A testament to escapism. The post ‘Born To Run’: Bruce Springsteen’s reimaging of ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

This is part three of George Parry’s assessment of the 2024 election in Pennsylvania. Find part one here and part two here. According to the Pennsylvania Department of State, in the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden received 3,358,229 votes, consisting of 1,995,720 mail-in ballots and 1,409,341 in-person votes on Election Day. In contrast, Donald Trump received 3,377,674 votes, consisting of 595,570 mail-in ballots and 2,731,230 votes on Election Day. In short, going into Election Day, Biden was ahead by 1,400,150 votes and went on to win Pennsylvania by 80,555 votes. But a shift appears to be underway. The Pennsylvania Department of State reports that, as of Oct. 29, 2024, 849,849 ballots have been cast by registered Democrats, 468,067 by registered Republicans, and 155,909 by others. So to date, the Democrat mail-in ballot advantage over Republican stands at 381,782.  These numbers will change since mail-in ballots will be accepted up until 8 p.m. on Election Day. But to the extent that the party identifiers on the mail-in ballot return envelopes more or less track the actual votes therein, it appears that the Republicans may be on course to materially improve their pre-Election Day position vis-a-vis the Democrats. As previously discussed in this series, thanks to the efforts of the Republican National Committee and Republican organizations such as Early Vote Action, the Democrats’ 2020 voter registration advantage of 685,818 has been been cut to 297,824. And now, Early Vote Action and other Republican operations — such as PA Chase — are following up to turn out the vote.  These groups are “chasing the vote” by going door-to-door in deep red counties to motivate the newly registered Republicans as well as preexisting “low or no propensity” GOP voters to complete and mail their ballots or, in the alternative, vote in person.  According to PA Chase’s Cliff Maloney, in 2020 there were “141,000 Republicans who requested a mail-in ballot but never sent it back.” If they had, he concludes, Trump would have carried Pennsylvania. So it is that PA Chase, Early Vote Action, and the RNC believe that the key to victory lies in aggressively canvassing and turning out the vote in the rural red counties where Trump is popular.  For example, PA Chase is fielding over 120 full-time “vote chasers” to knock on 500,000 doors before Election Day. They report that they have already contacted over 400,000 voters and expect to reach their goal.  And, after the initial face-to-face visit has concluded, the vote chasers are following up to make sure that the individual contacted either votes by mail or in person. PA Chase has posted an informative YouTube video (linked to here) that explains its persistent, up-close-and-personal style of motivating and turning out “low propensity voters who are aligned with us” but for one reason or another have failed in the past to vote. By getting them to submit mail-in ballots and avoid the vicissitudes and uncertainties of in-person Election Day voting, the chasers hope to “beat the Democrats” at their own game of retail voter turnout.  While all of this seems promising, the proof, of course, will be in the vote counting. Meanwhile, in a recent New York Times interview, Democrat Sen. John Fetterman characterized the level of Pennsylvanians’ enthusiasm for Trump as “astonishing.” He said: There’s a difference between not understanding, but also acknowledging that it exists. And anybody who spends time driving around, and you can see the intensity. It’s astonishing. I was doing an event in Indiana County. Very, very red. And there was a superstore of Trump stuff, and it was a hundred feet long, and it was dozens of T-shirts and hats and bumper stickers and all kinds of, I mean, it’s like, Where does this all come from? It’s the kind of thing that has taken on its own life. And it’s like something very special exists there. And that doesn’t mean that I admire it. It’s just — it’s real.”  (Emphasis added) Fetterman also said that Elon Musk, who has endorsed Trump and appeared with him at a rally in Butler County (where Trump was almost assassinated), will have great appeal to Pennsylvania voters. “And now Musk is joining him,” Fetterman said. “I mean, to a lot of people, that’s Tony Stark. That’s the world’s richest guy. And he’s obviously, and undeniably, a brilliant guy, and he’s saying ‘Hey, that’s my guy for president. That’s going to really matter.” Fetterman said that he was “alarmed” when Musk began campaigning for Trump and added that the billionaire is a “bigger star than Trump” in “some sense.” Which brings us to the mounting Democrat lawfare against Musk in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.  Recently, Musk’s America PAC began handing out million-dollar checks to randomly selected registered voters in Pennsylvania and other battleground states. Even though the money is being handed out unconditionally and with no quid pro quo requirement that the recipients vote, Musk has been warned by our corrupt U.S. Justice Department that the giveaway violates federal laws banning inducements to voters.  But wait. As bad and ridiculous as that is, Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s Soros-funded district attorney, has sunk even lower.  Krasner has sued Musk and America PAC in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, alleging that the giveaways constitute an illegal lottery and a violation of consumer protection laws. Krasner’s civil complaint states, in part, that “America PAC and Musk must be stopped immediately, before the upcoming Presidential Election on Nov. 5. That is because America PAC and Musk hatched their illegal lottery scheme to influence voters in that election.” To put this into proper focus, District Attorney Krasner has never met a cop he didn’t despise, and, to be fair, the Philadelphia police feel the same way about him. Known as “Uncle Larry” to Philadelphia’s criminal class (who wholeheartedly praise his ongoing campaign to empty the prisons), Krasner now purports to be a champion of good government and fair elections. Larry Krasner is essentially Kamala Harris with short hair. So it comes as no surprise that he has come forward with this baseless and absurd bit of legalized harassment to help out a kindred spirit who did her best to undermine the rule of law when she was a soft-on-crime prosecutor in California. I will report more on Uncle Larry’s lawsuit as it plays out in court. Also on the legal front, we have the Pennsylvania Supreme Court back to its old tricks of rewriting the Election Code as Election Day fast approaches. I will cover that development along with the reports of fraudulent mail-in ballot applications in Lancaster County and elsewhere in the next installment of this series.  Also coming up will be an examination of Philadelphia’s “glitchy” and, according to experts, hackable electronic voting machines that will play their part in the upcoming election. So stay tuned. George Parry is a former federal and state prosecutor and retired trial lawyer. He blogs at knowledgeisgood.net. READ MORE: Report From Pennsylvania: Part One Report From Pennsylvania: Part Two The post Report From Pennsylvania: Part Three appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

If you’re too old to go trick-or-treating, too full of self-respect to hang around your front door all day on Halloween so you can hand out candy to other people’s brats, and too much of a loser to have friends with whom you can celebrate the holiday by meeting for a few drinks, you may want to spend your Halloween watching one or two suitably scary films on Netflix. As it happens, I’ve been checking out some of the streaming service’s approximately 1.5 trillion offerings in the horror genre and herewith offer a few tips. First of all, there’s The Open House (2018), written and directed by Matt Angel and Suzanne Coots. Like many of these movies, it’s about people moving into a house and involves a creepy basement. In this one, after his father is killed in a random shooting while buying groceries, high school runner Logan Wallace (Dylan Minnette) and his mother, Naomi (Piercey Dalton), are forced by their suddenly straitened financial situation to move into her rich sister’s recently vacated house in the countryside. The one catch is that they’re obliged to leave the house for a few hours every week so it can be shown by realtors to prospective buyers. At first the movie looks promising. Logan is a sympathetic character, especially given his obvious pain over the loss of his father. His loving but fraught relationship with his mother has potential. And when odd things start happening in the house — for example, the heat keeps getting turned off — one is intrigued. But the picture soon goes downhill. Everything that seems to be an important plot point turns out to be a red herring. The circumstances under which Dad was killed turn out to have nothing whatsoever to do with the story. Nor do Logan’s athletic skills. Ditto the psychologically aberrant behavior of the family’s new neighbor, Martha (Patricia Bethune). When Logan finally explores the house’s basement and figures out what’s been going on, what follows is exceedingly disappointing. Movies in this genre have an unspoken contract with the viewer, and this movie violates that contract big time. (Also, while we’re at it, why call it The Open House and not just Open House?) ***** I put on Get Out (2017) expecting a run-of-the-mill horror flick. But when I saw in the opening credits that it was written and directed by Jordan Peele, a name I recognized, I looked it up and saw that it had been nominated for Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor, and had actually won Best Original Screenplay. (I used to watch the Oscars religiously, and I’m pretty knowledgeable about nominees and winners from half a century or more ago, but results from recent years are another matter.) The reason for Get Out’s popularity with Academy voters soon became clear: whatever its merits or demerits, it’s an ardent, utterly irrational indictment of white racism. Our hero is a successful young black photographer, Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), whose WASP girlfriend, Rose (Allison Willias), takes him from New York City to meet her parents, neurosurgeon Dean (Bradley Whitford) and psychiatrist Missy (Catherine Keener), at their elegant country house. Chris is a tad uneasy about the meeting — how will Rose’s folks react to her black beau? — but she assures him that they’re totally open-minded. During Chris’ initial interactions with them, indeed, they come off as virtue-signaling liberals of the first water, embarrassingly eager to prove that they’re not bigots. (Out of the blue, Dean tells Chris that Obama was his favorite president and that he’d have voted for him, if possible, for a third term.) But gradually Chris comes to recognize that something disquieting is afoot. The family’s black servants, for example, seem like zombies. After Missy hypnotizes him, supposedly to help him kick smoking, he has psychic experiences that make him yearn to bail prontissimo. But it soon becomes clear that Rose’s family doesn’t want him to leave — ever. Yes, Get Out is an offensive, self-indulgent exercise in anti-white fantasies. If the races had been reversed, it would never have been green-lighted by any studio on the planet; as it is, Get Out would fit perfectly, along with the works of Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi, into the syllabus of the most hysterical and unhinged Black Studies course on the planet. Still, it’s an eerily engaging ride, and Peele’s blatant bigotry contributes a big dose of wacky wokery that only adds to the level of horror. ***** Black Phone (2021), directed by Scott Derrickson from a screenplay by him and C. Robert Cargill, takes us to a North Denver neighborhood in 1979, where, over a brief period, several middle school boys living within close proximity to one another have disappeared, obviously nabbed by some predator. For some reason, however, local life goes on as usual, with families, rather bemusingly, taking absolutely no reasonable precautions. The crime spree hits home for our protagonist, Finney (Mason Thames) — a sensitive boy who, as we’ve been shown, habitually shrinks from violence — when two of his friends, Bruce and Robin, disappear. Soon enough it’s Finney’s turn to be snatched by the masked marauder (Ethan Hawke), who locks him in — where else? — a creepy basement. But this isn’t just another realistic movie about child abduction victims. On the contrary, it’s chockablock with supernatural phenomena. For one thing, Finney’s sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), has inherited from their late mother a tendency to have weirdly revealing dreams. For another, on the wall of the kidnapper’s basement is a telephone on which his previous victims, now dead, call Finney with advice about how to escape his captor. Some movies feature supernatural elements that the viewer is expected to buy into, otherwise the pictures don’t work. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that they usually don’t work, and that filmmakers’ increasing preoccupation over the decades with vampires, werewolves, zombies, and the like has been detrimental to the horror genre. In this case, the combination of the girl’s prescient dreams and the phone calls from beyond the grave just didn’t do it for me. Not to mention that the whole thing (which is based on a short story of the same name by Joe Hill) felt padded out beyond all reason. Most of all, however, the very premise struck me as detestable. Again, this is a matter of crossing a line that’s hard to locate exactly. The various versions of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the many films in the Scream franchise involve the slaughter of innumerable teenagers, but somehow they don’t seem to me to be particularly offensive. This one does. Why? Perhaps, first of all, because the murders in the Chainsaw and Scream movies are so over the top, and the victims so unidimensional and stereotyped, whereas Finney and his friends, as introduced in the opening sequences, are real and endearing, bringing to mind movies like Stand by Me; second, because the types of abductions depicted in Black Phone happen all too frequently, and are a serious matter; and, third, because introducing supernatural elements into the mix feels particularly tasteless. Nonetheless, plenty of people apparently disagree: for a low-budget thriller, Black Phone was a box-office smash, and a sequel is scheduled for release next October. So check this one out, if you’re tempted, and decide for yourself. ***** Another creepy basement figures in Barbarian (2022), which was written and directed by Zach Cregger and which is the worst-ever ad for Airbnb. It’s set in an extremely seedy Detroit neighborhood where Tess Marshall (Georgina Campbell), who’s come to town for a job interview with a hip documentary filmmaker, discovers that the house where she’s arranged to spend the night has also been rented to Keith (Biil Skarsgård), of whom she’s suspicious until it turns out that he’s a hip local musician with whom she shares hip professional acquaintances. They agree to share the place for the night, and all goes well until Tess, during a quick visit to the creepy basement to fetch some toilet paper, comes across a hidden corridor that Keith decides to investigate. I won’t serve up any spoilers. Suffice it to say that it’s a chilling watch, in which the further developments in the plot involve A.J., an obnoxious Hollywood actor played by Justin Long — whom horror fans may recognize as the boyfriend from Drag Me to Hell (2009). ***** After losing their friend, Ally, in an automobile accident, three young people who look like twentysomethings but are apparently supposed to be teenagers, Peter (Rory Alexander), Monica (Annie Hamilton), and Tilly (Anna Bullard) — who was apparently driving the death car and is riddled with guilt — come up with a cure for their grief: road trip! Their destination: the uninhabited country home of Monica’s late grandparents, which, naturally, comes complete with a creepy basement that Peter, upon discovering it, describes succinctly as a “creepy basement.” As in The Open House, odd things start happening: Tilly keeps blowing out candles only to discover they’ve been mysteriously lit again. She hears Ally’s voice — or does she? On their second night in the house, the kids realize that they’re not alone — and that they should vamoose pronto. But their car won’t start. And when they go back inside, the floor is covered with pictures of Ally. An audio tape of Ally’s final moments — but who could have taped it? — plays. We learn some unsettling new details about the accident. And next thing you know, a masked marauder has dragged Monica off and Peter has fled in fear, leaving Tilly to her fate. Directed by Alex Herron from a screenplay by Wolf Kraft, Dark Windows (2023) is blessedly short and legitimately disturbing, with two or three echoes of (homages to?) Bryan Burtino’s first-rate horror flick The Strangers (2008). In short, a pretty worthwhile watch — never mind that the villain’s identity isn’t really all that hard to guess, the two girls are so much of a type that (in the early scenes, anyway) they can be hard to tell apart, and both of them seem to have attended the Claire Danes School of Overacting. ***** I’ll close this round-up with Wounds (2019), written and directed by Babak Anvari. Will (Armie Hammer, previously seen subjecting Timothée Chalamet to statutory rape in Call Me by Your Name), works at a crummy New Orleans bar where, during a violent fracas involving a couple of unsavory regulars, a group of scrawny teenagers flee in fear, one of them leaving behind a cell phone. Will takes the phone home, and soon begins receiving a series of bizarre, gruesome messages — and then starts experiencing hallucinations. None of it adds up — for me, anyway — and the film concludes, abruptly, with a repulsive supernatural event that has no clear relationship to anything. After it was over, I read an online synopsis that purported to explain what it all supposedly meant, but it just left me more baffled. But give it a try, if you wish: maybe it’ll make more sense to you than it did to me. Oh, well. At least it doesn’t include a creepy basement. The post Netflix Films to Skip and Stream This Halloween appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California’s presidential electors are a foregone conclusion. Likewise, the state’s decision on a U.S. Senate race is not even worth pondering. On statewide races, Californians tend to vote around 60 percent to 40 percent for the Democratic candidate. Several congressional races this year are close, and Republicans are polling fairly well in some Southern California districts, which could help determine which party controls the House of Representatives. As usual, the big issue here centers on statewide initiatives. California has a boisterous system of direct democracy. Conservatives of a certain philosophical bent distrust such majoritarianism given that the Founders wisely distrusted any such system. It’s not a surprise that early 20th-century progressives — most notably Gov. Hiram Johnson — developed our system that lets ordinary voters determine matters typically reserved for legislators. Practically speaking, however, California voters tend to be far more conservative in their decisions on initiatives than in their choices for candidates. For context, Democrats control every statewide constitutional office and supermajorities in both houses of the Legislature. Yet the same voters who give their nod to those candidates tend to reject tax hikes and far-left pipedreams. So non-progressives have generally made their peace with this progressive election system — and modern progressives often try to limit voter input. It’s ironic, but that’s the world we live in here. California Democrats still wrongly blame Proposition 13, the 1978 ballot initiative that capped property taxes, for every ill afflicting the state even though no sane person could suggest that our tax rates are too low or government budgets are miserly. Ironically, the most significant measure this year never even made it onto the ballot after Gov. Gavin Newsom and his allies successfully sued to stop it. The Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act would have required the Legislature to seek approval from voters for any tax hike — something that could have reignited the kind of tax revolt that led to Proposition 13 and bolstered Ronald Reagan’s presidential candidacy. That’s how Democrats roll in California. They blather about democracy, but aren’t too keen on it when it threatens to undermine their spending plans. But California voters still have much to consider. The latest polls suggest that Proposition 36 will win by extraordinary numbers. This tough-on-crime measure, back by district attorneys and the business community, would make changes to 2014’s Proposition 47. That decade-old measure reduced sentences for low-level crimes, but Californians have tired of the retail-theft wave and dealing with shuttered stores and retailers who lock up common items behind glass doors. Democrats, who have feared returning to the old days of overincarceration, have only themselves to blame for their coming ballot-box rebuke. They could have worked with DAs, business owners, and Republicans to fix some of Prop. 47’s obvious flaws (such as allowing DAs to prosecute thieves for felonies if they engage in serial thefts), but instead they waited far too long to pass a package of anti-crime bills. As I explained recently in The American Spectator, “[L]awmakers included poison pills that would scuttle the legislative package if voters approved Proposition 36. After backing away from that cynical approach — designed to score political points rather than seriously address the crime issue — Newsom tried to qualify an alternative measure that would confuse voters.” He failed to make the deadline and has now mostly engaged in sour grapes. Passing complex legislative packages at the ballot box isn’t ideal. But the Legislature (especially the notoriously liberal Assembly Public Safety Committee) refused to act even amid public concern. At least the initiative process provides some way to circumvent ideologically driven lawmakers. Voters also seem ready to reject Proposition 32, which would yet again raise the state’s minimum wage. Another major initiative is Proposition 33, which would expand rent control. Voters have on two previous occasions rejected nearly identical measures that would gut the Costa-Hawkins Rental Control Act. That 1995 law stopped localities from imposing draconian rent controls. California already has a statewide rent-control law and many cities such as San Francisco and Santa Monica have relatively extreme local measures, but overturning Costa-Hawkins would open the floodgates to even broader and more destructive price controls. Prop. 33’s simple but dangerous language: “The state may not limit the right of any city, county or city and county to maintain, enact or expand residential rent control.” Costa-Hawkins stopped the locals from slapping rent controls on single-family houses, newer construction, and imposing vacancy controls that stop landlords from raising rents even after a tenant vacates the property. Argentina recently eliminated rent controls, and rental prices have fallen as the number of available units has surged, yet California is slow to learn. Rent control always is a disaster and is a key reason California has such a tight rental market, but fortunately voters are likely to understand that concept better than their representatives. The latest polling suggests voters are poised to reject this nonsense once again. Proposition 34 is related. It’s an effort by apartment owners to turn the tables on the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), which is the prime sponsor of these rent measures. This gets oddly complicated. The official ballot title and summary explains that Prop. 34 “Requires health care providers meeting specified criteria to spend 98% of revenues from federal discount prescription drug program on direct patient care.” What does that have to do with rent control? Well, the measure targets AHF, which earns money from that federal drug program. The group not only promotes rent control, but campaigns against zoning reform. The initiative would limit its political advocacy. Unfortunately, California voters often support bond measures. State bonds don’t directly raise taxes, but they grab large portions of the general fund to make annual interest payments and therefore create pressure for tax hikes. By contrast, local bonds directly raise taxes (or continue higher tax rates by extending existing bond measures). On this year’s state ballot, voters are asked to approve an additional $10 billion on climate-resiliency programs (Proposition 4) — something the Southern California News Group editorial board termed a “giant feedbag of climate pork.” And Proposition 2 would float $10 billion in school-facilities bonds even though the state already spends more than 40 percent of its general-fund budget on public education — not to mention the endless bond spending at the local level. California lawmakers refuse to make tough choices in their $297 billion budget and squandered a previous $97.5 billion surplus. The climate feedbag has a solid lead in the polls, but the school bond is a closer call. Then there are scores of local bond measures on the ballot, as financially strapped cities and school districts would rather just raise taxes than reform their bureaucratic systems. So direct democracy remains, as always, a mixed bag for conservatives. But I suppose it’s better than the alternative without it. Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org. READ MORE: Newsom’s Oil-Price Show Hearings Last Gasp of ‘Progressive DA’ Movement? The post Preview of California’s Initiative Frenzy appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Everyone is familiar with the ubiquitous pharmaceutical ads that encourage the viewer to ask their doctor about Abilify for depression, Skyrizi for plaque psoriasis, or Linzess for irritable bowel syndrome. At some point during these commercials, which show grim-faced recluses in gloomy rooms becoming confident extroverts laughing with friends over sunny al fresco lunches, there comes a disclaimer about side effects. This boilerplate, as we all know, is there to appease the FDA and head off lawsuits. If someone were to ask you the purpose of one of these commercials, its aside about weight gain, stomach pain, and tiredness would not leave you flummoxed. You would still say that the ad’s intent was to convince you to take the drug. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our fall 2024 print magazine, which includes this article and others like it.   By the same token, if an acquaintance started peppering his conversation with demeaning stereotypes about black people, you would disregard any reassurance he offered that he wasn’t being racist. The balance of his words would reveal what was in his heart, and you would be foolish to ignore his bigotry simply because he finished with a perfunctory disclaimer. Yet denying that a drug commercial is intended to sell drugs and that a man’s racist words demonstrate his racist views is exactly the approach evangelical leaders who are introducing progressive ideology into the church insist Christians must take. Under the guise of charity, these peddlers of plausible deniability and their defenders demand we set aside not just biblical discernment, but everything common sense tells us about communication when evaluating these teachers’ sermons, essays, and interviews.  One example: In a review of my book Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda, apologist Neil Shenvi insisted that author Karen Swallow Prior did not draw a moral equivalency between being pro-life and embracing COVID masks and vaccinations in her January 2022 Religion News Service column. This is despite the fact that Prior wrote, long after evidence had showed cloth masks to be ineffective, that: It is not asking too much — in fact, it’s really the bare minimum — for those of us who believe we are justified in asking a woman to sacrifice much to preserve a life growing inside her body to inconvenience our own bodies by voluntarily (even cheerfully) wearing a piece of cloth, keeping distant or possibly even adding one more vaccine to the ones we got when we went to school. Prior’s dilution of the term “pro-life” to include matters where Christians should have personal liberty characterized the entirety of her essay.  Later, she implied that guilt for some COVID deaths should be laid at the feet of those who did not comply with government recommendations and mandates. More people would have lived, she asserted, had mask- and vaccine-skeptical pro-lifers been “a bit more patient” and “changed [their] lifestyles a bit more for a little longer.” Prior finished by arguing that a Christian’s body “belong[s] to the body of Christ and should do no harm” — a clear suggestion that those who disagreed with her COVID positions were hurting others. So why did Shenvi insist that Prior had never argued that a person could not credibly claim to be pro-life unless he agreed to mask up and get the COVID jab? For two reasons. First, because Prior denied that she was doing so in her column. Second, because Prior told him that she hadn’t. I have no notion of the extent of Shenvi’s journalistic skills, but I wonder if he asked Prior any follow-up questions. For instance, if these were not her views, then why did she label both the pro-abortion claim “It’s just a blob of tissue” and the mandate-skeptical statement “Public health mandates are tyranny” as “Death-dealing lies”? In addition, why did she say that Christian pro-lifers “brought” the “culture of death” to Los Angeles hospitals overcrowded with COVID patients?  Shenvi, whose review was championed by a number of the evangelical leaders I critiqued in my book, shows similar gullibility on behalf of the late Tim Keller, who was arguably the most influential pastor of the last decade. Keller spoke out about evangelicals who voted for our forty-fifth president many times, and not in flattering terms. In an essay for the New Yorker, he asked whether evangelicalism could “survive Donald Trump.” In an interview with Premiere Christianity, he said that Trump made it “harder” for evangelicals to “share their faith.” In comments Pete Wehner relayed in the Atlantic, Keller described evangelicals who supported Trump in 2019 as being “about power” rather than faithfulness. He said that both Christian Trump voters and the Moral Majority of yesteryear were “not enough about service; they’re not enough about serving the common good.” (Shenvi illogically concluded that, because Keller was critiquing two groups he believed were ideologically similar, it was illegitimate for me to highlight his criticism of one of them.) Further evidence of Keller’s views on Trump voters is found in the fact that he agreed to attend a private meeting of pastors to “self-reflect” on the “distortions” caused by evangelical support for Trump. In addition, in 2022, Keller authored a report that delineated a spectrum of Christians who might work together on cultural renewal projects despite having differing political outlooks. He placed Trump supporters in the category of fundamentalists whose views put them beyond the range of collaboration. Additionally, he put those who are anti-woke and “Trump-leaning without wanting to endorse Trump himself” in a category designated as less likely to be allies in a renewal movement. Shenvi, and those affiliated with publications like the Gospel Coalition and Christianity Today who cheered him on, insist that none of this was enough for me to say that Keller found support for Trump to be uniquely discrediting. The fact that I offered broader contextual evidence — such as Keller’s decision to never chastise Biden voters in similar fashion and his support for former Obama staffer and Never-Trump PAC founder Michael Wear — was something they ignored completely. Instead, they have insisted that it is a violation of the Ninth Commandment to write in clear terms about Keller’s stated views because he twice denied singling out Trump voters. By the standards of Shenvi and his supporters, if Christians do not approach texts and commentary with Ned Flanders–level naivety, disregarding the overwhelming emphasis of a speaker’s message when he also tried to create wiggle room for denial, we are bearing false witness. They demand we do away with all sensible skepticism and pattern recognition if a professional communicator, once called on the carpet for what he’s been consistently communicating, hides behind claims of misunderstanding. Bluntly, this kind of sophistry is how error, false teaching, and unbiblical progressivism have been allowed to run rampant in the Church. We are commanded to guard against such rank gullibility. Romans 16:17–18 warns against those who introduce unsound doctrine through “smooth talk and flattery [that] deceive the minds of naive people.” We can presume that “smooth talk” includes when teachers deny that they are advancing unsound doctrine and divisive worldly ideas. Jude 1 tells us that false teachers will “secretly slip in among [us].” Inherent to this text is the commandment to discern those who disguise their views. We are to show “mercy mixed with fear” to those who have embraced questionable doctrines — mercy so that repentance may happen and fear so that we ourselves may avoid being deceived. Ephesians 5:6 commands us not to be “deceived through empty words”; Colossians 2:8 bids us not to be taken captive by “empty deceit”; and Acts 20:27–28 warns us to “be on [our] guard” because “from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them.” How does deception happen? Does it come packaged in clear, straightforward arguments? Or are distortions advanced incrementally, with hedging and disclaimers, until error is fully embraced, like when Barack Obama insisted he believed marriage was between a man and a woman, even as his rhetoric moved the ball forward on same-sex marriage until he could finally announce his full evolution? From the perspective of Shenvi and his supporters, Christians would have been required to ignore the obvious inference of Obama’s statements until the moment he openly admitted his position because he denied his views in the interim. There is no wisdom in this. When Shenvi’s megachurch pastor, former Southern Baptist Convention President J. D. Greear, received pushback for his ongoing promotion of critical race theory, racial quotas, and Black Lives Matter, among other woke priorities, he, too, fell back on disclaimers. In a long 2020 video that was almost entirely devoted to promoting the social justice positions of Black Lives Matter, and even adopted the slogan itself, Greear offered a brief aside in which he denied being ideologically aligned with the movement. “I realize that the Black Lives Matter movement and website have been hijacked by some political operatives whose worldview and policy prescriptions would be deeply at odds with my own,” he said. But the Black Lives Matter movement was not “hijacked.” It was Marxist from its inception. Greear’s argument that Americans needed to “take a deep look at our police systems and structures” was perfectly in line with the mission of BLM. This is not to say that Christians ought to rake a pastor or leader over the coals for an ill-judged comment or two, but that is not what we’re discussing here. We are discussing pastors and leaders whose ongoing commentary consistently introduces unbiblical and/or debatable progressive ideology into the church. When they are critiqued, they fall back on insistence that they did not mean it. Why then did they feel moved to make these statements? They never explain. They only insist that the disclaimers are where the balance of attention should be directed. It is akin to the maniac of Proverbs 26:18–19 who shoots flaming arrows of discourse to deceive his neighbor and then, when the assault is acknowledged, claims to have been “only joking.” Another passage from Proverbs 26 answers the finger-wagging claim that the Ninth Commandment requires Christians to overlook error, false teaching, and legalism where they are being denied: Enemies disguise themselves with their lips, but in their hearts they harbor deceit. Though their speech is charming, do not believe them, for seven abominations fill their hearts. Or, as John Calvin put it, “Ambiguity is the fortress of heretics.” Not every pastor or leader who is introducing progressivism into the church is among these disguised enemies, but they may be influenced by them. The better part of Christian love demands that we not swallow camels of meaning while straining gnats of plausible deniability.  Megan Basham is a reporter at the Daily Wire and the author of Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our fall 2024 print magazine. The post How Naivety Is Allowing Unbiblical Progressivism Into Evangelical Churches appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

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