Originally posted from 09-05-04 to 09-12-04
The Devil Made Them Do It
by Jeffrey Quick

World Net Daily, one of the Web's leading purveyors of religious bigotry, has never said anything positive about neo-pagan religions. If there is an organization called "Pagans for Bush" (or, perish the thought, "Pagans for Peroutka"), you'll never read about it there. (And there might well be, though conservative neo-pagans aren't as vocal as their liberal brothers.) But if any tragedy can be tangentially linked to witchcraft, Joe Farah has to let us know.

Two 13 year old girls in Indiana decided to off themselves on the railroad tracks. Evidently their suicide notes mentioned reincarnation. Wiccans generally believe in reincarnation. Ergo, the kids were dabbling in witchcraft, even though Sarah Casey's dad found nothing of the sort in her room or on her computer. And most neo-pagans (especially kids) are so blabby and non-security-conscious about their traditionally-secret religion that there would have been evidence all over there, not to mention that right about the time Wiccans learn about reincarnation, they also learn about the Threefold Law: that the good or evil one does comes back to you three times. Even if one regards suicide as morally neutral towards oneself, there are all your loved ones to think of, not to mention your fellow Wiccans who might get slimed by WND.

To be fair to Farah, he picked up his take from WNDU, South Bend, which seems to be relying on the police. And this is Indiana (not "in-Diana", as local pagans would have it.), once the Vatican of the KKK—not exactly a bastion of liberalism.(I've met some of what passes for Big Name Pagans in Indiana, and even I find them a bit scary.) But the press seems never to have asked to see the suicide notes. Even if they were redacted to protect the privacy of the families, they'd cast some light on motivations. But that would be investigative journalism. Better and more profitable to accept the police story and start a community witch hunt ('for the children"), even if some members of the community are unconvinced of the competence of the police. And better for Farah to accept the story uncritically; he knows what plays for his audience.

One unexpected salutary effect of the coverage is to question the role of religion in children's lives. "At 13 they should, the family should, be dealing with religious concepts together," Dr. Morris Newton told the station. "I think the 13-year-old mind is not sophisticated enough to appreciate the nuances of not just Wicca, but any sort of religious tenet." This is an admission that religion is dangerous to the growing mind, for even if the family is there to provide those "nuances", the young mind can't grasp them. And WNDU indirectly quotes a Wiccan High Priestess:"Chestnutt won't teach teens Wicca because it's so complex." No, Chestnutt (and most other Wiccan leaders) won't teach minors Wicca because she is afraid of being hauled to jail by some disgruntled parent. As a religious system, Wicca is a lot more simple-minded than Christianity. But its practice requires a mindfulness that American 13 year olds (or adults) don't have...which is an excellent argument for teaching it to them, for how else shall they learn mindfulness?

Two girls are dead, and nobody knows why. It's easier to blame the alleged Devil's alleged minions than to admit that in a world where terrorist threats and overactive governments are everywhere, and where the press and schools teach that the earth is in grave danger, two girls might have decided they have no future. The police and press are starting to realize that Wicca played no part in this tragedy. I don't expect to hear that from Farah though.

Originally posted from 03-07-04 to 03-14-04
The Question
by Dr. M. Sidney Wallace

The previous champion of free speech, Howard Dean has been pushed to the back of the fireplace. He is now nothing more than a pile of smolderingcoals. He has been lumped onto the pile of other contenders like Sharpton, Lieberman, Kucinich, Gephardt, and Edwards.

This has been one of the shortest and least exciting campaign seasons that the Democrat Party has ever had. When Howard jumped out to the front of the pack by activating young people to exercise their free speech and campaign for him, it took the established party a little while to figure out what was happening. However, the patriarch of the party, Bill Clinton, under instruction and guidance of the matriarch, and current leader of the party was able to generate the candidate they wanted to be defeated in November.

If Hillary is not the candidate of the donkey party she wants to make sure that a member of the established elite will be defeated. You can bet your bottom dollar that she and slick Willie will be doing everything in their power to make sure that George Bush is re-elected President.

As of Tuesday, March 2nd, John Kerry has effectively secured the nomination of the Democrat party and the race for the presidency is on. Look for John Kerry to exercise his right of freedom of speech to complain about everything in the nation that he finds wrong:

  • He will complain about the unemployment of the nation, which is at a relatively low level for individuals willing to work.
  • He will complain about the American disgrace in education, which is exactly what Ted Kennedy has created.
  • He will complain about the shortages in the judiciary, which is being filibustered by his party.
  • He will complain about Iraq and Afghanistan, which are more stable now than three years ago.
  • He will complain about the racial tension in the black community, which exists in the mind of Jessie Jackson.
  • He will complain about the sun coming up in the East, which is the fault of some personal friend of Mel Gibson.
  • He will complain about not being able to marry Barney Frank, but instead having to settle for his "female" wife.

Millions of old line Democrats will rally behind Senator Kerry as he exercises his right to "free speech" and demands that taxes be raised to pay for the federal government to correct all of these problems.

George Bush, on the other hand, is not exercising his right to "free speech." However he is letting his actions do his talking.

This brings me to the all-important question: Is it true that people of the United States demand freedom of speech to make up for their lack of freedom of thought?

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Originally posted from 02-22-04 to 02-29-04
An Allegiance to Truth: The Response
by Rex Curry

NOTE: The following was written in response to our commentary An Allegiance to Truth. It is published here without alteration.

What I find objectionable about your commentary, is someone who, while making a point (whether I agree with the point or not), uses falsified information in the process of doing so. In the midst of what has become a highly polarized argument, I suspect that's one thing on which most of us can agree. It's entirely possible that you are not doing so intentionally, and I am not accusing you of deliberately pulling the wool over people's eyes. But it didn't take a lot of time for me to research many of the facts involved, and it would behoove you - particularly since you present yourself as something of an authority on your own comments - to do a little more of the same yourself.

You have not disproven a single thing I have contended. You have not read the original 1892 article about the pledge with its promotion of government schools and its swipe at all of the better alternatives, a central socialist point about the pledge that is glaringly unaddressed in your own comments. You repeatedly site another source that has a website that has never ever published (and to this day does not contain) a single photograph of the original pledge and yet you hamhandedly insinuate falsehoods about mine, and that is all you do, insinuate. I will await that time if you ever reach it when you admit that the photo with the "circular pattern" flag that you "analyzed" is in fact authentic. I made the effort to collect and display photos, a effort you criticize, while you site a source that has never done so, and while you make hamhanded comments without your ever having made any effort to collect and analyze such photos on your own.

The Pledge of Allegiance was written by Francis Bellamy in 1892 and expresses ideas in the socialist utopian novels of Francis' cousin Edward Bellamy. Francis wrote the pledge to promote the Bellamys' idea of socialism in the most socialistic institution -government schools. The Bellamy cousins were totalitarian socialists, and the ideas that inspired them and the pledge caused mass atrocities worldwide. (http://members.ij.net/rex/pledge1.html)

Edward Bellamy's book "Looking Backward" (1888) was such a success that it inspired the "Nationalism" movement in the U.S. and "Bellamy Clubs" (also known as "Nationalist Clubs") whose members wanted the federal government to nationalize most of the American economy. They saw government schools as a means to their socialist "Nationalism."

The book "Looking Backward" is about a man who sleeps from 1887 until the year 2000. The United States has become one giant socialist monopoly (excuse the redundancy). The book openly portrays men treated as military draftees, from the age of twenty-one until the age of forty-five, in the U.S.'s industrial army (for more on that see http://members.ij.net/rex/pledge_military.html). Bellamy's glorification of the military includes government assignment of all jobs. Everyone is issued ration cards which are used to draw goods from government storehouses.
Everyone is permitted only the same amount in value annually.

Of course, all of the preceding is portrayed as a dandy utopia just as it was portrayed by so many apologists for the military socialist complex of the socialist trio of atrocities and other socialist hell-holes (see http://members.ij.net/rex/socialists.jpg). According to R. J. Rummel's article in the Encyclopedia of Genocide (1999) the top three most murderous regimes are: (1) the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 62 million deaths, 1917-'87; (2) People's Republic of China, 35 million, 1949-'87; (3) Germany under the National Socialist German Workers' Party, 21 million, 1933-'45;

Did Bellamy foresee soviet-style rationing, or did he inspire it?

Bellamy's is the same socialist naivete that resulted in 7 million persons who perished from 1932-33 in the famine that resulted in Europe's "breadbasket" after the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics imposed collectivist land management in the Ukraine. By the spring of 1933, an estimated 25,000 people died every day in the Ukraine. It is the same socialist naivete that resulted in 27 million people starving to death in 1958 in the so-called "Great Leap Forward" in China. Was the "Great Leap Forward" inspired by "Looking Backward"

If Bellamy's fictional character had awakened in the year 2000 he would learn that since 1887 Bellamy's philosophy had set and was holding all the worst records for shortages, poverty, misery, starvation, atrocities and mass slaughter. Edward Bellamy lived from 1850-1898, and died in Chicopee, Massachusetts and was spared witnessing the horrors that his socialism caused to the rest of humanity.'

The original Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. flag as dictated by Francis Bellamy used a straight-arm salute, not the hand-over-the-heart (see rare historic photos at http://members.ij.net/rex/pledge1.html). Francis Bellamy died in 1931, living long enough to see a similar salute and a similar philosophy espoused by the National Socialist German Workers' Party. As the only person on the internet who collects, exposes and writes about historical photos of the original socialist salute to the U.S. flag, I consider Edward Bellamy's book (and the Bellamy cousins' ideas) terrifying.