Intermezzo Guest Blog: Dr. Victor Hanson on Biden’s Amerika

Razor wire and fences still surround the U.S. Capitol at sunrise. (Photo: Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images)

The World Goes On While America Sleeps
Victor Davis Hanson / @VDHanson/ February 12, 2021
Dr. Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and author of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won.  You can reach him by e-mailing authorvdh@gmail.com.

The Democrat-controlled Senate spends thousands of collective hours conducting an impeachment trial against a citizen who is no longer president.  The acquittal is predetermined, as in the first impeachment effort a year ago — and known to be so to the Democratic prosecutors.  The constitutionally mandated presiding judge — the chief justice of the Supreme Court — refused to show up.  Chief Justice John Roberts apparently believes an impeachment trial of a private citizen is either a waste of time or unconstitutional — or both.

The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives is busy ferreting out purportedly extremist Republican House members.  For the first time in memory, one party now removes committee members of the other.  Yet for each Republican outlier, there is a corresponding Democratic firebrand member who has either called for violence or voiced anti-Semitic slurs — and yet will not be removed from House committees.  So the asymmetrical tit-for-tat continues.

The subtext to this madness is that the Democratic Congress, the new administration, the administrative state, and the political left are obsessed with dismembering the presidential corpse of now citizen Donald Trump.  Apparently they fear that one day he will rise from the infernal regions to wreak his revenge.  Meanwhile, life in America goes on.

Yet few of our leaders are very worried about the existential crises left unaddressed by their obsessions with the ghost of Trump.  Take the debt.  It is now nearly $28 trillion, and it is growing by almost $2 trillion a year.  No one in Washington talks about reducing the annual budget deficit.  Nor do officials find ways to balance the budget.  The idea of paying off the monstrous debt remains a fantasy.  Instead, our elected representatives argue over whether to borrow another $1 trillion, or more likely $2 trillion, without worry of where it comes from or how it will be repaid.

But money is not completely a construct.  We will eventually pay for our profligacy either with steeper taxes, higher inflation, 1970s-like stagflation, or permanent zero interest.  Or eventually America will renounce its debt and destroy the credibility of the U.S. government.  Meanwhile, hundreds of billions of dollars and countless hours of once-productive labor are diverted to unproductive ideological censorship, career canceling, and indoctrination.

Our allies, such as democratic France, warn America that it is cannibalizing itself — and becoming dangerous to others.  Our enemies, such as the totalitarian Chinese, are delighted with our suicidal wokeness.  The cost is not just the expense of cleaning up the billions of dollars of destruction from the summer riots, the thousands of memorials and statues destroyed and defaced, and the hundreds of schools and buildings to be renamed.

Far more consequential is the suppression of creative thinking — from humanistic study to scientific research.  The Islamic world, as the historian Bernard Lewis once observed, stagnated in the 19th and 20th centuries once radical Islamists began squelching all free inquiry.  Humanities and science were perverted from 1932 to 1945 in Germany by the pollution of Nazi racial censors.  What was written or advanced in communist Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union is largely discredited, given that commissar hacks determined the rules of publication and research.  Something similarly frightening is now occurring in the United States.

Scholars, journalists, artists, and educators feel they must mouth politically correct platitudes.  They constantly hedge their public discourse in fear of career cancellation.  They strain to synchronize their research with some approved woke ideology to save their livelihoods.  When professors must write “diversity statements” and hire, promote, and fire on the basis of race, the model is not the U.S. Constitution, but something out of contemporary China.

No one pays much attention that our capital is now weaponized with soldiers in camouflage and barbed wire.  Not since the Civil War has Washington resembled such a vast police state.  Ex-military officers who once warned Trump not to deploy federal troops to ensure the safety of the White House from Antifa and Black Lives Matter demonstrators now are silent about a veritable army deployed in Washington.

President Joe Biden has signaled that all new pipeline construction is over.  Fracking on public lands is taboo.  The border is to become wide open.  Federal immigration law is now effectively nullified.  Americans may soon have to be tested for COVID-19 before flying into or out of the country.  But illegal immigrants will not be COVID-19-certified when — illegally — they cross the border.  Iran is bankrupt, isolated and roundly despised by most of the countries in the Middle East.  Now America is doing its best to resuscitate the most radical and anti-American regime in the world — at the expense of our allies in the Arab world, Israel, and America’s own interests.  While we are busy devouring each other, China is smiling because once-feared American capitalists have become laughable Keystone Cops.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com.

Guest Blog: Dennis Prager: I Now Understand the “Good” German

by Dennis Prager, January 5, 2021

As my listeners and readers can hopefully attest, I have been on a lifelong quest to understand human nature and human behavior.  I am sad to report that I have learned more in the last few years, particularly in 2020, than in any equivalent period of time.

One of the biggest revelations concerns a question that has always plagued me: How does one explain the “good German,” the term used to describe the average, presumably decent German, who did nothing to hurt Jews but also did nothing to help them and did nothing to undermine the Nazi regime?  The same question could be asked about the average Frenchman during the Vichy era, the average Russian under Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Leonid Brezhnev and their successors, and the millions of others who did nothing to help their fellow citizens under oppressive dictatorships.

These past few years have taught me not to so quickly judge the quiet German, Russian, etc.  Of course, I still judge Germans who helped the Nazis and Germans who in any way hurt Jews. But the Germans who did nothing? Not so fast.

What has changed my thinking has been watching what is happening in America (and Canada and Australia and elsewhere, for that matter).  The ease with which tens of millions of Americans have accepted irrational, unconstitutional and unprecedented police state-type restrictions on their freedoms, including even the freedom to make a living, has been, to understate the case, sobering.

The same holds true for the acceptance by most Americans of the rampant censorship on Twitter and all other major social media platforms.  Even physicians and other scientists are deprived of freedom of speech if, for example, they offer scientific support for hydroxychloroquine along with zinc to treat covid-19 in the early stages.  Board-certified physician Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, who has saved hundreds of covid-19 patients from suffering and/or death, has been banned from Twitter for publicizing his lifesaving hydroxychloroquine and zinc protocol.

Half of America, the non-left half, is afraid to speak their minds at virtually every university, movie studio and large corporation — indeed, at virtually every place of work.  Professors who say anything that offends the left fear being ostracized if they have tenure and being fired if they do not.  People are socially ostracized, publicly shamed and/or fired for differing with Black Lives Matter, as America-hating and white-hating a group as has ever existed.  And few Americans speak up.  On the contrary, when BLM protestors demand that diners outside of restaurants raise their fists to show their support of BLM, nearly every diner does.

So, then, who are we to condemn the average German who faced the Gestapo if he didn’t salute Hitler or the average Russian who faced the NKVD (the secret police and intelligence agency that preceded the KGB) if he didn’t demonstrate sufficient enthusiasm for Stalin?  Americans face the left’s cancel culture, but not left-wing secret police or reeducation camps.  (At least not yet — I have little doubt the left would send outspoken conservatives to reeducation camps if they could.)

I have come to understand the average German living under Nazism and the average Russian living under communism for another reason: the power of the media to brainwash.

As a student of totalitarianism since my graduate studies at the Russian Institute of Columbia University’s School of International Affairs (as it was then known), I have always believed that only in a dictatorship could a society be brainwashed.  I was wrong.  I now understand that mass brainwashing can take place in a nominally free society.  The incessant left-wing drumbeat of The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and almost every other major newspaper, plus The Atlantic, The New Yorker, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, NPR, all of Hollywood and almost every school from kindergarten through graduate school, has brainwashed at least half of America every bit as effectively as the German, Soviet and Chinese communist press did (and in the latter case, still does).  That thousands of schools will teach the lie that is the New York Times’ “1619 Project” is one of countless examples. 

Prior to the lockdowns, I flew almost every week of the year, so I was approached by people who recognized me on a regular basis.  Increasingly, I noticed that people would look around to see if anyone was within earshot and then tell me in almost a whisper: “I support Trump” or, “I’m a conservative.”  The last time people looked around and whispered things to me was when I used to visit the Soviet Union.

In Quebec this past weekend, as one can see on a viral video, a family was fined and members arrested because six — yes, six — people gathered to celebrate the new year.  A neighbor snitched on them, and the celebrants were duly arrested.  The Quebec government lauded the snitches and asked for more public “collaboration.”

Snitches are likewise lauded and encouraged in some Democrat-run states and cities in America (Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti in March: “Snitches get rewards”) and by left-wing governments in Australia.  Plenty of Americans, Canadians and Australians are only too happy to snitch on people who refuse to lock down their lives.  All this is taking place without concentration camps, without a Gestapo, without a KGB and without Maoist reeducation camps.

That’s why I no longer judge the average German as easily as I used to.  Apathy in the face of tyranny turns out not to be a German or Russian characteristic.  I just never thought it could happen in America.
Dennis Prager

c.a.’s note:  Additionally, there are some serious questions that need to be answered about who broke into the Capitol.  You will not find this reported on CNN, CNBC, MSN or other major news outlets . . . yet.   Pro-Trumpers did enter, but they were not the ones initiating the illegal actions.  There are many Pro-Trumpers who are at the far-right fringe that did wrong things, and these will be and should be prosecuted, but even those crimes pale in comparison to riots in our cities last summer.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/video-trump-supporters-stop-antifa-from-breaking-into-capitol_3649380.html

Intermezzo: Guest Blog by Jarrett Stepman

We Must Heed Lincoln’s Warning About Mob Rule

by Jarrett Stepman @JarrettStepman / January 06, 2021 /
Jarrett Stepman is a contributor to The Daily Signal and co-host of The Right Side of History podcast. Send an email to Jarrett. He is also the author of the new book, “The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past.”

Abraham Lincoln warned us: Mob rule begets mob rule.
On Wednesday, as Congress convened to certify an Electoral College vote of the 2020 presidential election, a mass of people broke into the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C.  They climbed the building, smashed windows, entered offices, and even entered the House and Senate chambers.  It was a bizarre scene, to say the least.



Taking selfies and engaging in photo ops from the House speaker’s chair certainly puts a modern twist on this 21st-century reenactment of the Vandals’ sack of Rome in 455 A.D.  But it wasn’t just window-smashing and photo ops.  The intrusion also turned deadly.  A woman was shot and killed.

There will also be questions as to how a group of people, no matter how large, was able to push their way inside the Capitol and stay inside for several hours.  So, what’s to be made of all this?



The right to peacefully assemble and protest is an essential one guaranteed by the Constitution.  Breaking into and vandalizing federal property — for whatever cause — is not.  Regardless of the original message of the protests, those who orchestrated the break-in to federal property deserve condemnation.  It’s a violation of the rule of law, not to mention a federal crime.

Certainly, many on both the left and right came out quickly to condemn the violence.  It would, however, be a mistake to see what happened in isolation.






Let’s not forget that Washington, D.C. — as with many other cities across the country — had already been beset last year by mobs and waves of violent riots.  When rioters lit fires, smashed windows, toppled statues, and physically and verbally assaulted political opponents in the name of Black Lives Matter this summer, the result was that a street was named for the movement in front of the White House.



The violence wasn’t limited to just Washington.  Around the country, large swaths of cities were set ablaze as police departments became overwhelmed, and politicians did little to stop it.  A lawless “autonomous” zone was created in the middle of downtown Seattle, which led to widespread property damage and several deaths.  Many hopped aboard calls to defund the police, rather than defending the police while they were besieged.  And more than a few turned down federal aid when it was clear that things had spun out of control.



Portland, Oregon, had the highest spike of violent crime in the entire country — impressive given the nearly unprecedented national surge in violent crime.  That is the consequence of rampant lawlessness.

When Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., dared to suggest in an op-ed in the pages of The New York Times that overwhelmed police departments should have the ability to request aid from the military, the Times newsroom rebelled, and he was called an authoritarian.  Yet, Cotton aptly called the lawless riots what they were: mob rule.

Mob rule, whether conducted by members of Black Lives Matter or people wearing MAGA hats, is a threat to law and order.  Not only that, it’s a threat to liberty, too.  It violates the very essence of the Constitution, of the belief that the people ultimately rule.  And as Abraham Lincoln warned in his famed 1838 Lyceum Address, mob law when left unchecked begets more mob law.  When portions of the population think that violence is the path to victory, where the rules of the system don’t have to be followed, it is only natural for others to think that mob law is the law.  Under mobocracy, even those inclined to follow the law may eventually lose faith in the government.

Lincoln warned:
Good men, men who love tranquility, who desire to abide by the laws, and enjoy their benefits, who would gladly spill their blood in the defense of their country; seeing their property destroyed; their families insulted, and their lives endangered; their persons injured; and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better; become tired of, and disgusted with, a government that offers them no protection; and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose. Thus, then, by the operation of this mobocractic spirit, which all must admit, is now abroad in the land, the strongest bulwark of any Government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken down and destroyed.

Even if we believe that our system has become corrupted, that injustice rather than justice has prevailed, it is still the wiser course to appeal to ballots, protest, and petition rather than violence.  The American Revolution, which ultimately ended in war and the overthrow of British rule, was for the most part an orderly affair.  Even within a system that did not provide representative government, the Founders appealed to law and negotiation first, second, and third before resorting to violence.  And once committed to revolution, they knew there was no going back.

We shouldn’t forget that the storming of the Bastille, as grave as the depredations of the French monarchy had sometimes been, led to mass violence and tyranny, not ordered liberty.

Most Americans understand this.  But make no mistake, unlike this summer’s riots — which countless media outlets distorted and misrepresented to excuse and minimize — there will absolutely be efforts to portray every Trump supporter as a violent insurrectionist.  And politicians will use that to justify curtailing the God-given rights of citizens who disagree with them.

Many have condemned the intrusion and vandalizing of the Capitol Building, as they should, but we should also not forget the fact that mob rule and lawlessness have destroyed the lives of countless Americans over the past year and has eroded our country’s attachment to the rule of law.  This should have always been unacceptable.

Lincoln’s warning in 1838 was ignored, and a generation of Americans paid a terrible price in blood for it. Let us learn from the past instead of tearing it down.  Regardless of the corruption of our institutions, the better path forward is to support the rule of law, reform old institutions or build new ones, and plan for the long term of sustaining this federal republic that we would surely like to keep.

Guest Blog: New York Needs The Police

Well, stupid blocks on WordPress are not its only problem. This blog was scheduled on their calendar to go out on September 5 at 8am. No idea how WordPress screwed this up, but it is getting so frustrating, I may move my blog to another host.
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I am not getting lazy (although some think I have been that way for a long time! 😉 ).
But I am just finding some folks saying some things better than I can, and some have better grounds for saying it. Such is the case with New York’s need for police. Welcome to a guest blog by BeautyBeyondBones, a courageous young woman who lives in NYC and is a Christ-follower.

Her story can be reiterated in a number of cities that have called for defunding police, maintaining the ignorant BLM line that they are the poor victims, all the while setting fires in their own cities and destroying what they are incapable of making. Such sad schmucks deserve our pity, not hatred. (See 2 Timothy 3:13 and Deuteronomy 11:16)
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New York Needs The Police

by beautybeyondbones, September 3, 2020
NYC is not safe anymore.
And it’s because the city desperately needs police presence.

I don’t have to tell you about society’s current tidal wave of hatred and detest towards our men and women in blue. Battle cries to “defund the police;” publicly canceling anyone who even considers that “blue lives matter.” There is a [sw]elling uprising against law and order, and while – sure, it may seem “woke” and a noble bandwagon to jump on, the fact of the matter is, there are serious consequences to alienating those who are there to protect and defend. And that is being seen in full scale in Manhattan, no matter how much the mainstream media may try to downplay it.

(And Mom and dad, I apologize ahead of time for the worry this post may ignite. Please know that I am being safe, taking precautions, and frankly . . . not doing anything stupid to get into a dangerous situation.)

My friends and I got back from Maine on Monday night at midnight. And the city was lights out. Dead. For a city that used to literally never sleep — where you could go out at any time, on any day, and see swaths of people milling around — it is alarming that Manhattan is so quiet. And why? Because half of New York has left, and those that have stayed behind are scared to go out past 10.

Outdoor restaurants close at 10 pm. Historically 24-hour CVS’s, bodegas, and diners — now all close at 10. Parks – which have never been gated up . . . now, locked with a chain and padlock at 10.

Why? Because it is no longer safe to be out after dark.

Perhaps you may be thinking I’m overreacting. Sure . . . just a typical overdramatic millennial who’s extra skiddish because she’s a young woman who lives alone. Please. I have never once felt scared in NYC. Ever. Until now.

It was such a shock to go from “Mayberry,” Maine back to Gotham. The night my friends and I got home, I got a text from one of my friends — that morning, there was an arrest made in her building. A homeless man had been living in her stairwell for MONTHS, and had been stealing packages. This was in a super nice building on the Upper West Side — arguably one of the nicest, most affluent neighborhoods in Manhattan.

A man. Living in her stairwell.

Which is particularly alarming and crazy, because she had been getting her packages delivered to my doorman building for quite some time now, because all of her packages were going missing.

Crime is up. You may recall the incident I had just a few months ago: where a BLM radical YouTuber accosted me outside my building, and forced me to get on my knees and hail BLM while he livestreamed it. I was one of a string of young women he “vlogged” that day.

Graffiti tags are absolutely everywhere. The population of homeless people has soared, and so has their boldness. My friend was curtly confronted by a homeless man who pressured her into VENMOing HIM money, when she explained she didn’t have any cash.

My “neighborhood watch” Citizen App on my phone pings incessantly throughout the day and night, notifying me of crime in my current vicinity. Unsettling reminders for sure.

These are not just isolated incidents. Homicides. Robberies. Burglaries. All have skyrocketed recently. And why? Because cops are afraid to do their jobs anymore.

Why put your life on the line, when — if you act to defend yourself, it could be filmed and end up on national news where you’ll be labeled a racist, and prosecuted?

They’ve had enough. And so they’re walking off the job. In startlingly large numbers.

The NYPD has recently cited “ongoing challenges,” including an “increase in retirements” and “deep budget cuts.”

That is terrifying information. Terrifying.

In case you missed it, back in June, one billion dollars was cut from the NYC police budget. And the impact of that are now beginning to be felt.

What is going to happen to our country if law and order is not the backbone of society? Truly? What will our world become?

Now here’s the tough part. Because yes – we need to support our men and women of the badge – but it is also true that there are “bad apples” that are drawn to the allure of the police force, and the power and -sadly, weaponry- that goes along with it. But to completely throw the entire baby out with the bathwater, just because of a problematic bunch . . . it is wholeheartedly unwise.

Are the horrific and heartbreaking incidents of unjust police brutality that have happened in recent months absolutely unwarranted, unjust, and deserving prosecution? One hundred percent yes.

But those handful of terrible, terrible incidents do not color the vast majority of blue men and women who truly have dedicated their lives and their livelihoods to protecting and serving the community, and keeping people safe.

It is a job that I cannot imagine waking up and doing every day.

And it is a job that, yes, probably should have more training and vetting, and support, and accountability, than it currently does.

But we need to support law and order in this country. Without it, we are creating a scenario ripe for malice, and foul play, and all sorts of corruption. A scenario that we are beginning to see play out in Manhattan.

Yes – we need to stand up for the innocent lives lost to unjust police force. We need to demand justice for Brionna Taylor, for George Floyd, and for those heartbreaking examples of lives lost at the hands of cops.

But we need the police.

If that means supply more adequate training – so be it. If that means more checks and balances within the system – full steam ahead. If that means a stricter vetting process to become a man or woman in blue – let it be done.

But we need the police. And we need to support the police.

Lord, may the civil unrest that is plaguing this country come to a peaceful end. May our brothers and sisters see one another as just that: one family — one human race, all with dignity and inherent value. May we come to respect one another and earnestly desire to work together to come up with creative and effective solutions to make each and every person in this country feel safe, and supported. And may any tinges of racism be expunged from the hearts of those harboring such darkness, and be replaced with Your love — a love that sees the dignity and value of each and every human life – from conception to natural death. Amen.

“This is what the Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.” Ez 37:5

Guest Blog by Star Parker

Star Parker @UrbanCURE
Star Parker is a columnist for The Daily Signal and president of the Urban Center for Urban Renewal and Education.

As so much despair has gripped our nation during this difficult time, I decided to go into our nation’s most distressed communities with a message of hope and truth.  I have been working on policy issues dealing with race and poverty through my organization, UrbanCURE, for 25 years.

We purchased billboard space in hard-hit cities across the nation and posted a short, time-tested message that strikes at the heart of what drives poverty.  The billboards show a picture of a young black man or young black woman and say: “Tired of Poverty? Finish school. Take any job. Get married. Save and invest. Give back to your neighborhood.”  The billboard then refers to Proverbs 10:4, which says, “A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.”

This is a message delivered with care and love.  It’s a message I know is true. It is so true that it produced an immediate reaction from Black Lives Matter, which contacted the billboard company, Clear Channel Outdoor, demanding that the billboards be taken down.

Claims from Black Lives Matter — laced, of course, with profanity — that our message is racist, inaccurate, and self-hating are a crude distortion of reality.

I know the accuracy of our message from my experience in life. I was once a young woman with disdain for the “establishment,” living off welfare and going nowhere.  Then two Christian businessmen straightened me out. Their message and guidance saved my life.

Aside from my personal experience and my daily learning as a Christian, I also know the truth of this message from years of policy work that has been going on in Washington.  The impact of the “success sequence” on poverty is well documented. Brookings Institution scholars Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill published their findings in their book “Creating an Opportunity Society,” in which they report that those who follow three steps — finish high school, get a full-time job, and get married before having children — face a 2% chance of being poor.

Brad Wilcox and Wendy Wang of the American Enterprise Institute followed on this work, showing that among millennials — ages 28-35 — there was a 53% incidence of poverty among those who did not follow these steps and a 3% incidence among those who did.

But regardless of whether or not you want to believe me or agree with me, what about freedom of expression?  What about the inherent importance of keeping dialogue open and free in our nation, with a goal of reaching truth?  How can shutting down communication serve anyone’s interests?

Shutting down dialogue, shutting down free and open exchange of ideas, is exactly what Black Lives Matter wants.  It said as much in a Facebook post to the billboard vendor that read, “At the end of the day, messaging and narrative control is priceless.”

Unfortunately, Clear Channel Outdoor responded to the intimidation of Black Lives Matter and took down UrbanCURE’s billboards, saying, “We strive to respect a wide variety of viewpoints on diversity and racial sensitivity.”  But can shutting down a powerful and truthful message because Black Lives Matter doesn’t like it reflect respect for “a wide variety of viewpoints”?  The nation’s shock after the terrible murder of George Floyd at the hands of a policeman was justifiable.  But the pushback unfortunately put wind in the sails of Black Lives Matter.

The question is: What does America, and what do black Americans, need? What will fix our problems?  For sure, suppression of free expression will make no one better off.  These are communities that need truth, that need love, that need empowerment.

This is the message we are delivering at UrbanCURE.

I hope Clear Channel Outdoor has a change of heart and is not intimidated by Black Lives Matter to breach contract and not publicize UrbanCURE’s message on its billboards.

Black Lives Matter: Shepherds or Thieves?

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”  Jesus, John 10:10 
(See https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2010/06/09/shades-of-brown-from-dark-to-light/)

BLM tries to portray itself as a shepherd of the black community, all the while raising racial tensions and alienating the very people who would help them if they acted on Martin Luther King’s principles of peaceful protest.  MLK would be appalled to see black men and women demanding that Black Lives Matter more than any other color or ethnicity.  Remember his dream, “that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  Curiously, this beacon of hope for minority communities in the mid-1900s is rarely, if ever, quoted by Black Lives Matter leaders or speakers.

Black Lives Matter was never a grass roots organization, but rather a consortium of Marxists who mask their communist and fascist sympathies under a veneer of racial injustice.  The grass roots part has taken on characteristics far different from their statement of being “restorative,” anti-racist and egalitarian, “building a beloved community to cultivate a communal network” that “practices justice, liberation, and peace in our engagements with one another.”

The first question to ask rioters destroying police cars, buildings and private property is, “How is this bringing ‘peace in our engagements with one another’?”
If black lives really mattered to Black Lives Matter, the corporation, why do the rioters not distinguish between white and black policemen and policewomen when they are throwing bricks and molotov cocktails?
If black lives really mattered to Black Lives Matter, why do they graffiti and destroy black owned businesses without discrimination?
If black lives really mattered to Black Lives Matter, why do they not address the black-on-black violence that takes more lives in a month than police kill in years?
If black lives really mattered to Black Lives Matter, why are they destroying the fabric of communities that invite resources to come there?
If black lives really mattered to Black Lives Matter, why do they not address the pillaging of a Florida WalMart by an almost entirely black mob or the trashing of a Nashville mini golf course?

If black lives really mattered to Black Lives Matter, why are they not addressing what some activists are calling “womb lynching” of black babies?

In the late 70s Jesse Jackson called abortion “murder” and once told a black newspaper in Chicago that “we used to look for death from the man in the blue coat and now it comes in a white coat.”

“According to a city Health Department report released in May, between 2012 and 2016 black mothers terminated 136,426 pregnancies and gave birth to 118,127 babies. By contrast, births far surpassed abortions among whites, Asians and Hispanics.” (WSJ, Jason Riley).  At a ratio of 474 abortions per 1,000 live births across the entire US (more than 40%!), black women have the highest ratio of any group in the country.

Writing in Commentary magazine, Jason Hill, a professor of philosophy at DePaul University, noted the hypocrisy of groups like Black Lives Matter, who “want white people to esteem black lives and value the humanity of black people when they themselves can’t condemn and express moral outrage at those who maim and kill black children in the course of gang warfare, senseless street violence, and drive-by shootings.
“The moral hysteria raised by a few incidents of police brutality in the face of this larger national tragedy is reckless hyperbole and hides from the nation a deep malaise at work in the psyche of some in the black community: a form of self-hatred that manifests itself in a homicidal rage not fundamentally against white people, but against other black people.”

It is intriguing is that Planned Parenthood does not support black lives, though the abortion giant supports Black Lives Matter.
https://illinoisrighttolife.org/three-reasons-why-planned-parenthood-does-not-support-black-lives/

“When you combine the amount of black violent behavior directed at other blacks with the number of pregnancies terminated by black women, the rate at which blacks willingly end the lives of one another is chilling and far surpasses what goes on within other racial and ethnic groups. Racial disparities in abortion rates are no less disturbing than racial disparities in income, crime, poverty and school suspensions. Why are the people who want to lecture the rest of us about the value of black lives pretending otherwise?” (Jason Riley, a black syndicated columnist)

As for the racism of BLM, now a white actor is not even allowed to voice a black cartoon character!  So how does one address the portrayal of historical figures like Aaron Burr, Angelica Schuyler and her sisters, Hercules Mulligan, George Eaker and others in Hamilton by excellent, but much more melanized, actors than the real historical figures?  The cries of systemic racism ring hollow when they are voiced by “anti-racists” who are more racist than those they are protesting. 

Many black authors and pundits would certainly agree, as I do, that black lives matter.  But my black friends do not have any qualms about asserting Chinese lives matter; Asian Indian lives matter; Australian lives matter; Mongolian lives matter; Dutch lives matter; Egyptian lives matter; yes, all lives matter.  Because it is not the color of the skin that matters.

As one pundit said: “the problem is not skin; the problem is sin.
The solution is not race; the solution is grace.” 
We must not confuse racism and injustice.  Racism cannot be fixed with legislation.  That is a posture of the human heart.  A conscious or unconscious feeling of superiority and partiality of one color of skin over another one is not subject to legal definition or prosecution. 

Racism, as an attitude of the heart, does not affect another person until the racist acts on that attitude.  That is when injustice occurs and we must strive as Christ-followers to help laws protect others from injustice, even if the racist refuses to allow his heart to change. “Jesus changes the heart . . . Laws protect us from those whose hearts won’t change.”  (Dr. Dharius Daniels

Remember under all this, there is one race, the human one, and we are all no more than six degrees of separation from any other brother or sister, no matter what their melanin content.  “We are all actually the same color . . . from our melanin; we’re just different shades of the same color.  Just because you don’t have as much melanin as I do, don’t you dare think God does not love you as much as he loves me, just because He gave me more!”  (Vodde Baucham)

Two Hands: One Black, One White

On one hand, someone once said, “If everyone woke up at 6:00am and found we were all the same color, the same religion, and the same nationality, by noon we would have found something to incite our prejudices.”  Prejudice, the ignorant, unreasonable, thoughtless and uninformed formation of an unfavorable view of someone before that person has done anything to warrant such a low opinion, is as constant as the sun.

On the other hand, the manipulation of perceived prejudice to gain personal advantage over someone else is just as constant, and often constitutes a “reverse prejudice” against innocents who differ only in that they resemble those who have expressed prejudice.

On these issues I see two conflicting perspectives, both of which hold some truth.  The difficulty will be in balancing these, especially in a public forum where emotions often can run high and thoughtful dialog can become difficult.  Politicians, police officers, city council members, or anyone publicly addressing racial conflicts must be at the top of their game for any such confrontations or presentations.  It is not enough to spout maxims for the media nor to post tweets or clips on social platforms.  We need serious and thoughtful dialog whenever it will be allowed.

On the one side is the obvious injustice too often suffered by people of color, such as Ahmaud Arbery, Travis Miller and George Floyd experienced.

Anecdotally, a strong young black man who often serves as a day-nurse for a handicapped neighbor was sitting in his car in front of my home.  He had arrived 45 minutes early and was dozing in his very nice new Toyota at 8:15am.  Someone in my neighborhood called the police!!  When the officers kindly knocked on his window and woke him up, he was as professional as he always is and explained clearly his reason for being there.  He even showed them his nurse’s id and driver’s license, a courtesy on his part not required by law.  I have to wonder if an unknown white guy had been dozing in the car, would the police have been called, or might the neighbor have knocked on the window to see if he was all right?

Condoleeza Rice speaks of the racism she encountered (and overcame) growing up in the South.  Just Mercy is an excellent movie portrayal of the difficulty in minorities getting justice as recently as the 1990’s.  And of course, the more recent crimes against blacks in Alabama, Kentucky, and Minnesota simply aggravate a perception of white carelessness.

However, on the other side the BLM “movement” lacks validity based on its origins in Marxist philosophy and socialist intentions (https://thefederalist.com/2016/09/28/black-lives-matter-bringing-back-traditional-marxism/).  While it is true that black lives matter, why does the movement not address black-on-black crime that accounts for many more deaths than white-on-black violence?  Why is there no mention of one of the greatest civil rights leaders  in history in any of the speeches by BLM speakers?

“You can’t blame [these crimes] on a police officer, you can’t say this is about criminal justice reform.  This is about people carrying weapons who shot up a car with an eight-year-old baby in the car.  We’ve got to stop this.  We are doing each other more harm than any police officer on this force.  We’ve had over 75 shootings in the city over the past several weeks.  You can’t blame that on Atlanta’s Police Department.” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance-Bottoms, July 6, 2020.

A Facebook post that I copied for a guest blog (June 16, 2020) details a black police officer’s lament, “I realized that most in the African-American community refuse to look at solving the bigger problem that I see and deal with every day, which is black-on-black crime taking hundreds of innocent black lives each year, and instead focus on the nine questionable deaths of black men, where some were in the act of committing crimes.”

 

Jay Stalien , along with Lexington Kentucky’s Police Chief Weathers, as well as men like Travis Miller, stand as heroes in my book.  We have had a black president and blacks have access to opportunity more than at any point in our history.  Black men and women have ably competed for seats of power in CEO positions, as governors, mayors; in almost every area of authority.  We must not let “white guilt” for crimes committed by ancestors excuse illegal and unjust actions that hurt black and white communities, nor allow “victim mentality” to rule our black communities.  The issue must not be devolved into demanding equal outcomes.

Furthermore what separates us in skin color is so insignificant, one source put it at 0.01 % of our DNA!  It is simply that more or less melanin is most easily identifiable to the ignorant who insist on seeing us as “different races” instead of recognizing we are all the human race with insignificant differences in melanin.  As Vodde Baucham, a black minister at a predominantly white church says, “We are all actually the same color . . . from our melanin; we’re just different shades of the same color.  Just because you don’t have as much melanin as I do, don’t you DARE think God does not love you as much as he loves me, because He gave me more!”

In Mother to Son Jasmine Holmes writes poignantly about “the talk” black mothers must have with their sons, not about the birds and bees like white moms, but about how to act when in driving downtown or across country and the additional dangers he will face just for having more melanin in his skin.  She offers us a window to see what black boys face as they grow into men in America. By giving voice to the perspectives of their mothers, Holmes offers Christ-followers a way forward toward racial unity and understanding.

She explains how one of the most difficult challenges faced by black Christian mothers is helping these children strike the right balance between their blackness and their Christianity.  She makes us wonder if white Christians feel this same conflict?  Do white mothers instruct their children to subject their cultural whiteness to Christianity?

She admits that it has been hard to drive this point home with a black son.  She stresses he must reject media that might be culturally affirmed but violates faith values.  Bitterness, resentment, and hostility — though culturally justified — cannot be embraced by young disciples of Christ, and that is true no matter how much or little melanin you have, whether your hand is black or white.