Stanford and Judge Duncan; Fourth Circuit transgender follies; and more

Inbox

Ed Whelan ewhelan@eppc.org via gmail.mcsv.net	Mar 13, 2023, 2:10 PM (1 day ago)
to me

From NRO’s Bench Memos:

What Punishments Must Stanford Impose?

Ed Whelan

about 3 hours ago

In their joint apology to Judge Kyle Duncan, Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Stanford law dean Jenny Martinez acknowledged the obvious fact that the protestors’ disruption of Duncan’s presentation “was inconsistent with our policies on free speech.” They further acknowledged that “staff members who should have enforced university policies failed to do so, and instead intervened in inappropriate ways that are not aligned with the university’s commitment to free speech.”

The question now is what punishments Stanford should impose. I think that it’s clear that DEI dean Tirien Steinbach should be fired. As for the student protestors, Stanford’s written policy on campus disruptions—a policy that Steinbach herself linked to in her email to students before the event—provides valuable guidance. That policy expressly states that while Stanford “firmly supports the rights of all members of the University community to express their views or to protest against actions and opinions with which they disagree”:

It is a violation of University policy for a member of the faculty, staff, or student body to:

Prevent or disrupt the effective carrying out of a University function or approved activity, such as lectures, meetings, interviews, ceremonies, the conduct of University business in a University office, and public events.

That policy also expressly states that while there is no “ordinary” penalty for violations, past infractions “have led to penalties ranging from censure to expulsion.” (Emphasis added.) It thus gives clear notice that censure should be expected as the minimum penalty.

Princeton professor Robert P. George offered this helpful guidance:

Hold everything constant–the interruptions, vile language, and the rest–except the speaker is Sonia Sotomayor, the sponsor is the Stanford Women’s Collective, and the students disrupting the event and hurling hateful epithets at the speaker are anti-abortion. What would happen?

Whatever the true answer to that question is, is also the answer to the questions of what should have been done by administrators at Judge Duncan’s talk, and what sanctions should be imposed now on those who disrupted it.

Boston University professor David Decosimo responded:

Let’s be real. If a group of conservative Stanford law students shouted down a federal judge w/ obscenities & mocked their sex life while a Dean watched & praised them, there’d be front page stories on fascism, the Dean would be fired, & they’d be expelled & banished from big law.

‘Please Reach Out To Your Abuser For Support’

Ed Whelan

about 1 hour ago

Another entry in the beyond-parody category: As the Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium has reported, one of the Stanford law bureaucrats who attended Judge Duncan’s event and who did nothing to stop the disruption has emailed student leaders of Stanford’s Federalist Society chapter “to provide you with resources that you can use right now to support your safety and mental health.”

Believe it or not, one of acting associate dean of students Jeanne Merino’s suggestions is to “reach out” to DEI dean Tirien Steinbach—yes, the leading culprit in this whole matter—“if you would like support or would like to process last week’s events:

Fourth Circuit’s Transgender Follies

Ed Whelan

about 1 hour ago

In early January, I highlighted the federal district judge, Clinton appointee Joseph R. Goodwin, who had the guts and humility to reverse his position and to dissolve the preliminary injunction that he had initially entered against West Virginia’s “Save Women’s Sports” law. Under the West Virginia law, biological males cannot take part on girls’ sports teams in public schools. Goodwin ruled that the law survives intermediate scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause and that it satisfied—indeed, “largely mirrors”—Title IX.

Just after expedited briefing was completed on appeal (in B.P.J. v. West Virginia Board of Education), a divided Fourth Circuit panel, in a one-sentence order devoid of reasoning, dramatically altered the status quo, as it enjoined operation of the West Virginia law for the duration of the appeal.

West Virginia has now filed in the Supreme Court a motion to vacate the Fourth Circuit’s injunction. From the introduction to that motion (citations omitted):

[The Fourth Circuit’s] unreasoned order unjustifiably upsets the way that things traditionally work in school sports. For as long as schools have offered sports teams, it has been the “norm” to designate student athletes to them by sex. Without that separation, there is “a substantial risk that boys would dominate the girls’ programs and deny them an equal opportunity to compete in interscholastic events.” Separate teams also “aid in th[e] equalization” of athletics programs for men and women by “mak[ing] monitoring of the opportunities provided easier.” And sometimes, co-ed teams cause a “detrimental effect on the safety of the participants.” For these and other reasons, many have recognized that “commingling of the biological sexes in the female athletics arena would significantly undermine the benefits” that separate sports teams “afford to female student athletes.”

Nothing warrants the Fourth Circuit majority’s radical approach, and this Court should vacate its unreasoned and incorrect injunction. Complete lack of analysis is the first tell that something is amiss, as federal courts should not enjoin democratically passed legislation without at least providing a rationale. What’s more, B.P.J. will not succeed on the merits. All parties, B.P.J. included, agree that separated sports teams serve important interests. Consistent with that starting point, the Act makes the reasonable judgment that many have made before: Biological differences between males and females matter in sports. Both Title IX and the Fourteenth Amendment allow that judgment.

Let’s hope that the Court promptly grants West Virginia’s motion.

This Day in Liberal Judicial Activism—March 13

Ed Whelan

about 7 hours ago

1963—Ernesto Miranda is arrested in Phoenix on charges of abduction and rape. His interrogation by police yields a written confession. His confession is admitted at trial, and he is convicted.

Three years later, in Miranda v. Arizona, the Supreme Court rules by a 5-4 vote (with the majority opinion by Chief Justice Warren) that a confession made during custodial interrogation will be conclusively deemed involuntary and inadmissible unless police first provide what are now known as the Miranda warnings (or unless other effective safeguards are adopted). It therefore vacates Miranda’s conviction. In dissent, Justice Harlan states that “[o]ne is entitled to feel astonished that the Constitution can be read” to bar admission of a confession “obtained during brief, daytime questioning … and unmarked by any of the traditional indicia of coercion.” Harlan also observes that the “thrust of the [Court’s] new rules” is not to protect against coerced confessions but “ultimately to discourage any confession at all.”

In response to Miranda, Congress in 1968 enacts a law providing that voluntary confessions shall be admissible in evidence in federal prosecutions, whether or not Miranda warnings were given. In 2000, in a striking illustration of the staying power of activist precedents, the Supreme Court rules 7-2 in Dickerson v. United States that Miranda “announced a constitutional rule that Congress may not supersede legislatively,” and it voids the federal statute. As Justice Scalia argues in dissent, the majority in Dickerson does not in fact hold that the use at trial of a voluntary confession, in the absence of Miranda warnings, violates the Constitution, but rather regards Miranda’s rules as merely “prophylactic.” Thus, in voiding the federal law, the majority necessarily rules that it has the “immense and frightening antidemocratic power” “not merely to apply the Constitution, but to expand it, imposing what it regards as useful ‘prophylactic’ restrictions upon Congress and the States.”   

2014—By a vote of 5 to 2, the Florida supreme court rules (in Estate of McCall v. United States) that a statutory cap on wrongful-death non-economic damages on medical-malpractice claims violates the equal-rights guarantee under the state constitution. Five justices agree that the plurality opinion misapplies rational-basis review. But three of those justices nonetheless concur in the plurality’s result. That leaves only the two dissenters to embrace the simple reality that the cap “is rationally related to the legitimate state interest of decreasing medical malpractice insurance rates and increasing the affordability and availability of health care in Florida.”

This Day in Liberal Judicial Activism—March 11

Ed Whelan

March 11, 2023

2020—“I think it needed to be said,” asserts octogenarian federal district judge Lynn S. Adelman in defense of his 35-page political screed titled “The Roberts Court’s Assault on Democracy.” 

In fact, Adelman says nothing that hasn’t already been said, over and over, in the fever swamps of the Left. He condemns Chief Justice Roberts’s metaphor of a judge as umpire as a “masterpiece of disingenuousness,” charges that “the Court’s hard right majority is actively participating in undermining American democracy,” alleges that the Court’s rulings “constitute a direct assault on the right of poor people and minorities to vote,” and complains that the “Republican Party has been particularly afflicted by the concentration of wealth at the top,” “has also become more partisan, more ideological and more uncompromising,” and has displayed a “zealous partisanship” on judicial appointments that “reminds one of nothing so much as … those fervent defenders of slavery who pushed the South into the Civil War.” (And that’s all just in his screed’s first eight pages. How could anyone read further?) 

Adelman, a longtime liberal state senator who was appointed to the federal bench by Bill Clinton in 1997, might be said to epitomize the judge as politician in a robe—except that he is known to appear frequently in his courtroom without even bothering with the pretense of a robe.

M. Edward Whelan III
Distinguished Senior Fellow and

Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies
Ethics and Public Policy Center
1730 M Street N.W., Suite 910
Washington, D.C. 20036
202-682-1200
www.EPPC.org

Sign up for email distributions of my blog posts 

at National Review’s Bench Memos, 

and subscribe to my Substack, Confirmation Tales.

Stanford and Judge Duncan; Fourth Circuit transgender follies; and more

Inbox

Ed Whelan ewhelan@eppc.org via gmail.mcsv.net	Mar 13, 2023, 2:10 PM (1 day ago)
to me

From NRO’s Bench Memos:

What Punishments Must Stanford Impose?

Ed Whelan

about 3 hours ago

In their joint apology to Judge Kyle Duncan, Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Stanford law dean Jenny Martinez acknowledged the obvious fact that the protestors’ disruption of Duncan’s presentation “was inconsistent with our policies on free speech.” They further acknowledged that “staff members who should have enforced university policies failed to do so, and instead intervened in inappropriate ways that are not aligned with the university’s commitment to free speech.”

The question now is what punishments Stanford should impose. I think that it’s clear that DEI dean Tirien Steinbach should be fired. As for the student protestors, Stanford’s written policy on campus disruptions—a policy that Steinbach herself linked to in her email to students before the event—provides valuable guidance. That policy expressly states that while Stanford “firmly supports the rights of all members of the University community to express their views or to protest against actions and opinions with which they disagree”:

It is a violation of University policy for a member of the faculty, staff, or student body to:

Prevent or disrupt the effective carrying out of a University function or approved activity, such as lectures, meetings, interviews, ceremonies, the conduct of University business in a University office, and public events.

That policy also expressly states that while there is no “ordinary” penalty for violations, past infractions “have led to penalties ranging from censure to expulsion.” (Emphasis added.) It thus gives clear notice that censure should be expected as the minimum penalty.

Princeton professor Robert P. George offered this helpful guidance:

Hold everything constant–the interruptions, vile language, and the rest–except the speaker is Sonia Sotomayor, the sponsor is the Stanford Women’s Collective, and the students disrupting the event and hurling hateful epithets at the speaker are anti-abortion. What would happen?

Whatever the true answer to that question is, is also the answer to the questions of what should have been done by administrators at Judge Duncan’s talk, and what sanctions should be imposed now on those who disrupted it.

Boston University professor David Decosimo responded:

Let’s be real. If a group of conservative Stanford law students shouted down a federal judge w/ obscenities & mocked their sex life while a Dean watched & praised them, there’d be front page stories on fascism, the Dean would be fired, & they’d be expelled & banished from big law.

‘Please Reach Out To Your Abuser For Support’

Ed Whelan

about 1 hour ago

Another entry in the beyond-parody category: As the Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium has reported, one of the Stanford law bureaucrats who attended Judge Duncan’s event and who did nothing to stop the disruption has emailed student leaders of Stanford’s Federalist Society chapter “to provide you with resources that you can use right now to support your safety and mental health.”

Believe it or not, one of acting associate dean of students Jeanne Merino’s suggestions is to “reach out” to DEI dean Tirien Steinbach—yes, the leading culprit in this whole matter—“if you would like support or would like to process last week’s events:

Fourth Circuit’s Transgender Follies

Ed Whelan

about 1 hour ago

In early January, I highlighted the federal district judge, Clinton appointee Joseph R. Goodwin, who had the guts and humility to reverse his position and to dissolve the preliminary injunction that he had initially entered against West Virginia’s “Save Women’s Sports” law. Under the West Virginia law, biological males cannot take part on girls’ sports teams in public schools. Goodwin ruled that the law survives intermediate scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause and that it satisfied—indeed, “largely mirrors”—Title IX.

Just after expedited briefing was completed on appeal (in B.P.J. v. West Virginia Board of Education), a divided Fourth Circuit panel, in a one-sentence order devoid of reasoning, dramatically altered the status quo, as it enjoined operation of the West Virginia law for the duration of the appeal.

West Virginia has now filed in the Supreme Court a motion to vacate the Fourth Circuit’s injunction. From the introduction to that motion (citations omitted):

[The Fourth Circuit’s] unreasoned order unjustifiably upsets the way that things traditionally work in school sports. For as long as schools have offered sports teams, it has been the “norm” to designate student athletes to them by sex. Without that separation, there is “a substantial risk that boys would dominate the girls’ programs and deny them an equal opportunity to compete in interscholastic events.” Separate teams also “aid in th[e] equalization” of athletics programs for men and women by “mak[ing] monitoring of the opportunities provided easier.” And sometimes, co-ed teams cause a “detrimental effect on the safety of the participants.” For these and other reasons, many have recognized that “commingling of the biological sexes in the female athletics arena would significantly undermine the benefits” that separate sports teams “afford to female student athletes.”

Nothing warrants the Fourth Circuit majority’s radical approach, and this Court should vacate its unreasoned and incorrect injunction. Complete lack of analysis is the first tell that something is amiss, as federal courts should not enjoin democratically passed legislation without at least providing a rationale. What’s more, B.P.J. will not succeed on the merits. All parties, B.P.J. included, agree that separated sports teams serve important interests. Consistent with that starting point, the Act makes the reasonable judgment that many have made before: Biological differences between males and females matter in sports. Both Title IX and the Fourteenth Amendment allow that judgment.

Let’s hope that the Court promptly grants West Virginia’s motion.

This Day in Liberal Judicial Activism—March 13

Ed Whelan

about 7 hours ago

1963—Ernesto Miranda is arrested in Phoenix on charges of abduction and rape. His interrogation by police yields a written confession. His confession is admitted at trial, and he is convicted.

Three years later, in Miranda v. Arizona, the Supreme Court rules by a 5-4 vote (with the majority opinion by Chief Justice Warren) that a confession made during custodial interrogation will be conclusively deemed involuntary and inadmissible unless police first provide what are now known as the Miranda warnings (or unless other effective safeguards are adopted). It therefore vacates Miranda’s conviction. In dissent, Justice Harlan states that “[o]ne is entitled to feel astonished that the Constitution can be read” to bar admission of a confession “obtained during brief, daytime questioning … and unmarked by any of the traditional indicia of coercion.” Harlan also observes that the “thrust of the [Court’s] new rules” is not to protect against coerced confessions but “ultimately to discourage any confession at all.”

In response to Miranda, Congress in 1968 enacts a law providing that voluntary confessions shall be admissible in evidence in federal prosecutions, whether or not Miranda warnings were given. In 2000, in a striking illustration of the staying power of activist precedents, the Supreme Court rules 7-2 in Dickerson v. United States that Miranda “announced a constitutional rule that Congress may not supersede legislatively,” and it voids the federal statute. As Justice Scalia argues in dissent, the majority in Dickerson does not in fact hold that the use at trial of a voluntary confession, in the absence of Miranda warnings, violates the Constitution, but rather regards Miranda’s rules as merely “prophylactic.” Thus, in voiding the federal law, the majority necessarily rules that it has the “immense and frightening antidemocratic power” “not merely to apply the Constitution, but to expand it, imposing what it regards as useful ‘prophylactic’ restrictions upon Congress and the States.”   

2014—By a vote of 5 to 2, the Florida supreme court rules (in Estate of McCall v. United States) that a statutory cap on wrongful-death non-economic damages on medical-malpractice claims violates the equal-rights guarantee under the state constitution. Five justices agree that the plurality opinion misapplies rational-basis review. But three of those justices nonetheless concur in the plurality’s result. That leaves only the two dissenters to embrace the simple reality that the cap “is rationally related to the legitimate state interest of decreasing medical malpractice insurance rates and increasing the affordability and availability of health care in Florida.”

This Day in Liberal Judicial Activism—March 11

Ed Whelan

March 11, 2023

2020—“I think it needed to be said,” asserts octogenarian federal district judge Lynn S. Adelman in defense of his 35-page political screed titled “The Roberts Court’s Assault on Democracy.” 

In fact, Adelman says nothing that hasn’t already been said, over and over, in the fever swamps of the Left. He condemns Chief Justice Roberts’s metaphor of a judge as umpire as a “masterpiece of disingenuousness,” charges that “the Court’s hard right majority is actively participating in undermining American democracy,” alleges that the Court’s rulings “constitute a direct assault on the right of poor people and minorities to vote,” and complains that the “Republican Party has been particularly afflicted by the concentration of wealth at the top,” “has also become more partisan, more ideological and more uncompromising,” and has displayed a “zealous partisanship” on judicial appointments that “reminds one of nothing so much as … those fervent defenders of slavery who pushed the South into the Civil War.” (And that’s all just in his screed’s first eight pages. How could anyone read further?) 

Adelman, a longtime liberal state senator who was appointed to the federal bench by Bill Clinton in 1997, might be said to epitomize the judge as politician in a robe—except that he is known to appear frequently in his courtroom without even bothering with the pretense of a robe.

M. Edward Whelan III
Distinguished Senior Fellow and

Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies
Ethics and Public Policy Center
1730 M Street N.W., Suite 910
Washington, D.C. 20036
202-682-1200
www.EPPC.org

Sign up for email distributions of my blog posts 

at National Review’s Bench Memos, 

and subscribe to my Substack, Confirmation Tales.

THE CATHOLIC MONITOR

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Might Francis’s main agenda at the Amazon Synod have been not so much about undermining Catholic doctrine despite the Pachamama worship (which has already been greatly accomplished with Amoris Laetitia), but pushing for a one-world government?

March 12, 2023

Why did the globalist elite and Francis use youth Greta Thunberg to inspire so-called GREEN YOUTH rallies in the media propaganda spectacular called the “Climate Strike” in over 150 countries just before the COVID media hysteria campaign?

What was the reason that Adolf Hitler inspired HITLER YOUTH rallies and wrote in Mien Kampf:

“Whoever has the youth has the future”?

Why did Francis make a “special invitee” to his Amazon Synod the one-world government advocate Hans Joachim (John) Schellnhuber according to journalist Edward Pentin on Twitter?

Might Francis’s main agenda at the Amazon Synod have been not so much about undermining Catholic doctrine despite the Pachamama worship (which has already been greatly accomplished with Amoris Laetitia), but pushing for a one-world government?

Hitler wanted a one-world government so he inspired the Hitler youth and others with the propaganda and scare tactics against the Jews and all the so-called racially inferior useless eaters. Hitler’s top propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels said: 

“The Führer gave expression to his unshakable conviction that the Reich will be the master of all Europe. We shall yet have to engage in many fights, but these will undoubtedly lead to most wonderful victories. From there on the way to world domination is practically certain. Whoever dominates Europe will thereby assume the leadership of the world.” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Order_(Nazism)]

So, now, is it possible that the global elite and Francis apparently want a one-world government and are attempting to inspire green youth and others with propaganda using the big lie scare tactic of the end of the world is near unless the world accepts a “‘green dictatorship” one-world government which now includes the new scare tactic that you’ll die from COVID unless you take the vaccine.

On August 9, 2019, Francis in an interview with the Vatican Insider showed that he had joined climate extremists in shamelessly exploiting the youth Greta Thunberg for a “regressive green dictatorship” one-world government.

“He praised the increased awareness and movements among young people, such as Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager whose #FridaysForFuture campaign asks students to hold a strike to demand swift action on climate change. Francis had met the 16-year-old environmental activist at a weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square in April.”
[https://international.la-croix.com/news/cardinal-blase-cupich-voice-of-the-pope-in-the-united-states/9292]
agnst-nationalism/]
Scientist and doctor Laurent Alexandre according to Climate Changed Dispatch in the article “French Doctor Exposes How Militant Climate Extremists Are Exploiting Greta Thunberg” said “people who follow Greta Thunberg are the useful idiots of the green dictatorship”:

“In a stinging commentary at Le Figaro here, Dr. Laurent Alexandre, surgeon-urologist, a graduate of Sciences Po, HEC and ENA, and co-founder of the Doctissimo website, asserts that teenage Nobel Prize nominee Greta Thunberg is being shamelessly exploited and “is playing into the hands of economic interests.”

“Laurent Alexandre first comments that “the young people who follow Greta Thunberg are the useful idiots of the green dictatorship” much in the same way Lenin called left-wing bourgeois “useful idiots of the revolution” and that the failures of all Marxist models have ‘left the anti-liberals in turmoil.’”

“He writes that ecology today serves as ‘the ideal instrument to propose a new utopia that is a substitute for the Marxist dictatorship’. He adds: ‘By exploiting the youth, we are imposing a liberticidal agenda in the name of good feelings.’”

“… Alexandre implies that Greta Thunberg is unwittingly promoting ‘the interests of China and Russia’ and that her demands would make us “highly dependent on rare metals needed for wind, solar and storage installations, of which China has a near-monopoly.”

“The French urologist and book author describes Ms. Thunberg as ‘a shamefully manipulated victim’ who needs to be protected, but adds that her radical ideas ‘must be attacked relentlessly’”.

“… Finally, Alexandre comments that following the green path will backfire because it would ,aggravate global warming, increase the waste of public money, lead to a regressive green dictatorship and put us at the mercy of China and Russia. All liberal democrats, all Raymond Aron’s heirs, must combat the deadly utopias it conveys.’”
[https://climatechangedispatch.com/doctor-greta-thunberg-climate-extremists/]

Is using the Amazon Synod as a way to push for this “repressive green dictatorship” one-world government the reason Francis made a “special invitee” of Schellnhuber ?

In 2015, LifeSiteNews reported that Francis appears to be in alliance with John Schellnhuber who is calling for a one-world government:

“Pope Francis has appointed controversial German Professor John Schellnhuber as an ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.  Schellnhuber was one of the four presenters of the new encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si’, on Thursday. He is also scheduled to chair a session of a Pontifical Academy for Sciences educational workshop on “Children and Sustainable Development” set for November.”

“… Schellnhuber is also known for his advocacy of a one-world government.  In order to avoid his catastrophic predictions for unchecked climate change.”

“… Schellnhuber is also a full member of the Club of Rome.”

“[T]he Club of Rome in 1972, was one of the starting points for the worldwide attempt to reduce the population by aggressive methods of promoting birth control and the killing of pre-born children.”

 [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.lifesitenews.com/mobile/news/whos-that-one-world-climate-guru-who-helped-present-the-popes-encyclical-at]

On May 9, 2019, the New American reported on the “unholy alliance” between the one-world regime globalists and Francis:

Francis said “‘When a supranational common good is clearly identified, it is necessary to have a special authority legally and concordantly constituted capable of facilitating its implementation. We think of the great contemporary challenges of climate change, new forms of slavery and peace,’ his holiness told those gathered to discuss ‘Nation, State, and Nation-State,’ the conference theme.”

“Pope Francis put a pretty fine point on his message, claiming that planetary problems are exacerbated by ‘an excessive demand for sovereignty on the part of States.'”

“… Our only hope for planetary peace and progress is to make room for ‘international organizations’ to develop into governing bodies, supplanting the ‘state interests’ with the will of the United Nations, he stated.”

“… Those people pushing for unlimited access to abortion loathe the Roman Catholic Church and its centuries-long opposition to the murder of children in utero are the very people standing with the head of that church in the fight to kill sovereignty and establish a one-world government.”

“That seemingly bizarre and undeniably unholy alliance should be enough to compel people to question what the underlying goal of the globalists must be.”

“In other words, what sort of government would the pope and pro-abortion advocates find mutually commendable?”
[https://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/item/32245-pope-francis-calls-for-end-of-sovereignty-and-establishment-of-global-government]

Pray an Our Father now for reparation for the sins committed because of Francis’s Amoris Laetitia.

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.

Francis Notes:

– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:

“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.”
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said “the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church.”
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]

– “If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html

– “Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html

– If Francis betrays Benedict XVI & the”Roman Rite Communities” like he betrayed the Chinese Catholics we must respond like St. Athanasius, the Saintly English Bishop Robert Grosseteste & “Eminent Canonists and Theologians” by “Resist[ing]” him: https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/12/if-francis-betrays-benedict-xvi.html 

 –  LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:

The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”

–  On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:

“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”

– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:

“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.

Election Notes: 

– Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: “212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted…Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden” [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]

– Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times “Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html

– Tucker Carlson’s Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written” according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1

– A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020:
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1

What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”:
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1] 

Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it.

Pray an Our Father now for America.

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.SHARE

 Life Among the Ruins

The few sowed the wind, and 

the many reaped their whirlwind.

By: Victor Davis Hanson

American Greatness

March 6, 2023

American society is facing three existential crises, not unlike those that overcame the late Roman, and a millennium later, terminal Byzantine, empires.

Premodern Barbarism

We are suffering an epidemic of premodern barbarism. The signs unfortunately appear everywhere. Over half a million homeless people crowd our big-city downtowns.

Most know the result of such Medieval street living is unhealthy, violent, and lethal for all concerned. Yet no one knows—or even seems to worry about—how to stop it.

So public defecation, urination, fornication, and injection continue unabated. Progressive urban pedestrians pass by holding their noses, averting their gazes, and accelerating the pace of their walking. The greenest generation in history allows its sidewalks to become pre-civilizational sewers. In a very brief time, we all but have destroyed the downtowns of our major cities—which will increasingly become vacant in a manner like the 6th-century A.D. Roman forum.

All accept that defunding the police, no-cash bail, Soros-funded district attorneys, and radical changes in jurisprudence have destroyed deterrence. The only dividend is the unleashing of a criminal class to smash-and-grab, carjack, steal, burglarize, execute, and assault—with de facto immunity. Instead, we are sometimes lectured that looting is not a crime, but lengthy incarceration is criminally immoral.

We have redefined felonies as misdemeanors warranting no punishment. Misdemeanors are now infractions that are not criminal. Infractions we treat as lifestyle choices. Normality, not criminality, is deemed criminal. We all know this will not work, but still wonder why it continues.

Many among the middle classes of our cities who can flee or move, do so—like 5th-century equestrians who left Rome for rural fortified farms before the onslaught of the Ostrogoths and Visigoths. For most of our lives, we were lectured that the old southern states—Florida, Tennessee, Texas—were backward and uninviting. Now even liberals often flee to them, leaving behind supposedly cosmopolitan Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore, and New York. The more people leave the blue states, the more those states praise themselves as utopian.

The less well-off, without the means to leave, hope that their environs have hit bottom so things can only improve. The elite who caused this premodern catastrophe assumes they will always have the money and wherewithal to ensure that they and their own can navigate around or even profit from the barbarism they unleashed. For them, the critic, not the target of criticism, is the greater threat.

The hard urban work of the 1990s and early 2000s—cleaner, safer subways, secure nightlife downtown, clean sidewalks, low vacancy rates, little vagrancy, and litter-free streets—so often has been undone, deliberately so. We are descending to the late 1960s and 1970s wild streets—if we are lucky the mayhem does not devolve even further.

A mere 10 years ago, if an American learned that a man was arrested for clubbing, robbing, or shooting innocents, and yet would be released from custody that day of his crime, he would have thought it an obscenity. Now he fears that often the criminal will not even be arrested.

A once secure border no longer exists. Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas simply demolished it and allowed 6-7 million foreign nationals to cross illegally into the United States without audits—to the delight of their apparent constituent, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

What would shame a Biden or Mayorkas? What would change their minds? Billions of dollars spent on social services for the lawbreaking at the expense of the American poor?

Would 100,000 annual lethal overdoses—12 times more than those who died over 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan combined—from drugs that flow across the open border sway them? Or would it take 200,000, or 300,000 deaths before Joe Biden relented and ceased his chuckling?

What do people do when their highest officials simply renounce their oaths of office and refuse to enforce laws they don’t like? Everyone knows the border will eventually have to become secure, but none have any idea whether it will take another 20, 30, or 50 million illegal entrants and 1 million more fentanyl deaths to close it.

Polls show race relations have hit historic lows. Much of the ecumenicalism of the post-Civil Rights movement seems squandered—almost deliberately so.

The Left now rarely mentions Martin Luther King, Jr. or even the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964. Perhaps it knows it has violated the spirit and legacy of both.

Today, our identity politics leaders believe that the color of our skin, not the content of our character, certainly matters more. The practitioners of the new tribalism in some sense fear outlawing segregation and discrimination by race. They know to do so would end racially restricted houses and safe spaces, racially exclusive graduations, and race-based admissions, hiring, and promotion on campus.

Read Professor Ibram X. Kendi and his message is implicit. For him, the problem with a Jim Crow-like system was not segregation or racial chauvinism per se, but merely who was doing the victimizing and who were the victims.  So, the original racism was bad, but racism in reverse is good.

We abhor violence, racism, and misogyny—in the abstract. Yet the entire hip-hop industry would find no audience—or so we are told by its appeasers—if rappers refrained from “ho” misogyny, brags of violence against law enforcement, and self-described proprietary use of the N-word.

Most know that young black males under 30 commit violent crimes at well over 10 times their 3-4 percent demographic of the population—so often victimizing the nonwhite. All know that reality must remain unmentionable even as its causes need to be debated and discussed if lives are to be saved. Yet the greater crime seems not the crime itself, but even mentioning crime.

Postmodern Abyss

Postmodernism in our age is deadlier even than premodernism. Sexually explicit drag shows that allow the attendance of children 20 years ago would have been outlawed—by liberals worried over the trauma of the young watching performance-art simulated sex.

Now the children come last and the performers first—as ratified by the same liberals. But to fathom the new transitioning, simply learn from ancient transitioning and gender dysphoria, an unhappy classical theme from Catullus’ Attis poem (stimulatus ibi furenti rabie, vagus/ devolsit ili acuto sibi pondera silice/ itaque ut relicta sensit sibi membra sine viro) to Giton in Petronius’ Satyricon.

Current “science” is now synonymous with ideology, religion, or superstition. Lockdowns, mRNA vaccinations, masking, transgenderism, “climate change,” and green power brook no dissent. They are declared scientifically correct in the manner that the sun used to revolve around the earth, and any dissenting Galileo or Copernicus is cancel-cultured, doxxed, and deplatformed.

It is now verboten to cite the causes of the current upswing. We must remain silent about the classical exegeses that cults, pornography, and constructed sexual identities, when not biological, were the manifestations of a bored culture’s affluence (luxus), leisure (otium), and decadence (licentia/dissolutio).

The classical analyses of an elite collapse focus on a falling birth rate, a scarce labor force, ubiquitous abortion, an undermanned military, and a shrinking population. We suffer all that and perhaps more still.

Millions of young men are detached and ensconced in solitude, their indebted 20s too often consumed with video-gaming, internet surfing, or consumption of porn. Many  suffer from prolonged adolescence. Many assume that they are immune from criticism, given that the alternative of getting married, having children, finding a full-time job, and buying a house is society’s new abnormal.

Rarely has an elite society become so Victorian and yet so raunchy. A slip with an anachronistic “Gal” or “Honey” can get one fired. Meanwhile, grabbing one’s genitals while pregnant on stage before 120 million viewers is considered a successful Super Bowl extravaganza.

Our army is short of its annual recruitment by 25 percent. We all suspect but do not say out loud the cause. The stereotyping of poor and middle-class white males as both raging and biased, and yet expected yet to fight and die in misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, has finally convinced the parents of these 18-year-olds to say, “no more.”

Need we say anything about the lack of efficacy or morality of the Department of Justice, FBI, or CIA?

Or rather is there anything the FBI will not do?

Doctor court evidence? Hire Twitter to suppress the news? Monitor parents at school board meetings? Allow directors to lie under oath or “misremember” before Congress?

Swiping clean subpoenaed phones? Hiring fakers to compile dirt on a presidential candidate—and then using that known smear to hoodwink a judge to allow spying on Americans?

Suppressing evidence on a laptop to warp an election? Raiding an ex-president’s home with a SWAT-like team? Spying on Catholics in mass? Storming a home full of children of a man accused of a politically incorrect misdemeanor?

The more the military has been stalemated in Iraq, humiliated in Afghanistan, and dreading what China will soon do or what Iran will even sooner let off, the more it insists our priorities should be diversity, equity, and inclusion. Will that escapism ensure more lethal pilots, tank commanders, and Marine company commanders?

The mindsets of too many of our new generations of command are twofold: first to be promoted by virtue signaling woke policies that they must know eventually will hamper combat readiness, and then in the future to rotate at retirement into multimillionaire status by leveraging past expertise for defense contractors. Keep that in mind and almost every publicly uttered nonsense from our highest in the Pentagon makes perfect sense.

Them

There is a third challenge. Our enemies—illiberal, deadly, and vengeful—have concluded we are more effective critics of ourselves than are they. They enjoy our divided nation, torn apart by racial incivility, dysfunctional cities, and woke madness. (Notice how even the communists long ago dropped deadly Maoist wokeism, or how the Russians viewed the Soviet commissariat as antithetical to their military and economic agendas.)

Iran believes that this present generation of Americans would likely allow it to nuke Israel rather than stop its proliferation. China assumes that Taiwan is theirs and the only rub is how to destroy or absorb it without losing too many global markets and income. Russia  conjectures that the more we trumpet its impending defeat, the more it will destroy Eastern Ukraine and call such a desert peace.

Our “friends” can be as dangerous as our enemies.

A visitor from another world might conclude Mexico has done more damage to America than North Korea, Iran, and Russia combined. It has, by intent, flooded our border with 20 million illegal aliens. It has allowed cartels with Chinese help to conduct multibillion-dollar profiteering by killing 100,000 Americans per year (did the Kremlin ever match that tally in a half century of the Cold War?).

Mexico drains $60 billion from its expatriates on the expectation that American subsidies will free up their cash to be sent home. The more the cartels run wild, the more money trickles down—while their top drug enforcement official Genaro García Luna was found guilty in a New York courtroom  for collusion with the cartels.

How did all of this so quickly erode our great country? Our crisis was not the next generation of foreign Hitlers and Stalins. It was not earthquakes, floods, or even pandemics. It was not endemic poverty and want. It was not a meager inheritance from past generations of incompetents. Nor was it a dearth of natural resources or bounty.

Instead our catastrophe arose from our most highly educated, the wealthiest and most privileged in American history with the greatest sense of self-esteem and sanctimoniousness. Sometime around the millennium, they felt their genius could change human nature and bring an end to history—if only they had enough power to force hoi polloi to follow their abstract and bankrupt theories that they had no intention of abiding by themselves.

And then the few sowed the wind, and so the many now reap their whirlwind.

Rats and Cockroaches

By:  Judd Garrett

Objectivity is the Objective

March 9, 2023

Two creatures hate the light, rats, and cockroaches. Whenever light is shown on them, they scatter for the cracks, crevices, and crags, frantically seeking out the darkness because they don’t want anyone to see what they are doing. They love the darkness. They thrive in the darkness. There is a third creature who hates the light as well – Democrat politicians. They hate the light for all the same reasons that the rats and cockroaches hate the light, they do not want anyone to see what they are up to. But a big difference is that not only do the Democrat politicians want to remain in the darkness, they want you to live in the darkness as well, so they can continue their wicked ways without you seeing.

The last two nights, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson on his broadcast, has shown video that had never been seen by the public, of the United States Capital on January 6, 2021. This video had been hidden from the American people for the last 26 months, and Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer is apoplectic. Like his fellow rats and cockroaches, Schumer is frantically scrambling for everyone to be thrown back into the darkness, so he can hide in the shadows where he and the Democrats can continue their nefarious ways. 

In a panic-laced speech before Congress on Monday, Schumer condemned Tucker Carlson, calling him “shameful”. He claimed that Carlson was “lying to his audience”, and accused him of “cherry-picking from thousands of hours of video”. He also charged House Speaker Kevin McCarthy with choosing “cheap political expediency over truth and democracy” because he released the video. At the end of the speech, Schumer urged “Fox News to order Carlson to cease” showing the video that had never been hidden by the public. 

There is a lot to unpack from his speech, but it all falls under the category of, the Democrats will always accuse their opponents of the crimes that they, themselves, are committing. He claims that Carlson was “lying to his audience” but the video clearly shows that the Democrats have been lying to the American people for the last 26 months. January 6th was not a deadly armed insurrection. It was a riot. The video proves that. There was no insurrection. No one was armed. Some violence was consistent with a riot, not an insurrection. And January 6th was far less violent than many of the 500 BLM riots that we witnessed for 5 months in 2020, that members of Chuck Schumer’s party called “most peaceful protests.”

There were no words that Tucker Carlson said Monday or Tuesday night that caused me to arrive at the conclusion I have drawn. The video itself proved what January 6th was and what it wasn’t. I could have put the sound on my television on mute and just watched the video, and concluded that everything the January 6 committed tried to convince the American people was an orchestrated lie. The video evidence speaks for itself, and that’s why it had been hidden by the Democrats for over 2 years.

Schumer said that Carlson was “cherry-picking from thousands of hours of video”. That was exactly what Nancy Pelosi and the January 6th Committee did when they only showed video that supported their narrative and kept thousands of hours of contrary video hidden, not only from the public but also from many of the January 6th defendants, denying them their Constitutional rights of due process and access to potentially exculpatory evidence. The side that wants to keep video hidden is the side that is cherry-picking. That is what cherry-picking means. And it is Chuck Schumer and the Democrats who want to keep video hidden. All of the other video that the January 6th Committee has already released is still out there in the public square if viewers want to see it and compare it to Carlson’s video. 

It was Schumer, not McCarthy, who was choosing “cheap political expediency over truth and democracy” when Schumer urged “Fox News to order Carlson to cease” showing the video. But releasing the video to the public is standing up for truth and democracy, not suppressing it. Calling for censorship of the video and the shutting down of a news agency is anti-truth and anti-democracy. They don’t want Tucker Carlson to show the video for the same reason they didn’t release the video for 2 years. It contradicted their narrative. If the video had supported their narrative, then Chuck Schumer would be praising the release of the video.

I thought we live in a country that believes that releasing the video promotes truth and justice. There is a reason why there are cameras all over the Capital grounds, so if there is ever a questionable incident, we would have the video evidence to determine exactly what happened. That’s why people demand that police officers wear body cameras so we can see for ourselves what happened during a highly charged situation. Wasn’t it good that we had video footage of the Rodney King beating? And wouldn’t we logically construe that if the police officers go to great lengths not to show large portions of the video, then they were most likely covering up some wrongdoing? 

The NFL, the NBA, and MLB, all use video replays so the officials can review a close play and determine whether the correct call had been made or not. What would we think if, on a certain close call, the league office stepped in and denied the officials on the field access to the video, if there were certain camera angles of the play that the league refused to be released to the replay officials? We would believe the league was hiding something and attempting to manipulate the outcome of the game. We would not believe that that was the right, fair, and just thing to do.

Isn’t the release of information a good thing? Didn’t we glorify the release of the Pentagon Papers to the Washington Post? Isn’t the motto of the Washington Post, “Democracy dies in darkness”? They even made a movie about it called, The Post, and heralded Katherine Graham and Ben Bradlee as heroes, standing up for truth and democracy. Isn’t Carlson doing the exact same thing as Graham and Bradlee, releasing information that exposes the lies of our political class? When former FBI Director, James Comey, leaked classified documents to the New York Times trying to damage Donald Trump, the same people who are objecting to this footage being released, cheered. They said he was standing up for Democracy. 

Schumer was right on one point, though, January 6 was not non-violent. An unarmed 35-year-old, 130-pound woman, named Ashli Babbitt, was violently killed by a Capital Police officer, Michael Bird. Strangely, Officer Bird was given a medal for his act of violence. The most violent person in the Capital on January 6th was honored as a hero by Joe Biden and the Democrats. The cowardly 200-pound man, who was so scared of a 130-pound unarmed woman that he believed his only recourse to stop her from climbing through a window was to shoot her in the neck and kill her, is a hero to the Democrats. And in true rat and cockroach form, Michael Bird hid his identity in the darkness from the public for a year.

The Democrats have absolutely no substance, that is why they lie so easily. Everything the Democrats do is about theatre, about creating a false narrative. There is nothing to them of substance, at least nothing positive that is substantive. They can only win over voters by creating these sham narratives. They cannot win on the merits of their political positions. The Democrats make up fake crimes while covering up real crimes. Right now, the Democrats have lied so often about so many things that they are lying about lying. How do we get to a place in our country where the person who is showing the public all the evidence and all the facts is the liar, and the one who hides evidence from the public is the one standing up for the truth? The people who claim that the act of showing the video tape is lying, are lying themselves. There is an easy litmus test, if you want to silence the media and suppress video from the public, you are lying. And Chuck Schumer and the rest of the Democrats want to do just that.  

EXCLUSIVE: US Judge Kyle Duncan Interview

Jurist silenced by elite Stanford Law mob explains why it matters for democracy

ROD DREHER MAR 12, 2023

SAVE▷  LISTEN

It was a revolt of the elites, a pogrom against free speech and civil discourse carried out by some of the nation’s most privileged. It was a scene from Dostoevsky’s political novel Demons played out in one of America’s most exclusive training schools for its legal ruling class. And it is a stark warning about the potentially totalitarian future of the US.

You will have heard by now about the shocking incident last week at Stanford Law School, one of the country’s top three, in which Kyle Duncan, an appellate judge on the federal Fifth Circuit, was shouted down and verbally abused by woke students who did not want to let him give a talk to students of the Federalist Society, which had invited him. 

The law school’s diversity dean, Tirien Steinbach, turned up to read a long prepared statement in which she lectured the conservative judge for his wickedness, and for causing “pain” and “harm” to Stanford students through his jurisprudence and presence on campus. You can watch the entire debacle below — and you should, because you have to see it and hear it to grasp the grotesque and repulsive nature of what happened at one of America’s most elite law schools.

Since then, both the president of Stanford and the dean of the Law School have publicly apologized to Judge Duncan. But the significance of this event cannot and must not be brushed away — particularly given the prestige of Stanford Law School. This follows a similar incident a year ago at Yale Law School, the No. 1 law school in the country, in which ADF General Counsel Kristen Waggoner was shouted down by angry students. 

Yale and Stanford are among the law schools that produce America’s top legal minds and practitioners — men and women who form a vital part of the institutional basis of America’s liberal democratic constitutional order. What happened at Yale was shocking enough, but what happened at Stanford is far worse, because it happened to a sitting federal judge. This has massive implications for the future of the United States. 

Yesterday, Judge Duncan agreed to answer some questions about it all from me, in writing. The interview follows:

Rod Dreher: Watching the video of the encounter at Stanford was painful. Did you fear for your safety at any point?

Judge Kyle Duncan: It was a deeply unpleasant experience, but, no, I didn’t fear for my safety. We haven’t reached the point (yet?) where the kind of vicious invective thrown around thoughtlessly by coddled law students portends real violence. Still, had you been there, the loathing in the room for me and everything I supposedly stand for would have been almost tangible. And not only were my judicial opinions or my ideas attacked. The attack was intimately personal and, frankly, disgusting. If I talked to a dog the way those students talked to me, I’d feel ashamed. (Actually, there was a dog there, with paint on its fur in what is evidently one version of a transgender flag. But I don’t blame the dog).

One other thing about safety, and this is kind of incredible. As the protestors were noisily filing into the classroom, a somewhat older gentleman (ok, he was probably my age) approached me and said something like, “Your honor, I’m from the U.S. Marshals office in the Northern District of California. We heard there was something going on at your presentation, and we decided to come out and make sure you were safe.” I was speechless. I had thought about contacting the Marshals, but decided it would have been overreacting. And yet, by the grace of God, not one but two Marshals showed up on their own initiative (they were wearing street clothes and so it wasn’t obvious who they were). The Marshal told me, “If you feel unsafe at any time, just put your hand on top of your head, and we’ll get you out.” I love those guys.

So, no I never felt unsafe. But the presence of two U.S. Marshals helped. As we were walking out after the “talk,” one of them said, sadly shaking his head, “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Did you ever get to deliver your remarks?

No. You might read comments somewhere that I was, at some point, given “permission” to deliver my remarks by the DEI Assistant Dean, Steinbach. Nonsense. For a good 20-30 minutes (I’m estimating), I was ruthlessly mocked and shouted down by a mob after every third word. And then Steinbach launched into her bizarre prepared speech where she simultaneously “welcomed” me to campus and told me how horrible and hurtful I was to the community. Then she said I should be free to deliver my remarks. Try delivering a lecture under those circumstances. Basically, they wanted me to make a hostage video. No thanks. The whole thing was a staged public shaming, and after I realized that I refused to play along. 

You have called for the firing of the DEI dean and the disciplining of law students involved in the protest. Why?

Naturally, I realize that it’s up to Stanford what to do about the jeering mob of students and the DEI dean, Steinbach. But I said what I did because what went on in that classroom was an utter disgrace. Start with the students screeching vulgarities and interrupting me every other word. This is a law school, for crying out loud. It’s supposed to be training students to enter a profession where respectful disagreement, even about supremely important things, is the most basic tool of the trade. You can’t be a lawyer unless you understand that the role of a lawyer is to explain—zealously, yes, but also with care, precision, and respect for your opponent—why your client should prevail. 

Ask yourself: how is anything that went on in that classroom remotely compatible with that mission? Answer: it is the opposite of what it means to be a lawyer. Unless those students undergo a radical change in their whole approach to argument and disagreement, they are unfit to be members of any bar.

But if that isn’t bad enough, now consider the DEI dean. Now, I don’t know this woman. I have nothing personal against her. I’m only reacting to how she played her role as an administrator of one of the most prestigious law schools in America, and during a very tense situation where students are spiraling out of control. 

She did exactly the opposite of what a law school administrator was supposed to do. Instead of explaining to the students that they should respect an invited guest at the law school (yes, a federal judge, but really this applies to any guest), even one they might disagree with passionately, she launched into a bizarre (and already printed out) monologue where she accused me of causing “hurt” and “division” in the law school community by my mere presence on campus. So, this had the effect of validating the mob. 

Then, at the same time, she pretended to “welcome” me to campus so that I could express my views. All of this was delivered, as anyone can see from the video, in the voice and idiom of a therapist. I found it profoundly creepy. It was the language of “compassion” and “feelings,” but it came across as deeply controlling and aggressive.

Many people are talking about the weird metaphor she used: “Was the juice worth the squeeze?” I had no idea what she was talking about, but at some point I realized that she meant, “Yes, you were invited to campus, and we ‘welcome’ you. But your presence here is causing such hurt and division. So, was what you were going to talk about really worth all this pain you’re causing by coming here?” In other words, it’s just a folksy way of giving these students a heckler’s veto. If they hate you enough, then surely it wasn’t worth your coming to campus. Apply that twisted idea to the civil rights movement, and see where you end up. It isn’t on the side of the people marching across the Selma bridge.

In other words, what the dean was preaching is the exact opposite of the law of free speech. We protect the speaker from the mob, not the mob from the speaker. And here was a dean of one of the best law schools in the world using the exact opposite of that basic principle to silence a sitting federal judge. I just read back through what I wrote, and I find it hard to believe what I’m describing. And yet it happened. You can watch the video.

I think many ordinary people will look upon this as “just college kids being college kids,” and dismiss it. As someone who has been following these events for years, I think that’s a mistake. Why does what happened to you at Stanford matter? 

It’s a catastrophic mistake for at least two reasons. First, this is one of the best law schools in the world. The students are the cream of the crop. The future judges, senators, presidents, leaders of industry. And yet here is a mob of the best and brightest, shouting down a federal judge who’s been invited to campus, and thereby demonstrating that they don’t have the foggiest grasp of the basic concept of legal discourse: you have to meet reason with reason. Instead, their operating principle is: If I don’t like what you say or think, I will silence you. Power trumps reason.

Second, and this is critical, these students are evidently being formed to think and behave this way by the law school itself. I cannot fathom any other reason why they would feel free to spit vile insults in the face of an invited speaker they disagree with (again, who happens to be a federal judge). Sure, many of them arrived at law school predisposed to behave like this from their undergraduate formation. But the whole point of law school is to train bright-yet-unformed young minds to “think like a lawyer.” 

You’ve seen The Paper Chase, of course. The brilliant professor Kingsfield humbles the first year law students with his withering Socratic interrogation. Now we’ve evidently turned that model upside down. The first year law students ridicule and silence Kingsfield for his cis-hetero-normativity, and then Kingsfield is publicly disciplined by the assistant DEI dean for harming the community’s sense of “belonging” by expecting them to recite a case.

Make no mistake: this kind of thing is endemic in legal education today, up and down the rankings. What is notable about this episode is that it has unmasked the dynamic in a dramatic way at one of the top law schools. As they say these days, the DEI dean “said the soft part out loud.” It’s impossible to miss.

Both the protest and the lecture that Dean Steinbach delivered to you are examples of what I call, in my book Live Not By Lies, “soft totalitarianism”. That is, they use the language of therapy (“pain,” “harm”) to justify silencing dissenting opinion and steamrolling over anybody who objects by declaring them to be haters. What does the Stanford Law debacle say about DEI and its compatibility with liberal democratic norms and principles?

Yes, I’ve described this whole sorry episode elsewhere as a “therapy session from hell.” It’s very important to unmask this for the underhanded manipulation that it is. To me, it seems like a particularly insidious form of the ad hominem attack: a person is labeled a “hater” or as “denying someone’s existence” or whatever, and so you can write that person off completely. This was demonstrated by the protestors again and again at  Stanford. Whenever I would point out that it was despicable to treat me and their fellow students this way (that is, the students who invited me to campus), that the Federalist Society students would never imagine treating one of their invited speakers this way, and that therefore they should show some minimal respect, the response was inevitably: “But you deny our basic rights and even our right to ‘exist,’ and so we owe you no respect at all. We can say whatever we want to you, we don’t have to listen to a word you say, because you are a hater.” That message came through again and again. It is chilling.

As for whether this attitude is compatible with a liberal democracy, I think I have basically answered the question already. It’s the antithesis of liberalism. It is profoundly illiberal to reflexively silence those you disagree with by excluding them from the circle of respectable society and by equating them with the hostes generis humani—the enemies of the human race (I’m stealing that one from Justice Scalia). It’s the exact opposite of how we are supposed to reason and debate to figure out how to order our civic life together. It is a form of totalitarianism, as you yourself have pointed out over and over again. Yes, you fairly say this is “soft” totalitarianism, but it sure seems to be getting harder by the day.

And what does the Stanford event say about the future of liberal democracy — that is, when elite law students feel themselves entitled to treat a federal judge that way, and are encouraged to do so, actively or passively, by the law school administration? 

The elites set the tone of our society, like it or not. The law students we graduate from Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and the like are the ones who, inevitably, will be occupying the commanding heights of government, academia, big business, philanthropy, and so on. So what they think is acceptable behavior matters immensely. And if it doesn’t seem to matter as much right now, just wait five or ten years. Then they will have percolated up through the ranks and will be calling the shots. And then you will see this illiberal mindset more and more in action.

At some point in the “talk,” I just gave up and started trying to respond to the invective. And yes, I was angry. Sometimes anger is justified. Sometimes it is the appropriate response. I angrily told these jeering, howling students that what they were doing simply would not work in the courtroom, or in a law firm, or in a board room. They thought this was hilarious. They couldn’t care less. 

What if they are right, though? What if, in ten or twenty years time, this kind of behavior is the norm in the courtroom, the law firm, the board room? And I don’t necessarily mean loud vulgarity and shouting people down. Instead, I mean a situation where power and ideology always trump reasoned debate. When we reach that place (and I’m assuming we haven’t already reached it in some way), then the rule of law will have turned into barbarism.

The Seven Stages of Renewal

charliej373Mar 11By Charlie JohnstonSouth Bend, Indiana – In the 19th Chapter of 1 Kings, the prophet, Elijah, goes up in the mountain in search of God. While there he is buffeted by ferocious winds, a big earthquake, and the outbreak of a terrible fire. But God was in none of these. When a still, small whisper came to him, Elijah went out in adoration, for here was the Lord God.The modern world and the modern church is buffeted by heavy winds, terrible quakes, and ravenous fires. God has sovereignty over all these things, but that is not where He is. Do not go looking for Him there or become distracted by the fearful violence of the winds, quakes and fires around you. I speak of these things, but I try to keep us focused on God’s still, small voice – which we find in the little things we can do to make life a little better and a little more joyful for those around us.Let’s take a look at some of the winds and waves…A lot of very serious people are giving me their assessment of when, exactly, everything will go ka-flooey. They are also telling me what they are doing in hopes of cushioning themselves from the consequences of complete social collapse.I have said, from the beginning, that this was coming. It has come to a head later than I expected but much quicker than almost all the rest of the world believed possible. Far more important than the precise timing of specific events is the purpose behind each of those events. It is to bring as many of us back to God as is possible by our internal dispositions. God is changing our way of thinking, if we allow it. Let us call it the seven stages of renewal…First, reveal the depth of the rot. While that pot has been bubbling for almost a century, it finally came to full boil in late 2017 with the “me-too” revelations throughout entertainment, politics and news media. But this was just the beginning. We saw, once the Russian collusion hoax was revealed to be just that – a hoax – that the institutions we have long relied on are no longer working for the public good, but in an organized grasp for power over all of us. The news media lies all the time about everything. Gov’t bureaucrats serve neither the people nor their elected superiors: they work to enslave us and choose their own allies to rule us, while relentlessly working to topple anyone outside the cabal who accidentally wins election. Credentialed Churchmen work to topple Scripture and the Gospels to remake the “faith” into their own image. In their hands, Jesus is demoted from God to front man for their progressive project. You cannot change this. Rather, God wills you to see it with clarity that you may advance to the second stage.Second, you are forced to choose where you stand. While instinctively quick in most people, this stage takes time to play out for two reasons. Most people, even if solidly grounded in their faith, desperately want to believe that things will smooth over. Who wants to believe they will have to actually fight for their most foundational beliefs? While it may seem this breeds nothing but raw paralysis, it also gives time for those who are honestly misled to literally get right with God. As Mark Twain said, it is easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled. As I have often said, nothing is lost in God’s economy – so God gives time for those who have an honest heart but a foolish head to choose well. If they are not eaten up with narcissistic hubris, many will. Those who persist in believing, contra the growing evidence around them, that they – not God – are the source of all wisdom will become part of the ash heap of salvation history. Before this step is fully completed in the bulk of humanity the next step begins.Third, you must publicly declare yourself. It avails nothing to believe in God while keeping it to yourself, as Gideon found out before he stepped it up. As the Apostle says, “Even the demons believe – and tremble.” (James 2:19) Your choice must be followed by declaration and action or it is just an evasion of your active duty before God.Fourth, battle begins. As the lines are drawn with growing clarity, subtle subversion gives way to overt attacks. That does not mean efforts to deceive cease, but the deception is far more brazen. Attackers twist language, using the semantics of liberty and faith in their efforts to subvert it all. Censorship is touted to “save our democracy.” Biblically forbidden sexuality is endorsed in the name of “tolerance.” It is largely a more concentrated form of the old, “evil is good and good is evil” play. It only fools those who are already committed to evil. It fortifies the resolve of those who are committed to God. It does, however, confuse those meek souls who desperately want to believe that, in the face of determined evil, there can be some compromise between good and evil. Some of these succumb to the siren song of evil while others awake to the danger before them and re-commit to God. After the initial confusion and chaos, this stage solidifies the lines of the battle.Fifth, people realize there is no place of safety. The forces of aggression will not stop and are not at all shamed or slowed when their depredations are fully revealed. Even as people realize the battle cannot be stopped; that there will be no peace until one side has prevailed and the other defeated, some timid souls still hope to find safety by keeping their heads down. But the forces of evil now no longer demand mere tolerance for their depredations; they will only accept outright endorsement and participation. Those who try to insist on neutrality after this stage commences will be swept away by the forces of evil, with little help from the forces of good which they have determinedly held at arm’s length in hopes of avoiding trouble.Sixth, people begin to mount plans for defense. Having deceived themselves for so long that everything was going to smooth out, they are now shocked into action, realizing that it is not going to go away if they just ignore it all. Unfortunately, the action most choose initially is panicked and childish. Most begin devising a plan of escape that counts entirely on their cleverness and not at all on God. A little wisdom would tell them that if they were not clever enough to see that this was NOT just the normal give-and-take of politics it is a fool’s game to make their cleverness the foundation of their defense. A smaller group retreats into a restless search for signs, for “messages from heaven” that will tell how God is going to do everything for us to get us out of the mess our neglect and avarice have created. In short, they double down on the neglect that got us here but now call that neglect “faith.” This is the most chaotic stage of all – and would be terribly prolonged if not for God’s mercy and grace.Seventh, the mature ora et labora – or pray and work – stage. Those who work furiously from their own cleverness may spend all day mapping out how to feed the multitude with a couple of fish and a crust of bread but, despite their exhaustive efforts, all will go hungry. Those who spin ever more dire or hopeful pronouncements from heaven will ignore their constant failure and keep spinning in the void. Even the best, most clear-sighted among us still see as through a glass, darkly. The worst just relentlessly spin fantasies, either to terrify the masses or give false hope to themselves. The disengaged gear may spin furiously, but until it engages, it won’t move anything. Ora et labora. Without God, our labors are in vain. Without work, God’s grace has nothing to anoint. When we grow wise enough to know that it is all way too big for us, but do the little we can right in front of us, trusting to Him for all that we genuinely can’t do, God’s grace will take up residence among us. The force of 10,000 evil empires cannot withstand the power of  a tiny smidgeon of God’s grace. Ora et labora. Not when we say it, but when we live it – without fear and without expectation, but simply because that is what God calls us to – is when satan and his evil will be swept away by the tidal wave of God’s grace.Then, and only then, will we be properly attired and ready for the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart. We will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living because we will be the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. And then will open a new era of real peace, prosperity and brotherhood under God among men. Cast away childish things and become heralds of the Triumph.From the beginning, I founded CORAC as a foundational tool to live ora et labora. I have little sympathy for survivalism. Most survivalists won’t. Though I have – and continue – to live a life of profound mysticism, my mysticism tells me it is time to work, to trust God when I can’t even see the step right in front of me, to hoe my little garden because it is what God calls me to do right now and until He reveals His hand. If you must have a sign or a formula, that is what I have. Join me.Ora et labora.*********

New Fetterman Hospital Report Leaks – GOP Leader Demands Answers as New York Times Covers for John Fetterman.

By Adam Casalino|March 10, 2023 

What’s Happening:

It’s been a while since Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman disappeared into the Walter Reed hospital. We were told he was being treated for life-long depression. But we can’t help but assume this has something to do with the stroke he suffered last year. His wife and kids fled the coop and his office claims he is doing well, posting pictures like he was a hostage victim.

Things are pretty fishy. And Republicans are demanding answers.

Doctors Can’t Explain But This Can Vanish Tinnitus (Ear Ringing)

From Penn Live:

A western Pennsylvania Republican’s demand that Democratic U.S. Sen. John Fetterman prove he is “alive and well” or resign is gaining traction in conservative circles across the country…

In his statement, Logue said the Fetterman campaign lied about his health during the 2022 campaign and the Washington County GOP “refuses to take assurances from the Office of the Senator or Democrat operatives that Fetterman is able to carry out his duties as Senator.”

More…

More…

Something tells us that Fetterman won’t be able to provide those assurances. Short of him posting a video featuring him speaking and showing his recovery, what are we to believe? The liberal media appears to be covering up for him and his office.

They are even trying to spin yarns about his shocking condition.

From The National Review:

In an absolutely shocking piece of “journalism,” the New York Times profiles how the office of John Fetterman is operating while the senator recovers from severe depression and a stroke at Walter Reed Hospital…

There is so much in this report that is wrong… But the line that really jumped out at me was this: “When Mr. Fetterman checked himself into the hospital on Feb. 15, the lead doctor told him that his case was treatable and guaranteed he would get back to his old self. Post-stroke depression, doctors said, affects one in three people and can be very serious, but is also highly treatable.”

You don’t have to be a doctor to understand what’s wrong with this statement. The doctor wasn’t named, which is highly unusual in articles of this nature. And you and I both know that doctors are never that confident about a patient’s recovery.

Especially when they suffered a stroke that was so severe, that the patient can’t understand human speech anymore.

The doctor guaranteed Fetterman would be back to “his old self”? When do doctors say that? But notice this, they are calling his depression a “post-stroke” symptom. Just days ago, the left claimed this was something he had been wrestling with his entire life.

Are you smelling a rat?

Nobody in their right mind is buying this performance. John Fetterman is very ill. So ill, he cannot serve in office. Republicans from Pennsylvania are demanding he resigns. But Democrats are not about to admit they were wrong and encourage that.

So, what are we going to do next?

Key Takeaways:

• John Fetterman remains isolated in the hospital as Republicans demand his resignation.
• The NYT released a shockingly misleading article about his condition, citing unnamed doctors.
• Fetterman is possibly too unwell to serve, but Democrats refuse to admit this.

Source: Penn Live, National Review

Stanford President and Law-School Dean Apologize to Judge Duncan

Ed Whelan

I’m pleased to break the news that Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Stanford law school dean Jenny Martinez have issued a joint letter of apology to Judge Kyle Duncan for the violations of university policies on speech that disrupted his talk on Thursday:

We write to apologize for the disruption of your recent speech at Stanford Law School. As has already been communicated to our community, what happened was inconsistent with our policies on free speech, and we are very sorry about the experience you had while visiting our campus.

In an obvious reference to DEI dean Tirien Steinbach’s bizarre six-minute scolding of Duncan, their letter observes that “staff members who should have enforced university policies failed to do so, and instead intervened in inappropriate ways that are not aligned with the university’s commitment to free speech.”

I asked Judge Duncan for comment and have received this response from him:

I appreciate receiving Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s and Stanford Law Dean Jenny Martinez’s written apology for the disruption of my speech at the law school. I am pleased to accept their apology.

I particularly appreciate the apology’s important acknowledgment that “staff members who should have enforced university policies failed to do so, and instead intervened in inappropriate ways that are not aligned with the university’s commitment to free speech.” Particularly given the depth of the invective directed towards me by the protestors, the administrators’ behavior was completely at odds with the law school’s mission of training future members of the bench and bar.

I hope a similar apology is tendered to the persons in the Stanford law school community most harmed by the mob action: the members of the Federalist Society who graciously invited me to campus. Such an apology would also be a useful step towards restoring the law school’s broader commitment to the many, many students at Stanford who, while not members of the Federalist Society, nonetheless welcome robust debate on campus.

Finally, the apology promises to take steps to make sure this kind of disruption does not occur again. Given the disturbing nature of what happened, clearly concrete and comprehensive steps are necessary. I look forward to learning what measures Stanford plans to take to restore a culture of intellectual freedom.

Two comments:

1. Late yesterday afternoon, Martinez sent a statement to Stanford law students. (I copy her statement in two parts from a post by David Lat.) As I noted in a tweet thread yesterday evening, there was a lot that was missing from Martinez’s statement. Perhaps most galling was Martinez’s suggestion that Steinbach’s intervention was a “well-intentioned” “attempt at managing the room” that just “went awry.”

Why did Stanford president Tessier-Lavigne sign the apology to Duncan, rather than just leave it to Martinez to do so? One obvious possibility is that he was disappointed with her excuse-mongering for Steinbach and didn’t trust her to issue a proper apology.

2. The letter of apology is very tepid in its assertion that Stanford is “taking steps to ensure that something like this does not happen again.” We shall see what steps Stanford actually takes. Firing Steinbach would be a good first step. Identifying and publicly censuring students who engaged in flagrant misconduct would be another.

M. Edward Whelan III
Distinguished Senior Fellow and

Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies
Ethics and Public Policy Center
1730 M Street N.W., Suite 910
Washington, D.C. 20036
202-682-1200
www.EPPC.org

Open in app or online

Stanford Law Students Are The Enemy

By humiliating federal judge, ruling class shows contempt for liberal democracy

ROD DREHERMAR 10

SAVE▷  LISTEN

This is shocking stuff from a Federalist Society event at Stanford Law School. A woke mob of law students shouted down Federal Judge Kyle Duncan as he tried to deliver a lecture. Watch as the gutless whinypants DEI administrator nearly breaks into tears talking about the “pain” of and “harm” to these privileged shitbirds, and lambasting a federal judge about how wicked he is. 

Here’s Ed Whelan’s take:

Ed Whelan @EdWhelanEPPC

With the acquiescence of @StanfordLaw administrators, Stanford law students yesterday shouted down Fifth Circuit judge Stuart Kyle Duncan at a scheduled event on topic of “The Fifth Circuit in Conversation with the Supreme Court: Covid, Guns, and Twitter.” 1/2:07 PM ∙ Mar 10, 2023549Likes205Retweets

I watched the video. I hope you do too. I can’t be neutral about this. Judge Duncan is a friend of mine. I know him to be a Catholic man of great character and compassion, as well as conviction. It made me ball up my fists watching him humiliated by these brats and by that mewling, pathetic DEI Dean Steinbach. She performed EXACTLY as DEI officers are taught to perform. That is why we must abolish it at every opportunity. No compromise with it: full abolishment, to the extent of the law. If we don’t, you mark my words: that Madame Defarge will be knitting inclusivity shawls to catch the heads as they tumble down from the guillotine.

I cannot bear these people, these Stanford Law students and their grotesque Dean Steinbach. These people are the Enemy. I will vote for anybody who will stop them. They are destroying our liberal democracy. Every one of those students are going to go into the ruling class, and will spend their careers in the law trying to oppress the people they have decided don’t have a right to be free, or respected, or anything but crushed as wrongthinkers and Bad People.

Someone said on Twitter that the “emerging conservative narrative” is wrong, that the video shows a dean “deftly navigating a hard situation” in a way that allows the talk to proceed. I presume that writer was not drunk when he watched the video and wrote that. Here’s one response:

This event is a good example of the soft totalitarianism I’ve been writing about. They don’t believe that Duncan had a right to speak to a student law society about the law. After disrupting his speech at length, and sitting through that disgusting lecture by Dean Steinbach, half the students in the room left. They only came to prevent him from talking, and to prevent their classmates from hearing him.

Don’t you get it? Don’t you see where this is going? These people are the ruling class! They do not believe in free speech, reasoned debate, and other hallmarks of liberal democracy. And they will be the judges of tomorrow appointed by a Democratic administration. 

I would have been emotional about this anyway, because I loathe these privileged brats with everything in me. But I am beside myself because they did this to my friend, who is one of the gentlest souls I know. You don’t like his jurisprudence? Fine. That’s your right. But you don’t have the right to treat him like this — or anyone else. Not a conservative judge, and not a progressive judge. Not at South Bumblefutz State law school, and not at Stanford law school. Nobody. Nowhere. If they’re allowed to get away with this — and of course they will — then we won’t long have a country.

I hope you will watch the clip and listen to the language of Dean Steinbach. All that mealy-mouthed therapeutic nonsense about “pain” and “harm” suffered by the students simply for having a judge they don’t like on campus. Liberal tears get cried because liberal tears work. The administration of Stanford is complicit in this disgrace too. 

I cannot stand Donald Trump. I wish he would go away. He’s not good for our country. But I tell you this: if he is on the ballot in 2024, I will crawl over broken glass to vote for him as a strike against these ruling-class woke totalitarians, and hope that President Trump will appoint many more federal judges to hold the line against the Jacobins. Personally, I’d rather have Ron DeSantis, who is demonstrating right now that he has the spine and the smarts to attack wokeness. If you think these Stanford radicals are going to respect the basics of liberal democracy when they make it to the bench, you’re dreaming. They are the products of an academic law system that despises half the country, and the liberal democracy that gives them a say-so in how they are governed. 

Now is a good time to go back to April 3, 2015, and read this piece I did about a conversation I had with a professor closeted as a Christian inside one of the country’s top law schools, who would only speak with me anonymously. I called him “Prof. Kingsfield”. We spoke after woke capitalists compelled the Indiana state legislature to repeal the state version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, alleging that it was bigoted against LGBTs. Excerpts:

What prompted his reaching out to me? “I’m very worried,” he said, of events of the last week. “The constituency for religious liberty just isn’t there anymore.”

Like me, what unnerved Prof. Kingsfield is not so much the details of the Indiana law, but the way the overculture treated the law. “When a perfectly decent, pro-gay marriage religious liberty scholar like Doug Laycock, who is one of the best in the country — when what he says is distorted, you know how crazy it is.”

“Alasdair Macintyre is right,” he said. “It’s like a nuclear bomb went off, but in slow motion.” What he meant by this is that our culture has lost the ability to reason together, because too many of us want and believe radically incompatible things.

But only one side has the power. When I asked Kingsfield what most people outside elite legal and academic circles don’t understand about the way elites think, he said “there’s this radical incomprehension of religion.”

“They think religion is all about being happy-clappy and nice, or should be, so they don’t see any legitimate grounds for the clash,” he said. “They make so many errors, but they don’t want to listen.”

To elites in his circles, Kingsfield continued, “at best religion is something consenting adult should do behind closed doors. They don’t really understand that there’s a link between Sister Helen Prejean’s faith and the work she does on the death penalty. There’s a lot of looking down on flyover country, one middle America.

“The sad thing,” he said, “is that the old ways of aspiring to truth, seeing all knowledge as part of learning about the nature of reality, they don’t hold. It’s all about power. They’ve got cultural power, and think they should use it for good, but their idea of good is not anchored in anything. They’ve got a lot of power in courts and in politics and in education. Their job is to challenge people to think critically, but thinking critically means thinking like them. They really do think that they know so much more than anybody did before, and there is no point in listening to anybody else, because they have all the answers, and believe that they are good.”

He went on to say, of Christians:

“We have to fall back to defensive lines and figure out where those lines are. It’s not going to be persecution like the older Romans, or even communist Russia,” he added. “But what’s coming is going cause a lot of people to fall away from the faith, and we are going to have to be careful about how we define and clarify what Christianity is.”

“If I were a priest or pastor, I don’t know what I would advise people about what to say and what not to say in public about their faith,” Kingsfield said.

More:

On the political side, Kingsfield said it’s important to “surrender political hope” — that is, that things can be solved through political power. Republicans can be counted on to block the worst of what the Democrats attempt – which is a pretty weak thing to rely on, but it’s not nothing. “But a lot of things can be done by administrative order,” he said. “I’m really worried about that.”

And on the cultural front? Cultural pressure is going to radically reduce orthodox Christian numbers in the years go come. The meaning of what it means to be a faithful Christian is going to come under intense fire, Kingsfield said, not only from outside the churches, but from within. There will be serious stigma attached to standing up for orthodox teaching on homosexuality.

“And if the bishops are like these Indiana bishops [who capitulated — RD], where does that leave us?” he said. “We have a problem in the current generation, but what I really worry about is what it means to transmit the faith to the next generation.”

Can you not open your eyes and see the future they have prepared for us? This is not just a bunch of spoiled elite law school kids acting out — the kind of college students who will grow up once they get into the Real World. Dean Steinbach comes from the Real World. She validates them. All elite culture does. Liberal tears have corroded the girders of liberal democracy. Watch the video. Think about what you saw. Understand that not a damn thing is going to come of this.