Tag Archives: Fascism

News

Federal judge awards German homeschooling family political asylum

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The Romeike Family, formerly of Germany

Story here from the UK Telegraph. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

The case of the homeschooling couple from Germany who were granted political asylum in the United States, about which Ed West blogged recently, becomes even more interesting if one reads the remarks of the man who granted the Romeikes asylum, Immigration Judge Lawrence O. Burman, of Memphis, Tennessee.

[…]Judge Burman added that the scariest thing about this case was the motivation of the German government. He said that, rather than being concerned with the welfare of the children, it was trying to stamp out parallel societies. Making his court order, the judge voiced concern that, although Germany was a democratic country and an ally, the policy of persecuting homeschoolers was “repellent to everything we believe as Americans”.

[…]The mentality is that the state – not parents – is the natural controller and shaper of children’s lives and beliefs. When a schoolgirl can be given an abortion without her parents’ knowledge, we know that, while public utilities may have been privatised, children have been nationalised. The Romeikes who fled from Germany objected to their children being forced to follow a curriculum that they believed was anti-Christian. The same would apply in British state schools, where pornographic sex education is increasingly being made compulsory.

Next to unilateral “no-fault” divorce, this opposition to parental rights is what prevents me from considering marriage and parenting, no matter how good of a match I find. And make no mistake, the idea that children are the property of the state is totally at home among today’s Democrat party. The system of ineffective government-run public schools, which are partially funded by homeschooling and private-schooling families who don’t even use them, is anti-family and anti-liberty.

Consider this radical feminist Democrat:

“We really don’t know how to raise children. If we want to talk about equality of opportunity for children, then the fact that children are raised in families means there’s no equality. […]In order to raise children with equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise them.”
(Mary Jo Bane:  Former Assistant Secretary of Administration for Children and Families in the Department of Health and Human Services of the Clinton administration)

I wrote about the problem of state intrusion into the family here: Are marriage and family compatible with single-payer health care?

But sometimes Christians cause their own problems by being ignorant about economics. I have talked to fundamentalist Christian homeschoolers who actually favored single-payer health care, yet simultaneously opposed things like taxpayer-funded abortions. The problem is that many Christians are not informed about economics. They think that they can empower a secular-leftist state to achieve “social justice” through wealth redistribution, without having their own religious liberty impacted.

But the same government that can confiscate wealth from “the rich” to nationalize health care can also force pro-life nurses at government-run hospitals to perform abortions. The best defense of religious liberty is a free market. If a government-run school discriminates against you in the free market, you can always homeschool or use private schools. That is, if you can afford to homeschool or pay for private schools after the government is done using your taxes to indoctrinate the other children.

Polemics

What did Pope Pius XII do to protect the Jewish people in Nazi Germany?

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Here’s an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. (H/T Lex Communis)

Excerpt:

During the war, the pope was far from silent: In numerous speeches and encyclicals, he championed human rights for all people and called on the belligerent nations to respect the rights of all civilians and prisoners of war. Unlike many of the pope’s latter-day detractors, the Nazis understood him very well. After studying Pius XII’s 1942 Christmas message, the Reich Central Security Office concluded: “In a manner never known before the pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order … Here he is virtually accusing the German people of injustice toward the Jews and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals.” (Pick up any book that criticizes Pius XII, and you won’t find any mention of this important report.)

In early 1940, the pope acted as an intermediary between a group of German generals who wanted to overthrow Hitler and the British government. Although the conspiracy never went forward, Pius XII kept in close contact with the German resistance and heard about two other plots against Hitler. In the fall of 1941, through diplomatic channels, the pope agreed with Franklin Delano Roosevelt that America’s Catholics could support the president’s plans to extend military aid to the Soviet Union after it was invaded by the Nazis. On behalf of the Vatican, John T. McNicholas, the archbishop of Cincinnati, Ohio, delivered a well-publicized address that explained that the extension of assistance to the Soviets could be morally justified because it helped the Russian people, who were the innocent victims of German aggression.

Throughout the war, the pope’s deputies frequently ordered the Vatican’s diplomatic representatives in many Nazi-occupied and Axis countries to intervene on behalf of endangered Jews. Up until Pius XII’s death in 1958, many Jewish organizations, newspapers and leaders lauded his efforts. To cite one of many examples, in his April 7, 1944, letter to the papal nuncio in Romania, Alexander Shafran, chief rabbi of Bucharest, wrote: “It is not easy for us to find the right words to express the warmth and consolation we experienced because of the concern of the supreme pontiff, who offered a large sum to relieve the sufferings of deported Jews … The Jews of Romania will never forget these facts of historic importance.”

Lots more about the preceding Pope (Pius XI) at the main article.

Just for the record, I’m an evangelical Protestant, not a Roman Catholic.

Related Posts

News

Church loses charitable status for speaking out on abortion and homosexuality

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Story from the National Post.

Excerpt:

A Calgary church has lost its charitable status in part because it spends too much of its time advocating on social issues such as abortion and marriage.

In October, the Kings Glory Fellowship Association, a non-denominational Protestant group, was told by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) that for several reasons, including a lack of clarity on how it spends it money, they could no longer issue charitable receipts.

But the letter highlighted that the group spent more than 10% of its time on “non-partisan political activities and therefore strayed into activities “outside its stated purpose.”

“We note … the members of the Board of Directors espouse strong negative vies about sensitive and controversial issues, which may also be viewed as political, such as abortion, homosexuality, divorce, etc.”

The CRA allows charitable organizations to spend some time on “political activities,” but the cutoff is 10%. A spokesman for the CRA was not immediately available to explain how the percentage of time a group spends on non-charitable works is determined.

Artur Pawlowski, the head of the Kings Glory Fellowship, said his group “has nothing to do with politics and we do not advertise for a party or a candidate. The only political activity you can connect us to is defending our right to speak.”

Mr. Pawlowski said the primary mission of his church is to feed homeless people. He said this group supplies food for about 150,000 a year, mainly to people “that no one else wants to deal with.”

“When we feed people we don’t care whether they are homosexuals or have had abortions or been divorced but we preach what the Bible says about those issues.”

This whole article is worth reading. I should note that Calgary is the most conservative city in Canada, but the CRA is a federal agency, which is filled with secular leftists who have no place in their worldview view for a right to free speech. Another reason why Canada is no longer ranked as one of the freest countries in the world for religious liberty.

UPDATE: We have a hate crimes bill in the United States so that certain things cannot be discussed, however civilly, in a public forum. There may be nothing wrong with your comment but even expressing disagreement with certain points of view is dangerous. If you take the view of the government on certain moral issues, then no would can respond to you. If you disagree with the government on certain moral issues, then you’re in trouble. So we just can’t discuss these things here, which I think was the real point of the hate crimes law.