Bloggers From The United States

"I am disappointed in the outcome, but not surprised since the disciplinary process has been entirely opaque and inequitable from the get-go... Fortunately, men do not control my happiness, nor do they control my connection to God. I am proud of what I have done... We will continue to act with integrity and courage. Mormon women and their legitimate concerns cannot be swept under the rug or summarily dismissed by one 'Court of Love.'"

"On Sunday, I will be tried in absentia for apostasy by the leaders of my former congregation in the Mormon church... for the simple act of opening my mouth and starting a conversation about gender equality in the church and the deep roots of this institutional inequality. My grave situation is another example of how silencing women has long been a top communications priority for patriarchical institutions, both literally and figuratively. In the Mormon church, all positions of authority and leadership require ordination to the priesthood – and no women can be ordained, though the vast majority of male members, age 12 and up, are. This means that no women can lead any official rites and ceremonies, despite the fact that there is no specific Mormon church doctrine explaining why women are not ordained..."

"The founder of a Mormon women's group who was accused of undermining church teachings was excommunicated Monday by an all-male panel of judges who said she can only return if she abandons her cause... Kelly is a lawyer and a co-founder of Ordain Women, an organization that wants equal standing for women in Mormon church, which reserves its top leadership positions for men and does not permit female lay clergy... The bishop informed her that the excommunication — one of the highest-profile cases in the church in years — would last for at least a year and be lifted only if she showed "true repentance" and gave up her activism... Kelly, who chose not to appear at the disciplinary hearing, said that while it was a "tragic day," she would not be silenced. She said she plans to appeal, but is not hopeful because the church leader who would consider her case is the same person who initiated the excommunication process against her."

"You know what else I'm sick and tired of? I'm sick and tired of men making laws about our bodies and our choices and our lives without consulting us."

"Twenty-six U.S. states, including Utah in Article IV, §1, and the majority of countries around the world, formally protect women in their respective constitutions. The U.S. Constitution does not. The lasting need for the ERA is more clear now than ever. Women have no anchor in the U.S. Constitution. Currently, when the U.S. Supreme Court reviews a case under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, laws that discriminate on the basis of gender do not get the highest level of protection that other classes do, like race or religion. In effect, this means it’s easier to pass and keep sex discriminatory laws on the books. Laws we rely on to protect us, like Title IX and Title VII, are on the chopping block. Ratifying the ERA would finally place women’s rights permanently in the U.S. Constitution at the highest level, and will help protect all marginalized genders and families."

"Without any hesitation, my parents will tell me if they are uncomfortable with something. I've always stayed true to their feelings and if something has made my mom uncomfortable or my father uncomfortable, they've always mentioned it. They have kept me on the right path. It's really grounding to have parents that are still willing to parent me as an adult even though all these crazy things are going on in my life."

"Take his depiction of the recent boom of right wing bloggers. The strip begins with a large man posting pro-war messages on his blog. When an e-mail asks him why he doesn’t enlist if he’s so supportive of the military, he’s hit with carpal tunnel syndrome, desperately shouting “Ma, do we have any more Cheetos?” The cartoon wasn’t particularly popular with conservative bloggers, but then again that’s not the point...Don Perkins, the man behind Tom Tomorrow, explained at a book reading at The Booksmith on Haight St. “Literally every right wing blogger in the world spent the rest of the week writing about how they’re not, you know, fat.”"

"These protests must stop! Things are fine! There is no problem we can't address with vague promises of incremental reform. Now these whiners are upset because some old man got pushed over and fractured his skull! And because some protesters have been tear gassed! Or you know, shot in the head with rubber bullets and maybe lost an eye here and there!"

"Tom Tomorrow’s comics usually feature biting satire of political leaders, especially conservatives, and always have smiling characters reminiscent of 1950s pop art. Hell in a Handbasket contains four years worth of strips encompassing the Bush administrations response to the September 11th attacks and the war on Iraq. In one panel published around the battle of Baghdad, Dick Cheney quips “Let’s skip to the quagmire!” in anticipation of a long stay in Iraq. In fact, though his art may be farcical, Perkins said he merely puts on paper what many Americans are thinking."

"As protests erupt across the country, the president hides behind a big, beautiful wall."

"The Right Is Scared of the Protests. Defunding the police? Dethroning Confederate monuments? What’s next, a better tomorrow?"

"After less than six months, cartoonist Tom Tomorrow has lost his biweekly gig at U.S. News & World Report. Tomorrow's departure does not stem from a conflict with U.S. News editor James Fallows. "I love his work," Fallows told the Voice, expressing "personal regret" over Tomorrow's involuntary termination. "I probably like his strip more than anyone else in the world," Fallows said. In fact, the two shared an amicable postdismissal dinner last week at Hamburger Harry's... The decision not to renew Tomorrow's contract, knowledgeable sources say, was influenced by U.S. News owner and editor in chief Mort Zuckerman."

"Waiting for the next debt crisis."

"There were millions of people in the streets protesting the war, but no one listened to us. It’s really amazing how quickly it went from sugar to shit and so obvious... Right wing blogs used to write about their contribution to the war, which was, I guess, typing."

"A NRA Debate Tips. Afraid of big government taking away your guns? Here are six arguments you can use to defend yourself."

"Conservatism-under-liberalism should defend human goods that are threatened by liberal ideas taken to extremes. The family, when liberal freedom becomes a corrosive hyper-individualism. Traditional religion, when liberal toleration becomes a militant and superstitious secularism. Local community and local knowledge, against expert certainty and bureaucratic centralization. Artistic and intellectual greatness, when democratic taste turns philistine or liberal intellectuals become apparatchiks. The individual talent of the entrepreneur or businessman, against the leveling impulses of egalitarianism and the stultifying power of monopoly."

"Trumpism is also a celebrity-driven , forged by its leader’s unique reality-television appeal. This has made it relatively easy for the Republican Party’s leaders to hope that his campaign is sui generis, that when he loses in November (as most of them still expect) there won’t be a coherent Trumpism after Trump."

"There's clearly going to be some conflict between the worldview of a left-leaning, alternative press cartoonist and that of a wealthy New York real estate and publishing magnate."

"Gun Talk: With Your Host, the Glib Sociopath Because, freedom. Duh."

"The triumph of a raw populism, embodied by a shameless demagogue, over both the official establishment and the official ideology of a major political party."

"Running Out of Stuff to Do? Try Freaking Out. If you get through all of these suggestions, try doing them again!"

"Don’t get me wrong: I believe that people who circumcise for religious reasons should have the right to do so."

"Europeans think its weird for American Gentiles to be circumcised, and I think they’re right … but I remember the one kid we had in my elementary school class, a black boy who had been born at home, and who was not circumcised. All us boys wanted to stare at his primitive root wiener when we were at the urinal during recess, because it was monstrous. Nobody told us that wieners could look like that."

"Here’s what Viktor Orban knows: that “liberalism” has produced a society and a culture that despises itself, and is committing suicide. It hates the traditional family. It hates Judeo-Christian religion and moral norms. It hates the history and traditions of the countries where it governs. It hates certain people because of the color of their skin, and loves others because of the color of their skin — in both cases, irrespective of the content of their character. It has no respect for free speech, freedom of religion, and other traditional liberties. It believes that it has the right and responsibility to spread its beliefs globally. It has conquered every institution in the West — most importantly, Big Business — and is using soft power to silence and marginalize the “deplorable” people who disagree. The news media lie by commission and omission in order to prop up the Narrative. This is not liberalism. This is illiberal leftism, which wears liberalism like a skin suit."

"[T]hings we thought were permanent and stable are not. Soft totalitarianism is coming. It is time to prepare for the struggle ahead."

"I utterly despise this shallow, mendacious, destructive habit of mind we have of demonizing people in the past who don’t live up to our supposedly perfect standards."

"[A]n American public that has been so propagandized and demoralized that it cannot see the true nature of the threats to it, or if it can, it lacks the wherewithal to respond appropriately. The rot has gone very deep."

"If you can’t prove that particular claims of systemic racism are wrong, you have no reliable way of proving that they are correct either. Again, though, what is true and what is false is a sideshow. The real deal is about power."

"[C]laims of systemic racism in particular institutions are now accepted and repeated as fact, and that it is practically impossible to criticize or reject those claims in any way. "Systemic racism" is as fundamental to the construal of reality in the fast-emerging social order as “class conflict” was in Marxist social orders. It is the uncontestable axiom on which the entire ideological structure is built. Deny that, and you’re part of the racist system."

"“Do you believe in the civic religion of America?” Think of it like this: how could the Catholic Church hold itself together if a significant number of Catholics decided that Jesus Christ, St. Peter, and St. Paul were villains? It couldn’t. A nation is not a religion, but it has to hold its founders in esteem — and this is especially true of America, which was not founded on a tribe, as most other nations were. You don’t have to believe that Washington, Jefferson, and the Founders were without sin — of course they weren’t — but you do have to believe that what they did was good, even heroic. Certainly not villainous."

"How do you know that such a silent majority exists? I know a lot of people are planning to vote for Trump as their contribution to the fight against this madness. Vote for Trump if you want to, but understand that all of this has happened under Trump. I think there’s no question that it will accelerate under Biden, and in that sense, a vote for Trump is reasonable. But don’t think for one second that Trump is going to stop any of it. He doesn’t know how. Whether Trump is re-elected or not, the war on faith, family, and the foundations of American democracy will continue."

"Everybody is afraid. The Gospel speaks to this fear! It offers a way out, and a way forward!"

"[H]atred and tribal violence is endemic to the human condition. Cain slew Abel, and it’s been downhill from there."

"[T]he American media, whether it believes it is doing this or not, is seeding violent racial conflict — and that we are going to see it sooner rather than later."

"The same mob that demanded the death of Jesus, and the release of Barabbas. The same mob that any one of us, whatever our race, could find ourselves standing in, pumping our fists and shouting, under the right circumstances. All of us could be tempted to pick up the stones and hurl them at a great sinner. Stones come in many shapes and sizes. If you don’t think you could brain a sinner with one, or egg on the stone-throwers, then you don’t know your own heart as well as you should."

"This is not a popular truth to say right now, in this time of moral hysteria and purity trials, but it remains true. The color of your skin does not guarantee virtue or vice. Rather, as King taught, and as the Bible teaches, it’s what’s in your heart. Jesus condemned the Pharisees as “whited sepulchres” — tombs that were gleaming on the outside, but that concealed foulness within."

"These are some of the things the Church has to say to the public right now. We are all under judgment. We are all under mercy. There is none righteous, no, not one. But the One who was and is righteous — through obedience to Him, we can be healed."

"Hear me clearly: racism exists, it's a sin, and it should be resisted. But these SJWs, deeply embedded in institutions, and in command of the propaganda apparatus, are taking a genuine social problem — racism — that always needs attention, but construing it in a highly ideological way that has very little to do with addressing with this complex problem, and everything to do with advancing a narrative of command and control that demonizes an entire race of people as plunderers and parasites by nature, and incites others to despise them. We know from history where things like this go."

"Notice that none of this has to do with the government. If you think totalitarianism is only something that the state can impose, you’re wrong. This is what Woke Capitalism is doing to us. We are in a different world now."

"They start with pulling down and abusing statues; they will end by doing this to people."

"Bolsheviks actually had a vision of what they wanted to see replace the order they destroyed. Other than “defund the police,” the Woke do not."

"[S]omeone driving a Geo Metro in this day and age isn't rich."

"They begin by destroying statues. They will end by destroying people."

"I’ve had it. My “Law of Merited Impossibility” (“It will never happen, and when it does, you bigots will deserve it”) was meant as a joke, but the reality it pointed to was serious. Now it’s not even funny in a black-humor way. It’s just true. I don’t believe there is any limiting principle to the destruction that progressives will bring."

"[T]he deepest level of hell is reserved for traitors. Why traitors? Because they make life in community impossible. In medieval Italy, cities were in a frequent state of war with each other. When they closed the city gates at night, everybody in the city had to trust that no one would open the gates during the night and let in troops of the enemy. If you could not have that trust, you couldn’t sleep. You couldn’t live, for fear that your neighbor would betray you, and everyone, to the enemy. To render everyone isolated from everyone else, and living in fear — this was hell."

"[T]he only way for people in a multiracial, pluralistic, modern democratic society to live together is through the old-fashioned liberal principles whose most prominent advocate was Martin Luther King, Jr. The left, led by academic and media institutions, is pulling those principles down with the ideological fervor of fanatical iconoclasts. Nobody is thinking about where this cannot help but lead."

"[t]he forces of disintegration are far more powerful than this rhetoric implicitly acknowledges. Roger Kimball, the author of Tenured Radicals, certainly does not need to be educated in the toxicity of progressivism. He gets that. What I’m not sure that he gets is how resisting it is going to require much more than countercultural education. It is going to require forming generations henceforth in the awareness that if they hold on to their religion and their traditional beliefs — including a belief in the virtues of the Western tradition — they will be regarded by the dominant culture as moral reprobates, as outlaws. They will be hated, and in many cases made to suffer."

"[W]e have moved into a new phase of ideological conflict, one in which leftist elites hold the high ground. One major difference between today and the period Roger Kimball refers to is that in 2020, Woke Capitalism is a thing; the radicals hold power within corporations. Daniel McCarthy calls out the hypocrisy of the big corporations. Nike, for example, is Very, Very Concerned about white supremacy in America. Concentration camp for Muslim Uighurs in China? Not so much."

"[T]he coming battle will actually sideline many practicing Christians. That it will be between the Woke on one side, and white nationalists on the other. There is no way that authentic followers of Jesus Christ can endorse race nationalism of either the white or the black kind."

"Wishy-washy Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is going to be burned up, and is now being burned up. There is going to be no middle ground left. Churches will either go militantly woke, or may turn to a Christianized version of white nationalism. The rest of us believers will be doing our best simply to hold our churches and families together, and not lose our members to the passionate ideologies tearing the country apart."