OPINION

Canceling Church Services on Christmas?

Some Protestant pastors are canceling their Sunday church services this week because it’s Christmas Day and they fear no one will show up.

• John M. Grondelski

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Do you ever wonder what happened in Boston on December 25, 1661?  

In 1659, Massachusetts Bay Colony, under Puritan leadership, banned the observance of Christmas as “superstitious,” fining anyone caught celebrating it. As in Soviet Russia, the best evidence against any “keeping” of Christmas was to go to work.   

Well, December 25, 1661, was a Sunday. And Sundays were the high point of the Massachusetts week, regulated by what one was to do (go to church) and fail to do (work). 

Orthodox. Faithful. Free.

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So, when Puritans went to church on Sunday, December 25, 1661, presumably the minister said nothing about Christmas, an early version of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” If the “Bible-in-a-Year” model had been in vogue back then, by the last week of December they should have been in the middle of some real awful plagues in the Book of Revelation. That’ll teach ‘em! 

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And when the Puritans came home on Sunday, December 25, 1661, (probably in mid-afternoon) and lolled around the farm, how did the Colony authorities know they were honoring the Sabbath rather than clandestinely “forbearing of labour” to honor Christmas? 

I make these observations in light of a feature in the December 18 New York Times’ Sunday Magazine, in which Ruth Graham interviews Protestant pastors across America who plan to cancel church servicesnext Sunday, December 25. Why? 

Because it’s Christmas Day. 

Now, lest one think that the spirit of Increase and Cotton Mather and perhaps Jonathan Edwards suddenly stalks the land, relax. There’s nothing quite so theologically serious about why they’re calling off church services. 

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The pastors are cancelling them because they don’t think people will come. 

Unlike financial planners, their future forecast is based on past performance: when Christmas last fell on a Sunday—in 2016—service attendance was minimal. People told pastors they preferred a slow morning, with their families, opening presents.   

Given that precedent, and still-anemic numbers after the great Covid lockdown, some Protestant pastors simply decided to announce no service would be scheduled. Graham reports that 84 percent of Protestant ministers surveyed planned Christmas services, which means almost one in five didn’t. 84 percent of Protestant ministers surveyed planned Christmas services, which means almost one in five didn’t.Tweet This

The Mathers at least railed at Christmas because they thought it “superstitiously” detracted from the honor due God. Today’s pastors now rail at Sunday because it detracts from the comfort options of their congregants on Christmas. 

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As if Christmas and Sunday are mutually exclusive. 

Graham notes that the 2020 pandemic experience had also changed the way some ministers think of what it means to “go to church.” Given the tele-evangelical bent of Protestantism, “online church” is growing. [That doesn’t work for a sacramental church like the Catholic Church—unless you turn the sacraments into empty rituals—but for Protestants who long ago marginalized even Eucharistic celebration, no sweat].  

Ministers who are more theologically loosey-goosey (a key theological term) invoke Matthew 18:20 (“where two or three are gathered in my name, I am in their midst”) to apply a religious patina to familial present-opening on the living room floor. It’s probably not too far from the American Golfer’s Proof for the Existence of God (“I encounter the Lord in nature…on the eighteenth hole”).   

Pundits lament the decline of “organized religion.” But the truth is that moderns don’t seem to think religion needs to be “organized.” Religion as a structure, a discipline against which one measures one’s beliefs and actions, is derided as “inauthentic” or “externalist” or even “hypocritical.” “Real” religion is interior. 

In one sense, that’s true: religion needs to be self-appropriated. But I fear that, in practice, the interiority of religion of which moderns speak is inside the house, sipping hot chocolate by the Christmas tree; or under the covers at noon, reading the Times Sunday Magazine about the other folks who aren’t going to church either. 

Honesty demands admitting this schmear has nothing in common with “organized religion,” not just because it is unorganized but because it doesn’t deserve the name “religion.” Religare, the etymological origin of “religion,” means “to bind together.” But this goo unites nothing.  

It calls itself “spiritual” because it feigns some nonmaterial aura; but it shares nothing with spirituality unless we believe everyman is simultaneously his own disciple and guru. Such schmaltz may have worked for Ralph Waldo Emerson and even Henry David Thoreau (though the latter needed his working aunt to bail the wordmonger of Walden out of jail), but I bet even Ebenezer Scrooge would have preferred a thicker gruel. 

Worship of God always involved a communal context. God made a covenant with Israel, not individual deals with Moses and Aaron. A true Jewish worship service presupposes a minyan: ten men past their bar mitzvahs (i.e., true “sons of the Torah”). Christianity speaks of the “body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 12), the “vine and the branches” (John 15:1-17), and God’s will to save men in community (Lumen gentium, # 9).   

The sidelining of the ecclesiological context of worship, while accelerated by the great Covid lockdown and the failure to reckon with the long-term damage of a “field hospital” that retreated from the battlefield, preexisted 2020. The privatization of religion has long been afoot; it is arguably even a foundational tenet of the Protestant Revolt, with its focus on personal Scriptural interpretation and “my relationship with Jesus.”   

What we see today is what happens when individualism detaches from organized religion to become a religion in itself, one that takes down its competition. It’s a “religion” that finds social resonance when even the mainstream faiths peddle a moralistic therapeutic deism instead of an authentic Judaism or Christianity. How could we imagine a “good and gentle Jesus” who simply wants us to “love” being upset that we are not “going to church” when He’s both everywhere and yet conveniently nowhere in terms of most of what I want to do in life?   

Note the verb: “imagine.” There’s a lot of imagining that takes the place of real religion today. And that’s why going to church on Christmas becomes a question, even for those who imagine this is compatible with real faith. 

• John M. GrondelskiJohn M. Grondelski (Ph.D., Fordham) is a former associate dean of the School of Theology, Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey. All views expressed herein are his own.

Reparations For LeBron Is A Slam Dunk December 21, 2022 Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the latest call for reparations: Max Fennell says white people owe him money. Why? Because he is black and blacks were enslaved a long time ago by white people. Has that hurt him? Apparently not. He is an affluent 35-year old businessman, entrepreneur and former professional triathlete. But he wants the money. He also wants land. Fennell testified last week before a California reparations task force. He said every black person in the state should get $350,000. He wants additional funding for businessmen like himself: black-owned businesses should receive grants of $250,000 and 15-20 acres of land. Here is what he told the panel. “It’s a debt that’s owed, we worked for free…we’re not asking—we’re telling you.” We worked for free? Fennell never worked for free a day in his life. Yet that doesn’t stop him from hustling whitey. And let’s face it—whitey is ridden with guilt, making him a ripe target for shakedown artists. There are few things the task force should consider before it goes any further. It is a matter of historical record that not all blacks were enslaved during slavery. In fact, some of the slavemasters were black. Journalist Philip Burnham wrote an enlightening article in the February/March 1993 edition of American Heritage on this subject. He concluded that black slaveowners were not uncommon (and let’s not forget that African slavemasters sold their black slaves to the Europeans). “According to 1830 U.S. census records, 3,775 free blacks—living mostly in the South—owned a total of 12,760 slaves. Though the vast majority of these owned no more than a few slaves, some in Louisiana and South Carolina held as many as seventy or eighty.” Burnham found that some black slaveowners had benign motives—they wanted to protect family members from being mistreated—while others shared the motivation of white slaveowners and were consumed with the pursuit of commercial profit. John Hope Franklin, the distinguished African American historian, came to the same conclusion. “The majority of Negro owners of slaves had some personal interest in their property. There were instances, however, in which free Negroes had a real economic interest in the institution of slavery and held slaves in order to improve their economic status.” Another prominent African American historian, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., found evidence of free blacks in New Orleans who defended the Confederacy. On the eve of the Civil War, free blacks issued a statement making clear what their interests were. “The free colored population [native] of Louisiana…own[ed] slaves, and they are dearly attached to their native land…and they are ready to shed their blood for her defense. They have no sympathy for abolitionism; no love for the North, but they have plenty for Louisiana….They will fight for her in 1861 as they fought [to defend New Orleans from the British] in 1814-1815” (my italics). So how will they determine who needs to pony up? Surely some of the blacks who live in California today are descendants of black slavemasters. Do they get a check? Or should they have to fork up as well? Here’s another problem. The reparations task force is apparently not considering a means test, which means LeBron James qualifies. James earns $100 million a year shooting basketballs into a hoop. His net worth is $600 million. He also earns $60-90 million a year in endorsements and has a $1 billion lifetime contract with Nike. To top things off, the money James gets from Nike is taken, in part, from slaves who work for the company in communist China. No matter, it looks like LeBron makes the cut. Indeed, it’s a slam dunk. But the Mexicans who clean his locker room have to pay. This a sticky wicket best left alone. But white guys ridden with guilt—like Gov. Gavin Newsom—won’t drop it, and neither will professional hustlers like Max Fennell. “California dreaming” never sounded so surreal.

Charity volunteer arrested, charged for silent prayer “thoughtcrime” near abortion facility

Summary

• Birmingham charity volunteer arrested and searched – including through her hair – after silently praying in a censorship zone
• Arrest and charges take place as authorities consider criminalising prayer near abortion facilities nationwide 

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BIRMINGHAM (20 December 2022) – A charity volunteer has been arrested and charged on four counts after she told the police she “might” be praying silently, when questioned as to why she was standing on a public street near an abortion facility.   

Police approached Isabel Vaughan-Spruce standing near the BPAS Robert Clinic in Kings Norton, Birmingham. Vaughan-Spruce was carrying no sign and remained completely silent until approached by officers. Police had received complaints from an onlooker who suspected that Vaughan-Spruce was praying silently in her mind.  

“It’s abhorrently wrong that I was searched, arrested, interrogated by police and charged simply for praying in the privacy of my own mind. Censorship zones purport to ban harassment, which is already illegal. Nobody should ever be subject to harassment. But what I did was the furthest thing from harmful – I was exercising my freedom of thought, my freedom of religion, inside the privacy of my own mind. Nobody should be criminalised for thinking and for praying, in a public space in the UK,” said Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, following her arrest for silent prayer.   

The censorship zone measure introduced by Birmingham authorities criminalises individuals percieved to be “engaging in any act of approval or disapproval or attempted act of approval or disapproval” in relation to abortion, including through “verbal or written means, prayer or counselling…”.  

A “thoughtcrime” in UK law?  

Vaughan-Spruce had stood near the abortion facility whilst it was closed on three occasions, in which she says she “might” have been praying.

Whilst in the police station, Vaughan-Spruce was shown pictures of herself outside the abortion facility. She said she could not recall from the pictures whether she was praying at these specific moments, or whether these had been taken at times that she was distracted and thought about other things, such as her lunch. She maintains that all her thoughts were equally peaceful and imperceptible and that none should be criminalised.    

“Isabel’s experience should be deeply concerning to all those who believe that our hard-fought fundamental rights are worth protecting. It is truly astonishing that the law has granted local authorities such wide and unaccountable discretion, that now even thoughts deemed “wrong” can lead to a humiliating arrest and a criminal charge,” said Jeremiah Igunnubole, Legal Counsel for ADF UK, the legal organisation supporting Vaughan-Spruce.  

 “A mature democracy should be able to differentiate between criminal conduct and the peaceful exercise of constitutionally protected rights. Isabel, a woman of good character, and who has tirelessly served her community by providing charitable assistance to vulnerable women and children, has been treated no better than a violent criminal. The recent increase in buffer zone legislation and orders is a watershed moment in our country. We must ask ourselves whether we are a genuinely democratic country committed to protecting the peaceful exercise of the right to freedom of speech. We are at serious risk of mindlessly sleepwalking into a society that accepts, normalises, and even promotes the “tyranny of the majority,” he continued.

As part of her conditions for bail, Vaughan-Spruce was told that she should not contact a local Catholic priest who was also involved in pro-life work – a condition that was later dropped.

Police also imposed restrictions, as part of her bail, on Vaughan-Spruce engaging in public prayer beyond the PSPO area, stating that this was necessary to prevent further offences. 

Pro-Life Views under Pressure  

Vaughan-Spruce is the Director of the UK March for Life and has volunteered for many years in support of women in crisis pregnancies.   

“I have devoted much of my life to supporting women in crisis pregnancies with everything that they need to make an empowered choice for motherhood. I am also involved in supporting women who have had abortions and are struggling with the consequences of it. I’ve grown close to many of the women I’ve been able to support over the years, and it breaks my heart to know that so many more go through this every day,” explains Vaughan-Spruce.   

“My faith is a central part of who I am, so sometimes I’ll stand or walk near an abortion facility and pray about this issue. This is something I’ve done pretty much every week for around the last 20 years of my life. I pray for my friends who have experienced abortion, and for the women who are thinking about going through it themselves,” she continued.  

Her arrest follows another recent incident in Bournemouth where a woman was told to leave by local authorities for praying, even outside of the local censorship zone. Find out more. 

 Last year, a grandmother from Liverpool successfully overturned her charge on human rights grounds after she was arrested and fined for praying silently near an abortion facility on a walk during lockdown. Find out more.   

 Westminster weighs up nationalising censorship zones in light of human rights concerns  

In Westminster, parliamentarians are considering legislation to introduce censorship zones in England and Wales. Clause 9 of the Public Order Bill, currently under parliamentary debate, would prohibit pro-life volunteers from “influencing”, “advising”, “persuading”, “informing”, “occupying space” or even “expressing opinion” within the vicinity of an abortion facility.  

 Those who breach the rules could face up to two years in prison.  

 A 2018 government review into the work of pro-life volunteers outside of abortion facilities found that instances of harassment are rare, and police already have powers to prosecute individuals engaging in such activities. The most common activities of pro-life groups were found to be quiet or silent prayer, or offering leaflets about charitable support available to women who would like to consider alternative options to abortion.   

At 150m, the national censorship zones would be larger than a football pitch (115m). In the equivalent space, if one goalkeeper were to pray for the other goalkeeper – regardless of impact or noticeability – that would be an offence.

 The censorial provisions of the parliamentary bill drew substantive criticism from members of the House of Lords, including Liberal Democrat Peer Lord Beith, who deemed the clause “the most profound restriction on free speech I have ever seen in any UK legislation.” Lord Farmer called the clause “fundamentally flawed”, and asked, “When one walks past, one sees that vigils are often small groups of harmless, mainly female, pensioners. Why should they be banned and silenced?”  

The Clause has caused great controversy following a statement released from the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of Stateshortly after MPs voted to include it, admitting that the clause “could not be said to be compliant” with Convention rights as protected in the European Court of Human Rights.   

Baroness Claire Fox, who advocates for abortion, pointed out that “creating prohibitions on protest on an issue-by-issue basis is not an appropriate way to make law. It sets a precedent that will inevitably lead to attempts to prevent speech, expression, information sharing, assembly or the holding of protected beliefs around other sites or in relation to other controversial or unpopular causes.”   

Joe Biden just got hit with a truth bomb from this top Republican

Despite what the corporate-controlled media is telling you, the Hunter Biden laptop story, and the FBI’s attempt to suppress it, is one of the biggest scandals to ever hit the White House. 

Rarely, if ever, has there been such a deliberate attempt to manipulate the media to help a particular candidate (in this case Joe Biden) right before an election. 

But now Joe Biden just got hit with a truth bomb from this top Republican. 

“Twittergate” has the potential to completely upend the Department of Justice

If the FBI really did meddle in the 2020 elections as leaked documents indicate, then this scandal has the potential to completely upend the Department of Justice. 

Unfortunately, many Americans do not even know about this scandal at all, which is why House Republicans must make investigating this scandal a top priority in the next Congress. 

One House Republican who is outraged by “Twittergate” is Rep.Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who just unleashed on Joe Biden and the FBI. 

Appearing on Fox Business Network’s Mondays with Maria, Rep. Mace argued, “It doesn’t matter what side of the aisle that you sit on, but there are bureaucrats who try to manipulate the political system for political gain for their candidates, and that’s not their job. And if you are suppressing free speech as a government agency, then those individuals need to get kicked out of those jobs. We have got to hold people accountable.” 

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She then went on to say, “We have a Constitution. We should follow it. The creators, what they created and founded our country on was brilliant. But the checks and balances need to be real. It needs to be more than just a headline, more than just a letter.” 

Although Nancy Mace is no hero for the conservative movement, she is completely right about this. 

If even squishy Republicans like Nancy Mace are fired up, then you know something is up. 

What “Twittergate” proves is that the FBI is entirely politically motivated

As Rep. Mace said, bureaucrats have been caught red-handed trying to manipulate America’s political system for personal gain. 

This is corruption at its very worst, and each and every America ought to be outraged. 

Republicans must make investigating this case a top priority. 

That being said, you can expect Democrats and the corporate-controlled media to do everything in their power to stop these investigations. 

Today’s Department of Justice and FBI are a complete and total disgrace. 

These agencies are no longer interested in enforcing the law, but rather they are interested in playing politics and making personal gains. 

Not only does this make America a less safe country as drug lords and human traffickers run free, but it also undermines America’s democratic institutions. 

There is nothing pro-democracy about the American Left.  

In fact, the American Left has a loathing for the very concept of democracy. 

There is nothing Democrats hate more than people who have opinions that are different from their own, and instances like “Twittergate” prove the extreme lengths they are willing to go to silence these opposing voices.

US Political Daily will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.  

The ESG of SBF

By: Judd Garrett

Objectivity is the Objective

December 14, 2022

On Monday, Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested on eight separate counts of defrauding his investors out of $1.8 billion through his failed cryptocurrency/Ponzi scheme, FTX. Coincidentally, he was apprehended the day before he was going to testify in front of Congress where he might have incriminated himself, but also possibly incriminated some Democrat lawmakers in the process to whom he had donated millions of dollars. So, he had to be put behind bars to shut him up.

The interesting part about this whole episode is the complete lack of outrage that is coming from the left. In the past, when there was a major financial fraud, whether it was Enron or Bernie Madoff or Mike Milken, the left was loudly outspoken, using these financial crimes to attack capitalism and the free market, and to push for more government control of our financial institutions. But Sam Bankman-Fried is different from those other people and other companies because Sam Bankman-Fried was seen as better than everybody else. He was more moral and more virtuous, and because of that, he believed that he could do whatever he wanted with impunity. 

For most of his life, Sam Bankman-Fried has been told by most of America’s institutions that Republicans are the devil, and Conservatives are the devil’s minions. He believed that if he held the proper political positions, pushed the right social causes, and donated to the right political campaigns, then he attained a level of infallible virtue. He claimed to live by the “effective altruism” and “earning to give” movements. In a pledge in which Bankman-Fried promised to give away most of his fortune, he wrote, “A while ago I became convinced that our duty was to do the most we could for the long run aggregate utility of the world… In the end, it’s the work my friends and colleagues at foundations do that matters the most.” He promised to give away $500 million per year to causes such as reducing climate change and Covid-19 preparedness.

Why would he believe he was not virtuous and special? All he had to do was spout out a lot of the woke talking points, and was rewarded handsomely – rich and famous people started investing in his company at a rate where he became an overnight billionaire. Major news agencies gushed all over him, running glorified profiles on him, calling him the next JP Morgan. This is what has been indoctrinated into his brain from the time he was a little kid. Republicans and Conservatives are the devils; Democrats and Liberals are the saviors. So, if you are on the left side, then you are moral and virtuous, and special. Why would he think otherwise?

Because he was so virtuous, Bankman-Fried believed he was allowed to do whatever he wanted even if it meant defrauding thousands of investors out of billions of dollars. That did not matter because of all the good that he was doing with their money. As the second leading donor to the Democrat party in 2022, he was primarily responsible for helping the Democrats hold onto the Senate, and preventing the Republicans from having a true red wave. In short, he helped prevent the devil from taking power in America. So, that act of heroism, in and of itself, should cause people to turn a blind eye to all of his illegal activity. 

Joe Biden stated that American democracy was at stake in the 2022 election because Republicans were poised to take over the House and Senate. So, the millions of dollars that Sam Bankman-Fried donated to Democrats, regardless of whether the money was procured legally or not, saved American democracy, so it should not matter that he defrauded thousands of people out of billions of dollars. Imagine how much worse all of those people’s lives would be if American democracy had been lost – if they were forced to live under the semi-fascist rule of Republicans. Sam Bankman-Fried was a hero. He was on the same level as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King jr., and all those soldiers who stormed the beaches of Normandy. 

Sam Bankman-Fried saved America. It does not matter that he hurt thousands of his investors in the process. And now, think about what Blackrock is doing with its ESG movement. Blackrock has a fiduciary obligation to its investors to put their interests first as the primary motivation for the decisions they make. If they do anything contrary to that, they are violating their fiduciary obligation to their investors. But Blackrock has been investing in companies not to grow their investor’s accounts as much as possible so they can retire comfortably – in alignment with their fiduciary responsibilities – but to grow their ESG score as high as possible even if that means their investors do not make as much money as they could have. ESG investing puts promoting liberal and left-wing causes first and the interest of the investors last. How is that any different than what Sam Bankman-Fried was doing? He used his company to put his left-wing politics first and his investors last. How is that any different than what Twitter has been doing up until Elon Musk took over? The executives at Twitter used their company to push left-wing politics first, and the interest and needs of the individual user last. The same can be said for Facebook and Instagram and Google, and all of the big tech companies. Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX were simply ESG allowed to run to its natural and full fruition. And thousands of people have been irreparably harmed.

If you want to destroy an economy, if you want to destroy a country, allow politics to infect every major institution of that country. And over the last 40 years, the United States of America has allowed politics to infiltrate and take over our education system, our entertainment industry, professional sports, the media, social media, law enforcement, our intelligence agency, and our military, and now it is infecting our financial institutions. But the interesting observation about the politicization of all of our main institutions is that when we live our normal lives and interact with most people, there is very little politics spoken. It is not as if people are clamoring to have politics in all of these institutions throughout their lives. It is that these institutions are so infected with politics from the outside that people by nature end up engaging in politics to a much greater extent than they would have if these institutions had remained politics-free.

Did anybody in the media ask Sam Bankman-Fried one hard question? Did anybody even wonder about his meteoric rise at such a young age? Or were they just so enamored with his virtue that there was no way that he could ever be doing anything to harm anyone? Isn’t this a little bit like the way we are handling our current President? How many journalists in the mainstream media ask Joe Biden a hard question? How many journalists in the mainstream media challenge his policy positions from the open border to inflation, to our supply chain crisis, to gas prices, to crime, to fentanyl? How many journalists in the mainstream media have asked Joe Biden about his illegal business dealings in Ukraine and China using his son Hunter as a proxy to sell his influence? No one in the mainstream media is asking any of those questions because they believe they don’t have to because by being a Democrat and a liberal, Joe Biden is virtuous and incorruptible. 

The mainstream media is so thrilled that Donald Trump is no longer the President that not only will they accept anybody who is not Donald Trump, they will turn a blind eye to everything that person is doing. There’s no way, in their mind, that somebody with a “D” next to their name could do anything dishonest or corrupt, or unethical. That’s not the way it works in their minds where they think that every Republican is evil, and every Democrat is virtuous. So, you get a completely non-curious media when a Democrat wins the Presidency and a completely out-of-control attacking media to the point of inventing scandals when a Republican is President. In the end, we get a completely warped country because our media and every other main institution has been completely infected by left-wing politics. And no country can stand when it becomes this lopsided.

 Two Antithetical Billionaires

The hatred of the accomplished Musk and the worship of the hollow man Bankman-Fried are sad commentaries on how liberalism has descended into progressivism and ultimately into Stalinism.

By: Victor Davis Hanson

American Greatness

December 15, 2022

Before the midterm November elections, Sam Bankman-Fried was a left-wing billionaire heartthrob.

He properly grew up on the Stanford campus, where his parents were well-known left-wing activist law professors. He went to a tony prep school and on to MIT.

Bankman-Fried mocked society’s bourgeois capitalist conventions by dressing and looking like a slob in cut-offs and T-shirts. Indeed, he bested the nose-ring, Charles Manson-esque appearance of former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. He outdid the all-black, Steve Jobs copy-cat get-up of another fallen leftist icon, the now-convicted felon Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos infamy.

The Left canonized Bankman-Fried for the hundreds of millions of dollars he created out of thin air and channeled to left-wing congressional and state candidates, Joe Biden, and a host of “progressive” causes under the cool slogan “effective altruism.”

For decades hence—or so Bankman-Fried promised—his cryptocurrency company FTX would churn out billions. Its politically correct gifting won exemptions from the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Democratic-controlled congressional oversight committees.

The loud-talking, left-wing slob promised billions of dollars more in gifts to come. He was knighted as the successor to the kindred financial market manipulator and progressive “philanthropist” George Soros.

SBF may have been a sloppy, immature fool, but he was no dummy.

He had learned early on that loud leftist talk, big promises of philanthropy, and huge cash infusions to the media and leftist candidates—all under the veneer of “effective altruism”— ensured de facto immunity for his Ponzi schemes from both bad press and government investigation.

Then, suddenly, the midterms were over. Powerful financial interests were screaming their millions had vanished at the hands of SBF.

The Republicans took the House. They promised embarrassing hearings, with Bankman-Fried the loose-talking star villain. And so—presto!—he was finally indicted by the Biden Department of Justice.

Bankman-Fried, in desperation one last time, had turned to his old props of raggedy dress, nerd talk, and contrived naivete.

His schtick no longer worked. Too many leftists were embarrassed that they got too much money from him. Too many exposed “regulators” had known what this wannabe Madoff character was up to before the midterms.

The now albatross Bankman-Fried was loud and everywhere, then suddenly not—and won’t be again.

In contrast, consider how the Left now despises Elon Musk as much as it once worshiped Sam Bankman-Fried.

Musk once mixed vaguely liberal politics with a David-versus-Goliath self-confidence, as he took on Big Auto and Big Space—and won.

But then he turned to Twitter and Big Tech. Or, rather, Musk realized Silicon Valley was no longer the irreverent embryo of boy geniuses he remembers from his youth, which outsmarted and preempted the global technology establishment.

Instead, it had become a dreary, constipated place of hard-core, uncompromising leftists in need of a shake-up.

Tech moguls used their billions, their monopolies, and their exemptions from oversight to warp the way Americans searched the Internet, communicated with each other, voted, and accessed the news—all in service to left-wing causes.

Musk’s mortal sin was not just buying the money-losing Twitter and reinventing it as a free-speech platform.

It was not even exposing the company’s rot of a lazy, overstaffed, woke, and pampered workforce and its giddiness in censoring free expression and wounding the public careers of any who challenged the status quo.

Musk’s crime was far worse.

First, was the sin of betrayal. A month ago, all those Teslas on the streets of Palo Alto, Austin, and Cambridge were virtue-signaling proof of green moral superiority. Then suddenly, these still wonderful cars are seen as fuel for the prince of darkness.

Musk, of all people, now the progressive apostate, would dare to end Twitter as a left-wing bulwark. And he promised to flip this time-tried Pravda to host anyone to say what he pleased.

Second, Musk doesn’t much care that the Left hates him. No doubt he regrets the billions he paid for the overpriced, money-losing company.

No doubt he frets that Tesla may lose sales once yuppies and greens trade in their Tesla amulets as if they were now some godforsaken gas-guzzling SUVs.

But otherwise, Musk has the resources, youth, genius, and energy to do to social media what he did to the space and automobile industries: revolutionize it, open it up to keener competition, and reject stifling orthodoxy.

How sad that the Left despises a man who built real things against the odds and took risks to champion free speech. And how predictable it worshiped a leftist fraud who bilked a million investors and ruined the lives of thousands.

The hatred of the accomplished Musk and the worship of the hollow man Bankman-Fried are sad commentaries on how liberalism has descended into progressivism and ultimately into Stalinism.

• The Wire

AMERICAN DIPLOMACY AT ITS BEST

By

 Paul Duke

 – 

December 15, 2022

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There is no denying that our “public servants” have evolved over the decades, from good-willed leaders and organizers, to a ruling class that spends more time padding their pockets than they do serving their constituents.  This is simply the unfortunate reality of the current situation, and it’s made many of these folks simply kooky.

They’re not like you and I.  They’re the people from the mansions on the hill, working on The Hill, and creating ever more incestuous ways in which to interact.  Their entire careers are spent inside of a bubble that would bewilder the average American, were you to drop them suddenly into the middle of a Beltway cocktail party.

And, thanks to this strange circumstance, our elected officials really aren’t all that compatible with other humans beings, and their attempts to “fit in” are getting all the more desperate.

https://decide.dev/lad/12702276120947302?pubid=ld-3754-3499&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fredrightpatriot.com&rid=&width=696

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi revealed her habit of eating a hot dog in the House Democratic cloakroom every day to French President Emmanuel Macron last week.

Pelosi made the comment during a Friday state dinner at the White House in a conversation with Macron and his wife, as well as President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden. Pelosi’s daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, was also reportedly in attendance and turned the conversation toward American cuisine, according to The New York Times.

The younger Pelosi reportedly pressed Biden to reveal his favorite American staples.

Madam Speaker couldn’t help but chime in, allegedly.

“He said: ‘Hot dogs, ice cream and spaghetti,’” Alexandra said. She then reported that her mother had jumped in to say she eats a hot dog on Capitol Hill every day. Macron and his wife reportedly appeared puzzled at the comment.

Pelosi’s bizarre brag once again appears to demonstrate the divide between our elected officials in their constituents…even when it comes to having a normal conversation with someone.

Here’s What We Know About Sam Bankman-Fried’s Political Donations

BY NIK POPLI 

DECEMBER 14, 2022 6:01 PM EST

Disgraced FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried faces a litany of charges tied to the collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange. But along with being an outsized figure in crypto, Bankman-Fried (nicknamed SBF) is also one of the largest political donors in American politics, and has been accused of violating campaign finance laws as part of a scheme to illegally funnel millions of dollars to candidates and political action groups ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

The indictment claims that Bankman-Fried falsely reported political contributions that were actually being sourced from Alameda Research, an investment firm that he controlled, using customer money. Federal prosecutors said he also made corporate contributions to candidates and political action committees in New York that were reported in the name of another person.

Biden Vows to Push to Restore Abortion Rights Nationally if Democrats Expand Hold on Congress

“These contributions were disguised to look like they were coming from wealthy co-conspirators, when in fact the contributions were funded by Alameda Research with stolen customer money,” said Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, at a press conference on Tuesday. “All of this dirty money was used in service of Bankman-Fried’s desire to buy bipartisan influence and impact the direction of public policy in Washington.”

The campaign finance allegations come a day after Bankman-Fried was arrestedon criminal charges in the Bahamas.

Here’s what we know about Bankman-Fried’s political contributions.

SBF was a huge political donor according to public records

Bankman-Fried contributed more than $70 million to election campaigns in less than 18 months, placing him among the nation’s top political donors. He personally gave at least $40 million to politicians and political action committees ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, mostly to Democrats and liberal-leaning groups, making him the second overall top donor to Democrats, only behind George Soros, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. 

Bankman-Fried also donated a significant amount to fundraising committees and super PACs affiliated with both parties. The biggest single recipient was Protect Our Future, a Democratic-aligned super PAC that claims it was “designed to help elect candidates who will be champions for pandemic prevention.” The group received $27 million from Bankman-Fried, and supports effective altruism, a philanthropic movement premised on the use of reason and data to allocate money, which Bankman-Fried also supports. Beneficiaries of Protect Our Future include Carrick Flynn, who lost a Democratic primary in Oregon’s 6th District, George Rep. Lucy McBath and Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett.

Bankman-Fried also gave a combined $7 million to the two main super PACs supporting Democratic candidates for Congress in the 2022 elections.

In addition, he personally contributed the individual maximum of $5,800 to more than a dozen members of Congress including Senators Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, and Sen. John Boozman, an Arkansas Republican, who lead the Senate Agriculture Committee, which has a role in regulating cryptocurrency. Stabenow and Boozman introduced a bill together this year that was intended to give FTX a path toward regulatory compliance in the U.S.

Other lawmakers that received maximum donations from Bankman-Fried include Democratic Senators Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, and Cory Booker of New Jersey; and Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine.

In total, federal election filings show that Stabenow and Hassan were the candidates to receive the most money directly from Bankman-Fried this year, at over $20,000 each.

SBF claims he gave tens of millions in untraceable donations to Republicans

Although federal election receipts show that Bankman-Fried donated almost exclusively to Democrats, he claimed on a November phone call with YouTuber Tiffany Fong that he donated an equal amount to Republicans and Democrats. 

“All my Republican donations were dark,” he said, referring to political donations that are not publicly disclosed in FEC filings. “The reason was not for regulatory reasons, it’s because reporters freak the f—k out if you donate to Republicans. They’re all super liberal, and I didn’t want to have that fight.”

Given that he donated nearly $40 million to Democrats in the 2022 election cycle—and he admitted to giving an equal amount to Republicans—his total political contributions may have actually been around $80 million.

Stuart McPhail, senior litigation counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group that filed an FEC complaint against Bankman-Fried last week, says his claims and the campaign finance charges could spur changes to election laws.

“There are a number of loopholes and limits that Sam Bankman-Fried was able to exploit that Congress can fix,” he tells TIME. “He directed money to influence elections but hid where that money came from.”

SBF was a major Biden donor

The former crypto king made one of the largest donations to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in 2020, contributing $5.2 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The White House on Tuesday refused to answer questions about whether the President would return those political donations in light of the federal charges, claiming the Hatch Act prevented the executive branch from commenting on political campaign activities.

Crypto spends more on political donations than nearly any other industry

Just a few years ago, cryptocurrency was a relatively obscure topic in Washington. But with FTX’s large contributions and Bankman-Fried’s steady lobbying efforts, people and groups tied to crypto firms were among the biggest donors in politics during the most recent election cycle. Campaign donations from the crypto world exceeded those of the defense and auto industries combined, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Political donations from FTX or its top executives accounted for most of the industry’s political spending. 

Read more: Crypto Goes to Washington

Many lawmakers are returning SBF-linked donations

A number of lawmakers from both parties are facing growing pressure to give up their campaign contributions from Bankman-Fried and other FTX executives in light of allegations that he stole customer funds.

The campaign of Beto O’Rourke, a Democratic candidate for Texas governor this year, said it returned a $1 million SBF donation four days before Election Day, according to The Texas Tribune. Other lawmakers donated the money to charity, including Reps. Chuy Garcia, Democrat of Illinois, and Kevin Hern, Republican of Oklahoma.

A litany of other lawmakers, including Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, have previously said they would give the donations they got from Bankman-Fried to charity.

However, the indictment does not list which of Bankman-Fried’s donations were allegedly made illegally. It also does not list the names of additional co-conspirators who may have been used to funnel the money.

Our Parasitic Generation

Yes, there is a lot of ruin in great nations.

But even America is by now running low on greatness and ruin is everywhere becoming evident.

By: Victor Davis Hanson

American Greatness

December 11, 2022

“Be assured young friend, that there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.” — Adam Smith

Are we sure that there is all that much ruin left in the United States?

We are $31 trillion in collective debt. The new normal is an annual $1.5 trillion budget deficit. The military is politicized and short of recruits. We trade lethal terrorists for woke celebrity athletes as if to confirm our enemies’ cynical stereotypes. 

Our FBI is corrupt and discredited, collaborating with Silicon Valley contractors to suppress free speech and warp elections. We practice segregation and racial discrimination and claim we do not because the right and good people support it and, anyway, the victims deserve it. The country has seen defeat before but never abject, deliberate humiliation as in Kabul, when we fled and abandoned to the terrorist Taliban a $1 billion embassy, a huge, remodeled air base, thousands of friends, and tens of billions of dollars in military hardware — and hard-earned deterrence.

We are witnessing the breakdown of basic norms essential for civilized life, from affordable food and fuel to available key antibiotics and baby formula. Old Cairo seems safer than an after-hours subway ride or strolls at dusk in many major American cities. Medieval London’s roadways were likely cleaner than Market Street in San Francisco. Speech was freer in 1920s America than it is now.

The Breakdown of Basic Society

Our California always is a preamble to America’s future. Our present Californiais likely your tomorrow. 

Each summer here we impotently expect forest conflagrations. Millions of acres of flames pour millions of tons of smoke and carbon and soot into the skies. Tens of millions of hated combustion engines cannot begin to match the natural blankets of aerial dirt. 

The state seems to shrug it off, saying wildfires are both inevitable and natural. Old-fashioned forest management and fire-fighting strategies, honed over centuries, are deemed obsolete by our green experts. So, we let fiery nature take its better course. What is the implicit message to those in the way of fires that devour homes and trees? Nature’s way? Natural wood mulch? Or that such fools should not build their cabins or homes where they are not wanted?

What was bequeathed to us from a state of 15 million—magnificent aqueducts, once brilliantly designed freeways and airports, superb universities and schools, perfectly engineered reservoirs, and downtowns of majestic skyscrapers—in a California of 41 million are frozen in amber or decay. They have few updates and even fewer replacements. The decrepitude recalls the weedy forums and choked fountains of Vandal-era Roman cities, which is what happens when a later parasitic generation mocks but still consumes what it inherits but cannot create. 

Our own generation’s pale contributions are multibillion-dollar, quarter-built, graffiti-defaced high-speed rail Stonehenge monoliths. We prefer to shut down rather than build nuclear plants. Our solar battery plants are as prone to combust as they are to store electricity. And our urban streets reek of feces. All seem testaments to our incompetence, arrogance, and ignorance. We fear the idea of homelessness, and so cede to the homeless our downtowns and avoid what follows.

Our great universities, once the most esteemed in the world from Berkeley and Stanford to UCLA and USC, grow burdened with commissars, too many of their outnumbered faculties are weaponized, and their students have never been more confident in their abilities, and with so little reason for that confidence.

A return to syllabi and grading standards of just 30 years ago would result in mass flunking. Failure on tests apparently means the test, not the test taker, is found wanting.

What follows is the erosion of meritocracy and competence. And that reality is starting to explain the great unraveling: why our bridges take decades to build rather than a few years, why train tracks are not laid after a decade of “planning,” and why to drive down a once brilliantly engineered, but now crammed and dangerous road is to revisit the “Road Warrior” of film. Sam Bankman-Fried and Elizabeth Holmes are apt characters of our age.

Institutions That Went Rogue

The FBI has imploded. It has all but become a Third World retrieval and investigatory service for the Democratic Party. Its last four directors either have lied, misled, or pleaded amnesia while under oath. 

In 2016, the bureau with the Democratic National Committee sought to destroy the integrity of an election by fabricating a Russian collusion hoax. Its continuance and coverup ultimately required FBI agents and lawyers to alter legal documents, to lie under oath, to destroy subpoenaed phone data, and to outsource illegal suppression of First Amendment rights to Silicon Valley contractors. The nation now fears there isn’t anything the FBI might not do.

As we became hyper-legal with Trump, we are more sub-legal with the entire Biden family. For a decade, with impunity, it gorged multimillion profits from selling the “Big Guy”/Mr. “10 Percent” Joe Biden’s name and access—sums for the most part hidden and likely not completely taxed. We all know it is true, and we all know the FBI and Department of Justice know it is true, and we know further that the truth means nothing.

This self-satisfied generation constantly brags about transforming elections. But it will be known more as the destroyer of a once-hallowed Election Day. Not so long ago 70-80 percent of the electorate took the trouble of voting under transparent protocols. We replaced it in most states with 60-70 percent of the votes without audit and the product of vote harvesting and curing. Our generation, in just a couple of years, destroyed Election Day voting and Election Night counting.

The New Medievalism

Despite different calibrations, various data reveal what is self-evident to the naked eye. The American middle class is shrinking, if not insidiously sliding into an indebted peasantry. Westerners are regressing and by design, now deciding daily whether to top up the tank, turn up the heat, or buy beef. 

Society is also bifurcating. A tiny powerful minority has more leverage than any other elite in the history of civilization. And a large underclass of subsidized poor shares with the wealthy a disdain for the struggling middle class, the old bulwark of democracy.

In place of knightly penances and chivalric oaths, our elite takes Bankman-Fried-like vows to “fight climate change,” support “transitioning,” and ensure “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” But like their Medieval brethren, they do so only by first enhancing, not endangering, their own careers. 

For the ruling class, prep schools, alphabetic certifications from tony universities, and revolving-door résumés are modern versions of having an abbey on site, a stately coat-of-arms, or taking vows from the correct religious orders. Otherwise, it is the same medievalism masked by pretension.

Our Rhine and Danube

America is rapidly resembling something like wide-open fifth-century A.D. Rome when its traditional inviolable northern borders on the Rhine and Danube rivers vanished. Thousands of unassimilated tribes crisscrossed as they pleased on the premise that no one among their overripe, soft hosts could or would dare stop them. 

Joe Biden just remarked that he is too busy to visit the southern border. And why not? There may have been roughly 5 million illegal aliens who have crossed it since his inauguration. He earns contempt both from those who try to enforce the border and those who cross illegally over it.

Biden surrealistically trashes Trump’s supposed archaic idea of a wall — always without noting self-evident truths about it: anywhere Biden stopped the wall or has not replaced prior rickety fencing, there are the most porous and trafficked entry points. 

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ various mendacities that the border is “secure” translate to allowing as many million aliens as possible to break the law to enter the United States in the four years of the Biden experiment. The administration sees itself in a race to create a one-off window of historic laxity through which millions can pour in—before a comatose nation wakes up and shuts it down.

We are approaching an historic 50 million residents who were not born in the United States, and of various legal and illegal statuses. In a sane world, we might survive the challenge — if newcomers had all come legally, learned the customs and language of their desired new home, were audited and queued by some logical meritocratic process, and were quickly assimilated and integrated by a confident host population that assumed any who wished to live in America surely desired help in becoming an American and felt gratitude to their hosts. 

Instead, there is only chaos — and it is by design. 

The legal immigrant waiting in line to enter the United States is considered a fool, while illegal aliens and residents instead quickly absorb three messages from their hosts. 

ü First, illegal residents will often be treated better than American citizens, at least in terms of lax law enforcement, various legal exemptions and amnesty, and unaudited entitlements. 

ü Second, many will soon learn they can assume immediate moral claims against the majority population of their new home, who can be seen as racist oppressors and obligated to offer reparatory concessions in terms of hiring, admissions, and entitlements. 

ü Third, too many will quickly learn, Ilhan Omar-style, to harbor quiet derision for their benefactors. Their contempt is not due to Americans’ dearth of magnanimity and generosity, much less to “systemic racism.” Instead, their American hosts are silently assumed to be naïve, timid, overly solicitous, malleable, easily manipulated, rolled, and conned—especially when it is understood that if the roles were reversed and the entrants were the hosts, they would have a different notion of borders.

The idea of 330 million American citizens of different incidental races and ethnicities united by a common American identity of shared values, customs, and traditions is all but mocked. In its place is arising something like the former Yugoslavia — an undefined mishmash of competing and increasingly hostile tribal interests, with residents sorting themselves out into red and blue states that eventually will lead to two antithetical Americas. 

So once assumed services, customs, institutions, and expectations are eroding—from a safe walk to a government office in a large city’s downtown, to a visit to the local public emergency room in extremis for humane, rapid, and competent care, to a clean, safe subway ride in a major city, or watching election returns conclude on Election Night.

A Nation of Thieves?

In a nearby Home Depot the other day, there were two long lines to check out. The other six were closed, as was the largest exit with several self-check-out counters. 

Why? When asked the clerk whispered that the theft rate is high in the store and that from time to time it shuts down various exits to limit stealing or perhaps to confuse calculating thieves. I added that I had learned that almost any large item in a box purchased at Home Depot had to be first opened to ensure that key parts like knobs, wires, and screws had not been ripped off. 

A local Walmart stopped its 24-hour service; again, the clerk said it was due to unsustainable looting during the early morning hours. 

I also went to Walgreens and Rite Aid recently. Much of what anyone wanted, from razors to antihistamines, was under lock and key. None of this was true just a decade ago. I live in a rural area among small towns—a world away from Los Angeles and San Francisco where smash-and-grab robberies and unapologetic looting have caused the mass closures of pharmacies and all-service stores. 

Exemptions given thefts under $950 in some states may be the culprit. Others cite the post-George Floyd riots and the climate of unpunished street criminality. Maybe years of mask-wearing made us forget who normally used masks and for what reasons.

Weaponized activist district attorneys and virtue-signaling mayors also signal to criminals that property crimes don’t warrant arrest, much less conviction, much less incarceration. 

But whatever the cause, a once famously lawful America has become a veritable land of thieves. The criminal is all but exempt. And the middle class and poor suffer as a result of poor services, higher prices, reduced hours, and fewer stores. 

We know the solution is to deter crime by assured punishment for the guilty. But the majority of Americans either cannot or will not demand a return to sanity for fear of some sort of undefined pushback from their elites. Pick your charge: “racism,” “privilege,” “bias,” or “discrimination.” Any will do.

We have seen lots of cultural revolutions in this country, but never one that was so singularly focused on razing the foundations of America—until now. 

Yes, there is a lot of ruin in great nations. But even America is by now running low on it.

Words of Mary
December 13, 2022

I bring you the peace and light of the sleeping Christ child.
I watched Him sleep that night, you know.
I kissed His tiny fingers and toes as He slept upon the straw,
Newborn and yet eternal, with no beginning or end.
I felt a mother’s desire to protect Him from the night,
And yet the night’s darkness could not overcome His light,
For indeed His arrival pierced the night and sent it scurrying
Into the very corners of our humble shelter.
For inside this sleeping baby was the light of a thousand stars,
That although contained unseen within Him,
Burst forth within my heart when I looked at Him,
And caused even simple shepherds to glow that night.

I bring you the joy and the love of the sleeping Christ child.
I watched Him sleep that night, you know.
I kissed His cheeks and murmured words of love,
As He opened His eyes, and love itself looked back at me. 
And I was filled with the joy of this new life,
And I thought of all that I would show Him of this world,
Even as the world held its breath, and stars danced in the sky,
Acknowledging that this small baby held the secret of their creation.
For although the tiny fingers held no scepter,
And there was no crown upon His head,
He was more a King than any king who had ever lived,
As He had always been, and was now, and would always be.

I bring you the hope and the promise of the sleeping Christ child.
I watched Him sleep that night, you know.
I kissed His brow and stroked His hair,
And thought of how I would guide His steps,
Even as angels watched in awe, and demons trembled in fear,
At the birth of this child who held the wisdom of heaven,
And the hope of all mankind.
And although hope was tangible in His presence,
As He looked at me, I saw more than hope in His gaze,
For as He waved tiny hands, and moved tiny feet,
The despair of all the ages was dispelled,
And in its place hope, bursting forth like a thousand roses
Brought the aroma of a promise
Which permeated the air and covered the earth,
With each wave of His tiny hands.

-S