Category Archives: Freedom of Religion

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Clearly, I should be watched, perhaps even arrested for Wrongthink.

We have previously reported on the Federal Bureau of Investigation and its supposedly abandoned policy of surveilling “Radical Traditionalist Catholics.” That story has pretty much faded away, but I seriously doubt that everyone in the FBI has forgotten that we are the absolutely greatest threat to America!

Well, the US is not the only nation which engages in such silliness!

UK Government Report: ‘Lord of the Rings’ Fans May Be Potential ‘Far-Right’ Terrorists

Catholic Vote News Feed | Groundhog Day, February 2, 2024

We have Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Shakespeare, and Homer on our bookshelf. Clearly, I should be watched! Photo by D R Pico.

CV NEWS FEED // A now-viral report by British government counterterrorism program Prevent stated that classic novels by authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis can be “red flags” for possible “far-right extremism.”

“We prevent vulnerable people from being drawn into extremism,” Prevent claims on its website. Prevent goes on to describe itself as a “government-led, multi-agency” program that “aims to stop individuals becoming terrorists.” Its website elaborates that “police play a key role” in the program’s efforts.

The Daily Caller’s Kay Smythe reported that while Prevent “was founded to support counter-terrorism efforts” it “has gradually swayed into a focus on only extremists from Islam and ‘far-right’ ideological mindsets.”

“[T]he programme’s attempts to address right-wing extremism were even more inept than some of its attempts to address Islamist extremism,” British author Douglas Murray noted in a February 2023 Spectator piece.

Murray pointed out that Prevent was once “advised by left-wing activist groups like Hope not Hate.”

“Such groups have long believed that the definition of far-right should encompass, for instance, many people who supported Brexit,” he added.

My old Bible, using an Israeli 20 shekel note as a bookmark.

It’s not just Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit which are in our bookcase, but I also have a Bible, a Catholic Bible, complete with an Israeli ₪20 note being used as a bookmark therein! The bookmark is currently in the Book of Job, because that was the Catechism lesson I taught this morning. I’m even on our parish council.

Even worse: one of the parishioners in our very small parish is trying to get a Knights of Columbus chapter set up, and has asked me to sign up.

Representative Jim Jordan reported that in its zeal to track down the January 6th kerfufflers, the:

federal government flagged terms like “MAGA” and “TRUMP,” to financial institutions if Americans completed transactions using those terms.

What was also flagged? If you bought a religious text, like a BIBLE, or shopped at Bass Pro Shop.

Heaven forfend! Clearly, I should be watched, perhaps even arrested for Wrongthink.

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Journolism: The credentialed media don’t exactly lie, but they conceal politically incorrect facts

We have previously reported that today’s professional journalists rarely deliberately lie to us, but that they often omit rather important parts of the story. This was an Associated Press story, an ostensibly straight news piece, in which the writer managed to omit the most important part of the story. Read on and you’ll see why I frequently refer to journolists[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading as opposed to journalists! Continue reading →

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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Liz Magill is not just toast, but toast which has fallen on the floor, buttered side down

We have previously reported how University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill has completely fouled up the school’s response to the antiSemitism on campus, costing the Ivy League university the good will of its many deep-pocket alumni donors.

Well, she may have just fired herself! From The Philadelphia Inquirer: Continue reading →

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Are you ready to surrender your rights for the “common good”?

I’m old enough to remember the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, a product of mostly leftist students on campus.

With the participation of thousands of students, the Free Speech Movement was the first mass act of civil disobedience on an American college campus in the 1960s. Students insisted that the university administration lift the ban of on-campus political activities and acknowledge the students’ right to free speech and academic freedom. The Free Speech Movement was influenced by the New Left, and was also related to the Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement. To this day, the Movement’s legacy continues to shape American political dialogue both on college campuses and in broader society, influencing some political views and values of college students and the general public.

I’m not a leftist by any means, but I completely support the freedom of speech, and all of the rights enshrined in our great Constitution. Sadly, so many of today’s left do not support freedom of speech, at least not when they believe they have the power to restrain it.

Irish senator under fire for advocating bill to restrict free speech

One critic calls Ireland’s anti-hate law ‘draconian,’ adding it will have ‘severe implications’

By Brianna Herlihy, Fox News | First Sunday of Advent, December 3, 2023 | 4:00 AM EST

A speech delivered in June by an Irish lawmaker who said the work of legislatures is about “restricting freedoms” in the name of the “common good” has gone viral, with criticism on both sides of the Atlantic.

Senator Pauline O’Reilly of the Green Party, in defense of Ireland’s proposed Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences Bill 2022, spoke at the Houses of the Oireachtas in June, saying, “We are restricting freedom, but we’re doing it for the common good.

Well, of course she’s a member of the Green Party, of the hard left.

“You will see throughout our constitution, yes, you have rights, but they are restricted for the common good. If your views on other people’s identities go to make their lives unsafe, insecure and cause them such deep discomfort that they cannot live in peace, then I believe that it is our job as legislators to restrict those freedoms for the common good.”

If a right is “restricted for the common good,” is it a right at all?

Senator O’Reilly’s speech is embedded below the fold, since videos take up a lot of bandwidth on the front page. Continue reading →

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Another deep-pockets Ivy League donor tells the pro-Hamas students to go to Hell Go directly to Hell, do not pass Go, do not collect $2,000,000

We noted, just yesterday, that despite the noisy pro-Palestinian demonstrations on our college campuses and in large cities, only about 20% of Democrats support Hamas, and that, even surveying only those in the 18-to-24-year-old age bracket, Hamas enjoyed less support than Israel. The radicals are both the noisy and stupid ones.

As for colleges themselves? We have also noted how some deep-pockets donors are closing their checkbooks and job offers in the face of the anti-Semitism being displayed. Now, yet another college is losing a billionaire donor. From Forbes: Continue reading →

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Rashida Tlaib and the rest of the Usual Suspects prove the need for a strong, independent, affirmatively Jewish Israel!

We are being told by the people the credentialed media use as spokesthings, like Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), the now-censured congresscritter from Detroit and a ‘Palestinian-American,’ if such an oxymoron can actually exist, that all the Palestinians want is their freedom. They don’t hate Israelis specifically, or Jews more generally, but just want their freedom. Mrs Tlaib even tried to claim that the mantra, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free!” as not being anti-Israeli at all, but no one actually believed her.

However, there’s an obvious question: do the (purported) leaders of the pro-Palestinian movement in the West actually represent the crowds behind them. The tweet I retweeted from @StopAntisemitism is just one of hundreds they’ve posted, documenting people living in the United States and Canada showing us exactly who they are. The Stop Antisemitism site is doing great work in exposing and identifying those people, and letting their colleges or employers know just who they are, and many have found their way to the unemployment line. If you think that’s a bad thing, just imagine how employers would react if one of their employees was caught on video calling for the death of [insert virtually forbidden slang for Negroes here].

Of course, even those stupid enough perhaps to want to say that kind of thing about blacks are generally not stupid enough to say it on tape, which means that they are at least not as stupid as the anti-Semites! Continue reading →

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The left sure like Christians, right up until they seem to be actual Christians!

We have been told what a devout Catholic President Biden is, and how former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was a good, believing Catholic. President Trump, on the other hand, showed us how fake a Christian he is, because he almost never attended religious services. Clearly, for the left, being a faithful Christian of some denomination or other was a pretty good thing. Or at least it was until someone who is actually a Christian becomes Speaker of the House! Continue reading →

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Is Pope Francis trying to destroy the Church?

Photo from St Paul’s Catholic Church website. Click to enlarge.

We have previously mentioned what it’s website calls “Historic St. Paul Roman Catholic Church,” at 425 West Short Street in Lexington, Kentucky, and not in a positive way. St Paul’s has an active homosexual ministry, something which cannot ever be approved. Continue reading →

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Today’s American left really, really hate our individual rights! Or at least they do when those rights are exercised by conservatives!

We noted, a year and a half ago, how President Biden and his leftist minions, proposed the creation of a Ministry of Truth ‘Disinformation Governance Board‘ within the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security, and had chosen Nina Jankowitz, who for months told us that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation, to head it.

On April 25th, she told us how she feels about #FreedomOfSpeech:

I shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would look like for the marginalized communities . . . which are already shouldering . . . disproportionate amounts of this abuse.

Then came Helen Ubiñas, who has a very visible platform as a regular columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, claiming that Freedom of Speech is dangerous and harmful to people like her: Continue reading →