Tuesday, September 29, 2020
October 1 Faith On Trial ...
Tuesday, September 22, 2020
FOT this Thursday Sept. 24, 2020
This week 10 a.m. Central this Thursday:
The vacancy on
the U. S. Supreme Court – Martin Cannon, The Thomas More Society
Critical race
theory – Mike Gonzales, The Heritage Foundation
Streaming:
IowaCatholicRadio.com
Catholic Nominees To High Court Face Bias
By Bill Donohue, Catholic League president
According to multiple news reports, the two leading candidates to fill the opening on the U.S. Supreme Court are Amy Coney Barrett and Barbara Lagoa. Both federal judges are Catholic. This raises a serious issue: In the event that either woman is nominated, senators who have shown a bias against Catholics being seated on the federal bench should recuse themselves.
There are five Democrats who are already tainted. Their remarks were made as members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
1) Sen. Dick Durbin
On September 7, 2018, I wrote to him regarding his remarks of September 6 on the suitability of University of Notre Dame Law School professor Amy Coney Barrett to be seated on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. I accused him of crossing the line when he drilled down on her Catholicity.
"Do you consider yourself an orthodox Catholic?" This was a remarkable question posed by Durbin. After all, he attended Catholic schools for 19 years. He said he had "never seen [that term] before." He then asked, "What's an orthodox Catholic?" This was disingenuous. Durbin was trying to get Barrett to opine on her Catholic values and how they may affect her judicial decisions. He would never do this to any nominee who was Jewish or Muslim.
Barrett was not perturbed. "It is never appropriate for a judge to apply their personal convictions, whether it derives from faith or personal conviction."
This was not the first time Durbin showed his true colors. In 2005, when considering the qualifications of John Roberts, a Catholic, for the Supreme Court, he told a CNN correspondent that senators need to "look at everything, including the nominee's faith." Yet there is no record of Durbin looking into the faith of non-Catholic nominees for the federal bench.
2) Sen. Dianne Feinstein
On September 7, 2018, I wrote to her about comments she made while questioning Barrett on September 6. "When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you."
I wrote the following to Feinstein. "No one was fooled by your question. Why didn't you come right out and ask her if she takes her judicial cues from the Vatican? That would be more honest." I also asked her, "Do you, as a matter of course, probe the propriety of having a person of deep faith on the court who is not Catholic? If so, please share that information with me. If not, try treating Catholics as equals."
In 2005, when questioning John Roberts, Feinstein asked him if he agreed with President John F. Kennedy when he pledged to respect separation of church and state. Thus did she dig up the old canard about "dual loyalties." Apparently, she was unaware that Kennedy made his Houston remarks in 1960 following an outburst of anti-Catholicism by leading Protestants.
3) Sen. Kamala Harris
In 2018, Harris questioned the suitability of Brian C. Buescher to be seated as a federal district judge. On December 26, 2018, I issued a news release condemning Harris for attacking the nominee because he was a member of the Knights of Columbus, a pro-life Catholic organization.
Harris asked Buescher, "Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman's right to choose when you joined the organization?" Her real target was the Catholic Church's teachings on abortion and sexuality. Harris has also declared war on pro-life activists who expose the ugly practices of abortion mills.
4) Sen. Mazie Hirono
Hirono took the same position against Buescher as Harris did, which is why I included her in my statement of December 26, 2018. Here is what she said to the Catholic nominee. "The Knights of Columbus has taken a number of extreme positions. If confirmed, do you intend to end your membership with this organization to avoid any appearance of that?" She cited the Knights' opposition to gay marriage as an example.
If the Knights are "extreme," then millions of Americans, most of whom are not Catholic, are on the fringes. Those who believe that marriage should be reserved for one man and one woman are hardly extremists. They are simply stating the obvious (only a man and a woman can make a family). No matter, Hirono wants those who believe this verity to be excluded from the judiciary.
5) Sen. Chuck Schumer
On August 13, 2003, I issued a news release criticizing Schumer's remarks opposing Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor's nomination to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Pryor oversaw the removal of the Ten Commandments monument from the state Supreme Court building.
"His beliefs are so well known," Schumer said of Pyror, "so deeply held, that it's very hard to believe—very hard to believe—that they're not going to deeply influence" him if he gets confirmed.
In effect, Schumer was subjecting Pryor to a "de facto" religious test. Charles Krauthammer said "the net effect of Schumer's 'deeply held views' litmus test...is to disqualify from the bench anyone whose personal views of abortion coincide with those of traditional Christianity, Judaism and Islam."
These five senators have shown themselves incapable of fairly considering the nomination of a practicing Catholic to the nation's highest court. Should Amy Coney Barrett or Barbara Lagoa be chosen by President Trump to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court, these Democrats should recuse themselves.
Monday, September 21, 2020
The Debates Are Coming
By DEACON MIKE MANNO, JD
(The Wanderer) Next week the presidential campaign — for good or evil — moves into the debate stage. As you know, there will be three televised debates between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. They will start next Tuesday, September 29, followed by one October 15, and the third October 22. Between the first and the second there will be a vice-presidential debate on October 7 between current Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris.
Debates have been part of the political tapestry of America since the beginning of the Republic but debating by presidential candidates is of relatively recent origin. One of the reasons is that during earlier times presidential candidates did not campaign in the modern sense. Surrogates campaigned in their place. In fact, it wasn’t until 1932 that a presidential candidate — Franklin D. Roosevelt — actually appeared before his national convention to accept his nomination in person.
Prior to that time a special committee from the convention would formally notify the nominee who, in turn, would write a letter — for publication, of course — to the party accepting. So face-to-face debates were out.
But in 1858 Abraham Lincoln did meet Stephen Douglas for a series of seven debates, without a moderator, in which one candidate would open the debate with an hour address, the opponent would then respond with an hour and a half reply, followed by a half-hour response by the first. At each debate the candidates would alternate who would begin the debate. However, that campaign was for a U.S. Senate seat from Illinois.
At the time senators were chosen by the legislature, not popular vote. Thus the campaign was to elect party members to the Illinois legislature. Lincoln lost; Douglas was re-elected to the Senate. However, the two would meet two years later as the respective presidential nominees of their parties.
When we think of presidential candidates debating most think of the Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960. But they weren’t the first; only the first general election debates. Interesting side note: Those who watched the first debate on television thought Kennedy won; those who heard it on the radio thought Nixon had won. The era of televised politics was upon us!
The first debates between presidential candidates took place on the radio in 1948. Candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey and former Minnesota Gov. Harold Stassen, debated in Oregon before that state’s presidential primary. The debate topic was limited to a single issue: Should the Communist Party be outlawed? Dewey won the primary 52-48 percent, won the GOP nomination, but lost the election (“Dewey Defeats Truman”) to President Harry Truman.
In 1956 the first televised presidential debate was held between former Illinois governor and 1952 Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson and Tennessee Sen. Estes Kefauver during the Florida primary. Stevenson won the state’s primary on his way to the nomination; Kefauver won the nomination for vice president on the second ballot. The ticket lost as President Dwight Eisenhower rolled to a second term.
And in 1960, before he won the Democratic nomination, Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy, and his primary opponent, Sen. Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, participated in a televised debate in West Virginia. The polls in West Virginia weighed heavily in Humphrey’s favor — it was more rural than urban, giving the folksy Humphrey an edge over the urbane Kennedy. Additionally, it was 95 percent Protestant which put Kennedy’s Catholicism at issue.
In the earlier Wisconsin primary, Kennedy’s victory came from heavily Catholic areas. His victory was smaller than predicted, which gave Humphrey hope that he could upset Kennedy in the West Virginia primary. The two debated May 4 on WCHS-TV in Charleston where Kennedy took the religious issue head-on, reframing it as tolerance versus intolerance. Kennedy ultimately defeated Humphrey with 60.8 percent of the primary vote cementing the nomination by proving that a Catholic could be elected president.
The era of televised debates between major party nominees followed Kennedy’s nomination when he met Vice President Richard Nixon in four debates. In the first Nixon was handicapped by several visual problems. First, his suit blended in with the background on the black and white television of the day; in contrast Kennedy’s dark suit stood out. Second, he was recovering from a brief hospitalization and had lost weight, and refused makeup which highlighted his five o’clock shadow. The visual comparison helped Kennedy, although, as mentioned above, radio listeners thought Nixon had won.
Nixon, recovering from his poor visual performance, was ready for the three subsequent debates. He was considered the winner of the second and third debates, and the final debate was considered a draw. However, the viewership of the first debate swamped that of the following debates which gave the debate edge to Kennedy who narrowly won the election.
After Kennedy-Nixon it would take another 16 years before general election candidates would debate again, although there were numerous debates between primary candidates. As you might expect, Nixon refused to debate in both his winning presidential campaigns, 1968 and 1972.
The Kennedy-Nixon debates themselves had to be authorized by an act of Congress. The Communications Act of 1934 required all candidates be given equal time on air. Thus for broadcasters to legally limit a broadcast debate to only the major party candidates, Congress had to temporarily suspend the 1934 act. A revision of the rules by the FCC in 1975 eliminated the requirement that the law be suspended.
The next debates were held under the sponsorship of the League of Women Voters starting with the Ford-Carter campaign in 1976. That campaign saw the first of the vice-presidential debates between Minnesota Sen. Walter Mondale and Kansas Sen. Bob Dole. The ’76 debates were working in President Ford’s favor and he was closing the gap between him and Gov. Jimmy Carter. However, in the second debate Ford made the statement that there was no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and his momentum from the first debate stalled and he lost a close election.
In 1980 there were three major candidates: Democrat President Jimmy Carter, former California Republican Gov. Ronald Reagan, and Independent Cong. John Anderson from Illinois. Initially Carter had the lead over Reagan and debates were scheduled with the three candidates. Carter, however, refused to debate with Anderson present and Reagan refused to debate without him. Only Reagan and Anderson participated in the first debate, the second debate, and the vice-presidential debates were canceled. A final debate was held with only Reagan and Carter.
As Kennedy had done in his first debate with Nixon, Reagan took command of the stage and was considered the winner of the debate and went on to a landslide victory over Carter. In 1992 there was a three candidate debate between independent businessman Ross Perot, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, and President George H.W. Bush.
In 1987 the League of Women Voters withdrew from sponsorship of the debates and the nonprofit corporation, The Commission on Presidential Debates, took its place. Established under the sponsorship of both major national parties, it now produces both the presidential and vice-presidential debates. Under the commission rules any candidate with 15 percent support from five national polls can be included in the debates. The rule effectively eliminates third party and independent candidates from the debates.
Independent parties have challenged that rule in the courts, but have been unsuccessful in their attempts to lower the 15 percent threshold. The latest being a D.C. district court which ruled in June that “there is no legal requirement that the commission make it easier for independent candidates to run for president of the United States.
So now the stage is set for the 2020 version of presidential debates. The rules have come a long way since Lincoln and Douglas were alternately given 60, then 90, then 30 uninterrupted minutes to thrust and parry.
Enjoy it: FOX News’ Chris Wallace will moderate. Pull up a chair, pop some corn, and be ready for it to be over-analyzed from what was said to what Chris Wallace wears. For better or worse, this is how we pick our leader. God save us from ourselves.
(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday morning on Faith On Trial on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)
Saturday, September 19, 2020
Thursday, September 17, 2020
Why Is Fox News Protecting George Soros?
By Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League
On September 16, Newt Gingrich was cut off the air on a Fox News show, "Outnumbered," for merely mentioning the role that George Soros is playing in fomenting the anti-cop agenda of the left. Here is what he said.
- "The number one problem
in almost all these cities [where riots have taken place] is George
Soros-elected left-wing anti-police pro-criminal district attorneys who
refuse to keep people locked up."
- "Progressive district attorneys are anti-police, pro-criminal, and [are] overwhelmingly elected with George Soros' money."
Gingrich was interrupted by one of the show's regulars, Melissa Frances, who said, "I'm not sure we need to bring George Soros into this." The former Speaker of the House replied, "He paid for it. Why can't we discuss the fact that millions of dollars ...." Gingrich was then cut off again, this time by Marie Harf who took Frances' side.
Why is Fox News protecting George Soros? Is there anyone who doubts that he is one of the biggest contributors to left-wing causes in the nation, if not the biggest? We at the Catholic League know the atheist billionaire as the nation's most generous donor to anti-Catholic causes and organizations.
It seems plain that Frances was told by the show's producers (in her earpiece) to cut Gingrich off at the knees. She dutifully obliged.
It didn't take long before left-wing media outlets celebrated what happened. The Daily Beast explained that Soros is "often the focus of anti-Semitic tropes." Huff Post said, "In some cases, his name has been used to evoke anti-Semitic tropes."
Maybe Soros has been used this way, and if so, that would be despicable. But neither left-wing website provided any examples. Are we to assume, then, that because some bigots have attacked Soros that no one is allowed to cite his role in promoting the left-wing agenda without being called an anti-Semite? Does this justify trying to censor Newt Gingrich?
Where did Fox News, the Daily Beast, and Huff Post pick up on the talking point that negative comments about Soros can legitimately be construed as anti-Semitic? From the New York Times.
On October 30, 2018, in a front-page story in the New York Times, reporters noted that "baseless claims" that Soros financed illegal border crossings "carry a strong whiff of anti-Semitism." Two days later, November 1, 2018, another front-page story commented that critics of Soros employ "barely coded anti-Semitism." On March 11, 2019, reporters commented that critics of Soros have "skated up to the edge of racism and anti-Semitism with no consequences."
Is it anti-Semitic to criticize George Soros? If so, then the ADL, which was founded to combat anti-Semitism, is anti-Semitic.
On December 5, 2003, ADL national director Abraham Foxman wrote that Soros blamed the current "upsurge of hatred" directed at Jews on Jews. "Not surprisingly," he wrote, "many Jews are distressed by this tendency, now spilling over to our own community, of blaming Jews for anti-Semitism. That is why I have called Mr. Soros' comments obscene."
Would Fox News consider Foxman's remarks anti-Semitic?
Last year, Fox News host Neil Cavuto interviewed me about the fire that engulfed Notre Dame Cathedral in France. Here is what I said. "Well, Neil, if it is an accident, it's a monumental tragedy. But forgive me for being suspicious. Just last month, a 17th-century church was set on fire in Paris. We've seen tabernacles knocked down, crosses have been torn down, statues."
That was it—Cavuto had a meltdown and cut me off. "We don't know that. So if we can avoid what your suspicions might be."
In short, even speculating about the guilty—even though I did not say a word about religious fanatics—was enough to set off the censors in the control room. So much for my free speech.
It is not just Big Tech that is stifling the free speech of conservatives. It's executives at Fox News.
The Depravity of a Culture That Celebrates the Sexploitation of Young Girls | The Stream
The Depravity of a Culture That Celebrates the Sexploitation of Young Girls | The Stream: Now that the new Netflix movie Cuties is available for viewing, we know that it is far worse than we imagined.
Tuesday, September 15, 2020
This Thursday on Faith On Trial on Iowa Catholic Radio
What is “Critical Race Theory?” We’ve heard about it on the news, President Trump has weighed in on the matter and so has the major media. Is it good, bad, or not something to bother with? Mike Gonzalez from the Heritage Foundation will join us to discuss. Also Thursday Robert Tayler, chief counsel for the Advocates for Faith and Freedom will explain some of the difficulties in getting California to open churches … other businesses are open, why not churches?
Join us this Thursday at 10 a.m. CDT for Faith On Trial. Iowa Catholic Radio, 1150 AM; 88.5 & 94.5 FM, streaming on IowaCatholicRadio.com, or download our free app.
Monday, September 14, 2020
For The Election… Suburbanites, Listen Up!
By DEACON MIKE MANNO, JD
There is an issue in this campaign that is bubbling just beneath the surface, yet to catch the attention of the general public. It deals with a nearly obscure adjunct to the 1968 Fair Housing Act: Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH).
The law requires that all federal departments and agencies administer their programs so as to further the purposes of the Fair Housing Act which, in part, is to eliminate housing discrimination and segregated communities.
In 2015 the Obama administration’s Housing and Urban Development adopted the AFFH rule which required cities and towns receiving federal housing funds to conduct studies to determine if there were any patterns or practices in their locations that were inconsistent with the purposes of the law, to analyze the relative factors that may be noncompliant with the law, then to develop plans to rectify the situation.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that, according to the Poverty & Race
Research Action Council, the AFFH rule worked by creating “a community-centered
process to analyze patterns and causes of segregation as well as neighborhood
disparities,” and by having jurisdictions looking for federal funding “set
actionable goals to promote greater integration and equity.”
But the objections to the AFFH were not with the idea of fairness in housing,
but the remedies. Under the Obama rule the federal government had to correct what
the administration would deem objectionable patterns of discrimination or
quasi-discrimination.
“Before we could see the results of the 2015 rule, it was suspended, and now it has been dismantled,” Angela McIver, of the Fair Housing Rights Center in Southeastern Pennsylvania told the Inquirer.
“Now, the same jurisdictions that receive federal funds for housing only have to certify that they will do something in relation to fair housing.”
In announcing the repeal of the rule, Housing Secretary Dr. Ben Carson, said the Obama rule “was an overreach of unelected Washington bureaucrats into local communities.”
What was so objectionable? Stanley Kurtz of National Review, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, answered, “It would allow bureaucrats in Washington, in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, to control zoning laws, to control the placement of transportation and business districts, even to some degree the drawing of school districts — in other words, almost every important local governmental responsibility could, under AFFH, fall into the de facto control of the feds.”
Kurtz, in an interview on FOX’s Life, Liberty & Levin, told host Mark Levin that the real problem stems from the Democratic notions that view the suburbs as “fundamentally unjust.” People move from more urban locations to the suburbs and take with them the tax base that the larger central cities need to survive.
“That is viewed by Obama and many other Democrats as a way of selfishly keeping your money from less well-off people in the cities,” Kurtz told Levin.
“So the Obama administration, riding on some language in the original Fair
Housing Act that did not have all the meanings he gave to it, created a really
massive rule called [AFFH].”
Now, he notes, former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential
nominee, has suggested that if elected he would not only re-implement the AFFH,
but Biden’s would go further than Obama’s original rule. According to Kurtz:
“Biden has embraced [Sen.] Cory Booker’s (D., N.J.) strategy for ending single-family zoning in the suburbs and creating what you might call ‘little downtowns’ in the suburbs. Combine the Obama-Biden administration’s radical AFFH regulation with Booker’s new strategy, and I don’t see how the suburbs can retain their ability to govern themselves.
“It will mean the end of local control, the end of a style of living that many people prefer to the city, and therefore the end of meaningful choice in how Americans can live.”
Calling AFFH an “affirmative action for community planning,” Kurtz cites three elements that would intermingle suburbs with the larger cities they surround.
First, it would create a “quota system” to force “economic integration” on the suburbs; second, it would slow down or close suburban growth by restricting the use of automobiles and limiting highway growth, thus forcing people back into the cities; and, finally, it would force suburbs to redistribute tax moneys to poor cities in their metropolitan region.
“The impact of this radically progressive policy would put the suburban vote at risk for Democrats,” Kurtz said. “The danger AFFH poses to Democrats explains why the press barely mentions it. This lack of curiosity, in turn, explains why the revolutionary nature of the rule has not been properly understood. Ultimately, the regulation amounts to back-door annexation, a way of turning America’s suburbs into tributaries of nearby cities,” he added.
Star Parker, columnist for The Daily Signal and president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, called the Obama rule a “war on the lifestyle of the single-family home.”
She wrote, “The Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule pretends to take
care of all of this [urban sprawl, environmental problems] by invading the
suburban space; limiting single-family home zoning; mandating dense, low-income
housing; and financing it all with tax revenue from resident single-family home
dwellers. It was the right move by the Trump administration to eliminate this
inappropriate assault on the most basic American freedom to choose where and
how one wants to live.”
The Catechism And Subsidiarity
Now, place this all in the context of the general election, especially in light of the activities of Black Lives Matter and other left-wing pressure groups. Should the Democrats win the Senate, they have promised to end the filibuster, which means that any bill can pass the upper house with a simple majority vote. With no filibuster to deal with in the House it, too, can easily pass the Biden proposal, which he will surely sign into law.
There will be no check the Republicans can use to stop this federal power grab.
No longer will local governing bodies and their citizens control their own
zoning or community planning.
All will ultimately be in the hands of the Biden administration, which will
make the final decisions so to achieve their vision of equality and
environmental policies.
Ironically, the proposal also contradicts one of the essential Catholic social doctrines, the principle of subsidiarity — the belief that issues should be dealt with as close to the people affected as possible.
“A community of higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1883). Or we might call it federalism.
This scheme should come up in the campaign, and at the debates, if we have debates. Hopefully there is an enterprising reporter somewhere with the determination to raise the issue. Then we’ll see how the rest of the press and the candidates handle it.
(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday at 10 a.m. CDT on Faith On Trial on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)
Thursday, September 10, 2020
Wednesday, September 9, 2020
New York Times Earns Spot In "1619 Project"
By Bill Donohue, Catholic League president
Coming on the heels of a bloody summer, much of it driven by racially charged rhetoric and behavior, the new school year has begun. But not without calls to address racism. Elementary and secondary students are being primed to learn about America's irredeemably racist past, present, and future.
The favorite resource for educators is the "1619 Project." It is a proposed curriculum being disseminated by the New York Times that seeks to revise American history. According to this version, America was not founded in a revolution in 1776; it was founded in slavery in 1619.
This vision of the Founding is now working its way into school curricula across the nation. It has been formally adopted in Chicago, D.C., Buffalo, Newark, Wilmington, and Winston-Salem. Thousands of classrooms around the nation will implement this radical interpretation of American history.
The "1619 Project" is the work of Nikole Hannah-Jones. Her contribution is not the result of her training: She is neither a historian or a professor. She is a journalist. And while she complains about systemic racism, Hannah-Jones, whose mother is white and father is black, insisted that no white people work with her on the Project.
Prominent historians of America's founding have panned her work. In a letter that these leading scholars signed, they charged the "1619 Project" with "a displacement of historical understanding by ideology." Pulitzer Prize winning historian Gordon Wood accused this initiative of being "so wrong in many ways." Another winner of this prize, James McPherson, said that it "left most of the history out."
Hillsdale College president Larry Arnn succinctly summed up the problem with Hannah-Jones' creative enterprise. The "1619 Project," he said, is "an ideological campaign to undermine Americans' attachment to our founding principles and to the Constitution by making slavery—rather than the principles of liberty that ended slavery and preserved our liberties for nearly 250 years—the principal focus of American history."
Students will be taught that Africans were forcibly taken from their homeland and brought to the New World as slaves. They will not be taught that slavery has existed in every part of the globe, and that Africans were bought by Europeans from their African slavemasters; they were not captured. Nor will students learn that slavery was abolished in the United States in 1865, but it took until 1981 for Africa to make it illegal (it still exists in parts of Africa today).
Most important, students will not learn that the Founders could have decided to justify slavery, making no overtures toward liberty. That is what virtually every other nation has done. Instead, they crafted the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the net effect of which was to lay the philosophical and legal foundation for the eventual demise of slavery. The Civil War was fought precisely to realize the Founders' vision of liberty.
No nation has made more progress in realizing equal opportunity than the United States. We recently twice elected a black president and have done more to end systemic racism than any other nation. One of the reasons why so many people want to come to our shores—often illegally—is because we are the envy of the world. It is our unparalleled freedom and prosperity that draws so many minorities to come here. But none of this will be taught to students subjected to the "1619 Project."
To make matters worse, the New York Times has no moral leg to stand on. The following report was sent to all schools in the six states listed above that have adopted the "1619 Project." The version that the schools received included an introductory note.
"1619
PROJECT":
PROPOSED REVISION
The New York Times rolled out its "1619 Project" on the alleged racist origins of the United States with great fanfare. It would be inexcusably hypocritical not to include the newspaper's own contribution to racism in classroom instructions.
The family that owned the New York Times were slaveholders. To wit: Bertha Levy Ochs, the mother of the paper's patriarch, Adolph S. Ochs, was a rabid advocate of slavery, continuing a tradition set by her slave-owning uncle. She lived with her father's brother, John Mayer (he dropped the surname Levy), for several years in Natchez, Mississippi before the Civil War. He owned at least five slaves.
Ochs' parents, Julius and Bertha Levy, were German Jewish immigrants who met in the South before moving to Ohio (where Adolph was born). When the Civil War broke out, Bertha wanted to be actively engaged in her pro-slavery efforts and moved to Memphis to support her Confederate-fighting brother (Julius was on the Union side).
When Bertha died, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, to which she belonged, draped a Confederate flag over her coffin. Adolph even donated $1,000 to have her name engraved on the founders' roll of the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial. He sent a note saying, "Robert E. Lee was her idol."
Adolph was raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, and at age 20 he became the publisher of the Chattanooga Times. In 1900, the paper ran an editorial saying that the Democratic Party, which he supported, "may justly insist that the evils of negro suffrage were wantonly inflicted on them." After he purchased the New York Times in 1896, he moved to New York. When he died in 1935, the United Daughters of the Confederacy sent a gift to be placed in his coffin.
Most Americans are mature enough not to blame the New York Times today for the racist beliefs and practices of its ancestry. In doing so, they show prudence. But are they too generous in their assessment? According to the wisdom of the "1619 Project," they are absolutely too forgiving.
If this were all there was to the racist history of the New York Times, we could give it a pass. But we cannot. Its racist record runs deep.
In 1910, the Times covered a heavyweight boxing match between the black heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson, and Jim Jeffries, the former heavyweight champion who came out of retirement for the fight. Jeffries, dubbed the "Great White Hope," was expected to win. He lost.
The sports writers for the Times put their money on Johnson, but not before issuing a dire warning. "If the black man wins, thousands and thousands of his ignorant brothers will misinterpret his victory as justifying claims to much more than mere physical equality with their white neighbors." In other words, stupid blacks might want political, economic and social rights as well, and that would not be auspicious.
In the 1920s, after a race riot in Washington, a Times editorial waxed nostalgic, speaking about conditions prior to the Great War (World War I.) "The majority of Negroes in Washington before the Great War were well behaved," adding that in those happy days, "most of them admitted the superiority of the white race and troubles between the two races were unheard of." They wanted more than "mere physical equality."
Also in the 1920s, Adolph Ochs invited a black singer, Roland Hayes, to lunch at the New York Times. His father, Julius, was so angry he left the building. According to Iphigene, Adolph's progressive daughter, Julius believed that while "we love the Negroes," it is important to "keep them in their place; they are fine as long as they stay in the kitchen."
In 1931, in one of the most infamous racist events in the 20th century, two white woman accused nine black teens of rape. It turned out to be totally false. Adolph's Chattanooga Times was quick to condemn the alleged rapists. An editorial read, "Death Penalty Properly Demanded in Fiendish Crime of Nine Burly Negroes." The trial reporter for the paper called the defendants "beasts unfit to be called human."
Matters did not change throughout the 1940s. The NAACP, while noting that this southern arm of the New York Times was somewhat better than its competitors, it was still "anti-Negro." That is because the papers were in the hands of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger. While on a Red Cross tour of England during World War II, he expressed horror at the sight of black American soldiers "fraternizing" with white women. "Rape by Negroes is just one degree worse than by whites, and black illegitimate children just one degree more unfortunate than white ones." That is what he told General Dwight Eisenhower.
Arthur's workplace policies were also tinged with racism. A Newspaper Guild survey taken in the 1950s found that of the 75,000 newsroom employees he commanded, just 38 were black. Bad as he was, he was still better than other family members. He fought, successfully, to end the practice by the Chattanooga Times of publishing racially segregated obituaries.
Even though those who ran the New York Times made progress with racial relations in the 1960s and 1970s, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. said in the 1980s that the paper was "just miserable to women, miserable to blacks."
It was miserable to blacks in another way. By championing the life of Margaret Sanger, a notorious racist, it shows, and continues to show, how much further it needs to go before its racist past is behind it.
Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, referred to blacks as "weeds" and "human waste" in need of "extinction." But to the august New York Times, she was known in 1980 as a "modern heroine." At the end of the decade, she was cited as a "legendary pioneer." In 1992, she was labeled a "strong-willed woman." In 2006, the eugenicist was branded "courageous," and in 2014 was noted as a "pioneering feminist."
Never once did the New York Times call Margaret Sanger out for what she was—a white racist who lied to the public about her real motives. "We don't want the word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population." She had little to worry about—the "newspaper of record" kept the truth from the public. It still does.
It's not just the defense of notorious racists that bedevils the newspaper—it has been accused of promoting racism in its workplace.
In 2016 two black female employees in their sixties filed a class-action lawsuit against Mark Thompson, the CEO of the New York Times Company. They argued that "deplorable discrimination" exists in the workplace. "Unbeknownst to the world at large," their deposition says, "not only does the Times have an ideal customer (young, white, wealthy), but also an ideal staffer (young, white, unencumbered with a family) to draw that purported ideal customer."
For all of these reasons, any school that adopts the "1619 Project" as a model to discuss the history of racism in the United States has a moral obligation to inform students of the racist legacy of the New York Times. Not to do so would be intellectually dishonest. If we are to have a national conversation about race, we must tell the truth about the role that this newspaper has played in contributing to racism in the United States.
Tuesday, September 8, 2020
How will the election affect pro-life activities?
This week on Faith On Trial we’ll try to answer that question with Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life. Following Fr. Pavone we’ll host Theresa Walsh, Executive Director of InnerVisions Health Clinic where women facing an unexpected or crisis pregnancy can go for help.
All at 10 a.m. CDT Thursday
Friday, September 4, 2020
COVID-19 Lawsuits Affecting Ministry
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The Importance of Religious Liberty in a Healthy Society
Gateway Seminary President Jeff Iorg and Professor Glenn Prescott discuss how religious liberty contributes to societal health, our freedom to proclaim the gospel, the polarization in our culture, and the Christian church’s role in current political and cultural issues. Join us during our YouTube live event, Ministry Under Fire, on September 9, 2020 at 9AM (PST) to learn more about current cases affecting the cultural challenges ministries face today.
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Mr. Tyler of Advocates for Faith and Freedom has been a frequent guest on our radio program, Faith On Trial. In fact he is scheduled to join us on our program Thursday September 17. That program will air live at 10 a.m. (CDT) on Iowa Catholic Radio, 1150 AM; 88.5 & 94.5 FM and it will stream on IowaCatholicRadio.com. It will also be on our free app.
You can view the conference mentioned above at: https://youtu.be/uv-JJ7cA6MY at 9 a.m. (PST)
Thursday, September 3, 2020
Pro-Abortion "Catholic" Group Should Fold
By Bill Donohue, president the Catholic League
In 1973, in the year that abortion was legalized, an anti-Catholic group was founded to promote abortion rights. But it was not the usual anti-Catholic outfit. This one falsely assumed a Catholic identity. Initially called Catholics for a Free Choice, it would later shorten its name to Catholics for Choice. Having been around for almost a half century, it now looks like it is in disarray.
When it was founded in New York City, it did not set up shop in the New York Archdiocese (as did the Catholic League when it moved to the Big Apple in 1992). No, this "Catholic" pro-abortion outfit rented space from Planned Parenthood. Its first president was Father Joseph O'Rourke; he was expelled from the Jesuits in 1974. It now appears that its time is up: It has been curiously without a president this entire year.
Jon O'Brien was president of Catholics for Choice for 12 years, having succeeded Frances Kissling, the long-time champion of abortion-on-demand. On December 2, 2019, this well-funded letterhead (it has no members) announced that he resigned. In his place was named an acting president, Sara Hutchinson Ratcliffe. She is still acting president.
Ratcliffe honed her abortion-rights skills at Planned Parenthood. Under her tutelage, almost nothing has been done. Its quarterly magazine, "Conscience," stopped publishing in the fall of 2019. In 2020, Catholics for Choice issued a mere seven press releases, and the last time it was cited in the news was March 31, 2020 (before that it was August 16, 2019). By contrast, the Catholic League generates news releases on a steady basis and is cited in the news almost daily.
Every presidential-election year, Catholics for Choice tries to convince the public that it is entirely acceptable for Catholics to be pro-abortion. It is not. From the Vatican to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, directives have repeatedly been issued making it clear there are not two legitimate Catholic positions on abortion. There is only one: pro-life. This year, the invisibility of this faux Catholic outlet will not be of any use to Joe Biden.
Without funding from the Ford Foundation and other left-wing philanthropies, Catholics for Choice would fold. It's time it should. Even its allies must know that its time is up—it is accomplishing nothing.
Wednesday, September 2, 2020
Former Dem vote ‘fixer’ says election fraud rampant, will spark ‘war’ in November
Tactics range from unsealing envelopes and replacing ballots, using complicit postal workers to throw out ballots, and 'helping' nursing home residents fill out ballots.
By Calvin
Freiburger
September 1,
2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Stealing
elections by manipulating mail-in ballots is a very real danger, according to a
longtime Democrat “fixer” who told his story to the New York Post over
the weekend.
The
individual, who requested to remain anonymous, claims to have rigged mail-in
ballots “on a grand scale” for “decades,” according
to the Post, which says it has verified his identity, past
crimes, and history of political consulting work.
“His dirty
work has taken him through the weeds of municipal and federal elections in
Paterson, Atlantic City, Camden, Newark, Hoboken and Hudson County and his
fingerprints can be found in local legislative, mayoral and congressional races
across the Garden State,” the Post’s Jon Levine wrote. “Some
of the biggest names and highest office holders in New Jersey have benefited
from his tricks.”
“There is no
race in New Jersey — from city council to United States Senate — that we
haven’t worked on,” said the fixer, a former Bernie Sanders supporter.
The fixer
explained that photocopying ballots is simple enough, as real copies have no
security features, but return envelopes do, so real ones have to be collected
from actual voters.
“He would
have his operatives fan out, going house to house, convincing voters to let
them mail completed ballots on their behalf as a public service,” Levine
reported. “The fraudster and his minions would then take the sealed envelopes
home and hold them over boiling water” to loosen the glue, then simply replace
the real ballot with a fake one and reseal the envelope. “Five minutes per
ballot tops,” the fixer said.
The
whistleblower added that in some localities postal employees actually
serve as a fraud operation’s “work crew.” If an anti-Trump postal worker serves
in a neighborhood where “95 percent are going to a Republican, he can just
throw those in the garbage.”
Other
effective methods include “helping” nursing home residents fill out their
ballots (a “gold mine,” per the fixer), bribing homeless people to vote for a
certain candidate, and even sending operatives to impersonate voters at polling
places (based on public records revealing who tends to sit out elections). He
also revealed that ballots his people have fixed are subtly marked in such a
way (such as a bent corner) that Democrat volunteers at county elections boards
know not to challenge them.
President
Donald Trump set
off a firestorm in May when he tweeted that mail-in ballots for the
upcoming elections would be “substantially fraudulent. Mailboxes will be
robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out &
fraudulently signed.” Many have attempted to discredit Trump’s comments as a
conspiracy theory, but evidence suggests there is ample cause for concern, from
former New York City elections commissioner Alan Schulkin (a Democrat) admitting in
2016 that vote fraud is widespread, to a New Jersey judge vacating the
results of a city council election over charges of election fraud.
“An election
that is swayed by 500 votes, 1,000 votes … could be enough to flip states,” the
anonymous fixer warned the Post. “This is a real thing. And there is going to
be a f***ing war coming November 3rd over this stuff … If they knew how the
sausage was made, they could fix it.”
Tuesday, September 1, 2020
Some Catholics Are Not!
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By Judie Brown, President American Life League The Catholic faithful silently said a
prayer of thanks for the words of Notre Dame’s famed former head coach Lou Holtz who told the
nation the truth: that Joe Biden is a Catholic in name only. But my oh my, how the non-faithful scurried as they lined up to attack the
coach and his honesty. Even infamous dissident Jesuit James Martin joined in the
nastiness! Their collective defense of the
pro-abortion Biden reminded me of a childhood game called “Rock, paper, scissors.” In that game, paper covers
rock. When discussing Catholic teaching on something as clear as the evil
of abortion, Biden is the paper, and Catholic teaching is the
rock that he attempts to cover—or push down—with his deceit and lies. That
rock that Biden covered up is the truth of our faith spoken by many of us, by
the coach, and most importantly by Jesus Christ Himself, who is the way, the truth, and the
life. Biden’s 47-year record of support for abortion-murder gives him the mistaken idea that claiming to be Catholic is sufficient, even though he does all he can to advance the culture of death and cover up the truths of our faith. Others who verbally decried the coach
and did all they could to distance themselves from him—including Notre Dame’s president—are the scissors. These folks
attempted to cut away at Holtz’s credibility, thus becoming complicit in
Biden’s deceit. The distinctions are very clear. Sadly,
they are not clear to those who play games of politics instead of witnessing
to truth. So why is this important? In this case,
as in so many others, simple comparisons help us define why certain actions
and words are problematic. We are living in a world where truth is nothing
more to some than a personal opinion, so when we draw clear distinctions in
simple ways, we can help bring clarity into the darkness. The allusion to this game can work in
other areas as well. For example, when we see the various reports of
the vulnerable elderly who have died tragically in
nursing homes or long-term care facilities because of the negligence of
others. In this situation, the elderly are the vulnerable paper. They are in
isolation, and their care is often in the hands of caregivers, who act like scissors by shredding ethical
healthcare practices. This happens because not-so-Catholic men like Governor Cuomo also act as scissors. Such hypocrites
are leaders who are so busy avoiding responsibility for their decisions that
truth is shredded and thousands of elderly men and women die. Speaking truth as Coach Holtz did is
laudable, while Cuomo’s actions and denials are both evil personified and
deadly. In the battle we wage, striving always
to defend the culture of life as we work to dismantle the culture of death,
we know that public sentiment is often the worst enemy of all. Helping others
see the facts with clarity and on purpose must be our goal. By clearing up
false narratives, we are lighting the way to protect and preserve life. Abortion is a grave evil, but this truth is rejected and babies die.
Euthanasia in any of its forms—including the negligence in many states during
the pandemic—is evil, but the truth is rarely acknowledged. In the aftermath,
people die. Saving lives, affirming human dignity,
and fighting for every innocent person’s right to live are the greatest goods
for which we should fight every day. As Catholic pro-life people, we are
called to strive always to be among those who crush evil with good. And we
strive to expose the deceivers who grind the truth in the jaws of evil while
denying that what they do is wrong. Never forget that, while not one of us
is perfect, Jesus Christ is perfect, and His words to us in Matthew 16:24 are clear: “If anyone
wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow
Me.” So let’s face it: Some Catholics are
not. |
Faith On Trial -- Thursday September 3
This week on Faith On Trial: Hans von Spankovsky from the Heritage Foundation on mail-in voting; and Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition on Covid-19 lockdowns and the mental health of the isolated and lonely. 10 a.m. (CDT) Thursday on IowaCatholicRadio.com.
FSU student sues school, student govt for punishing him for privately sharing his Catholic convictions
ADF attorneys represent student after university fails to address
unconstitutional retaliation against him by student government
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. –
Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed a lawsuit Monday
against Florida State University administrators and student senate officials
after they repeatedly failed to address unconstitutional retaliation against
the president of the FSU Student Senate for sharing his personal religious
beliefs with other students.
In a
June 3 private text conversation with fellow Catholic
students, Jack Denton suggested that BlackLivesMatter.com, Reclaim the Block,
and the ACLU advocate for causes opposed to Catholic teaching and Catholic
students may wish to avoid supporting the organizations financially. After
another student took screenshots of Denton’s private messages and shared them
publicly on social media, student senators mocked and misrepresented his
remarks and, after a failed attempt on June 3, removed Denton from leadership
as the SGA’s student senate president on June 5. ADF attorneys filed the
lawsuit after receiving no response to a letter they sent to
university officials on July 22, advising them to address the unconstitutional
violation of Denton’s First Amendment freedoms.
“All students should be able to peacefully share their personal convictions
without fear of retaliation,” said ADF Senior Counsel Tyson Langhofer, director
of the ADF Center for Academic Freedom. “Florida State should be fostering real
diversity of thought, not punishing individuals based on their religious
convictions or political beliefs. While FSU students claim they’re creating a
‘safe space,’ they’ve tried to cancel Jack’s freedoms and discriminate against
him because they don’t like his beliefs, in direct violation of the school’s
SGA Ethics Code, the Student Body Constitution, and—most importantly—the First
Amendment.”
“Jack has patiently appealed to fellow students and university administrators
using the university’s internal procedures,” Langhofer continued, “but students
and administrators have repeatedly failed to respect Jack’s constitutionally
protected freedoms. That’s why we’re filing a federal lawsuit to defend Jack.”
As the ADF lawsuit states, “Student governments at public universities are the
ultimate ground for experimenting with representative self-government in a
diverse society. Students from all walks of life and points of view have the
opportunity to work together for the common good of their university community
through the political process, all while engaging in the pursuit of truth that
the university is designed to facilitate. Students must live with one
another—quite literally—and student government helps them learn to do so in a
way that respects the ability to develop different moral and political ideas
and speak about them in a political context.”
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