There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
One day after New York City’s first Muslim mayor, Democrat Zohran Mamdani, took office just twenty-four years after Muslim terrorists murdered nearly 3,000 New Yorkers in the 9/11 attack that destroyed New York City’s World Trade Center Twin Towers with hijacked passenger planes used as missiles, Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul ordered the replacement building built at Ground Zero, and over a dozen other state landmarks, to be lit in green Friday night to ‘celebrate’ Muslim American Heritage Month.
Muslim terrorists had previously tried but failed to bring done the Twin Towers with a truck bomb in 1993 that killed six people and wounded over a thousand.
Videos from the September 11, 2001 Muslim attack on the World Trade Center Twin Towers posted below. The Muslim 9/11 plot by al Qaeda terrorists ordered by Osama bin Laden involved a total of four known hijacked passenger planes–two that were flown into the Twin Towers, one that was flown into the Pentagon and another that crashed in rural Pennsylvania after brave American passengers fought the Muslim terrorists for control of the plane.
Hochul posted on X Friday evening, “The resilience, compassion, and contributions of Muslim communities help make our state stronger. Tonight landmarks across the state are lit green as New York celebrates Muslim American Heritage Month.”
The resilience, compassion, and contributions of Muslim communities help make our state stronger.
Tonight landmarks across the state are lit green as New York celebrates Muslim American Heritage Month. pic.twitter.com/5AFw9dsgof
Governor Hochul Issues Proclamation Recognizing Muslim American Heritage Month For the First Time in New York State
Sixteen State Landmarks To Be Lit Green in Honor of the Heritage and Culture of New York’s Muslim American Community
Governor Kathy Hochul today issued the first ever proclamation declaring January as Muslim American Heritage Month across New York State. Governor Hochul further directed 16 state landmarks to be illuminated green this evening in observance this month, and in celebration of the heritage and culture of Muslim Americans.
“Home to the largest Muslim American population in the nation, New York is proud to join in this month-long celebration, recognizing the values, faith and traditions of our Muslim American communities,” Governor Hochul said. “New York remains committed to being a beacon of hope, tolerance, and inclusivity that celebrates the diversity of its Muslim American population and protects them from Islamophobia, hate, bias, and harm.”
For the first time in state history, Governor Hochul has proclaimed the month of January as Muslim American Heritage Month in the state of New York. This designation recognizes the significant contributions Muslim Americans have contributed to society throughout history including in the arts, sciences, mathematics, technology, literature, music, medicine, and philosophy, and encourages the people of New York to take the opportunity to better appreciate, recognize, and understand the rich cultures, histories, and principles of the Muslim American community.
These 16 landmarks will be illuminated green in honor of Muslim American Heritage Month:
One World Trade Center Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge Kosciuszko Bridge The H. Carl McCall SUNY Building State Education Building Alfred E. Smith State Office Building Empire State Plaza State Fairgrounds – Main Gate & Expo Center The “Franklin D. Roosevelt” Mid-Hudson Bridge Grand Central Terminal – Pershing Square Viaduct Albany International Airport Gateway MTA LIRR – East End Gateway at Penn Station Fairport Lift Bridge over the Erie Canal Moynihan Train Hall Roosevelt Island Lighthouse Niagara Falls
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said, “While I was proud to be sworn in as our city’s first Muslim mayor yesterday, Muslims have been part of New York for centuries. We have built small businesses, raised our families, pursued every profession, enriched our culture and cuisine, and been a part of what makes our city what it is today. I am grateful for Governor Hochul’s leadership in recognizing these many contributions and ensuring that every January, Muslim New Yorkers can see ourselves reflected and recognized in a city and state that is also our home.”
YouTuber Nick Shirley has revealed he’s receiving death threats and warnings that he’ll be “Kirked,” a sinister reference to being assassinated, following his viral video that uncovered over $110 million in alleged taxpayer-funded fraud at Somali-run daycare centers in Minnesota
Shirley, 23, who documented empty daycares raking in millions while showing no signs of actual childcare, appeared on the “PBD Podcast” on Wednesday and detailed the harassment, including doxxing of his family and being stalked by Somalis during filming.
The independent journalist’s explosive 42-minute video, published last week, has garnered over 132 million views.
🚨 Here is the full 42 minutes of my crew and I exposing Minnesota fraud, this might be my most important work yet. We uncovered over $110,000,000 in ONE day. Like it and share it around like wildfire! Its time to hold these corrupt politicians and fraudsters accountable
In the footage, Shirley and his team visit multiple daycare facilities in the Minneapolis area, home to one of the largest Somali populations in the U.S., only to find locked doors, no children in sight, and signs of abandonment despite these centers receiving massive government subsidies.
One center alone reportedly pocketed $4 million in taxpayer dollars, with Shirley estimating the total fraud uncovered in a single day at over $110 million.
On the PBD Podcast, hosted by Patrick Bet-David, Shirley described the intense fallout from his exposé.
“I’ve been getting death threats,” Shirley said. “People are telling me I’m going to get Kirked.”
“They’re saying, ‘You’re going to be Kirked … you’ll be the next Kirk.’ And it’s just like, are you kidding me? I hate what’s happening right now,” Shirley said. “I feel bad for my family, honestly, because we didn’t do anything wrong, and yet you guys are coming after me like I’m some sort of villain. My little sister is getting phone calls [from the news]. I’m like, why are you guys doing this?”
The term “Kirked” is a dark reference to the September assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
🚨NEW: @nickshirleyy says people telling him he'll get "KIRKED" after viral Somali fraud video😡
Shirley also discussed how his team was followed by Somalis while filming, an Indian news outlet doxxed his home address and his father’s identity, and his family has faced harassment.
“Don’t talk to my family. I mean, some news in India, they doxed my home. They doxed my dad. It was really weird. And I haven’t even told my dad about that because I just don’t want to even bother him about it,” he added.
Shirley continued, “Are you guys kidding me? Why are you guys coming after somebody for going against fraud? I didn’t make this a right or left issue. I just showed you guys that fraud was happening. And now you guys are coming after me. You’re saying I’ll be the next Kirk. You’re literally stopping at intersections and coming after me and trying to attack me.”
On the immigration and multi cult debate we need to have:
The recent Bondi terror attack has once again reignited the old debates about mass migration, multiculturalism and related topics. Of course those vitally important matters are largely being ignored by the Albanese government. Instead, he is putting all his hopes in even more gun control.
Aside from that he is dishing out deep and meaningful truths, such as: “Love is more powerful than hate” – something straight out of a Hallmark greeting card as commentator Andrew Bolt put it. Useless! We need a genuine national conversation on things like immigration levels, the threat of Islamism, and how to properly consider multiculturalism.
Consider these quotes from 24 thinkers on these crucial issues:
“A sovereign nation-state is responsible for the welfare and security of all people living within its territorial boundaries. Under the United Nations (UN) constitutional order, a sovereign state has ultimate authority over its own domestic affairs and its international relations with other states. Because freedom is a basic human right, people are free to leave their homeland, but they do not have an inalienable right to enter another country. Citizens are free to emigrate, but they do not have the right to immigrate. Whether a person is allowed to enter a foreign country is decided by officials of the receiving state. . . . The imbalance between leaving and entering communities is not unique to global society; it is a widely shared practice in most human communities.” Mark Amstutz, Just Immigration: American Policy In Christian Perspective
“Environmentalists have been outspoken in their support of smaller family size and abortion rights as keys to reducing global warming. But when it comes to immigration, the single biggest contributor to population growth in the industrial world, they stand largely silent.” Gary Bauer
“We let hundreds of thousands of people come into Australia from regions of the world where it is perfectly normal, mainstream and even virtuous to hate Jews, to even hate Christians, to think that people who are not Muslims therefore are at war with Islam, and therefore can be killed.” Stephen Chavura
“All Americans … are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That’s why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens.” Bill Clinton, 1995 State of the Union address
“We must enforce the laws we have on the books, secure our borders, and deny special benefits to illegal immigrants such as in-state tuition rates. This approach is best for American citizens and is fair to those who have taken the time and effort to go through the legal immigration process.” Ron DeSantis
“Every season we hear how ‘Islamophobia’ is out of control, yet synagogues harden their entrances and Christmas markets brace for attacks. Must be the ornaments causing trouble. If the victims aren’t the problem, why is naming the perpetrators considered taboo? Isn’t that backwards?” Alyona Genkin
“Countries since biblical times have had the right to clearly established secure borders that they controlled and were recognized by surrounding governments, travel tribes and individuals. Furthermore, nations, including Israel of the Bible, had the right to determine who entered their land and under what circumstances, and they could confer resident or alien status to foreigners should it be mutually beneficial. The same is true today, I maintain.” James K. Hoffmeier, The Immigration Crisis: Immigrants, Aliens, and the Bible
“Today aliens (i.e. legal immigrants) who are needy should be extended governmental social services such as welfare, unemployment, food stamps, job training and other benefits offered to disadvantaged citizens…However, as the gleaning laws remind us, the poor and the aliens actually had to go out and work in the fields to get the grains and fruits (Lev. 19:9-10; 32:33; Deut. 24:19-21).” James K. Hoffmeier. The Immigration Crisis: Immigrants, Aliens, and the Bible
“We must insist on assimilation – immigration without assimilation is an invasion. We need to tell folks who want to come here, they need to come here legally. They need to learn English, adopt our values, roll up their sleeves and get to work.” Bobby Jindal
“In America, multiculturalism is a widely held creed, whose promotion has become the chief mission of our schools. In most European countries, multiculturalism is an official state policy, and deviation from it might land you in jail.” William Kilpatrick, Christianity, Islam and Atheism
“Why doesn’t multiculturalism work? The answer is that multiculturalism is essentially a form of relativism in which morality is relative to culture. The corresponding belief is that the members of one culture have no right to make judgments about the rightness or wrongness of another culture’s traditions or practices. . . . Because of its inherent divisiveness, the multiculturalist model would eventually fail in any society. But it is particularly fatal to a society that has in its midst an aggressive cultural group that refuses to subscribe to relativism. By neglecting to stand up for their own values, traditions, and religious heritage – indeed, by denigrating them – European countries left themselves almost defenceless against a resurgent Islam. Islam’s success in Europe has been built in large part on European self-doubt.” William Kilpatrick, Christianity, Islam and Atheism
“Assimilation is the point. If you want to come to our country, follow the rules, adopt our culture, teach your children to love this country, speak English, integrate, and contribute.” Konstantin Kisin
“Immigration without assimilation means colonisation.” Brianna Lyman and others
“‘Know your enemy, name your enemy’ is a 9/11 message that has gone unheeded. Our immigration and homeland security policies refuse to profile jihadi adherents at foreign consular offices and at our borders.” Michelle Malkin
“This is the great lie of mass migration. You are not just importing individuals. You are importing societies. No magic transformation occurs when failed states cross borders. At scale, migrants and their descendants recreate the conditions, and terrors, of their broken homelands.” US Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller
“I cannot understand how a society can be so insane that it can welcome in people that want to destroy it.” Douglas Murray
“The most dangerous lie of the 21st century was that all cultures are interchangeable. Sweden is the irrefutable proof that they are not. As an Iranian who watched my own country fall to extremism, the tragedy unfolding in Scandinavia feels like a recurring nightmare. I have seen a civilization commit suicide before, and the symptoms are always the same: a fatal tolerance for those who explicitly wish to dismantle your way of life. We are witnessing the total collapse of a utopian fantasy. Sweden now rivals nations like Mexico in bombing frequency for a country not officially at war. This is not merely a crime wave. It is the sound of a society fracturing under the weight of imported conflict. It echoes the silence that eventually fell over my own homeland when the vibrancy of culture was traded for the rigidity of dogma. Sweden is the canary in the coal mine. It demonstrates that tolerance cannot extend to the intolerant.” Armin Navabi
“The American people are a welcoming and generous people. But those who enter our country illegally, and those who employ them, disrespect the rule of law. And because we live in an age where terrorists are challenging our borders, we simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, and unchecked. Americans are right to demand better border security and better enforcement of the immigration laws.” Barack Obama, April 2006 speech
“Multiculturalism is the PC sexing-up of modern Western society’s profound alienation from its own culture, from its 300-year-old traditions of democracy, reason, growth and an aspiration, at least, to freedom, though that has been frequently thwarted. As such, the core instinct of multiculturalism, its driving force in fact, is to shush and stifle, to elevate self-censorship and denial of difficult reality over the volatility of allowing open discussion and, worse, a judgement of and between values.” Brendan O’Neill
“What is being brought home to us, through painful experiences that we might have avoided had it been permitted before now to say the truth, is that we, like everyone else, depend upon a shared culture for our security, our prosperity and our freedom to be. We don’t require everyone to have the same faith, to lead the same kind of family life or to participate in the same festivals. But we have a shared civic culture, a shared language and a shared public sphere. Our societies are built upon the Judeo-Christian ideal of neighbour-love, according to which strangers and intimates deserve equal concern.” Roger Scruton, How To Be a Conservative
“So what happens when people whose identity is fixed by creed or kinship immigrate into places settled by Western culture? The multiculturalists say that we must make room for them, and that we do this by relinquishing the space in which their culture can flourish. Our political class has at last recognized that this is a recipe for disaster, and that we can welcome immigrants only if we welcome them into our culture, and not beside and against it. But that means telling them to accept rules, customs, and procedures that may be alien to their old way of life. Is this an injustice? Surely not. If immigrants come it is because they gain by doing so. It is therefore reasonable to remind them that there is also a cost. Only now, however, is our political class prepared to say so, and to insist that the cost be paid. And it may be that this change of heart comes too late.” Roger Scruton
Migrations And Cultures: A World View by Sowell, Thomas (Author)
“When you import people, you import cultures, including cultures that have been far less successful in providing decent lives and decent livelihoods.” Thomas Sowell,Migrations and Cultures
“What ‘multiculturalism’ boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture – and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.” Thomas Sowell
“When you import people, you import cultures. Those cultures no longer give way to the American culture when ‘multiculturalism’ is a dogma and its apostles and activists make it necessary for American laws, language, and culture to give way, or at least accommodate growing alien enclaves in our midst. A nation is more than a collection of whatever population happens to reside within its borders. Something has to unite those people if the country is not to degenerate into the kind of unending internal strife brought on by Balkanization in many countries around the world, not just in the Balkans. Unity and patriotism are not luxuries. Survival in an international jungle depends on them. What are dangerous luxuries are the open borders which erode national solidarity. The fact that we are already at each other’s throats over the immigration issue is an ominous sign.” Thomas Sowell
Multiculturalism “is a cult of tolerance in which you demonstrate your sensitivity to other cultures by being almost totally insensitive to your own.” Mark Steyn, Face of the Tiger
“At the heart of multiculturalism is a lie: that all cultures are equally ‘valid.’ To accept that proposition means denying reality—the reality of any objective measure of human freedom, societal health, and global population movement. Multiculturalism is not the first ideology founded on the denial of truth.” Mark Steyn, America Alone
“We have harboured those who hated us, tolerated those who threatened us and indulged those who weakened us.” Margaret Thatcher
“Having a wall does not mean ‘keep out’. It means ‘use the door’ (come in legally).” President Trump and others
“This is why we say, import the third world, become the third world. Because the thing nobody wants to say is that the reason why third world countries are the way they are is because third world people are the way they are. OK, at the end of the day your country is a reflection of its people. Every country is, when it comes down to it. Somalia is totally dysfunctional and corrupt because scam and fraud and piracy – this is part of the lifestyle, part of the culture. Bring it over here and you get the same stuff.” Matt Walsh
“If those who wrote and ratified the 14th Amendment had imagined laws restricting immigration – and had anticipated huge waves of illegal immigration – is it reasonable to presume they would have wanted to provide the reward of citizenship to the children of the violators of those laws? Surely not.” George Will
Members of Gen Z are often nicknamed “Zoomers,” a term used to describe young adults who came of age in the era of smartphones, social media, and rapid cultural upheaval.
Males in their teens and twenties are prolonging their adolescence—rarely marrying, not buying a home, not having children, and often not working full-time.
The negative stereotype of a Zoomer is a shiftless man who plays too many video games. He is too coddled by parents and too afraid to strike out on his own.
Zoomers rarely date, supposedly out of fear that they would have to grow up, take charge, and head a household.
Yet the opposite, sympathetic generalization of Gen Z seems more accurate.
All through K-12, young men, particularly white males, have been demonized for their “toxic masculinity” that draws accusations of sexism, racism, and homophobia.
In college, the majority of students are female. In contrast, white males—9-10 percent of admittees in recent years at elite schools like Stanford and the Ivy League—are of no interest to college admission officers.
So they are tagged not as unique individuals but as superfluous losers of the “wrong” race, gender, or sexual orientation.
Gen Z men saw themselves scapegoated by professors and society for the sins of past generations—and on the wrong side of the preposterous reductionist binary of oppressors and the oppressed.
Traditional pathways to adulthood—affordable homes, upwardly mobile and secure jobs, and safe and secure city and suburban living—had mostly vanished amid overregulation, overtaxation, and underpolicing.
Orthodox and loud student advocacies on campus—climate change, DEI, the Palestinians—had little to do with getting a job, raising a family, or buying a house.
During the Biden years, white males mostly stopped enlisting in the military in their accustomed overrepresented numbers.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, they had died in frontline combat units at twice their percentages for the demographic. No matter—prior Pentagon DEI commissars still slandered them as suspects likely to form racist cabals.
Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes was on “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo to discuss former FBI director James Comey’s indictment.
“We continue to look at the indictment of former FBI director, Jim Comey for making false statements and obstruction of Congress,” Bartiromo said.
“Devin, thanks very much for being here this morning. Give us your reaction to the indictment of Jim Comey,” Bartiromo said.
“I think Comey should consider himself lucky Maria, number one, that he wasn’t treated like Roger Stone was treated,” Nunes said.
“They actually raided his home at 6 am, dragged him out, and that was before they actually called the CNN cameras,” Nunes said of Roger Stone.
“Secondly, what also didn’t happen to him is what happened to General Flynn, where Comey himself admitted that they ambushed Flynn in the White House, charged him on very similar charges, even though the FBI agents themselves said that they didn’t believe Flynn had lied,” Nunes said.
“Comey has long been a liar, a leaker. He’s dishonest. He Ruined the FBI,” Nunes said.
“Most importantly, he will be lucky if there is not a grand conspiracy charge brought, which is really what should be brought against probably about two dozen characters in the United States over the last seven, eight years,” Nunes explained.
Bartiromo asked Nunes if there should be more charges and indictments on former FBI Director Comey.
“Devin, my question to you is number one, should there be more charges against Jim Comey, and number two, should there be more indictments? What do you think?” Bartiromo asked.
“So, on Comey, I think the answer for this is, it’s very specific and it’s over whether or not he lied on this one part. The larger part is whether or not you can bring a kind of grand conspiracy case,” Nunes said.
“There is also a term in there called misleading. And what a lot of what these guys did is they made up things using intelligence that didn’t exist but acted like they knew something that actually wasn’t there, and they lied and mislead the American people,” Nunes said.
“Everything that has been declassified, is that they didn’t have any intelligence on Russia colluding with Trump,” Nunes explained.
It’s been one week since the British government’s odious ‘Online Safety Act’ came into force and basically everything on the Internet is now blocked.
The legislation was presented as an effort to protect children from seeing things they shouldn’t be seeing online.
However, to absolutely no one’s surprise, it’s already being used to eviscerate free speech.
The first thing that was blocked were videos of protests outside hotels where the government is housing illegal immigrants on the taxpayer’s dime.
British users of X shared screenshots of messages that popped up while they attempted to view footage from the protests, which started in Epping after a migrant sexually assaulted a teenage girl and have since spread around the country.
An elite team of police officers is to monitor social media for anti-migrant sentiment amid fears of summer riots.
Detectives will be drawn from forces across the country to take part in a new investigations unit that will flag up early signs of potential civil unrest.
The division, assembled by the Home Office, will aim to “maximise social media intelligence” gathering after police forces were criticised over their response to last year’s riots.
Probably purely a coincidence, right?
Also probably purely a coincidence that a shady government outfit now known as the National Security and Online Information Team (NSOIT) has been lobbying social media companies to take action against users who post what it describes as “concerning narratives” about immigration and ‘two tier policing’.
Previously known as the ‘Counter Disinformation Unit’, it was formerly tasked with identifying and monitoring COVID lockdown dissenters during the pandemic.
Today we learn that this spying operation actively used web trawling tools originally created to hunt for jihadist terrorists to find critics of ‘asylum’ hotels instead.
A Whitehall “disinformation” unit used tools created to hunt for jihadists to find critics of asylum hotels, The Telegraph can reveal
While censoring dissenting voices is evidently a primary focus for elements within the British Deep State, a whole host of other stuff has been blocked.
Whether this is intentional and nefarious or just a result of the massively broad terms of what the government could possibly consider ‘harmful’ or ‘hateful’ content, or whether the social media companies just don’t know, or just don’t want to take any chances, remains to be determined.
X user Chris Middleton shared an enraging thread of some of the stuff Brits can’t see anymore.
The Act gives Ofcom powers to slap platforms with fines of up to 10% of global turnover for “harmful” content.
“Harmful” is so vague that companies are over-censoring in order to avoid trouble.
It’s not protecting kids. It’s incentivising mass censorship.
Travel back in time to the year 2021 and you might find yourself in the middle of a bizarre debate over the virtues of “cancel culture”. At the time the political left was aggressively trying to secure long term power within the US through a multi-pronged psychological offensive – A war on the minds of the masses designed to force Americans into submission.
A big part of their strategy relied on the fundamentals of Cultural Marxism: The combination of Marxist mob tactics, artificial consensus and the exploitation of minority grievances as a vehicle for controlling speech. This was the rise of the “woke movement” to the halls of government.
The root of their power was not martial. In fact, the political left is weak and largely astroturf with minimal ability to project power in a physical way. If conservatives wanted to destroy them tomorrow the task would be relatively easy. We don’t because many of us still have hope that our problems can be solved through peaceful discourse.
What the leftists did have at their disposal was a massive institutional apparatus of government agencies, corporations, Big Tech and NGOs. The full might of the establishment cabal was on their side, which meant they had the means to enforce “cancel culture” and silence their ideological opponents.
I don’t think there has ever been a psychological war on a population that was more pervasive and tyrannical. Not since Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China has a citizenry been under such a siege by their own government. The fact that we survived this event, defeated the onslaught and actually grew a grassroots anti-woke movement without the use of social media forums is truly mind blowing.
Very few people today realize the level of victory that was achieved. We thwarted perhaps the largest 4th Generation “mind war” ever devised and we did it without any institutional access. We won by simple truth and word of mouth.
Another tool that the leftists and globalists used was the mobilization of illegal migrants, gays and minorities as a shield against criticism or counter-protest. If conservatives and moderates fought back with superior debate or our own protest groups, we were immediately accused of racism, xenophobia and homophobia. Merely presenting an opposing view to the progressive machine was considered an act of evil.
Large contingents within all of these groups were happy to go along with the agenda for numerous reasons.
First and foremost, DEI allowed them to easily game the system. They could snatch up grants, subsidies, welfare, and leapfrog over more talented and more intelligent competitors in education and business simply because of their “marginalized status”.
Secondly, the system under progressives was two-tier; leftists activists, illegals and minorities were given preferential protection while breaking the law and causing chaos. Conservatives were labeled terrorists for any act of defiance. We were banned from the largest web platforms. Some of us were targeted by the online mob and lost our jobs. Others were “de-banked” and threatened with ostracism from the economy. Still others were imprisoned.
This imbalance of the law bred a culture of entitlement, especially within the LGBT cult and the black community. Illegal aliens were given carte blanche to enter the country and feed like parasites. Not only that, but they were treated like heroes coming to save the US from “population decline” and “labor shortages”.
They all participated in the game willfully and joyfully. They were ALL part of the problem. But, of course, none of them ever thought the party would end or that they might end up facing consequences for their behavior. They joined in the feeding frenzy without considering the inevitable clap-back.
The primary argument that leftists would often use to defend the application of cancel culture was that there was “no such thing as cancel culture”, only the righteous utilization of “consequence culture”. This was, of course, a misdirection. The word “consequence” suggests that a person deserves punishment for wrongdoing and that the leftists canceling him (or her) have the right to do so.
Cancel culture was never about justice or karma, it was about suppression of anyone who disagreed with the political left. A corrupt group of psychopathic people with no support from the majority is in no position to dole out consequences. They can dole out harassment and intimidation, but not justice.
In recent months, however, I think these people are finally beginning to understand what “consequence culture” really is and clearly they don’t like it. I touched on this issue when it comes to Hollywood and liberal entertainment media in my article ‘Conservative Creators: Don’t Let The Liberal Entertainment Crisis Go To Waste’, but I wanted to expand on the idea of payback for the political left and what it will mean going forward.
For example, I have to admit I can’t help but laugh over the Stephen Colbert controversy and leftists crying about violations of “free speech”. Keep in mind that a multitude of journalists and celebrities were fired, banned from public platforms and silenced for not going along with the establishment narratives on covid, open borders, the 2020 election outcome, January 6th, etc.
Leftists celebrated when FOX was pressured to fire their biggest name, Tucker Carlson, over his skepticism of the 2020 election and the “insurrection” claims surrounding J6. Carlson was mostly correct in his positions, but that didn’t matter. The progressive view? “It’s a private company, they can fire whoever they want…”
Now they are raging over Stephen Colbert getting the boot and losing his time slot (it’s a sign that most leftist late night hosts are facing the chopping block). Never mind that the guy’s show was bleeding around $40 million per year and his audience in the coveted 18-34 age range was shrinking into oblivion. Never mind that Colbert was acting as a shameless shill for Big Pharma. Liberals demand that his show remain in place. They demand that he never face any consequences for selling out and acting as a propagandist instead of a comedian.
Too bad. He’s toast, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Welcome to REAL consequence culture.
Within the black community there is another form of accountability taking place. The BLM movement basked in their privileged status, rampaging through cities and doing as they pleased under the protective hand of Democratic governments. In the process they destroyed whatever social capital they had left and ended decades of “white guilt” in the span of a few years.
Now, white conservatives and moderates just don’t care anymore. We don’t care about being called racist. We’re not interested in the supposed trespasses of previous generations. We’re NEVER going to pay reparations (you’re never going to see a dime), and we’re not going to tolerate ghetto behavior in shared public spaces any longer.
The term “black fatigue” has gone viral in the past month for a reason: White people are done with passively accepting bad behavior from a certain subset of blacks (many black Americans are also tired of ghetto culture and want it to end). The magical accusation of “racism” holds no power over us anymore.
Interestingly, we’re seeing this change culminating across the board, even in the corporate world. We see cruise lines banning typical ghetto habits on their ships. We see retailers abandoning predominantly black neighborhoods because of unfettered crime. We see DEI being dumped in hiring and blacks (and women) say they are being overtly affected. Well, this is what happens when you spend the last several years acting increasingly more unhinged, entitled and violent.
You were protected by a liberal narrative of historical shame, but that’s dying out. Which means people are going to start expecting you to display manners and self control. Otherwise, there will (finally) be consequences.
Illegal migrants might be the most entitled group of all. I can’t fathom a bunch of Americans entering another country illegally and then demanding access to their jobs market and welfare programs while also carrying around Americans flags in protest and asserting that they have no intention of assimilating. They would be shot in the streets in most places and no one would tolerate them.
The same standards are being enacted in the US after years of open borders. The illegals are outraged…and no one cares. There is some moderate empathy for agricultural workers, but they represent a tiny minority among the tens-of-millions of alien migrants that have invaded the US. And honestly, I really don’t care if they sweep up the farm workers, either.
America needs an immigration reset, at least for the next decade so that we can figure out what the hell happened and repair the damage done to our job markets, housing markets and wages. The media publishes sob stories regularly about illegal immigrants living within the US for 20 years or more that are suddenly facing deportation. Meaning, we’re supposed to care more about illegals that broke the law for 20 years compared to illegals that broke the law for 20 days?
No, consequences must be handed down and no one gets a pass. Not anymore.
I was also greatly amused by the recent interview with a slobbering, raving and classless Hunter Biden. Let’s not forget that Joe Biden was probably mentally vacant for a much of his presidency and ostensibly Jill Biden and Hunter were running things with their advisors behind the scenes. Is it any wonder that America was falling apart? We had a degenerate crackhead and his psychopath mommy at the helm.
The moron STILL acts as if he could officially be president one day. But if it is proven that Joe Biden was mentally incompetent during his term and most of his pardon signatures were forged by aids without his cognitive understanding, then ole’ Hunter is in for some legal consequences of his own. In the meantime, the fact that the family has fallen from grace and Hunter is a national laughing stock is enough.
When I witness the wide-eyed astonishment of these people as they finally face punishment, I think of the legacy of the western world. I think of the generations of good men that worked tirelessly to institute a sense of order, principle and the conventions necessary for our society to succeed. I am reminded, time and time again, how difficult is it to create a thing vs. how easy it is to destroy a thing. I’m reminded that our forefathers never would have put up with this shit.
In the end, civilization cannot survive and thrive unless consequences are exacted upon people who deserve them. I believe we are entering a new epoch when any person or any group, no matter their purported circumstances, will face automatic retribution for seeking to tear down the west. This is the way things used to be, and deconstructionists had best prepare themselves for the returning swing of the pendulum.
As you may have noticed, celebrations of “pride” have been much more subdued this Pride Month than they were in recent memory. The parades this year are less conspicuous and bombastic. Corporate websites are less obnoxious and explicit. And perhaps most notably, triumphant in-store displays have disappeared almost entirely or, at the very least, are much smaller and more restrained than in past years.
According to some in the mainstream media, all of this moderation—or abandonment—of LGBT “pride” has the same root cause as all evils in contemporary America: Donald Trump. The president is so mean, so nasty, and so omnipotent that companies fear him and do whatever they can to avoid incurring his wrath, including, apparently, forsaking longstanding practices, affiliations, and beliefs:
Corporate America has fallen out of love with Pride Month… and it’s because of Donald Trump.
Businesses that used to smother their merchandise in rainbow flags for the month of June have dramatically scaled back this year, many wary of provoking an investigation by the Trump administration.
Meanwhile, Pride events across the US are facing budget shortfalls as corporate sponsors duck out.
Now, with all due respect to the president, the media, and the people cited in the above article (some of whom are very smart, in fact), the idea that Trump killed Pride Month is, well, kind of stupid. Not only is the notion thoroughly ahistorical, but it also gets the causative forces in American politics precisely backward.
For starters, it’s important to remember how and when the backlash against “pride” began in earnest.
Recall that on March 31, 2023, Bud Light was not only the most popular beer sold by the world’s largest brewing company but was also the most popular beer on the planet by sales. It was, inarguably, America’s—and the world’s—go-to beer. The following day, however, everything would change. Bud Light—and LGBT “Pride”—would consciously choose to self-immolate.
The next day, Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid, Bud Light’s young, smart, and talented vice president of marketing, launched her campaign to remake the brand and to bring it into the 21st century. She worried the beer she had been hired to keep at #1 was associated too closely with the common folk. She fretted about its history of “fratty and out-of-touch humor” and believed she had been tasked with making it more “inclusive…and lighter and brighter and different.”
As part of that more “inclusive” strategy, Heinerscheid and her team contracted with a young TikTok sensation named Dylan Mulvaney to promote the brand in a short video. And so, on that fateful day, April Fool’s Day 2023, Mulvaney, who is famously and flamboyantly transgender, uploaded a video in which he/she, dressed like Audrey Hepburn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” sang the praises of the new, au courant Bud Light.
The rest, as they say, is history. Within a week, Bud Light’s sales tanked, the result of a conservative-led boycott of the brand. Within a month, it had lost precisely what it sought to protect, its vaunted status as the nation’s best-selling beer. By Independence Day, Bud Light was no longer even in the top 10 best-selling beers in America, having fallen all the way down to 14th place.
And then the real collapse began.
As sales of Bud Light fell, so did the sales of the brewer’s other brands. And so did AB InBev’s stock. From its high on April 6, the company’s share price fell more than 18%. Before the bleeding finally stopped in October, the share price had fallen by more than one-fifth.
Recall as well that two months after Bud Light’s disastrous fling with Dylan Mulvaney, Target Corporation, a longtime LGBTQ ally, launched its most aggressive Pride Month campaign ever, featuring children’s Pride displays, a “tuck”-friendly swimsuit for men who wished to hide their…uhhh…manhood, and designs from a UK brand that also produced “Satanic” designs.
Again, the backlash was swift and merciless. As with Bud Light, Target was the object of considerable online and cable news outrage. The company saw its sales fall dramatically in the face of a conservative-led boycott and, in time, saw its share price collapse as well. The nation’s “normies” had, once again, done what had never been done before and what was once thought impossible: they had organized and sustained a conservative boycott of a major corporation. They had been pushed too far by what they saw as aggressive corporate politicization, and they had successfully and spectacularly pushed back against it.
The truth of the matter is that Donald Trump didn’t have anything to do with the death of Pride Month. “Pride” killed itself, as it was destined eventually to do. It’s one of the Seven Deadly Sins for a reason, after all, namely because it is inherently self-destructive. “Pride,” as Proverbs famously puts it, “goes before disaster, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” And fall they did.
Ever since these twin retail disasters, American companies have been notably (and understandably) more circumspect about their efforts to promote politically divisive themes, especially LGBT Pride. Many corporations—with a push from conservative activist Robby Starbuck—ended their participation with and sponsorship of the Human Rights Campaign, the LGBT activist group that helped turn Pride Month into a national event and actively punishes companies it perceives as less than ideally supportive of its agenda.
And note that all of this—from the Bud Light debacle to the Target disaster to Robby Starbuck’s humiliation of the HRC—took place while Joe Biden was president and Donald Trump was a private citizen. Indeed, the first two took place before Trump had even secured a single convention delegate or Republican primary vote. In other words, the media can blame him all they want for the death of Pride Month, but the timing is off.
Additionally, and more to the point, the media—and countless others, including most Democratic elected officials—radically misunderstand how American politics works. Trump didn’t cause the cultural backlash that killed Pride Month. The cultural backlash that killed Pride Month also caused Trump. Or at least it caused his re-election.
In my nearly three decades as a macro-political analyst for large institutional investors, I have always insisted on the existence and relevance of one simple truth that defines American politics and its inevitable twists and turns: Washington is not where the biggest and most important decisions are made in this country. Those decisions are made in the states, cities, towns, school districts, churches, and families of the nation. Washington is merely where the score is kept.
Or, as Andrew Breitbart more pithily put it, “Politics is downstream from culture.”
Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016 because the American people rejected the foreign policy and cultural excesses of the Obama years. Likewise, Trump was re-elected in 2024 because the voters rejected Biden’s even more significant cultural excesses. Trump wasn’t elected to convince normies to dislike Pride, Pride Month, or “woke” more generally. He was elected because the normies had already come to loathe them all on their own.
The advent of Pride Month, albeit in recent years a slightly more muted affair than in the past, is an annual reminder of one of the central aspects of our modern culture. Ours is a culture not merely characterized by the death of old moral values but their intentional and exultant destruction. Anyone who has witnessed a Pride parade can be in no doubt about this. Twice I have unintentionally been in London as the parade takes place; twice my shock at the explicit nature of some of the floats has only been exceeded by my incomprehension at the parents who have brought their tiny children out to watch and cheer. Today, we apparently celebrate neither sexual modesty nor childhood.
Such exultant destruction of things once deemed sacred is a constitutive part of a Western culture that has transformed the rebel into a hero. Rebels need sacred rules to transgress, and as rebellion began to emerge as a heroic ideal in the nineteenth century—at least among the artistic classes—so the religion that upheld those sacred rules was bound to suffer. Matthew Arnold may have captured something of the death of religion with his image of the “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar” of the ebbing sea of faith, but it does not capture the ecstatic frenzy and deicide of the sexual revolution. Transgression is fun, exhilarating fun, as thinkers as diverse as Augustine, Nietzsche, and Freud knew only too well. And the glorification of the transgressor is a hallmark of our moment.
Rereading Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain recently, I was struck by how the characters’ various ideologies have remained part of the Western cultural landscape a century later. In the rarefied atmosphere of an alpine sanatorium, far above the humdrum lives of ordinary people, elite intellectuals explore modernity’s pathologies and contradictions in ways familiar today. Exclusive humanism and critical theory do battle in the persons of Settembrini and Naphta, a thinly disguised Georg Lukács. Both schools find their supporters today. But the figure who most succinctly captures the wider spirit of our age is Madame Chauchat, the symbol of erotic temptation. She declares to Hans Castorp, the central character: “It seems to us that one ought not to search for morality in virtue, which is to say in reason, in discipline, in good behavior, in respectability—but in just the opposite, I would say: in sin, in abandoning oneself to danger, to whatever can harm us, destroy us.”
Transgression—in this case, the tease of erotic transgression—is the hallmark of the “virtuous,” or perhaps better “authentic,” person. That is the logic of the sexual revolution that has done so much to reshape Western culture in the last sixty years, and of which Pride Month is the liturgical celebration.
In the century since Mann wrote, the basic ideas he was exploring have not changed. Postmodernity really is not that different from modernity. What has changed is the scope and location of these ideas. No longer do they only inform the entertaining conversations of those living on the cultural mountaintops. Now they are the common property of the culture at all levels, enabled both by technology and the media. Medicine has made chaotic sexual behavior less risky. Chauchat’s transgression is today cheap and easily available in the over-the-counter forms of the abortion pill and antibiotics. And social media has extended adolescence by incentivizing increasingly transgressive behavior. To keep those clicks coming, we must become ever more outrageous. Indeed, this turbocharges one of the essential dynamics of transgression as an ideal: Once a specific transgression is normalized, it too must be transgressed. The hunger is never satisfied; it only becomes more extreme. And so, while rebellion in the 1970s was having a poster of the Sex Pistols on your bedroom wall or telling your horrified mother that Debbie Harry was your ideal date, today it’s proclaiming on X or Instagram that Hitler was one of the good guys and queer people should support Hamas.
There is something infantile about rebellion and transgression. The need to perform and draw attention to oneself by constantly overthrowing and despising anything considered valuable or sacred by a previous generation has a rather Oedipal ring to it. Growing up used to be about learning and internalizing the values of the past in order to take one’s place in society. But a society built around transgression is really a society committed to a permanent state of immaturity. Whether it’s activists or social media users upping the rhetorical ante by insulting anyone they disagree with and demanding public affirmation of what is obviously false—that men can be women and vice versa—or whether it’s the ever-more outlandish sexualities on display in pop culture, the dynamic is the same: public discourse degenerating into infantile tantrums.
Which brings us back to Pride Month. Exhibitionism and glorying in transgressive sexuality and in the inability or unwillingness to exert self-control is the mark of an infantile society. No, children shouldn’t be taken to Pride parades. But we fool ourselves if we think that such parades are not themselves deeply childish affairs.
Published April 10, 2025We’re certainly in a moment, and the faithful should be the guiding lights.
The thing about culture is that it is always changing. That’s because culture is, in a very real sense, created by humans. It’s the result of what we think, what we imagine, what we change, what we legislate, what we invent, what we relate to, and all kinds of other human experiences.
There are some moments, however, in which the changes are deeper and wider, the shifts in culture more fundamental. Many sense we’re living in such a time where the changes that have taken place over the last several decades have been substantial, to say the least. My friend Os Guinness calls this a “civilizational moment,” where society isn’t just at a critical crossroads in twenty-first century America. It’s instead at a critical crossroads for Western civilization itself.
Of course, history tells the story about civilizations, how they rise and fall. There are rules to civilizations, and if those rules are broken, then those civilizations no longer have a future. What Os means when he calls this a civilizational moment is that we’re at a time when our future is unclear. Will Western civilization be renewed? Will it enter a time of revolution? Or will we continue in irreversible decline?
It’s important as Christians to always remember that the decline of Western civilization is not the decline of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God both predates and will long outlast the history of Western civilization. However, its decline will be significant indeed because so many of the ideals of the Western world were shaped and formed by Christian beliefs—specifically those beliefs about morality and about human dignity. Such ideals aren’t found in other civilizations that have long since been swept into the dustbin of history.
Decades ago we warned that the public promotion of the radical sexual agendas would have worrying and lasting repercussions. We were mocked and scorned for saying this. When the fake marriage debate came along, we insisted this would NOT be the end, and even more radical demands would be made. We were mocked and scorned again. Now the trans militants are working overtime targeting women and children especially.
I have already documented far too many examples of this, and they keep on coming. Consider just two more recent cases, one from the UK and one from Australia. In England we have now gotten to the place where a Christian teacher at a Christian school affirming basic Christian sexual ethics can come very close to losing her job! One report says this:
A Christian teacher in the U.K. has been found guilty of “‘unacceptable professional conduct” by a high court for telling students about her biblical beliefs on gender and sexuality, all while teaching at a Christian school. Glawdys Leger was a Modern Foreign Languages teacher for 12 years before she was suspended from Bishop Justus Church of England School in Bromley in February 2022.
The 43-year-old refused to promote LGBTQI+ ideology to her seventh-grade students which included introducing them to “gender identities such as pansexual, asexual, intersex, and transgender, plus Stonewall-inspired films and Animal Farm-esque slogans: ‘Equality is a strength, Diversity is our power, Inclusion is a necessity’,” Christian Legal Centre reports.
Instead, she told students that Christians believe sex outside of marriage is sin and that as a Christian you need to “live your life for God.” She also said, “There is no place to hurt or exclude anyone because they are LGBT, Christians should pray for people who are LGBT, And that she ‘spoke about God’s love and how we are all loved and precious,’” Christian Concern explained in a statement.
According to a professional conduct panel (PCP), Leger’s comments were recorded by one of the students who complained that the teacher said being LGBT was a “sin” and that transgender people were “just confused.” In December 2023, the PCP removed Leger from her position and deemed her conduct to be “unprofessional.”
The Aquinas Church of England Education Trust then reported Leger to the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) because “she upset one pupil by sharing her views on LBGTQ+ and she went on to share many more in our investigation and subsequent hearings, such that we were not certain whether she would continue to share those views with young people.”
The article goes on to say this:
“I am relieved to not be banned from teaching in the UK. However, I find it extremely alarming that I have been found guilty of discussing and debating Christian teaching in a Christian school in an RE lesson,” Leger said after the initial ruling.
“I raised what I did because children were being taught one extreme LGBTQI+ narrative at the school with no debate. Yet for raising, expressing, and teaching Christian beliefs on these issues, I have been accused of not presenting a balanced view,” she continued.
Leger added, “The message from the TRA is that Christian teachers must not only be silent about their beliefs, but they must actively promote LGBT ideology or risk being severely punished and even losing their careers.” Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, said it is only getting worse for Christian teachers in the U.K.
“Regulatory bodies are creating an oppressive environment for teachers which chills the atmosphere and prevents the expression of Christian faith in schools and any alternative or balancing viewpoint to LGBTQI+ ideology,” she said. “Glawdys is a Christian teacher who was teaching Christian ethics in an RE lesson in a Christian school. For her to be punished for doing her job well creates censorship in the classroom.” https://cbn.com/news/world/christian-teacher-found-guilty-sharing-biblical-beliefs-sexuality-christian-school
When sexual insanity has even poisoned so-called Christian institutions then you know we are in a real bad way. But things are no better here in Australia. A Canadian man who cares greatly about the war on our children has run afoul of the law in Queensland for daring to say children should be protected, and not exploited, by the trans militants. One story says this:
A Canadian father who campaigns against irreversible gender dysphoria treatments for children has been fined and arrested in Brisbane, in what has been described as a “worrying attack on freedom of expression”. Chris Elston – better known online as Billboard Chris – was standing in Queen Street Mall with a sign stating “children cannot consent to puberty blockers” when he was approached by a Brisbane City Council worker who accused him of obstructing people’s movement.
The council worker went on to issue Mr Elston with an $806 fine for “obstructing or unreasonably disturbing any person lawfully using a mall”, a claim the activist calmly insisted was untrue. Mr Elston’s sign reflects current Queensland law, after the state government issued a directive banning puberty blockers and cross sex hormones for new patients suffering gender dysphoria earlier this year.
After refusing to comply with the directive to remove his sign and leave the area, Mr Elston was approached by multiple officers from Queensland Police, who informed him that continuing to remain would lead to him being arrested and charged with “contravening” the move-on direction.
He later was brought to Parliament House in Canberra to share his story. Three pro-family champs offered these comments:
Rukshan Fernando
It’s great to see @billboardchris making the rounds at Parliament House, hosted by Senator Babet. Despite the overzealous detainment by Queensland police and the woke Brisbane City Council workers trampling on free speech, Chris is out here in Australia garnering support for his cause to protect children. He will also be participating in a landmark case alongside X and Elon Musk against the censorship-obsessed office of the eSafety Commission in Australia. Good luck!
Senator Malcolm Roberts
Grateful to be able to offer my support to @BillboardChris in person at Parliament House today after the concerning events in Queen Street Mall, Brisbane.
As I’ve said many times in Senate speeches and other forums, gender dysphoria should be met with compassion and understanding, not a scalpel or hormone drugs.
Our children need support during adolescence, not automatic affirmation that could lead to irreversible harm. Given that children are not mature enough to consent to treatments that will result in permanent infertility and damage, a total ban on such treatments for anyone under 18 is necessary.
We must protect our children as they navigate this challenging period in their lives.
I stand with Billboard Chris and commend his dedication to ending this abuse of our children.
Above all, free speech and the right to peaceful protest must be safeguarded at all costs.
Lyle Shelton
Fresh from being removed from the Queen St Mall today by nine @QldPolice for peacefully displaying these signs, it was a privilege to catch up with @BillboardChris. The @LNPQLD’s failure to protect freedom of speech is deeply disturbing.
You can sign a petition on his behalf. It already has over 20,000 signatures:
Chris Elston, better known as Billboard Chris, is a Canadian father on a mission. Equipped with nothing but a sandwich board, he travels the world engaging in vital street advocacy to protect children from gender ideology. Billboard Chris’ message is simple: “Children cannot consent to puberty blockers.” But now, his voice—and the truth—is under attack in Australia.
In March of last year, Australian authorities ordered X (Twitter) to remove one of his online posts. In the post, Billboard Chris had shared a news article published by the Daily Mail, which criticized the appointment of a radical transgender-identifying activist to a World Health Organization panel charged with drafting new “guidelines” on the provision of “gender-affirming care”.
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner demanded that X remove the post, resulting in the platform ‘geo-blocking’ the post in Australia. Billboard Chris is not backed by large corporations or political power. He’s just a dad fighting to protect children from one of the most dangerous ideologies of our time. Like every one of us, he has the right to peacefully express his beliefs. Yet, Australian authorities have violated his basic right to free speech.
And this isn’t just about Billboard Chris. The result of the eSafety Commissioner’s overreach is to keep Australians in the dark. The people of Australia have the right to uncensored information about the truth of gender ideology and the way it is advanced by activists and institutions.
Governments must not be allowed to hide views they don’t like from their citizens. Now, a Canadian citizen must travel to Australia to defend his right to speak freely on an American-owned social media platform.
All over the West we see the sexual revolutionaries waging war on Christians and others who believe that children should be protected and that radical adult agenda items should not be rammed down our throats. These two cases are just the tip of the iceberg.
We all need to take a stand now before we will lose our rights to do so.
Published March 21, 2025Without God, opposing cultural forces look awfully alike.The Oscar winner for Best Lead Actress this year was Mikey Madison for her role in Anora. After offering the expected thanks to family, friends, and the film’s production crew, she thanked “sex workers” for inspiring the film, which told the story of a young exotic dancer and occasional prostitute caught up in a dysfunctional romance with a Russian oligarch.
I . . . want to again recognize and honor the sex worker community. I will continue to support and be an ally. All of the incredible people, the women that I’ve had the privilege of meeting from that community has been one of the highlights of this entire incredible experience.
A full-fledged endorsement of an immoral and exploitative profession is especially strange in the post-#MeToo era. As Lila Rose of LiveAction put it,
‘Sex work’ isn’t ‘work.’ It’s destructive and evil. It preys on vulnerable young girls and boys. It is not empowering or liberating. It fuels trafficking and abuse.
In fact, the same could be said of the film itself and the actress herself. After all, Madison is a real person whose body was exposed to the world. She was paid for it. Does consent change that she is also the victim of exploitation?
At the other end of the cultural spectrum are Andrew and Tristan Tate, who are famous for espousing a corrupted brand of masculinity. Openly misogynist, the Tate brothers are Muslims who praise terrorist groups, brag about abusing and degrading women, and have been credibly accused of sex trafficking minors. Despite this, some right-wing podcasters celebrated when the U.S. government pressured Romania to release them from prison where, since 2022, they’ve faced charges of sexual assault and trafficking of women.
In an alternative form of the same twisted logic that celebrates the exploitation of women by calling it empowerment, the Tates are defended for countering woke, anti-male culture by being awful men. Hopefully, their U.S. publicity tour will be cut short by the Florida Attorney General, who has launched a criminal investigation into the brothers.
Editor’s note: Every Friday, “Weekend Plug-in” meets readers at the intersection of faith and news. Click to join nearly 10,000 subscribers who get this column delivered straight to their inbox. Got feedback or ideas? Email Bobby Ross Jr.
(ANALYSIS) What can 36,908 U.S. adults tell us about the state of religion in America?
The big news, according to Pew: The decline of Christianity in the United States has slowed and may have leveled off.
The Pew Research Center’s latest Religious Landscape Study queried 36,908 U.S. adults. (Shutterstock photo)
Stop the presses!
I asked a handful of top Godbeat pros who reported on the study to offer their insights.
1. What surprised you most about Pew’s findings?
•Tiffany Stanley, Associated Press: “I was surprised at just how many people held spiritual or supernatural beliefs. Given that so many Americans have abandoned organized religion, it was striking to see that more than 80% believe in a higher power and a human soul.” (Read Stanley’s story.)
•Daniel Silliman, Christianity Today: “There are more than 17 million evangelicals who don’t go to church! Digging into the specifics of ‘evangelical’ was fascinating and, I hope, useful to people.” (Read Silliman’s story on “Who are evangelicals?” and his related report on the Pew study.)
•Kelsey Dallas, Deseret News: “This is an obvious answer, but it’s a true answer: I was most surprised by the pause in the rise of the ‘nones.’ I did not expect the trend line to level off.” (Read Dallas’ main story on the Pew study and her 10 key takeaways.)
• Clemente Lisi, Religion Unplugged:“There has been so much talk of the ‘nones’ over the past few years that it’s very surprising to see things stabilizing. I have to think that the pandemic had something to do with it, although the study didn’t go into much detail on that. Also, despite a drop in organized religion, Americans in large numbers hold spiritual and supernatural beliefs. It’s a further sign that Americans aren’t prepared as a whole to ignore faith — it’s just that it has taken on other forms. Lastly, immigration has seen other faith traditions grow, which makes sense. Religions like Hinduism and Buddhism will certainly have an impact on American society in years to come.” (Read Lisi’s story.)
• Liam Adams, The Tennessean and USA Today Network: “I was most surprised by the narrowing gender gap and how it compares to larger narratives about young men flocking to conservative faith traditions in droves. In fact, Pew acknowledged those notions in its report and said the data doesn’t totally reflect the hype. Still, the data points to a leveling off in rates of religiousness among men and women, or at least challenges earlier trends of much higher rates of religiousness among women. We quoted sociologist Penny Edgell’s reflections on what the data on the narrowing gender gap and the heightened political polarization says about attitudes toward traditional gender roles. This is a phenomenon I’m seeing in the faith groups I cover regularly, so it’s helpful to have data that both affirms and complicates my observations.” (Read Adams’ story.)
• • •
2. What surprised you least?
•Tiffany Stanley, Associated Press: “That young adults are much less religious than their elders. Part of that may be their life stage, but it’s also why the long-term decline of American religion still seems ominous, even with the current stabilization.”
•Daniel Silliman, Christianity Today: “People in America are really spiritual, even as they grow more leery of organizations and groups. I think a lot of the talk about secularization has been wrong, and people should read more of sociologist Peter Berger. This study goes a ways to confirming and fleshing out what I thought!”
•Kelsey Dallas, Deseret News: “I’m going to cheat and make my answer about Pew Research Center instead of about the data. I wasn’t surprised that Anna Schiller,Greg Smith and others at Pew made covering the study quite painless for reporters. They provided embargoed info well in advance and organized an in-depth press briefing. It’s not surprising because Pew’s crew has long been kind to journalists.”
• Clemente Lisi, Religion Unplugged:“I wasn’t at all surprised that more Republicans identify as being more religious than Democrats. Also not surprising is the gap between young and old. Both are trends we have seen in other studies and a big reason why Americans are more polarized than ever. I think this political gap will widen in future years. As for the generation gap, that will also widen unless something changes. It will also certainly lead to a future drop in the number of people who identify as Christian.”
• Liam Adams, The Tennessean and USA Today Network: “I was least surprised at the lower percentages of U.S. adults who identify with particular Protestant denominations and with the slight increase in those who identify as nondenominational evangelical Protestant. I’ve been watching this play out on the ground level in my reporting on the Southern Baptist Convention, United Methodist Church and others. This will almost certainly continue and I expect it to be a dominant story in my ongoing coverage of Protestantism in the U.S., which is that of decline and shrinking denominational-affiliated institutions (i.e. staff layoffs, property sales).”
• • •
3. Any issues or trends revealed that you want to delve deeper into? And if so, what can you say about them without giving away too much to your competition?
•Tiffany Stanley, Associated Press: “I think there is more to be done on the idea that so many Americans see themselves as spiritual but not religious. And I’d like someone to dig more into how race, religion and politics intersect in the report.”
•Daniel Silliman, Christianity Today: “I want to know more about: The specific answers that people gave when asked their religious affiliation. Some of the ones mentioned in the appendix are fascinating! House church? Exvangelical? Sabbath keeper? I was especially charmed by the folks who gave the location of their congregation.
•Kelsey Dallas, Deseret News: “I want to dive more into how the study has landed with religious leaders. Are they feeling hopeful? Stressed out? What numbers stuck in their heads?”
• Clemente Lisi, Religion Unplugged: “All editors love stories that dig deeper. For me, I think it’s this anecdotal notion that more young men are joining Orthodoxy and Catholicism. While more women attend church compared to men, there are trends that show this is changing among the young. I’d love to see what other studies or a future Pew one will say about this and whether it really is making more believers out of young men. More importantly, if true, what’s really driving this?”
• Liam Adams, The Tennessean and USA Today Network: “In briefly poking around the Catholic-specific data, there was an array of views on major political issues and political party affiliations. I cover Catholics less than I do evangelical denominations, but I’m eager to find a way to cite some of this data showing variance among U.S. Catholics’ political and social views.”
• • •
I greatly appreciate my religion journalism colleagues taking time to share their analysis, especially during such a busy week.
When Christianity Today republished my “Jesus at the ballpark” feature in 2023, I was both excited by the extra exposure for the story and jealous at the headline, which was better than the original:
CT excels at clever titles — a fact reinforced by the magazine taking first place in the ACES: The Society for Editing headline contest. (In a different column, I’ll wonder if a copy-editing society could have come up with a less clunky name.)
“This is the nerdiest thing I will ever brag about,” Kate Shellnutt, CT’s editorial director for news, said of the award.
The Final Plug
“Americans are exhausted by a string of tragedies and want to move on. Do we have a duty to care?”
When a culture decides that its core values and beliefs are not worth defending, and are even immoral and outdated, then that culture is in a bad way. And when you bring into that culture thousands or millions of people from other cultures who see their own cultures as superior, then that host culture really is in big trouble.
Lastly, when those new arrivals refuse to integrate, but instead spend their time warring against the host culture, declaring it to be evil and in need of replacement, then you know that culture is finished. We are now of course living through all this in the West. Places like England and Europe are in advanced stages of this self-immolation.
And overwhelmingly it has been brought about by allowing millions of Muslims into the West who have no desire to fit in, but instead are doing all they can to see the host countries being turned into Islamic hellholes, just like the ones they left.
Two American writers who have often spoken about such matters can here be briefly quoted. Thomas Sowell put it this way: “What ‘multiculturalism’ boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture – and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.”
And Mark Steyn said that multiculturalism “is a cult of tolerance in which you demonstrate your sensitivity to other cultures by being almost totally insensitive to your own.” And again: “Multiculturalism was the West’s last belief system. Its final set of values accorded all values equal value. Which is to say that it had no values—for, if all values have equal value, what’s the point?”
Consider Angela Merkel who was Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. She allowed millions of migrants to come in, mainly from Muslim nations. But after some years of doing this, even she began to realise that the multi-culti experiment had been a big mistake. As I wrote in October of 2010:
Germany is a nation of 82 million people, including around 4 million Muslims, mostly from Turkey. The trouble is, for the most part they never did integrate very well. Indeed, many did not want to. And trouble has been brewing there for quite some time.
Thus Merkel declared on the weekend that multiculturalism has been one monumental failure. This is how the newsagency Reuters covered the story: “Germany’s attempt to create a multicultural society has ‘utterly failed,’ Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday, adding fuel to a debate over immigration and Islam polarising her conservative camp.
“Speaking to a meeting of young members of her Christian Democrats (CDU), Merkel said allowing people of different cultural backgrounds to live side by side without integrating had not worked in a country that is home to some four million Muslims. ‘This (multicultural) approach has failed, utterly failed,’ Merkel told the meeting in Potsdam, south of Berlin. https://billmuehlenberg.com/2010/10/18/islam-and-the-failure-of-multiculturalism/
The problem is, plenty of sensible and sage voices had been warning about this before, during and after all this out of control immigration was allowed to occur. In this regard let me feature two English greats who have both departed. They certainly sounded the alarm back then.
A full 23 years ago Margaret Thatcher was warning us about all this. Writing in the New York Times a few months after the September 11 terror attacks, she penned a piece rightly calling out the problem: “Islamism is the new Bolshevism”. She began her piece with these words:
“Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks.” Milton’s words perfectly describe America today. After the horror of September 11 the world has seen America gather its strength, summon its allies and proceed to wage war halfway across the globe against its enemy – and ours.
America will never be the same again. It has proved to itself and to others that it is in truth (not just in name) the only global superpower, indeed a power that enjoys a level of superiority over its actual or potential rivals unmatched by any other nation in modern times. Consequently, the world outside America should never be the same either. There will, of course, arise new threats from new directions. But as long as America works to maintain its technological lead, there is no reason why any challenge to American dominance should succeed. And that in turn will help ensure stability and peace.
Yet, as President Bush has reminded Americans, there is no room for complacency. America and its allies, indeed the western world and its values, are still under deadly threat. That threat must be eliminated, and now is the time to act vigorously.
In many respects the challenge of Islamic terror is unique, hence the difficulty western intelligence services encountered trying to predict and prevent its onslaughts. The enemy is not, of course, a religion – most Muslims deplore what has occurred. Nor is it a single state, though this form of terrorism needs the support of states to give it succour. Perhaps the best parallel is with early communism. Islamic extremism today, like bolshevism in the past, is an armed doctrine. It is an aggressive ideology promoted by fanatical, well-armed devotees. And, like communism, it requires an all-embracing long-term strategy to defeat it.
Of course, looking back, we now see that America and Europe really did not change all that much. Instead of clamping down on mass migration, especially of those who have no great love of Western values like freedom, democracy, rule of law and the like, we have simply dug our graves even further.
Her final paragraph went like this:
The events of September 11 are a terrible reminder that freedom demands eternal vigilance. And for too long we have not been vigilant. We have harboured those who hated us, tolerated those who threatened us and indulged those who weakened us. As a result, we remain, for example, all but defenceless against ballistic missiles that could be launched against our cities. A missile defence system will begin to change that. But change must go deeper still. The west as a whole needs to strengthen its resolve against rogue regimes and upgrade its defences. The good news is that America has a president who can offer the leadership necessary to do so. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/feb/12/afghanistan.politics
Those thoughts have also been proven to be a bit idealistic and utopian. But one line there is well worth repeating. “We have harboured those who hated us, tolerated those who threatened us and indulged those who weakened us.” She was 110 per cent correct there, but as always, her incisive words fell on deaf ears.
Another prophetic voice sounding the alarm on multiculturalism and the rise and rise of Islam in the West was Roger Scruton. I mentioned how Merkel came to see that her grand plans of DEI (not yet known by that acronym back then) had fallen apart.
A few months after she had made that concession, Scruton wrote a piece for the American Spectator titled, “Multiculturalism, R.I.P.” He too is worth quoting from. He begins:
Throughout my adult life governments around the Western world have been propagating the gospel of multiculturalism, which tells us that immigrants, from whatever part of the world and whatever way of life, are a welcome part of our “multicultural” society. Differences of language, religion, custom, and attachment don’t matter, they have reassured us, since all can form part of the colorful tapestry of the modern state. Anybody who publicly disagreed with that claim invited the attentions of the thought police, always ready with the charge of racism, and never so scrupulous as to think it a sin to destroy the career of someone, provided he was white, indigenous, and male. To be quite honest, living through this period of organized mendacity has been one of the least agreeable ordeals that we conservatives have had to undergo. Keeping your head down is bad enough; but filling your head with official lies means sacrificing thought as well as freedom.
But now, quite suddenly, the oppression has ceased. Even Angelika Merkel, chancellor of a country whose reputation for political correctness is more carefully nurtured than any other cultural asset, has just told us that multiculturalism is dead — quite dead. President Sarkozy has for some time been saying the same, while Prospect, Britain’s leading left-wing intellectual monthly, currently carries the caption “re-thinking race: has multiculturalism had its day?” This caption is in many ways the most revealing of the current attempts to put multiculti at a distance. For it manages simultaneously to deny and to affirm the original message, which is that to discriminate among cultures is to discriminate on grounds of race — in other words, to be a racist. This is perhaps the most pernicious of the lies that we have been required to swallow during these years of oppression, since it is one that compares all defense of the majority culture, and all attempts to integrate minorities, with some of the greatest crimes of recent history.
So let’s be clear from the outset: culture and race have nothing to do with each other….
He goes on to say this:
Once we distinguish race and culture, the way is open to acknowledge that not all cultures are equally admirable, and that not all cultures can exist comfortably side-by-side. To deny this is to forgo the very possibility of moral judgment, and therefore to deny the fundamental experience of community. It is precisely this that has caused the multiculturalists to hesitate. Rightly enjoying the polytheistic festivals of the Hindus, the Carnivals of Caribbean blacks, and the celebrations of the Chinese New Year, they have led us to believe that cultural difference is always an addition to social life, and never a threat to it. Anyone who discriminates between cultures, therefore, really must have something more dangerous at the back of his mind — a desire to exclude on grounds of strangeness, which is the first step towards the racist mindset.
But experience has finally prevailed over wishful thinking. It is culture, not nature, that tells a family that their daughter who has fallen in love outside the permitted circle must be killed, that girls must undergo genital mutilation if they are to be respectable, that the infidel must be destroyed when Allah commands it. You can read about those things and think that they belong to the pre-history of our world. But when suddenly they are happening in your midst, you are apt to wake up to the truth about the culture that advocates them. You are apt to say, that is not our culture, and it has no business here. That is what Europeans are now saying — not just a few crazies, but everyone. And the multiculturalists are reluctantly compelled to agree with them.
He looks at how very different Western cultures, built on the Judeo-Christian worldview, are from most others – certainly Islamic cultures. He then concludes this way:
So what happens when people whose identity is fixed by creed or kinship immigrate into places settled by Western culture? The multiculturalists say that we must make room for them, and that we do this by relinquishing the space in which their culture can flourish. Our political class has at last recognized that this is a recipe for disaster, and that we can welcome immigrants only if we welcome them into our culture, and not beside and against it. But that means telling them to accept rules, customs, and procedures that may be alien to their old way of life. Is this an injustice? Surely not. If immigrants come it is because they gain by doing so. It is therefore reasonable to remind them that there is also a cost. Only now, however, is our political class prepared to say so, and to insist that the cost be paid. And it may be that this change of heart comes too late. http://spectator.org/articles/38473/multiculturalism-rip
Here we had two very strong and very sensible warnings about the massive mess the West was getting itself into. But most Western leaders, elites, politicians and members of the commentariat refused to listen. And so today our problems are even so much worse than back then.
For the third time, let me remind you of the words of Thatcher: “We have harboured those who hated us, tolerated those who threatened us and indulged those who weakened us.” We are now paying a very heavy price for this indeed.
Our country refused to embrace this particular diversity experiment – and thank God for that
By Anastasia Mironova, writer, publicist
Trump has banned 72 genders. Where will he put transgender people? Where is he going to put the trans toilets, the trans athletes, and what will happen to the transitions of children?
There are few occasions when we can genuinely rejoice in being smarter than the Americans. And it is crucial for us to know that we are smarter. For almost a hundred years, Russia and America have been locked in an invisible competition: who is smarter, taller, and prettier. When Donald Trump signed the bill to return to two genders, I realized: here it is! We’ve been bloody clever! Clever enough not to collapse into the wave of madness that the unstable, the exalted, and the outright crazy have brought upon themselves.
I cannot fathom how the Americans let this happen. And worse, they dragged dozens of developed countries along with them into counting genders and opening new toilet cubicles. But here, we stand as the winners. We never bought into it. For us, it’s laughable. For Americans, not so much. Most of their people are normal. They don’t go into others’ toilets, wear women’s underwear under their jackets, or petition for the right to bring vibrating anal plugs to work.
Yes, the anal plugs are not a joke. I saw it on the news—a man asked his employer not to assign him mobile tasks because maintaining his “emotional well-being” required…well, you can guess what and where.
Pronouns aren’t a joke either. America entered its elections in a state of tension: the best liberal minds among psychiatrists, psychologists, and gender theorists struggled to assign all genders their pronouns. How Americans remember them, I cannot say. By 2024, they’d come up with about 60 pronouns — ”thon,” “zir,”“xe,”“fae,” and so on — intended to reflect gender diversity and to avoid offense or lawsuits. An entire industry emerged around teaching Americans how to use these pronouns, filling their heads with nonsense.
By the end of 2024, it was said there were 74 recognized genders. Male and female were among them, of course. But others? Astralgender, for those who feel a cosmic connection. Aesthetigender, for those born of…beauty? Cassgender, for those who think gender doesn’t matter, though they’re distinct from Cassflux, who fluidly don’t care, and Genderflux, whose intensity of expression fluctuates. There’s even Cloudgender, for those unable to define their gender due to lack of clarity.
Imagine all these identities demanding respect, inventing pronouns, and creating new academic fields. Universities now offer master’s and doctoral degrees in gender studies. Some demand separate Olympic categories — aero-gendered weightlifting, anyone? It’s absurd, but the desire to cater to the “unwell” is now called fascism if opposed. Trump is labeled a fascist for signing a bill restoring the reality of two genders.
I watched a video online titled “A Fascist Came to a School Board Meeting.” It was a father bringing his eight-year-old daughter to a meeting to ask if she wanted boys in her bathroom. Her answer: “No, because it’s wrong.” Yet the school heads on the podium lectured him about poor parenting for not teaching his daughter about the multitude of genders. When the father suggested the women on the panel share a restroom with men themselves, the clip ended — leaving us wondering about their decision.
It seems to me that people like this father are the real heroes who brought Trump to power. Their daily resistance to gender madness has elevated them to national hero status. The unnamed father standing guard at the toilet door, protecting his daughter from a tattooed man in a wig and shorts, symbolizes the resistance. In another state, he might have faced legal retribution: prosecution, job loss, child services investigating his family. This is what everyday Americans endure for defending common sense.
Liberal media mocks them, calling rape by transgender people a “redneck boogeyman.” A few years ago, there was a case in Virginia where a male student wore a skirt while raping a girl in a “gender-neutral” bathroom. The school covered it up, transferred the rapist to another school, where he assaulted another girl. These are not isolated incidents — and they represent just one of 72 genders. Imagine dealing with all of them!
Trump’s executive order returning the country to two genders is, at its core, a symbolic return to common sense. Whether it’ll translate into actual policies remains to be seen. Will hormonal treatments for children be banned? Will “gender police” emerge to oversee municipalities? Will doctors prescribing hormones to children face prison? These questions linger.
For now, we can be thankful that we haven’t stumbled into this madness. In Russia, the idea of 74 genders is simply not relevant. Reality here doesn’t accommodate cloudgenders, aesthetigenders, or aerogenders. It’s not part of who we are — and that’s something to celebrate.
This article was first published by the online newspaper Gazeta.ru and was translated and edited by the RT team
I’m Bub Kuns, and today we’re talking about wokeness one more time.
The woke movement—the latest flavor of Marxism — is an atheistic ideology in direct conflict with Christianity — especially when it comes to its view of God and man.
As economist Rod Dreher points out, “Marx viewed humans as ‘social beings’ entirely determined by historical and material circumstances rather than by their relationship with God. He viewed human reason as purely instrumental—a tool of production and social organization rather than the capacity to contemplate the truth and participate in the divine wisdom. Finally, Marx viewed liberation as the fruit of political action, not as a personal process of conversion aided by grace.”
You see, wokeness cannot be reconciled with Christianity for the simple fact that they come from two opposing worldviews. Whereas Marxism views humans as the product of their environment, the Bible tells us we are the product of God’s gracious handiwork.
And if SOCIALISM stems from Marxism, what are ITS dangers? We’ll discuss them another time.
Bub Kuns is (at heart) a storyteller. He is a director, producer, writer, performer and editor. Bub’s life mission is to help and guide people to love God with all their “heart, soul, mind and strength.” Part of how he does that is by providing truth-filled, accessible, captivating content that packs a little punch. Bub produces content that inspires, challenges and activates believers to use their talents and voices to make a difference in their communities and in the world for the cause of Christ.
I’m Bub Kuns, and today we’re talking about wokeness again.
This idea of believing nearly all society’s problems are because of “white privilege” has done great damage to true racial reconciliation in America. Instead of encouraging the building of cross-cultural relationships — a biblical concept — wokeness unfairly stigmatizes all white people today as “oppressors” because of past historical injustices. Rather than engaging in useful conversations so society can move toward actual justice, woke advocates just vilify anyone who disagrees with them
As theologian Owen Strachan said, “In [wokeness], there is no grace and no love. There is only grievance, resentment, and condemnation. Wokeness judges us without knowing the hidden motives of our heart — knowledge only God possesses.”
In essence, wokeness does nothing to help society’s problems because it focuses on external things like skin color instead of internal heart issues that can only be changed through Jesus.
We’ll discuss other problems with wokeness next time.
Bub Kuns is (at heart) a storyteller. He is a director, producer, writer, performer and editor. Bub’s life mission is to help and guide people to love God with all their “heart, soul, mind and strength.” Part of how he does that is by providing truth-filled, accessible, captivating content that packs a little punch. Bub produces content that inspires, challenges and activates believers to use their talents and voices to make a difference in their communities and in the world for the cause of Christ.
I’m Bub Kuns, and today I’m talking about “cancel culture” again.
The best way believers can respond to “cancel culture” is by sharing God’s truth and supporting it with sound logic and evidence.
But HOW we respond, well, that matters, too.
Colossians 4 tells us, “Let your speech be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how to answer every man.”
In other words, we need to challenge those who disagree with us — and even those who try to cancel us — WITHOUT BEING HOSTILE OR UNREASONABLY ARGUMENTATIVE.
This doesn’t mean we compromise our message, but that we share biblical truth in a way that maintains a good testimony. 1 Peter 2 tells us, “For this is the will of God, that by DOING GOOD you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people.”
Doing this will make a big impact.
And how else should we respond to “cancel culture?” We’ll discuss them another time.
Bub Kuns is (at heart) a storyteller. He is a director, producer, writer, performer and editor. Bub’s life mission is to help and guide people to love God with all their “heart, soul, mind and strength.” Part of how he does that is by providing truth-filled, accessible, captivating content that packs a little punch. Bub produces content that inspires, challenges and activates believers to use their talents and voices to make a difference in their communities and in the world for the cause of Christ.
This is Bub Kuns and today we’re talking about “cancel culture” again.
“Cancel culture” poses a danger to free speech in general, but its secular perspective seems to specifically target those with a biblical worldview.
As examples, “cancel culture” came after a Christian politician Päivi Räsänen in Finland, who was recently prosecuted in court, as well as Pastor Josh Williamson of Britain, who was threatened with deportation by a local government official. Their crimes: posting social media messages that reflected a biblical viewpoint on marriage and sexuality.
You see, cancel culture seeks to silence voices that don’t align with its progressive secular mindset through intimidation and character assassination.
But as former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said, “Our society is built on the values of free speech and mutual respect, but cancel culture rejects both. In place of free speech, it demands conformity. Instead of mutual respect, it tears people down.”
Of course, there are other problems with cancel culture and we’ll discuss them another time.
Bub Kuns is (at heart) a storyteller. He is a director, producer, writer, performer and editor. Bub’s life mission is to help and guide people to love God with all their “heart, soul, mind and strength.” Part of how he does that is by providing truth-filled, accessible, captivating content that packs a little punch. Bub produces content that inspires, challenges and activates believers to use their talents and voices to make a difference in their communities and in the world for the cause of Christ.
Years ago when the woke takeover of government and popular media was hitting a crescendo, I often struggled to put the horrifying development into the proper words. That is to say, woke isn’t just about DEI or blaming the “patriarchy” – These things are tools that leftists use, but the goal of the movement has always been the destruction of the western world. Woke represented the perverse inversion of every aspect of western society and human morality – To explain such evil requires a concise analysis.
In the movie ‘Platoon’, directed by Oliver Stone, Charlie Sheen’s character is a young soldier cast into the nightmare of the Vietnam War. Regretting his decision to volunteer, he makes a disturbing observation:
“Hell is the impossibility of reason. That’s what this place feels like. Hell.”
This description perfectly summarizes the core aspirations of the woke movement; to create a world where all reason is impossible. A world where all logic and critical thought are admonished. A world where lies are celebrated and the truth is treated as treason. A society that’s not allowed to claim its own heritage because it has been labeled “racist”. A culture perpetually walking on eggshells as leftist hall monitors loom over us, gatekeeping our every moment. What we witnessed as a society over the past decade has been a calculated nuclear attack on the very fabric of the human soul.
Some of us saw these developments within the PC movement coming. However, it’s a very different experience to predict a calamity vs living through that calamity. To see a living breathing monster in action can be daunting.
There was a point, I believe, in 2021-2022 where we came within a razor’s edge of civil war. You could feel it in the air; millions of Americans were fed up and ready to wipe the political left off the face of the Earth (such a conflict might still happen). I don’t think progressives realize how lucky they are that conservatives are patient.
At bottom, the outcome of the 2024 election represents a total condemnation of the woke religion. Even if you don’t like Donald Trump or the GOP in general, there is no denying that the Democrats lost because they embraced far-left zealotry. Kamala Harris, a DEI candidate, is the ultimate example of Get Woke, Go Broke (her campaign spent over a billion dollars, putting them in the red, only to lose the presidency anyway).
In light of this great turning point in our cultural history and because 2024 is quickly coming to a close, I just want to relate a few observations on why the woke cult lost and applaud some of the much needed changes that are happening in our nation’s return to normalcy.
Celebrities And The Media Don’t Matter Anymore
The worship of corporate icons has ended. Hollywood is dying. Most studios are now scrambling to get rid of their DEI programs and put out content that appeals to conservatives (or at the very least, content that doesn’t piss us off). Actually putting out products that make your customers happy instead of acting like the customers owe you something? Imagine that…
For generations Hollywood and the media have treated Americans like a captive audience beholden to the establishment. In recent years, though, a new trend developed in which companies simply stopped trying to cater to audiences and began acting as if we are REQUIRED to consume their woke content. Communists despise the free market, not because of wealth inequality, but because the existence of consumer choice forces the elites to serve the public rather than the public serving them.
This behavior has destroyed the old celebrity edifice and made such people obsolete. So-called “journalists” have also met with a dire fate as their kingdom of spin crumbles. They can’t control the news if no one listens to them anymore. It’s truly a beautiful thing.
Democrats Realize Abortion Is Not A Winning Issue
During the election campaign the vast majority of Democrat Party focus was fear mongering over the loss of access to abortion. I’m not sure when killing babies became some kind of sacred liberty for progressive women – For the longest time it was treated as a shameful but convenient way to avoid responsibility for one’s actions; because that’s what it is.
It’s not “health care”. It’s not bodily autonomy (because the rights of the baby are ignored). It’s not a safety net to prevent death during childbirth because abortion laws don’t interfere with that option anyway. It’s always been about birth control for irresponsible women who refused to use preventative measures or close their damn legs.
The sexual revolution and abortion go hand-in-hand. You can’t encourage sexual promiscuity as a social norm without the consequences involved, unless you also allow people to kill those consequences. But I’m getting the sense that newer generations are starting to see the circular destructive nature of this dichotomy. I think they are getting sick from it and they’re looking for a little purity.
This is why abortion ranked near the bottom of almost every poll of most important issues to Americans during the 2024 election. Leftists claimed there would be a societal uproar over abortion rights once Roe v Wade was overturned. It never happened. They said there would be a massive “blue wave” of Democrat election victories. The opposite occurred. In the end, abortion access just doesn’t matter that much.
The Transing Of Children Is A Red Line For Most Americans
Conservatives said it over and over again – Leave the kids alone. The leftists refused to listen. The effort to introduce gender ideology into schools and children’s entertainment was expansive. Not only did they try to confuse children about their basic genetic make-up and biological roles, they also tried to expose kids to sexualized discussions to the point of grooming.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the moment the left went after the kids was the moment they lost the culture war. That’s when the mask came off and centrists realized that everything conservatives were warning about when it came to progressives was true. That’s when the Democrats alienated the middle-road voters and the independents.
It does make sense in a Machiavellian way; a large percentage of woke activists don’t have kids and probably never will. In order to pass on their cultism they have to steal YOUR kids and brainwash them. It’s the only way progressives can perpetuate their species.
Nobody Cares About Making A Woman President
Would people vote for a woman for president if she was honest, forthright, intelligent and logical? Probably, but the Democrats don’t have such candidates and the idea of overlooking basic competence and honesty just for the sake of having a woman in the White House is not appealing to the public. They don’t care about identity politics, which is why Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris were both crushed by Donald Trump.
The political left has long sought to force their own made-up social taboos on the rest of us, from personal identity to race to gender to sexual orientation. What they don’t seem to grasp is that people want candidates with a plan. Nothing else matters and “victim status” is irrelevant.
Have ancestors that were slaves? No one cares. Are you gay? Irrelevant. Do you think you should win simply because you’re a woman and women are historically less represented in government? Maybe you’re special, maybe you’re not, but there’s nothing special about a career victim.
Open Borders Ideology Is Dead
Along with the economy, the border crisis issue was the most important factor on the minds of Americans during the election. Housing expenses are going through the stratosphere. It’s not surprising that the public doesn’t want a bunch of third world parasites using government subsidies to snake homes out from under native Americans and drive up rental costs.
Illegals sneaking into the country also work for lower pay, often under the table, driving down wages for citizen workers and craftsman and making industries like construction less enticing. Yes, Americans would do these jobs, just not for a 30% to 50% wage cut. And since tens of millions of migrants have flooded into the US, the fact that they work for less doesn’t help with prices. The massive extra demand actually sucks up supply and inflates prices further.
The progressive notion of the “American melting pot” no longer holds any magic for the average American. The “migrant dream of the 1920s is irrelevant today. We don’t want other cultures flooding the west, and we don’t want millions of people that don’t intend to assimilate. Leftists still don’t understand that their open border narrative has failed. Nationalism and protectionism are the winning positions. No foreigner is entitled to American access. If they get it, they should be thanking their lucky stars instead of acting is if it’s something they’re owed.
Comedy Is Making A Comeback
Remember when calling your friends gay or retarded was normal and no one threw a tantrum over it? Remember when comedy equaled tragedy + time and people knew how to laugh in the face of adversity? Well, we’re bringing that tradition back and there’s nothing the woke pearl clutching losers can do about it.
It might not sound very important, but anyone familiar with the writings of Erasmus, including his ‘Praise Of Folly’, knows the problems that arise when an ideological movement is incapable of laughing at itself. Humor often requires self examination and a truthful eye, which is something authoritarians greatly fear. If you can laugh at the establishment, then the establishment loses power.
There have been times when Christianity was incapable of self reflection and humor and it hurt conservatives as a whole. Today, though, most humorless people reside among progressives. They have dominated our cultural institutions for many years because they used to respect humor. Finally, thanks to the independence of online content creators, the cultural power has been taken away from leftist elites and is returning to the people.
I’m noticing, with great relief, that most people are starting to smile again. It’s slow and it’s subtle, but comedians are far less inclined to walk on eggshells these days. It’s a big change from only a few years ago. Never forget, the left tried to take our laughter away and control what we’re allowed to make fun of. Without humor, society crumbles.
There are many other shifts in America that are making daily life bearable again and I can’t cover them all here. My point is that these wonderful steps away from the woke chasm are worth celebrating. To be sure, there is more work to be done and a lot of damage to be mended. However, take heart in the knowledge that most of the country is finally awake and we are, in one great chorus, opposed to wokeness.
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