Monday, April 11, 2022
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Pope Francis Calls on Christians to Surrender Before Violence
“There is no such thing as a Just War.”
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Pope Francis, a leading advocate of Doormat Christianity, is at it again, trying to reverse nearly two millennia of Christian doctrine, by preaching total passivity—even against violent aggression.
On March 18, 2022, Francis declared before an audience that “A war is always—always!—the defeat of humanity, always. We, the educated, who work in education, are defeated by this war, because on another side we are responsible.”
So far, all well and good, if only because such lofty but impotent words are expected.
But then Francis went so far as to say that, “There is no such thing as a just war: they do not exist!”
That is a remarkably dangerous claim, one that, if embraced—as no doubt it is by millions of similar naïve thinkers—can easily lead to their annihilation.
There is, indeed, such a thing as a just war—the only rational way of responding to unjust wars—and it is firmly grounded in Christian, especially Catholic, teaching, even if the head of the Catholic world argues otherwise.
In fact, from the very start, Christian theologians had concluded that “the so called charity texts of the New Testament that preached passivism and forgiveness, not retaliation, were firmly defined as applying to the beliefs and behavior of the private person [and not the state],” to quote historian Christopher Tyerman.
Christ himself—who called on his followers to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s (Matt. 22:21)—differentiated between the social and spiritual realms. In the only recorded instance of Jesus being slapped, he did not “turn the other cheek,” but rather challenged his slapper to explain himself (John 18:22–23). The Nazarene further praised a Roman centurion without calling on him to “repent” by resigning from one of the most brutal militaries in world history (Matt. 8: 5–13). Similarly, when a group of soldiers asked John the Baptist how they should repent, he advised them always to be content with their army wages (Luke 3:14)—and said nothing about their quitting the Roman army.
This is because there is “no intrinsic contradiction,” continues Tyerman, “in a doctrine of personal, individual forgiveness condoning certain forms of necessary public violence to ensure the security in which, in St. Paul’s phrase, Christians ‘may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty’ (1 Tim. 2:2).”
Or in the words of that chief articulator of Just War theory, Saint Augustine (354–430), “It is the injustice of the opposing side that lays on the wise man the duty to wage war.” Crusades historian Jonathan Riley-Smith elaborates:
FBI Kidnapping Caper Was Flagrant Election Interference
The only people pushing to do something big before Election Day resided in the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C.
On October 8, 2020, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced shocking news: federal authorities had arrested several men for conspiring to kidnap and possibly kill her before Election Day. After indulging in a moment of self-pity, Whitmer quickly pinned the blame on President Trump, a man with whom Whitmer had engaged in a very public feud throughout 2020 over pandemic-related lockdowns.
Trump, Whitmer claimed, fueled the rage of alleged white supremacists and right-wing militias responsible for the dastardly abduction plot. “When our leaders meet with, encourage, or fraternize with domestic terrorists, they legitimize their actions,” Whitmer said in a televised speech. “And they are complicit.”
Earlier that day, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, also a Democrat, and officials from the U.S. Department of Justice detailed the charges in a separate press conference. “Last night, the FBI and Michigan State Police arrested six individuals charged in a criminal complaint with conspiring to kidnap the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer,” explained Andrew Birge, assistant U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan. The defendants, Birge claimed, plotted to kidnap Whitmer from her vacation cottage “before the November election.”
His office took the lead in prosecuting the six defendants, who also faced weapons of mass destruction charges.
Exactly 18 months to the day, Birge’s prosecutors suffered a humiliating defeat in a Grand Rapids courtroom after a jury acquitted two of the men and deadlocked on the guilt of two others. (Two defendants pleaded guilty and testified for the government during the three-week trial). Despite endless resources and favorable rulings by the judge overseeing the case, the government failed to secure a single conviction in what the Justice Department considered one of its largest domestic terror investigations ever.
Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta, after a year and a half in prison, went home to their families on Friday night; Adam Fox, the alleged ringleader, and Barry Croft, Jr. remain incarcerated while Birge’s office prepares to retry the men—a fool’s errand, as they didn’t know each other prior to the FBI’s involvement in the faux plot and live almost 1,000 miles apart. (Croft resides in Delaware.) It’s a desperate attempt to save face, regardless of the lives and the principles of justice at stake.
Not only were jurors unpersuaded by Birge’s prosecutors, the jury instead seemed to believe defense attorneys’ arguments that their clients were entrapped by the FBI. At least a dozen FBI undercover agents and informants, working out of numerous FBI field offices across the eastern half of the country and at the direction of supervising agents, concocted and funded the sting operation. Dan Chappel, the main informant compensated at least $60,000 by the FBI for “bringing people together,” as his FBI handler ordered him, took the stand to explain his role. But his testimony was lackluster and ultimately did not convince the jury the men were guilty.
The Justice Department and FBI have lots of explaining to do—so, too, does Andrew Birge. Hundreds of hours of secret recordings and thousands of texts fail to prove what Birge said in his initial press conference: there was no evidence to support his claim that the defendants wanted to “kidnap” Whitmer before Election Day. After all, if no kidnapping conspiracy or legitimate threat existed, no deadline existed, either.
The only people pushing to do something big before Election Day resided in...
Disney Helps Employees ‘Transition’ Transgender Children and Themselves
The Walt Disney Co. is assisting employees and their children with sex-change and “gender affirmation” procedures through the company’s benefits program, an internal video suggests.
Disney’s “benefits team” is offering resources and guides to employees transitioning to the opposite gender, as well as information for employees’ children who are transitioning, according to a video shared by Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo.
“The other big area is gender identity and expression, so doing all of this work to ensure that our employees and cast can express their gender here authentically and proudly at the company,” a man said in the video.
The video is from an internal company meeting, according to Rufo, and the backdrop displayed the phrases “The Walt Disney Company” and “Reimagine Tomorrow.”
“So, you know, coming up with guides on how to change your photo, information about pronouns, working with our benefits team to give information about gender-affirmation procedures both for our employees who are transitioning and trans, but also our employees who have kids who are transitioning,” the man in the video continued.
A question-and-answer document on Disney’s gender-affirmation coverage shared online by Fidelity Investments, which manages Disney’s benefits program, appears to confirm this policy.
Disney covers “Gender Affirmation procedures” for both adults and adolescents through Cigna, a health insurance company. The company covers puberty-suppressing hormones for minors under the direction of an endocrinologist, according to...
Arizona AG says state can cite ‘invasion’ to deport migrants without feds
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| Attorney General Mark Brnovich claims Gov. Doug Ducey can declare Arizona to be under “invasion” in order to begin deporting suspected illegal immigrants.Jonathan J. Cooper/AP |
The approach would theoretically allow Arizona to break with the Biden administration and start turning away people at the US-Mexico border, where officials made approximately 1.9 million arrests last year.
“The federal government’s failure to secure the border and protect Arizona from invasion is dangerous and unprecedented,” Brnovich wrote. “Thankfully, the Founders foresaw that States might need to protect themselves from invasion and made clear in the Constitution that States retain the sovereign power to defend themselves within their own territory.”
Republican Arizona state Rep. Jake Hoffman requested the opinion, which was published Monday night, after former Trump administration officials Ken Cuccinelli and Russ Vought proposed last year that border states like Arizona dust off an obscure provision in the Constitution to address the border crisis.
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| Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has appeared reluctant to make an “invasion” declaration.Ross D. Franklin/AP |
“The violence and lawlessness at the border caused by transnational cartels and gangs satisfies the definition of an ‘invasion’ under the U.S. Constitution, and Arizona therefore has the power to defend itself from this invasion under the Governor’s authority as Commander-in-Chief,” Brnovich wrote. “An actual invasion permits the State to engage in defensive actions within its own territory at or near its border.”
Cuccinelli told The Post that “this obviously turns attention now not just to Gov. Ducey in Arizona — though that’s the logical first place — but over to Texas and people asking, ‘Well, why don’t you do this?'”
“Gov. Ducey … was extremely aggressive in committing himself to protecting Arizona and Arizonans and at the border [in his recent state of the state speech]. Well, the attorney general of Arizona has given him the method to do that, to actually solve the problem, instead of just complain about the problem,” Cuccinelli added. “And we call on Gov. Ducey to in fact go ahead and do that and start turning people around at the border in between the ports of entry.”
“Technically, it’s a war power, but we’re not talking about tanks and planes,” he went on. “We’re literally just talking about people meeting people crossing the border, probably thumb-printing them, taking their picture and turning them around back across the border from...
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