Ten 2020 Issues, Policies, Personalities — and ChanceWe’re in uncharted territory: lock-downs,social anarchy and violence, virtual campaigning,and a heap of known unknowns. By VICTOR DAVIS HANSONAugust 18, 2020  The nation has never seen an election like this. A mysterious virus from China has terrified the country, killed perhaps 180,000 Americans, and is now weaponized as a political asset to neuter the president. Half the country is still in de facto quarantine. Governments — national, state, and local — for the first time have induced an artificial but severe recession. The country is convulsed by riots, looting, and urban violence, but with the novelty that many governors and mayors have either turned a blind eye to the anarchy or contextualized it as a legitimate reaction to social injustice. Joe Biden has been incommunicado for nearly four months, so much so that the Democratic Party believes that his vice-presidential running mate may well be the next president much sooner than later. And the media seek to shield Biden from himself by aborting normal journalistic scrutiny — on the unspoken surety that he is not cogitatively able to conduct a normal campaign and, indeed, in one unguarded moment of confusion and bewilderment, might well sink the entire 2020 progressive agenda. The result is a virtual candidate, with virtual issues, and a virtual campaign. How then can we adjudicate what issues will matter? 1)The Lockdown. More or less, Americans followed the March–June lockdowns that seemed at least for a while to slow the viral spread. Of course, “flattening the curve” to prevent hospital overcrowding soon insidiously morphed into the impossible task of stopping the virus by shutting down the economy and quarantining the population. I suppose the theory was “we had to destroy the health of a society to ensure it was healthy.” We know from Sweden and the gradual diminution in cases in the hardest hit states of the U.S. Northeast that the virus has a say in such policies. It seems determined to have an initial spike followed by a lull and yet another lesser spike, before it finds it harder to infect more vulnerable victims, as antibodies and T-cells increasingly ensure either growing de facto immunity or asymptotic infection, all while herd immunity rises and the virus plays itself. We will soon, perhaps in a year or so, learn of the real tally of forced quarantines — the substance abuse, child abuse, retrogression in millions of young students denied K–12 learning and supervision, missed health diagnostics and preventative care, and delayed or cancelled surgeries. And the tab will likely be far higher than the coronavirus death count and the post-viral fatigue and morbidity of stricken but recovering patients. In other words, there were never blue/red choices or Democratic/Republican ones, but only bad and worse and all in between. Fairly or not, the lockdown as a political issue is now crystalized as back-to-school/not-back-to-school for millions of the nation’s students, the vast majority of whom are either going to be immune — or asymptomatic if infected. To the degree Trump makes the moral argument that in such a lose/lose scenarios we have far more to forfeit by keeping kids home than at school, and that we can protect vulnerable teachers through reassignments from classroom teaching, he will win the issue. Biden’s insistence that schools remain closed is likely a losing issue, because voters know that locked-in families are increasingly not viable —economically, physically, and psychologically, and in a way that outweighs even their fear of the virus. As a grandfather of a special-needs child, I can attest that the months without skilled teaching and classroom stimulation have been disastrous — they’ve now wiped away much of the stunning progress achieved in the past year by skilled and emphatic classroom teachers. 2) COVID. Like any other natural or manmade disaster — from 9/11 to Katrina to the 2008 financial crisis — the sitting president gets praised or blamed depending on whether the catastrophe is seen as waning or waxing, even if it is well beyond a president’s ability to either worsen or mitigate any such disaster. COVID up until now is a he said/she said, dead-ender, as data can be adduced that the U.S. did better than the UK or Spain but worse than Germany, or should have/should have not issued the travel ban, quarantines, or earlier/later or not at all. The point is not the past status of the virus, but that the trajectory from October 1 to November 3 — Election Day — will become political. If the second spike deflates, the virus seems to decline, and people instinctually regain confidence, with news of impending vaccines and far better treatments, then Trump will benefit from that reality. If we see a third spike at this time — say, one that falls heavily on teachers who returned to work in some states — then Biden will claim “I told you so.” 3) The Economy. Even Biden cannot argue that the pre-viral economy was inert when he knows it was booming by any historical marker. Its weakness — huge deficits — is neutralized as an issue because Biden and Harris, to meet their fantasy agendas, would borrow far more than even Trump has. Polls understandably continue to suggest more voter confidence in Trump than in Biden on economic issues. Whether the economy — rather than the lockdown and virus — is the news will hinge on whether it continues to recover or suffers a sudden debt/financial/liquidity crisis. 4) The Violence and Social Anarchy. The wreckage of the inner core of our major cities should be Trump’s greatest issue, given that even blue-city mayors and the network and cable news industry cannot censor all the sickening and nihilistic violence. The Left and its appeasers own the violence. Initially, they proudly enabled the demonstrations in hopes of weaponizing the outrage over the death of George Floyd into another “Charlottesville” writ against Trump. The meme that Trump’s “storm-troopers” want to take over cities is now a stale joke, given that Antifa seems eager to roast Portland police personnel in their barricaded precinct, while looters in the million-dollar mile of Chicago greedily target Gucci and Nikes as “reparations” justice. If Trump frames the issue that he is the only sane impediment between all that and civilization, he will be helped enormously.  Biden’s recourse seems to be to stay quiet about the violence and to outsource support for the demonstrators to Harris, while he now and again nods to law and order and claims he wants to defund the police without defunding the police. In a larger sense, Biden seems fixated on past May-June inert issues that often drove down Trump’s polls, but seems baffled that the real challenges are August-October issues that are quite different, fluid, and breaking in Trump’s direction. 5) The Strange Case of the Biden VP. In Democratic terms, Harris was the only viable pick once Biden explicitly limited his running-mate selection to a woman and implicitly to a black woman. The other younger, more woke candidates were unvetted — and for good reason given their now exposed pasts. The only other candidate with stature is Susan Rice, who has never been elected to anything; but, more important, seems incapable of telling the truth, and she tends to alienate everyone with whom she deals. But Harris has problems of her own that explain why she exited the Democratic primaries early with nonexistent support. She is rude, often ill-prepared, demagogic, and seems to think her role as VP is threefold: a) Trotskyization of her recent hard-left social persona that failed so miserably in the primaries; b) a wink and nod “centrist” rebirth, by carefully referencing her career as a California prosecutor (when in fact she was a vindictive DA), and c) privately reassuring leftists, donors, Sandernistas, and the Antifa/BLM crowd that if they elect Biden now, they will be very soon be electing Harris, who will revert to her hard-core leftist essence, since she will not have to face voters as she did in 2019. In sum, her appointment prompted short-term giddiness; but in retrospect, her long-term negatives will start becoming an issue. 6) Socialism. The new old Joe Biden is not really a socialist convert. He is a naïve Menshevik who has no idea of the nature of those who are telling him what to say and do. So far, he has mixed the message that he is impaired and personally fearful of the coronavirus — understandable given his age and health — with his usual platitudinous phrases (“first, second, . . .”; “come on, man”) and calls for patriotic obeyance to the quarantine. Throughout, he avoids telling America what he is for and what he is against— and whether the agendas of Bernie Sanders, AOC, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren are his own. Whether before or during the debates, Biden will have to answer yes or no to fracking, reparations, government confiscations of semi-automatic guns (even the U.S. government cannot buy “back” what one never “owned”), Medicare for all, the end of border-wall construction, decoupling with China, free health care for illegal aliens, a wealth tax, a 40 percent-plus income-tax rate on higher incomes, and getting back into the Iran deal and the Paris climate accord. The strangest thing about this strange Biden campaign is that we all know what the hard Left was for in the primaries, we all know that Biden and Harris have embraced that losing message, and yet we known that no one will simply say, New Green Deal? Hell, Yes! Reparations? Of course! Open borders? Why Not? Never have such contortionist candidates disowned the very issues that they bragged would usher them to victory, while reinventing themselves as something they are not — with the surety that they’d revert to what they are if they were elected. 7) Tweeting versus Mental Confusion. The proverbial swing voter in the ten or so states is the key to the election. Without much sweat, Trump will fire up his base and the old Perot/Reagan Democrat/Tea Party voters who previously hid in 2008 and 2012 or voted Obama. He may well capture 10–15 percent of the black vote and 40 percent of the Latino vote. But he could still lose, given lots of new variables, like mass mail-in voting and third-party vote harvesting like the kind that destroyed California’s quite accomplished congressional incumbents and candidates in 2018. Conventional wisdom reminds us that Trump needs to win a majority of independent suburbanites in these key purple states. The issue is simple: Do they fear getting only a recorded message when calling 9/11, an Antifa punk showing up at their corner park, a BLM looter across the street from their Costco, or another no-bail, turnstile, parolee carjacking — more than they are turned off by Trump’s tweeting, his epithets, and his shouting about “fake news”? What bothers these pivotal voters most: Trump on the rampage whining about how biased reporters spin fake news, or ten seconds of dead silence as Biden looks in vain for his wife, or a toady reporter, to steer him back to his prompt and his place in the script? In contrast, Trump’s most able cabinet members and advisors—Barr, Pompeo, and the recently arrived Scott Atlas—are increasingly appearing in high-profile, visible roles, and proving invaluable to the campaign. 8) Known Unknowns. In the next eight days, all sorts of breaking news can change the pulse of the election.Will other Gulf Arab states join the UAE in recognizing Israel? Will Russia intervene in Belarus? Will China provoke an incident with Hong Kong or Taiwan or unleash its pit bull North Korea to embarrass Trump? Will the health of the septuagenarians Biden and Trump stay constant ? Will John Durham flip a wannabe fixer like Eric Clinesmith to snare the principles in the veritable coup to destroy Trump? Will Kamala Harris go full Antifa/BLM? Will a mysterious tape, recording, intercept of a long dormant scandal appear in Access Hollywood/George W. Bush DUI style? Will Biden or Trump go full Howard Dean/I have a scream and shout “YAAAAHH!” to wreck his campaign? We all know some sort of attempted October surprise is coming, we just don’t know its magnitude and effect. 9) The Virtual Election. No one knows either how we can elect a president through virtual campaigning, virtual conventions, and perhaps virtual debates and virtual voting by mail. We suspect that Joe Biden’s cognitive challenges are the stimulus for the left-wing effort to cite the virus as grounds for changing the rules. But even when rules change, they don’t always change as the changers anticipated. 10) Sleeper Cells. In 2016, money didn’t matter. Hillary Clinton vastly outraised and outspent Trump in nearly every state. Polls of the Electoral College were way off. Voters do lie to pollsters because they don’t want their names on electronic lists, or they decline to say out loud what they like about Trump, or they’re just amused by the idea of screwing up left-wing analyses. Worse in 2016 were the silly quoted odds that Clinton would win — often reaching absurd disparities such as a 4–1, 5–1, or 10–1 sure thing. In 2016, “organization” didn’t matter. Robbie Mook was declared a genius and proved a fool; Trump’s campaign was said to be foolish run by a bigger fool Steven Bannon, plagued by government subversion and serial firings and hirings — and yet it proved far more sophisticated in its analytics and strategies. Do record gun sales, crashing ratings for the woke NBA, weird outlier polls, voters’ own belief that Trump will win or that their neighbors will vote him in, etc. mean anything? Is right now August 2016, when the polls just can’t be wrong — again? In sum, the more Trump talks about his empathy for the suburbanite and inner-city dweller, both deprived of their civil rights to safety and security by deliberately lax, blue-state law enforcement, the more he expresses his bewilderment but undeniable compassion for Biden’s tragic, steady cognitive decline, and the more he seems too busy to tweet about much other than the landmark Israel–UAE deal, an impending COVID vaccine and therapy breakthroughs, unexpected economic uptick indicators, and his efforts to save the nation’s children from the disaster of two lost two school years, all the more likely swing voters will break in his favor. And all the more likely he will confound the learned-nothing/forgotten-nothing polls.

THE RACCOON STORYby E. P. UNUMAugust 18, 2020 Like many citizens, I’ve wondered and tried hard to understand why President Trump has such a remarkable following. Listening to the media, it’s pretty obvious why he probably should not! But, he actually does have a tremendous following and, so, it puzzled me.  If you want to know how most people feel, and this applies to both democrats and republicans, read below. The Raccoon Story says it all. You’ve been on vacation for two weeks. You come home, and your basement is infested with raccoons. Hundreds of rabid, messy, mean raccoons have overtaken your basement. You are beside yourself and your wife and kids are screaming at the top of their lungs. You want these raccoons gone immediately. So, you call the city and four different exterminators, but nobody can handle the job.  But, praise the Lord, there is this one guy and he guarantees to get rid of them. He is dressed in a suit, neatly pressed with a nice red tie and sort of orange hair. He makes a terrific impression, so you hire him. You don’t care what university he attended or if his suit was refurbished. You don’t care if the guy smells. You don’t care if the guy swears. You don’t care how many times he’s been married. You don’t care if he has a plumber’s crack. You simply want those raccoons gone! You want your problem fixed! He’s the guy. He’s the best!  So, here is why we want Trump.  Yes, he’s a bit of a jerk. Yes, he’s an egomaniac, but we don’t care. The country is a mess because politicians suck, both Republicans and Democrats can be two-faced and gutless.  Illegals are everywhere. There are homeless living in tents in our cities, peeing and defecating on our sidewalks. Our businesses are aflame with riots and looters. People are clamoring to get rid of police, which makes no sense at all.  We are sick of it all! We want it all fixed!  We don’t care that Trump is crude. We don’t care that he insults people. We don’t care that he has changed positions. We don’t care that he’s been married three times. We don’t care that he fights with Megan Kelly and Rosie O’Donnell. We don’t care that he doesn’t know the name of some Muslim terrorist. We don’t care that he takes on politicians like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. We don’t care that he calls out leaders of nations in public to pay their fair share of NATO and stop relying on America to pick up the tab for their defense. And, we especially don’t care that he is not politically correct, and does not use nice words when dealing with China, who launched a virus on the world. Under Obama and Biden our country became weak and bankrupt, our enemies were making fun of us. We were being invaded by illegals. We were on our way to becoming a nation of victims where every Tomas, Ricardo, and Hasid is a special group with special rights to a point where we don’t even recognize the country in which we were born and raised. By God, we just want it fixed, now! And, Trump is the only guy who seems to understand what the people want. We’re sick of politicians, sick of the Democratic Party, sick of the Republican Party, and sick of illegals. We just want this thing fixed.  Trump may not be a saint, but we didn’t vote for a Pope. We voted for a man who doesn’t have lobbyist money holding him back, a man who doesn’t have political correctness constraining him. We all know that he’s been very successful, he’s a good negotiator, he’s built a lot of things, and he’s not a cowardly politician. And, he says he’ll fix it. We believe him because he is too much of an egotist to be proven wrong or looked at and called a liar.   For the past three years, while under daily assault from the democrats, and Never-Trumpers he and his Administration built the single greatest economy in the history of the world, until China unleashed the virus on us.  Furthermore, he is doing it all over again. Look at the numbers. We are coming back. But some of the raccoons are still lingering around causing mayhem. We don’t care if the guy has bad hair. We just want those raccoons, all of them, gone, out of our house, NOW! You are welcome to pass this on. Thousands of people who haven’t voted in 25 years seem to be getting involved. And the more people that get this email the more that will understand why Trump was elected. The raccoons have got to go! Now for the record… I have no problem with immigration, but it has to be legal. My grandparents immigrated from Italy in 1900. There were no handouts, no subsistence payments, no free housing. They became Americans, fought in WW I and WW II, raised their families and worked hard. They experienced the American Dream first-hand.  Is our immigration system broken today? Yes it is. So fix it. Don’t just let people pour in. Take care of American citizens first. Clean up our cities. Put an end to the violence, the riots and the looting. It is all communist funded and inspired anyway. If you don’t believe this, go on YouTube and listen to the presentation of G. Edward Griffin, a historian and lecturer.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeHc280V9AY Watch, listen, and learn. His presentation is from 1969…51 years ago. But, the content could very well be today. It is extraordinarily alarming. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris cannot get rid of the raccoons. They are part of the raccoon family and are proponents of taking our nation down the path of socialism and, ultimately, communism. Don’t let it happen. If we do, there will be more than raccoons with which to deal.

JudicialWatchBecause no one  is above the late

JUDICIAL WATCH INVESTIGATIVE FACT SHEETTHE VAST GEORGE SOROS NETWORK

BACKGROUND

George Soros was born in Hungary and became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1961. He made his fortune managing hedge funds and investments worldwide. In February 2017 Forbes Magazine estimated his net worth at $25.2 billion, ranking him as the 19th wealthiest individual in the world.

George Soros created his Open Society Foundations (OSF) in 1979. Ac­cording to the group’s website, OSF has contributed $1.5 BILLION to groups in the United States alone. DiscovertheNetworks.org has stated that the OSF has funded 199 organizations in the United States, and an additional seven American groups have been funded indirectly by contributions from other Soros-funded groups. In late 2017, Soros transferred $18 BILLION…the bulk of his personal wealth…to OSF. In one fell swoop, Soros’ transfer to OSF made the group second only to the Bill and Melinda Gates’ Foundation in the value of its U.S. assets.

DIRECT U.S. POLITICAL INVOLVEMENT AND FUNDING OF LEFT-WING CANDIDATES

Soros’ direct political activity began during the 2004 campaign cycle. He contributed just over

$25 million to various liberal and Democratic Party groups working to defeat then President George W. Bush’s reelection. Since then, Soros has continued to make large personal contributions to leftist candidates for national office, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. (Judicial Watch does not support or oppose candidates for public office.)

Recently, new evidence of Soros’ ongoing involvement in supporting left-wing candidates came to light. Soros personally donated $408,000 to a Political Action Committee that supported Cook County, Illinois State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, who made headlines when she dropped felony charges against actor Jussie Smollett, who was accused of fabricating a hate crime. Smollett claimed he was attacked in Chicago by two masked men who shouted racial and homophobic slurs, beat him, poured bleach on him and tied a rope around his neck. He blamed the attack on white Trump supporters. Smollett’s entire story was a fabrication, apparently created by the actor in order to make headlines and increase his visibility as he negotiated his TV contract. When the hoax was uncovered, prosecutors charged him with 16 felonies… but Foxx dropped the charges.

Soros continues to contribute lavish sums to left-wing Democrats in races for justice-sensitive posts in­cluding prosecutors, state’s attorneys and district attorneys in a growing number of states across the U.S.

Where Does Other Soros Money Go?

Groups receiving funds from OSF are universally “progressive” in their philosophy. Some recipients cover the full range of radical and progressive causes, including:

·       The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU);                 • Common Cause;

·       The Brookings Institution;                                         • Planned Parenthood.

·       The Center for American Progress;

Other groups receiving financial support from the Soros network address specific issues. They include:

·       Anti-Israel (Al-Haq, Amnesty International, Arab American Institute Foundation, New Israel Fund);

·       Anti-conservative judicial appointments (Alliance for Justice);

·       Anti-educational choice (American Federation of Teachers);

·       Pro-abortion rights (Catholics for Choice, Center for Reproductive Rights, National Women’s Law Center);

·       Radical and LGBT agenda (Human Rights Campaign)

Soros’ support also goes to groups involved in two issues that are extremely important to Judicial Watch: illegal immigration and honest elections. Here is a partial list of open-border and pro-amnesty groups that have received money from the OSF:

·       America’s Voice (pro-“comprehensive immigration reform”);

·       American Bar Association Commission on Immigration Policy (“opposes laws that require em­ployers and persons providing education, health care or other social services to verify citizenship or immigration status”);

·       American Immigration Council (pro-amnesty);

·       American Immigration Law Foundation (legal actions in support of amnesty);

·       Brennan Center for Justice (legal actions, pro bono support to activists, media campaigns);

·       Casa de Maryland (radical state lobbying organization for amnesty and expanded rights for illegal aliens living in Maryland);

·       Center for Constitutional Rights (pro-open-borders);

·       National Immigration Forum (pro-amnesty for illegal aliens and more visas for individuals wishing to immigrate legally tote U.S.);

·       National Immigration aw Center (pro-full access to government social welfare programs for illegal aliens).

·       Unidos US (formerly National Council of La Raza) (pro-amnesty and expanded rights for illegal aliens).

Judicial Watch research has also identified Casa de Maryland, National Immigration Law Center and Unidos US as recipients of U.S. taxpayer dollars (through U.S. government grants).

The following groups have received Soros funding and are reportedly active in promoting, organizing and supporting the “migrant caravans” from Central America which helped ignite the current unprec­edented numbers of illegal aliens attempting to cross our border with Mexico.

·       Amnesty International;

·       The Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC) (the “largest network of nonprofit immigration legal services programs” in the country;

·       The American Constitution Society (highly critical of Trump immigration policies);

·       Center for Legal Action in Human Rights (active in OSF programs in Guatemala);

·       Church World Service (compared Trump administration response to the migrant caravans to turning away Jewish refugees from Europe aboard the MS St. Louis in 1930);

·       Human Rights First (actively opposes Trump administration immigration efforts);

·       The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights (sued Trump administration over his immigration executive order and the inclusion of a citizenship question on the 2020 Census form);

·       The National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild (provided legal assistance to caravan migrants);

Judicial Watch research has also identified The Catholic Legal Immigration Network as a recipient of U.S. taxpayer dollars through grants from three U.S. government agencies.

Following is a partial list of Soros-funded groups determined to weaken ballot integrity, undermine election integrity laws and make it easier for illegal aliens to vote in American elections.

·       The Advancement Project (which advertises itself as “the next generation, multi-racial civil rights organization);

·       Bend the Arc Jewish Action (condemns voter ID laws as barriers that make it harder for minorities to vote);

·       Demos (whose board i now chaired by the daughter of radical U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential candidate 4Iizabeth Warren);

·       Project Vote (the voter mobilization arm of the discredited ACORN organization, which also received Soros support);

·       Southern Coalition for Social Justice (involved in several challenges to voter ID and redistricting legal challenges in the South).

The Revolving Personnel Door between the Soros Network and the U.S. Government. The influence of George Soros upon U.S. government policy, especially during the Obama years, is not due exclusively to his massive financial contributions to liberal advocacy groups, left-wing candidates and the Democratic Party. !His world-view is also shared by scores of liberal activists who at one time or another have worked in the Soros network (most frequently at the Open Society Foundations) and in policy-making positions within the U.S. government…including positions in the Obama White House, the Justice Department, the State Department, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).Judicial Watch has identified 21 individuals who have been through this “revolving door” between the Soros network and the U.S. government, and we believe that we have just begun to scratch the surface.

At the same time, we have identified millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars going, in the form of U.S. govern­ment grants, to groups led by OSF board members and others with connections to the Soros network. (You can review profiles of these individuals and review some of the OSF-related grants we have un­covered in “The Financial and Staffing Nexus Between the Open Society Foundations and the United States Government,” a Judicial Watch Special Report that we would like to send to you in appreciation for your tax-deductible contribution of $50 or more.)

Conclusion

The Soros network clearly dwarfs both national political parties in its financial resources. Its impact on American public policies (both foreign and domestic) is only now beginning to be understood…thanks in large part to Judicial Watch’s research, investigations and litigation. There is much more to be learned about the influence of the Soros network, and especially when U.S. taxpayer dollars are awarded to groups within the Soros network, therefore using public taxpayer funds to advance George Soros’ radical left agenda.

Judicial Watch is suitably positioned and uniquely qualified to successfully investigate and liti­gate this nexus of taxpayer financing of left-wing activism.

Good News: Fauci’s Out and Common Sense Might Be Returning Aug 17 – These days it seems there is not much good news out there. People are still panicked over the coronavirus, governments are still trampling civil liberties in the name of fighting the virus, the economy –already teetering on the edge of collapse – has been kicked to the ground by what history may record as one of the worst man-made disasters of all time: shutting down the country to fight a cold virus. That’s why we’ll take good news wherever we can get it, and President Trump’s hiring of Dr. Scott Atlas to his coronavirus task force may just be that good news we need. As the media has reported, President Trump has sidelined headline-hogging Anthony Fauci in favor of Atlas, the former Stanford University Medical Center chief of neuroradiology. Recall, Fauci was the “expert” who told us a few months ago that we would never be able to shake hands again. Fauci’s advice, forecasts, and assessments proved to be wildly wrong, contradictory, and just plain bizarre: Don’t wear a mask! You must wear a mask. Masks are important as symbols. Put on goggles. Stay home! Churches must be severely restricted but Black Lives Matter marches and encounters with strangers met over the Internet are perfectly fine. When Anthony Fauci demanded a lockdown of the economy for an indefinite period he actually seemed oblivious to the havoc it would wreak on the economy and on people’s lives. People like Fauci and others who demanded lockdowns and stay-at-home orders were still collecting their paychecks, so what did they care about anyone else? Dr. Scott Atlas is not only a former top physician and hospital administrator: as a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution he also understands the policy implications of locking a country down. On April 22, Dr. Atlas wrote an op-ed in The Hill titled, “The data is in — stop the panic and end the total isolation.” In the article he made five main points that are as true today as when he wrote them: an overwhelming majority of people are at no risk of dying from Covid; protecting older people prevents hospital overcrowding; locking down a population actually prevents the herd immunity necessary to defeat the virus; people are dying because they are not being treated for non-Covid illnesses; we know what part of the population is at risk and we can protect them. Imagine how many thousands of lives could have been saved had the Administration listened to Dr. Atlas back in April. CDC Director Robert Redfield admitted last month that lockdowns were killing more Americans than Covid. “First do no harm” was thrown out the window and nearly six months of wrong-headed policy has done perhaps irreparable harm to the country. North Dakota and Sweden did virtually nothing to lock down or restrict their populations and they actually fared better than lockdown states in the US. They had lower death rates, their hospitals were never over-run with Covid patients, and they have an economy to go back to. We very much hope that Dr. Atlas will not “moderate” his message to please the blob in Washington. Trump’s Covid policies to this point have caused more harm than good. With Fauci out of the driver’s seat we finally have a chance of turning things around.

https://secureaddisplay.com/i/t/js/?ALU=8720160227T1225045401D405DC8A380445C91212D0B348B5AAF&AULU=13120720170601T132040740A55EE965814447CCA51FC9AE0FFBD7EB&cb=1597694728171&ccvid=921994872&pvid=1897985228

Abortion Is Slavery

• By Guy McClung
• 11 August AD 2020
• One Comment

Abortion is slavery. Not simply like. Not a comparison. Not an analogy. Without qualification, without condition, categorically, undeniably, abortion is slavery. With slavery, a slave owner owns a slave thing. With abortion, a woman owns a pregnancy thing.

Slavery

In 1857 Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote about the core principle of those who advocated for and tried to justify  the institution of slavery:

The deadly sin of slavery is its denial of humanity to man.” (Harriet Beecher Stowe, A Key To Uncle Tom’s Cabin).

This is the same core principle of those today who advocate for abortion. This is why abortion is not merely like slavery. Abortion is slavery.  Many aspects of the actions of those who are pro-abortion, their to-date accomplishments, the goals of today’s democrat party, and the abortion culture in America far surpass – in pure evil – the wickedness of those who were pro-slavery. Thus, it is an understatement to say, “Abortion is slavery.”

The book, Aunt Thommie’s Cabin (a fictional story by the present author; available on Amazon) is patterned after the 19th-century book that exposed the evils of slavery, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s fictional Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In her follow-up non-fiction bestseller, A Key To Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Mrs. Stowe presented the factual basis for her portrayal of the evils of slavery.

What follows are the main points of the first chapter of this author’s follow-up non-fiction book, A Key To Aunt Thommie’s Cabin.

Human Things

Both Aunt Thommie’s Cabin and the two books by Mrs. Stowe make clear the evils that necessarily follow when a culture and its laws declare and accept that a human being is a thing. The present-day attempt to have unborn children declared to be and then be treated as things is in many ways identical to the historical treatment of slaves as things.

What Mrs. Stowe presented in A Key To Uncle Tom’s Cabin implicitly showed the contrast of casting the debate about slavery in terms of an answer to the question, “What is it?” instead of the question, “Who is this particular human being, this individual man or woman, or child, or a baby who is living in slavery?”

The important word in these questions is the word “is”. This is the real word. By saying what something is, one also says what it is not. By saying who someone is, one also says who someone is not. By saying that a “someone” is a “something,” humanity is implicitly denied to a human being. Once the reality is established, or once some people allege that a chosen attempt at defining reality is confirmed, all sorts of social, ethical, legal, political, and moral conclusions follow.

Those who are pro-abortion and the democrats are called here “abortionarians”. They, as did the supporters of slavery, believe that if they say this human being, this child, is a thing, then this establishes truth and makes reality; and Voila! this child is a thing, only a thing, and nothing more. They believe, like an almighty creator, they can speak and what they say, by their words alone, becomes real.

It is on the basis of the alleged ‘reality’ of a human being, or various groups of human beings, as ‘things’ that the world has suffered the holocausts of slavery, of national socialism, of socialism, of Marxism, and of communism, e.g., both under the now-dead national socialism of Germany, the communism of socialist Russia, the utter evil of the tyranny of Mao Tse Tung in China, and the present-day communism of the tyrannies of mainland China, Cuba, Venezuela, Viet Nam, and North Korea. This is the same as today’s democrat socialists.

This dehumanization of unborn children is the alleged principled basis for the abortion holocaust in America.

Mrs. Stowe’s Key Insights

In both Uncle Tom’s Cabin and A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Mrs. Stowe stated explicitly what she viewed as the primary basis for justifications, legalization, and the ongoing societal acceptance of the institution of slavery in America and all its evils – the lie that a slave, a human being, was a thing.

Originally, Uncle Tom’s Cabin [“Cabin”] was published in installments in a newspaper, The National Era, from 1851 to 1852. For the first editions, the subtitle she chose for the story was “The Man That Was A Thing.”

In Chapter I of Cabin, Mrs. Stowe wrote:”… the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging to a master  . . .”

She wrote in Chapter II of Cabin: “… this young man was in the eye of the law not a man, but a thing…”

In  Part IV, Chapter VI of A Key to Aunt Thommie’s Cabin [“Key”],  she wrote: “. . . his slave . . . in the eye of the law he was still his chattel personal –  a thing, and not a man.”

And in Part IV, Chapter VIII of Key, discussing the failure of Christian churches to advocate for abolishing slavery, she says:

For they commence by declaring that their brother shall no longer be considered as a person, but deemed, sold, taken and reputed as a “chattel personal (Key, p. 241).

“A “chattel personal” is property. Personal property was “personal” to the owner of the property and, if the land was sold on which personal property was located, the personal property went with the owner when he left the land.“Cattle” is a variant the Old French word ‘chatel” (based on the Latin word ‘capitalis,’ which meant ‘of the head’); and, in the law of the United States, ‘chattel’ meant movable personal property. It has this same meaning today.

In America during the time of slavery, slaves, like cattle, were ‘chattel property.’ To the law, they were not men, not women, not fathers, not mothers, not girls, not boys, not children, not sons, not daughters, not granddaughters, not grandsons, not cousins, not nieces, not nephews, not infants, not babies, not family.

In America today, it is the same with pregnancy things.

Human Being Pregnancy Things

In Aunt Thommie’s Cabin [“Thommie”], the pregnant heroine is a high school student, Harriet McCorvey. In her world history class, there is a discussion about what has happened in history when a human being or a group of human beings are denied the status of ‘human’ and are treated like things:

Many have called what the Nazis did to the Jews ‘genocide’. . . . Calling some human beings ‘things’, and not legal persons, has happened down through history. It has even happened here in America.”

“We decided with our laws in the eighteen hundreds, before Lincoln was president, that African-American human beings who were slaves were not protected as legal persons under our law. Our Supreme Court said that African-American slaves were property, just like your car or your house or your cellphone, and you could buy them and sell them like any other property, and their masters could punish them, whip them, and shackle them as long as they did not kill them. They were not ‘legal persons’ according to the law. And in some places their babies were treated like a crop to be planted, raised and sold” (Aunt Thommie’s Cabin, p. 34)

“Yes, just like the Jews killed by Nazis, these people said these black human beings were not persons under the law.”        Then one of the girls asked the question that was already percolating in Harry’s head. “But isn’t that what we have done here in America today with unborn babies and the law?” (Aunt Thommie’s Cabin, p.35).

Harriet (“Harry”) herself reaches the conclusion that unborn children in America have been reduced from the status of human to the status of things and mere property, and that this explains how they are treated here:

“And it’s just like the Jews and the slaves,” said Harry. Everyone looked at her.

“What do you mean? demanded one girl.

“I mean that if you can say someone, some human being, is not a person then you can do whatever you want to them” (Thommie, p. 36).

As it turns out, Harry is pregnant with twins with Down Syndrome. For decades, abortionarians here in America, and as reflected in Aunt Thommie’s Cabin, refuse to refer to Harry’s unborn twins as human, human beings, persons or people. Consistently, they use terms such as “cell masses,” “tissue,” “packages,” “products,” and “biomaterial.”

Aunt Thommie describes how those terms were used when she was a young girl:

“I got pregnant,” said Thommie. . . I believed or wanted to believe when they said ‘mass of cells’ or ‘products of conception’ or ‘the pregnancy’ or just it. And they were so believable, so intelligent. I waited into the second trimester and then ‘it’ was moving inside me. They wouldn’t call ‘it’ a baby, or a child, or preborn, or unborn, or a person or alive, and they never called me a mother.” (Thommie, p. 67).

Aunt Thommie explains for Harry how the law views her children:

“You mean force me to kill my babies?” Harry was unbelieving. “Doesn’t the law say they are mine? Like my property?”

“Yes,” said Thommie, “but the law also says you are a minor and may not know what’s good for you. And to them your babies are not babies . . .”

“They aren’t babies, Harry, as far as the government and Preferred Personhood are concerned. They’re just growths, like an ingrown toenail, a tumor, masses of tissue – and dollar signs.” (Thommie, p. 75).

Human Being Things In Mrs. Stowe’s Books

Some clear, poignant, and –  by today’s standards of what is good, decent, moral, right, legal, and just – unbelievable excerpts from Mrs. Stowe’s Key exhibit clearly the accepted belief of many in America before the Civil War that a slave was a thing.

“ South Carolina says: “Slaves shall be deemed, sold, taken, reputed, and adjudged in law, to be chattels personal in the hands of their owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators, and assigns …. The slave-code, then, of the Southern States, is designed to keep millions of human beings in the condition of chattels personal; to keep them in a condition in which the master may sell them, dispose of their time, person, and labour” (Key, p. 79).

“ . . . the trader or owner violates no law of the State—neither statute nor common law. He buys or sells at auction or privately, that which the majesty of the law has declared to be property. . . .) (Key, p. 64).

“He who is the absolute owner of a thing owns all its faculties for profit or increase; and he may, no doubt, grant the profits or increase, as well as the thing itself” (Key, p. 76).

An excellent article that discusses the identical human-thing basis for both slavery and abortion is “The Abolition of Chattel Abortion”, by Professor Cynthia L. Hallen, Life, and Learning XXII:

You Can Do Whatever You Want To Subhuman Unborn Things

This point about artificially denigrating human beings as ‘things,’ and then what society or government can legally do to them, has been made by your present author:

Throughout history, for various reasons, a people or a government has called a being a “thing” and then said that this “thing” is not a “human” being. If something is a thing, it can be treated like a thing and it has no moral claim to be treated otherwise. And then the people or the government can use the “things” – even if in some way they are “human” things – for any utilitarian purpose, much like other things are used for their utility – like food, fuel, and beasts of burden. Similarly, if the “thing” happens to have some life, it is simply characterized as vegetable life, cellular life or animal life – and then the “thing” can be treated like a mass of cells, like a pig for butchering to be made into bacon (which can be sold), or like a tree or plant whose various parts can be harvested and as a commercial crop (“Feminist Anti-Porn Logic: The Rational Basis For The Anti-Abortion Position” ,Catholic Stand, July 2, 2016.)

Conclusion of Hope

Each slave was a unique human being. None of them was ever duplicated. Each unborn child is a unique human being who will never be repeated, in all of human history.

Prolifers will be victorious. Science and truth, on this subject now hand-in-hand,  have shown and will continue to show in undeniable detail, in true images, and in a live video that no unborn child is a mere ‘thing.’ Despite the vehement efforts of those who are proabortion and of the democrat party, the truth is becoming more and more evident. Unborn children are not things; they are not ‘property.’

Further Sources

“Abortion IS The New Slavery”, Jayme Metzgar, The Federalist, Aug 13, 2015;

“Science Proves the Unborn Are Human Beings”, Jimmy Akin, National Catholic Register, Oct. 8, 2012;

“The Humanity of the Unborn Child”, Fr. Shenan J. Boquet, Jan. 21, 2019;

“Science Is Giving the Pro-Life Movement a Boost”, Emma Green, The Atlantic, Jan. 18, 2018;

“Abortolition, Abortion Abolition”, Guy McClung, The American Catholic, July 25,  2018.

“Slavery and Abortion: History Repeats”, EWTN.com.

“DeVos compares abortion rights debate to slavery”, Nicole Gaudiano, Politico, Jan. 23, 2020;

“A Black History Month Reminder–Slavery and Abortion are Very Similar. Here’s Why”,  Roland C Warren, Care Net, Feb 12, 2020.

“Ben Carson Is Right to Compare Abortion to Slavery”, David French, National Review, Oct.r 26, 2015.

• https://platform.twitter.com/widgets/tweet_button.3c5aa8e2a38bbbee4b6d88e6846fc657.en.html#dnt=false&id=twitter-widget-0&lang=en&original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fcatholicstand.com%2Fabortion-is-slavery%2F&size=m&text=Abortion%20Is%20Slavery&time=1597694728093&type=share&url=https%3A%2F%2Fcatholicstand.com%2Fabortion-is-slavery%2F&via=AnthonySLayne
• https://www.facebook.com/v2.3/plugins/share_button.php?app_id=249643311490&channel=https%3A%2F%2Fstaticxx.facebook.com%2Fx%2Fconnect%2Fxd_arbiter%2F%3Fversion%3D46%23cb%3Df2fe83793cea40e%26domain%3Dcatholicstand.com%26origin%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fcatholicstand.com%252Ff39ac3bc55813%26relation%3Dparent.parent&container_width=0&href=https%3A%2F%2Fcatholicstand.com%2Fabortion-is-slavery%2F&layout=button_count&locale=en_US&sdk=joey
• Email
• Print
• Pocket
• WhatsApp
• Share
• Telegram
• Save
• https://www.reddit.com/static/button/button1.html?newwindow=true&width=120&url=https%3A%2F%2Fcatholicstand.com%2Fabortion-is-slavery%2F&title=Abortion%20Is%20Slavery
• https://embed.tumblr.com/widgets/share/button?canonicalUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fcatholicstand.com%2Fabortion-is-slavery%2F&postcontent%5Btitle%5D=Abortion%20Is%20Slavery&postcontent%5Bcontent%5D=https%3A%2F%2Fcatholicstand.com%2Fabortion-is-slavery%2F

Like this:

https://widgets.wp.com/likes/#blog_id=44877074&post_id=61677&origin=catholicstand.com&obj_id=44877074-61677-5f3ae304c50d2

• A KEY TO UNCLE TOM’S CABIN, ABORTION, ABORTION IS SLAVERY, AUNT THOMMIE’S CABIN, GUY MCCLUNG, HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, SLAVERY, UNCLE TOM’S CABIN

Share on facebookFACEBOOKShare on googleGOOGLE+Share on twitterTWITTERShare on linkedinLINKEDINShare on pinterestPINTERESTGUY MCCLUNGGuy McClung lives with his wife of 46+ years south of Houston, Texas helping inventors develop and patent their inventions. Following two stints in the seminary with the missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, total 5 years (for which he is truly and forever thankful), he came to the realization that God was not calling him to that type of vowed obedience; so he left the seminary. After two years fine matrimonial training on active duty with the US Army-Infantry, he got married. Seven children and about a dozenn grandchildren later, he decided to try to write some words that would convey his thanks to God almighty for blessing after blessing after blessing. His first published novel, AUNT THOMMIE’S CABIN, exposes the bases for slavery and abortion as both being the denial of the humanity of human beings.

Feel the Exciting Excitement of Kamalamania Kurt Schlichter| August 17, 2020  All across America, little girls of alternatively Tamil and Afro-Caribbean descent, depending on which is most politically useful at the moment, who have been endlessly told by unspecified haters that they can never be nominated to be vice president, were inspired at Kamala Harris’ selection by whoever selected her on behalf of Grandpa Badfinger. Yes, if they hook up with a powerful married Democrat man, that initial connection can fuel their rise to power too. Take that, all you modern-day Bull Connors (Connor was a Democrat, but shhhhhhh)! “I won’t cotton to them little girls of alternatively Tamil and Afro-Caribbean descent, depending on which is most politically useful at the moment, thinkin’ they can be vice president someday,” they drawl as they twirl their mustaches. Well, Kamala showed all the haters. Girls of that oddly specific demographic can be nominated to be vice president, and let’s take it one step further – they don’t even have to hook up with a powerful married Democrat man and fuel their rise to power via that initial connection to do it! Well, sure Kamala did, and so did the ethnically uninteresting Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit, but those little girls can do it themselves. Well, maybe if they are Republicans. And speaking of Sarah Palin, it’s great to see that it’s once again bad to criticize a woman running for vice president. Now, criticizing Kamala (pronounced “i wil pr?’ nouns h?r nam ene wa i dam wel plez”) Harris has been officially declared racist and cisgender and sexist, as well as sexist, cisgender, and racist, by The New York Times, all of pinko Twitter, and the Fredocons, so we better not criticize her. Got that? No criticism. You must just sit back and let the tsunami of excitement created by the nomination of this avaricious grasper wash over you. Can’t you feel the excitement? It’s exciting! We know, because the media told us that people are thrilled that Gropey J’s fickle finger of failure fell upon Kamala. And that she’s a “pragmatic moderate.” And, again, that no one can criticize her, because if you do, then you are all the horrible -ist and -phobe things that they have already been calling you for years. I’m not sure what they think we have to lose; if you cry wolf long enough, don’t be shocked if we shrug when a hirsute Lon Chaney, Jr. shows up doing the mambo to the dulcet tones of Warren Zevon. Except we cons will say whatever we want about her, including but not limited to providing commentary on her cheesy debut into the world of politics. And pointing out her history is not just mean. Her history is indicative of her pattern of behavior, and when the purported president is one broken hip away from 25th Amendmentville, everything about her matters. The fact is that she has hiked her way along the cursus honorum by being as figuratively accommodating to California tech zillionaires and ‘Frisco limo libs as she apparently was literally to Willie Brown. We’re told that’s not supposed to matter, but it does matter. And we’re going to talk about it, whether or not the lib blue checks start literally shaking. Now, making this obvious point gets labeled “misogyny.” It’s unclear how you demonstrate hatred for women by observing that a woman got a career kickstart by making a play for another woman’s man. Of course, no woman has ever talked bad about another woman for getting ahead thanks to her, um, versatility. Women love ambitious home wreckers and never, ever speak ill of them, according to important and smart elite people who have apparently never met a woman. Others point out that no one would say this stuff about a man, but no one can identify a man it would apply to. We conservatives do regularly make reference to the satyriasis of Democrat icon John F. Kennedy, if that’s any help. Apparently, that’s not sexist. And at least we aren’t hitting Kamala for having a confirmed kill like Democrat icon Teddy Kennedy, and we won’t be as long as Oldfinger’s newly hired food taster does his job. It’s odd that we are supposed to ignore bad behavior unique to women in the name of abolishing sexism, yet we are also supposed to celebrate the unique uniqueness of people with cervixes. Grrrrls are powerful and wonderful because they are grrrrls, but if you observe that they can also be bad in ways men generally aren’t, well, that’s sexism because reasons and shut up. No wonder this SJW stuff is a punchline. Like all leftism, it clashes with lived experience and requires a conscious capitulation to an agenda over what you see with your own eyes. Some women are hussies. They just are, and all the Helen Reddy anthems in the world are not going to make normal people unknow that. Yet liberals are happy to submit to the giddy joy of denying reality. Rejecting the truth is their offer of solidarity to their pagan deity, a symbol of their commitment to wokeness. As a result, we’re now getting people explaining at us with all seriousness that sometimes 2 + 2 = 5, and also that Kamala Harris is a “pragmatic moderate.” That’s why conservatives prefer to take people as individuals. But individuals have individual hopes and dreams and priorities, and that does not work for the Left. The Left wants people in boxes, in useful roles, trapped playing a part designated for them by their confluence of genes instead of the content of their character. Kamala Harris was picked because she checked boxes, and the same people who think it was important that her relatives came from Africa, or India, or wherever, think her cervix status is important too.  None of it is. Not at all. But what is important is she has a track record of naked ambition and that she is using leftist tyranny as her hobby horse to ride to power. She is a terrible risk to all of us who love freedom, and we’re going to say so no matter how many memos the Left circulates announcing that we’re not allowed to. By the way, the first female vice president and president will be Republican. And if you want an exceptional GOP candidate to support for Congress, but live in some Democrat cesspool, try Lauren Boebert in Colorado. Her pro-America, pro-God, and pro-gun agenda has exempted her from the be nice to girls rule that got re-imposed the other day, so she needs you.

Trumpism—A Look Backward and Forward to November Between the abyss and what goes on in Portland and the Magnificent Mile, there is for the moment nothing else but Trump standing in the breach. By Victor Davis Hanson August 16, 2020(emphasis added) Perhaps 70 percent of Trumpism remains a hodgepodge of Reaganism: strong defense, realist foreign policy, deregulation, smaller government, big deficits, tax cuts, energy growth, and stars-and-stripes traditionalism. But it is the other unorthodox 30 percent that excited his base, terrified conservative apostates, and won Trump the 2016 election by energizing between 4 million and 6 million voters in swing states who had either given up on Republicans, or on elections altogether.  NeverTrumpers talk of Trump’s demise and their own resurrection as Phoenixes to rebirth the GOP. They have no idea that those who despise them had ensured their Beltway-preferred candidates could rarely win; nothing has changed since. Trumpist conservatism is usually defined as not free, but fair trade, strict enforcement of immigration laws, an end to optional interventions that will not likely, in a cost-to-benefit analysis, result in U.S. interests or strategic calm for a purported troubled region, and a belief that industry and manufacturing are not brick-and-mortar anachronisms, but the creators of what we cook on, sit on, live in, drive, and work in; our non-virtual world that everyone relies on and yet takes for granted as so passé.  If Trump left his agenda at that, NeverTrumpers likely would be disgruntled but mostly quiet. The Left, as is its wont with Republican presidents, would have remained serially hysterical as in the Reagan and Bush years, but not completely unhinged as it has been since 2017.  What distinguished Trump then was not just his substance, but also his style. Translated it could be envisioned as chemotherapy, toxic enough to kill the status-quo cancer, but not quite lethal enough to kill the host. Or maybe Trump derangement arose from class disdain over the orange skin, the combed over dyed hair, the mile-long ties, the Queens accent, the oddly agile bulkiness, the raucous Manhattan career—the antithesis to all that appears on the Sunday morning talk shows. Or maybe Trump’s don’t-tread-on-me brand could be defined as a remedy, a promise no longer to lose nobly rather than to win ugly (the last Republican to do so had been George H. W. Bush in 1988).  Or maybe the rub was rather than being defensive about having neither prior military nor political experience, Trump was boastful and strutting about just such inoculation from Washington. Whereas his haters believed he was unscientific in not consulting with the beltway intelligentsia, he countered not only that they were overrated, but to most outside their bubble were themselves silly, self-important, and superfluous.  Most hated Trump not because he hated or ridiculed them, but because he found them useless, as we saw from the fixations of John Brennan and James Clapper to the dazed pundits of NeverTrump to the wise men of the retired military. What created the hatred of Trump and his supporters, then, was not a rather heterodox political agenda (see below), but a style that took on the Left on its own terms, and shocked a Republican establishment—again not just by conjuring the specter of Lee Atwater, but by shrugging as irrelevant his ostracism by the traditional conservative beltway insider.  We forget some Republicans could be crass and crude, albeit in their own polite way. I would prefer a supposed braggart cracking down on China, or a purported narcissist closing the border, or an alleged demagogue promising change in the Rust Belt than any more sermons from privileged gentlemen conservatives that tolerating illegal immigration “is an act of love,” or silent agreement that those manufacturing “jobs are not coming back” as Obama put it, or wonkishly boy wonder Paul Ryan being drilled in a debate by the vacuous smiling Joker Joe Biden or Mitt Romney oblivious that Candy Crowley had just hijacked his debate momentum—and with it the election.  Crassness is not a requisite for needed change, but so often in a flawed world the two are shared, in the reverse fashion that gaseous pieties are frequently voiced by the sober and judicious.  But all this is irrelevant when we consider what Trump did rather than what he said.  I mean not just that action matters more than rhetoric, but rather to evaluate Trump by the general past standards of presidential comportment rather than through Platonic ideals. Trump is less randy and gross in office than were reckless and sexually cruel but now revered icons like John F. Kennedy or Bill Clinton. He has not weaponized the federal government for political advantage in the manner of Barack Obama (who may go down soon as the most corrupt president since Warren G. Harding).  Trump, of “Crooked Hillary,” “lock her up,” and “Sleepy Joe” infamy, was more likely to react concretely to the plight of the inner city and the economic aspirations of minorities and the white working-class, who were not just crushed by globalization but so often ignored by their supposed champions of both parties.  The EconomyFrom early 2017, Trump pushed three general themes to reawaken an inert economy that only sluggishly had survived the 2008 financial panic.  One, was to deregulate, recalibrate tax incentives, and create an entirely new psychological climate that would encourage capitalists to invest, spend, and expand, rather than retreat, ride out, and hoard. The point was to go out, get busy, build, profit and not fear talk of “you didn’t build that” and “at some point you’ve made enough money” as warning shots across their bow. We forget that psychology is a great part of economic growth. After 2017, trillions of dollars reentered the U.S. economy that had been hoarded, protected, and sequestered since 2009. Second, Trump hectored corporations, foreign and domestic, to relocate into the U.S. heartland, given that U.S. workers, energy costs and supplies, security, and the business climate were in truth more frequently competitive than abroad. Third, Trump at least sought trade equilibrium with those nations, friends, foes, and neutrals—China, Japan, Germany, Mexico, South Korea, and Canada—who ran up huge trade surpluses, a fact in the past that was contextualized as either irrelevant or unalterable. Foreign PolicyJoe Biden has claimed the recent historic establishment of diplomatic relationships between Israel and the United Arab Emirates was not of the Trump Administration’s own making, but the logical epilogue to years of hard Obama Administration foundational work.  Biden is right in a sense. For eight years, his Obama team sought to empower Iran—through the lifting of sanctions; through the flawed Iran Deal; through appeasement of Hezbollah, the Assads, and Hamas; through estrangement of the Arab Gulf States and Israel—all as a bizarre Persian/Shiite counterweight to the Sunni Arab world and the U.S.-Israeli special relationship.  Obama and Biden so succeeded that they drove Israel and Gulf States to seek an-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend realist partnership, whose fruition we witnessed last week.  We forget, however, when Trump entered office, that Israel was isolated. Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf States were bewildered by U.S. neutrality in the Middle East. Iran was ascendant. The “jayvees” of ISIS had overrun much of Iraq with delusions of caliphate grandeur. The Ottomanizing Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was supposedly our new trusted “bridge” between East and West.  Less than four years later, Iran is isolated, broke, and a veritable client of China. ISIS was bombed out of existence. Israel and much of the Arab world are more worried about Iran than they are about each other. The Palestinians are not the key to regional peace. Turkey is recognized as the rogue that it had become while relations with Greece have warmed.  The United States is energy independent of the Middle East, as is Israel—because of the expansion of fracking and horizontal drilling that a Biden-Harris Administration claims would cease upon assuming office.  Indeed, the fact of U.S. energy independence is often forgotten, but it is a reality that anchors almost every major breakthrough we’ve seen in the Middle East over the last four years, from cancellation of the Iran Deal to pushing the Gulf States to détente with Israel, and leaving the EU and China to worry about the security of Middle East oil exports as much or as little as we do. Trump’s signature foreign policy achievement is a complete recalibration of policy toward China—one deeply resented by the legions of Wall Street investors, corporate interests, celebrities, athletes, foundations, universities, and media, all deeply leveraged by Chinese lucre.  Before COVID-19, Trump was written off as a crank, a protectionist, a Sinophobe, a quixotic anachronism screaming about Chinese mercantilism. After the virus, the trick for the bipartisan establishment was how to square the circle of emulating or trumping Trump’s Chinese skepticism and decoupling—but without appearing to be anyway influenced by Trump or in any manner embarrassed by their prior overt appeasement or collaboration with Beijing. After all, how could a guy like Trump be right, and the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution wrong? For all the hoax of “Russian collusion,” Vladimir Putin is in terrible shape and has not fooled the administration as he did with “reset” in the Obama years. In the last four years, the United States upped sanctions on Russia, crashed the world export market of natural gas and oil so dear to Moscow, beefed up NATO spending, hectored Germany about its new energy dependence on Putin, increased U.S. military capability, reached out to frontline Eastern Europe, left an asymmetrical missile deal with Russia, obliterated Russian mercenaries in Syria, sold lethal weapons to Ukraine—even as the likes of James Clapper, John Brennan, James Comey, and an array of retired generals sermonized that Trump was a Russian “asset.” Translated that means the president who contained Putin they loathed, and the Obama presidency that empowered him they idolized.  Even Trump’s most controversial steps, redeploying of 12,000 troops from Germany, the art of the deal brinkmanship talk with North Korea, withdrawing a few troops from the Kurdish-and NATO-allied Turkey fire zone in Syria, or jawboning NATO members to honor their reneged pledges of military investments did not cause catastrophes as predicted. Indeed, for the most part, many in the bipartisan establishment knew warnings were overdue and change was needed. They just assumed that whoever was naïve enough to bell the cat would be blamed for making the danger noisy. For Trump’s critics he did more psychological damage by his often coarse rhetoric than the material good he achieved with undeniable breakthroughs. For that exegesis to be persuasive, however, they would have to make the argument that the mellifluous citizen-of-the-world rhetoric of the Obama Administration far outweighed in importance the serial setbacks it caused to U.S. interests and security. Or perhaps, one could explain how, prior to 2017, China had weaponized the Spratly Islands, North Korea apparently had nuclear-tipped missiles pointed at the U.S. West Coast, Iran was bragging about a new Shiite crescent, and Russia felt free to invade eastern Ukraine, absorb Crimea, and habitually since 2014 interfere in U.S. elections with impunity. ImmigrationTrump sought to redefine illegal immigration, in the manner of 1960s and 1970s lunch-bucket Democrats and Cesar Chavez—as a threat to the wages and viability of U.S. workers, especially those most vulnerable entry-level laborers.  Whatever the catastrophes of the caravans and the coordinated efforts of Central American nationals and Mexico to swarm the border in 2017-2018, illegal immigration is now way down.  The wall, for all the lawsuits, the deep-state inner resistance, and the hysteria of the media, is now finally making progress. The Left no longer argues that it will never be built, that it is porous and ineffective, or that it will not discourage illegal entries from the south, but rather fears that it is suddenly advancing far too rapidly, that its construction and height are too imposing, and that in its perimeters it has stopped far too much illegal immigration.  Trump screamed about making Mexico “pay for the wall.” I’ll leave it to both his critics and supporters to argue whether Mexico’s costly deployment of some 15,000 troops to the border to discourage mass influxes, or the fortification and guarding of its own southern border to discourage Central American arrivals into the United States or rebooting of the old NAFTA on more favorable terms is proof, a token, or irrelevant to the idea that Mexico is contributing more than at any time in its recent history to discouraging illegal entry into the United States from its soil. Pre-virus, all of the above had led to strong GDP growth, low unemployment and record low minority unemployment, and historical rises in middle class wages and family incomes. Trump’s chief weakness was a spending binge in line with those of both Bush and Obama. It is sustainable only in the short term due to de facto zero interest rates, which both has deleterious effects on the thrifty middle class and is likely to change sooner rather than later.  But then again, Trump is not running against fiscal conservatives, but a Biden-Harris socialist conglomerate that wishes to borrow far more on things like Medicare for All, reparations, and the Green New Deal that will result in more debt and even less economic growth. CultureTrump is neither a traditional conservative in the Ronald Reagan mode nor a centrist establishmentarian Republican like John McCain or Mitt Romney. But he has done more culturally for the conservative cause than any president since Calvin Coolidge. Like him or not, he has appointed more constructionist federal judges at all levels than any prior Republican president in a single term.  He likewise has been more opposed than any prior Republican to the current culture of abortion on demand. His education secretary is trying to enforce the Bill of Rights on what have become sometimes neo-fascistic college campuses, and to discourage race-based set asides and de facto discrimination on the basis of race.  He is a defender of the police while acknowledging the need for greater oversight, and opposed both violence in the streets, and the appeasement of it by blue state governors and mayors. In some sense, there are no conservatives, either by temperament or by political ability, eager to stop the summer madness of statue toppling, arson, spiraling crime, shakedowns, cancel culture and the vows of Antifa and BLM that all this is the beginning of a complete rewriting of American history and a radical recalibration of our shared futures. Between the abyss and what goes on in Portland and the Magnificent Mile, there is for the moment nothing else but Trump standing in the breach.A Final Note No president in the history of the Republic has ever been targeted for removal by the opposition party, the permanent bureaucracy, and members of his own party, and in such an illegal and unethical manner.  There was the first impeachment effort, the Beltway punditry in early 2017 calling for his removal by coup if necessary, the voting machine suits, the Clinton-Obama-Steele subversion of the Trump campaign and transition, the Hollywood assassination chic, the effort to take out former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, the farce of the 25th Amendment that included the bathos of high federal officials contemplating wearing wires in private conservations with the president to the psychodrama of Professor Bandy Lee testifying before Congress about Trump’s mental state, the silly Emolument Clause gambit (Trump has lost over $1 billion while in office and taking no salary), the subversion of the FISA courts, the Russian hoax, Robert Mueller’s two-year long and $35 million witch hunt, the fabricated Steele dossier implanted in the bowels of the Obama government and media, the one-phone-call impeachment circus, the revolt of the retired generals, and what has rightly lately been called “coup porn,” the hysteria over Ukraine and the caricaturing of Trump in 2020 as Typhoid Mary, Herbert Hoover, and Bull Connor as the Left weaponized the contagion, quarantine, and rioting. The Left, the media, and the NeverTrump Right rarely now any more argue all of the above was warranted or based on verifiable wrongdoing, but see the mish-mash instead as a righteous “any means necessary” tactic to achieve the noble end of destroying a president that they detest.  That Trump is still standing is an unrecognized tribute to his resilience, stamina, and willpower to fight it out to the bitter end.  His critics say 2020 is not 2016. This time the polls are right on, not rigged by the sort who trafficked in absurd Russian hoaxes or were mesmerized by Michael Avanetti. The silent Trump voters no longer exist, they add. The suburban mom, we are told, fears Trump’s temper more than Antifa. The fence-sitter is bothered more by tweeting than Biden’s ever-longer moments of confused silence. And on and on. Perhaps.  But Americans at some point empathize with an underdog fighter on behalf of what they fear may be a fading America, even someone they are not always fond of, but who does not give up when bullied and subjected to a level of unwarranted abuse that they themselves know they could never endure. The Left never wished to beat Trump at the polls (indeed they feared such an ordeal); they instead wanted to destroy his person, his family, and everyone who followed him. That Trump withstood such illegal, unconstitutional, and unethical venom also says something about those who dished it out—and, in the end, did so viciously and yet so impotently.

SOME STATES (Maryland, Michigan and Arizona) ARE ALLOWING MUSLIM STUDENTS TO PRAY DURING SCHOOL HOURS.

IF THEY ALLOW THAT, THEN WE SHOULD BRING BACK OUR FLAGS INTO THE CLASSROOMS AND ALLOW OTHERS TO PRAY TOO! TIME FOR THE CHRISTIANS TO SPEAK UP AND DEMAND THEIR RIGHTS.

When we get 100,000,000, that’s one hundred million, willing Christians to BOND together, voice their concerns and vote, we can take back America with God’s help.

Become one of the One hundred million.  Then let’s get 200 million. It can be done just by sending this email to your friends.

Do the math.  It only takes a single willing heart and a fed-up SOUL.
 
God Bless America and Shine your light on Her!

In 1952 President Truman established one day a year as a “National Day of Prayer.”

In 1988 President Reagan designated the first Thursday in May of each year as the “National Day of Prayer.”

In June 2007, then Presidential Candidate Barack Obama declared that the USA “Was no longer a Christian nation.”

In May 2009 President Obama dismissed our 21st annual National Day of Prayer ceremony at the White House under the ruse of “not wanting to offend anyone.”

Sept. 25, 2009, a Muslim Prayer Day was held on the West front of the U.S. Capitol Building, the site where U.S. Presidents have been inaugurated since 1981.  There were over 50,000 Muslims in D.C. that day.  President Obama dismissed our National Day of Prayer and now it is okay for an event at our capitol for Islamists?

I for one was offended.  But wait, it did not stop!

February 17-19, 2015, a Muslim prayer was recited at the start of the second day of the White House summit on “Countering Violent Extremism,” but no other religious text was presented during the portion of the event that was open to the press.  Imam Sheikh Sa’ad Musse Roble, president of the World Peace Organization in Minneapolis, Minn., recited a “verse from the Quran” following remarks by Obama administration officials and Democrat members of Congress.

Former President Obama encouraged schools to teach the Quran for extra credit, while at the same time, we cannot even talk about the Bible, God, pray, or salute the American Flag.

The direction this country was headed should strike fear in the heart of every Christian.

How refreshing and beautiful our First Lady Melania Trump was in Melbourne, Florida, on February 18, 2017.  Instead of the normal “pumping up” of the crowd, Melania chose to start the rally off with the Lord’s Prayer.  It sounded more like the start of a football game after the National Anthem rather than what we would expect to hear after a prayer.

Make a “Joyful noise unto the LORD thy GOD!”  
 
Because of the “sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity” of Madeline Murray O’Hair and ACLU efforts in 1962, “School Prayer was removed from the U.S. public education system by slowly changing the meaning of the First Amendment through a number of court cases
Several court cases should be confronted and reversed.

Send this to ten people, or one hundred and ten, and send it to the person who sent it to you!  To let them know that indeed, it was sent out to many more.
    

MAIKE HICKSON

What we know of Our Lady of Fatima’s ‘3rd secret’ appears to be unfolding in Church today: priest

The Third Secret given to Sister Lucia predicted, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the topSat Aug 15, 2020 – 12:01 am EST

• Share on Facebook445
• Share on Twitter
• 53
• Share via Email
• Print this Page

August 15, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Father Frank Unterhalt, a German diocesan priest and speaker of a group of faithful priests called Communio veritatis, has written an article about the current crisis in the Catholic Church and linking it back to the message of Our Lady of Fatima. He quotes Cardinal Ciappi, a theologian of the Papal House from 1955 to 1989, who stated in 1955: “In the Third Secret it is predicted, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top.”

In his statement (see full text below), Father Unterhalt of the Archdiocese of Paderborn sums up different aspects that help us to see that the Church has been infiltrated for quite some time now by anti-Catholic forces. Here, he quotes the former Communist Bella Dodd who admitted to having helped infiltrate the Church in the U.S. with some 1,100 communist priests, and he also refers back to the Freemasonic instruction “Alta Vendita” which aimed at receiving “a pope according to our needs.” 

Father Unterhalt also quotes George Weigel who, after studying the communist archives, described in 2011 “how the communist governments and secret services infiltrated the Vatican and used diplomatic relations with the Holy See to promote their interests – as one might expect – and to strengthen their efforts to penetrate the highest levels of the Catholic Church’s leadership, especially the Vatican itself – an approach that many high-ranking dignitaries in the Vatican apparently did not see through.”

The German priest also reminds us that it was already Father Maximilian Kolbe, who in 1917 witnessed an appearance of Freemasons in Rome holding up a flag with the words “Satan shall reign in the Vatican, and the Pope shall be his slave.”

It was Pope Benedict XVI who announced in 2010 that the Third Secret of Fatima is about the fact that “the greatest persecution of the Church comes not from her enemies without, but arises from sin within the Church.”

Here, we might also be reminded of the fact that, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he had said that Freemasonry was the greatest danger for the Church.SUBSCRIBEto LifeSite’s daily headlinesSUBSCRIBEU.S. Canada World Catholic

PETITION: Urge Catholic bishops to refuse Holy Communion to pro-abortion Biden! Sign the petition here.

Father Unterhalt does not mention the ongoing debate as to whether or not Rome has even fully published all the words of Sister Lucia of Fatima relating to the Third Secret, a discussion that is kept alive since the official publication of the Third Secret in Rome in June of 2000. In any event, the words of Cardinal Ciappi about an apostasy at the top of the Church as quoted by Father Unterhalt are not contained in the officially published Third Secret. It is to be hoped that future research will give us further light in this matter.

For example, Cardinal Silvio Oddi, who had been the secretary of Archbishop Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli – later Pope John XXIII – during the time the latter served as the apostolic nuncio in Paris, stated in 1990 in an interview about the Third Secret: “I would not be surprised if the Third Secret alluded to dark times for the Church: grave confusions and troubling apostasies within Catholicism itself … If we consider the grave crisis we have lived through since the [Second Vatican] Council, the signs that this prophecy has been fulfilled do not seem to be lacking.”

Father Unterhalt also reminds us that both the Book of Revelation and the Catechism of the Catholic Church speak to us about the loss of Faith at the end of times and of the final trials of the Church. Here he quotes the catechism as saying: “Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the ‘mystery of iniquity’ in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth.”

Father Unterhalt has been making strong statements in the last years that are pertaining to the preservation of the Catholic Faith. He and his priestly group Communio veritatis opposed, for example, the idea of intercommunion with Protestants; he publicly rebuked the head of the German bishops, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, for adapting the Catholic Church to the zeitgeist; and he condemned the practice of receiving Holy Communion in the hand while standing. Unterhalt also rejected Pope Francis’ new rule of giving Holy Communion to adulterers. Finally, he encouraged us to remain close to Our Lady, saying that “Many faithful are asking themselves today how one can withstand the current storm of the great test and remain in the true Faith. I would like to answer that with the famous words of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary in Fatima: ‘My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way which leads you to God!’” 

***

Full statement by Father Frank Unterhalt

The Church lives through the Third Secret of Fatima

It is high time to understand the full meaning of the prophetic announcement made by Cardinal Wojtyła at the 1976 Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia: “We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has ever experienced. I do not think that the wide circle of the American Society, or the whole wide circle of the Christian Community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-church, between the Gospel and the anti-gospel, between Christ and the antichrist. The confrontation lies within the plans of Divine Providence. It is, therefore, in God’s Plan, and it must be a trial which the Church must take up, and face courageously…”[1]

It is important to realize the full dimension of this dramatic appeal! Above all, one must consider what an anti-church needs at its head. In this sense, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen affirmed: “There will be a mystical Body of the antichrist, which will resemble in all its externals the Mystical Body of Christ.”[2]

During his visit to Germany in 1980, Pope John Paul II, when asked in Fulda how things were going with the Church in relation to the Third Secret of Fatima, replied with the following words: “We must prepare ourselves for great trials in the near future. Yes, they may even require giving our lives, and total dedication to Christ and for Christ! It can be softened by your and our prayer, but it cannot be averted. Only in this way can the true renewal of the Church arrive. How often has the renewal of the Church been born from blood. It will not be any different this time. Let us be strong and let us prepare and trust in Christ and His Holy Mother! Let us pray the Rosary very much and often!”[3]

Shortly after, this turned real for him. On May 13, 1981, the anniversary of the first apparition of the Blessed Virgin and Mother of God Mary in Fatima in 1917, the assassination attempt took place in Rome. Here the whole trial of which he spoke became visible in a dramatic picture. The direct attack against the Holy Father was not only directed at him, but at the entire Mystical Body of Christ on earth. According to the teaching of St. Augustine, the Pope is the “figura ecclesiae” and represents the whole Church.[4] Against this background, she must understand that she is in the midst of an apocalyptic struggle in which everything is at stake. This becomes even clearer when we consider the exact circumstances of the assassination attempt: The five shots were fired at 17:17.

On the one hand, this unmistakably points to the year in which Freemasonry was founded, 1717. St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe witnessed their demonstration on St. Peter’s Square in Rome in 1917. The Apostle of the Immaculata read the professed plan of the Freemasons on the relevant flag: “Satan shall reign in the Vatican, and the Pope shall be his slave.”[5]

On the other hand, in the same year 1917, the October Revolution occurred in Russia with the manifestation of atheist communism and the connected decisive struggle. 

In these contexts, the attack on the head of the Catholic Church shows the hostile attempt to overcome her completely. The aim of the attack in Rome was obviously to remove the God-given foundation of the Church in order to replace it with another “leadership.”

Of course, this plan did not end with the assassination attempt, which failed from the enemy’s point of view – to the contrary. Enlightening in this context is a letter of Sister Lucia to the Holy Father of May 12, 1982(!), in which she referred to the third part of the Secret: “Since we did not heed this appeal of the Message, we see that it has been fulfilled, Russia has invaded the world with her errors. And if we have not yet seen the complete fulfilment of the final part of this prophecy, we are going towards it little by little with great strides.”[6]

The theologian and writer Prof. Dr. George Weigel has analyzed the archives of the communist fight against Karol Wojtyła and Pope John Paul II, and has described the pertinent campaign as follows: “This material illustrates how the communist governments and secret services infiltrated the Vatican and used diplomatic relations with the Holy See to promote their interests – as one might expect – and to strengthen their efforts to penetrate the highest levels of the Catholic Church’s leadership, especially the Vatican itself – an approach that many high-ranking dignitaries in the Vatican apparently did not see through.”[7]

The shocking confession of the well-known Dr. Bella Dodd, a high-ranking member of the Communist Party in the USA, opens our eyes in a special way to the historical background. After her conversion to the Catholic faith, the former activist gave sworn testimony about the deliberate infiltration of the Church. According to her own testimony, she followed an order by Stalin at the time, which was issued to all Communist Party organizations to have agents without faith and morals infiltrate Catholic seminaries and religious orders.[8] 

This plan from Moscow was implemented extremely effectively – right down to the Vatican. In the 1950s, she explained: “In the 1930s we put 1100 men into the priesthood in order to destroy the Church from within, right now they are in the highest places in the Church.”[9]

Dr. Bella Dodd left no doubt about the drastic consequences: “You will not recognize the Catholic Church.”[10]

The philosopher Prof. Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand provides us with a profound analysis which clearly shows that the decisive battle is not outside but inside the Church herself: “An unprejudiced look at the present devastation of the Lord’s vineyard cannot overlook the fact that a ‘fifth column’ has formed in the Church (it is also called a mafia by some, even on the Church side), a group of purposeful destroyers of the Church. […] Their systematic and refined undermining of Holy Mother Church also bears clear enough witness to the fact that this is a deliberate conspiracy on the hand of the Freemasons and the Communists, who – despite their differences and other enmities – work together for this goal. For Freemasonry, the Church is the arch-enemy, and for the Communists the main obstacle to the conquest of the world. […] But the incomprehensible thing is that this conspiracy exists within the Church, that there are bishops and even cardinals, and above all priests and religious who are a kind of Judas.”[11]

Bishop Dr. Rudolf Graber has dealt with the goal of the hostile strategy. He quotes the so-called “Alta Vendita” – the Masonic plan for revolution within the Catholic Church. In it, it says: “What we demand, what we look for and have to await – just as the Jews await their Messiah – is a Pope according to our needs […] We do not doubt our reaching this highest goal of our efforts.”[12]

In this context the famous word formulated by Cardinal Ciappi is of particular importance. He was an expert on the Third Secret of Fatima and theologian of the Papal House from 1955 to 1989. In a letter to Prof. Baumgartner from Salzburg in 1995, he wrote: “In the Third Secret it is predicted, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top.”[13]

A look into the Book of Revelation makes this clear. 

The fire-red dragon (cf. Rev 12:3) represents atheistic communism, which seeks to destroy faith in God. In this battle two beasts come to the aid of the dragon, who shows himself to have powerful strength.

The black beast, which resembles a panther (cf. Rev 13:1-2), is Freemasonry. It acts in the background and hides itself in the shadows to be able to penetrate everywhere unrecognized. The throne and power of the dragon have been given to him (cf. Rev 13:2).

The other beast is ecclesial Freemasonry: “He had two horns like a lamb, but he spoke like a dragon” (Rev 13:11). This is a reference to the hierarchy of the Church, in which the mitre – with two horns – indicates the fullness of the priesthood. The beast that comes up out of the earth looks like a servant of Christ the Lamb, but is a servant of Satan the dragon.

The False Prophet (cf. Rev 19:20) is the pseudo-religious leader of the anti-church and drives apostasy from the top. He deceives and betrays the inhabitants of the earth (cf. Rev 13:14) and wants to lead people to worship the antichrist (cf. Rev 13:12), of whom he is the forerunner.

A direct reference to the Third Secret of Fatima is also found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the ‘mystery of iniquity’ in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth.”[14]

The Paschal Mystery of Christ is thus intensely renewed in his Mystical Body. The Church will follow her Lord in his death and resurrection.[15]

This is why Pope Benedict XVI, as a pilgrim on the road to Fatima in May 2010, explained the Third Secret: “Consequently, I would say that, here too, beyond this great vision of the suffering of the Pope, […] an indication is given of realities involving the future of the Church, which are gradually taking shape and becoming evident. So it is true that, in addition to moment indicated in the vision, there is mention of, there is seen, the need for a passion of the Church, which naturally is reflected in the person of the Pope, yet the Pope stands for the Church and thus it is sufferings of the Church that are announced. […]

As for the new things which we can find in this message today, there is also the fact that attacks on the Pope and the Church come not only from without, but the sufferings of the Church come precisely from within the Church, from the sin existing within the Church. This too is something that we have always known, but today we are seeing it in a really terrifying way: that the greatest persecution of the Church comes not from her enemies without, but arises from sin within the Church”.[16]

So, during this time, she experiences in everything the passion of Jesus and the abysmal iniquity of the betrayal. 

Christ made the servant of the true Mercy, St. Sister Faustina, experience all the bitterness of the Church’s agony of Gethsemane. She wrote in her diary: “On that day I suffered more than at any other time, inwardly and outwardly. I did not know that one can suffer so much in a single day.” The most terrible dimension of Gethsemane is the appearance of the traitor. St. Sister Faustina noted the date of this worst day of suffering. It was December 17, 1936.

Assumptio Beatae Mariae Virginis 2020

Pastor Frank Unterhalt

__________________

[1] John-Henry Westen, “Two timely quotes from St. John Paul II on his feast day,” in: LifeSiteNews, October 22, 2014; The Wall Street Journal, November 9, 1978.

[2] Fulton J. Sheen, Der Kommunismus und das Gewissen der westlichen Welt [Engl. title: Communism and the Conscience of the West], Berlin 1950, p. 12. [translated from German]

[3] Stimme des Glaubens [Voice of the Faith], October 1981.

[4] Cf. Augustine, Epistulae 53,2.

[5] Maria Winowska, Pater Maximilian Kolbe. Ein Leben im Dienst der Immaculata [Father Maximilian Kolbe: a Life serving the Immaculata], Freiburg/Schw. – Konstanz – München 1952, p. 41. [translated from German]

[6] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, The Message of Fatima (June 26, 2000), Introduction.

[7] George Weigel, Der Papst der Freiheit. Johannes Paul II. Seine letzten Jahre und sein Vermächtnis [Engl. Title: The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II–The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy], Paderborn 2011, p. 14. [translated from German]

[8] Cf. Iben Thranholm, „Catholic abuse crisis is likely no accident, but a strategy to ‘destroy Church from within’“, in: LifeSiteNews, September 17, 2018.

[9] Bella V. Dodd, School of Darkness, Angelico Press reprint edition 2017, Introduction; originally published by P. J. Kenedy & Sons, New York 1954.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Dietrich von Hildebrand, Der verwüstete Weinberg [Engl. title: The Devastated Vineyard], Regensburg 1973, 2^nd ed., p. 11. [translated from German]

[12] Rudolf Graber, Athanasius und die Kirche unserer Zeit [Engl. title: Athanasius and the Church of our Time], Abensberg 1987, 11^th ed., p. 85. [translated from German]

[13] Brian W. Harrison, “Alice von Hildebrand Sheds New Light on Fatima,” Introductory commentary, in: OnePeterFive, May 12, 2016.

[14] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 675.

[15] Cf. ibid., 677.

[16] Pope Benedict XVI, Interview during the flight to Portugal, May 11, 2010

[17] Tagebuch der Schwester Maria Faustyna Kowalska [Diary of Sister Maria Faustina Kowalska], Hauteville/Schweiz 1991, 2^nd ed., No. 823. [translated from German]

Translation by LifeSite’s Martin Bürger

Words of MaryAugust 16, 2020

“As I lived in God, I rest in God.

As my Son dwelled in me, I dwell in Him.

Words cannot describe the things of the Spirit,Or the work of the Father and the Son,For how can it be explained that the Spirit came upon me,And I bore the Son of God, Or that at the end of my earthly life,I was delivered into the arms of my Son,And yet these things are so.

 
I was born a vessel of the Lord.His mark was upon my soul,And therefore no evil could enter.

 I lived as a vessel of the Lord,And therefore the Son of God was placed within my womb.

And after my earthly life, would the Lord have allowed a vessel of His,To be crushed and broken underfoot?

 
When my Son died on the cross,He gave this vessel into the keeping of His beloved disciple,And when it was time for my earthly life to end,This disciple gave this vessel back into the keeping of my Son.And I was given a place of honor where all might look upon me,And say, “Behold this vessel of the Lord.”

For to the angel I had said, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, Be it done unto me according to thy word.”

And so after my time on earth was completed,And I was placed in the arms of my Son,The angel said to my Son, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord.All has been done in accordance with Thy Word.” 

As I lived in God on earth, I rest in God in heaven.As my Son dwelled in me, I dwell in Him.But always when the children He has given me need my help,I say unto my Son, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord,”And I am sent unto them.

Children, behold this vessel of the Lord,For I am your Mother,And when you honor me,You have honored my Son.”

-S