Thought Control

Leftist Thought Control by David Limbaugh is an article detailing what has become obvious to all but the ideologically blinded. Efforts to control what we think and believe are approaching levels that are toxic to a free society. The weapons of control come in many forms. Sometimes it is nothing more than personal insults but at other times one's very livelihood can be threatened by a failure to endorse policies propagated by leftist interest groups. From the article:


"The political left, which holds itself as progressive, rational and fact-based, is becoming an enemy of academic inquiry, and a practitioner of thought control on a wide variety of issues. Increasingly, from the left's perspective, there is just one acceptable viewpoint."


Acceptable is the operative word. It accurately conveys the arrogance of its proponents and a secular fundamentalism that is dangerous for America.

A Follow-up on Emily Brooker

Emily Brooker. She was blogged about here. I'm glad to report there was a good ending to this story. After undergoing hostile interrogation by members of the faculty of Missouri State University, following her refusal to submit to a demand that she send a letter to the Missouri state legislature in support of adoption by homosexuals, the Alliance Defense Fund assisted her in filing a case in federal district court. The university settled. It removed the grievance from Emily's record and agreed to pay her tuition for two years of graduate school. The professor, who attempted to coerce Emily to violate her conscience, was removed from his administrative duties and placed on academic leave for the rest of the semester.

According to David French of the ADF:

"...the university announced the results of the investigation, and - to the administration's infinite credit - the report is not a whitewash. In fact, I've never read a more stinging indictment of an academic department. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the report was the authors' call for accountability and consequences. Here are their first two recommendations for fixing the problem:


"Close down the school; disband the faculty and restart the School after a short period...This option ensures ridding of all toxic faculty...

Eliminate those faculty who are identified as major contributors of the problem and find ways to remove them from the faculty..."

How about that. A call for genuine reform! This is what can result from the couragous stand of one young woman.

Stifling Religion at the Expense of Disaster Victims

If you want a good idea as to the priorities of some Americans look no further than what took place in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The need for relief was of course great and one of the organizations willing to alleviate suffering was the Calvary Baton Rouge Church of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The church did so by providing free food through a barbeque to residents of a housing project managed by FEMA. In addition to food, the church also shared the message of the gospel with residents.

Some officials of what is known as the Keta group decided that speaking about the gospel could not be tolerated even if this meant foregoing the food benefits. Keta managed the FEMA project.

Fortunately a letter, authored by attorney Jeremy Tedesco of the Alliance Defense Fund, explained the First Amendment rights of church members to the Keta group and caused FEMA to reverse gears. The troubling aspect of this is the extent to which some will go to inhibit the free expression of religion. The suffering of disaster victims is not too high a price to pay, in the minds of some officials, if that's what it takes to silence church members.

Religious Bigotry Disguised as Inclusiveness

A Prison Fellowship essay by Mark Earley titled and subtitled respectively, Selective History; The Cross and William and Mary, cites an instance of intolerance masquerading as inclusiveness. From the essay:

"Founded in 1693, the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia—my alma mater—is the second-oldest college in the United States after Harvard. Like Harvard, William and Mary was founded for explicitly Christian purposes: The Royal Charter listed the training of “ministers of the gospel” and the propagation of the Christian faith among the “western Indians” among the school’s founding purposes.

Not surprisingly, given the school’s history, one of the oldest buildings on campus is the chapel, designed by Sir Christopher Wren who also designed St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. On the altar stood a gold cross that was donated to the school by the nearby historic Bruton Parish church in the 1930s.

I say “stood” because in October, William and Mary President Gene R. Nichol ordered that the cross be removed from the altar. His goal was to “make the Wren Chapel less of a faith-specific” place and to “make it more welcoming” to people of “all faiths.”

As you probably guessed, Nichol could not cite a specific instance of non-Christians being made to feel unwelcome by the presence of the cross."

But he was in a position that enabled him to act on his own subjective feelings toward Christianity. Too bad he had to cover this as an attempt to safeguard the feelings of others. The fact that Muslims, Jews, Hindus and members of other groups did not complain is telling but not surprising. There is good reason to think they would have been wary of attempts to remove religious symbols from a chapel. After all it might be a synagogue or a mosque next time.

A Shortage of Tolerance Among Those Promoting It

Emily Brooker, a student attending Missouri State University, became of victim of political correctness when she opted to abide by her conscience rather than give in to demands that she support a policy that would allow adoptions by homosexuals. Allegedly, a professor of a class, attended by Emily Brooker, assigned a project requiring students to write and sign a letter supporting the adoption policy. The letter was to be sent to the Missouri legislature. Emily refused based on the biblical values she holds.

Consequently Emily was accused of violating "Standards of Essential Functioning in Social Work Education;" a serious charge. The three specific standards which she was alleged to have violated were: Diversity, Interpersonal Skills and Professional Behavior. A threat to withhold her degree was allegedly made.

In addition, Emily was interrogated by an ethics committee composed of faculty members. She was alleged to have been subjected to questions like "Do you think gays and lesbians are sinners?" and "Do you think I am a sinner?"

As a result the Alliance Defense Fund filed a complaint on Emily's behalf in federal district court in support of her First Amendment rights. Although the mainstream media did not pick up on the story, it was publicized by some faith based organizations. A copy of the filed complaint can be viewed here.

The case was settled out of court. The university affirmed Emily's First Amendment rights and cleansed her recodrd of the grievance. The university also agreed to pay Emily's tuition for two years of graduate school. The professor involved was removed from his administrative duties. He is on non-teaching leave for the remainder of the semester.

A Skewed Value System

Prison Fellowship is an organization that has ministered to the needs of prisoners throughout the United States. Although it champions Christian values, non-Christian inmates are beneficiaries of its services. InnerChange Freedom Initiative was a highly successful program affiliated with Prison Fellowship until its operations were the target of a court order occasioned by a lawsuit filed by Barry Lynn and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Reduced recitivism was a by-product of this well administered program. That brings me to the point of this post. While organizations like Americans United for Separation of Church and State strive to rid our prison systems of any connection to Christian organizations, even when benefits derived from the services provided by them are well documented, literature supplied by extreme Muslim organizations, openly sympathetic to al-Qaeda, proliferate and recruitment follows suit. Prisons have become breeding grounds for home grown terrorists. So is this being challenged? That's the other shocking aspect of this. While Christian organizations with good track records are legally handcuffed, Muslim extremism not only thrives; it goes unchallenged.

What's wrong with this picture? Plenty, but at the heart of it lies a religious conflict. In this case it is not so much Christianity at odds with Islam as it is Christianity at odds with secularism. At its core religion is about values. True values are believed to be divinely ordained by both Christianity and Islam. Secularists depart from this view but their preoccupation with the deity is no less obvious.

The interesting part of this involves analyzing why Americn leftists and leftist organizations have a double standard toward religion depending on whether it is embodied by Christianity or Islam. As Mark Early has observed: "Shouldn't we be more concerned with removing radical Islamic literature from our prisons than removing the Bible?"

One would think so but the left views conservative Christians as their primary enemy and Muslims as a group to include in "diversity" programs. The innane policies spawned by this attitude have awakened the interest of normally left leaning academia. A study involving both the University of Virginia and George Washington University resulted in a recommendation that a federal commission be created to investigate the problem.

The InnerChange Freedom Initiative was a voluntary program that was working for inmates of diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds. It was part of the solution; not the problem. Wresting control of our prisons from extremists and hypocritical boosters of church and state separation may be an uphill battle but it is one that is necessary.