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Why do progressives make heroes out of criminals, and call the police villains?

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How do Democrats respond to riots, vandalism and arson?
How do Democrats respond to riots, vandalism and arson?

OK so in this post, I’ll summarize the facts concerning the latest shooting of an “unarmed black man” by the police in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Then I have a lecture given by David Sayet at the Heritage Foundation to explain why secular leftists and Never-Trumpers are so anxious to side with convicted criminals against the police, and the law-abiding people the police protect.

This is from Julie Kelly over at American Greatness:

According to news reports, Kenosha police were responding to a 911 call related to an existing warrant on Jacob Blake for felony sexual assault, trespassing, and domestic abuse before Blake was shot on August 23.

[…]Blake allegedly broke into the bedroom of the victim, an ex-girlfriend, in the early morning of May 3 and sexually assaulted her while one of her children slept beside her. The victim told police that Blake attacks her “around twice a year when he drinks heavily,” the New York Post reported August 28. A 911 call from that same residence triggered Blake’s encounter with police, which sparked looting and rioting in Kenosha, a city located on the border of Illinois and Wisconsin, that spread to other cities across the county.

Police also confirmed that Blake had a knife in his possession; video taken during the incident supports that claim. Blake resisted arrest and ignored officers’ commands before he was shot in the back. He remains in stable condition at a Milwaukee hospital.

Some reactions of prominent Democrats:

Political leaders, celebrities, and athletes have rallied to Blake’s defense. In a video message taped at his home, Joe Biden said Blake’s shooting was another example of “systemic racism” and fretted about what Blake’s children watched unfold.

[…]Biden’s running mate spoke with Blake’s family this week. Sen. Kamala Harris said she did not think the shooting was justified.

[…]LeBron James is outraged at the Blake incident; he has referred to the serial sexual abuser as a “gentleman” and encouraged his fellow NBA players to boycott the playoffs in Blake’s honor.

[…]NFL quarterback Drew Brees taped Blake’s name on his helmet.

Blake’s father and other family members spoke at Friday’s March on Washington in honor of the 57th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Hope you’re not watching sports any more. At least don’t pay anything for it. These are not good people.

Anyway, it seems like the expectation on police is that they allow criminals to commit crimes against blacks, just in the case that the criminals are also black themselves. Because apparently black lives don’t matter if the criminal threatening those lives is also black. Only the lives of black criminals matter. We can’t ask people of every race to behave morally. That’s racist. We have to allow some criminals of certain races to break the law and not be punished.

Anyway, I thing it’s a good time to re-post this old lecture featuring Jewish comedian Evan Sayet, who walked away from the left. He has an inside view of what is going on in the heads of the Democrats who march on behalf of criminals like George Floyd, Jacob Blake, etc.

Video:

The part I want you to see (full transcript):

The Modern Liberal will invariably side with evil over good, wrong over right, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success.

[…]What I discovered is that the Modern Liberal looks back on 50,000 years, 100,000 years of human civilization, and knows only one thing for sure: that none of the ideas that mankind has come up with–none of the religions, none of the philos­ophies, none of the ideologies, none of the forms of government–have succeeded in creating a world devoid of war, poverty, crime, and injustice. So they’re convinced that since all of these ideas of man have proved to be wrong, the real cause of war, pov­erty, crime, and injustice must be found–can only be found–in the attempt to be right.

If nobody ever thought they were right, what would we disagree about? If we didn’t disagree, surely we wouldn’t fight. If we didn’t fight, of course we wouldn’t go to war. Without war, there would be no poverty; without poverty, there would be no crime; without crime, there would be no injustice. It’s a utopian vision, and all that’s required to usher in this utopia is the rejection of all fact, reason, evi­dence, logic, truth, morality, and decency–all the tools that you and I use in our attempts to be better people, to make the world more right by trying to be right, by siding with right, by recognizing what is right and moving toward it.

[…]What you have is people who think that the best way to eliminate rational thought, the best way to eliminate the attempt to be right, is to work always to prove that right isn’t right and to prove that wrong isn’t wrong.

[…]What happens is, they are indoctrinated into what I call a “cult of indiscriminateness.” The way the elite does this is by teaching our children, start­ing with the very young, that rational and moral thought is an act of bigotry… the only way to eliminate bigot­ry is to eliminate rational thought.

There’s a brilliant book out there called The Clos­ing of the American Mind by Professor Allan Bloom. Professor Bloom was trying to figure out in the 1980s why his students were suddenly so stupid, and what he came to was the realization, the recog­nition, that they’d been raised to believe that indis­criminateness is a moral imperative because its opposite is the evil of having discriminated.

[…]Since nothing can deemed good, nothing can be deemed evil. That which society does recognize as good must be the beneficiary of some sort of prejudice. That which society recognizes as evil must be the victim of that prejudice. So, again, the mindless foot soldier will invariably side with whatever policy, mindlessly accept whatever policy seeks to tear down what is good… and elevate what is evil until everything meets in the middle and there is nothing left to fight about.

There’s a 10-year-anniversary redo of it here:

The first lecture was the most popular lecture ever given at Heritage Foundation, my favorite think tank. And it changed my life. The second lecture was even meaner, and had some up to date material.

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To be a Bible-believing Christian, you have to be comfortable working alone

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I see chastity in the Bible, but I don't see Black Lives Matter Marxism in the Bible
I see chastity in the Bible, but I don’t see Black Lives Matter Marxism in the Bible

So, when I read the Bible there are things that stand out to be as being of first importance. The priorities are about personal moral character. The overall theme seems to be to deny your personal desires and ambitions and gain control of yourself so that you can devote yourself to following Jesus. The Bible isn’t teaching that we need to implement Marxism as a solution to “inequalities”.

The Bible emphasizes things like controlling your temper, being patient when you must suffer for being a Christian, forgiving others who are penitent about treating you badly, giving to charity, being sober and chaste, either staying unmarried or marrying an opposite sex partner for life, not envying, not stealing, building other people up in the knowledge of God, renewing your mind. There’s no emphasis on disparities or social justice. Everything is about individual choices. Every person is responsible for themselves.

Now, when I go to Twitter and Facebook, I see people who occupy positions of power in Christianity who don’t talk about any of those things. They don’t practice those things themselves as of first importance. They don’t read books about how to practically pursue those things, e.g. – books about evidence countering premarital sex, divorce or same-sex marriage. They don’t talk about those things, they aren’t informed enough to be convincing about those things, they don’t promote those things to non-Christians using evidence.

Let’s take an example: chastity and natural marriage between one man and one woman for life. When you look at the social media of prominent Christians, Christian professors, Christian apologists, Christian celebrities, etc., you aren’t going to see them linking to studies about the premarital sex, hooking up, cohabitation, polyamory, no-fault divorce. Instead, they’re going to be talking about what makes them look virtuous to others. You know – recycling, essential oils, illegal immigration, refugees, girl wash your face, wear a COVID mask, black lives matter, yoga, dog and cat parenting, I support public school teachers, etc. The sum total of their Christian distinctiveness is that they’ve got essential oils and rainbow unicorn mugs in their office that say “just believe”.

There isn’t a single point where their personal morality or public engagement is centered around what the Bible teaches explicitly. The leaders have left the Bible behind for life enhancement and virtue signaling, as required by their new Lords and Saviors in the secular left mainstream news media. And this is not surprising at all when you look at the most popular books in Christian Women’s section of book stores. It’s all Rachel Hollis, Beth Moore, Joyce Meyer, Jen Hatmaker, Lauren Akins, Priscilla Shirer. The goal is to for the individual to feel good, get social approval and achieve their heart’s desires. Nothing there about promoting what the Bible teaches using reason and evidence to non-Christians. Whatever these people understand Christianity to be, it’s not something that requires that they read non-fiction, behave morally and persuade others with evidence. They’re narcissists, not salt or light.

So what about feminism and the Sexual Revolution? The response of Christian leaders to the new ways of meeting, dating, marrying proposed by radical feminists is enthusiastic celebration. And if delaying marriage for careers and promiscuity result in more abortions and divorces and single motherhood, then don’t blame the choices of women, just blame secular men for not turning into Christians after being given premarital sex. (This is the majority view among conservative pastors – let women have sex with atheists, then blame atheists for not converting into faithful, devoted husbands). It’s just too hard to read actual studies on sex, dating and marriage, and then take a stand against women who have accepted feminism for emotional reasons: “it’s just easier to get along with my teachers and peers if I’m sexually active with no-commitment bad boys”.

The response to the challenges of atheism is to quote Bible words and expect magical conversions due to burning of the bosom. There is no difference between the evangelistic views of Al Mohler and Russell Moore and Mormon leaders. Both camps are firm believers in magic words evangelism, i.e. – fideism. You have to pre-suppose the Bible is true because of a burning sensation when you read it. Since this approach doesn’t work when used on non-Christians, you get this retreat from proclaiming the truth of Christianity to non-Christians. They’ve been doing the same thing over and over for decades, and now they’ve just stopped presenting Christianity as true entirely. Now, they to focus on “wear a mask” and “defund the police” instead, so they can continue to achieve their real goal – communicating their virtue to others.

Regarding Marxism, they keep swallowing every cause trotted out by the left to achieve the left’s end goal of a Marxist utopia. Whether it’s global warming, importing big-government supporting refugees and illegal immigrants, black lives matter Marxism, the housing bubble bailouts, the new trillion student loan bubble, or defund the police, Christian leaders just keep rushing around like lemmings to support any cause that the secular left tells them is good. The Bible does not give them their priorities and definition of good and evil. Instead, they now look to the talking heads on CNN and MSNBC to tell them what they must promote in order to signal their virtue to others. Their religious hobby was always about signaling their virtue to others. When sobriety and chastity got hard, they switched to wear a mask and defund the police.

How should a Bible believing Christian respond to these changes in the priorities of Christian seminary professors, leaders, and woke pastors? Well, I don’t see how you can go to church any more. It’s a waste of time except in rare cases (Wayne Grudem, Voddie Baucham, etc.). I do think that group Bible study, mentoring, and joint activity against feminism, socialism and atheism are still valuable. Definitely reading books together. (Laura and I are reading the new science apologetics book from the Discovery Institute chapter by chapter, and I’m also working through Money, Greed and God with Carla). The church and Christian leaders have nothing useful to say about any of the real problems we are facing. None of their leaders are reading anything that would inform them and strengthen their convictions in the areas that the Bible considers to be central.

So, I guess my conclusion would be this. If you are approaching Christianity like “Jesus was a refugee” and “black lives matter” woke pastors, and thinking that the church / seminary hierarchy is a great place to communicate your personal virtuousness to a large group of people, then keep doing that. But if you’re just interested in championing the viewpoints that the Bible considers of central importance, then get yourself some books about the evidence related to feminism, socialism and atheism and read them. Get yourself an alias and a blog. Write what you learn about. Mentor others one-on-one so they learn how to defend the Bible’s teachings as well. Get involved in politics for the Republican party, which at least has some policies that overlap with our concerns about abortion, religious liberty, self-defense against criminals, etc.

We’re past the point of relying on woke pastors and Christian leaders to know anything about how to defend the Bible. They’re just pissing away the religious liberty that was built by previous generations for their own selfish purposes. Don’t rely on them.

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Study: children of naturally married couples outperform children of same-sex couples

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

Whenever I debate a controversial issue, I like to go straight to the studies in order to let the evidence speak for itself. Although it’s difficult to convince someone on the opposite side to change their mind, usually people in the middle will side with the person who has evidence, instead of the person who is crying the loudest and telling anecdotal stories that may or may even not be true.

The Public Discourse reports on a study out of Canada.

Excerpt:

A new academic study based on the Canadian census suggests that a married mom and dad matter for children. Children of same-sex coupled households do not fare as well.

There is a new and significant piece of evidence in the social science debate about gay parenting and the unique contributions that mothers and fathers make to their children’s flourishing. A study published last week in the journal Review of the Economics of the Household—analyzing data from a very large, population-based sample—reveals that the children of gay and lesbian couples are only about 65 percent as likely to have graduated from high school as the children of married, opposite-sex couples. And gender matters, too: girls are more apt to struggle than boys, with daughters of gay parents displaying dramatically low graduation rates.

Unlike US-based studies, this one evaluates a 20 percent sample of the Canadian census, where same-sex couples have had access to all taxation and government benefits since 1997 and to marriage since 2005.

While in the US Census same-sex households have to be guessed at based on the gender and number of self-reported heads-of-household, young adults in the Canadian census were asked, “Are you the child of a male or female same-sex married or common law couple?” While study author and economist Douglas Allen noted that very many children in Canada who live with a gay or lesbian parent are actually living with a single mother—a finding consonant with that detected in the 2012 New Family Structures Study—he was able to isolate and analyze hundreds of children living with a gay or lesbian couple (either married or in a “common law” relationship akin to cohabitation).

So the study is able to compare—side by side—the young-adult children of same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples, as well as children growing up in single-parent homes and other types of households. Three key findings stood out to Allen:

children of married opposite-sex families have a high graduation rate compared to the others; children of lesbian families have a very low graduation rate compared to the others; and the other four types [common law, gay, single mother, single father] are similar to each other and lie in between the married/lesbian extremes.

Employing regression models and series of control variables, Allen concludes that the substandard performance cannot be attributed to lower school attendance or the more modest education of gay or lesbian parents. Indeed, same-sex parents were characterized by higher levels of education, and their children were more likely to be enrolled in school than even those of married, opposite-sex couples. And yet their children are notably more likely to lag in finishing their own schooling.

[…]The truly unique aspect of Allen’s study, however, may be its ability to distinguish gender-specific effects of same-sex households on children. He writes:

the particular gender mix of a same-sex household has a dramatic difference in the association with child graduation. Consider the case of girls. . . . Regardless of the controls and whether or not girls are currently living in a gay or lesbian household, the odds of graduating from high school are considerably lower than any other household type. Indeed, girls living in gay households are only 15 percent as likely to graduate compared to girls from opposite sex married homes.

Thus although the children of same-sex couples fare worse overall, the disparity is unequally shared, but is instead based on the combination of the gender of child and gender of parents. Boys fare better—that is, they’re more likely to have finished high school—in gay households than in lesbian households. For girls, the opposite is true. Thus the study undermines not only claims about “no differences” but also assertions that moms and dads are interchangeable. They’re not.

With a little digging, I found the abstract of the study:

Almost all studies of same-sex parenting have concluded there is “no difference” in a range of outcome measures for children who live in a household with same-sex parents compared to children living with married opposite-sex parents. Recently, some work based on the US census has suggested otherwise, but those studies have considerable drawbacks. Here, a 20% sample of the 2006 Canada census is used to identify self-reported children living with same-sex parents, and to examine the association of household type with children’s high school graduation rates. This large random sample allows for control of parental marital status, distinguishes between gay and lesbian families, and is large enough to evaluate differences in gender between parents and children. Children living with gay and lesbian families in 2006 were about 65 % as likely to graduate compared to children living in opposite sex marriage families. Daughters of same-sex parents do considerably worse than sons.

The author of the study is a professor of economics at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. His PhD in economics is from the University of Washington. A previous study had shown that gay relationships typically have far more instability (they last for more shorter times). That’s not good for children either. Another study featured in the Atlantic talked about how gay relationships have much higher rates of domestic violence. That’s not good for children either. So we have three reasons to think that normalizing gay relationships as “marriage” would not be good for children.

The reason I am posting this is because I want people to understand why social conservatives like me propose these laws defining and promoting marriage. We do favor natural marriage for the same reason that we oppose no-fault divorce, and for the same reason why we oppose welfare for single mothers (it encourages single motherhood). We don’t want to encourage people to deprive children of their mother or their father. We look at the research, and we decide that children need their mother and father. Given the choice between the needs of the child and restraining the freedom of the adults, we prefer the child’s need for her mother and father. It’s not just arbitrary rules, there is a reason behind the rules.

But children are not commodities. They have certain needs right out of the box. Adults should NOT be thinking about how to duct-tape a child onto any old relationship that doesn’t offer the same safety and stability that opposite sex marriage offers. We should be passing laws to strengthen marriage in order to protect children, not to weaken it. Libertarians don’t want to do that, because they want adults to be free to do as they please, at the expense of children.  Libertarians think that the adults should be able to negotiate private contracts and have no obligations to any children who are present, or who may be present later.

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