Tag Archives: Secularism

News

Defense Department brands evangelical Christians and Catholics as “extremists”

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Anti-Christian bias at the Defense Department
Anti-Christian bias at the Defense Department

The Washington Times reports on the latest Obama administration department to marginalize religious Americans. (H/T Lydia)

Excerpt:

The Defense Department came under fire Thursday for a U.S. Army Reserve presentation that classified Catholics and Evangelical Protestants as “extremist” religious groups alongside al Qaeda and theKu Klux Klan.

The presentation detailed a number of extremist threats within the U.S. military, including white supremacist groups, street gangs, and religious sects.

The presentation identified seventeen religious organizations in a slide titled “religious extremism.” They include al Qaeda, Hamas, the Filipino separatist group Abu Sayyaf, and the Ku Klux Klan, which the slide identifies as a Christian organization.

“Religious extremism is not limited to any single religion, ethnic group, or region of the world,” the slide explains, in language that closely resembles the text of a Wikipedia page on “extremism.”

While outfits such as al Qaeda and the KKK are explicitly violent, the presentation also lists Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism as extremist groups.

I noted the careful way that the article refuses to say whether the presenter was a man or a woman. I have an opinion on that.

This isn’t the first time that characterizations of the right like this have been seen in the government, either.

Take a look at this article about FBI training from Life News.

Excerpt:

Documents LifeNews.com obtained today reveal the Obama administration partnered with leading pro-abortion organizations to host an FBI training seminar in August with the main focus of declaring as “violent” the free speech activities of pro-life Americans.

On August 25, 2010, the FBI and the United States Department of Justice co-sponsored a training seminar with Planned Parenthood, the National Abortion Federation and the Feminist Majority Foundation.

When information about the seminar, which took place at FBI headquarters in Portland, Oregon, reached pro-life advocates, they asked officials for permission to attend and were granted access to the seminar and the training materials.

FBI and Obama administration officials provided participants with an 84-page document entitled “Resource Guide: Violence Against Reproductive Health Care Providers” that contained print copies of Power Point presentations prepared by the Justice Department and an analysis of alleged pro-life “violence” prepared by the pro-abortion groups.

The so-called violence perpetrated by pro-life advocates mostly contained examples of constitutionally-protected free speech, including activities such as praying, providing women outside abortion centers with alternatives information, and peaceful protesting or picketing.

That material was prepared by the Obama administration Department of Justice.

And most significant of all, the report by the Department of Homeland Security.

Excerpt:

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Wednesday that she was briefed before the release of a controversial intelligence assessment and that she stands by the report, which lists returning veterans among terrorist risks to the U.S.

[…]The Times reported Tuesday that the department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) issued April 7 the nine-page document titled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” Outcry from veterans groups, Republican lawmakers and conservative activists followed, but the reaction spread Wednesday to Democratic lawmakers and liberal-leaning groups.

[…]“Rightwing extremism,” the report said in a footnote on Page 2, goes beyond religious and racial hate groups and extends to “those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely.”

“It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration,” said the report, which also listed gun owners and veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as potential risks.

I am not surprised by this, because there really is no interaction with thoughtful, scholarly Christians throughout the K-12 process in public schools. You have a bunch of unionized education majors teaching children for 13 years. Then those children go off to college, often to non-quantitative departments that indoctrinate rather than teach practical skills. And then they graduate and get unionized jobs in the government – not the private sector. When would they ever be exposed to thoughtful conservative scholarship? Never. And that’s what causes this intolerance – it’s lack of critical thinking and lack of viewpoint diversity. They don’t know any thoughtful Christians, and they don’t care to correct their views by looking for them.

News

Socialism in France: economy contracts by largest amount in four years

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Here’s the BBC with some bad news for Europe.

Excerpt:

Germany’s economy slowed to “near stagnation” last month, while France’s recorded its biggest contraction for four years, according to a closely watched survey.

The Markit composite purchasing managers’ index (PMI), which measures both the manufacturing and services sectors, declined to 50.6 in Germany last month, from 53.3 in February.

Any figure above 50 indicates growth.

France’s reading fell to 41.9 points, its worst since March 2009.

For the eurozone as a whole, the index fell to 46.5 from 47.9 in February.

Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit, said the latest data painted a gloomy picture.

“The [eurozone] recession is deepening once again as businesses report that they have become increasingly worried about the region’s debt crisis and political instability,” he said.

“The unresolved election in Italy was commonly cited as a key factor clouding the economic outlook in March, and the botched bail-out of Cyprus could well filter through to a further worsening of business sentiment across the region in April.”

Mr Williamson added that the weak showing from Germany “suggests that the only source of bright light in an otherwise gloomy region has once again begun to fade”.

Germany’s index reading was the worst in the country for three months.

The French socialist government has also been rocked by a scandal:

It is hard to think of a worse scandal for the Socialist government in France. As “President Normal” and “Mr Fair”, François Hollande’s whole being and essence was to crack down on tax evasion and financial corruption, making the wealthy pay their share in dragging France out of its economic woes. Riding his scooter, living in his modest flat and taking a salary cut, Hollande had promised that, unlike Nicolas Sarkozy before him, his presidency would be “exemplary”, squeaky clean, and totally just.

But now Jerome Cahuzac, the trusted tax tsar and budget minister who had vigorously led Hollande’s crusade against fraudsters and tax-dodging millionaires, has made a shock confession of his own monumental fraud. With investigators and journalists closing in on the truth, he admitted hiding €600,000 (£509,000) from the taxman in a secret foreign account for 20 years. Not only that; Cahuzac had spent the past four months repeatedly lying on TV and to parliament, where he insisted from the government benches: “I do not have, I have never had, an account abroad, not now, not ever.”

Last year, France decided to elect a socialist prime minister named Francois Hollande, and then the people of France voted to give him a socialist majority in Parliament. And now we are seeing the results of that decision. Hollande’s priorities are things like a 75% income tax rate, hiring 60,000 new unionized teachers, lowering the retirement age back to 60, and massive spending on government-owned housing. It doesn’t look like his plan is working to grow the French economy.

News

Pro-life group at Johns Hopkins University denied official club status

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Life Training Institute tweeted this article from the Washington Times.

Excerpt:

The Student Government Association at Johns Hopkins University has denied a pro-life group official club status at the Baltimore school for fear the group will make students feel uncomfortable.

“They were denied status because the students on the student council felt being pro-life violates their harassment policy,” Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, told Fox News.

The SGA at Johns Hopkins voted March 12 to deny the group, called Voice for Life, the right to become an official student club. The vote was affirmed on March 24 by the SGA’s Senate, Fox News reports.

According to emails obtained by Fox News, members of the SGA compared the pro-life students to white supremacists, which Ms. Hawkins said was deeply offensive to the group’s black members.

“To compare pro-lifers with white supremacists — it’s unreal,” she told Fox News.

Another SGA member said that allowing pro-life demonstrations made her feel “personally violated, targeted and attacked at a place where we previously felt safe and free to live our lives.”

An SGA senator said: “We have the right to protect our students from things that are uncomfortable. Why should people have to defend their beliefs on their way to class?”

Voice for Life is searching for an attorney to help them fight the ban. SGA representatives did not return calls seeking comment, Fox News reports.

Now the secular leftists who run the universities like to think of themselves as tolerant, open-minded and diverse. But, actually, they are so intolerant that they cannot even bear to listen to any view other than their own view. What we need on university campuses is an Academic Bill of Rights that guarantees basic liberties to students and faculty who do not toe the leftist line. That would be real diversity, and it would encourage real critical thinking. The university feels that it is fine to make pro-life students uncomfortable, with the many pro-abortion groups on campus. But making pro-abortion students uncomfortable is unthinkable.