One o the most interesting things about secular leftists is their terrible fear that people who disagree with them will use coercion or force. But actually, if you look at secular left regimes throughout history, it’s the secular leftists who love to resort to coercion and even violence to force people who disagree with them into silence or compliance or worse.

Here’s the latest article from Christopher Rufo, writing for City Journal, the journal of the center-right Manhattan Institute.

He writes:

A few years ago, Texas Children’s Hospital made no secret of its support for transgender medicine. Its doctors proudly administered puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and other medical interventions to children who self-identified as “trans.”

Then the tone shifted. In the face of public pressure, CEO Mark Wallace announced that he was shutting down the child gender clinic. But doctors at the hospital, including Richard Ogden Roberts, David Paul, and Kristy Rialon, never stopped.

The public would not have known if not for a courageous surgeon, Eithan Haim, who felt morally obligated to expose the subterfuge. He contacted me about how the hospital had lied about terminating the transgender medicine program, and that doctors were, in fact, continuing to perform sex-change procedures on children as young as 11.

The story rocketed across the world. The hospital immediately went on the defensive. Within a week, Texas legislators passed a bill confirming that transgender medical procedures for minors were illegal.

But the story also attracted attention from another powerful source: federal prosecutors. The Department of Justice has not shied from targeting political opponents of the Biden administration: former President Trump; conservative school board protesters; persons praying outside of abortion clinics; and now, doctors who dissent from transgender ideology.

On the morning in June 2023 that Haim was to graduate from Texas Children Hospital’s residency program, federal agents knocked on his door. They had identified him as a potential “leaker,” presumably through forensic examination of the hospital’s computer systems. Shortly thereafter, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tina Ansari began threatening Haim with prosecution.

Now, Ansari has made good on those threats. Earlier this week, U.S. marshals appeared at Haim’s home and summoned him to court to face an indictment on four felony counts of violating HIPAA. His initial appearance is next Monday, where he will learn more about the charges against him.

It’s important for Christians and conservatives to understand that secular leftists are not just Christians with the God removed. They have no rational foundation for free will. They have no rational foundation for objective morality. And they have no rational basis for human rights, like religious liberty. When their will to power runs up against your conscience, then anything is possible.

This story reminds me of how secular leftists in Wisconsin organized pre-dawn raids against conservatives who disagreed with them.

Pre-dawn raids in Tennessee

Here’s another case of secular leftists in government acting like domestic terrorists, this time from The Federalist:

Pennsylvania family the FBI raided last September over the father’s pro-life advocacy filed two claims today for a total of $4.35 million in damages due to the FBI’s unconstitutional, “malicious,” and “corrupt” use of “excessive force.”

Mark Houck and Ryan-Marie Houck say in their legal filings obtained by The Federalist that their seven children continue to suffer as a result of the FBI raiding — with battering rams, ballistic shields, armor, and long rifles — the home of a nonviolent pro-lifer who didn’t own any guns and whose seven children were just waking for breakfast.

The Houcks “have lost three babies from miscarriages due to the stress of the FBI’s conduct and resulting prosecution” and subsequently been diagnosed with infertility, Ryan-Marie Houck’s filing says. She says she still cries for hours and the family’s high anxiety provoked by the raid has caused them to install security cameras and rarely leave home.

In the Sept. 23, 2022 raid, “Government agents aimed rifles and handguns at Mr. Houck from his porch and from behind vehicles in his yard and driveway,” Ryan-Marie Houcks’ complaint says. “They also aimed their weapons at Mrs. Houck, who slowly walked down a staircase to approach the Houcks’ front door. Mrs. Houck approached after Mr. Houck had already walked peacefully outside with his hands up. Any bullet that missed Mr. Houck could have struck Mrs. Houck or her children, who were stirring throughout the house and had gathered behind her on the staircase. The entire family was located directly downrange.”

The sunrise raid that included approximately 20 law enforcement officers was conducted after Mark Houck’s lawyer had informed the Department of Justice he would voluntarily turn himself in if requested. Mark Houck’s complaint says his 9-year-old daughter was terrified to find two officers dressed in black carrying rifles looking into their home through a back window.

The Houcks’ lawsuits say that, as a result of the “unnecessary” raid, “The children continually come to her [Ryan-Marie] crying and suffering from nightmares.” Ryan-Marie and their five oldest children, ages 7 to 13, now must take medication “to get a few hours of sleep” each night.

“Joshua was six years old at the time he saw his father taken away at gun point,” says Ryan-Marie’s complaint. “He cried the entire time and yelled to the FBI, ‘Please don’t take him he is my best friend.’ To this day, any time someone brings up the raid or tells the story, he starts to cry as if he is reliving the day all over again. He constantly worries that he will lose his father or mother.”

Their 4-year-old has started sleepwalking, the claims say. The entire family seizes up with anxiety any time they have an unannounced visitor. Once, a friend showing up unannounced gave Ryan-Marie a panic attack, her filing says.

The accused man was found not guilty by a jury.

A Pennsylvania jury acquitted Mark Houck in January on all charges the Department of Justice brought against him. The DOJ argued Houck had violated a federal law that prohibits physically obstructing abortion facilities. Houck and his son were 100 feet away from the facility when they were accosted by a pro-abortion escort.

The laws are not being enforced impartially:

Mark Houck’s complaint notes that, except for one single recent case, the DOJ has prosecuted only pro-lifers for alleged violations of the FACE Act used against him. The law is supposed to apply both to abortion supporters and pro-lifers, but the DOJ has almost exclusively used it against pro-lifers.

Sounds like stuff that you would see with other secular leftist regimes. Stalin in the Soviet Union. Mao in China. Pretty standard secular left morality. They hate people who disagree with them.

Pre-dawn raids in Wisconsin

In Wisconsin, Democrat District Attorney John Chisolm had no problem at all using law enforcement to go after conservatives who supported Act 10. He sent armed police to conduct pre-dawn raids on people like Cindy Archer, who were advocating for the law.

National Review reported on the Chisholm police raids:

In two separate reports, National Review described these raids in detail. (The court cited our reports in its opinion.) On October 3, 2013, multiple Wisconsin conservatives were awakened by a persistent pounding on the door, their houses were illuminated by floodlights, and police — sometimes with guns drawn — poured into their homes. Once inside, the investigators turned the private residences of these innocent conservative citizens “upside down,” seeking an extraordinarily broad range of documents and information. These raids were supplemented by subpoenas that secured for investigators massive amounts of electronic information.

[…]The raid victims have suffered severe, long-term consequences as a result of these raids. Almost to a person, they say they no longer feel secure in their own homes. They report watching what they say, terrified that overt political involvement could lead their homes to be invaded again. One victim said, “I tried to create a home where the kids always feel safe. Now they know they’re not. They know men with guns can come in their house, and there’s nothing we can do.” Another victim — whose son was home alone when police arrived, guns drawn — is haunted by this chilling thought: “He could have been in the shower. They could have broken the door down. He could have been shot. Over politics.”

By the way, this Legal News Online article about his wife, Colleen Chisolm, sheds light on his motivation for using law enforcement as a weapon against conservatives.

Now a longtime [John] Chisholm subordinate reveals for the first time in this article that the district attorney may have had personal motivations for his investigation. Chisholm told him and others that Chisholm’s wife, Colleen, a teacher’s union shop steward at a school in St. Francis, which is near Milwaukee, had been repeatedly moved to tears by Walker’s anti-union policies in 2011, according to the former staff prosecutor in Chisholm’s office. Chisholm said in the presence of the former prosecutor that his wife “frequently cried when discussing the topic of the union disbanding and the effect it would have on the people involved … She took it personally.”

[…]Chisholm added… that “he felt that it was his personal duty to stop Walker from treating people like this.”

She cried, then he sent armed police to their houses. Law enforcement isn’t to protect taxpayers. Apparently, it’s to enforce secular leftist views on taxpayers.

I have a little experience with metaphysics – just what I learned from a few lectures by the wonderful Christian professor Dr. J. P. Moreland. What I remember from those lectures is that metaphysics can be useful for defending the reality of non-physical minds, and dogmatic skepticism is self-refuting. But I found a nice, easy article by Tyson James to give us a real overview of metaphysics.

His article is on Worldview Bulletin.

He starts like this:

One day, a close church friend asked me, “What is metaphysics?” Dr. Paul Gould notes in a previous article that local bookstores often locate the subject of metaphysics somewhere around tarot cards and astrology. It may be surprising, then, for some to learn that metaphysics is actually the name of a very important field in philosophy.

So, what is metaphysics to philosophers and what in the world does it have to do with Christianity? These are actually very important questions, since metaphysics is a subject which touches on some of the most fundamental elements of the Christian faith.

So, I looked down the list and he has these:

• Is there a first cause?
• Do we have free will?
• Are there any unchanging truths?
• What are space and time?
• How do things which change maintain their identity over time?
• Is the physical universe all there is?
• Are objective morals real?

This is what he has to say about the one I remember:

How do things which change maintain their identity over time? Christians believe that the same person who was a sinner may also accept Christ, be saved from his sins, and enjoy eternity with God. But some people say that there is no “self” which maintains identity over time, that we’re just collections of atoms which change every time an atom is gained, lost, or rearranged. So, answering this question is important for showing that the same person who is lost without Jesus may be saved and restored in Jesus.

As a software engineer from an immigrant family, reading philosophy is as painful to me as a root canal. I just keep thinking “why do I have to know this if no one will pay me to know this?” But I like to win apologetics battles more, so I have forced myself to learn a little about some of the topics in his list. Every good Christian apologist knows how to defend philosophical attacks, like the problem of evil, religious pluralism, postmodernism, physicalism of minds, the hiddenness of God, rational unbelief, animal pain, etc. And we know how to go on the attack with objective morality, mind-body dualism, persistent identity through time, free will, etc. Not to mention first cause arguments, but I try to only think about that as a scientific problem. Metaphysics is useful for many of these tasks.

Anyway, metaphysics. Let me find you something useful to teach you some metaphysics. Here is a good short essay from Dr. John Depoe, who defends the reality of the non-physical minds, which is also known as “substance dualism”, because there are two substances – your body and your mind.

He writes about the persistent identity argument for the soul:

Another argument supporting substance dualism is that one maintains personal identity through change. Even though one is continuously going through physical changes and experiencing different mental states, a person continues to be the same person. If persons were identical with their physical parts or mental states, they would cease to be the same persons as these changes occurred. Therefore, it is necessary to postulate an immaterial, substantial self that endures through change.

Suppose that someone believes that people do not maintain identity through change and concludes that the previous argument for substance dualism fails. This denial of personal identity through change, I contend, presents untenable difficulties. First, there is one’s own awareness of being the same person through change. Moreover, if one is not literally the same person through these changes, how can a person maintain long-term goals and desires?

If you are your body, and your body is always changing, then you aren’t the same person now as 5 minutes ago.

There are many other good arguments for real non-physical minds. First of all, we know about the existence of at least one non-physical mind. God. That’s who brings the physical universe into being. He’s not physical. And there is also our first-person awareness of our mental state, our experience of consciousness, our ability to think about other things (“intentionality”), and our experience of free will.

So you see, this is all very practical, even if it frightens my practical West Indian parents if I talk about it too much.

Matt Walsh linked to this article from the UK Telegraph in his article about how federal and state law enforcement covered up the motive of the Nashville shooter (archived). The UK Telegraph talks about a new study that suggests that a rise in “excess deaths” since the pandemic. The study does not conclude that vaccines were responsible for excess deaths.

Here’s the article from the UK Telegraph: (archived)

Covid vaccines could be partly to blame for the rise in excess deaths since the pandemic, scientists have suggested.

Researchers from The Netherlands analysed data from 47 Western countries and discovered there had been more than three million excess deaths since 2020, with the trend continuing despite the rollout of vaccines and containment measures.

They said the “unprecedented” figures “raised serious concerns” and called on governments to fully investigate the underlying causes, including possible vaccine harms.

[…]The study found that across Europe, the US and Australia there had been more than one million excess deaths in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, but also 1.2 million in 2021 and 800,000 and 2022 after measures were implemented.

Researchers said the figure included deaths from Covid-19, but also the “indirect effects of the health strategies to address the virus spread and infection”.

They warned that side effects linked to the Covid vaccine had included ischaemic stroke, acute coronary syndrome and brain haemorrhage, cardiovascular diseases, coagulation, haemorrhages, gastrointestinal events and blood clotting.

I think this is significant, because there was always concern among taxpayers that these vaccine mandates were being pushed by secular leftist fascists who were irrationally overexuberant about the idea of forcing people to act uniformly. The fascists don’t like differences of opinion or behavior. That’s why they like things like mass transit, but despise individual retirement accounts. They long for a “unity” brought about through the use of government power.

Secular left fascists realize that science has the respect of taxpayers, so they want to misuse science to compel taxpayers to behave uniformly. You can see it with the way that global warming hysteria is used to control the decision-making of taxpayers around energy consumption.

Another problem with the vaccines was how it was impossible for taxpayers to sue the vaccine manufacturers in case the product caused harm. I can’t think of another product that has an exemption like that. You would think that Ralph Nader socialists would want to protect taxpayers from big corporations, but we saw the opposite. Secular leftists sided with corporations, and the propaganda against dissent was so strong that the secular left had many people believing that firings, imprisonment and seizing of children were all appropriate ways of dealing with dissenters.