marked cruiser, he is the most visible symbol of civil government and serves as a reminder that society is governed by rules that citizens are expected to follow. A compact exists between the officer and the government that he serves. The officer does his job in the knowledge that it comes with significant risk to his personal safety; he accepts this risk with the understanding that the government affords him certain protections, especially in cases where he may have to use reasonable or justifiable force.

Following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers—and with the resulting social upheaval—that compact has been now tossed aside. Today, the police officer is an object of derision and scorn, viewed not as a remedy to crime and disorder but as a cause of it—at least to an uninformed but influential minority, which includes members of the government and media. As the police officer endures this reaction, he knows crime and disorder haven’t abated. Indeed, both have increased alarmingly in many places. But now, if the officer uses force to bring a lawbreaker into custody, the legal protections that he once enjoyed will be abrogated, if necessary, to appease that same minority.

How else to explain the speed with which Atlanta police officer Garrett Rolfe was fired and charged with murder after he shot and killed Rayshard Brooks on June 12? How else to explain why Rolfe’s partner, Devin Brosnan, has been charged with aggravated assault and violation of his oath? After the tumult in Minneapolis and elsewhere, Atlanta’s authorities clearly sacrificed both officers in the hope that their city wouldn’t be looted and burned. There isn’t a cop in America who hasn’t feared being in Rolfe’s place.

“BLM, Covid-19 and Climate Change, 3 Great International Cons” from “In Defense of Rural America” by Ron Ewert

From the article:

“But worse than all this, they have turned government against white Americans to placate BLM. Some cities have actually sat their white staff down and told them to be less white. That is exactly what the City of Seattle did to its white staff in June of 2020.”

“Can you imagine the outcry if a city government sat the black staff down and told them to be less black? All Hell would break loose. The media would go bananas. Democrats would become apoplectic and call for investigations. Petitions would pop up calling for the recall of the mayor and city council. Demands for their resignations would ring out across the land. ANTIFA and Black Lives Matter rioters would go on a nationwide, shooting, looting and burning rampage.”

“On June 12, 2020, the same day that protestors took over a section of Seattle’s Capitol Hill, the Seattle Office of Civil Rights called all white staffers to a two and one-half hour training session on how to be less white. They were told they would have to give up their objectivity, individualism, intellectualization, comfort and perfectionism. It made no difference that Objectivity is the foundation of logic, reason and science. Individualism is the corner stone of freedom and Perfectionism is the motive to the betterment of our lives and the drive towards worthy achievement.

It’s All About November 3 by By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/11/its-all-about-november-3/

The Democrats thought they could ride the tiger to victory.  Instead, they will be consumed by the monster they created but could not control.

Everything is what it is, and not another thing.” That lapidary observation from the Sermons (1726) of Joseph, Bishop Butler, is one of the most profound philosophical observations I have ever encountered. One of the simplest, too. In nine short words, it introduces a principle of mental hygiene that Marxists, Freudians, Hegelians, astrologers, sociobiologists, and other lovers of mystification ignore at their—or, more to the point, at our—peril.

Butler’s chief target was what we now call the selfish theory of human nature—the “strange affection in many people of explaining away all particular affections, and representing the whole of life as nothing but one continued exercise in self-love.” Butler zeros in on the fundamental confusion that nurtures this unflattering view of humanity. It is this: a (deliberate?) confusion between the proposition that we cannot knowingly act except from a desire or interest which is our own, and the proposition that all of our actions are self-interested. 

The first is not only true, it is a necessary truth: it could not be otherwise. The second proposition— that all of our actions are self-interested—far from being self-evidently true, is a scandalous falsehood.  

It is a tautology that any interest we have is an interest of our own: whose else could it be? But the objects of our interest are as varied as the world is wide. 

No doubt much of what we do we do from motives of self-interest. But we might also do things for the sake of flag and country; for the love of a good woman; for the love of God; to discover a new country; to benefit a friend; to harm an enemy; to make a fortune; to spend a fortune. 

“It is not,” Butler notes, “because we love ourselves that we find delight in such and such objects, but because we have particular affections towards them.” How much wandering in mental thickets might have been avoided had Sigmund Freud acquainted himself with Butler’s Sermons?