In discussing how President Obama uses children to shield himself from criticism, I broke my own rule about leaving kids out of political debates. The children of public figures should be left on the sidelines. It was a stupid mistake and I apologize--and as a dad I should have known better.
If only Karl Marx were alive today to see his wackiest ideas being completely paraded around. He would be so proud. I can see him now: Sprawled out on his hammock from REI, fiddling around for the last vegan potato chip in the bag as he binge-watches Academy Awards on his 70-inch smart TV. In between glances at his iPhone X (he's got a massive Twitter following), he sips Pepsi. In his Patagonia t-shirt and NIKE tennis shoes, he writes a line or two about "oppression" and "the have-nots" as part of his job for Google.
His house is loaded with fresh products from all the woke companies. In the fridge, he's got Starbucks, he loves their soy milk. He's got Ben & Jerry's in the freezer. He tells everyone that, if he shaved, he'd use Gillette, on account of the way they stand up for the Have-Nots. But, really, Marx uses Dollar Shave Club because it's cheaper, a higher quality. Secretly, he loves Chic-Fil-A. He buys all his comic books off Amazon. The truth is, he never thought people would actually try to make the whole "communism" thing work.
RELATED: SOCIALISM: This is the most important special we have done
Companies have adopted a form of socialism that is sometimes called woke capitalism. They use their status as corporations to spread a socialist message and encourage people to do their part in social justice. The idea of companies in America using socialism at all is as confusing and ridiculous as a donkey in a prom dress: How did this happen? Is it a joke? Why is nobody bursting out in laughter? How far is this actually going to go? Does someone actually believe that they can take a donkey to prom?
Companies have adopted a form of socialism that is sometimes called woke capitalism.
On the micro level, Netflix has made some socialist moves: The "like/dislike" voting system was replaced after a Netflix-sponsored stand-up special by Amy Schumer received as tidal wave of thumb-downs. This summer, Netflix will take it a step further in the name of squashing dissent by disabling user comments and reviews. And of course most of us share a Netflix account with any number of people. Beyond that, they're as capitalist as the next mega-company.
Except for one area: propaganda. Netflix has started making movie-length advertisements for socialism. They call them "documentaries," but we know better than that. The most recent example is "Knock Down the House," which comes out tomorrow. The 86-minute-long commercial for socialism follows four "progressive Democrat" women who ran in the 2018 midterms, including our favorite socialist AOC.
Here's a snippet from the movie so good that you'll have to fight the urge to wave your USSR flag around the room:
This is what the mainstream media wants you to believe. They want you to be moved. They want the soundtrack to inspire you to go out and do something.
Just look at how the mainstream media treated the recent high-gloss "documentary" about Ilhan Omar, "Time for Ilhan." It received overwhelmingly bad ratings on IMDb and other user-review platforms, but got a whopping 93% on the media aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
This is exactly what the media wants you to think of when you hear the word socialism. Change. Empowerment. Strength. Diversity. They spend so much energy trying to make socialism cool. They gloss right over the unbelievable death toll. BlazeTV's own Matt Kibbe made a great video on this exact topic.
Any notion of socialism in America is a luxury, made possible by capitalism. The woke companies aren't actually doing anything for socialism. If they're lucky, they might get a boost in sales, which is the only thing they want anyway.
We want to show you the truth. We want to tell you the stories you won't hear anywhere else, not on Netflix, not at some movie festival. We're going to tell you what mainstream media doesn't want you to know.
Look at how much history we've lost over the years. They changed it slowly. But they had to. Because textbooks were out. So people were watching textbooks. It was printed. You would bring the book home. Mom and dad might go through it and check it out. So you had to slowly do things.
Well, they're not anymore. There are no textbooks anymore. Now, you just change them overnight. And we are losing new history. History is being changed in realtime.
RELATED: 'Good Morning Texas' joins Glenn to get an inside look at Mercury Museum
You have to write down what actually is happening and keep a journal. Don't necessarily tell everybody. Just keep a journal for what is happening right now. At some point, our kids won't have any idea of the truth. They will not have any idea of what this country was, how it really happened. Who were the good guys. Who were the bad guys. Who did what.
As Michelle Obama said. Barack knows. We have to change our history. Well, that's exactly what's happening. But it's happening at a very rapid pace.
We have to preserve our history. It is being systematically erased.
I first said this fifteen years ago, people need clay plots. We have to preserve our history as people preserved histories in ancient days, with the dead see scrolls, by putting them in caves in a clay pot. We have to preserve our history. It is being systematically erased. And I don't mean just the history of the founding of our country. I mean the history that's happening right now.
And the history that's happening right now, you're a problem if you're a conservative or a Christian. You are now a problem on the left, if you disagree and fall out of line at all. This is becoming a fascistic party. And you know what a fascist is. It doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or a Republican or an independent. If you believe it's my way or the highway, if you believe that people don't have a right to their opinion or don't have a right to their own life — you could do be a fascist.
Christianity might seem pretty well-protected in the U.S., but that's not the case in many parts of the globe.
On Easter Sunday, suicide bombers made the news for killing 290 innocent Christians in Sri Lanka and injuring another 500. On Tuesday, ISIS claimed responsibility for the massacre. Of course, the Western world mourned this tragic loss of life on a holy day of worship, but we forget that this isn't an isolated incident. Indeed, Christians are discriminated at extreme levels worldwide, and it needs to be brought to light. And whenever we do highlight brutal persecutions such as the Easter bombings in Sri Lanka, we need to call them what they are — targeted attacks against Christians. Sadly, many of our politicians are deathly afraid to do so.
RELATED: Hey media, there is absolutely a war on Christians!
A 2018 Pew Research Center study found that Christians are harassed in 144 countries — the most of any other faith — slightly outnumbering Muslims for the top of the list. Additionally, Open Doors, a non-profit organization that works to serve persecuted Christians worldwide, found in their 2019 World Watch List that over 245 million Christians are seriously discriminated against for their religious beliefs. Sadly, this translates into 4,136 Christians killed and 2,625 either arrested, sentenced, imprisoned, or detained without trial over the year-long study period. And when it comes to churches, those in Sri Lanka were merely added to a long list of 1,266 Christian buildings attacked for their religion.
These breathtaking stats receive very little coverage in the Western world. And there seems to be a profound hesitation from politicians in discussing the issue of persecution against Christians. In the case of the Sri Lanka bombings, there's even a reluctance to use the word "Christian."
After the horrific Pittsburgh Synagogue and New Zealand Mosque shootings, Democrats rightfully acknowledged the disturbing trend of targeted attacks against Jews and Muslims. But some of these same politicians refer to the Sri Lanka bombings with careless ambiguity.
So why is it so hard for our leaders to acknowledge the persecutions Christians face?
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, for instance, certainly did — calling the incursions "attacks on Easter worshippers." Understandably, the term confused and frustrated many Christians. Although, supporters of these politicians argued the term was appropriate since a recent Associated Press report used it, and it was later picked up by a variety of media outlets, including Fox News. However, as more Democrats like 2020 presidential candidate Julián Castro and Rep. Dan Kildee continued to use the phrase "Easter worshippers," it became clear that these politicians were going out of their way to avoid calling a spade a spade.
So why is it so hard for our leaders to acknowledge the persecutions Christians face? For starters, Christianity in democratic countries like the U.S. is seen differently than in devastated countries like Somalia. According to Pew Research, over 70% of Americans are Christian, with 66% of those Christians being white and 35% baby boomers. So while diverse Christians from all over the world are persecuted for their faith—in the U.S., Christians are a dominant religion full of old white people. This places Christians at the bottom of progressives' absurd intersectional totem poll, therefore leaving little sympathy for their cause. However, the differing experiences of Christians worldwide doesn't take away from the fact that they are unified in their beliefs.
By refusing to name the faith of the Sri Lankan martyrs, politicians are sending a message that they have very little, if no, concern about the growing amount of persecution against Christians worldwide.
Martyrs don't deserve to be known as "Easter worshippers." They should be known by the Christian faith they gave their lives for. Decent politicians need to call the tragedy in Sri Lanka what it is — a vicious attack on the Christian faith.
Patrick Hauf (@PatrickHauf) is a writer for Young Voices and Vice President of Lone Conservative. His work can be found in the Washington Examiner, Townhall, FEE, and more.
Here are a few statues that actually exist:
- A bust of Che Guevara glaring at a hillside in Bolivia.
- A statue of Lucifer in Madrid, Spain, and another in Belgium.
- There are statues of Karl Marx, Stalin, and Lenin all over the world, including a statue of Lenin in Seattle.
- Same goes for Mao Zedong, who is responsible for roughly 30 million deaths.
- Just outside a former ghetto in Warsaw, there was a statue of Hitler kneeling in prayer. (It sold for $17 million at Christies in New York.)
- There's a monument to a fascist soldier in Chicago that was gifted by Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini adored.
- A large statue of a naked man standing on naked women in a cemetery in Brooklyn.
- There's a statue of a policewoman urinating in Dresden, Germany.
- There's the infamous "Manneken Pis" statue in Brussels, which features a little boy peeing into a found and is, frankly, hilarious (they dress him up in little outfits depending on the season or holidays).
RELATED: Recent Yale study proves the left's racist outrage is an act of projection
Here's a list of things that have been branded racist in the past couple of years:
- Dogs/dog-walking.
- 911 calls.
- TSA's body scanners.
- Classic literature/philosophy.
- Milk.
- Knitting.
- Being cheerful.
- Not being cheerful.
- Friendliness.
- Not being friendly enough.
- Libraries.
- Clowns.
- The Avengers.
- Diets.
- Infant mortality rates (that one comes from none other than Kamala Harris, by the way, who tweeted that "implicit racial bias is one critical reason that the maternal mortality rate for Black women is three to four times higher than white women." She blamed maternal mortality rates on racism.)
- Makeup.
- Personal space.
- Vikings.
- Potatoes.
- Inclusion.
- Burger King commercials.
- Okie-doke hand signs.
- Rainbows.
- Compliments.
- Childbirth.
- House plants
- Nail polish.
- Bacon (The New York Times made this flawless argument in an article titled "Donald Trump is Trying to Kill You").
- Trying to improve racial tensions.
- Not focusing constantly on racial tensions.
- Mentioning racial tensions.
- Existence (if white).
I could list of examples of perceived racism all day, because that seems to be the new standard: Everything is somehow racist. Every facet of life. Frankly, it's exhausting.
And, as you know, there's an incredible amount of overlap between statutes and perceived racism. I don't have to give you any examples, you already know what I'm talking about, but I will say that they've included Christopher Columbus, Thomas Jefferson, Francis Scott Key, Abraham Lincoln, and Joan of Arc, among many, many others.
The most recent example is as unexpected as the whole "walking your dogs is racist" claim. And, honestly, whoever made the claim clearly did some expert-level research. They worked really hard to find this so-called racism.
But it's also a little more nuanced than most of the above examples.
The controversy centers on a statue of Kate Smith, a singer who once called "the Songbird of the South," who gained fame in the 1940s for her rendition of "God Bless America."
Smith's achievements are awe-inspiring. She performed for King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, at the White House shortly before the start of WW2. Ronald Reagan bestowed her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She's been credited helping defeat the Nazis thanks to an 18-hour broadcast in which she helped CBS raise over $100 million in war bonds.
And, for decades, both the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Flyers played her version of "God Bless America" at home games. The Yankees had featured it in during the seventh inning since 9/11. The Flyers even had a statue of Smith outside their stadium. She had become the team's good-luck charm after she performed "God Bless America" before Game Six of the 1974 Stanley Cup finals, and the Flyers won.
Suddenly, Smith became known as a racist, undeserving of a statue, destined to be canceled and forgotten.
But this month, all of that changed. Suddenly, Smith became known as a racist, undeserving of a statue, destined to be canceled and forgotten.
The statement reads:
The Flyers have enjoyed a long and popular relationship with 'God Bless America,' as performed by the late Kate Smith...But in recent days, we learned that several of the songs Kate Smith performed in the 1930s include lyrics and sentiments that are incompatible with the values of our organization, and evoke painful and unacceptable themes.
The songs?
"That's Why Darkies Were Born" and "Pickaninny Heaven."
"Pickaninny" being an archaic derogatory word to describe black children. She performed the song in the 1933 movie "Hello,
Everybody!" In the scene, she devoted the song "a lot of little colored children living in an orphanage" and sang of how "great big watermelons roll around and get in your way" and "luscious pork chop bushes bloom right outside your doorway."
As for the other song, "That's Why Darkies Were Born," well, have a listen for yourself:
Kate Smith - That's Why Darkies Were Born - 1931 youtu.be
Lyrics:
Someone had to pick the cotton/Someone had to plant the corn,
Someone had to slave and be able to sing/That's why darkies were born.
Someone had to laugh at trouble/Though he was tired and worn,
Had to be contented with any old thing/That's why darkies were born.
Based on that, it looks pretty bad for poor ole Kate Smith. But, as we see more often, the cries of "racism!" are in fact deeply ignorant, based on little more than emotion and sycophantic outrage.
Because the song, "That's Why Darkies Were Born" is purely satirical, as part of the 1931 Broadway revue "George White's Scandals" as a satire of white supremacists. Smith wrote the song with Paul Robeson, actor and civil rights activist. Robeson's father was literally a runaway slave.
Worse yet, both songs came at an early point in her career, in the 1930s, a time when works of satire like these were considered controversial, even dangerous, for the opposite reason. They are just two, largely insignificant, songs of the roughly 3,000 that she recorded over the course of her career.
Kate Smith's niece told USA Today:
Aunt Kathryn really did not see color. She didn't see a person's color. She was very in tune with a person's character. I've always thought that was a model, to not see a person's color but to see their character. And this is why I'm incredibly sad.
The message is clear: the left's outrage machine knows no bounds. Anything, even the fight against actual racism, can be deemed racist.