By Selwyn Duke
If you favor same-sex “marriage,” “by all means celebrate today’s decision,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts in his Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) dissent.
“But do not celebrate the Constitution,” he continued. “It had nothing to do with it.”
The Constitution may, though, have everything to do with the reversing of Obergefell. That is, if a new lawsuit identifying the 2015 opinion as “legal fiction” is successful.
Image credit: Amazon.com
By Selwyn Duke
It’s ironic, but the same people who often don’t even know what boys and girls are may seem to be cocksure about what should be canceled. Then again, awash in their characteristic relativism, some of them aren’t even sure about that. Consider one Charlotte Gordon, “distinguished professor of humanities” at Endicott College in Massachusetts.
Image created using Grok AI.
By Selwyn Duke
It’s like 20 9/11s — or 50 October 7s. That’s approximately how many Christians have been murdered by Islamic jihadists in Africa just during the past decade. This “silent genocide,” as one ex-U.S. diplomat puts it, is still ongoing, too. It’s all part of an Islamic State (ISIS) effort to establish a new caliphate. And progress is being made on this front, as jihadist groups are poised to take over several African countries.
That’s not all there is on the Christian persecution front, either. Another report holds that Eurasian Christian communities are being destroyed with Israeli arms — funded by the U.S.
Regarding the Africa story, history is perhaps repeating itself. Unbeknownst to most, Christianity was the dominant religion in North Africa by the 400s A.D. In fact, the region at the time had more Christians than Europe did.
That is, until the jihadists arrived.
Shortly after Islam’s 622 birth, Muslim armies swept across North Africa, and the rest is history. Today, less than one percent of the region’s population is Christian.
This will be sub-Saharan Africa’s fate, too, if the jihadists have their way. As website Global Fight Against Terrorism Funding reports:
ISIS terrorists are beheading Christians and burning churches and homes in central and southern Africa, according to international observers. Military groups linked to Islamic terrorists have been held responsible for a swathe of attacks in the area in recent months.
According to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), attacks on Christians are increasing in the region…. Photos released recently by the Islamic State Mozambique Province (ISMP) show four attacks on Christian villages in Mozambique, with churches burned down, corpses of what the jihadists call “infidels” left strewn on the ground. MEMRI Vice President Alberto Miguel Fernandez told Fox News Digital: “What we see in Africa today is a kind of silent genocide or silent, brutal, savage war that is occurring in the shadows and all too often ignored by the international community.
“That jihadist groups are in a position to take over not one, not two, but several countries in Africa — take over the whole country or most of several countries — is dangerous.”
These terrorists play for keeps, too. As radio station WFIW informed Thursday, Fernandez, who’s also a former U.S. diplomat, explained
that the goal of these jihadist groups is “eliminating Christian communities,” as they push down from safe havens and Muslims are “given a choice: ‘either join us or you too will face killing and annihilation.’”
“Christians, of course, are not going to be asked to join,” Fernandez told Fox News Digital. “Christians are going to be targeted and destroyed.”
The United Nations migration agency said Monday that attacks by insurgents in Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado province displaced more than 46,000 people in the span of eight days last month.
The International Organization for Migration said nearly 60% of those forced from their homes were children.
In a separate report, the U.N.’s humanitarian office said the wave of attacks between July 20 and July 28 across three districts in Cabo Delgado caused the surge in displacements.
While the United Nations references attacks, its reporting has not detailed deaths or specified the targets. At least nine Christians in the Cabo Delgado province were reportedly killed in separate attacks by Islamic insurgents during that timeframe.
“I’m no fan of the United Nations in general, but I think what they’re doing is kind of the lowest common denominator,” Fernandez told Fox News Digital. “It’s kind of easy to be vague like that. The fact that some of this and some of the worst of it is happening because of a deep anti-Christian animus, hatred of Christians, religiously-based hatred of Christians is something that the UN usually doesn’t like to talk about.”
For sure, especially since anti-Christian hatred has a home at the UN itself.
As to the brutality, the following recent videos illustrate it, putting images to the words.
Unfortunately, the war on Christianity isn’t unique to Africa. Below, for instance, is a recent news piece about a massacre of Christians (and Druze) in Syria.
Then there’s the aforementioned story about the U.S.’s funding of anti-Christian activity. At issue is a politics-makes-strange-bedfellows partnership between Israel and Azerbaijan (Iran, their mutual enemy, unites them). According to The American Conservative, reporting Wednesday:
Recently, political commentator Ana Kasparian [asserted] that Israel armed Azerbaijan to erase the Armenian people from Karabakh. She referenced the decades-long conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly Armenian region legally part of Azerbaijan. After Azerbaijan’s decisive 2023 victory, the world witnessed scenes of mass exodus: Armenian Christians choosing to burn their own homes rather than surrender them, ancient churches being desecrated, and over 100,000 people fleeing under military pressure. Freedom House confirmed this as ethnic cleansing — enabled by Israeli-supplied drones and surveillance tech.
Here’s where U.S. policy becomes complicit: America sends Israel $3.8 billion annually in military aid…, and spent $17.9 billion on aid to Israel in the year following October 2023.
Azerbaijan is such a bad actor, do note, that U.S. law actually prohibits us from selling arms to it. Israel, however, is not thus constrained.
Of course, the blind eye turned to Christian persecution won’t surprise anyone acquainted with the now very militantly secular West. Just consider Britain, which once spread Christianity to the very corners of the Earth. Police there recently threatened to arrest a pastor after he was attacked by a Muslim mob. His sin?
He expounded upon the differences between Christianity and Islam while holding a Koran.
U.K. cops also recently arrested activist Tommy Robinson (again), this time for posting social-media messages such as “F___ Hamas.”
But, hey, don’t be surprised. Western authorities well know that they have to protect the religion of peace.
This article was originally published at The New American.
By Selwyn Duke
Here’s a striking statistic: A third of all Washington, D.C., district judges (known for anti-Trump rulings) are foreign-born. Does this matter?
It certainly may if they’re anything like hard-left representative Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.). She said in Spanish at a recent Mexico City summit, “I’m a proud Guatemalan before I’m an American.”
Then there’s Representative Deqa Dhalac (D-Maine), who was the first female Somali-born mayor in the U.S. In a resurfaced video clip, she can be heard saying, while wearing her hijab, that she wants to “help our country” (referencing Somalia). She did catch herself and follow the quoted phrase with, “our former country Somalia.” But is it really “former” in her heart? You can decide.
“I learned long ago the difference between critics and box office.” So said late President Ronald Reagan, referencing what his experience as a Hollywood actor taught him. Box office is what matters whether you’re selling films, politicians, or anything else. And perhaps illustrating this reality perfectly is the much discussed “un-woke” Sydney Sweeney ad for American Eagle Outfitters (AE) jeans. Though the critics are livid, the lucid are laughing — and AE is laughing all the way to the bank.
In fact, while wokesters are calling the ad “Nazi” propaganda, AE’s stock has jumped 20 percent. It just goes to show that when selling jeans, having good jeans — and models with good genes — really does matter.
(And, yes, there are such things as “good genes.” More on that later.)
By Selwyn Duke
There’s a political revolution bubbling in what once was the motherland. The Reform UK party, founded just seven years ago as the “Brexit Party,” may now be poised to win power in Britain’s next election.
How significant the party’s rise is cannot be overstated. A poll earlier this year showed Reform leading the Conservatives and the Labour Party for the first time ever. Note here that the former can be analogized to our Republicans and Labour to our Democrats. Given this, the result is much like the Libertarians or Constitution Party out-polling the GOP and Democrats in the U.S. It’s breathtaking and historic.
“Work expands to fit the allotted time,” the saying goes. And that education is no exception holds a lesson: Some will say when pondering homeschooling, “I’m not qualified to teach my kids.” But, informs homeschooling advocate Brett Pike, it’s not just that you can teach your kids — and splendidly.
It’s that you can do it in a fraction of the time schools do.
By Selwyn Duke
“Well, that’s very stylish.” So said tough silver-screen cop Dirty Harry Callahan, in the 1976 film The Enforcer, reacting to a feminist initiative. Its goal was, a woke female official informed, to “broaden the areas of participation for women in the police force.”
This was, of course, art imitating life, and today we’re so stylish that it doesn’t even seem stylish anymore. It does, however, seem dangerous and foolhardy to many — and you can count Duke among them.
I’ll let the reader figure out if this includes me. But right now I’m talking about Daily Caller senior editor Amber Duke. Fed up with the recent sad and tragic mob-attack spectacle in Cincinnati, Ohio, Duke asks, “Is It Time To Ban Girl Cops?”
My, my, now that is a third rail of American social commentary.
By Selwyn Duke
With the alphabet networks’ viewership down to 19 percent of the market — they controlled more than 90 percent in the mid-’70s — it’s safe saying the once-mainstream media aren’t exactly smokin’. The same is true of mainstream newspapers, and a recent USA Today article about smoking may illustrate why.
The headline, above a piece by one Andrea Javor, reads, “We know cigarettes are bad. So why are people starting to smoke again?” The problem?
They are — and they’re not.
That is, cigarettes are unhealthful. There are not, however, any data showing that people are starting to smoke more again. Yet it may seem that way to liberal journalists because, well, smoking is a “liberal thing.”
By Selwyn Duke
It was decades ago that I warned against using the term “African-American.” It was three years ago that legendary black singer Smokey Robinson said, passionately, “I resent being called an African-American — I really do.” Now a black Ivy League linguistics professor is echoing this sentiment. Saying the term is “awkward,” he’s touting the “back to ‘black’ by popular demand” position.
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