I saw a couple of articles that I wanted to share with you. The first one is by Christian apologist Larry Taunton, who writes about which progressive Christians to ignore during elections. The second article is by Dr. James White, and he writes about why we shouldn’t listen to progressive Christians like John Piper, who aren’t able to perceive how progressivism threatens liberty.

Let’s start with Larry Taunton:

I have been reflecting on the lessons of the Nazi occupation of Western Europe and those who did and didn’t collaborate with them for the simple fact that we are, unquestionably, witnessing the occupation of America’s public and private institutions by a homegrown enemy that hates America and all that it represents. After all, what is a General Milley if not the modern-day equivalent of Vidkun Quisling?

America’s conservative collaborators are those who have, for reasons that are not always clear, lent their platforms, sympathies, and intellectual support to the Radical Left if only by their unrelenting attacks on (mostly) red state conservatives who dared defy them and vote for Trump.

Tim Keller, who makes our list, has said that we must meet with “practitioners” of Marxism so that we might understand them. I have much preferred to meet with their victims. Our (adopted) daughter Sasha is one of them. Her life bears the unmistakable scars of that godless worldview. That Keller and Russell Moore (who also makes our list) would suggest—be it knowingly, naively, or only mildly—that such a murderous system has some resonance in Scripture, and Keller most certainly has, or that it is a “manufactured controversy” as Moore contends, is an intolerable outrage that must not go unchallenged.

He spends some time looking at the the work of the secularists and socialists from the other side. That is to say, he looks at the victims.

Here’s his list of the people who collaborate with the secular left:

• Tim Keller
• George W. Bush
• Beth Moore
• Russell Moore
• Bill Kristol
• David French

He’s got articles on each one, linked at the bottom of the post.

This one on David French has a wonderful concluding paragraph, which will be recognized by those who have seen the famous movie “The Bridge on the River Kwai”:

One senses that French has gone so far in his Never Trumpism that he simply can’t turn back. That has put him in the intellectually untenable position of blaming the debacle in Afghanistan on the American people instead of the Biden administration; justifying lockdowns, vaccine passports, General Mark Milley’s insubordination if not outright treason; denying his belief in “generational white guilt” while lending his support to a kind of “institutional racism” that ends in generational white guilt; and, perhaps most bizarrely, he attacks opponents of Critical Race Theory, an idea rooted in Marxism which is, in turn, atheistic to the core.

[…]David French’s collaboration is that of Alec Guinness’s Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai, priding himself on the preservation of his principles and good manners as he aids the enemy in the building of a vital bridge that will enable them to continue to kill his fellow countrymen. One wonders, however, if he’ll ever have Nicholson’s revelation:

“What have I done?”

I really recommend you read the article, and the linked articles on each collaborator at the bottom. This is actually the most important lesson of the 2020 election. Millions of Christians trusted progressive Christians to tell them who to vote for. The progressive Christians focused on Trump’s mean tweets, and ignored all the wins in fiscally policy, social policy and foreign policy. Wins that were documented by people who are concerned with the effects of POLICY, rather than with VIRTUE SIGNALING. People like the Susan B. Anthony List – a leading pro-life group that specializes in policy and law. Learning about specific actions and policies was too much work for low-intelligence people like Beth Moore and Russell Moore. Easier to read tweets, and virtue signal off of them.

Another great article came from Dr. James White, who took on progressive “Christian” John Piper.

He writes:

Dr. Piper completely missed the reality of the connection of the governmentally mandated, “take these or lose your job, your business, your freedom, your children, your life” vaccines and the rest of the current rush into global secular totalitarianism. How can this not be a part of one’s calculations? We all know this jab will not be the end of the series. The “boosters” are already being administered. Once one submits to the first in the series, upon what basis does one object to the next, and the next? Upon what basis do we define “public health emergencies” in the future? The CDC has already, at the very same time they are in control of our lives and livelihoods regarding C0vid, proclaimed the use of transgender pronouns a “public health” issue.

It is undeniable that the vaccines are not a solo issue. They are coming to us after mask mandates and church closures and pastoral imprisonments and before the next onerous demands from governments drunk on the power that inevitably comes from the rise of secularism. The secular state is far worse than the ancient pagan context of Rome (which was bad enough), for by its very definition it must be ultimate in all things as there is no Creator.

Why Piper does not see the role the vaccines play in the overall demands of the newly empowered totalitarianism I cannot say, but it is not the first time he has missed the role a particular element plays in the whole. Mean, arrogant tweets are, in the overall scheme of things, significantly less important than the fact that the Biden regime is intent upon forcing your children to celebrate drag queens and likewise just as intent upon taking control of every aspect of your life to force you to live in denial of the lordship of Christ.

What Piper has missed, badly, is the role these vaccinations play in a much bigger, much more basic movement into a technologically based, chemically and medically controlled secular totalitarianism. That elephant is intent upon staying, and until we are all intent upon removing him from the living room, he will continue to create soul-destroying havoc for all. Oh that John Piper would stop examining the tip of one of his tusks and help us all with the bigger issue.

Previously, I wrote about Dr. Wayne Grudem’s response to John Piper. Dr. Grudem is my favorite theologian. He wrote some things that are routinely ignored by progressive Christians:

[I]f Democrats gain control of our government and the Supreme Court, and enact their desired policies, no Christian taxpayer will be free to say, “I refuse to pay that portion of my taxes that the government is using to pay for abortions.” No business owner will be free to say, “I will not buy medical insurance for my employees that pays for abortions and sex-change surgeries.” There will be only two choices: violate your conscience or else be driven to bankruptcy or go to jail.

[…]Donald Trump is not the only person we are voting for. It is remarkable that the Trump administration has elevated so many self-professing evangelical Christians – far more than any in my lifetime – into positions of high influence in our government. They also provide role models for Americans. To vote for Trump as president is also to vote for Mike Pence as vice president, Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State, Ben Carson as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, Russell Vought as director of the Office of Management and Budget, and numerous others.

[….]A presidential election is not deciding what is most important in all of life, which is certainly our relationship with Christ. Paul writes, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. (Phil. 3:8). A presidential election is simply choosing the leaders of our government. In such a situation, the primary purpose is to decide what kind of government we will have, and in that situation policies and laws are not the only consideration, but they are the most important consideration.

Conservatives keep reading things like this and saying “well, I’m going to vote the right way”. But we need to share these articles so that a majority of people vote the right way.  That’s how we win elections. And we can’t afford to lose another one in 2024. The stakes are too high. Next time, we have to make sure that everyone – not just us, but everyone – understands the cost of listening to the pious progressive “Christian” leaders. Next time, we really have to focus on policies and results. Not on tweets and virtue signaling. Christianity is a truth-centered religion. It’s not some tool for narcissistic people to pick up and use to gain applause.

In this post, I want to talk about how whether Big Money from Big Tech can influence elections. I also want to look at the role of fact-checkers, who pays for their fact-checking, and what effect their fact-checks have on our elections.

Let’s start with this article about the Virginia election, that’s being held today:

So how do Democrats plan to ensure a McAuliffe win and a subsequent retention of power in the state and U.S. Senate? By using the same tactic they used in the 2020 national contest: profligate mail-in voting and fake grassroots get-out-the-vote efforts funding by philanthropies and wealthy leftists, a strategy revealed through Fakebook CEO Mark 2uckerberg’s gift to the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL).

[…]We were among the first to report in-depth on how billionaire 2uckerberg and the little-known Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) spent $350 million to effectively privatize the 2020 election in battleground states, helping turnout for Biden in the name of C0VID-19 “relief.”

Overnight, this little nonprofit’s revenues grew by more than 12,000 percent from $2.8 million thanks to 2uckerberg’s cash injection…

Across nine states, our data shows that CTCL’s grants consistently ignored Trump counties in favor of big, Democratic-leaning spots like Philadelphia, Maricopa County, and Houston—all essential to Biden’s victory. In Georgia, for instance, Biden counties were two-and-a-half times more likely to receive CTCL funding than Trump counties.

Virginia received close to $4 million in 2uck Bucks, more than one-third of which went to populous Fairfax County to “support in-person early voting” and “vote by mail.” Fairfax County was Biden’s biggest vote-haul in the state and is the linchpin to McAuliffe’s strategy.

The 2uck Bucks plan isn’t really surprising if you’ve seen how Fakebook uses “fact checkers” to censor news stories.

Previously, I blogged about how Fakebook censored an interview with an abortion survivor right before an election. I also blogged about one of Fakebook’s “fact-checkers”, whose social media posts revealed that she is a partisan Democrat who hates Trump. I also blogged about how Fakebook’s fact-checker “Politifact” had to retract a fact-check of Candace Owens, the well-known black conservative, after she sued them. I also blogged about how Project Veritas filmed Fakebook employees bragging about how they deliberately censor conservative content. I blogged about how Fakebook banned well-known Christian evangelist Franklin Graham for “hate speech”. And I blogged about how Fakebook internal documents revealed that they censor criticism of the Democrat party, “especially before important elections”.

Recently, Fakebook apparently censored content that claimed that ga5 prices went up in part because of Biden’s attacks on energy production.

Here’s another article from The Federalist:

Fakebook appeared to censor a meme on Wednesday that placed blame for high ga5 prices on President Joe Biden, citing a USA Today fact-check to justify the censorship.

“Fact check: Rising ga5 prices due to high demand and low supply, not Biden’s policies,” a pop-up explained, with a link to the supposed fact-check from USA Today.

The fact-check was funded by the same 2uck Bucks we saw earlier that were pumped into Democrat-leaning voting areas:

“Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Fakebook,” the paper wrote.

So what actions did the Biden administration take that would have affected the price of ga5 at the pump? The fact-checkers didn’t look at any.

To check the facts, you have to check the article from The Federalist:

The sharp rise in ga5 prices was a direct consequence of Biden’s immediate offensive, stifling capital investment with pressure on Wall Street in a capital-intensive industry, plus repeated pledges for a cascade of taxes and regulation to phase out fossil fuels.

“You don’t have to ban something if you regulate it to death,” former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler explained to The Federalist in October last year as Biden ran on a platform to do just that.

On his first day in the Oval Office, Biden began to make good on his promises with an executive order implementing a moratorium on leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Sixty miles west of the coastal plain, home to between 4.3 and 11.8 billion barrels of recoverable oil, millions of dollars of equipment stand ready for deployment in Prudhoe Bay to the 1.6 million out of the nearly 20 million-acre refuge once opened for drilling.

[…]Biden continued to suspend new oil and ga5 leases on federal lands pending a review of the federal leasing program from the Interior Department. The review, promised for release by late summer, is still pending.

The suspension on leasing remained in place until a federal judge overturned the ban to set up auctions next spring, but headwinds from a hostile administration hamper incentives for risking millions in new investment.

Biden has successfully suppressed a ramp-up in production through a combination of Wall Street pressure, new regulation, and outright bans where possible on new drilling.

“We would be happy to increase our production, but this administration is doing everything in its power to run us out of business,” Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Denver-based industry trade group Western Energy Alliance, told The Federalist. “I think if they stop manipulation markets the problem would be solved.”

The point is that a Biden win signaled that regulations on energy production were on the way.  Investors didn’t wait for the regulations to take effect. They reduced their investments immediately. Energy producers didn’t wait for the regulations to take effect. They reduced their production, and supply dropped. Anyone with any understanding of economics knows what happens when supply goes down – prices rise.