Verbal WarmingBy Peter Jones
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We are not surprised to hear that political freedom in the world has declined for a fifth straight year, especially in the Middle East and in North Africa. But loss of freedom in the West does surprise us. Freedom has shrunk partly because of silencing "hate speech."
Is the "climate of hate" warming or cooling here at home? The political pundits of the Left predict a violent and fiery future, which fits their present ideological needs. Some even claim that Right Wing violent political speech caused the Tucson massacre. Though recently abandoned by the electorate, the progressive Left still pursues a goal to silence opposing speech and thus to mute the cut and thrust of valid political debate.
Their charges are not idle threats. Politicians call for the application of the so-called "Fairness Doctrine," to regulate content on the airwaves, and Jewish Funds for Fairness, heavily financed by the Leftist billionaire George Soros and inspired by the Marxist Saul Alinsky, is seeking to silence Right Wing pundits in order "to transform society…and create a more just world." The just society will emerge when anti-socialist discourse is eliminated.
In the political debate about man-made global warming, free speech is constantly threatened. Based on the oft-repeated "truth" that "the science is settled," and that we should proceed post haste to spend $15-20 trillion to implement policies based on such solid scientific "fact," the leading power-brokers, many of them worshipers of Goddess Nature, regularly deny free speech to those in the opposite camp. The skeptics are trashed as "deniers" (as in "holocaust deniers"), and some have been denied access to the climate conferences in Copenhagen (2009) and Cancun (2010), where the proceedings in the opening ceremony last December were dedicated to the Mayan goddess Ixchel.
Opponents of the reigning climate-change ideology are not a miniscule idiot fringe. In fact, the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine collected the signatures of 31,000 scientists opposed to global warming alarmism. However, speech is only free for the Gnostic warmers who know that warming climate change is inevitable and, by this, intend to control the world. Actually, since 1990, $50 billion of government money has been spent on proving man-made global-warming, while only $19 million was granted to opposing research. This is a serious case of muzzling the opposition. According to James Hanson, head of NASA, and close associate of Al Gore, democracy is our problem: "…compared to China, we are 'the barbarians' with a 'democracy' that now rules the roost, making it impossible to legislate effectively on climate change."
Is this a trend that should concern us? In a previous Inside/Out I noted the rush to brand Christian organizations as "hate groups," thus denying them a place at the public table, not because of any serious example of "hatred" but because of "ideology." Readers will remember that Mark Potok, director of Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, openly recognizes that being labeled as "a 'hate group' is 'all about ideology.'" This is quite an admission. No crime, no vi olence, just "wrong thinking," which needs to be silenced.
Speech can be silenced in many ways. On the campus it is silenced by a refusal of public debate. It can also happen pre-emptively by admissions policy. Applicants to Vanderbilt's Nurse Residency Program in Women's Health who cannot agree to participate in abortions "will not be considered." In the UK, speech is being silenced in the area of attitudes toward homosexuality. Christian owners of a B&B were denied the right to refuse rooms to gay couples by a judge who declared: "…it is no longer the case [in once Christian England] that our laws must…automatically reflect the Judaeo-Christian position…[In fact] the moral consensus is now the other way around." Only certain speech and certain laws are now acceptable.
Genuinely violent speech must be deplored, but the charges brought against Christians are weapons of mass distraction. The white noise created by such groundless accusations muffles the grinding screech of two tectonic plates; a revolutionary conflict of opposing worldviews, of Christian Two-ism and of rising pagan One-ism. The latter now claims, as the English judge explicitly does, the right to control public discourse and silence "unhelpful" disagreement by any means because in One-ism there is no ultimate right or wrong, fair or foul play, only "enlightened" power, which progressively annihilates the right of Two-ist speech.
This is not unlike the time of the apostle Paul, who, locked up for his politically incorrect speech by the pagan Roman Empire, courageously asked his fellow believers: "Pray for me that I may have boldness to speak what I must speak."
May this prayer and boldness be ours, especially since the ultimate goal of One-ism, in all its forms, is to silence the Gospel. Christian speech is not hate speech, it is love speech. We pronounce the name and the truth of Jesus, who is the Word, full of truth and grace. Our speech is not optional. Remember what Jesus told his disciples:
So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 10:32)
No matter what the world says and no matter what consequences await us, we must speak the name and truth of Jesus for all to hear.