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North Carolina Republicans have super-majorities in both chambers, here’s what’s happening

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I have a close friend who lives in North Carolina, and she thinks that it’s a great state, and that it’s about to get a lot more conservative because they now have Republican supermajorities that can override the governor’s veto. I have noticed a lot of good stories in the news about North Carolina, and I thought that I might collect a few stories about what they are up to.

First, this one from yesterday, reported by Life News:

Pro-Life legislators in North Carolina have introduced a bill to ban abortions on unborn babies starting at 12 weeks. While pro-life advocates were hoping for legislation to protect babies starting at conception or at least a heartbeat bill protecting them beginning at 6 weeks, the political reality of the situation prevented that.

North Carolina Republicans face an uphill battle in getting legislation approved because pro-abortion Democrat Governor Roy Cooper is certain to veto any pro-life legislation and stronger pro-life protections for babies would have a more difficult time securing the supermajority necessary to override his veto.

North Carolina Republican legislative leaders said on Tuesday there’s agreement for a 12 week bill and House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger both said they would push the pro=life legislation in their respective chambers.

Now for a couple stories about cleaning up their elections, so that Democrats can’t steal them by voter fraud.

This one from Life Site News:

With its new conservative majority, the North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday reversed prior decisions against state voting rules and a Republican-redrawn districting map, a boon to the GOP’s prospects going into the 2024 elections.

The Carolina Journal reports that the state’s highest court, on which two Democrat justices were replaced with Republicans last year, voted 5-2 to reinstate North Carolina’s 2018 law requiring photo identification in order to vote and districting maps favorable to Republicans in congressional and state legislative races, and to forbid felons from voting in state elections until they have completed their sentences.

All three rulings were issued “with prejudice,” meaning that opponents cannot challenge them again.

Nice. And how about this one from The Federalist:

After scoring significant victories in the legislature in the 2022 midterms, North Carolina Republicans are introducing legislation that would bar state and local election officials from accepting or using private money to conduct elections.

SB 89 stipulates that state and local election boards, as well as county boards of commissioners, are prohibited from accepting “private monetary donations, directly or indirectly, for conducting elections or employing individuals on a temporary basis.”

Concerns surrounding the use of private money to conduct elections became prominent following the 2020 election cycle, during which Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg gifted nonprofits such as the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) hundreds of millions of dollars. These “Zuckbucks” were then siphoned into local election offices in battleground states around the country to change how elections were administered, such as by expanding unsecure election protocols like mail-in voting and the use of ballot drop boxes.

To make matters worse, the grants were heavily skewed towards Democrat-majority counties, essentially making it a massive Democrat get-out-the-vote operation.

That’s how Biden was able to win the election in states where he wasn’t even competitive in the polls.

And this one, from Daily Wire:

The University of North Carolina (UNC) made a move against woke culture on Thursday, banning controversial so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) requirements from the school’s hiring and promotion process.

The university’s Board of Governors reportedly voted Thursday to secure the ban, following pressure from Color Us United, a non-profit committed to speaking out “against those who want to divide America.”

UNC “shall neither solicit nor require an employee or applicant for academic admission or employment to affirmatively ascribe to or opine about beliefs, affiliations, ideals, or principles regarding matters of contemporary political debate or social action as a condition to admission, employment, or professional advancement,” the resolution said, adding that an employee or applicant can’t “be solicited or required to describe his or her actions in support of, or in opposition to, such beliefs, affiliations, ideals, or principles.”

A lot of this is going to hinge on who wins the governor post in 2024, and this guy (reported in The Federalist) is the guy who Republicans are running:

Mark Robinson believes Republicans and conservatives should never concede the cultural narrative, and that the party’s greatest need is to put forward those who can speak with force, conviction, and eloquence about the party’s shared values with everyday Americans. The lack of articulateness in such matters is, of course, a perennial complaint about GOP political discourse. However, if anybody is in a position to do something about it, it is the man who will be, barring incident, the first black lieutenant governor of North Carolina.

I’ve witnessed a great many politicians give a great many speeches, but I’ve seldom come across one with the natural ease and ability to combine passion and reason the way Robinson does when he gets warmed up on his favorite issues. His is a national-level talent that the GOP would ignore or sideline at its peril.

I saw a display of Robinson’s appeal last summer when he addressed a Back the Blue rally in downtown Raleigh. He electrified the audience and with a speech basically shut down the Antifa and Black Lives Matter protestors cat-calling and drumming on the periphery, striking them, at least momentarily, silent and dumbfounded.

I hope a lot of conservatives move there from blue states, and tilt the balance more. No point living in a blue state if you can get out. Don’t pay taxes to people who hate you, and your values. Just move. I like to make spreadsheets comparing all the interesting rankings of states, like fiscal solvency, state legislatures, pro-life and self-defense. According to my spreadsheets, across all measures that I care about, the two best states in the union are Florida and Tennessee.

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Guest post: Christians should oppose Black Lives Matter

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The following is a guest post by a friend of mine who is also a software engineer.

The Problems with Black Lives Matter

All over Facebook I’ve seen naïve Christians posting Black Lives Matter (BLM) material, hashtags, and even donation links. According to their official statements BLM aims to:

  1. “Disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure”
  2. Foster a “queer‐affirming network” and “freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking,” instead of helping people escape LGBT lifestyles and live as God intended.
  3. “A national defunding of police,” BLM is a member of M4BL which also calls for abolishing prisons.
  4. BLM parent group M4BL is pro-abortion: “we demand reproductive justice that gives us autonomy over our bodies and our identities.”
  5. BLM parent group M4BL is anti-capitalist. The alternative to capitalism is removing the freedom to buy and sell and putting the government in charge of resources. When government power is absolute, all checks and balances against evil disappear and atrocities become inevitable. I know of 100 million people who didn’t have a good time in anti-capitalist countries, especially minorities.
  6. BLM finds racism in everything with no concept of forgiveness. While masking the much larger and real causes of black inequality in the US. More on that below.

These goals don’t seem very Christian.

Some Christians say they only support the slogan “black lives matter” but not the organization. They’re probably friends with people who call themselves “National Socialists” and enjoy re-explaining to everyone they meet how it’s not actually the German kind. To each their own. Yet better slogans could be used to support black people.

Avoid the slackidasical “all lives matter” retort. That distracts from the real issues:

Black Inequality

Black inequality in the US is real. But BLM promotes a false narrative, blaming it entirely on modern systemic racism. If that’s true, why are blacks 3 times more likely to receive government assistance than whites? Why are police are about twice as likely to use lethal force against whites under arrest than blacks (although more likely to use non-lethal force against blacks)?

Before getting to the real reasons let’s first dig into that last source. It comes from the left-leaning Center for Policing Equity. The wording in their report focuses on specific localities where the police are harsher on blacks. But the overall data tells a different story. In tables 6 and 7 on page 20, police are 1.73 times more likely to use lethal force against whites under arrest than blacks, and 2.41 times more likely to use lethal force against whites under arrest for violent offences. Black Lives Matter and the left-leaning media would never tell you this.

Don’t police just arrest blacks way more than whites? Yes, absolutely. You can even find stats showing unarmed blacks are 5 times more likely to be killed by police than unarmed whites, a product of being arrested much more frequently. But unfortunately (trigger warning) it’s because in the US, blacks commit significantly more crime:

I looked up the FBI data this meme links to, converted it to rates per million and got the same result. Non-lethal crimes have a similar proportion by race.

What are the Real Causes of Black Inequality?

Perhaps the court systems are racist and blacks are convicted of murder more often? One could speculate so, but murders involve more investigation than most crimes, and you’d have to argue the system is so biased it only makes it appear as if blacks are 12.8 times more likely to kill whites than whites kill blacks. Quite a stretch.

Use careful grace in sharing these stats, as they’re easily abused by the small number of people wishing to paint blacks as an unredeemable, inferior race. Instead consider the better explanations for black inequality:

  1. 2.7 times more black children (65%) grow up in single parent homes than white children (24%). 17% of blacks were born out of wedlock in 1940 but that number is >70% today. Other races also increased but not nearly as much. We know broken families are strongly correlated with poverty, poor education, crime, and many other ills.
  2. As noted, blacks are three times more likely to receive government assistance than whites, a number that’s changed very little in 40 years. If welfare programs lifted people out of poverty, by now shouldn’t we see more than a slight decrease in blacks on welfare? Rather I suspect welfare increases rates of fatherlessness: women don’t need a man when the government pays the bills.
  3. Universities, employers, the government, and the media use “soft racism,” giving special treatment to blacks, sometimes causing an unhealthy and unnecessary inferiority complex.
  4. Due to this persecution narrative, and fear of being called racist, poor behavior among blacks isn’t called out, worsening the broken family cycle. Even being used as an excuse for the poor behavior of the recent rioters. Black CNN journalist Don Lemon received a “firestorm of criticism” for pointing to out-of-wedlock births as a problem among blacks.

I’m curious. Will you argue that fatherlessness leads to negative outcomes among whites, but a 2.7x greater rate among blacks doesn’t significantly increase their negative outcomes? Really?

Perhaps it’s even possible that police target blacks more frequently because these issues actually do lead them to commit more crimes, causing some police to subconsciously be more suspect of blacks? I don’t know if that’s true, but if so who is at fault?

Is Racism Still a Major Issue?

Before continuing please read this piece by conservative commenter David French (white), who adopted his black daughter from Ethiopia. He describes how through many incidents it made him realize racism is still alive and well in America.

Meanwhile, the black economist Thomas Sowell offers a contrary view:

Who’s right? David French says he used to think there were almost no racists. I’m still in that place. I don’t know anyone who is racist other than one or two people I met on strange corners of the internet. After adopting his daughter French discovered that yes, of course racism still exists, outlining several real incidents of bias against her. For example his daughter’s friend said, “My dad says it’s dangerous to go black people’s neighborhoods.” Alt-right trolls even made a cruel meme of his young daughter in a gas chamber.

Such memes are of course reprehensible. But French uses the wrong benchmark. The real question is not if racism exists, but if blacks face greater external hardship than other groups? People who are too smart, dumb, fat, thin, short, tall, attractive, ugly, rich, poor, Christian, or amoral. Or any other category. Almost everyone belongs to at least one. French doesn’t address that question.

Compared to Christian Persecution in the US (Yes, Really)

I can’t answer for most of those groups. But I am a Christian. I’m very glad to live in the US with its many Christian freedoms. I don’t even feel comfortable talking about Christian “persecution” in the US because other parts of the world have it so much worse. Yet there are still examples of anti-Christian discrimination here:

  1. I know a Christian friend who was kicked out of her PhD biology program for being a creationist. An intelligent, articulate, and polite one at that. I used to think people like her must’ve just been belligerent, but I hear similar stories from nearly every creationist or intelligent design proponent I speak to. Many keep their beliefs hidden. Books and documentaries are filled with such stories. Well known professor and textbook author Larry Moran has even called for universities to flunk by default any students who believe in intelligent design: “Flunk the IDiots.” Forbes later wrote a glowing bio of Moran for his stance. Imagine the outrage if Moran called to flunk all black students!
  2. In 2016, hapless Chinese scientists published a paper in the journal PLOS One, stating that the human hand shows “proper design by the Creator.” The remark was in passing and the rest of their paper had nothing to do with the evolution or design. As soon as this was realized, I watched as the backlash unfolded in the comments section. Five editors of PLOS One requested the whole article to be retracted (rather than the wording removed), two of those editors said they’d resign if it wasn’t retracted. Two others said the editor who approved the paper should be fired. And five scientists commented, saying they’d boycott PLOS One. Then the paper was retracted. Even though the Chinese researches explained they only meant to say “mother nature,” and English wasn’t their first language. No other issue with their research was found. That backlash was only for a translation issue. Imagine if they’d been Christians who actually believed God designed life.
  3. Practicing Christians are no longer allowed to hold certain jobs in the United States. A county clerk like Kim Davis cannot in good conscious abet two people into a lifelong commitment to live in sin, yet was jailed for refusing. California once banned all judges who volunteered with the Boy Scouts because the group previously required heterosexual scout leaders.
  4. Many friends often tell me they can’t publicly speak out against homosexual behavior in fear of losing their jobs. I doubt their employers have issue with vegetarians saying meat is murder.
  5. And of course secularists make memes, sometimes violent, mocking Christians all the time. So what.

Imagine if I took the crime stats above and marched around with signs about “white genocide” or “systemic racism” because blacks are more likely to get welfare or whites more likely to be shot while under arrest. That’d make me a complete narcissistic jerk. Or worse if I used it to justify arson, looting, and violence. Yet I’d still be more correct than Black Lives Matter because at least the data supports me.

I don’t think there’s anything special about hardships faced by US Christians. You could make a similarly troublesome list for hardships of unattractive and overweight people, probably worse. I’m not planning any protests for them or for US anti-Christian discrimination. That’s too minor compared to many greater injustices in the world. And please don’t take this and claim I’ve said racism no longer exists. The experiences of David French’s daughter are bad things that need to stop. But unlike in decades past, I’m not convinced it’s currently any worse than hardships faced by any number of other classes of people for a wide variety of reasons.

The Media Amplifies Racism for Profit

A couple weeks ago I posted to Facebook about Israel planning to ban their only Christian news station for proselytizing. Two friends commented that it was a great idea, because Christians indoctrinate people. I get similar comments often. Oh woe is me! But imagine if they’d instead called for banning black history? Call CNN! We found another Amy Cooper!

Although sometimes doing well, George Floyd had a long and sometimes violent criminal record. Nobody thinks he deserved to die. I’m glad the officers involved are being investigated. But put his case in perspective. People do awful things for many reasons. In the United States each year we have:

  • 600,000+ abortions
  • 250,000 deaths from negligent medical errors
  • 15,000 murders
  • 1,500 dead from child abuse.
  • 1,000 suspects killed by police (with 90 to 95% attacking police or another person). Among a total police force of more than 800,000.
  • 85 police officers killed.

Despite all that, the deceptive media amplifies any incident with a white perpetrator and black victim. Everyone knows about George Floyd, but few have heard of Tony Timpa (white), who in 2016 also begged for his life as police suffocated and made fun of him. The media gets away with this bias because almost everyone actually does hate racism, leading to collective outrage. So much that it brings riots, looting, and buildings on fire. Plus news media profit from increased news viewership of these riots. While the media ignores many greater injustices in the previous list.

The leftist media then uses Black Lives Matter as a front to push ridiculous leftist policies like defunding the police. Oh you’re against BLM? Racist.

Black inequality in America is real. If you love people of all races as Christ commands, then you should want to solve this problem. That can only be done if we tackle the real causes, and not the left-leaning media’s exaggerated racism narrative that masks them.

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Do religious people have a lower divorce rate than non-religious people?

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Yesterday, I blogged about a discussion between the Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles and some young secular left women, on the @Whatever podcast. I talked about the view that one woman had, that arguments for God’s existence and Christianity in particular were nonsense. But another woman said that Christianity doesn’t make your risk of divorce any lower, so there’s no benefit to being a Christian, and seeking out a Christian spouse. Is she right?

Let’s take a look at some data from a study, so we can really see what the evidence is.

Here’s something from the Institute for Family Studies:

When trying to understand how much people value something, economists pay particular attention to the value of what people give up in order to estimate how much they value what they get in exchange. Money is a common metric for value, but time is another metric that is sometimes easier to use. When it comes to Christianity, people are often reluctant to discuss how much money they contribute to their churches but are more forthcoming when asked how much time they spend on religious activities. Economists who study religion often use the frequency of church attendance as a proxy for the strength of an individual’s religious beliefs.

Using this line of reasoning, we can divide the American population into two groups: 1) the “devout,” or those who attend church two to three times a month or more; and 2) the “non-devout,” or those who attend church once a month or less. The following analysis used data for people ages 25 to 54 from the General Social Survey (GSS).

So, the first point is that secular left feminists are unlikely to get married at all, and that’s because marriage is moral rational in the Christian worldview than it is in the secular leftist worldview:

Here, it is clear that marriage rates have been falling for the population as a whole. But those who attend church on a regular basis are significantly more likely to marry than their less devout peers. Breaking this analysis down further by race,2 we see higher rates of marriage among regular church attenders in both white and black populations.

There appear to be social and economic forces occurring over time that are causing decreased marriage rates for all Americans. But for both black and white Americans, marriage is falling significantly faster for people who do not attend church regularly. This is creating a growing gap in marriage rates between the devout and non-devout over time. And the widening gap in marriage may indicate a growing separation of shared culture between the devout and non-devout.

People think that they can just chop the God out of Christianity, and the same morals will just continue as before, with no rational foundation for it. But marriage involves a loss of personal freedom to pursue pleasure, at least in the short-term. Atheism is about hedonism. That’s why atheists support abortion – because when someone else gets in the way of their pleasure, they think murder is a fine way to keep the good times rolling for themselves. It’s what Darwin called “survival of the fittest”, and this is what atheists believe. When atheists are faced with a conflict between their own happiness, and the loss of personal freedom that marriage requires, they choose not to get married. That’s why atheist states have such low marriage rates.

Marriage itself is self-sacrificial – you’re making a safe place for children to have stability, at your own expense. So that’s the first difference between church-attending Christians and secular left feminists – marriage rates. It’s no use complaining when you are a hedonist that you can’t find a good spouse to marry. You’re a hedonist, and you’re looking for a hedonist to marry. That’s not the kind of person who enters a commitment that requires self-control and self-denial. You might as well expect two psychopaths to run a successful business together than to expect two morality-deniers to get married and stay together.

Far-left Pew Research that 64% of members of a couple of Christian denominations are married. But for atheists, it’s a measly 36%. Atheists don’t get married.

OK, and what did they find about the divorce rates of these different groups of people – devout and non-devout?

This:

Devout vs Non-Devout Divorce Marriage
Devout vs Non-Devout Divorce Marriage

The article says:

The figure above shows that divorce rates are significantly lower for white Americans who attend church regularly and this difference remains significant across all decades.

A previous study out of Harvard University reached the same conclusion:

Considerable research over the last two decades has been devoted to the relationship between religious participation and health and well-being. Our research on this topic at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health links religious service attendance to a number of better health outcomes, including longer life, lower incidence of depression, and less suicide. Our work also indicates that religious service attendance is associated with greater marital stability—or more specifically, with a lower likelihood of divorce.1

We are not the first to study the relationship between religious service attendance and the likelihood of divorce. In fact, a number of studies have found similar results: namely, that those who attend religious services are about 30 to 50 percent less likely to divorce than those who do not.2

It’s really important for young people to make sure that the actions they take today are taking them towards the goal they want to reach tomorrow. Young people, especially women, seem to have a disconnect between their words and actions. They say they want marriage. They say they want to avoid divorce. But their actions in the moment take them closer and closer to not marrying at all, or divorcing if they do marry.

Young people, especially women, love to make decisions on the basis of feelings. They need a “spark” in order to know that a person is “their person”. The person that “the universe” has “manifested” for them to be effortlessly happy. They expect a tall, tattoo’d atheist with a criminal record for domestic violence to marry them, and make them live happily ever after. Why? Because there is a spark. There are tingles. There is a feeling in the moment. And surely, choosing what you want in the moment will get you long-term results, right? That’s why the marriage rate is declining. Does anyone have the courage to tell these young fools the truth?