The Testimony of Heroes

“It is our job to tell the stories. Tell your students what a difference people of courage and nobility and genius have made to the world. Just tell the stories!”

—Scott LaBarge, “Why Heroes Are Important” (2000)

 

A Cloud of Witnesses

Most Christians are familiar with the sports analogy that begins in Hebrews 12. The writer challenges us to lay aside the weights that might slow us down and run our race with patience and with our eyes fixed on Jesus Christ. The race here is the Christian life. As an encouragement to us all, the writer reminds us that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. The witnesses are all the great heroes of faith described in chapter 11.

It would be easy to fill out the sports analogy and think of these great men and women as spectators who are watching us and cheering us on. But that’s not what the word “witness” actually means. A witness (martyr) is someone who can give legal testimony to something he has seen or heard. Those who make up the great cloud of witnesses aren’t bearing witness about us. They, by their faith and actions, have borne and continue to bear witness to the faithfulness of God. They are His witnesses.

This idea of giving and receiving testimony runs throughout Hebrews 11. The “elders”—all the saints of old—“received a good report,” honorable testimony, through their faith. By faith, Abel offered the right kind of offering to God and so “received a witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts” (v. 4). Enoch walked with God, and God took him straight to heaven, but before that translation “he had this testimony, that he pleased God” (v. 5). The writer goes on to mention Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and others. He says they all “obtained a good report through faith” (v. 39). That is, God bore witness to their faith, the faith that He Himself had given them.

Notice the shift, though. In Hebrews 11 it is God who gives the good report to His servants. In chapter 12 these same servants are witnesses to us of how God keeps His promises, of how He rewards those who believe.

The Heroes of Faith

Abel bore testimony to the gospel by bringing God a slaughtered lamb. Noah testified to God’s promise of coming judgment by building a huge boat on dry land. Abraham testified to the reality of the New Jerusalem by forsaking his own city and setting out for a land he knew nothing of. Moses parents testified to God’s promises by hiding their infant son from the civil authorities. Moses testified to the reality of Christ by choosing persecution and exile over the throne of Egypt. Rahab testified to the grace of God by committing treason against her city and her gods. In each case, the testimony sprang from faith in the promises of God.

The testimony of the saints is always to the grace and promise of God, never to their efforts or accomplishments. But the faith and actions that constitute that testimony brings forth God’s own testimony to the world: These are My servants, He says; these are My friends: they are righteous … righteous through Jesus Christ.

Why We Need Witnesses

Scripture tells us that we are to believe the testimony of two or three credible witnesses (Deut. 19:15; Matt. 18:16). God gives us many, many witnesses to His faithfulness. He gives us such witnesses because we need them. We need them for inspiration and encouragement. We need them as examples. We need to see how others ran the same race and how God sustained them during difficult and dangerous times. We need to see what faith looks like as others lived it out—both in circumstances like our own and in circumstances different from our own.

Some might object to the word “need.” We have Christ presented to us in the preaching of the gospel and the sacraments. How can we rightly say that we need anything more? There are at least three ways to answer this.

First, while it is true that Scripture emphasizes the preaching of the gospel and the sacraments as the primary means of grace, God also provides other things to help us grow in grace: Bible reading, prayer, meditation, fellowship, and, yes, the example of others. All of these point us back to Christ, who purposes to save men by “the foolishness of preaching” (1 Cor. 1:21) or “the hearing of faith” (Gal. 3:2). But each is more than a mere repetition of last Sunday’s sermon. Each has a depth and texture that goes beyond the exact words of the pastor’s previous message.

Second, when we speak of others as examples, we ought to be speaking evangelically. That is, the men and women whom God holds up to us as examples were themselves living out the gospel. They had Christ as the goal of their earthly race, just as we do. They believed the promise of God concerning the Messiah, and they moved, however imperfectly, in terms of that faith. When we look to these saints, we ought to see Jesus. When we reduce their lives to mere moralisms, then we have mistaken their lives altogether.

Third, Scripture repeatedly holds up other believers as examples for the rest of us. In Philippians Paul writes, “Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us” (Phil. 3:17, ESV). He also exhorts Timothy, a young pastor, to “be an example to believers” in word, manner of life, love, spirit, faith, and purity (1 Tim. 4:12). Peter says that all elders ought to be examples to their flocks (1 Pet. 5:3). James includes all the Old Testament prophets as examples of suffering and patience: he specifically mentions Job (Jas. 5:10-11). But in all these commands there is an implied qualification. Paul makes it explicit when he tells the Corinthians, “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1). We are to follow others as we see Christ in them, as we see them living out the gospel.

Witnesses as Heroes

Why did the writer of Hebrews choose the men and women he did? Why do we call these saints “heroes”? There are no doubt many reasons, but here are two. First, these saints all fit the argument of the book. Hebrews was addressed to Jewish believers who needed to abandon the Old Covenant for the New. They needed to give up the religion they thought they knew to follow Christ. They had to give up Jerusalem for the New Jerusalem. But their allegiance to the gospel was proving difficult: persecution had begun. Each saint the writer picks as an example speaks in some manner to the Hebrew situation. Each of these saints gave up something extraordinary—a city, a world, a way of life … to follow Jesus.

Second, the stories of these faithful men and women appeal to the reader’s imagination and emotions. We are drawn into their faith-adventure. We are intrigued and moved by their lives. We find that in many ways they are just like us, and yet God used them to accomplish things that mattered. Not everything they did was great as the world measures greatness, of course. Some of these heroes did subdue kingdoms and put foreign armies to flight. But others simply suffered, worshipped, and waited. Their stories can encourage us as well. We see that we can imitate heroes, even be heroes, in the course of very ordinary lives.

Conclusion

God could have filled Scripture with outlines or bullet points of theological truth. Instead, He told us stories about men and women of faith. And all of these stories combine to give us the one great Story, the good news of Jesus Christ. We should conclude that God intends these stories, not merely as a deposit of theological truth, but also as encouragements to our faith, imagination, and vision. Jesus is our Savior. He is also our Example. We are to be like Him. That’s the goal of salvation. To help us toward that goal, Jesus gives us Himself … in the gospel, in the sacraments, and in the stories of imperfect heroes who ran their race with their eyes fixed on Him.

Thought Police: Canadian Activist Lauren Southern Gets BANNED From The UK For Life

Lauren Southern, a Canadian activist, received a ban from the United Kingdom for life because she conducted a social experiment that irritated Muslims. Apparently, you’re no longer allowed to have your own opinions – they must conform to the government approved opinions.

This just more evidence that there is an all-out global assault on liberty and free thinking. Southern’s ban comes after she distributed what the UK deemed “racist material.” In the “racist material”, the Canadian claimed Allah was gay. Well, gay isn’t a race and neither is Islam. So we’ve already pinpointed the problem here: Southern had an opinion that a government didn’t like.

According to the Daily Mail UK, Lauren Southern came under fire in February after she was caught handing out leaflets in Luton that proclaimed “Allah is a gay God” and “Allah is trans.” Although the 22-year-old said it was only a “social experiment,” she was detained in Calais when trying to re-enter the UK on March 13 and was questioned over the posters.

In a video posted on Thursday, Southern claimed that she received a lifetime ban from coming to the UK, stemming from the leaflet incident. A Home Office Spokesperson said that the “Border Force has the power to refuse entry to an individual if it is considered that his or her presence in the UK is not conducive to the public good.” Free speech is always conducive to the public good, but it’s in the governments best interest to squash any dissent.

Of course, the media is far from biased pro-government propaganda, so let’s hear from Southern herself what her side of the story is. She explains in her video titled “‘Allah is Gay’ – Here’s What Happened In Luton.”

Southern says she became intrigued by an article which claimed Jesus Christ lived his life as a gay man. (Please note, that the author of that article has received little to no backlash for his theory that Christ could have been gay. Southern is banned for insinuating Allah is gay.)

Southern claims the UK has “blasphemy laws enforced by sharia” law. She also concluded that her social experiment “highlights a double standard in Western societies: why is it racist to say Allah is gay, but not Jesus is gay?”

“Why does (sic) the rights of Muslims to be homophobic trump the rights of gay people to have their self-expression?” Southern added that the UK “needs to have a conversation about this before they’re no longer able to have a conversation at all.”

Southern said she has assumed her interaction with the police in Luton was the end of the incident until she was quizzed for six hours by border guards in Calais earlier this month.

Quentin Tarantino thinks it is OK to RAPE 13 year old girls if they are “in to it”

Tweet

Sacred Owls I don’t know how This video fell between the seats. I have never seen it before today. As I listened to this Howard Stern interview with Quentin Tarantino where he is an APOLOGIST of Roman Polanski’s RAPE of a 13 YEAR OLD GIRL, I could feel the blood boil just under the skin of my face.

I felt like I didn’t need to ever say this… A 13 YEAR OLD CANNOT CONSENT TO ANYTHING without a parent or legal guardian’s consent. Even then, a parent cannot consent, legally, to just anything PRIOR to the act. SEX WITH A 40 YEAR OLD WHILE DRINKING ALCOHOL, AND CONSUMING ILLEGAL, SCHEDULE A, NARCOTICS UNDER AGE (BEING PROVIDED BY SAID RAPIST, ROMAN POLANSKI) IS RAPE AND IS ILLEGAL.

Let that sink in… Read what was just written above once more.

Quentin said it was not rape because she was “in to it”. Robin and Howard were appalled and agreed that it is rape, credit where due.

You need to be 18 or older to consent to sex, legally, in practically every US state. It is one thing for a 16 & a 17-year-old to hook up. There is some grey area legally there if both parents are somewhat aware and don’t see harm in the two dating. But a 40-something-year-old “man” (more like predatory human piece of shit) GIVING DRUGS AND ALCOHOL TO A 13 YEAR OLD GIRL to COERCE FALSE (AND ILLEGITIMATE CONSENT)… That is something else all together.

Fucking shame on you Quentin Tarantino, I hoped you would never make my shit list. Don’t let me catch you engaging in pedophilia. Including when you think they are “in to it”. I know what your colleagues are into. We have the videos. We have the photos. We have the tapes.

You’d better hang up that chick habit, hang it up “daddy-o”, or we will cut you up in two.

Tweet

Jedi Religion: Thousands Of People All Over The World Are Converting To ‘Jediism’

Yes, there are actually people out there that want to be a Jedi so badly that they have made “Jediism” their official religion.  As you will see below, a new documentary entitled “American Jedi” has just been released that examines this phenomenon, and when I first heard about this I decided that I wanted to learn more.  So I did some research, and I discovered that there is actually an official website for “the Temple of the Jedi Order” that bills itself as the “international church of Jediism”.  And even though this “faith” is entirely based on fictitious characters, the IRS actually granted tax exempt status to the Temple of the Jedi Order in 2015.

I was seven years old when Star Wars first came out, and it definitely had a major impact on me.

But even as a child, I understood that it was just a movie.

Unfortunately, there are some people out there that are so drawn to “the Jedi Order” that they actually want to make it a religious faith.  The following comes from the Huffington Post…

For small sects of the fanbase, however, the line between the two worlds has blurred, and their love for “Star Wars” has manifested itself into a religious devotion. Literally.

A new film called “American Jedi” is an enchanting look at this community.

This new documentary was filmed by Laurent Malaquais, and he told the Huffington Post that he “grew up in an environment where spirituality was about being inclusive of many religious practices.”  So as he filmed this project, he felt that he was able to identify with those that have chosen to belong to “the Jedi community”.

Of course wherever there are Jedi, the Sith are not too far behind, and it turns out that “a practicing Sith” also plays a significant part in this film…

According to the Huffington Post, “American Jedi” follows one follower of Jediism in particular: Opie Macleod. While they were living in the Jedi community, Macleod discovered his wife was having an affair with his friend Miles Robinson, described as “a practicing Sith.”

“My student, who I had said was a Jedi Knight, not only tossed the Jedi path away, to follow and explore the Sith path,” Macleod said, the Huffington Post reported, “but also slept with a Sith.”

You can watch the trailer for this documentary right here.  It is one thing to dress up like Luke Skywalker and wave a fake lightsaber around, but it is another thing entirely to make “Jediism” your religion.  I guess it just shows how spiritually empty a lot of people are feeling these days.

The core of the Jedi religion is a creed known as “the Jedi code”…

The Jedi Code

There is no Emotion, there is Peace.

There is no Ignorance, there is Knowledge.

There is no Passion, there is Serenity.

There is no Chaos, there is Harmony.

There is no Death, there is the Force.

This “code” doesn’t even make sense, and yet there are thousands upon thousands of people all over the world that have chosen to make this the foundation of their lives.

In recent years, you may have seen news stories about “the growth of the Jedi religion” in English-speaking countries around the globe.  According to Wikipedia, this “movement” began in 2001…

The Jedi census phenomenon is a grassroots movement that was initiated in 2001 for residents of a number of English-speaking countries, urging them to record their religion as “Jedi” or “Jedi Knight” (after the quasi-religious order of Jedi Knights in the fictional Star Wars universe) on the national census.

Without a doubt, many are reporting “Jedi” as their religion to census officials just to be funny.  But there are others that take this stuff deadly seriously, and their numbers are growing.

According to the New York Post, “Jediism” is now the seventh-largest religion in the United Kingdom, and it has 65,000 adherents in Australia…

The US census doesn’t count Jedi as a religion, but other countries’ data give us a sense of the size: In England it’s the seventh-largest religion, with 175,000 members; 15,000 Jedi can be found in the Czech Republic, along with 9,000 in Canada and 65,000 in Australia.

If the U.S. census actually included “Jedi” as an option, it would be fascinating to see what the numbers would be in the United States.

We live at a time when people are groping for answers to the most fundamental questions in life.  Millions of Americans are feeling deeply disillusioned, and they don’t know where to turn.  The spiritual void in our society is growing with each passing day, and the need for a new spiritual awakening has never been greater.

The post Jedi Religion: Thousands Of People All Over The World Are Converting To ‘Jediism’ appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

Paul Craig Roberts" Christmas Column 2017: The Greatest Gift Of All

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

Dear Donors, thank you for your support in 2017. Although you have kept me working yet another year, I find it encouraging that there are some Americans who can think independently and who want to know. As Margaret Mead said, it only takes a few determined people to change the world. Perhaps some of you will be those people.

 

My traditional Christmas column goes back to sometime in the 1990s when I was a newspaper columnist. It has been widely reprinted at home and abroad. Every year two or three readers write to educate me that religion is the source of wars and persecutions. These readers confuse religion with mankind’s abuse of institutions, religious or otherwise. The United States has democratic institutions and legal institutions to protect civil liberties. Nevertheless, we now have a police state. Shall I argue that democracy and civil liberty are the causes of police states?

Some readers also are confused about hypocrisy. There is a vast difference between proclaiming moral principles that one might fail to live up to and proclaiming immoral principles that are all too easy to keep.

 

Liberty is a human achievement. We have it, or had it, because those who believed in it fought to achieve it. As I explain in my Christmas column, people were able to fight for liberty because Christianity empowered the individual.

 

The other cornerstone of our culture is the Constitution. Indeed, the United States is the Constitution. Without the Constitution, the United States is a different country, and Americans a different people. This is why assaults on the Constitution by the regimes in Washington are assaults on America that are far worse than any assaults by terrorists. There is not much that we can do about these assaults, but we should not through ignorance enable the assaults or believe the government’s claim that safety requires the curtailment of civil liberty.

 

In a spirit of goodwill, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a successful New Year.

 

Paul Craig Roberts

The Greatest Gift For All

Christmas is a time of traditions. If you have found time in the rush before Christmas to decorate a tree, you are sharing in a relatively new tradition. Although the Christmas tree has ancient roots, at the beginning of the 20th century only 1 in 5 American families put up a tree. It was 1920 before the Christmas tree became the hallmark of the season. Calvin Coolidge was the first President to light a national Christmas tree on the White House lawn.

Gifts are another shared custom. This tradition comes from the wise men or three kings who brought gifts to baby Jesus. When I was a kid, gifts were more modest than they are now, but even then people were complaining about the commercialization of Christmas. We have grown accustomed to the commercialization. Christmas sales are the backbone of many businesses. Gift giving causes us to remember others and to take time from our harried lives to give them thought.

The decorations and gifts of Christmas are one of our connections to a Christian culture that has held Western civilization together for 2,000 years.

In our culture the individual counts. This permits an individual person to put his or her foot down, to take a stand on principle, to become a reformer and to take on injustice.

This empowerment of the individual is unique to Western civilization. It has made the individual a citizen equal in rights to all other citizens, protected from tyrannical government by the rule of law and free speech. These achievements are the products of centuries of struggle, but they all flow from the teaching that God so values the individual’s soul that he sent his son to die so we might live. By so elevating the individual, Christianity gave him a voice.

Formerly only those with power had a voice. But in Western civilization people with integrity have a voice. So do people with a sense of justice, of honor, of duty, of fair play. Reformers can reform, investors can invest, and entrepreneurs can create commercial enterprises, new products and new occupations.

The result was a land of opportunity. The United States attracted immigrants who shared our values and reflected them in their own lives. Our culture was absorbed by a diverse people who became one.

In recent decades we have lost sight of the historic achievement that empowered the individual. The religious, legal and political roots of this great achievement are no longer reverently taught in high schools, colleges and universities or respected by our government. The voices that reach us through the millennia and connect us to our culture are being silenced by “Identity Politics,” “political correctness” and “the war on terror.” Prayer has been driven from schools and Christian religious symbols from public life. Constitutional protections have been diminished by hegemonic political ambitions. Indefinite detention, torture, and murder are now acknowledged practices of the United States government. The historic achievement of due process has been rolled back. Tyranny has re-emerged.

Diversity at home and hegemony abroad are consuming values and are dismantling the culture and the rule of law. There is plenty of room for cultural diversity in the world, but not within a single country. A Tower of Babel has no culture. A person cannot be a Christian one day, a pagan the next and a Muslim the day after. A hodgepodge of cultural and religious values provides no basis for law – except the raw power of the pre-Christian past.

All Americans have a huge stake in Christianity. Whether or not we are individually believers in Christ, we are beneficiaries of the moral doctrine that has curbed power and protected the weak.

Power is the horse ridden by evil. In the 20th century the horse was ridden hard, and the 21st century shows an increase in pace. Millions of people were exterminated in the 20th century by National Socialists in Germany and by Soviet and Chinese communists simply because they were members of a race or class that had been demonized by intellectuals and political authority. In the beginning years of the 21st century, hundreds of thousands of Muslims in seven countries have been murdered and millions displaced in order to extend Washington’s hegemony.

Power that is secularized and cut free of civilizing traditions is not limited by moral and religious scruples. V.I. Lenin made this clear when he defined the meaning of his dictatorship as “unlimited power, resting directly on force, not limited by anything.” Washington’s drive for hegemony over US citizens and the rest of the world is based entirely on the exercise of force and is resurrecting unaccountable power.

Christianity’s emphasis on the worth of the individual makes such power as Lenin claimed, and Washington now claims, unthinkable. Be we religious or be we not, our celebration of Christ’s birthday celebrates a religion that made us masters of our souls and of our political life on Earth. Such a religion as this is worth holding on to even by atheists.

As we enter into 2018, Western civilization, the product of thousands of years of striving, is in decline. Degeneracy is everywhere before our eyes. As the West sinks into tyranny, will Western peoples defend their liberty and their souls, or will they sink into the tyranny, which again has raised its ugly and all devouring head?

"Happy Winter"? Why I"m Grateful To Be "So Old" That I Remember When It Was Normal To Say "Merry Christmas"

Having recently found myself walking the streets of Berkeley, Calfornia, in need of caffeinated distraction from the liberal goings on around me, I stepped fortuitously into the nearest Starbucks, ordered and received my "iced grande extra hot lemon-spiced latte, add sprinkles, 3 pumps syrup", my transaction was completed with the somewhat-shocking-to-me remark from the otherwise-lovely young female barista... "Happy Winter"

I was perplexed - are we now so far down the politically-correct-drain that the "safest space" during the christmas holidays is a greeting that is thankful for a season?

The answer, I am afraid is yes.. And Douglas Mackinnon, writing for The Daily Caller, seems to agree: Grateful To Be ‘So Old’ That I Remember When It Was Normal To Say ‘Merry Christmas’

When many people start to creep up to the age of 50, 60, or 70, they begin to lament the onset of “old age” and fantasize about the fountain of youth or hope Google is about to market some alien-inspired gadget which will zap them back into a twenty-something.

For me, the onset of “old age” is just fine. One of the main reasons being that it means I’m old enough to remember when it was not only normal to say “Merry Christmas” to people at Christmas-time, but truly odd if you did not.

Now, when advertisers seek to cash in off a certain day using only Santa Claus, Rudolph, a Christmas tree and elves in red and green clothing in their commercials, everyone understands that the time has to be Christmastime, and yet the advertisers are now so petrified of offending even one person who might tweet from his mom’s basement, that they refuse to insert the words “Christmas” or “Merry Christmas” into the ad.

If someone reminded those advertisers that “Christmas” is actually the celebration of the birth of the Baby Jesus, they would have to be institutionalized.

As terrified as they may be, I have yet to meet the person who is offended by the words “Merry Christmas.” More than that, I have lost track of how many times Jewish and Muslim friends (including my wife born into the Muslim faith in Iran) have said:

“This is politically-correct insanity. The United States is still a majority Christian country. Simply say ‘Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays’ and be done with it.”

This “controversy” did play on my mind as I was writing a little Christmas novel meant to unite titled: “The North Pole Project: In Search of the True Meaning of Christmas.”

For the main character in the book, the “True Meaning of Christmas” is: “When we help those in need or in pain, that is the most meaningful gift we will ever receive.”

This main character in the book, he starts out as a hedonistic multibillionaire who has everything but nothing. As he realizes that truth and contemplates the worst, his minister brother calls and talks him back from the abyss while reminding his little brother that the only time he remembered him truly happy in life was when they lived on an army base with their military parents and, as an eight-year old boy, he would collect old soda bottles to turn in for money so he could buy Christmas presents for children on the base less fortunate than them.

“Become that person again,” the minister brother begs him. “Become Santa Claus all over again and in the process, save yourself.”

As the story evolves, the multibillionaire joyfully reconnects to his faith and then stands upon it as the foundation for the good he intends to do for the rest of his life.

With his own faith now restored, the multibillionaire does speak to the dismay and sadness he personally feels that Christ has been removed from Christmas and that millions of Americans are now worried about saying “Merry Christmas” to others out of fear of offending someone.

That said, he also goes out of his way to stress that anyone of any faith or no faith is welcome to be a part of his special project to help poor and disadvantaged children around the world as long as they are good people. For the multibillionaire, the only thing that comes to matter is the shared human connection of helping children in need. Desperately poor and forgotten children who are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist or of no faith.

For the multibillionaire realizes that they — and we — are “All God’s Children.”

The story also incorporates subplots of 10 adults from around the world going through some of life’s most difficult challenges and being “saved” by this project while they and hundreds of other volunteers band together to help those tens of thousands of children from multiple nations.

*  *  *

The idea for the book first came to me after I sat down with an actual minister to talk about why so many people were not only losing faith but also literally walking away from their houses of worship and their faith.

He told me he felt that more and more people were simply losing faith in their “leadership” — be that leadership political, corporate, or faith-based. They saw and heard from leaders who continually “talked the talk but never personally walked the walk,” he said.

This minister also said he felt that churches were no longer addressing the basic needs for joy, hope, faith and a simple human connection. We both agreed that, faith aside, this country and the world needed a whole lot more of the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

So…no matter if you take joy in saying “Merry Christmas,” are fearful of doing so or are one of those people offended by the words, simply help someone in need during the “season” and call it anything you want.

That good deed will still be the best gift you will ever receive.

And for that, I say, “Merry Christmas.”

US Ambassador Calls Own 2015 Statement "Fake News"; Things Then Rapidly Go South

The new US ambassador to the Netherlands, Pete Hoekstra, is not off to a good start following an international embarrassment on Dutch TV in which he smugly denied every saying there are no-go zones in the Netherlands - calling the suggestion "fake news." 

Ambassador Pete Hoekstra

Hoekstra - former congressman (R-MI) and chair of the House Intelligence Committee for two years, was asked by Dutch journalist Wouter Zwart of news program Nieuwsuur about comments he made in 2015: 

Zwart: “You mentioned in a debate that there are no-go zones in the Netherlands, and that cars and politicians are being set on fire in the Netherlands.”

 

Hoekstra: "I didn"t say that. This is actually an incorrect statement. We would call it fake news." 

Zwart then shows Hoekstra a clip of him saying exactly that: 

"The Islamic movement has now gotten to a point where they have put Europe into chaos. Chaos in the Netherlands, there are cars being burnt, there are politicians that are being burnt ... and yes there are no-go zones in the Netherlands" -Pete Hoekstra, 2015

A still-smug Hoekstra deadpans to Zwart, denying that he used the phrase fake news. "I didn"t call that fake news. I didn"t use the words today. I don"t think I did." 

Hoekstra - born in Groningen, Netherlands, was sworn in on December 11th by Mike Pence. In response, he said that he "made certain remarks in 2015 and regret the exchange during the Nieuwsuur interview. Please accept my apology." 

Please see my comments regarding recent interview. Thank you. Pete pic.twitter.com/gxQOcZ8Duk

— Pete Hoekstra (@petehoekstra) December 23, 2017

Ironically, as it turns out, there are several parts of The Netherlands which aren"t quite classified as "no-go" zones, but whose residents are approximately 80% immigrants. In 2007, The Netherlands Housing Ministry identified 40 "problem districts" to be transformed into "dream districts." In a now-deleted (but archived) article, Dutch news outlet RTL Niews published 20 of the districts. 

"no-go zones" in the Netherlands, geenstijl.nl

RTL Niews requested that the government release a ranking of the list from best to worst, which the Council of State - the highest court in the country, forbade.

Islam is the second largest religion in the Netherlands, practiced by around 4 percent of the population. There are currently 47,500 refugees in the Netherlands - nearly twice the number from just three years ago. Under a 2008 regulation, working refugees in the Netherlands pay a 75% tax on their income to cover the cost of food and living expenses, as well as declare any savings or valuables they bring into the country. Asylum seekers are allowed to work for up to 24 weeks per year after they have been in the country for six months. 

Dutch Islamists protesting the arrest of three men alleged to be recruiting for ISIS.

In 2014, three Dutch citizens were arrested on suspicion of recruiting for ISIS in order to assist its armed struggles in Syria and Iraq - leading many to call The Hague "jihad city" and "sharia triangle." 

One of those detained is 32-year-old Azzedine Choukoud, known as Abou Moussa, a charismatic Dutchman of Moroccan descent. He has been involved in demonstrations in recent years, and has been in contact with fighters in Syria. In a YouTube video, he congratulated the Muslim community on the establishment of the caliphate in Iraq and Syria. A few young men hold up a black IS flag in the background.

 

They come from Schilderswijk neighbourhood, which the media have renamed the "sharia triangle". This neighbourhood primarily houses immigrants, as do many neighbourhoods in large Dutch cities - in this case more than 90 percent of the population are immigrants. Dissatisfaction is common and unemployment, crime, and poverty rates are higher than in the rest of the country.

-speisa.com

In 2013, calls for an urgent debate in the Dutch parliament over the integration of Muslim immigrants after an area near the Hague known locally as "the Sharia triangle" is being run by a form of "Sharia police." 

The claims relate to the district of Schilderswijk, about two kilometres from the city centre, where an almost entirely Muslim population of some 5,000 people surrounds the El Islam mosque, fuelling criticism that the government has failed to ensure a proper ethnic mix in schools and local housing. One recent investigation, in which local people were extensively interviewed, concluded that Schilderswijk had become “orthodox Muslim territory” which was now largely ignored by the city authorities, by politicians and even by the police, on the grounds that it had become self-regulating. -Irish Times

The orthodox Muslims had become so dominant in the area that they were dictating neighborhood attire and behavior. In one incident, a local woman claimed that her daughter was approached and told that her short skirt was inappropriate, while her son had been called a "kaffir," a racist term used against non-Muslims.

"Another man said he felt he was gradually being driven out of his home because he had a dog, and many traditional Muslims tended not to keep or favour dogs."

So, as it stands, there are "no-go" zones in The Netherlands, depending on one"s definition. Perhaps Ambassador Hoekstra should have just owned up to his 2015 comments, since the coverup was - as always happens - worse than the truth.

#ChurchToo Blows Up On Social Media Exposing Rampant Child Sex Abuse by Religious Leaders

The "ChurchToo" Hashtag has been used to call out sexual predators disguised as trustworthy religious leaders who have been protected by the church system.

We Don"t Trust Each Other Anymore

Authored by Taylor Lewis via Mises Canada,

To channel Tina Turner briefly, what’s trust got to do with keeping a nation? Everything, it turns out.

Despite an uptick over the past year, Americans’ trust in the key institutions is fading. Congress, big business, national news outlets, the criminal justice system–the organizations that influence our public life most are those the least trusted.

The presidency, now presided by over by the trash-talking and tweeting Donald Trump, continues to see its confidence rating plummet. The media’s near-constant negative reporting doesn’t help Trump’s image.

Events in recent days are guaranteed to worsen domestic relations. Truth in character is a diminishing trait. Blame, as ever, lies on both sides.

The Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson’s latest offering highlights the abundance of lies coming from the White House. Everything from failed campaign disclosures to clumsy press hearing answers get Gerson’s goat. A swamp scribbler par excellence, the Post writer embodies establishment opinion on Trump. And while his criticisms are overwrought - the Trump Administration no more frames facts to create a more favorable image than its predecessor - they represent how many liberals view the President.

Still, Gerson isn’t all wrong. One of his targets - Christian support for Alabama Senate candidate accused lecher Roy Moore - is on the mark. The accusations lobbed against Moore haven’t been fully verified, but it’s hard to think so many similar stories would emerge, all depicting the same scenario. Moore hasn’t denied his predilection for minors, either.

Moore’s behavior doesn’t automatically bar Christian support. But it should cause concern. Yet Christian evangelicals have embraced the godly judge even more since the allegations were put in print. “Many of the people who should be supplying the moral values required by self-government have corrupted themselves,” Gerson writes.

It’s never worth debasing the faith for the earthly practice of politics. Unfortunately, some Christians elevate politics - and politicians - to a divine level. Is it any wonder then that secular liberals would look disdainfully upon politically passionate Christians?

For all the sins of hypocrisy on the right, the left is equally guilty, if not more.

Liberals’ recent about-face on Bill Clinton’s sexual predation is the mea culpa of the 21st century. For decades, Democrat operatives and media flunkies have waved away charges that Clinton raped, fondled, and aggressively pursued women other than his wife.

The outing of Harvey Weinstein as a gross pervert changed all that.

The smutty scandal unearthed by Ronan Farrow was more than sordid revelations of Hollywood hijinks–it’s become a cultural turning point. Going forward, we’ll look back at the pre-Weinstein days as a time more innocent and less corrupt, fictive as it was.

As liberals come forth and express contrition over doubting Clinton’s victims, it’s hard to take their compunction seriously, especially when they waged a propaganda war painting Republicans as theocratic tyrants who want all women to return to the detestable model of June Cleaver. Chris Hayes, Matthew Yglesias, Michelle Goldberg, and others are playing the public for fools if they think that twenty years of playing offensive line for QB Willie will easily be forgotten.

Then there’s Lena Dunham, the boisterous voice of socially-conscious millennials. The “Girls” creator has championed herself as a voice of women and an ally of the abused–until it came knocking on her own door. When a writer for her hit show was accused of raping actress Aurora Perrineau, Dunham snapped to his defense, tweeting “first tenet of my politics is to hold up the people who have held me up.”

Not a bad message. Except that Dunham once claimed women never lie about rape. This selective feminism isn’t doing liberals like Lena any favors. If that wasn’t enough, the very woman who celebrated the extinction of white men was just accused of being a closet racist by a colleague.

Dunham’s a wily example, but not wholly exceptional. Minnesota senator Al Franken has been accused by two women of inappropriate groping. Actor Kevin Spacey was fired from a host of gigs for preying on young men. George Takei is fighting off allegations of imposing himself on men. Russell Simmons has been outed for forcing a 17-year-old to perform oral sex on him. All share a common characteristic: They are outspoken leftists.

There is a devious pattern to all of this. Many of the most vocal ideologues end up hiding dark secrets. Their sanctimony makes it harder to accept our imperfect nature and, in turn, see one another for genuine people to work things out with.

In Eugene O’Neill’s Christian-themed play Days Without End, the demonic doppelgänger Loving mocks the protagonist’s search for higher meaning, declaring that “there is not truth for men, that human life is unimportant and meaningless.”

Without truth, we are base creatures, festering in a bloody power struggle.

“To abandon facts is to abandon freedom,” writes Timothy Snyder. “If nothing is true, then all is spectacle.”

It isn’t just spectacle–it’s a dark void without purpose. And if man lacks purpose, his country, by default, must as well.

At their core, nations are composed of a shared set of truths. When those beliefs diverge to the point of irreconcilability, a schism becomes inevitable. Divided houses don’t stand.

The moral hypocrisy on display by the country’s leading influencers is shredding what little commonality Americans still have. How can a society last when its members no longer believe their neighbors are acting in good faith?

EU "Values" Fit Poland Like "The Saddle Fits The Cow"

Via GEFIRA,

“We want God”, “Great Independent Poland,” “Death to the Enemies of the Fatherland!” “Christ is Poland’s King”, “Deus vult” (Latin for God wills, a battle cry of the Crusaders)these are the principal banners carried in the annual Independence March that is held in Warsaw and also in other cities on 11 November, Independence Day.

Also, in the one two days ago, at the head of the marching column you could see a few white flags sporting the red Jerusalem cross.

Tens of thousands of people, waving tens of thousands of white-and-red national flags young and old, of all walks of life, with whole families take to the streets.  

The people participating in the march think of themselves as patriots (the word which in Poland still has positive overtones) paying tribute to the fallen heroes.

To the western media these are Nazis, racists, anti-semites and islamophobes. An abomination for the European Union.

What has positive overtones in Poland (patriotism, faith, family), has negative ones in Western Europe and the other way round. Migrants, LGTBQ and gender mainstreaming is not welcome in the area between the Oder and Bug Rivers. The EU values cannot be farther from Poland’s values and vice versa.

The Independence March denigrated by the Western media was favourably covered by the Polish government and other national media, except for those which are far to the left and very much pro-European. The former shored up the positive aspects of the event, the latter only looked for incidents to blow them out of any proportion and join the chorus of their western counterparts in condemning “fascists” and “white supremacists”.

A thirty-six million nation in the heart of Europe (i.e. with a population approximately the size of Spain’s) is throwing down the gauntlet to the EU establishment and its view of European unity based on cultural and religious indifference and anti-nationalism.

While in France or Belgium Muslims pray openly in the streets, Turkish nationalists stage large rallies waving Turkish flags in the heart of Dutch cities and construct mosques, with empty Christian churches as sad witnesses thereto; Poles pray the rosary on the borders of their countryand march, proudly displaying national emblems and flags, demanding God and rejecting multiculturalism.

At the time when the Soviets were establishing the communist political system in Central Europe someone said (someone ascribed these words to Stalin himself) that communism fits the Polish nation like a saddle fits a cow. Is the attempt to Europeanize Poles another attempt at saddling the cow?

Outrage Follows "Jaw-Droppingly Shocking" 1986 Prince Charles Letter Blaming Mid-East Problems On "Foreign Jews"

Prince Charles has sparked media outrage following a report he wrote a letter blaming "the influx of foreign, European Jews" for aggravating the Arab-Israeli conflict and leading to general unrest in the Middle East, while also asking whether an American president would "have the courage" to take on "the Jewish lobby" to put an end to terrorism in the region.

The note, written on November 24, 1986, was found in a public archive and published Saturday by the Daily Mail. The Prince penned the letter after official visits to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar with Princess Diana.

"I now appreciate that Arabs and Jews were all a Semitic people originally,” the then 38-year-old Prince of Wales wrote in his letter, adding, that “it is the influx of foreign, European Jews (especially from Poland, they say) which has helped to cause great problems” in the Middle East. “I know there are so many complex issues, but how can there ever be an end to terrorism unless the causes are eliminated?” he questioned.

"Surely some US president has to have the courage to stand up and take on the Jewish lobby in the US? I must be naive, I suppose!” he concludes.

The Editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard, described Charles’ comments “both shocking and entirely predictable.”

Both shocking and entirely predictable https://t.co/Ftm3TqvWL5

— Stephen Pollard (@stephenpollard) November 12, 2017

"To me this is the most astonishing element of the Prince’s letter. The “Jewish lobby” is one of the anti-Semitic themes that have endured for centuries. It is this myth there are these very powerful Jews who control foreign policy or the media or banks or whatever."  Pollard then told the daily mail that the letter was "jaw-droppingly shocking" and added that "[the Prince’s comments] come from the heir to the throne is unsettling, to put it mildly."

While the letter is inflammatory, there is no suggestion Charles holds anti-Semitic views according to The Mail: "He has many prominent Jewish friends and in 2013 became the first Royal to attend a chief rabbi’s inauguration ceremony. In a speech that year, he expressed concern at the apparent rise of anti-Semitism in Britain."

At the same time, he is seen as a defender of Islam, with one historian noting that no other major Western figure has as high a standing in the Muslim world. 

 

It has also been suggested he has pro-Palestinian leanings, a perception the letter appears to support.

Prince Charles is not the first one to fall in the "lobby" spotlight: among those to come under fire for using the term ‘Jewish lobby’ are General George Brown, the highest-ranking military officer in the US as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was publicly rebuked and disowned by President Gerald Ford in 1974 after claiming that a ‘Jewish lobby’ controlled Congress, according to The Daily Mail. Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage was criticised earlier this month when he referred to ‘a powerful Jewish lobby’ in the US.  In 2006, Chris Davies, former leader of the Lib Dem MEPs, was forced to resign after he used the term. Archbishop Desmond Tutu also came under fire when he used the phrase in a newspaper article in 2002.

The Prince’s reference in the letter to the influx of European Jews also caused dismay.

It is not clear if he is referring to immigration before or after the Second World War, or both. Mr Pollard said: ‘It is the absolute classic Arab explanation of the problems in the Middle East.

 

"And it is what everyone has always said the British aristocracy actually thinks – the idea that Jews were some kind of foreigners who had no real place in Israel until we decided to make it their homeland. Historically it is nonsense and it’s quite stunning when it comes from the heir to the throne.’

 

A senior Israeli diplomatic source said last night: ‘He [Charles] was travelling around the Gulf states [just before he wrote the controversial letter], which in those years were very anti-Israel. It seems he was presented with a narrative in a very convincing way.’

Earlier this month, Britain marked the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, the document that paved the way for the state of Israel, with a gala dinner in London attended by Theresa May and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

It is also not the first time Prince Charles has gotten in hot water for controversial remarks: In 2007, leaked emails between senior Clarence House staff put Charles at the centre of a row about the Royals’ attitude towards the Jewish state.

* * *

Attempting some damage control, a spokesman for Clarence House said the thoughts revealed in the 1986 letter, were actually “not The Prince’s own views.”

“The letter clearly states these were not the Prince’s own thinking on Arab-Israeli affairs, but represented the opinions of some of those he met during his visit which he was keen to interrogate,” the statement said. It added that Prince Charles "was sharing the arguments in private correspondence with a long standing friend in an attempt to improve his understanding of what he has always recognized is a deeply complex issue to which he was coming early on in his own analysis in 1986," the representative said.

"Over the years, the prince has continued his study of the complex and difficult themes he referenced here. He has built a proven track record of support for both Jewish and Arab communities around the world and has a long history of promoting interfaith dialogue and cultural understanding,"

she added.

UC Santa Cruz "Liberals" Declare Mainstream Republicans Nazis: A Threat To Their Safety For Simply Existing

Authored by Alex Thomas via SHTFplan.com,

A meeting of the College Republicans at the University of California, Santa Cruz was taken over and subsequently shut down by hard-left students who literally screamed that the groups very existence was a threat to their safety.

The leftist group initially organized the effort to derail the free speech of Republicans on campus in a Facebook post that openly called for shutting down the groups “right of assembly” while also labeling mainline conservatives as white supremacists and fascists.

“White Supremacist, fascist-sympathizing College Republicans are having a meeting at McHenry library, room 0332. Everybody be aware of this violent racist activity happening everyday on this campus!” wrote a student.

 

“We need a movement of people on this campus that rejects the ‘right of assembly,’ or ‘right of free speech’ for white supremacists and fascists.”

The group then went through with their social media threats, banging on the meetings door and eventually barging into the room to full on disrupt the peaceful meeting while screaming about fascists, racists, and white supremacists. Remember, this was a meeting of mainline conservatives.

Details published by Campus Reform include the fact that the leftist group refused to have any sort of dialogue with the College Republicans.

According to the UCSC College Republicans, their offers to discuss the concerns of the protesters were met with exclamations that “dialogue is violence,” after which the protesters called the club’s presence a “threat to the library” and demanded that the CR members vacate the space immediately.

 

The protesters even reportedly berated library staff members when they refused to shut down the pre-approved meeting. One staff member eventually asked the CR members to leave in order to end the disturbance, but meeting attendees chose to respond by sitting quietly and refusing to leave the area.

One student protester laughably ran out of the meeting hysterically screaming about nonexistent “Nazis downstairs”.

The commotion culminated in one of the student activists running out into the main library area screaming that there were “Nazis downstairs,” but while the gimmick drew several spectators, many of them expressed indignation at the actions of the protestors. 

 

“As a Democrat, I am embarrassed that some people on the left act this way,” remarked Phil Leonard Vogel, creator of the moderate campus news publication City on a Phil. “They give all of us a terrible name.”

 

After nearly two hours, school officials eventually called the police, who reportedly arrested three of the protesters.

Unbelievably, one of the protesters even claimed that the groups very existence was a disturbance.

You truly can’t make this stuff up.

“Your existence is a disturbance, your existence is a disturbance to every marginalized person in this country.”

This is apparently what it means to be a liberal (at least for some) in the year 2017.

Professor Suggests "Toxic Masculinity" Caused Las Vegas Massacre

Authored by John Hasson via Campus Reform,

Mass shootings, including the recent Las Vegas massacre, are caused by “toxic masculinity,” according to a professor at Columbia College Chicago.

Last week, shortly after the horrific shooting in Las Vegas, Philosophy professor Stephen Asma tweeted a link to an op-ed he had written for Aeon in 2016 arguing that “toxic masculinity fuels mass shootings.”

“My article on the weaponized loser seems sadly trenchant every few months. #shooter #ToxicMasculinity #Paddock,” Asma remarked in the tweet, apparently attributing the murderer’s motives to the “toxic masculinity” that Asma blames for other mass shootings.

“The facts of toxic masculinity are rarely discussed after mass shootings, as we beat the usual drums of gun control and mental health...But consider the bigger evolutionary picture,’ Asma writes in the op-ed.

“Social life requires the domestication of men...Males must transform from little tyrants, competing for females, to selfless bodyguards and potential providers.”

Asma then asserts that if a man is unable to obtain a partner, he remains “emotionally juvenile—aggressively impulsive, self-serving, and potentially violent,” and may even “take up a disdainful hostility towards domestication itself.”

He even asserts that Islam and Christianity share part of the blame, because both religions advocate for sexual abstinence before marriage.

“Islam and Christianity have played an important role in domesticating their respective male populations, but at a cost,” he writes.

“Religion tries to manage eros for the sake of social harmony, but it does so indirectly by demonising desire and the body.”

This emphasis on abstinence, Asama continues, plays a key role in producing violence.

“Ascetic repressions, without creative outlet, often increase violent energy,” he claims.

“Revenge fantasies and righteous religious narratives (that glorify suffering) help justify the punishment of everyone who is successful. Now add guns to the dynamic, and the story writes itself.”

Asma hedged when asked to clarify his apparent claim that Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock’s actions could be explained by the op-ed, however, telling Campus Reform that it “seems too early to say” what Paddock’s exact motivations were.

“Paddock is not a clear match with my thesis, but that"s because he remains a mysterious cipher,” Asma elaborated, though he ominously added, “so far...”

UK Public Schools Forcing Girls As Young As Four To Wear Muslim Veil

Research published in The Sunday Times this week revealed that eight state-funded British schools are forcing children to wear the Islamic hijab along with other Muslim female dress code requirements, which includes girls as young as four. The findings are based on open source investigations into published dress code directives of 176 Muslim schools across Britain, most of which are private.

However, the new discovery of public schools among them has sparked outrage across the UK, especially as three of the schools are elementary level schools (including kindergarten). According to The Sunday Times:

Girls as young as four are being “forced to wear the hijab” as part of approved school uniform in state-funded Islamic schools, campaigners have told ministers.

According to research by the National Secular Society, the hijab appears to be compulsory in eight state-funded Islamic schools in England, including three primary schools.

A further 51 private Islamic schools of the 176 surveyed by the society also require the headscarf to be worn by female pupils. Eighteen schools said wearing the head covering was optional.

Shockingly, one particular school called the Independent Olive Secondary requires that, “Hair should be covered by a black scarf; outside the School the face must be covered,” while another UK school is explicit in stipulating that, "It is very important that the uniform is loose fitting and modest and that the hijaab is fitted closely to the head. The College uniform is COMPULSORY" (sic). The Tayyibah Girls School in London warns: "The school is not willing to compromise on any issues regarding uniform."

The Tayyibah Girls School in London.

Meanwhile, some schools go so far as to recommend the niqab. For example girls at Al-Ihsaan school in Leicester are told they must wear either a “jilbaab or niqab”. The jilbaab is a long and loose-fitting gown which covers the entire body expect for hands, face, and feet. But the niqab recommendation is much more significant in that it is practiced by only a small minority within the Muslim world - it covers the entire face except for the eyes, and is typically worn with black garments with cover head to toe. 

In addition to the eight publicly funded schools which require head coverings of veils, thirteen others cite an optional hijab as part of their uniform policy. Islamic academies in Britain came under scrutiny early this month when a previous Times story first reported that "Thousands of state primary schools are allowing girls as young as five to wear the Muslim religious headscarf as part of approved school uniform, a Sunday Times survey has revealed."

The earlier investigation found that even Church of England associated schools were increasingly adopting various forms of Islamic dress as acceptable among students:

Last month a survey by The Sunday Times revealed that nearly a fifth (18%) of 800 state primary schools, including Church of England primaries, in 11 regions of England now list the hijab as part of their uniform policy, mostly as an optional item.

Feversham College is a high school level academy specializing in Science for Muslim girls aged 11-18 years. It"s website spells out that a "close-fitting" hijab is "COMPULSORY" (sic).

Activists associated with the investigation cited by The Sunday Times called the uniform requirements “illiberal and repressive” and stated, “no child should be obliged to wear the hijab or any other article of religious clothing while at school.” Included among those appealing to the UK education secretary to root out such practices, especially when they appear at state funded schools, are Muslim women activists.

Of course, it"s mostly a good thing when the state leaves private religious schools alone to do or require whatever they want in terms of dress code, but that state funded UK schools would enforce Muslim veils is the deepest hypocrisy in a country which has recently been known to target and punish families wanting to opt out of LGBT related curriculum. The British authorities have even threatened Orthodox Jewish schools with closure with the ultimatum: "teach your children about homosexuality and gender reassignment, or we will close you down."

In a trend that began years ago, the British education secretary began warning even Christian private schools that their teaching curriculum must reflect the "UK values" and laws concerning transgender recognition. The government now routinely cites "combating extremist" as a motive for getting private schools to conform.

German Food Chain Faces Backlash After Airbrushing Crosses From Churches On Food Packaging

Europe’s war on religion has reached an absurd milestone.

According to the Telegraph, customers of budget supermarket Lidl have expressed outrage after the company airbrushed Christian symbols from packaging of its "Eridanous"-branded Greek-food line, which featured images of the Anastasis Church in Santorini, Greece, in order to remain "religiously neutral," as the company claimed.

“The German chain"s Greek food range features images of the famous Anastasis Church in Santorini, Greece, complete with its world-renowned blue dome roof."

Shoppers have taken to the company’s Facebook page to express their "disappointment" that the cross was photoshopped. One user, Daniel Novak, wrote: "I"m highly disappointed in a company that is bending over to cater to specific people. Why are you hiding from the history?”

"We are all to learn from history, removing it with Photoshop will cause the same mistakes of the past to be done over and over again."

One user demanded to know who the company thought it would be offending with the crosses.

“Steve West added: ‘Why have you taken the crosses off the top of Greek churches in your advertising?

‘Is there somebody you will think takes offence? There is. Me, Greeks and many others. I definitely won"t be using you again if you don"t reverse this policy.’”

Another asked why the company felt compelled to erase reality.

“And Daisy Matthews wrote: ‘Why are you erasing the reality from a photo?’

If there were products from Hindu, Sikh, Jewish, or Muslim countries with their symbols depicted on there I wouldn"t have a problem buying them.”

Still others said they felt discriminated against as Christians, and doubted that the company would treat an image of a mosque the same way.

“‘As a Christian I feel really hurt, discriminated against, upset and disappointed that you have done this, if it is the case I won"t be shopping at your store anymore.’

The "Eridanous" range features Greek delicacies such as olive oil, Moussaka, yogurt and gyros.”

In fact, customers have also pointed out that some of the packaging for Halal meats sold at Lidl appear to feature buildings with minarets, a piece of Islamic religious architecture. According to the Telegraph, the row has spread across Europe, with shoppers in Belgium and Germany criticizing the policy.

The company quickly apologized, but it did little to quiet customers’ anger.

"We have been selling our highly popular Eridanous own-label range in Lidl stores across Europe for over 10 years now, and in that time the design of the packaging has been through a number of updates.

"We are extremely sorry for any offence caused by the most recent artwork and would like to reassure our customers that this is not an intentional statement. In light of this we will ensure that all feedback is taken into consideration when redesigning future packaging."

But the Belgian arm of European TV and radio station RTL, which originally picked up the story after a reader who noticed the packaging wrote in, said it had been given a different statement.

Ironically, the company said it airbrushed the cross because it didn’t want to “exclude” customers of different faiths.

“‘We are avoiding the use of religious symbols because we do not wish to exclude any religious beliefs,’ it quoted a spokesman as saying.

‘We are a company that respects diversity and this is what explains the design of this packaging.’”

"Our intention has never been to shock," said the supermarket"s spokesman.

"We avoid the use of religious symbols on our packaging to maintain neutrality in all religions.

‘If it has been perceived differently, we apologize to those who may have been shocked.’”

Lidl’s experience is one that’s becoming increasingly common in the modern PC-dominated culture: Companies offending large groups of customers while actively trying to do the opposite.
 

Privatize The Public Monuments

When I was a student at the University of Colorado, I regularly walked by the Dalton Trumbo memorial fountain which was named after the communist Stalin-sympathizing novelist and screenwriter. 

Once upon a time, the fountain had been simply known as "the fountain," but around 25 years ago, it was unnecessarily renamed after a controversial person. 

The reason for the renaming was the same as with any memorial or monument designed to honor a person or idea — to create an emotional connection and familiarity with the person or idea connected to the place; to communicate a certain view of history. 

The renaming of the fountain followed an earlier renaming controversy. One of the University"s dorms, Nichols Hall, was named after a participant in the infamous Sand Creek Massacre. Even in its own time, the massacre had been denounced, earning condemnation from Indian fighters like Kit Carson. Not surprisingly, the dorm that bore Nichols"s name was eventually renamed "Cheyenne Arapahoe" in honor of the Indian tribes whose members Nichols had helped attack.

As with the Trumbo fountain, the dorm"s name was changed in order to send subtle messages — messages about what is valued, what is good, and what is bad. 

There"s nothing inherently wrong with this, of course. The problem only arises when we begin to use taxpayer funded facilities and institutions to carry out these attempts at education. 

Thus, in a sense, when approaching the problem of government monuments and memorials, we  encounter the same problem we have with public schools. Whose values are going to be pushed, preserved, and exalted? And, who"s going to be forced to pay for it? 

Ideology Changes Over Time 

This problem is further complicated by the fact that these views change over time.

Over time, the "good guys" can change as majority views shift, as new groups take over the machinery of government institutions, and as ideologies change. 

In 1961, when Nichols Hall was named, few people apparently cared much about the Sand Creek Massacre. 25 years later, however, views had changed considerably among both students and administrators. 

For a very obvious illustration of how these changes takes place, we need look no further than the schools. 

In the early days of public schooling — an institution founded by Christian nationalists to push their message — students were forced to read the King James Bible. Catholics were forced to pay taxes so schools could instruct students on how awful and dangerous Catholicism was. Immigrant families from Southern and Eastern Europe were forced to pay for schools that instructed their children on the inferiority of their non-Anglo ethnic groups.

A century later, things have changed considerably. Today, Anglo-Saxons are taught to hate themselves, and while Catholics are still despised (but for different reasons), they now are joined in their pariah status by most other Christian groups as well. Italians and Eastern Europeans who were once treated in public schools as subhuman are now reviled as members of the white oppressor class. 

Similar changes have taken place in art and in public monuments and memorials. 

Public Memorials Serve the Same Function as Public Schools 

But the principle remains the same, whether we"re talking about public schools or public monuments: we"re using public funds and facilities to "educate" the public about what"s good and what"s not. 

This has long been known by both the people who first erected today"s aging monuments, and by the people who now want to tear them down. The leftist who support scrapping certain monuments actively seek to change public monuments and memorials to back up their own worldview because they recognize that it can make a difference in the public imagination. They"re fine with forcing the taxpayers to support their own worldview, of course, and actively seek to use public lands, public spaces, public roads, and public buildings to subsidize their efforts. They already succeeded in doing this with public schools decades ago. 

The Answer: Privatize the Monuments

In a way, the combined effect of public memorials, monuments, streets, and buildings function to turn public spaces into a type of large open-air social studies class, reinforcing some views, while ignoring others. 

Libertarians have long noted the problem of public education: it"s impossible to teach history in a value-neutral way, and thus public schools are likely to teach values that support the state and its agendas. Even some conservatives have finally caught on. 

To combat this problem, those who object to these elements within public schooling support homeschooling, private schooling, and private-sector alternatives that diminish the role of public institutions. 

Governmental public spaces offer the same problem as public schools. 

In both cases the answer is the same: minimize the role of government institutions in shaping public ideology, public attitudes, and the public"s view of history. 

Rather than using publicly funded thoroughfares, parks, and buildings as a means of reinforcing public "education" and "shared history" as we do now, these government facilities should be stripped down to their most basic functions. Providing office space for administrative offices, providing streets for transport, and providing parks for recreation. (The last thing we need is a history lesson from the semi-illiterates on a typical city council.)

Some might argue that all these properties and facilities should be privatized themselves. That"s fair enough, but as long as we"re forced to live with these facilities, we need not also use them to "honor" politicians or whatever persons the current ruling class happens to find worthy of praise. 

The nostalgia lobby will react with horror to this proposition. "Why, you can"t do that!" they"ll complain. "We"ll be robbed of our heritage and history." Even assuming these people could precisely define exactly who "we" is they still need to explain why public property is necessary to preserve this alleged heritage. 

After all, by this way of thinking, the preservation of one"s culture and heritage relies on a subsidy from the taxpayers, and a nod of assent from government agencies. 

Preserving and Promoting Culture Through Private Action 

Once upon a time, however, people who actually valued their heritage did not sit around begging the government to protect it for them. Many were willing to actually take action and spend their own money on preserving the heritage that many now rather unconvincingly claim is so important to them.

A good example of the key role of private property in cases such as this can be seen in the work of the Catholic Church in the US — which has never enjoyed majority support from the population or from government institutions. If Catholics were to get their symbols and memorials in front of the public, they were going to have to build them on private property, and that"s exactly what they did.

In Denver, for example, the Catholics of the early 20th century knew (correctly) that no public park or government building was going to erect any Catholic-themed art or memorials on their property. So, the Catholics proceeded to erect an enormous cathedral on a hilltop one block from the state capitol. The new cathedral was highly visible and provided easy access to religious ceremonies for the few Catholic politicians and officials who worked at the capitol. It provided meeting space. It contained stained-glass art created by German masters. Moreover, the new building served as a huge symbolic middle finger to the anti-Catholic Ku Klux Klan which was growing in importance in Denver at the time.

So, did Church officials sit around whining about how there was no crucifix on the front lawn of the State Capitol? Did they demand that the taxpayers pay to maintain a central town plaza featuring a statue of Saint Peter? Some probably did. Those who made a difference, though, took action and acquired real estate in prominent places throughout the city. They put universities on that land, and cemeteries, and convents, and friaries, and schools, and even some memorials and statues. Today, next to the cathedral, on a busy street corner, is a large statue of a Catholic pope: John Paul II. It"s on private property. It"s seen by thousands every day. 

Source. 

And why should the self-appointed protectors of American "traditional" values think they deserve anything different? Indeed, we"d all have been saved a lot of trouble if the organizations that demanded statues of Confederate generals everywhere had put them on private land instead of in public parks. We"d all be better off if the private owners of the Stone Mountain monument hadn"t sold it to the State of Georgia because they were too cheap to maintain it themselves. 

In the past, had the purveyors of publicly-funded culture instead taken a principled and successful stand against using public lands and funds to push a certain view of history, no one would have to now waste his time sitting through city council meetings where politicians decide who deserves a statue, and who is to be thrown in the dustbin of history. Were we to quit using public parks as showcases for public indoctrination, we wouldn"t have to worry about the Church of Satan erecting a monument in the "free speech area" of a public park — as they recently did near Minneapolis. 

The next time someone wants a statue of some politician, artist, or intellectual — whether they be communists, Confederates, or satanists — they ought to be told to buy a nice little plot of land somewhere — perhaps along a busy street or next to an important street corner in town — and put their statue there.