Christopher Hale, of a group called Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, has emerged on CNN and Fox News as a defender of Pope Francis against Rush Limbaugh’s charges that the pontiff spews Marxism.

The stories on CNN and Fox News cited Hale as a critic of Limbaugh and defender of the pope without noting his group’s connections to George Soros, the billionaire atheist, and that Hale worked on the “National Faith Vote Team” for the “Obama for America” 2012 presidential campaign organization.

Hale was also an intern in the Obama White House and worked for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

Frank Walker of the conservative Pewsitter website labels the group a religious and political Trojan Horse designed to mislead Catholics and produce votes for the Democratic Party. Soros, the major financial backer of the Democratic Party’s “progressive” base, also supports such causes as drug legalization, the rights of “sex workers” and felons, euthanasia, radical feminism, abortion rights, and homosexual rights.

The Fox story by Lauren Green, which aired on Bret Baier’s “Special Report” on Wednesday night, highlighted Hale’s criticism of Limbaugh and defense of the pope, without noting that the papal document “The Joy of the Gospel” had criticized conservative economic policies, dubbed “trickle-down” by the Vatican. Green misidentified the papal document as “The Gospel of Joy.”

Hale told Fox that the pope only wants “human-centered capitalism” promoting “people over profits,” and that he is challenging both liberals and conservatives. But that is not how Limbaugh and other conservatives are seeing it.

The Vatican document is emerging as cannon fodder for the Obama administration as it tries to change the subject from the pitfalls of socialized medicine to “inequality,” low paid workers, and other social problems.

On Wednesday, in a speech to the Center for American Progress, another Soros-funded group, President Obama favorably cited the pope’s remarks. Obama said, “Some of you may have seen just last week, the pope himself spoke about this at eloquent length. ‘How can it be,’ he wrote, ‘that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?’”

But conservative Catholic writer Victor Biorseth countered, “We are already seeing how collectivism kills right here in America with the bare beginnings of Obamacare, which is a government controlled redistribution of both health care itself and health care insurance. In all likelihood people have already died, and many, many more will die, due to the critically ill losing their doctors, losing their health care facilities, being required to start treatment procedures all over again, not being able to, and losing their insurance coverage.”

Biorseth calls it “trickle-down collectivism.”

As AIM has reported, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good received at least $200,000 from George Soros and offered a “Health Care Reform Prayer,” asking for God’s help in passing Obamacare.

We noted that the executive director of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (CACG) at the time was Victoria Kovari, a former organizer for the Gamaliel Foundation, the same group that helped launch Barack Obama’s career as a community organizer in Chicago. She had also served as co-chair of Catholics for Obama.

The chairman of CACG is Alfred M. Rotondaro, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

How Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good became a source for stories attacking Limbaugh on Fox News and CNN is itself an interesting story.

It was first promoted as a “Catholic” group that is opposed to Limbaugh, by Media Matters, which is also Soros-funded. Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good had launched a campaign to “Tell Rush Limbaugh: We support Pope Francis!” It went on, “To call the Francis a proponent of ‘pure marxism’ is both mean spirited and naive. Francis’s critique of unrestrained capitalism is in line with the Church’s social teaching.”

While he found parts of the document on evangelism to be worthwhile, Catholic writer Biorseth also took issue with the pope’s statement that Islam is a peaceful religion. The pope had declared that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”

Biorseth countered, “No they are not. All the Koran’s violent verses instructing disciples to either convert us all to the religion of Islam, subjugate us all under Islamic law, or kill us all, were the later verses, after the flight to Medina, abrogating and replacing all the earlier more peaceful verses written at Mecca. Ask an Imam. Violent jihad is preached in virtually every Mosque on earth; all good Moslems will, at the very least, give moral support and not oppose terrorist acts done in the name of jihad. That’s just the way it is.”

Before he issued his document on “The Joy of the Gospel,” Pope Francis met in the Vatican with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the former KGB officer who now claims to be a Christian.

This commentary originally appeared at AIM.org and is reprinted here with permission.

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The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by WesternJournalism.com.

British comedian Rowan Atkinson makes people laugh as the humorous “Mr. Bean.” But his brother, Rodney Atkinson, a political writer and commentator, isn’t laughing about the attempt by the media to make Nelson Mandela into a savior of South Africa.

He is quoted in the London Daily Telegraph as saying, “Mandela and his ANC [African National Congress] were about to turn South Africa into a Marxist, communist country when they were bought off by the American Democratic Party and big multi-national business who showered the new black rulers with wealth and power, and, above all, with favorable international media coverage, in the lead on which was, of course, the BBC, despite its treatment by that other genocidal racist Marxist, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.”

It’s true that leading Democrats, such as former President Bill Clinton, have been raising money for the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

Meanwhile, Jim Allister, who represents a unionist political party in Northern Ireland, said, “I think the uncritical hysteria following the death is verging on propaganda.” He added, “Mandela had been blessed with a long life, drawn to a close only by natural causes—something brutally denied to the victims of his ANC and the victims of the IRA, which his ANC so avidly supported!”

On December 6, he posted this comment: “When Baroness Thatcher died the BBC fell over itself to show balance; Mandela dies and BBC eschews anything approaching balance.”

The British Daily Mail reports that the BBC aired more than 100 programs about Mandela in one week, and that a total of 1,834 viewers and listeners had complained “as the airwaves continue to be flooded with tributes disrupting radio and TV schedules.”

The BBC responded, “Nelson Mandela was one of the most important world leaders of the 20th century whose long and complex life story represents a moment of historical change for people in South Africa and around the world. His death was something we regarded as sufficiently significant both to break into our scheduled coverage and extend our news programs. His political and cultural influence was global and as both a UK and international broadcaster it is important that we reflected that, and the range of reactions to his death, to all our audiences.”

Some complaints are being directed against U.S. media coverage of Mandela, who was depicted even by some conservative commentators as a George Washington-type figure or a freedom fighter.

Going beyond this fawning coverage, NBC’s usually reliable foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, turned in a strangely positive story about a rising South African political figure by the name of Julius Malema, who has singled out white people for racist treatment and confiscation of their property.

Engel reported, “When Julius Malema was a teenager he was in the crowd cheering for Nelson Mandela. Now he’s running for president as champion of the have-nots. His plan is a radical redistribution. White South Africans, just 10% of the population, own most of the land.” Malema told Engel, “They [the whites] must give a portion of their land to black people.”

Malema is the head of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), which Engel forgot to mention is openly Marxist-Leninist. He used to run the Youth League of Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC). The group is a self-declared “radical, leftist, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movement with an internationalist outlook anchored by popular grassroots formations and struggles.”

The EFF manifesto includes “Expropriation of South Africa’s land without compensation for equal redistribution in use.”

A recent EFF event featured banners declaring the “Honeymoon is over for white people in South Africa,” and, “To be a revolutionary you have to be inspired by hatred and bloodshed.”

Rather than portray Malema as a serious threat to the white population, Engel depicted the whites in charge of the “white-owned farms” as backward thinking and fanatical in their determination to protect their land through force. Some were labeled as “white extremists” for training with weapons for self-defense.

The EFF also has a foreign policy that declares, “…we call on the Apartheid state of Israel to end its racist occupation of Palestinian lands, and join on the call for the international isolation of the Israel through boycotts, divestment and sanctions until they end the occupation. Furthermore, we join the international call on the release of the Cuban Five and lifting of the trade embargo on the Cuba and its people. We also believe that all economic sanctions on Zimbabwe must be lifted and the people of Zimbabwe must be given a chance to enjoy in the wealth of nations.”

The Cuban Five are Castro’s spies imprisoned in the U.S.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, under fire for human rights violations and even accused of genocide, received “thunderous applause” from thousands of black people who turned out for the Mandela memorial service.

Instead, however, media attention has focused on a sign-language interpreter who was a fraud, and a “selfie” photograph joined in by Obama.

The prospect of “white genocide” in South Africa, however, is a non-story.

This commentary originally appeared at AIM.org and is reprinted here with permission.

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The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by WesternJournalism.com.

Editor’s note: A shorter version of this article first appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Pete Seeger’s death at age 94 is a cultural catharsis for the American left. The New York Times accorded his passing the kind of space normally reserved for the death of a president. Such was Seeger’s special place of reverence among liberals.

The media is hailing Seeger as a “social-justice”–crusading “progressive,” a voice for the poor, the downtrodden, the working man, and the environment. He’s also being portrayed as a victim of wild-eyed McCarthyites who maniacally searched for a red under every bed.

Well, the full story is a little different.

Pete Seeger had in fact been a Marxist, a committed one who stumped for international communism at the height of the Stalin era. Interviewed in 2008 for the PBS series “American Masters,” Seeger conceded those sympathies. He first joined the Young Communist League at Harvard (mid-1930s) and later (early 1940s) joined Communist Party USA (CPUSA).

That latter fact is a halting one. Many American communists, especially Jewish communists, bolted from CPUSA when their beloved Joseph Stalin allied with Hitler, specifically via the August 1939 Hitler-Stalin Pact. Not Seeger. He was undeterred, joining the party after the pact. (For the record, likewise undeterred was Barack Obama’s mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, who also joined CPUSA after the pact.)

Seeger was a loyal comrade. If you were a communist agitator/organizer staging a big display or furthering the revolution, Pete Seeger’s presence was as reliable as a red flag. He was guaranteed to provide musical entertainment for the cause.

Here are a few examples:

At the massive anti-Vietnam rally held in New York City in April 1967, organized by the radical New Mobe, Seeger was there, strumming for the faithful.

In the 1950s, New York communist parents sent their red-diaper babies to the Little Red School House, founded in the 1920s by “progressives.” There, the likes of Angela Davis, Victor Navasky, the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and future Weather Underground terrorist Kathy Boudin (who spent many years in jail for murder) sat at the knee of leftist celebrities like Seeger, who played and taught music there.

Seeger also provided rousing performances at the summer “commie camps” in the Catskills, where the New York faithful sent their children to study the gospel according to Marx. These surreal spectacles were a sort of twisted red version of Vacation Bible School.

But Seeger’s most disturbing work as a Marxist minstrel was his crooning for “The Almanacs,” which historian Ron Radosh—himself a former red-diaper baby—calls a “communist folk-singing group.” At varying times, “The Almanacs” included Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Burl Ives, and Will Geer, later known as “Grandpa” on TV’s “The Waltons.” Seeger founded the group in 1941.

The most egregious work by “The Almanacs” was its propaganda for the insidious American Peace Mobilization, which Congress identified as “one of the most seditious organizations which ever operated in the United States” and “one of the most notorious and blatantly communist fronts ever organized.” Founded in 1940, the objective of the American Peace Mobilization was to keep America out of the war against Hitler. This also meant no Lend-Lease money to Britain.

Why did the American Peace Mobilization take such a position? It did so because Hitler signed an alliance with Stalin. For American communists, any friend of Stalin was a friend of theirs. They literally swore an oath, formally pledging to a “Soviet America” and to “the triumph of Soviet power in the United States.” They were unflinchingly devout Soviet patriots.

In my book Dupes, I publish the declassified Soviet Comintern document detailing how the American Peace Mobilization “was organised on the initiative of our Party in Chicago in September, 1940.” (Obama’s mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was there.)

As for mobilizing the “peace,” eager Pete Seeger was there to salute the flag.

The kick-off rally to attract naïve recruits (i.e., liberal dupes) to the American Peace Mobilization was a huge April 1941 promotional in New York. The featured musical talent was Stalinist Paul Robeson and “The Almanacs.” Almost every “folk ballad” was a swipe at America and FDR—who communists were attacking at that point—for supporting an “unjust war” by aiding Britain as it was besieged by the Nazis’ ferocious onslaught.

Such was the position of American communists, like Pete Seeger.

Of course, liberals should be enraged at Seeger for efforts like this. Unfortunately, they don’t understand their own history. For them, the bad guys are never on the left. As ex-communist James Burnham used to say, for the left, the preferred enemy is always to the right.

Speaking of which, in the left’s perverse moral universe, I’ll be viewed as the bad guy for pointing out these sordid facts about Pete Seeger. I’ll be pitied for my crass McCarthyism, whereas Seeger will be forever lionized by liberals as a peace-loving lamb, a happy-hearted hippie unfairly persecuted for his mere pursuit of “social justice.”

Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College, executive director of The Center for Vision & Values, and New York Times best-selling author of the book, “The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor.” His other books include “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism” and “Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.”

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The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by WesternJournalism.com.

Comrade Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York City, is starting to do all of the destructive things anyone with any brains could foresee.

De Blasio is owned by two factions of the Left: the teacher’s union and the Working Families Party (WFP). The teachers union is closing in on an unheard-of eight year contract. The teachers know they have to nail down their benefits now because things will be different when sanity returns to New York, and de Blasio is shown the door. They looked at the stunts Wisconsin public service unions pulled and opted for guaranteed booty against the possibility that the “party” would end after a few years.

The WFP, which was ironically formed to serve the interests of those who are not interested in working, has taken its turn smacking the City of New York around like a piñata. The difference between the two is the teachers want guaranteed benefits, and the WFP wants to destroy capitalism.

The WFP, which runs the City Council, has decreed that starting April 1st, more than half a million private business workers will be entitled to five paid sick days a year, whether the business they work for can afford to pay for this benefit or not.

The law was changed in early March when the City Council jubilantly reduced the number of employees a business may have before it comes under their edict. Previously, businesses had to have fifteen or more workers to be forced to grant these days off. Today, the law reaches down to smaller businesses that employ just 5 or more workers.

But, another section of this new law commands businesses with as few as one employee to “allow” each employee as many as five unpaid days off a year without fear of being fired.

Since about 62% of New York’s businesses employ fewer than five workers, this latest example of why Marxists should never be allowed to take over our lives will destroy thousands of businesses and put tens of thousands of New Yorkers out of work.

When they inevitably apply for unemployment insurance coverage, this will bleed the small business community in New York white.

When the Working Families Party comes to your town, get up and fight because they are vicious Marxists who will destroy everything in their path if you don’t stop them.

Comrade de Blasio will do things like this until the day he leaves office. What he does will destroy the richest city in America, but there is a bright side to New York’s agony; the whole country will be reminded of what Democrats will do when they get total control of our lives.

Good luck talking that away, Harry and Nancy.

The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by WesternJournalism.com.

One of the major speakers at last week’s “New Populism” conference was Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), a labor union that represents online writers, reporters, editorial assistants, editorial artists, and correspondents at major news organizations.

Cohen gave his speech after returning from the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) conference, where Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, was announced as winner of the title of “the world’s worst boss” for trying to keep prices low for consumers and opposing union control of his workplace.

Bezos, the new owner of The Washington Post, will have to negotiate with The Newspaper Guild, which merged with the CWA in 1995 and represents nearly 900 editorial and newsroom workers at the Post.

“Amazon has successfully fended off U.S. labor unions since its founding in 1994,” notes Time magazine.

Bezos has been described as a libertarian; but the Post was known as a liberal Democrat newspaper under its previous owners, the Grahams.

It will be interesting to see if he cuts this union down to size. The survival of the paper, with declining revenue and readers, may depend on it.

As the “populism” conference indicates, the progressives—once called liberals—are now calling themselves something else, in order to fool the electorate.

Don’t look for the media to blow the whistle on themselves.

Whatever they call themselves, they are in control of much of the news and editorial content of major news media organizations.

We look forward to the Post, under its new owner, telling the truth about how the CWA functions as a major component of the progressive movement, and how liberal bias is killing the appeal of the so-called mainstream media.

In addition to the Post, the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild represents employees at such news organizations as The Baltimore Sun and Bloomberg-BNA. Not surprisingly, CWA says thousands of its members also work for public broadcasting entities.

A partisan political operative who serves as a member of the Democratic National Committee and endorsed Obama in 2008, Cohen is a regular guest on the MSNBC cable channel.

Cohen’s tone last week was desperate, as the “progressives,” or “populists,” apparently understand that their President’s popularity is declining, and that their base is becoming increasingly demoralized and less likely to turn out to vote in November’s elections.

One member of the audience openly griped that she was being forced to liquidate her retirement fund in order to pay for her Obamacare plan.

The CWA’s “Education Department” has published a 38-page document entitled “Building a Movement for Economic Justice & Democracy,” which describes in detail how various components of the progressive movement are said to make up more than 71 million people, enough to create a working majority of the voting population and guarantee victory in national elections.

This might be news to the Republicans who think they will retain the House and take the Senate in this year’s national elections.

Holding up a copy of his “Building a Movement” booklet, Cohen told the “populism” conference that the political left needs to push a “common narrative” and “common collective action.” It is a message of “economic justice,” he said.

There is one thing for sure, the United States of America will look very different from what it is today in a few years.  The only question is what that reality will look like.  The outcome of the November elections and the presidential election in 2016 will determine to a great degree what kind of country we are going to have in the future.

Today we have an imperial president flagrantly violating the Constitution in order to further his radical, Marxist agenda.  We have government spending that is out of control and a national debt that has long past the redline that historically calls into doubt the viability of a country’s finances.  We have an administration that has no qualms about using the vast power of the federal government to harm its political opposition.  Racial relations are at an all time low.  Our national leadership is nonexistent in global affairs and serious, deadly national security threats are not only looming but crossing the horizon globally.  The question is, is this the kind of government that Americans really want?

I believe there is still time to save the country.  If we can elect a leader, an adult, who will deal efficiently with all of the issues listed above, I believe America can recover.  However, that is a BIG if!  In the meantime, we are barrelling towards a Constitutional crisis.  The most obvious issue facing the country regarding the separation of powers is the Obama administration’s threat to legalize five million illegal immigrants currently in the country.  The President’s lawlessness will be so exposed by this illegal power grab and action that the country will be thrown into an uproar.  I’m talking fire and brimstone, riots in the streets, cats and dogs sleeping together, Bull Run kind of turmoil.  Only time will tell if our Dear Leader will undertake this criminal act.  If he does, there will be consequences for the country and his party.

While this situation plays itself out, there are many other paths of crisis that could work themselves out in the short run.  First and foremost, there is the IRS scandal.  We now hear from some in the IRS that, well what do you know, Lois Lerner’s emails probably still exist somewhere in the technological cloud at the tax collection agency. If this email trail leads to the White House, well, all bets are off.  Will the liberal, corrupt, mainstream media finally get on the impeachment bandwagon?  Another variable is whether or not this will happen prior to the elections in November.

Also working its way through the court system is the Speaker of the House, John Boehner’s lawsuit against President Obama for overstepping his Constitutional authority.  The legal opinions on the outcome of this legal action are all over the map so it is a real wildcard that could easily go either way.

We also have the House of Representatives Select Committee investigation of the Benghazi disaster.  What if the White House is found to have been derelict in its duty to protect our diplomats?  Or, what if worse information comes out, that the agenda driving the decision making process was based on political factors and not the best interest of the United States?  With all of these issues getting closer to their final outcomes, American citizens can be sure that they will witness history over the next couple years. I hear they quit teaching civics in high school; make sure your child watches this crisis to get an education he may not be getting in our government schools.

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The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by WesternJournalism.com.

Suppose you wanted to eradicate your opposition.

However, you wanted to do so in a way that avoided any blowback, and lulled your opposition to sleep so that they wouldn’t know what hit them until it was too late. Rather than a full-frontal assault, you might try subtlety instead. Say, the introduction of a lie that became repeated so often by those with influence it was accepted as truth. Despite the fact all of the actual hard evidence says to the contrary, it is not.

This is what is called “propaganda.” Defined by Dictionary.com as, “information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.”

Marxist Progressives who want to replace individual liberty with statism in America have religious freedom in their cross-hairs, even if it means targeting the Little Sisters of the Poor order of Catholic nuns. Because once the church is silenced, so is the notion of God-given rights our entire Constitutional republic hinges upon. For if your rights do not come from God, then they come from government, and what government giveth, government taketh away.

Yet it’s not the coercive force of government that is the Marxist Progressives’ most powerful weapon, but cultural propaganda. Sadly, too much of the church in America isn’t fighting back against this propaganda that seeks to undermine its mission, but is ingesting it into its own bloodstream. And the effects of believing this Marxist Progressive lie have been devastating.

The lie I’m referring to is this: unless the American Church accepts the re-definitions of morality and sexuality that have arisen in a post-sexual revolution culture, it is doomed, since no one wants to go to Church with a bunch of “bigots” and “haters” still bitterly clinging to the guns and their Bibles.

Yet the real numbers show the exact opposite is true. In fact, it seems the best way to shrink your Church/denomination is to sell-out the Word of God. Works every time.

Just look at the data from a recent report on this debate:

1. Prior to consecrating Gene Robinson as its first openly homosexual bishop in 2003, there were 2.32 million Episcopalians in America. Fast forward a decade and this denomination has lost 18 percent of its overall membership, weekly Sunday attendance has declined 24 percent, and marriages conducted in the Church have fallen 45 percent. Meanwhile, the more Biblical Anglican Church of North America, which was formed in protest to the liberalization of the Episcopalian Church, has planted 488 new churches since 2009. The Episcopalians planted only four in all of 2012.
2. From 1987 to 2009, the average membership decline within the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America was only 0.62 percent. But since that Church abandoned Biblical teaching on morals and sexual ethics in 2010, more than 600 congregations have abandoned the denomination. That’s 12.3 percent in just three years, or almost 600,000 people. If this current rate of decline continues, the church won’t even exist 20 years from now.
3. It’s been a long time since the United Church of Christ held God’s Word in high esteem. This is the denomination of Jeremiah Wright after all, Barack Obama’s former anti-American pastor. In 2005 the Church became the first Protestant denomination to openly support redefining marriage. Since then it has lost over 20 percent of its members. An average of 39 congregations left the denomination annually from 1990-2004, but a whopping 350 congregations have bolted since the Church officially “came out of the closet.” For the first time, membership in this denomination is now below a million people, and it’s on pace to be extinct in about 30 years.
4. Since 2006, the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. has been wrestling with whether or not to toss the Bible aside and embrace the sexual revolution. From 2006-2013 the denomination lost 22 percent of its members. Over 100,000 people left the church in 2012 alone. It’s on pace to sleep with the fishes by 2037.

On the other hand, look who’s growing.

Assemblies of God, Catholics, and Mormons, just to name a few. While all three of these churches have wide-ranging theological disputes regarding the nature of the trinity, whether Scripture or the Church has ultimate authority in the believer’s life, etc., they all share one major thing in common – continued reverence for Biblical morality.

Yes, the largest conservative evangelical denomination in America, the Southern Baptist Convention, has declined by 3 percent since its all-time membership high in 2007. But that pales in comparison to the Dunkirk happening to the liberal churches.

There are two lessons to learn here.

The first lesson is nobody is better at de-stabilizing a culture than Progressive Marxists. They’re so good at telling lies, even their opponents believe them and then implement them to their own peril.

The second lesson comes from Jesus Christ himself:

“Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the works you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lamp stand from its place.”

These numbers prove some lamp stands are being removed as we speak. When the church embraces darkness, last one out turns out the lights.

Learn more about your Constitution with Steve Deace and the Institute on the Constitution and receive your free gift.

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The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by WesternJournalism.com.

Last week’s news became big news on the Fox News Channel on Thursday when former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani brought up the name of President Barack Obama’s childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis. It was almost seven years to the day when we published our seminal piece about Davis, “Obama’s Communist Mentor.”

Davis was a member of the Communist Party and a suspected Soviet espionage agent. He was included in the FBI’s security index, meaning that Davis could be arrested or detained in the event of a national emergency. The FBI file on Davis documents his anti-white and pro-Soviet views, infiltration of the Hawaii Democratic Party, and other activities.

Davis also wrote an autobiographical and pornographic sex novel, Sex Rebel, disclosing that he had sex with a young girl and engaged in shocking and bizarre sexual activities.

Giuliani’s public identification of Davis and discussion of his role in grooming a young Barack Obama marks the first time, in my memory, that a top Republican has ever mentioned the Davis-Obama relationship. It was done in the context of Fox News’ Megyn Kelly questioning how Giuliani could dare ask whether Obama loves America.

If the Republicans had brought this up during the 2008 campaign, Obama might have been defeated and the country could have been spared the last six years of “progressive” hope and change. The Davis-Obama relationship is something so damaging and corrupt that its public airing would have raised questions about the Democratic Party’s vetting of Obama and the direction of the Democratic Party itself.

However, Republican operative Karl Rove was warning Republicans not to accuse Obama of being a socialist. He said such a charge would generate a negative backlash. The result in 2012 was another Obama victory.

Now that it has become apparent to more and more people that Obama is not a traditional liberal Democrat and is, in fact, a Marxist with Muslim sympathies, a figure such as Giuliani feels compelled to speak out. So let’s take a look at what Giuliani said.

“I don’t feel it. I don’t feel this love of America,” Giuliani said, talking about Obama. “I’m talking about a man who grew up under the influence of Frank Marshall Davis who was a member of the Communist Party, who he refers to over and over in his book, who was a tremendous critic of the United States.”

Kelly countered that Obama “was raised in part by his grandparents. His grandfather served in World War II, his grandmother worked in a munitions plant to help the nation during World War II. I mean, to suggest he was raised by people who don’t love America or didn’t help him learn to love America.”

Giuliani argued that “his grandfather introduced him to Frank Marshall Davis, who was a communist.” He added, “You can fight in World War II, and then you introduce someone to a Communist and the young boy gets…”

After Kelly interjected that “it’s a political world view. It’s not a hatred for the country,” Giuliani responded, “Communism wasn’t hatred for America?”

Giuliani is correct about the Davis influence over Obama and the role that the grandfather played in picking Davis as a mentor.

But when Giuliani notes that Obama refers to Davis “over and over in his book,”Dreams from My Father, it’s important to point out that Davis was not identified as Frank Marshall Davis in that book. Instead, Obama identified him merely as “Frank.” The rest of the story was put together by anti-communist researcher Trevor Loudon, and we confirmed the identification with another source in Hawaii who was a close friend of Davis.

Even more of the story was put together by Paul Kengor in his authoritative book on Davis, The Communist. It appears that Davis was an influence over Obama for about nine full years, until Obama was 18 and went off to college. Obama went to college and, by his own admission, would attend socialist conferences and pick Marxist professors as his friends.

This relationship alone would have disqualified Obama from getting low-level federal employment. The loophole in our system is that background checks are not required for federal elected officials. Our founders counted on a free press to review the fitness of those running for office.

When former Obama adviser David Axelrod talks about Obama being free from major scandals, he is ignoring the biggest scandal of all—how Obama concealed his Marxist upbringing and relationship with Davis. Axelrod, of course, was part of the cover-up. When “Frank” was identified as Davis, the Obama campaign insisted he was just a civil rights activist.

As we reported at the time, news organizations such as the Associated Press, The Washington Post, Newsweek, and even Fox News ignored or downplayed Davis’s communist sympathies.

As Giuliani indicated, there are other influences on Obama that help explain his anti-Americanism. These include the “community organizing” philosophy of Saul Alinsky, his pastor Jeremiah Wright, and the communist terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

Giuliani clearly feels, at this stage in Obama’s presidency, that some things have to be said openly for the sake of the country. A former crime-busting U.S. Attorney who was mayor of New York City at the time of 9/11, Giuliani fears for the future of our country. But it’s not just the fate of America that is at stake. It is clear that Obama has no love for America’s traditional allies, such as Israel. Hence, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is coming to America to plead his case personally. He is afraid that Obama wants to make a deal that will allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.

Now that Giuliani has publicly raised some inconvenient truths about Obama, the “progressives” and their media allies will naturally scream and cry “McCarthyism.” Strangely taking this tack, Fox News’ Kelly wondered if Giuliani’s comments about Obama had damaged “the Republican brand.” The Republican brand will only be damaged by an inability to face facts and confront and expose anti-Americanism at the highest levels of the United States government. It is shocking that it has taken this long for the evidence to emerge publicly on a national basis on Fox News and other channels.

This controversy will help determine what direction the Republicans will take. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, who has made it his job to protect Obama from the fallout from major scandals, was quick to label Giuliani’s remarks about Obama as “stupid.” He also attacked Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker as “spineless” for saying Giuliani “can speak for himself,” and not directly challenging what the former mayor had said

“What Scott Walker did ought to disqualify him as a serious presidential contender,” wrote Milbank.

This is a signal from one of Obama’s best friends in the media that the information unearthed by Giuliani is of the blockbuster variety. Giuliani went for the jugular and hit a gusher.

The first thing Republicans can do is simply challenge the media to report on the Davis FBI file. They have been avoiding it for over six years.

Congress could also investigate Obama’s communist connections, which stretch from Hawaii to Chicago, and question the FBI about what they knew, if anything, about the Obama-Davis relationship. The reestablishment of House and Senate internal security committees, including a loyalty program for U.S. officials to eliminate security risks, should be considered.

Republicans could remind people that it was anti-communist Democratic President Harry Truman who started the first loyalty program. He issued executive order 9835 establishing the program in 1947.

The executive order said that “each employee of the Government of the United States is endowed with a measure of trusteeship over the democratic processes which are at the heart and sinew of the United States,” and declared that “the presence within the Government service of any disloyal or subversive person constitutes a threat to our democratic processes…”

It is time for a background check on the President of the United States? Does he pass the loyalty test?

This article originally appeared at AIM.org and is reprinted here with permission.

The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by WesternJournalism.com.

Those who assembled on March 12 at St. John the Apostle Catholic Church in Leesburg, Va., to celebrate the life of conservative thinker and writer M. Stanton Evans heard several references to his monumental 1994 work, The Theme is Freedom. This book is worth remembering and re-reading as we are being treated repeatedly to the spectacle in the media of “conservatives” endorsing gay rights and gay marriage.

In an illustration of what Stan called the “pagan ethic,” he cites on page 128 “the campaign to change societal views of homosexuality—to treat it as an ‘alternative lifestyle,’ as valid in its way as heterosexual conduct.” Stan comments, “Among other things, this is a reversion to pagan ways of thinking.” He cites acceptance of homosexuality in ancient civilizations such as Babylon and notes, “All of this was unequivocally condemned by the religion of the Bible.”

Yet, as Austin Ruse points out in his Breitbart article, “GOP Elite Ask Supreme Court to Impose Gay Marriage on America,” a brief to celebrate homosexual “marriage” as equal to traditional marriage has been submitted to the court and signed by 300 conservatives and/or Republicans, including no less than 26 former senior Mitt Romney staffers.

These so-called “conservatives,” who are not conservative in any real sense, are part of a “Project Right Side” that is designed to confuse the public about the meaning of the term. The “media” section of the website tells us how news organizations have covered the “conservative case for gay marriage.”

But there is nothing “conservative” about asking the Supreme Court to impose homosexual marriage on all 50 states. What’s more, as Stan Evans says, it is a return to paganism.

The fact that many don’t recognize this as paganism demonstrates how the definition of “conservatism” is being changed right before our eyes.

Many are deceived because the media repeatedly offer up so-called “conservatives” who endorse homosexual marriage. The names of several of them appear on the brief to the Supreme Court. They are:

• Alex Castellanos, a Republican media advisor who appears regularly on NBC’s Meet the Press and currently serves as a member of CNN’s “Best Political Team on Television”
• S.E. Cupp, CNN commentator
• Margaret Hoover, CNN contributor
• Abby Huntsman, MSNBC political commentator
• Ana Navarro, CNN commentator
• Nicolle Wallace, co-host of ABC’s “The View”

The subtitle of The Theme Is Freedom is “Religion, Politics, and the American Tradition.” The dedication reads, “For my father, who kept the faith.” The acknowledgments include the touching comments, “…these pages are not only dedicated to the memory of my father, but also reflect the many conversations I had with him across the decades about the religious basis of our society, and countless other issues.”

Stan described the book as “an effort to trace, conceptually and as a matter of historical fact, the nexus between religious values and the rise of our political system.” He notes for example:

• “That biblical teaching was the formative influence in the creation of Europe, and that Europe was the nursery of freedom as we know it, are both established facts of record.”
• “If Christian doctrine is opposed to freedom, then liberty ought to flourish where Christianity has had the smallest degree of influence, and languish where that influence is the greatest. That a general survey prima facie says the opposite suggests that something in the conventional history is mistaken.”
• “…this correlation of Christianity with the rise of freedom is anything but accidental. In fact, the precepts of our religion provided the conceptual building blocks for the free societies of the West—including the very idea of liberty as we know it, limits on the power of the state, and institutions that gave these practical expression.”

The so-called conservatives who promote gay marriage can say anything they want, but their position is not conservative or Biblical. Regarding the latter, Robert A. Gagnon’s book, The Bible and Homosexual Practice, is the best authority. The case against same-sex intercourse is based on scripture.

In chapter seven of his book, The Rise of Neopaganism, Stan Evans explains why and how Marxist concepts have become embedded in Western thought. “More problematic in an immediate sense,” he writes, “are aspects of the Marxist worldview, generally not recognized as such, that have already penetrated liberal thought and are considered perfectly routine and normal.”

He is describing what we know to be the process of cultural Marxism. The return of paganism is cultural Marxism dressed up in “progressive” camouflage.

Paganism also denies the humanity of the unborn. “The Christian tradition from the earliest period says the unborn child is a human life that deserves respect and ought to be protected; the pagan view tells us it is not a legal person, and thus entitled to no protection,” Stan writes.

The pagan view is dominating America, thanks to the “conservatives” who join the liberals in either adopting or refusing to fight it. Stan describes how it works in practice for America’s children:

…it is considered perfectly proper for children from religious homes to be taught the precepts of Darwinian-Huxleyan evolution, extreme environmentalism, the value-free “alternative lifestyle” view of homosexuality and sexual conduct generally and other Neopaganism in their school work…Children may be taught the precepts of neopagan nature worship; they may not be taught the precepts of the Bible.

Incredibly, the paganism even infiltrates groups which call themselves religious. The organization Dignity USA, which claims to be Catholic, is holding a conference featuring Dan Savage, described merely as a “writer, TV personality and gay activist.” Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth describes Savage, who has been invited to the White House to celebrate “gay pride,” as “the face of progressive hate.” Catholic League president Bill Donohue says Savage has a history of offering obscene anti-Catholic rants.

The latest “conservative/libertarian” to jump aboard the gay marriage bandwagon is Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review, a Brit who argues in his new book, The Conservatarian Manifesto, that “there is more to be gained by including gays in the institution [of marriage] than by keeping them out.” With that statement, he dismisses the Judeo-Christian tradition, which is the foundation for our freedoms. “Gay Marriage: The Wrong Fight” is one of his chapter titles. The battle against gay marriage “has been lost,” he says.

It might be worthwhile to be pro-life, he concedes, since “scientific advances” might yet prove the unborn child is a human life. Again, there’s no reference by this modern “libertarian” to the religious tradition that human life is sacred.

Cooke, a legal immigrant to the United States, would be well-advised to return to Britain and fight for the Christian values that are quickly disappearing in his home country. Mike Overd, a Christian street preacher, is going on trial in Britain for proclaiming the gospel in a public setting. The group Christian Concern reports, “Mike has been preaching the gospel on the streets of Taunton for over five years. But he’s faced real opposition—police even appealed to the public in a local newspaper to record him preaching so that they could get evidence of him making ‘offensive remarks.’” He was previously charged with quoting anti-homosexual references from the Bible.

Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch reports that one of his most recent “offensive” comments may have been discussing the Muslim Prophet Muhammad marrying a 9-year-old girl by the name of Aisha. Overd compared the life of Muhammad to the perfect life of Jesus. Spencer asks, “Will British authorities seize and destroy copies of the hadith of Bukhari for stating that Aisha was nine [when] Muhammad consummated his marriage with her?” Bukhari’s collection is recognized by most Muslims as an authentic record of stories about Muhammad.

Commenting on the case, Spencer notes, “Britain is dying, while its authorities do nothing to save it, for fear of being called ‘racist.’ When telling the truth becomes an offense for which someone can be arrested and prosecuted, the society in which this happens [is] in its death throes.”

Who and what killed Britain? Consider the book, The Rise of Gay Rights and the Fall of the British Empire. The author defines homosexuality as “resistance” to Western religious traditions and “imperialism.”

This is how Britain began its decline. The Brazilian philosopher and writer Olavo de Carvalho says every nation has an elite or aristocracy. When this group goes against the traditions of their own country, rather than defending them, we see the nation begin to decline in influence and power. He says the elites begin focusing on their egotistical sexual desires rather than the good or interests of the nation.

The same thing is happening in the United States. The founder of the modern gay-rights movement in the United States was Harry Hay, a member of the Communist Party who also championed the rights of pedophiles. Now, key members of the Republican establishment have joined this campaign for gay rights.

What “Project Right Side” has done for us is name the members of the conservative movement and the Republican establishment who are signing up to accelerate our own nation’s decline. One notable name on this list is David H. Koch, described as a “philanthropist,” but more widely known as a major funder of the conservative movement and the Republican Party. The groups taking his money have a lot to answer for.

The result of these efforts, as Stan Evans predicted in his book, will be to help Barack Obama transform America into something we won’t be able to recognize as being in any sense American. It will be a Marxist or pagan America stripped of its Christian traditions.

Just like the Christian street preacher on trial in Britain, our children will lose their freedoms in the process. Stan Evans saw it coming. He warned us. Whether it’s called paganism or cultural Marxism, surrender would not be an option for Stan Evans.

This article originally appeared at AIM.org and is reprinted here with permission.

The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by WesternJournalism.com.

Have you ever felt that it’s over in America, that the lights are about to be shut off after years of Marxist decisions by the Democratic Party and its minions? Have you ever needed some inspiration to just get out of bed and fight the good fight for another day?

Well, today I have that inspiration for you.

It comes in the form of a skinny, nineteen year-old mixed-race kid who decided he wanted to study Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, and free market economics. The part-Japanese Brazilian has become a force for change against the communist principles of the Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who is well on her way to destroying the Brazilian economy and its democratic foundation.

Here is Kim Kataguiri in his own words:

“What Lula and Dilma have done shouldn’t just result in their being banned from politics. It should result in them being in jail!” Kim Kataguiri yelled, denouncing Rousseff and her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.  

Yahoo News goes on to report:

Kataguiri says he had a political awakening two years ago when he began questioning a classmate’s position that a popular cash transfer program applauded by many experts around the globe was responsible for the expansion of Brazil’s middle class and for lifting millions of citizens from poverty during the last decade.

He believed the credit instead should go to the country’s commodities boom. “That’s what has helped the poor,” he said.

Kataguiri and others in the group believe the best remedy for Brazil’s corruption is the expansion of free-market views and making the government smaller and more fiscally responsible — following classic tenets of American conservatism.

The young activist has become a social media sensation in Brazil. His now-one hundred thousand-plus-strong group is changing hearts and minds in the barrios of Sao Paulo and Rio as they push their free-market agenda and challenge the government. The group has even found a way to start impeachment proceedings against the government for corruption and incompetence.

I wish we could find more young people like him in America. I wish we could find the courage to start impeachment proceedings against our Marxist president.

As the old saying goes, “from the mouths of babes…”

The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by WesternJournalism.com.

This Youtube video has a chilling message of biblical proportions. It describes itself as “apocalyptic literature” written by a pastor’s wife in “biblical prose” for a commentary of current events. It was uploaded in 2013 but is ever more relevant in 2015.

The video commentator opens by saying:

And it came to pass in the age of insanity that the people of the land called America, having lost their morals, their initiative, and their will to defend their liberties, chose as their Supreme Leader that person known as, The One.

He emerged from the vapors with a message that had no meaning; but he hypnotized the people telling them, “I am sent to save you.”

“My lack of experience, my questionable ethics, my monstrous ego, and my association with evil doers are of no consequence. I shall save you with hope and change. Go, therefore, and proclaim throughout the land that he who preceded me is evil, that he has defiled the nation, and that all he has built must be destroyed.”

And the people rejoiced, for even thought they knew not what The One would do, he had promised that it was good; and they believed.

The video runs through much of what the Obama administration has done to “fundamentally change” America. It covers taxing of the rich and redistributing the wealth, marxist policies, approval of radical [Islamic] terrorism, the falling housing market, the disruption of the coal market and increasingly-expensive electricity, amnesty, mandated healthcare, and the destruction of businesses.

The video ends with the people becoming aware of what “The One” had done to their once-great nation. The “hope” and “change” he spoke of destroyed them and left their homeland in ruin.

You may think this is a fairy tale, but it’s not. It’s happening right now.

Has Obama corrupted our great nation? Is his fundamental change our destruction? Let us know what you think and spread this message to inform those who may be blinded to “The One.”

The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by WesternJournalism.com.

Since we published our article, “Catholic Church Captured by ‘Progressive Forces,’” it is starting to dawn on many in and out of the media that Pope Francis has come down on the side of the “progressive,” and even Marxist, forces in the world today.

Writing on TheBlaze and commenting on the pope’s friendly meeting with Cuban dictator Raul Castro, Catholic writer Stephen Herreid of the Intercollegiate Review called the pope’s dealings with Castro and other Marxists “a new Catholic scandal” as significant and terrifying as the presence of pedophiles in the church. He wonders how conservative Catholics can continue to pay respect to a pope “intent on making friends with the enemies of religious liberty.”

Francis had a one-hour meeting with Raul Castro on May 10. The day before, Castro had greeted Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Francis will visit Cuba in September prior to his tour of the United States.

The Associated Press reported that Castro commented, after meeting with the pope, that the pontiff “is a Jesuit, and I, in some way, am too.” Castro added, “I always studied at Jesuit schools.” He also promised, “When the pope goes to Cuba in September, I promise to go to all his Masses, and with satisfaction.”

The evidence is getting too big for the major media to ignore: the pope has made common cause with the forces of international Marxism, which are associated with atheism, the suppression of traditional Christianity, and the persecution and murder of Christians.

Conservative Catholics and many others are terrified of what is to come. Some fear that the Roman Catholic Church has joined the campaign for a global socialist state that could turn into an anti-Christian tyranny.

Dr. Timothy Ball, author of The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science, told me during a recent interview, “I think the Catholic Church is regretting making him the pope. They did it because the previous pope was starting to deal with the problems of pedophilia and corruption in the money in the church. So the powerful Cardinals pushed him [Benedict] aside. It wasn’t a health matter at all. He just realized he couldn’t beat them…He [Francis] is bringing in these socialist ideas. He’s already expressed some of them—about inequities of wealth, redistributing the wealth, which are themes you’ve heard from Obama.”

Benedict had also been a strong opponent of Liberation Theology.

As Herreid put it in his Blaze column, “In a matter of months, Pope Francis has announced a desire to ‘quickly’ beatify a deceased liberation theologist bishop, reconciled with a Sandinista activist priest who once called Ronald Reagan a ‘butcher’ and an ‘international outlaw,’ and even invited the founder of the liberation theology movement, Rev. Gustavo Gutiérrez, to speak on the need for a ‘poor Church for the Poor’ at an official Vatican event this week.”

In fact, this is the latest example of Francis welcoming advocates of Liberation Theology—a doctrine manufactured by the old KGB to dupe Christians into supporting Marxism—directly into the Vatican.

Francis received Gutiérrez, considered the father of Liberation Theology, in September 2013, but in a private audience without photos. Then, on November 22, 2014, at the end of an audience granted to the participants of the National Missionary Congress of Italy, Francis warmly greeted him personally. Gutiérrez, a Peruvian theologian and Dominican priest, is being welcomed as an official guest at the Vatican to participate in this week’s Caritas Internationalis General Assembly, the theme of which is, “One Human Family, Caring for Creation.”

Caritas is a global confederation of 164 Catholic organizations. Its U.S. affiliates are Catholic Charities and Catholic Relief Services.

Herreid comments, “Neither Pope St. John Paul II nor his trusted friend and successor Benedict XVI were taken in by liberation theology. John Paul fought Communism throughout his pontificate, and Benedict was equally forceful against liberation theology’s interpretation of the traditional ‘preferential option for the poor’ as a preferential option for violent state-mandated wealth-redistribution.”

The Francis-Marxist alliance seems to confirm the predictions of the late Vatican insider Malachi Martin, who wrote penetrating books about the Catholic Church entitled The Jesuits and The Keys of This Blood. He believed that Mikhail Gorbachev, who presided over the “restructuring” of the old Soviet Union, never gave up on Marxism-Leninism but adopted the viewpoint of the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci that a worldwide communist state could only be achieved gradually. It was to be a “revolution by infiltration.” He said, “Liberation Theology was a perfectly faithful exercise of Gramsci’s principles.”

Martin wrote that “The most powerful religious orders of the Roman Church—Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans, Maryknollers—all committed themselves to Liberation Theology.”

In addition to Gutiérrez, one of the speakers at this week’s Vatican conference is Jeffrey Sachs of the U.N.’s Millennium Project, an advocate of a global tax that could impose a cost of $845 billion from the U.S. alone. Sachs is speaking at a panel discussion on “Growing inequalities: a challenge for the one human family.”

Sachs previously appeared at a Vatican conference on “Sustainable Humanity, Sustainable Nature: Our Responsibility,” which was held from May 2 – 6, 2014.  It was held under the authority of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.

A joint statement published after the close of that Vatican conference called for Sustainable Development Goals “to guide planetary-scale actions after 2015.”

It said, “To achieve these goals will require global cooperation, technological innovations that are within reach, and supportive economic and social policies at the national and regional levels, such as the taxation and regulation of environmental abuses, limits to the enormous power of transnational corporations and a fair redistribution of wealth. It has become abundantly clear that Humanity’s relationship with Nature needs to be undertaken by cooperative, collective action at all levels—local, regional, and global.”

This week’s Caritas conference includes consideration of a “strategic framework” for the years 2015 to 2019 that quoted Francis as calling on every Christian “to be an instrument of God for the liberation and promotion of the poor…”

In building “a civilization of love,” the document urges the “transforming [of] unjust systems and structures” and desires an outcome in which “Justice is attained with respect to climate change and the use of natural resources…”

Christiana Figueres, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, explained what all of this means in simple language. “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history,” she said. “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution. That will not happen overnight and it will not happen at a single conference on climate change…It just does not occur like that. It is a process, because of the depth of the transformation.”

The pope’s left-wing supporters at the Catholic Climate Covenant are ecstatic over his upcoming encyclical on ecology and climate change and believe it can be the catalyst for this deliberate transformation. Dan Misleh of the Catholic Climate Covenant tells his supporters that his group is creating what he calls “an educational, inspirational video” on how to stop global warming and developing new programs to help Catholics “reduce their carbon footprint.”

Members of his climate coalition include:

• United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development
• United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: Migration and Refugee Services
• Catholic Charities USA
• Catholic Relief Services
• Catholic Health Association of the United States
• Columban Center for Advocacy and Outreach
• Conference of Major Superiors of Men
• Carmelite NGO
• Catholic Rural Life
• Franciscan Action Network
• National Council of Catholic Women
• Leadership Conference of Women Religious
• Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities
• National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry
• Sisters of Mercy of the Americas

This article originally appeared at AIM.org and is reprinted here with permission.

The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by WesternJournalism.com.

Listen to propaganda from the EPA and MDE, and you would think “Climate Change” programs are about saving the environment–but you would be wrong.

I’ll start by defining a term I created: “climateer”–someone with a vested interest in believing in catastrophic anthropogenic climate change. Two especially interesting attributes of climateers are the facts that (a) they have no conclusive facts, but rely on anecdotal assertions like ”97% of scientists believe in climate change”; and (b) climateers are genuinely disappointed when evidence indicates their fears are exaggerated.

The fact is, exaggerated Climate Change has little to do with the E-word, i.e. the Environment…but has everything to do with the C-words: Communism vs. free-market Capitalism.

Perhaps you’re thinking… “sounds a little over the top, commissioner…”

Consider this.

The question of whether or not there is climate change is not the question. Climate has been changing since the beginning of time. The more relevant questions are these: Is change exceeding regular cyclical norms? And to what extent is it anthropogenic, i.e. man-made?

Let’s return to the question of whether climate change doctrine is motivated by the E-word or the C-word.  Nothing I say will convince climateers they’ve been duped, so I’ll let the leftist “experts” tell us in their own words.

Fasten your seatbelts.

Ottmar Edenhofer, Vice-chair of the U.N. International Panel on Climate Change, says: “One must say clearly that we… redistribute the world’s wealth by climate policy.” Hmmm.

Harvey Ruvin, former Vice-chair of the International Council on Local Environmental Initiatives, said: “Individual rights will have to take a back seat to the collective” in the process of implementing Sustainable Development.” Interesting vernacular.

Naomi Klein of The Nation magazine says: “So when [Commissioner Rothschild] reacts to… climate change as if capitalism itself were coming under threat, it’s not because [he’s] paranoid… It’s because [he’s] paying attention. … most leftists have yet to realize that climate science has handed them the most powerful argument against capitalism.”

Third Annual Conference of the World Association for Political Economy in Lang Fang, China, May 2008:  “…global ecological sustainability will be possible only with fundamental social transformations and a new global economic system organised on the principles of social ownership of land and other major means of production … only socialism and the global solidarity of all working peoples can free both humanity and the earth from the fatal threat of global capitalism.”

Are you catching these not-so-subtle undercurrents of Marxism?

A top-10 favorite comes from David Foreman, founder of Earth First and director of the Sierra Club: “We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects … We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness tens of millions of acres of presently settled land.”

Truth is stranger than fiction.

In the book “Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis by Environmentalist Chris Williams,” Williams says: “It is utterly impossible for Capitalism to view the world as a single interlocking system. “ He asserts the only political system that can holistically address the challenges of the 21st century is “Marxism.”

The frontal attack on free-market capitalism is self-evident.

They regularly change phraseology, so rebutting them is like playing a game of whack-a-mole at the Ocean City Boardwalk–as soon as you knock down one of their hysterical arguments, an increasingly ambiguous replacement argument pops-up.  Pow!

A lack of conclusive evidence forced climateers to change their vernacular four times in three decades. First, it was “Global Cooling.” Then, “Global Warming.” Next, “Climate Change.” And now, drum roll please, they have adopted their most ambiguous term. They call it “Climate Disruption.”

Cute… and sufficiently ambiguous to allow every self-appointed pantheistic climateer to wave his/her hands hysterically and yell “climate disruption.”  Every time there is a storm, hurricane, tornado, typhoon… you name it…  hotter, colder, wetter, dryer, more snow, less snow… see, it’s exactly what we warned would happen. Their diagnosis is always the same, and it reminds me of the snake-oil salesmen of the 1850’s who went from town to town selling the same “ointment” for anything and everything that ails you.

Climateers also shifted vernacular related to “Sea Level Rise.” In an effort to band-aid unsustainable hysteria, it’s now called “Storm Surge.” Convenient.

There you have it. Hilarious, pathetic, and a threat to America and individual liberty.

Climate Change is all about attempts to put a stake through the heart of America’s free-market economy, and replace it with a government-controlled Marxist economy… all in the name of social justice… to save the world from the threat of free market capitalism.

Remember, this was in their own words, not mine.

It’s time to stop scaring our children and refocus them on the morality of free markets and individual liberty.

Learn more about your Constitution with Commissioner Rothschild and the “Institute on the Constitution” and receive your free gift.

The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by WesternJournalism.com.

Barack Hussein Obama is making the world safe for Islamo-Marxism.

At first glance, it would seem an improbable collaboration; but the marriage of convenience between radical Islam and Marxism, like the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939-1941, has a practical purpose: to destroy Western democracy.

Adolf Hitler did not want a two-front war and benefited from Soviet resources while he attempted to crush France and Britain in 1940 before turning the full force of the German military against his ultimate enemy in the east.

Likewise, Joseph Stalin expected Germany, France and Britain to exhaust themselves in a prolonged conflict, buying time to build Soviet military strength; and, debilitated by war, the Red Army would then easily march in and conquer all of Western Europe.

Both radical Islam and Marxism have a mutual hatred of Judeo-Christian democracy and a shared belief that the United States, as the cornerstone of Western civilization, is the embodiment of evil and the main impediment to establishing a global caliphate or a communist dictatorship. They have joined together in a formal conspiracy of political and social manipulation specifically designed to convince individuals that his or her actions are determined not by personal liberty, but the needs of a “community” whose desires and rights are dictated exclusively by mullahs or commissars.

Obama’s rhetoric and policies mirror the Marxist war on Western culture by destroying the Middle Class, weakening the family as the primary social institution, practicing tribal politics, encouraging historical revisionism, promoting political correctness and multiculturalism, and replacing logic and facts with emotionally satisfying gestures–all meant to undermine traditional American values and the principles upon which our country was founded.

Obama began his first term of office with his now infamous “apology tour,” humiliating, some say condemning, the United States.

On June 4, 2009 in Cairo, Obama said about Iran: “In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government. I understand those who protest that some countries have weapons that others do not. No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons.”

Yet Obama’s policies have virtually guaranteed a nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile-armed Iran.

Also in Cairo, Obama said: “There’s been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years, and much of this controversy is connected to the war in Iraq. So let me be clear: No system of government can or should be imposed by one nation on any other.”

Yet Obama’s policies fostered Islamist governments in Egypt and Libya.

In general, Obama has pursued policies that have facilitated rather than opposed the aims of our enemies.

Having been granted immunity from any uncomfortable questions about his personal history, Obama has established deceit and political oppression as primary instruments of government policy. He has attempted to render Congress powerless by unlawfully assuming executive authority not granted under the Constitution in order to continue, unobstructed, his fundamental transformation of the United States.

Left unimpeded, the inevitable result of Obama’s transformation will be a dystopia, characterized by a New Dark Age, a cataclysmic decline of society in which a totalitarian government enforces ruthless egalitarianism by suppressing or denouncing ability and accomplishment, or even competence, as forms of inequality.

All the damage that Obama has perpetrated on the United States, however, could be reversed, and his Constitutional transgressions declared null and void, simply by telling the truth.

That will not happen because Congress and the media are complicit in the greatest fraud and Constitutional crisis in American history; and, if exposed, the truth would obliterate the corrupt political-media status quo.

The Democrats and their media shills are in lock-step. They have sworn allegiance, not to the Constitution and the country, but to their führer, their Islamo-Marxist Messiah, who they will protect by any means necessary.

Republicans remain silent because they have sworn allegiance to their personal bank accounts.

It should now be clear to Americans who are not politically sedated that the institutions of the federal government can no longer be relied upon to adhere to the Constitution or enforce the rule of law. The States will need to reclaim the powers given them and the American people under the 10th Amendment, powers that have been increasingly usurped by Washington DC.

“When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil.” – Thomas Jefferson

The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by WesternJournalism.com.

There are many logical incongruities that are maintained on a populist level, especially when it comes to politics. Not least of these is the composition of the political spectrum in identifying ideologies and systems of governance. The most common fallacy is identifying fascism as a right-wing ideology, even though its ideological roots originate in the left-wing extremist models of communism and socialism.

The most pervasive political spectrum is loosely based on a left/right orientation, and attempts to place political models somewhere along the continuum. But for a political spectrum to have any meaningful representation, it must be based on some set of absolute values. Since every system of governance has unique characteristics, those can hardly be used for the absolute reference points from which to measure.

Since a spectrum is in fact a continuum, the absolute extremes must be established so that all variations and deviations from those extremes can be accurately charted. For example, light and dark, heat and cold, the band of waves of the electromagnetic spectrum, all measure from one extreme to the other. So it is with the political spectrum. Since governments establish order based on the regulation of the activities of the members of their respective societies, the correct extremes for the political spectrum delineate the degree of individual freedom allowed. And traditionally, that has been demarcated as left to right; least freedom, to most freedom; totalitarianism to anarchy.

And because the spectrum is a continuum, from one extreme to the other, it is a straight line. It doesn’t curve around, or circumvent the scale at any point. It is a continuous, single-dimensional range from one extreme to the other. And with individual freedom, there are only two absolute points of reference: maximum freedom (anarchy), or no freedom (totalitarianism). With those absolutes established at the ends of the spectrum, all systems of governance can be effectively placed on the spectrum, and scaled based on the degree or level of individual freedom–or conversely, the degree of state control over the individual.

Some political scientists have maintained that a single left-right axis is inadequate, and have consequently often added biaxial spectra distinguishing between varying issues. This is unnecessary when broadly identifying systems of governance based on a continuum of individual freedom; for ancillary factors and characteristics inevitably integrate into the dominant ideological model.

On the political spectrum, the furthest to the left, the more totalitarian the government is. Centralized planning and governmental control over the lives of individuals is characteristic of all forms of socialism, whether Communist or the Nationalist variety (fascism); and the state assumes preeminence over individual rights when taken to the extreme.

The furthest to the right on the political spectrum, the more individual liberty is advanced. Taken to its extreme is anarchy. When analyzed logically, then, National Socialism and fascism are wholly incongruent philosophically and practically to the right of the spectrum. Those who refer to Nazism as “right-wing” are politically ill-informed and have fallen for Stalin’s tactic of referring to them as such. One scholar makes the point that Nazism is to Communism what Pepsi is to Coke: basically the same but with a little different flavor.

Economically, fascism advocates control of business and labor, not ownership of it as communism advocates. In fact, Mussolini called his system the “Corporate State.” Even the term “totalitarianism” derives from Mussolini’s concept of the preeminence of the “total state.”

Indeed, European fascism is an offshoot of Marxism, the theoretical framework for communism and socialism. The founding father to fascism, Benito Mussolini, in 1919 established the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, which by 1921 became the National Fascist Party. He was born and raised a socialist. His father was a member of the same internationale as Marx and Engels. His father read him Das Kapital as a bedtime story. He was kicked out of the Italian Socialist Party in 1914 for supporting World War I, which he believed would save socialism, and stubbornly declared that he’d die a socialist.

This all makes much more sense logically, when the destructive and pejorative elements to Nazism, which was fascistic, are considered. The Brown Shirts, SS (Schutzstaffel), Gestapo, pogroms, anti-Semitism, genocide, eugenics, etc. ad nauseam are all products of oppressive, totalitarian ideology, not one that believes in more freedom.

Disturbingly, there is an American statism based ideologically on similar principles to European fascism. Our statist movement has the same ideological connections with those in Europe, reliant on philosophical components of Hegel, Weber, Marx, Kung, and Sartre. It’s harmonious in principle to Joseph Goebbels’, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, statement that “To be a socialist is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole.”

America’s version also seeks to concentrate power in the state at the expense of individual liberty. As philosopher Leonard Piekoff states, it “does not represent a new approach to government; but is a continuation of the political absolutism — the absolute monarchies, the oligarchies, the theocracies, the random tyrannies — which has characterized most of human history.” It seeks to suppress criticism and opposition to the government. It denounces and eschews individualism, capitalism and inequity in compensation. It seeks out and targets enemies of the people like corporations and those not supportive of their collectivist objectives. Clearly, even American statism is fascistic, and distinctly characteristic of the political left.

Historically, ideologically, and etymologically, fascism is a stepchild to Marxist theory. While differences exist between these isms, they are all oppressive, and are among the most totalitarian forms of government in the 20^th century.

Any attempts to describe the political spectrum as “circular,” rather than “linear,” are logically untenable. Any attempt to conflate fascism with the American right on the spectrum is historically revisionist and wholly illogical. It only fits with an inane and politically motivated model for casting aspersions; for it has no basis in historical, logical, or ideological fact.

The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by WesternJournalism.com.

“We must be ready to employ trickery, deceit, law-breaking, withholding and concealing truth…We can and we must write in a language which sows among the masses hatred, scorn, and the like towards those who disagree with us,” wrote Vladimir Lenin. The basis of Lenin’s statement is very much alive today within the Democrat party as they relentlessly attack and sow hatred towards cultural, moral, and religious institutions that conservatives hold dear.

“This is the basis of the great cultural war we’re undergoing…. We are two countries now. We are two countries morally, culturally, socially, and theologically. Cultural wars do not lend themselves to peaceful co-existence. One side prevails, or the other prevails,” states Patrick J. Buchanan in the opening scenes of James Jaeger’s film, Cultural Marxism: The Corruption of America.

The truth that conservatives must come to terms with is that the other side, the Democrat party, has prevailed as Cultural Marxism has advanced on the long march throughout our nation’s most revered institutions. This march began in the United States in the 1930’s as Marxists Antonio Gramsci and George Lukacs established the Frankfurt School at Columbia University in New York City. “The primary goal of the Frankfurt School,” writes Linda Kimball of American Thinker, “was to translate Marxism from economic terms into cultural terms.”

According to Kimball, “it provided ideas on which to base a new political theory of revolution based on culture, harnessing new oppressed groups for the faithless proletariat…smashing religion and morals [while] also building a constituency among academics.” Moreover, Cultural Marxism emphasized culture as the main cause for inequality stemming from race, religion, sex, and everything in between.

In order to implement this new direction in Marxism, Gramsci and Lukacs began what they termed the “long march throughout the institutions.” This “march” was slow and systematic beginning in the primary institutions of culture (schools, churches, newspapers, movies, media, etc.), which were taken over by socialist thinkers and sympathizers. “Once taken over,” notes Nelson Hultberg of The Daily Bell, “they could then impart ‘true socialist values‘ to the people and raise new generations to give their loyalties not to God, country, and individualism, but to the State and collectivism.”

The emphasis of Cultural Marxism was thus placed on analyzing, controlling, and changing what was once the popular culture, the popular discourse, the mass media, and the language itself in America. By institutionalizing and spreading their influence, this kind of Marxism would ingrain a hatred of Western values into the culture and future generations to come. The reason for this is best explained by the justification used by Frankfurt teacher and Father of the “New Left” Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse writes that: “The West is guilty of genocidal crimes against every civilization and culture it has encountered. American and Western civilization are the world’s greatest repositories of racism, sexism, xenophobia, antisemitism, fascism, and narcissism. American society is oppressive, evil, and undeserving of loyalty.”

With this notion in mind, Cultural Marxism placed a new emphasis on liberating all men and women from the “evil repression” and “tyrannical values” that Western civilization was built upon. To bring this about, the Frankfurt School designed numerous strategies to discredit and smear the values that had forged and sustained the West for the past 2,000 years.

“Critical Theory,” writes Hultberg, “was the first and most important of these strategies,” as it was not only critical to discrediting capitalism but also social conditions of contemporary society and existing social institutions. Hultberg explains: “Under its auspices, every tradition of Western life was to be redefined as ‘prejudice’ and ‘perversion’. And these redefinition’s were to be instilled into the social stream via devastating scholarly criticisms of all values such as family, marriage, property, individualism, patriotism, faith in God etc.”

Critical Theory precisely defines the tactics used by the Democrat Party today as they attack Christianity, capitalism, family, patriarchy, hierarchy, morality, tradition, loyalty, and patriotism. They routinely and consistently attack any and all foundations of our society in order to destroy our culture and advance their agenda.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with the various “rights” the Left has aggressively promoted throughout the years. James Simpson, of American Thinker, elaborates that “the Left doesn’t care about gay rights, any more than they care about civil rights, welfare rights, minority rights, animal rights or any other ‘rights’. According to the Left, ‘the issue is never the issue; the issue is always the revolution.” In other words, the cause of political action that we see today being pushed by the Left – whether minority rights or women’s rights – is never the real cause; women, minorities and other “victims” are only instruments in the larger cause, which is power.

“The Left uses ‘Rights’ agendas to wrap itself in the mantle of righteousness and seize the moral high ground, tactically putting us [conservatives] on the defensive in the process. But they couldn’t care less about the actual issue except in its ability to facilitate their path to power,” concludes Simpson.

In his first autobiography, Dreams Of My Father, Barack Obama clearly identifies his Marxist agenda, stating that: “once I found an issue enough people cared about, I could take them into action. With enough actions, I could start to build power. Issues, actions, power, self-interest. I liked these concepts. They bespoke a certain hardheadedness, a worldly lack of sentiment; politics, not religion.”

Take a second to think about this statement made by the future President in 1995 and then apply it to what we see happening today in America, with the latest example being the riots in Baltimore. What we are witnessing in Baltimore, as we did in Ferguson, epitomizes how the Left pushes an agenda in a way that disguises their true intention.

Make no mistake about it–the riots in Baltimore have as much to do with the death of Freddie Gray as the riots in Ferguson had to do with the death of Michael Brown. The Left is using their deaths in order to push a false narrative that seeks to exploit their deaths as examples of police waging a war on the black community. As Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke explains, the real war is on “our nation’s finest, the American police officer, and it continues to be fueled by some very important people.” Al Sharpton, Barack Obama, and former Attorney General Eric Holder have all contributed to fueling this fire.

From a Marxist standpoint, the “police war on blacks” is not the issue; the issue is expanding federal control of community police forces. Using animosity and hatred towards police, the Left has selectively chosen which cases to report on in order to incite these communities into rioting–no matter if actual or perceived targeting of the black community by police has occurred. The real issue is power, and Obama stated as much when he introduced his plan for a progressive takeover of state and local policing.

“We have a great opportunity… to really transform how we think about community law enforcement relations,” stated Obama earlier this year as he unveiled his goal in a report that gave recommendations on how Obama could institute his Task Force on 21st Century Policing. “Now Obama is trying to expand progressive control by attaching more conditions to federal funding of state and local law-enforcement efforts”, writes Neil Munro of Daily Caller. Obama drove this point home, stating that: “We can expand the [federally-funded] COPS program… to see if we can get more incentives for local communities to apply some of the best practices and lessons that are embodied in this report.”

“Those best practices,” comments Munro, “likely will eventually include rules that restrict police investigations of groups that are part of the Democratic coalition, and rules that try to lower convictions and penalties among favored sub-groups of the United States, regardless of the actual rates of illegal activity among those groups.” Furthermore, Obama’s goal is to ultimately implement the plan among the nation’s 18,000 or so law enforcement jurisdictions–thus, giving him an unprecedented amount of power and control over state and local police forces.

The riots we watched in Baltimore, as we did in Ferguson, signify the culmination of attacks brought about by Cultural Marxism, the end result of which will inevitably lead to anarchy in the streets and a consolidation of power by Barack Obama. Since Obama was elected, we have seen the Left use this tactic from healthcare to education. This administration is directly using those championing “No Justice, No Peace” as pawns in order to consolidate unbridled tyranny.

The Democrat Party is achieving their goal as they depict the present as miserable while deliberately making it so. The prime objective of the ascetic ideal preached by the Left is to “breed contempt for the present,” wrote the famous American philosopher Eric Hoffer. Hoffer noted: “It fashions a pattern of individual existence that is dour, hard, repressive and dull. It decries pleasures and comforts and extols the rigorous life. It views ordinary enjoyment as trivial or even discreditable, and represents the pursuit of personal happiness as immoral.”

Sadly, it seems that too many Americans are not aware of the narrative and tactics that the Left has accelerated the pushing of. We are truly living in a country that is undergoing a fundamental transformation between a capitalist and a communist society. As described by Karl Marx, this period is “of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other…in which the State can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”

The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by WesternJournalism.com.

For the first time in U.S. history, the leader of a major religion was invited to speak before a joint session of Congress. (No. Queen Elizabeth II doesn’t count.) Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals–along with the national news media–are all praising the pontiff’s congressional appearance.

But wait just a doggone minute! How is the pope’s speech before Congress NOT a violation of the separation of church and state? Everything he talked about was both political and religious based. His left-wing theology permeated what can only be regarded as a blatantly political sermon. Where are all of the folks who demand that Christian pastors not get involved in politics? Furthermore, why is no one threatening the Catholic Church with the loss of its 501c3 tax exempt nonprofit organization status? The Internal Revenue Code is pretty plain about pastors of 501c3 churches (of which the Catholic Church is the largest) being forbidden from engaging in political activity during their official duties. And when Pope Francis spoke before Congress, did he appear in the attire of a private person? No! He spoke in full papal regalia–meaning, he appeared before Congress in the official capacity as a religious head.

“The Vatican is a state,” you say. In that case, the hypocrisy of Pope Francis to lecture the United States about tearing down our borders and allowing illegal aliens to pour in at will is as obvious and odious as it can possibly be. Before he lectures us about how we should accept any and all illegals into our country, he should set the example and tear down the forty-foot wall surrounding the Vatican City State.

Then there is his pet socialist (yes, Pope Francis is a longtime socialist and Marxist) talking point regarding how rotten America is because of our material success. BARF! Why is no one willing to point out to the pontiff that the Roman Catholic Church is the richest corporation in the entire world? As if he needs any reminder. No corporation is even a close second. Without a doubt, the Catholic Church is the biggest hoarder of wealth on the planet.

But not only is Pope Francis a Marxist/socialist, he is also a globalist. His remarks regarding globalism could have been written by Henry Kissinger. Who knows? Maybe they were.

The history of this pope is one of a lifetime of involvement in Marxist, globalist activities. I strongly recommend that readers take a look at this report:

“Washington’s Pope”? Who is Pope Francis?

When I watch–and listen to–Pope Francis, it reminds of Piers Morgan.

With all due respect to my British friends, when I watch–and listen to–Piers Morgan, I want to fight the War for Independence all over again. And with all due respect to my Catholic friends, when I watch–and listen to–Pope Francis, I want to fight the Reformation wars all over again.

Thankfully, not all Roman Catholics are enamored with this pope. No more than I am enamored with many of our evangelical “popes” such as Joel Osteen and John Hagee.

It constantly amazes me how so many people are so willing to live their entire lives, and predicate the principles of their lives, with ideological, sociological, and theological biases–biases that have nothing to do with truth and everything to do with the advancement of private parochial agendas. And liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, Christians and secularists are equally culpable.

When President Bill Clinton lied to the American people, liberals and Democrats looked the other way and defended him in every way possible. And when President G.W. Bush lied to the American people, conservatives and Republicans looked the other way and defended him in every way possible.

Too many Catholics defend the pope regardless of his Marxist, socialist ideals. Too many evangelicals defend their denominational leaders regardless of their Marxist, socialist ideals. Even though they claim to reject globalism, too many secular libertarians refuse to deal with the way Bernie Sanders sidesteps the perpetual exploration into global hegemony by Democrat leaders in Washington, D.C. And even though they claim to detest and oppose terrorism, too many religious conservatives refuse to deal with the way that Benjamin Netanyahu and the State of Israel are up to their eyeballs in the sponsorship of all kinds of terrorism–including giving assistance to ISIS and terrorizing the Palestinian people.

Too many people are in a “protected” class, while those sharing alternative ideologies are marked for isolation, persecution, incarceration, or annihilation.

Public schools around the country are making prayer rooms available for Muslim students to pray in during school hours. Colleges and university campuses across the country provide prayer rooms, foot baths in bathrooms, and holy days for Muslim students. And no federal judge suggests that such conduct violates the SCOTUS rulings banning prayer in public schools. No school principal or college president or dean is put in jail. No mayor or city councilman of a “sanctuary” city that openly defies federal immigration laws is thrown in jail. But a Christian clerk in a Kentucky county is sent to jail by a federal judge for refusing to sign her name on a same-sex “marriage” license.

Liberals ignore the injustices and crimes against humanity by Sunni Muslims in Saudi Arabia and Turkey, while conservatives ignore the injustices and crimes against humanity by Talmudic Jews in Israel. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson ignore black-on-black crime, while Franklin Graham ignores police abuse. Conservatives ignore Ben Carson’s biggest big-government scheme of all the presidential candidates so far: government-mandated vaccinations, while liberals ignore the crimes of the biggest criminal in the field: Hillary Clinton.

But, inviting the pope to speak before a joint session of Congress has to take the all-time prize for hypocrisy and for the most glaring double standard of the entire media and political worlds.

Our founding documents (Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights) were written to protect us all from despots from both the left and the right, from both secular and religious zealots. As human beings created in the likeness of our Creator, we all have the same intrinsic, Natural rights. The purpose of government is to protect those Natural rights.

Now, all rules are off. There are no safeguards and no protections. Nothing is secure, and nothing is sacred. The rule of law has been replaced with the rule of whatever one can get by with. Nothing is wrong, only politically incorrect. The Rights of Man have been replaced with the rule of government.

This isn’t America anymore.

For the first time in U.S. history, congressional leaders from both parties invited the head of a major religious institution (Pope Francis) to use the U.S. Capitol building to promote a blatantly leftist, globalist agenda IN THE NAME OF RELIGION. This one cannot be blamed on Barack Obama. He has no control of Capitol Hill. This was the collaboration of John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, and Harry Reid.

So, pardon me while I laugh the next time someone accuses the pastor of a small church on Main Street, USA of violating the separation of church and state when he delivers a message supporting the right to life of unborn babies or traditional marriage or the lawful right of self-defense.

Pastors who relate Biblical principles to our country’s political affairs have NEVER violated the “separation of church and state.” Had Colonial preachers adhered to the modern interpretation of Thomas Jefferson’s personal letter to the Danbury, Connecticut, Baptists (from whence the phrase “wall of separation between church and state” has been taken–but which appears in NO official U.S. document), we would still be a Crown colony of England.

But after this week, we can all say, “Separation of church and state? What separation of church and state?”

P.S. I am once again featuring my four-sermon video series on “The Church And Israel.” This is one of the most-requested DVDs we have ever offered. Questions addressed on this video include:

*Does Genesis 12 (“I will bless them that bless thee…”) refer to the modern State of Israel?

*Is the modern State of Israel synonymous with Biblical Israel?

*Are modern Jews “God’s chosen people”?

*Should U.S. foreign policy favor the modern State of Israel on scriptural grounds?

To order this DVD containing my four messages on “The Church And Israel” for yourself or someone else, go to:

The Church And Israel

© Chuck Baldwin

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The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by WesternJournalism.com.

Near the end of Mel Gibson’s film “Apocalypto,” we see Christian missionaries arriving in the New World to save the natives from a culture of death that celebrates beheadings and human sacrifices to pagan Gods. Gibson has said he based the dramatic landing scene on the fourth expedition of the great Italian explorer Christopher Columbus. But celebrating the spread of Christianity has become so politically incorrect that a New Age adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has called for repealing Columbus Day.

Marianne Williamson, a prominent supporter of Sanders and his “political revolution,” writes in her book, The Healing of America, that Columbus was “a murderer of indigenous peoples,” and says his life “was a model for the standard of enslavement and killings that came to characterize much of European settlement in the New World…”

She insists that Columbus Day, which was declared a federal holiday in 1937 by President Franklin Roosevelt, must be repealed.

“When it comes to celebrating Columbus or Columbus Day we should just say no,” she writes. She proposes that Columbus Day be replaced by “Immigrants’ Day.”

Williamson, founder of The Peace Alliance and the campaign to establish a U.S. Department of Peace, has been doing much in the political realm other than promoting Sanders and writing about his “revolutionary” vision on the Sanders campaign website. She is sponsoring a conference in Washington, D.C. this month featuring such luminaries as Phil Donahue and promoting “personal peace” and the teaching of “peace in schools.”

In this context, a former teacher who is the curriculum editor of a group called Rethinking Schools and the co-director of the Zinn Education Project has proposed the abolition of Columbus Day and creation of what amounts to an “Indigenous Peoples Lives Matter” movement. The name “Zinn” refers to Howard Zinn, the Communist Party member who rewrote American history in favor of a “people’s struggle” against evil elites.

While Sanders has embraced Williamson, even speaking at one of her “Sister Giant” feminist conferences, it’s not clear if Sanders favors the tearing down of the Columbus Memorial Fountain, which is located at Union Station in Washington, D.C., just a few blocks from Sanders’ Senate office.

What’s more, there are images of Columbus throughout the U.S. Capitol complex. One shows Columbus examining a globe and chart, using an octant, mercury barometer, and magnetic compass to plan his voyages.

The attack on America’s history as a nation of European immigrants is not new, although the involvement of New Agers and Bernie Sanders supporters like Williamson in this assault doesn’t get any attention in the press. Sanders is usually portrayed as a nice man who believes in a “democratic” version of socialism, unlike the Soviet approach.

However, many Americans are tired of the trashing of their nation’s European roots and are now pushing back against the attempt to smear the reputations of those like Columbus who brought Christian civilization to natives who practiced savagery and barbarism.

An interesting historical fact is that the Columbus voyages were designed to counter the influence of global Islam. “By sailing west, Columbus was aiming to outflank Islam, gaining access to the riches of the East so as to finance the retaking of Jerusalem,” writes Ben Broussard. “Since the fall of Constantinople in 1453 [to Muslim armies], while Columbus was still a child, calls had come from all corners of Europe to renew the Crusade. Columbus saw himself as the instrument to fulfill the longed-for end.”

While the politically correct major media avoid the truth about the reasons for the voyages and what motivated the discovery of the New World, bloggers are stepping forward to answer the question, “Why was Columbus looking for a trade route to the East?” The Citizen Warrior blog notes that “during its second great jihad, Islam had invaded Central Asia and defeated Constantinople in 1453, cutting off the overland route for Europeans. Islamic armies continued their jihad northward, and conquered much of what is now Eastern Europe, until they were finally stopped at the gates of Vienna in 1683 (on September 11th).”

In his book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (And the Crusades), Robert Spencer confirms this, noting that the march of Islam had closed the existing trade routes to the East and that Columbus was trying to “bypass the Muslims” and make it possible for Europeans to reach India by sea.

The Order Sons of Italy in America (OSIA), an organization of  men and women of Italian heritage in the United States, has vigorously defended Columbus in a report entitled “Columbus: Fact Vs. Fiction.” However, the report notes that since 1992 “special interest groups” have “used this 15th century Renaissance navigator to further their 21st century political and social agendas.”

Of course, we know these “special interest groups” are the anti-American and Marxist-oriented organizations whose agendas include denigrating America’s Founding Fathers as white racists who oppressed the natives.

There was a time when Democrats and Republicans honored Columbus and didn’t bow to political correctness. In a statement on Columbus Day issued in 1940, President Roosevelt declared, “The courage and the faith and the vision of the Genoese navigator glorify and enrich the drama of the early movement of European people to America. Columbus and his fellow voyagers were the harbingers of later mighty movements of people from Spain, from Columbus’s native Italy and from every country in Europe. And out of the fusion of all these national strains was created the America to which the Old World contributed so magnificently.”

The OSIA report notes that while left-wing activists portray the New World at the time of the arrival of Columbus as an earthly paradise, the natives “practiced cannibalism, ritual human sacrifice and slavery and suffered from syphilis, hepatitis, addictive cocaine use and cancer, caused by smoking.”

The Gibson film “Apocalypto” depicts the human sacrifices in dramatic and graphic scenes, as human hearts are literally cut out of victims and offered up to their sun god. A Mayan priest then chops off a victim’s head, holding it high and then rolling it down a stairway.

In a review, Dr. Peter Hammond, Director of Frontline Fellowship, writes, “By the time the Christians arrive, we have a far greater understanding of what life was like in Central America before the blessings of European civilization brought an end to the incessant genocidal tribal warfare, rampant slavery and human sacrifices of idolatrous paganism.”

The bloody pre-Christian paganism that preceded the arrival of the Christian missionaries is what is now being sold as a Garden of Eden that America should be celebrating instead of Columbus.

With abortions being performed in the U.S. at the rate of over 3,000 per day, and baby parts being harvested for profit, as documented by the Center for Medical Progress, one can only conclude America is already well on its way back to barbarism.

But Marianne Williamson, who ran for Congress on a “pro-choice” platform, thinks honoring Columbus gives America a bad name. That Bernie Sanders embraces her and gladly accepts her advice says a lot about the nature of the Sanders socialist “revolution.” Williamson calls it a “Revolution of Love” against a “sociopathic economy” that requires meditation. “Ignite the change,” she concludes.

Who will defend Christian civilization and Columbus against this New Age socialist gibberish?

The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by WesternJournalism.com.