All posts by Wintery Knight

https://winteryknight.com/
News

Google’s YouTube censors video of national abortion conference speakers

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Hillary Clinton and Planned Parenthood
Hillary Clinton and Planned Parenthood

I can’t show you the video any more by embedding a YouTube clip, because YouTube censored the video. YouTube is owned by Google.

The Washington Free Beacon has an article about YouTube’s censorship of the video.

Excerpt:

YouTube has deleted a video that showed Planned Parenthood executives admitting abortion is “killing,” leading pro-life activists to accuse the site of censorship.

[…]The link to the three-minute video now redirects to a message from YouTube, saying, “This video has been removed for violating YouTube’s Terms of Service.” It does not elaborate on which terms or condition the video violated, nor does it give a reason why it was taken down. YouTube did not return request for comment.

But the Daily Signal has posted something about the video.

Exerpt:

Lawyers for Center for Medical Progress founder David Daleiden released a new video Thursday that exposes horrifying statements from leaders of the abortion industry during National Abortion Federation conventions in California in 2014 and 2015.

The National Abortion Federation describes itself as “the professional association of abortion providers.” The group says it “exhibits and presents at numerous conferences … about topics related to abortion care.”

The video notes that “Planned Parenthood makes up about 50 percent of [the National Abortion Federation’s] members and leadership.”

The video opens with a Planned Parenthood medical director speaking on a panel about “heads that get stuck” and the “hemorrhages that we manage.”

She is later seen telling a panel: “Given that we might actually both agree that there’s violence in here, ask me why I come to work every day. Let’s just give them all the violence, it’s a person, it’s killing, let’s just give them all that.”

A Planned Parenthood abortionist then complains about how an unborn child “is a tough little object” and “very difficult” to take apart.

A lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union is heard remarking, “When the skull is broken, that’s really sharp” as the crowd laughs about the difficulty of “getting that skull out.”

Another Planned Parenthood official, speaking on a panel, recalls that an “eyeball just fell down into my lap, and that is gross.”  The crowd laughs.

The video shows a procurement manager from StemExpress, which acquires fetal tissue for research, commenting that there are “a lot of [abortion] clinics that we work with that, I mean, it helps them out significantly.”

At another point, a  Planned Parenthood official says of clinics providing tissue from abortions that “the truth is that some might want to do it … to increase their revenues. And we can’t stop them.”

The Daily Signal article notes that California is currently prosecuting the Center for Medical Progress for releasing videos of abortionists explaining in plain English what it is exactly that they do for a living, and how they maximize revenue earned by killing unborn children.

CMP is being defended by the Alliance Defending Freedom.

If abortion were such a wonderful thing, you would think that abortion providers would be anxious to brag to the public about the great work they are doing.

Instead, countries that have legalized abortion have to censor news stories and prosecute nurses and doctors who refuse to perform abortions. Naturally, these nurses and doctors are not allowed to tell their stories or they will face criminal charges.

There is a great push in the United States right now by the abortion profiteers to force pro-life nurses and doctors out of the medical profession.

Wesley J. Smith explains in First Things:

Doctors in the United States cannot be forced to perform abortions or assist suicides. But that may soon change. Bioethicists and other medical elites have launched a frontal assault against doctors seeking to practice their professions under the values established by the Hippocratic Oath. The campaign’s goal? To force doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and others in the health field who hold pro-life or orthodox religious views to choose between their careers and their convictions.

Ethics opinions, legislation, and court filings seeking to deny “medical conscience” have proliferated as journals, legislative bodies, and the courts have taken up the cause. In the last year, these efforts have moved from the relative hinterlands of professional discussions into the center of establishment medical discourse. Most recently, preeminent bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel—one of Obamacare’s principal architects—coauthored with Ronit Y. Stahl an attack on medical conscience in the New England Journal of Medicine, perhaps the world’s most prestigious medical journal. When advocacy of this kind is published by the NEJM, it is time to sound the air raid sirens.

Naturally, in countries with single payer socialist medicine, that effort is much further along. Canada, for example, has been prosecuting pro-life nurses and doctors for decades. In a signle-payer system run by the secular left, there just is no room for conscience, much as there was no room for Germans who wanted to abstain from killing innocent Jews in Nazi Germany. When you are in a single payer health care system, you have to kill or be prosecuted for listening to your conscience.

Here’s an article about it from Evolution News:

Ontario, Canada, has passed a law formally legalizing lethal injection euthanasia. And it will force all provincial doctors to be complicit by either doing the deed themselves to all legally qualified patients who request to be killed, or by tasking them with procuring a death doctor.

From the website of the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (my emphasis):

In Ontario, health regulatory colleges are responsible for regulating their respective professions in the public interest. In doing so, colleges may establish policies and standards that their members must comply with, including policies and standards regarding medical assistance in dying.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario requires that when physicians are unwilling to provide certain elements of care for reasons of conscience or religion, an effective referral to another health-care provider must be provided to the patient. An effective referral means “a referral made in good faith, to a non-objecting, available, and accessible physician, other health-care professional, or agency”.

Think about this. Three years ago, it would have been a felony for doctors to kill patients, potentially landing them in prison.

Now, refusing to participate in homicide could cost them their medical licenses.

Single payer countries are very supportive of killing the elderly, since this reduces health care costs and allows them to have more health care money to buy votes by providing things that leftists want with taxpayer money, e.g. free sex-reassignment surgery, free contraceptives, free drug injection clinics for people addicted to illegal drugs, free breast enlargements, free IVF for unmarried elderly feminists, etc.

I see the effort to censor the CMP videos as part of the attempt to nationalize health care and criminalize dissent from the leftist agenda of deeming certain lives not as valuable as other lives.

 

News

Study: homeschooled children less likely to leave their faith

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A family praying and reading the Bible
A family praying and reading the Bible

Lindsay, a super-mom who homeschools her kids with her super-husband Doug, sent me this article from Christian News.

Quick blurb:

The recently-released findings from an in-depth study of nearly 10,000 young adults show that Millennials who were homeschooled are less likely to leave the faith than individuals who attended private or public schools.

Late last month, Generations with Vision and the National Home Education Research Institute published the results of their Gen2 Survey. The study explores the correlations between different educational methods and the spiritual decisions of Millennials who were raised in the church.

“The purpose of the study is to examine these adults who were churched growing up and to understand the key influences which either encouraged or deterred them from believing and practicing the faith of their parents,” said the survey’s director and lead researcher, Dr. Brian Ray.

Using a sample size of 9,369 18-to 38-year-olds who were churched while growing up, the Gen2 Survey collected data on Millennials’ educational backgrounds, worldviews, and religious beliefs. The study found that individuals who were homeschooled, attended church regularly, and had good relationships with their parents were most likely to remain involved in the Christian faith.

“Having a strong relationship with the child’s mother and father, attending church as a child, and years homeschooled were all clearly positively associated with Millennials’ basic Christian orthodoxy, broader biblical beliefs, Christian behaviors (e.g., attending church, keeping sex in marriage, prayer, not using pornography), satisfaction in life, civic and community involvement, and having beliefs similar to one’s parents,” Ray stated.

87% of study participants who were homeschooled said they have strong Christian beliefs. Conversely, Millennials who were enrolled in public schools or private Christian schools were more likely to walk away from the faith later in life.

“Number of years in Christian school and number of years in public school were negatively associated with most of the adult beliefs and behaviors just mentioned,” Ray explained.

Statistically, homeschooled young adults were six times as likely to be believers and seven times as likely to be stronger in their Christian beliefs as Millennials attending private schools. Homeschooled Millennials were also two times as likely to be stronger in Christian beliefs as those who attended Christian schools or public schools.

I find that when I court Christian women, they pretty much have the idea that kids are are for providing fun for their parents. And if you make a plan to make them achieve anything, then that is bad because it’s less fun for the parents. Sometimes they try to dress it up in emotional or religious language when they are explaining it to others, but under cross-examination, it really turns out to be “marriage and parenting are better when we do whatever I feel like moment by moment”. If the man does not step up during the courtship with the research and get agreement on issues like homeschooling, then he needs to shut it down and move on. Women who are guided by their feelings instead of studies in decisions about how to parent are not safe to marry. Either they accept the the best practices from research, or they are out of the running.

Of course, that necessarily means finding a wife who has done a decent degree, worked a few years, and saved up enough money to help you to keep her at home with young children. I am seeing a lot of men in my office who have decent salaries, but they still can’t keep their wives at home, because their wives ran up $200,000 in student loans (this actually happened to my co-worker Javier). Other times, I see grown women into their mid-30s, still carrying tens of thousands in student loans, and refusing to get a full-time job in their field (this actually happened to a missionary I know who refused to work any job but waitress / bartender). Sometimes, the woman just doesn’t want to stay home, because she likes the feel of earning her own money instead of being dependent on her husband. That screws the kids as well, but it’s a very popular attitude today. These are the things that a man has to check for before he marries – and remember that there is often a great gulf between words and past actions. Don’t be fooled by someone who talks about what they will do in the future, when their past is completely different.

So if a couple determines that they are going to have no strict approach to how to parent the kids, then they should not be surprised their children fall away from the faith. Either you are aware of who is teaching your kids, and what they are teaching them, or you are not. It is no coincidence that the secular left pushes for earlier and earlier starts to schooling and more and more free college. They know that the more they get the kids away from their parents and in with peers of the same age and secular leftist professors and teaches, the more those kids are likely to adopt their values – not the values of their parents. Not the values of grown-ups who have to survive in the real world with common sense.

Commentary

What’s a good sign that a person wants to go Heaven, and will like it there?

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Church is good for you
Find a church that doesn’t have the problems that you complain about

The Dina tweeted this column by Matt Walsh yesterday, and I am not sure how much I agree with it, but I found it very interesting.

Matt writes about how most American Christians think that they will go to Heaven either because 1) they have done “good” things or 2) you have faith in Jesus (without letting your faith in Jesus impact your life in any way that goes against your self-interest). He doesn’t think that either of those really mean that you will fit into Heaven.

He writes:

We do good things, we reassure ourselves. We believe. We’ll be fine. But “believing” and being a generally nice guy don’t matter on their own. What matters is to love Christ. If I don’t love Christ but I still give to charity because it makes me feel good, I’m no closer to Heaven than I would be if I were a bank robber. And if I don’t love Christ but I still believe that He exists and He is Lord, I am no closer to Heaven than I would be if I were an atheist. In fact, I’m probably much further away (“Even the demons believe”).

[…]Heaven is not for those who merely believe in God or perform wonderful deeds in His name, but for those who truly wish to do nothing but love and serve Him for all eternity. In other words, Heaven is for those who actually want to go. And we only want to go to Heaven if we want a life that is completely consumed by Christ and nothing else. If we want a life that is only partly Christ, we don’t want Heaven. We may as well admit it now while there’s still time: We don’t want Heaven.

If Christ is not even close to our primary joy in life, how can we go to a place where He is the only joy? If we are content to make Christ only a part of our lives here, how can we go to a place where there is no life but Him?

[…]Many of us think we desire Heaven because we imagine it as a place of self-centered pleasure. We believe that the happiness of Heaven is much like the happiness we find on Earth. So, if we enjoy eating good food, watching movies, playing sports, whatever, we fantasize that Heaven will be like some sort of resort where we can eat all the cheesecake we want and have access to an infinite Netflix library and maybe toss the pigskin around with Johnny Unitas on a football field in the clouds. And if this is the only kind of happiness we desire — a selfish, indulgent kind of happiness — then we clearly do not desire the happiness of Heaven.

[…]John Henry Newman once suggested that our attitude towards church is a pretty good indication of how much we really desire Heaven, and how much we’d actually enjoy it if we went there. As he pointed out, we cannot expect to find happiness in Heaven if we detest going to church, praying, and reading the Bible. If we find religion to be a crashing bore, and are stimulated only by what is selfish and secular, how do we think we’ll fare in a place where the only things we really love are obliterated, and the one thing we always avoid must now be the center of our existence forever?

If all the things that are purely about God in this life are, to us, dull and uninteresting, and all we do is bide our time until we can get back to the TV, then Heaven would be torture. There would be no leaving God to get back to the TV. It would be only God always. If we find little appeal in spending even a few minutes with God now, how can we expect that we’ll find any appeal in spending infinity with Him?

This is the problem with people who say they don’t pray, attend church, or read Scripture, but they go on walks instead, or spend time with their families, or go to the beach, and that’s where they “find God.” It’s true that God can be found in all of those things, but you can also enjoy them without thinking about God at all. There are only a few activities in life that are purely, solely, and inevitably about God and God only, and those are the activities many Christians enjoy least of all. Most of us can’t stand to worship the Lord unless it’s in the context of some relaxing and entertaining recreational activity, yet we still claim to desire Heaven.

No, it’s not Heaven we want. It’s a vacation.

I have always railed against the feminized church and pious anti-intellectual man-blaming pastors, but that was only because those were the only churches and pastors I had encountered. After moving a few months ago to a red state, I started attending a new church, based on their past apologetics-oriented activities, and the intellectual ability of the pastor. Since trying this new church, I’ve found it no problem at all to show up every Sunday for the service and for Sunday school. And I don’t feel anything awful about it.

I’ve been really blessed lately, red state, great new job, and achieving financial independence at last. I wanted to reconnect with God and so I went out and found a decent church. The whole point of me going there was to hear the hymns, think about the sermons, and read the parts of the Bible that I don’t normally read. I wanted a refresher on the character of my Boss, so that I could make better decisions that would respect him.  Jesus has been my Boss a long time. It never hurts to go back and find out what the Boss is like.

Dina and all my friends are happy that I am going to church. And I hope all my friends understand now why I wasn’t going much before. The problem was that there were no churches where I used to live that had intelligent pastors AND that were hosting apologetics events AND that equipped members of the flock to engage in public debates with atheists. This church does those things.

It doesn’t hurt that I get to wear a shirt and tie, or that the worship service has so many great classical hymns that don’t blow out my eardrums (I really hate dark churches with loud contemporary music!). Of course I was going to go to church, people – I just had to find a good one first. And that was their problem to solve, not mine.