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Kids Write Obama on Abortion

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Mike Adams
January 22, 2013  •Leave a Comment
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I’m getting sick and tired of the Obama administration using children selectively in order to help the president advocate his public policy positions. As I sat and watched his recent press conference, I finally understood his opposition to the Iraq War. It seems he and the late President Hussein are kindred spirits who share more than just a name. They share a sick penchant for using children as human shields in the middle of war. And make no mistake about it; America is currently at war with itself on many different fronts. As I sat and watched Obama surrounded by little human political shields, three things struck me as being especially hypocritical:

1. Just a few years ago, the president would have supported murdering all of those children by dismemberment.

2. The president would have classified their dismemberment as “health care” within a comprehensive reform package necessary to preserve the well-being of children, and finally

3. All the children at the press conference were protected from being murdered at that particular moment by government agents carrying concealed weapons.

But it got worse as the day went on. ABC News and other outlets began circulating letters written to Obama by children wishing to weigh in on current public policy debates. That’s normal, of course. Children always weigh in on public policy debates without being prodded by liberal parents who never left childhood themselves. And everyone knows it makes sense to base public policy decisions on the recommendations of children.

What people do not realize is that the practice of children voluntarily writing the White House is so common that the Obama Administration is having difficulty keeping the content of some of these letters from the press. Fortunately, I have a mole in the White House who has sent me some of these previously hidden letters – all of which were mailed by school children to Obama. In fairness, we are forbidden to assume that any of the following letters were written under duress from right wing parents or school teachers:

Grant writes “Mr. Obama, there should be some changes in the law with abortions. It’s a free country, but I recommend there needs be [sic] a limit with killing babies. Please don’t let people own abortion clinics or give money to powerful lobbies like Planned Parenthood. I think there should be a good reason to get an abortion. There should be a limit about [sic] how many abortions a person can have.”

Julia writes “Even though I am not scared for my own safety, I am scared for others who are not yet born. My opinion is it should be very hard for people to be aborted in the womb. I beg you to work very hard to make killing children not allowed, not just for me, but for the whole United States.”

Taejah writes “I am very sad about the children who lost their lives since 1973. So I thought I would write to you to STOP feminist violence. Thank you, Mr. President.”

Right now, ABC, NBC, CBS, and the New York Times should be up in arms about the fact that these letters are just now hitting the press. They should also be outraged that it took a leak for them to get there. Clearly, the press has a right to know what all children – liberal or conservative – are thinking about important matters of public policy. With the help of the media, we could have curtailed the right to abortions – despite the fact that they are clearly written into the language of the constitution (right next to the right to homosexual sodomy and free birth control). After all, the president himself said “if there’s even one step that we can take to save another child then surely we have an obligation to try.”

If only the president valued the political opinions of all children equally. Then he might realize that every child has an equal right to life. And so many children could be saved.

 



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Stand For Life

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Mike Adams
January 16, 2013  •Leave a Comment
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A former student recently emailed that she was disappointed that I had gotten so heavily involved with the student pro-life movement in recent years. She said she could remember a time when I had a love for defending free speech rights. Her email was somewhat unfair as I am still defending First Amendment rights (did she read my last column?). Also, I have been involved in pro-life advocacy since I became a columnist in 2002. In fact, my very first published column was on the topic of abortion.

In the event my former student is reading this expression of anti-abortion advocacy, I would like to enumerate the reasons why she – a pro-lifer herself – should have been involved in the student pro-life movement when she was in college. The following are also reasons why all pro-life students should be actively pro-life:

1. The Societal Diminution of all Human Life. The pro-abortion choice movement has produced a general devaluing of human life that can only be corrected by a strong pro-life movement among students. How many of you were shocked by the acquittal of Casey Anthony? I was certainly angry but I was not shocked. She wanted to party and to date without being weighed down by the responsibility of motherhood. I believe she killed her little girl in order to live a life of convenience. The evidence clearly points toward her unmitigated guilt. But tens of millions of women have done the same thing since Roe v. Wade. No wonder the Anthony jury seemed bored throughout most of the proceedings. No wonder she walked despite the evidence. Her kind of guilt is commonplace.

2. The proximity of the threat. The culture war is raging in America. There are battlefields everywhere but none as large or contentious as the university campus. This is where the immensely profitable non-profits make a lot of their money off abortion. They are marketing their services to your fellow students. Therefore, simply by virtue of where you are, you can make a greater difference if you are willing to cut against the current.

3. Momentum. A May 2009 Gallup Poll found 51% of Americans calling themselves pro-life. Gallup began asking that question in 1995 and this was the first time a majority of Americans identified themselves as pro-life. Pew Research Center did a survey around the same time showing that only 46% believed abortion should be legal in all or most cases. That was down from 54% the previous year. Therefore, I would urge pro-lifers to become activists because they would be joining a winning team. In so doing, they could help accelerate these positive trends.

4. State and Individual Neutrality. The state cannot be neutral on abortion. It either a) recognizes that the unborn are human and have a right to life or b) permits killing them. Since our government has taken the public policy position that the unborn are not afforded the same rights as toddlers – including the right to be free from dismemberment – you need to take a public policy position, too. That means becoming an activist, not being a pacifist in the midst of a war on the unborn.

5. Propaganda and Passivity. Pro-choice arguments are so bad that they cannot survive scrutiny. They must be confined to soliloquy, rather than subjected to debate. For example, the “back alley abortion” argument suggests that we must make killing children safe or else adults might be killed in the process. Abortion choice advocates warn that “thousands” would be killed in back alleys if abortion were once again illegal. This is the way they justify legalizing the murder of millions. The logic is twisted and the facts are wrong. The Centers for Disease Control reported that only 39 women died from illegal abortions in 1972, the year before Roe v. Wade. Put simply, propaganda is activism. And it is only effective when repeated endlessly in the presence of the passive. So we must all be active in combatting this deadly information.

6. Men’s Liberation. Men tend to be more supportive of abortion than women. That is why it is more accurate to call the so-called abortion rights movement a men’s liberation movement – as opposed to a woman’s liberation movement. Abortion liberates men by allowing them to sleep around without fear of consequences. It frees men from fatherhood and allows them to exploit women. So we need more male activists. Next time someone says “men have never had abortions, so they should not be commenting on it” say this: “women have never played in the NFL, so they should not be sportscasters.”

7. Underlining Causes. People will tell you that you should never become an activist seeking to make abortion unacceptable or, heaven forbid, illegal. Instead, they say you should focus on underlying causes. Rape has underlying causes. Should we make it legal and instead try to treat its underlying causes? Come to think of it, spousal abuse has underlying causes, too. We would never elect a politician who ran on a platform of making it legal for a man to beat his spouse. But we routinely elect politicians who run on a platform of saying it should remain legal for a woman to kill her baby. As you young people would say, “that’s messed up.” Indeed, it is. That’s why we need activists.

Reading this column, you may have noticed that all of my observations to this point have been brilliant. I’ll have more brilliant observations in my next book, “Up from Humility.” But the brilliant observations in this column have not been mine. In fact, each and every one of them was stolen from a new book called Stand for Life: Answering the Call, Making the Case, Saving Lives by John Ensor and Scott Klusendorf.

I highly recommend John and Scott’s new book. You can pick it up on Amazon for less than the price of two tall skinny lattes or a single ticket to the late show. By the time you are finished reading, you’ll be ready to take your first steps as an activist fighting for the right of the unborn to take their first steps.

Stand for Life is more than just aptly titled. It’s a real life saver (and I mean that literally). Of course, that’s just my humble opinion.

 



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Every Idea Is an Incitement

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Mike Adams
January 8, 2013  •Leave a Comment
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Dear CRM 495 Students:

Welcome back! It’s hard to believe that Christmas break is over and that it’s time to start a new semester. It’s almost as hard as believing that one of your professors is actually sending you an email using the word “Christmas.” But even the liberals agree that I am no ordinary professor. Please allow me to explain.

After I got tenure, I left the political Left and became a conservative Republican. I know you’ve never had a conservative professor before and you are probably wondering what to expect. In a nutshell, you can expect to hear the truth about a number of things for the very first time in your college career. And that means you can probably expect to be offended from time to time.

Just in case you are wondering whether you are getting in over your head, let me give you a few examples of beliefs I hold, which you may well deem to be offensive. Based on the following revelations, you can make an informed decision as to whether this class is really for you.

African-Americanism. I think the term African-American is ridiculous. If you insist on being called this then you aren’t American and you’ve probably never been to Africa. If you demand to be a hyphenated American then you’re just un-American. Get over yourself or get out of the country. Sorry if you’re offended but you offend me with your ethnocentrism.

Coke. I cannot stand that four letter word that begins with “c” and refers to female genitalia. Repeating it at The Vagina Monologues does not make women empowered. It makes them unrefined idiots. If you c*** c*** a feminist play without using feminists who say the word c*** then you simply c*** be taken seriously. Sorry if you’re offended, but women who curse like sailors offend me.

Daddy issues. Every semester, I get at least one female student who comes into class late and hyperventilating. She makes a scene in order to get sympathy. Then, she apologizes after class while dumping all her personal problems on me. Let me be blunt: women like this have daddy issues. Put simply, daddy didn’t give them enough attention and now they are seeking it from me because I remind them of daddy. Sorry that offends you. Go tell your daddy.

Guns. I have more guns than I need but fewer than I want. In fact, as I sit in my home office writing this email I am positioned between two packed gun safes. There are enough guns in this room to issue a 21 gun salute in the event you don’t make it through the semester. There are also about 12,000 rounds of ammunition in this room. And there is more elsewhere in the house. Some people are afraid of guns but I am afraid of gunlessness. Most of your professors say that homophobia is a social disease. I say that hoplophobia is a social disease. If you don’t like abortion – oops! I mean guns – you don’t have to have one.

Momma’s boys. Every semester, I get at least three male students who cannot run their lives. They constantly ask me questions that I have already answered on the syllabus. When is the first test? What kind of questions are on it? How many tests are there? These are the kinds of young males who still could not wipe their bottoms when they were 12 (and probably still can’t do their own laundry). If you are one of them, you have no chance of passing my class and no chance of succeeding in life. Please drop out now and join the army. Sorry if that offends you but you need to be a man. If that’s too much to ask, just complain to momma next time you’re home dropping off your laundry.

Pepsi. I cannot stand that five letter word that begins with “p” and refers to female genitalia. Every year at The Vagina Monologues, they sell p***** pops, which are little candied vaginas on a stick. The feminists walk around licking them in a display of feminist empowerment. I hate to be p**** but why don’t they sell p**** pops, too. Maybe that would offend them. That’s too bad because their sexism offends me.

Queer Centers. When I was a kid, we played “smear the queer” (dodge ball). Later, they said we could not call it that. Now, the word “queer” has made a queer re-entry into the realm of social acceptability. Some colleges are even opening “Queer Resource Centers.” Make up your mind, thought police. And stop acting like women with daddy issues! Sorry if that offends you. Indecisiveness offends me.

Racial Preferences. If you can’t get into college without checking a box that says African-American or Hispanic, you do not need to be here. Sorry but the only reason there are racial differences in SAT scores is because minorities refuse to take off the training wheels. You’re just as smart as anyone else so hop off the Big Wheel and join the bike race. Sorry if you’re offended but your racism offends me.

Wolf-crying. People cry racism all the time. In fact, I’ve been told I’m a racist for opposing affirmative action. That’s funny to me. I don’t think blacks need a crutch because I believe they are equal. Therefore, I’m called a racist – even though I was the first kid on my block to own a Flip Wilson record. Those people (oops, I said, those people) need to chill. In fact, I should let them borrow my old Flip Wilson record to lighten the mood. Next thing you know, they’ll say Flip Wilson offends them because Geraldine made fun of cross dressing. Have I mentioned that cross-dressing offends me?

XXX. Pornography is more than disgusting. It is evil and I hate it. This is probably not offensive to anyone – unless, of course, you are a porn star. But, once you become a porn star, you pretty much give up the right to be offended. If you’re offended anyway just drop my class and sign up for one of Dr. Porco’s instead (no I did not make up that last name). Dr. Porco was just hired by the UNCW English Department despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that he published a book of pornographic poems – some of which were written while he was drunk and hanging out in topless bars. He tries to pass them off as academic. And that offends me, which is why I simply choose not to read them.

Now that everything is on the table, you are ready for your first assignment. Since this is a class covering the First Amendment, we are going to focus on important US Supreme Court decisions dealing with free speech. Our first case will be Gitlow v. New York. I want you to read it with two questions in mind:

1. Since the Supreme Court nationalized the First Amendment, speech codes have emerged on most state-run campuses. How have these speech codes survived in light of the nationalization movement?

2. Holmes’ dissent in this case has been often quoted. If he is correct in saying that “every idea is an incitement” then how can universities actually enforce speeches codes? As they are actually enforced, do these codes violate other portions of our constitution?

As you can see, we’ll be tackling some serious issues this semester. So we need to weed out all of the self-absorbed, hypersensitive products of the era of political correctness in higher education. That was the purpose of this email. If you are still reading then congratulations! You’ve demonstrated more intellectual integrity and emotional maturity than the majority of your professors.

See you next week in class.

 



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Fellowship in the Woodlands

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Mike Adams
January 3, 2013  •Leave a Comment
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Most of America’s problems are cultural. Even our economic problems stem from the cultural rejection of personal responsibility and the acceptance of collective responsibility. And none of our problems would be as bad if the church was still shaping the culture instead of merely responding to it. I was reminded of this during my annual holiday trip home to The Woodlands, Texas.

I’ve attended Christmas Eve services four out of the last six years at the Woodlands Church (formerly Fellowship of the Woodlands), which is a Southern Baptist mega church that keeps its Baptist affiliation well hidden from the general public. That is symptomatic of what ails the church in 21st Century America. Production and marketing take center stage. Core beliefs are lost somewhere in the process.

Make no mistake about it; the production is good at The Woodlands Church. The set is grand and the music is wonderful. Pastor Kerry Shook and his wife Chris are largely responsible for that. Their son, a musician living in Nashville, comes home to perform in the Christmas services every year. I’ve seldom heard a more talented young singer and guitarist.

Couched in the musical productions of these mega churches, one sees an overwhelming desire to deliver a product that demonstrates the cultural relevance of the church. This is especially true on holidays when the church has more visitors than usual. This Christmas Eve, one of the singers was dressed like Michael Jackson and was moon walking around the stage as others sang. I didn’t see a likeness of baby Jesus in a manger. But I saw a likeness of Michael Jackson in a sequin outfit.

Many people dispute whether Jackson was a pedophile. No one disputes that he is still culturally relevant. Nonetheless, it was strange seeing Michael Jackson’s likeness on stage just minutes after the church staff assured parents that the church nursery provided a safe environment for their young children. Mega churches are seldom short on cash or irony.

After the music, an enormous train engine (actually, it was a life size model) appeared in the middle of the stage. It was slowly moved in on a set of make shift tracks in the midst of smoke and accompanied by the sound of a real train whistle. The pastor boasted that the whistle could be heard all the way over on highway 242. I agreed that the set was impressive. It probably took the church staff as much time to build it as would have been required to build a medium sized home for an impoverished Houston family.

The crowd at Woodlands Church also got to see a YouTube video of a man watching an old train pull into a station. I still don’t understand the point of showing the video, which featured a man so excited to see an old train that he took the Lord’s name in vain three times. Let that sink in for a minute: The Woodlands Church played (in church, mind you) a video in which a man was taking the Lord’s name in vain three times. And they did it as part of a Christmas Eve service celebrating the birth of our Lord.

It reminded me of the time I took the Lord’s name in vain in a lecture at Summit Ministries in 2010. I didn’t mean to do it. But it didn’t matter. The kids at the ministry let me have it – and rightfully so. I was absolutely in the wrong.

My question for the mega church is simple: how did the commandment-violating video get past the entire staff at the Woodlands Church without someone catching it and correcting it? It’s pretty easy to do an overdub on “oh my God” to turn it into “oh my.” But the entire staff missed it. Or perhaps they didn’t care.

Unlike my teenaged Summit students, senior pastor Kerry Shook couldn’t see anything wrong with playing that video in church on Christmas Eve – even though its narrator took the Lord’s name in vain three times. He just laughed at it. And that was all that mattered. The service wasn’t meant to honor God. It was meant to entertain.

Kerry and Chris delivered a joint sermon, which had a broad general theme connected to the giant locomotive that stood behind them. The thesis was that we need to relinquish our need to control people and circumstances and instead let God direct our lives. But during the short sermon, Kerry’s wife said something rather unusual. It had to do with holy moments in our lives. It was as morally confused a statement as I have ever heard inside a place calling itself a church.

Without batting an eye, Chris Shook stated that all of the moments in our lives are equally holy no matter what we are doing because they were all created by God. So she insisted that we must learn to live in the moment, rather than seek a holy moment – because, once again, all moments are holy, and equally so.

To illustrate the error of Chris Shook’s statement, consider these “equally holy” moments, which were “all created by God”:
-A man sees a woman being raped and intervenes to stop the attack.

-A man sees a woman being raped and decides to join in.

-A man gives his wife a dozen roses.

-A man gives his wife herpes.

-A man tells his grandmother she is a saint.

-A man tells his grandmother she is a whore.

Obviously, not every moment in our lives is equally holy or God honoring “no matter what we are doing.” It matters very much what we are doing. Everyone knows that, including Chris’ husband Kerry who contradicted his wife about five minutes later. Near the end of their joint sermon, Kerry thanked people for coming to The Woodlands Church on “Christmas Eve, one of the holiest nights of the year.”

Put simply, there can be no holier or holiest night if every moment in our lives is equally holy. Either Kerry was right or his wife Chris was right. A cannot be not-A. The law of non-contradiction matters.

Every right thinking person knows that Kerry was right. His wife needed to sit down and let her husband the senior pastor deliver the correct message unencumbered by contradictions steeped in moral relativism. The culture teaches moral relativism. The church needs to correct it.

Of course, having Chris up there was the most important thing because it shows that The Woodlands Church really isn’t a Baptist Church after all. They let women preach and that shows they are culturally relevant. A little bad theology never hurt anyone.

In our holiest moments, we recognize that sound theology must defer to the secular doctrine of feminism. Some doctrines are holier than others. And relativism is culturally relevant even when it isn’t logically consistent.

 



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Adams 2016

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Mike Adams
December 11, 2012  •1 Comment

I’m getting sick and tired of people asking me why I’m running for president in 2016. The answer is that I have to run. The GOP can’t run another big government establishment candidate masquerading as a true conservative. So I’m stepping up to the plate. And I’m going to win, largely because my policies will appeal to young people, libertarians, and Reagan Democrats. But that’s enough of the generalities. Here are the twelve specific changes you can expect when I become your 45th president.

1. Passing the 28th Amendment. There is a proposed 28th Amendment floating around the Internet. It reads: “Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States.”

Unfortunately, the proposed amendment is considered to be an “urban legend” by various websites. Its origins are not even perfectly clear. But I think someone needs to take this idea and run with it and turn it from an urban legend into a reality. I don’t care whether the idea came from Warren Buffet or Jimmy Buffet. I’ll be inaugurated on a Friday. But come Monday I will be pushing this idea from the bully pulpit.

2. Replacing the IRS with the Fair Tax. In June, I buried the hatchet with Neal Boortz. After two years of bickering over abortion, I realized I needed him to join my presidential administration as Secretary of Treasury. He says he’s going into retirement to fly airplanes. But I need him to push for the implementation of the Fair Tax and the abolition of the IRS. So I’m going to let him fly Air Force One as an incentive to come out of retirement. I hope it works. I plan to fire, not hire, thousands of IRS agents in the aftermath of Obamacare. That is because I believe the IRS is not a “service.” It’s more like a terrorist organization. If the agents agree to leave quietly, I promise not to send them to Gitmo.

3. Drilling in ANWR. I once heard a politician say it would do no good to drill in ANWR because we could not start drawing oil for a decade. But that was over a decade ago. So I’m moving forward. Some say we can only rely on ANWR for a few decades worth of oil. Nonsense! Plus, they fail to realize that if we continue to rely on the Middle East for oil there will be no United States left in a few decades.

4. Closing the Department of Education. George W. Bush gave us No Child Left Behind. My educational policy will be All Bureaucrats Left Behind. Washington DC has been controlling local education for far too long. That will end when we abolish the Department of Education. All levels of education will benefit from local control. Additionally, our universities will have a chance to return to a state of normalcy.

Obama’s Department of Education has demanded that state universities strip due process rights of students accused of sexual assault and sexual harassment in exchange for federal funds. Consequently, alleged rape victims no longer have to prove their cases beyond a reasonable doubt in university judicial proceedings. This kind of extortion will end as soon as we get the feds out of state education.

5. Closing of HUD. Does anyone really need to know why I’m shutting down HUD? Have you been in any urban area of America recently that did not appear to have been poorly developed? Government agencies always do a worse job than the private sector. And government agencies that are further away from a problem always do a worse job than government agencies that are closer to a problem. We can’t expect a federal agency in Washington to develop urban areas as far as 3000 miles away. Greater distance from a problem means less knowledge about the problem. Less knowledge about a problem means worse decisions directed toward resolution of a problem. So I’ve decided to get rid of HUD.

6. Repealing Obamacare. I really don’t know what Mitt Romney was thinking when he said “There are some parts of Obamacare I like.” I guess he forgot he was no longer running for office in Massachusetts. He was supposed to be pretending to be a conservative running for national office. Please be assured that you’ll never hear such nonsense coming out of my mouth. Obamacare isn’t a law. It is an assault on self-governance. I hate every bit of it and I plan to destroy it.

7. Raising Social Security Eligibility. Social Security has always been a bad deal. But it has gotten worse over the years as average life expectancy has increased. This has changed the ratio of those paying in to those paying out so that the program is no longer solvent. Obviously, eligibility requirements must be changed in order to keep the program afloat. It would be nice to increase the age of eligibility until the program ceases to exist. That will take a while. But I will be the first one to substantially raise age eligibility. The old folks might vote me out after one term. But that’s ok. I have a retirement plan. It’s called a presidential memoir.

8. Removing Embassies from the Middle East. If I let my daughter go to a neighbor’s house and she was then molested by one of his sons, I would not let her go back over there as a guest. Plus, I would demand justice for my neighbor’s son. I certainly would not resume diplomatic relations. I feel the same way about countries that cannot control their radical extremists. If they attack one of our embassies then we’re going to have to kill someone. And we won’t let our ambassadors go back over there if it’s not a safe place to be. Plus, it will be a good excuse to withdraw aid to some of these places. If they don’t have running water by now, there’s no hope for them anyway.

9. Impeaching Internationalist Justices. I hope Ginsburg lives until 2017 so I can see her impeached on my watch. She goes to foreign nations and in public speeches calls our constitution “irrelevant.” I plan to make her irrelevant. But she won’t be the only one. Any Justice who has ever written the phrase “according to international law” in a legal opinion will be impeached. They were sworn to uphold our constitution. International law is irrelevant.

10. Reducing the Size of the Military. Liberals are always complaining about the size of the military. I agree that there should be fewer people in the military. Under my administration, you will see an immediate reduction in our military forces. That is because there will be no more women and gays in combat positions. It’s just a bad idea for our country to be defended by gays and women. Those who think I am off on this one have their heads firmly planted in a fox hole. Political correctness and sensitivity training are distractions that should be reserved for civilian life. We can’t afford the luxury of such distractions in an age of terrorism. So it’s best that our military be comprised of a bunch of men who are not interested in sleeping with each other and don’t care about offending each other.

11. Abolishing the fed. First there was the housing bubble. Next, there will be the student loan bubble. There will be an endless string of bubbles until we get politicians out of the business of setting interest rates and controlling the banking industry. The free market alone should determine interest rates. As long as the fed is around, the free market will never have an opportunity to correct problems before they become bursting bubbles.

12. Repealing the PATRIOT Act. Sometimes emergencies necessitate government action. The problem is that once the emergencies pass, the government apparatus stays in place. Income taxes and other permanent solutions to temporary problems have plagued us for far too long (and they have been used to fuel further government expansion). The PATRIOT act is also interfering with my efforts to reduce the entanglement between our government and our banking system. Therefore, it must go.

Well there it is. I’ve laid everything out on the table except for my choice of a Vice Presidential candidate. I’m considering giving the slot to the First Lady. But I fear she would be offended by the demotion. So maybe I’ll put her in charge of dismantling Obamacare.

See you on the campaign trail. And remember to vote early and often.

 



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A Queer Need for Rejection

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Mike Adams
December 5, 2012  •Leave a Comment
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Whenever I write about the issue of First Amendment Freedom of Association, I defend the right of campus groups, not government administrators, to control their own belief structure and membership requirements. This often involves discussing real life cases with real life tension between religious groups and homosexual activists. This results in a slew of emails asking why a homosexual student would ever want to join a fundamentalist religious group. The short answer to the question is that homosexual activists don’t really want to join these organizations. Some want to use them for political gain before shutting them down altogether.

The homosexual rights movement is not a political movement seeking equality. It is a religious movement seeking affirmation. Conservative Christian organizations refuse to offer affirmation of the homosexual lifestyle. In fact, they actually condemn it. So they become targets of homosexual activism.

Paradoxically, homosexual activists also target conservative Christians because being rejected by them is an important part of the process of attaining affirmation from the general public. When a homosexual activist tries to “join” such a group, it is often done with the following goals in mind:

1. Using discrimination claims to strengthen the genetic argument (and using the genetic argument to strengthen discrimination claims). It is fairly obvious why homosexuals want to assert that homosexuality is genetic. If they are programmed to behave in a certain way then homosexuality becomes less of a behavior and more of a status. This helps advance efforts to include sexual orientation in anti-discrimination laws, which are meant to give homosexuals equal power in relation to legitimate civil rights causes based upon immutable physical characteristics.

The only problem with the genetic argument is that it lacks supporting evidence. There is no more evidence for a gay gene than there is for Santa Claus or for legitimate feminist scholarship. The best the activist can do is to argue circumstantially that no one would choose a lifestyle that guarantees being subjected to discrimination. The argument is as silly as saying there must be an interracial dating gene because no one would choose to be subjected to discrimination for dating someone of another race.

But homosexual politics is not about logic. It is about end results. Activists need to be subjected to “discrimination” in order to advance their cause. So they join conservative Christian groups they do not like, engage in advocacy they know offends and disrupts the group, get kicked out of the group, and then claim to have been discriminated against. Finally, they lobby for stronger anti-discrimination rules that put them on a par with blacks and women.

2. Defaming the opposition. Homosexuals have a lot of options on campus. They can join a Unitarian Universalist group, they can join a United Methodist group, or they can start their own religious group that affirms homosexual conduct. But the very thought that someone on their campus disagrees with their lifestyle makes them angry. They simply cannot “coexist” (no matter what their bumper stickers say). This anger is probably due to awareness that they are engaging in a lifestyle that is both unnatural and immoral. So, if you can’t beat the Christians, just join them (and eventually destroy them). It’s always destroying, not joining, that motivates them.

After they join the group they don’t want to be in – and deny the stated principles of the group they never agreed with – the unable-to-coexist homosexual activist goes to the administration with a complaint. When the Christian group is expelled from campus under the anti-discrimination clause people ask “Why did the Christian group have to expel the homosexual?” Stated another way, the question becomes “Why can’t Christians coexist with homosexuals?”

In the end, the homosexual activist has made the group whose very existence he refuses to tolerate look intolerant. Another public relations victory!

3. Containing moral criticism. Of course, once the conservative Christian group is gone a clear message is sent to those who would dare to criticize the homosexual lifestyle. This exerts a powerful chilling effect on constitutionally protected religious expression.

But that isn’t the end of things. The homosexual rights movement continues to redefine homophobia in order to reduce any semblance of criticism directed toward the homosexual agenda. Isn’t this similar to what we have seen in the struggle for racial equality in America?

At first, the civil rights movement was about stopping lynching and racial segregation. After redefining racism (to include any disagreement with black leaders whatsoever) the movement has become little more than a mechanism used to suppress political speech. Racism went from being a social problem to being a political weapon. Redefining homophobia now serves the same function for the homosexual activist that redefining racism served for the civil rights activist.

But there is one crucial difference between the black civil rights movement and the homosexual rights movement. The former began by addressing real oppression before eventually (and incessantly) crying “wolf” as a means of punishing political speech. The latter began as an attack on free speech that becomes more pronounced with each and every concession.

The supreme irony of all this is that the NAACP is the organization that first won legal recognition of the right to freedom of association in 1958. They prevailed in a successful effort to keep the KKK from joining and destroying their organization. The U.S. Supreme Court sided with the NAACP saying they could keep their membership lists secret and even keep out those who disagree with their beliefs.

Today, in an effort to attain moral equivalency with the NAACP, the homosexual rights movement is adopting one of the old tactics of the KKK. Politics makes strange bedfellows – particularly when it demands affirmation of what goes on in the bedroom.



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Bankrupt State University

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Mike Adams
November 30, 2012  •Leave a Comment
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Many of my friends and readers are disheartened by recent cultural and political trends. Many blame our universities and wonder whether we can ever restore sanity in our nation, given that the enemy seems to control the modern university. They see no chance to win in the war of ideas as long as they are forced to support the public university and, therefore, forced to fund a war against their own cherished values.

But I know something they don’t know. The public university that has declined so steadily in recent years will cease to exist in just a few short decades. The moral bankruptcy we have seen over the last twenty years is about to be followed by another sort of bankruptcy. Before long, many of the universities that have betrayed taxpayers and alumni will be forced out of business. It will happen for the following reasons:

1. Federal funding reductions. LBJ got us deeply entrenched in the business of federal funding for institutions of higher education. When he did, tuition began to skyrocket. More recently, the federal government has gotten us deeply entrenched in the business of individual student loans. This has had the same effect. When a lot of people are able to borrow a lot of money to purchase goods or services, the effect on the price of those goods and services is dramatic. Supply and demand is not a rule; it is a law.

State university administrators seized upon the increased demand for higher education by raising tuition. This was done for three reasons: a) because they could, b) because they wanted to give themselves raises, and c) because they wanted to hire associate and assistant administrators to do their work for them.

Now, the federal deficit is spinning out of control. As a result, the federal government will soon have to cut aid to state universities. This will confront administrators with this important decision: will they a) cut administrative spending, or b) raise tuition? The answer will be “b.”

2. Student loan bubble. People are easily enticed into taking the bait when offered unlimited funds to pursue education. This applies to those who are not qualified to attend college at all. (Think about the housing bubble for just a moment). As tuition continues to rise, many more students who enroll will figure out that they have been duped long before they graduate. The universities have lied to them during recruitment. Departments in the social sciences and other disciplines have betrayed them by exaggerating the pay scale and availability of jobs they could likely expect upon graduation. These realizations will result in a massive upswing in the dropout rate over the next few years. These dropouts are many times more likely to default on their college loans than students who graduate.

When the whole college loan industry collapses, people will actually have to pay for school as they go. That will result in many empty seats in many college classrooms. Universities will have to make up the difference by turning to alumni donors.

3. Declining donations. Consider the following scenario: just two weeks ago, a fraternity of 80 men was ejected from a public university campus. They were investigated for hazing but then exonerated. They were also investigated for an alcohol violation that was so minor that police declined to arrest anyone. They were found to be guilty of only one offense, which was dubbed “failure to cooperate with the investigation.” This was another way of saying the university thought but could not prove they were guilty because they refused to confess. At the end of the day, the 80-man fraternity was banned from campus for three years.

This real life incident will have two real life repercussions: a) the administrator who led the investigation will be promoted for expelling a politically incorrect fraternity (one of their flags has a Confederate symbol embedded within it). b) 80 future alumni will respond to the administrative overreach by refusing to donate for the rest of their adult lives.

This issue is serious. As the university administration has grown, it has assumed more control over the lives of students. In recent years, students have been prosecuted with increasing frequency for increasingly petty offenses with drastically decreasing respect for their due process rights. This includes petty prosecutions for speech code violations that amount to stripping students of the right to participate in the free exchange of ideas – the very reason many came to college in the first place. Is anyone foolish enough to believe this will have no effect on their willingness to donate?

The army of administrators that grew in the 1990s as a result of generous federal funding and the explosion in student loans bureaucracywill soon have to beg in order to retain their positions. Alumni will wisely apply the norm of reciprocity by exercising their power over these overpaid and underworked administrators who once practiced authoritarianism on them. They will wisely withhold donations and instead focus on paying their entirely-too-high student loan payments.

For all of these reasons, the public universities will eventually go bankrupt. And that is good news for a nation that is going morally bankrupt in the shadow of the ivory tower. They had a good thing going but the party is close to being over. The hangover will soon begin.

 



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Cleaning Up After Ruth Bader Ginsburg

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Mike Adams
November 26, 2012  •Leave a Comment
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Of all the sloppy and confused decisions rendered by the Supreme Court in recent years, few compare with CLS v. Martinez (2010). The decision was more than just poorly reasoned. It was also based upon willful blindness toward factual misrepresentations by the defendants in the case. Justice Ginsburg authored an opinion she knew she could arrive at only by pretending to believe facts she knew were not true.

Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE, offers a good critique of the decision in his new book, Unlearning Liberty. I write about it today because the decision is still causing serious problems for us in higher education. The problems are due to both a) incompetence and b) feigned ignorance concerning the holding in the case. Either way, the mess has gotten so out of hand that the only solution is state legislative intervention.

Nearly every conflict between a religious organization and a public university begins with a refusal of the group to affirm sexual practices and lifestyles that the administrators endorse. That isn’t always the case but it is too often the case. Surely, my libertarian and liberal friends agree that our public universities ought not to have official positions on such private matters. But, unfortunately, they do.

To be clear, these administrators do not simply favor toleration of alternative lifestyles. Tolerance presupposes a moral judgment they, which they refuse to offer. Instead, they use their power to make sure no one else is offering these judgments either. If any organization goes against their beliefs about sex, they simply refuse to recognize the organization.

Enter Christian Legal Society, or CLS, at Hastings College. A few years ago, they had the audacity to say that anyone who “advocates or unrepentantly engages” in sexual conduct outside of marriage between a man and a woman could not be eligible for leadership or voting membership in their official student group. They were de-recognized and then they sued.

Early in the litigation, Hastings College committed itself to a willful and knowing misrepresentation of its own policies. They specifically claimed that all groups had always been operating under an open membership or “all-comers” policy. That is to say, they were claiming that no group was ever allowed to exclude anyone from leadership or voting membership on the basis of beliefs about sex – or anything else, for that matter.

The argument was demonstrably false. At the time CLS filed suit, a gay student club, Outlaw, was forcing members to adhere to a belief statement that was favorable toward homosexuality. Additionally, La Raza, a radical leftist Hispanic organization, was requiring adherence to certain political beliefs. They were also requiring that members be Hispanic.

Nonetheless, Justice Ginsberg pretended to believe an obvious falsehood in order to fashion the following rule: public universities with all-comers policies do not violate the First Amendment when they prevent groups from selecting members and leaders on the basis of belief provided that the university does not target such groups on the basis of their beliefs.

In other words, a government entity has not really deprived a group of its First Amendment Freedom of Association rights provided it has deprived everyone else of those same rights. It takes years of working for the ACLU to develop that kind of enlightenment on the issue of religious liberty.

When confronted with the possibility that hostile groups might take over organizations they disagreed with, Ginsburg dismissed the concerns as “more hypothetical than real.” Those were her actual words. The irony is that while Ginsburg was saying she did not want to rule on a hypothetical case, she was actually ruling on a hypothetical case. Her ruling about universities with all-comers policies was based upon a case involving a university that did not really have an all-comers policy. In other words, it was a “more hypothetical than real” fact scenario.

Imagine a world with no hypotheticals. It’s easy if you try, Ruth.

Now back to reality. Just two months after Ginsburg wrote her opinion, all UNC student organizations received a memo telling them that the CLS decision required them to sign on to a new statement concerning open membership. This was odd, for the following reasons:

1) the CLS decision did not require anyone to do anything. It said the university could – not must but could – impose a ban on belief requirements if such a ban were put in place across the board.

2) No UNC campuses actually practice open membership. All of them have fraternities and sororities that require members to take oaths of membership. These groups typically have creeds or belief requirements. In other words, there has never been an open membership policy at any of the UNC campuses.

In addition to not being required to impose such a ban on belief requirements, universities in the UNC system are not even allowed to do so because they do not impose the ban across the board. But they did in anyway.

Within two years, here at my own university, the belief requirements started to disappear from religious and political organizations run by students wholly unaware their rights were being violated. The university told them to remove them in response to a non-existent mandate and they simply complied. They were duped.

When a group I now advise came to our campus this semester, its officers were told to remove officer belief requirements. I found out about it and fought them successfully with the help of FIRE Vice-President Robert Shibley. Specifically, the university altered its policies to conform to its pre-CLS practice stating that groups founded on certain beliefs can require officers and members to affirm those beliefs.

Game over. Right? Wrong.

A student reporter recently called our university and asked whether it was true that – as FIRE reported on its blog, The Torch – UNCW has now backed off its open membership policy. The university denied that it had. So I re-investigated the matter and found something very disturbing.

Just before the new paragraph stating that groups founded on the basis of belief can require officers and members to affirm those beliefs, a strange paragraph appears. In this paragraph, it says that UNCW has an open membership policy with regard to sexual orientation, religion, and a number of other variables.

So why did they specifically use the term “open membership”? And why the denial that they have in any way backed off their previous “open membership” policy – the one they did not actually practice because they had fraternities and sororities who require agreement with creeds as a condition of initiation?

The reason is simple: they are using that language as a trump card. They are preparing for the possibility that a group like CLS will come to campus and have a specific requirement for officers concerning sexual conduct. When they do, the university will seize upon language by Ginsburg, from CLS v. Martinez, which talks about the difficulty of separating status (e.g. sexual orientation) from belief (e.g. homosexuality is wrong) in the implementation of student membership policies.

Administrators will then claim that such a requirement violates their open membership policy – the one they do not actually have. Finally, Ginsburg or some other dishonest judge will pretend to believe them.

The only way to prevent this from unfolding in court to the detriment of the taxpayers is to have immediate legislative intervention. University bureaucrats are incompetent at best and scheming at worst. It’s time for lawyers in the NC House to come in and clean up the mess created by Ginsburg.

The state cannot offer less liberty than the Supreme Court requires. But as long as it does not rely upon the interpretation of federal law, it can offer more. And it should do so immediately while Republicans control the house and the N.C. governor’s mansion.

With one page of legislation, Ohio passed a law that banned all universities from interfering with the freedom of association rights of public university students. It should serve as a model for the nation. We should adopt it in the Tar Heel State and even add criminal penalties for college administrators who conspire to deprive students of their basic religious freedoms. We did it once to stop the KKK. Why not do the same to these robed and hooded academic bigots.



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Evidence Tampering U

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Mike Adams
November 12, 2012  •Leave a Comment
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For years, I’ve been writing about the issue of censorship on our nation’s campuses. But I have given far too little emphasis to due process violations within the so-called campus judiciary. Today, that all comes to an end. This will be the beginning of a series of columns highlighting the worst colleges in America when it comes to due process violations. I will reveal the name of this week’s winner after explaining why this university is being ushered into the due process Hall of Shame.

In 2005, a professor was brought up on charges of quid pro quo sexual harassment. Specifically, he was accused of giving a student an A in exchange for dancing with the professor in a sexually provocative way. There was only one problem with the charge: it wasn’t true.

One set of university documents (the transcripts) revealed no A was given. The university convicted the professor anyway even after it was clear that another set of documents (the official harassment accusations) had been doctored in order to sustain the charge.

In 2009, our present inductees disciplined a fraternity for waving a fraternity flag that had a portion of the confederate flag imbedded within it. Incidentally, they waved it at another southern fraternity that also had a fraternity flag with a portion of a confederate flag imbedded within it. The all-white fraternity waved it at the other all-white fraternity at a university intramural game at which no nonwhites were present. So a white university official charged them with violating the campus hate speech code.

I wrote about the incident and the university soon realized the campus speech code (as applied) was illegal. So, rather than dropping the charges, they doctored university documents in order to remove any evidence that the charges against the fraternity were related to the speech code. They then inserted new allegations and convicted them under those. The fraternity was then punished with suspension from intramural sports competition for “taunting” rather than “hate speech” as originally charged.

In 2011, a professor was accused of sexual harassment and sought out legal counsel to defend him. During cross-examination by his attorney, the female accuser claimed not to have made two statements included in the official charges. In other words, the university helped the accuser by padding the charges without even bothering to tell her.

The accused was eventually dismissed from the university. Those tampering with the evidence were never identified and disciplined.

In 2012, police responded to an off campus alcohol-related incident involving a campus social organization. The police left shortly after arriving and no charges or arrests were even contemplated by police. Nonetheless, officers of the student organization were brought in to the Dean’s Office for interrogation. Since they were being asked about behaviors that were minor violations of the criminal law, they asked to have legal counsel present. Their request was denied.

Recently, I had a chance to hear the tape recorded interrogation of the student officers. University officials repeatedly denied their requests for counsel and asked them to turn off the tape recorder. By the end of the investigation, the university had prepared three different reports on the incident. The facts in report #3 bore no resemblance to the facts in report #1. Each time the university realized its charges were incorrect they simply constructed a new version of events. Decent people would have dropped the charges once they realized they were wrong. But this is not the way things are done at Evidence Tampering U. The charges are still pending and the fate of the student organization is still hanging in the air.

Again in 2012, a professor appealed a sexual harassment charge (anyone seeing a pattern here?) and was exonerated on charges of inappropriately touching a student. Finally, there is some good news at Evidence Tampering U, right? Wrong. I’m not finished.

During the appeal of the conviction for inappropriate touching the university inserted a new charge of “inappropriate communication.” The university convicted the professor of that in partial retaliation for his appeal on the charge of inappropriate touching. No chance of winning an appeal at Evidence Tampering U. These people are good. They rig appeals by adding new charges each step of the way. They base their judiciary rules on Franz Kafka novels.

This is all very important because the way universities administer justice affects the way students view justice. At Evidence Tampering U., justice is not a process. It is a result. The ends justify the means. It is the same mentality that justifies stealing elections. And it is not the way we educate young people. It is the way that a constitutional republic eventually turns into a banana republic.

Unfortunately, it is the way things are done at The University of North Carolina at Wilmington, our inaugural inductees into the Due Process Hall of Shame. Their liberal administrators make providing a liberal education damned near impossible. It may seem ironic. But that’s what the evidence reveals.

In the next installment, we will learn about the role the Obama Department of Education has played in the erosion of campus due process. Students aren’t biting the hand that feeds them. They just re-elected the hand that is slapping them.



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Facing the Giants

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Mike Adams
November 8, 2012  •Leave a Comment
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Nearly ten years ago, I helped organize a lawsuit against UNC-Chapel Hill. The university was forcing Christians to allow non-Christians to run their organizations. It took me 18 months to find a plaintiff but I did. In case you were wondering, we took the case to federal court and we won. For a time, freedom of association was preserved at North Carolina’s flagship university.

But tyranny is a hungry beast ever in need of replenishing itself at the expense of weaker prey. This semester, the predator was once again a UNC public university campus. But I am pleased to report that with the help of Robert Shibley of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) we were able to win another freedom of association case. Working together, we won the case without a lawsuit. And we did it in just twelve days.

I am reproducing the email correspondence from that case in order to help others who are interested in challenging universities that knowingly violate the First Amendment. I have departed from my traditional practice of naming names as a reward to the university for backing down and saving the taxpayers from unnecessary litigation. I hope you find the following exchange (as well as my interspersed remarks) helpful:

Ms. (Administrator), it has come to my attention that you have asked Ratio Christi to remove its requirement that officers be Christians.

I need to know immediately and in writing by what authority you propose to force them to abandon their belief requirements.

This matter is urgent and and I expect a prompt written response.

Mike Adams


Thank you for the inquiry. We are in the process of working with these students as they pursue registration as a student organization. As the process is ongoing and in the beginning stages, our office has much work left to do with these students, including the review of Ratio Christi’s constitution, before any final decisions regarding their organizational status are made. We appreciate your concern in this matter and will continue to work with the students to welcome their organization to the campus community.

(Ms. Administrator)
Ms. (Administrator), you have not answered my question. It has come to my attention that you have asked Ratio Christi to remove its requirement that officers be Christians.

I need to know immediately and in writing by what authority you propose to force them to abandon those requirements.

This matter is urgent and I expect a prompt written response. If no response is forthcoming, I will assume the following:

1. You have attempted to interfere with Ratio Christi’s First Amendment right to determine the believe requirements of its officers.

2. You have done so on your own and not in accordance with any specific (university) policy, office, or individual administrative directive.

I have copied Robert Shibley of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. I have asked his organization to join my investigation into the matter. The chancellor is copied as well.

Mike Adams


Dr. Adams-

Our staff is still working with the students on the constitution for the establishment of the Ratio Christi student organization. Therefore, your inquiries are premature and your assumptions incorrect. I would encourage you to be patient as we work with these students to develop their organizational constitution and assist them in becoming a recognized student organization. Since the administrative review and process is not yet complete, your inquiries are premature and inappropriate. When the process is complete, I will be happy to respond to any issues you may have with the outcome.

Many thanks,

(Mr. Administrator)

Executive Director of Campus Life


(Mr. Administrator was then hit with a public records request seeking the information his office refused to divulge. He wrote back in less than 48 hours).


Dr. Adams-

Yesterday, (Ms. Administrator) and I met with representatives from the Ratio Christi student organization to discuss their organizational constitution and to assist them in becoming a recognized student organization. Unbeknownst to (Ms. Administrator) the (university) Office of Student Life has been reviewing its non-exclusionary membership clause in its student organization constitution template prior to your recent e-mails. During the meeting, I provided Ratio Christi with the following updated language for their inclusion in the constitution:

***

“ Student groups that select their members on the basis of commitment to a set of beliefs (e.g., religious or political beliefs) may limit membership and participation in the group to students who, upon individual inquiry, affirm that they support the group and agree with its beliefs …”

***

As I mentioned to you in my previous correspondence, the administrative review and process is not yet complete, but I believe that any issues have been resolved. When the process is complete, I will be happy to respond to any issues you may have with the outcome.

Many thanks,

(Mr. Administrator)

Anyone reading the previous exchange can see what happened here. The university tried to deprive students of their First Amendment freedom of association rights by leveraging the power of their office to control funds through the group recognition process. When they were caught and called out on it, they responded with predictably self-righteous indignation. But one official legal document -a public records request suggesting the prospect of litigation – jolted them back into reality (and civility).

After some reflection on the matter, the university decided to move forward with a quick change in policy in order to avoid litigation. There is little reason to believe they were actually contemplating any sort of policy change “in (their) student organization constitution template prior to (my) recent e-mails.” Administrators simply cannot be trusted. But that is not the point of the present column. The point of the column is rather obvious: to teach readers all it takes to change an unconstitutional policy is one maverick professor working in conjunction with one FIRE attorney.

The question is: where are all the maverick professors? And why are they so afraid of their employers despite the protection of tenure?



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