It should be clear by now, to those who have eyes to see, that the Democratic Party is profoundly anti-Catholic. The latest stunt demonstrative of this fact is a video of Michigan’s Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer feeding a Dorito to a kneeling podcaster, who receives the snack food on her tongue. You know, like Catholics receive the Holy Eucharist while kneeling at the altar rail. Whitmer and her team may try to dismiss the video as anything other than the anti-Catholic mockery that it is, but Whitmer makes her meaning clear. The Hill reported that Whitmer “offers the camera a serious expression while wearing Harris-Walz campaign gear” after placing the Dorito on the kneeling girl’s tongue. However, those familiar with the Michigan governor (I myself lived in Detroit for a period of time) will recognize a distinctly defiant, mocking menace in her eyes. This is more than just a political ploy, it is more than merely poorly capitalizing on a social media trend, it is mocking and deriding American Catholics. Of course, as I said, this is simply the latest instance of a top Democrat challenging the Catholic Church in America. The Democratic Party was once a political home for American Catholics, who valued providing for the poor and needy, working to protect the vulnerable and innocent in society, and preserving such liberties as freedom of religion. Abortion was, in the end, the death knell for the Democratic Party of old. The slaughter of unborn innocents is, in the end, incompatible with caring for the poor and needy, protecting the vulnerable and innocent, and preserving or respecting the freedom of religion. Since the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its horrific Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973, the Democratic Party has pitted itself against the Catholic Church and increasingly obsessed over what it erroneously calls “reproductive rights.” The Church has, of course, unwaveringly declared the grave moral evil of abortion since the first century. Long before heresies arose and were stamped out, long before Christological details were ordained, long before even the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was decided (Famously, even St. Thomas Aquinas did not endorse — though nor did he reject — the Blessed Virgin’s Immaculate Conception, as late as the 13th century), before all this, the Church knew and proclaimed that abortion was the slaying of an innocent, unborn child. Yet, in its hubris, the Democratic Party has chosen to contend with the will of God and defy this 2,000-year-old teaching. The regime of President Joe Biden and his deputy, Vice President Kamala Harris, is illustrative of this trajectory. Under the rule of Biden–Harris, abortion has been advocated at every turn, even in defiance of the U.S. Constitution and the Supreme Court, and the Catholics who dare oppose it are hounded out, persecuted, prosecuted, and derided. Catholics who adhere to the Tridentine Mass, the form of the liturgy celebrated prior to the Second Vatican Council and liberalized and promoted by the late Pope Benedict XVI, have been targeted by the Biden–Harris FBI and smeared as “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.” Catholics like Mark Houck have their homes raided by the Biden–Harris DOJ’s goon squad, all for the crime of praying a Rosary outside an abortion mill. Harris has also excused herself from attending the Archdiocese of New York’s Al Smith charity dinner, so contrary to Catholic principles do her own objectives run. Even though former President Donald Trump has satisfied himself with overturning Roe v. Wade and has determined that abortion is to be a matter for states to reckon with, the Democratic Party continues to clamor and cry that a second Trump administration means — Gasp! — the potential outlawing of butchering unborn babies. With inflation and illegal immigration both running rampant, wars erupting across the globe, the cost of living rising and the quality of life declining, all that the Democratic Party has to offer is abortion. This is not simply a political maneuver — after all, a solid plan for economic recovery and prosperity would score the Democrats far more points in the polls and at the voting booth than a shrill, incessant cry that abortions are necessary. No, it is a sacrament. Abortion is, for leftism and the Democratic Party, a religious ritual. In this light, Whitmer’s mockery of Holy Communion takes on a new layer of menace and malice. To Democrats, the Eucharist is nothing more sacred or worthwhile than a Dorito. Catholics, of course, recognize that the Holy Eucharist is the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ Himself, truly present under the appearance of bread and wine. The author and philosopher Peter Kreeft once astutely noted, “Abortion is the Antichrist’s demonic parody of the Eucharist. That’s why it uses the same holy words, ‘This is my body,’ with the blasphemous opposite meaning.” In the Holy Eucharist, through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, the blood of an innocent — in fact, of Innocence Himself — is offered as a willing sacrifice to God in reparation for our sins. In abortion, the blood of an innocent is offered as an unwilling sacrifice to demons, to sin, and to oneself, in pursuit of selfishness, in appeasement of fear, or in search of debauchery. The Democratic Party, as the political arm of leftism, is anti-Catholic for precisely this reason: its sacrament of abortion is incompatible with and in direct opposition to the Catholic sacrament of the Eucharist. READ MORE: The Case for Christian Conservatism Two Reasons To Pray for the Trumps The post The Party of Demons appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

As the 2024 Democratic National Convention drew to a close, the question remained: “Who is Kamala Harris?” More than 150 million Americans will vote in November for the next president of the United States, the person who will lead the “Free World” for four years and act as commander-in-chief of our powerful nuclear-equipped military. They will be electing the person whose pen stroke will determine what those 150 million will pay to fill their cars at the pump, buy food, and heat their homes in the dead of winter. Their vote will decide whether some of their children will be raped or murdered — or both — by a repeat criminal felon released from custody without bail or by a chronically violent gang member who will have entered the United States illegally. Or whether they will flourish peacefully in safety, unaware that they lived because that repeat criminal felon remained incarcerated and that chronic violent gang member was barred from crossing into the United States. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our fall 2024 print magazine, which includes this article and others like it.  Who is Kamala Harris? Her identity is deliberately hidden. The Democrat strategy presents her as a taste of water. Whether the Harris glass is half full or half empty, it has no taste. This allows Democrats and Independents, especially suburban moms and the quasi-educated but not knowledgeable, to see her as they wish. In rabbinic legend, it is taught that Queen Esther, who hid her Jewish identity from her husband, King Ahasuerus, and the people of Persia, was loved by all because everyone attributed to her whatever characteristics they wished to find in their king’s new wife (Esther 2:10, 20). This is how Democrat strategists have handled Kamala. Ask Harris voters: Why is she your candidate? They will say, “Because it is time we had an African American woman as president.” But neither her father, who was born in Jamaica, nor mother, who was from India, hail from African lineage. Even so, she knowingly falsely claimed at a Democrat candidates’ debate that she is African American. “Her story is that of a president raised from the ignominy of slavery,” a Harris voter will say. But her paternal ancestor, Hamilton Brown, who emigrated from Ireland to Jamaica, was a prominent slave owner. “Because she is tough on crime,” the voter will contend. But she responded to the George Floyd riots by urging people to donate to a group that indiscriminately bailed out violent prisoners, several of whom proceeded to rape or murder after their release. (They spent $350,000 to release Christopher Boswell, who was twice convicted of rape, faced ten more felony counts for rape and kidnaping, and was ultimately convicted of first-degree sexual assault and several other felonies, which accumulated to a sentence of twenty more years. George Howard also benefited from Harris’ care and empathy. A month after Harris’ favored group got him out, Howard murdered and was sentenced to ten more years.) Tough on crime? When she was California’s attorney general, she overlooked prosecutors who lied under oath, attained false confessions, and withheld evidence. When she was San Francisco’s district attorney, she lacked the competence to oversee forensic drug laboratories, which handle and test cocaine, fentanyl, and other such controlled substances seized from criminals. These laboratories document for criminal courts the required evidence of the seized drugs’ precise weight and purity of composition. The severity of a drug crime and length of punishment are determined by those reports. Her incompetence required judges to overturn more than six hundred convictions and impacted 1,700 criminal cases. Who is Kamala Harris? As she sought the 2020 Democrat nomination, early excitement over her candidacy was palpable; she drew over 20,000 people to her first campaign event. Soon enough, people learned more about this “African American.” She defended Jussie Smollett when he falsely described being attacked in the middle of a freezing Chicago night as he supposedly walked the deserted streets to buy a sandwich in sub-zero temperatures, only to be battered by racists yelling “MAGA!” She condemned those questioning his truth, asserting that Smollett had been the victim of a “modern-day lynching.” She advocated a Bernie Sanders–inspired “Medicare for All” scheme and promised to “get rid of” private health insurance. She failed to break out during the Democrat debates. As reported by Vox: “Harris tried to land a few jokes and zingers … but she seemed to be the only one laughing at them.” With her once-vigorous campaign collapsing into all-out freefall, she became frantic as the Iowa caucuses loomed. Unaware she was within earshot of a reporter, she told a radical-left Senate colleague, “I’m f*****g moving to Iowa.” Amid chaos in her staff and her hemorrhaging money despite early record fundraising, Harris was compelled to quit in December 2019 — never garnering a single caucus or primary vote. Who is Kamala Harris? Her first moments in the public eye were captured notoriously when she promenaded as the romantic partner to Willie Brown, who was then the most powerful Democrat in California, the speaker of the State Assembly. Brown is thirty years her senior and was married at the time to Blanche Brown, the mother of three of his children. Harris escorted Brown to soirées and posed shamelessly for the cameras with a champagne glass in hand, Brown smartly attired in his tuxedo. Harris humiliated Blanche Brown by cavorting so publicly with her husband. Blanche’s pain manifested when she told prominent journalist Herb Caen shortly before Willie Brown was sworn in as mayor of San Francisco: “Listen, she may have him at the moment, but come inauguration day and he’s up there on the platform being sworn in, I’ll be the b***h holding the Bible.” Brown gave Harris a $72,000 appointment to sit on a board that met once monthly. In reporting on the story, the Los Angeles Times described her as Willie Brown’s “girlfriend” and quoted a Brown insider who said that she was “the Speaker’s new steady.” Harris accepted that appointment after serving six months as Brown’s appointee to the state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, which paid $97,088 a year. Both those salaries were in addition to Harris’ salary as a prosecutor. Harris declined a Times request to be interviewed about her appointments.  This article is taken from The American Spectator’s fall 2024 print magazine. Subscribe to receive the entire magazine. Who is Kamala Harris? During her increasingly desperate 2019 presidential campaign, she proposed an incomprehensible $4.5 trillion in new spending. She promised she would ban fracking. She pledged to stop treating illegal border crossings as crimes. Instead, she advocated providing illegal immigrants with taxpayer-funded Medicare at a time when the system is tottering on the brink of bankruptcy. She encouraged considering giving felons, perhaps even the Boston Marathon bombers, the right to vote. The nonpartisan aggregator GovTrack rated Harris the most left-wing senator in the U.S. in 2019, and fourth-most the year before. When Harris became the Democrat 2024 presidential candidate, GovTrack mysteriously deleted its 2019 webpage. The ACLU rated her at 93 percent. The LGBTQ “Human Rights Campaign” and Planned Parenthood rated her 100 percent while the free-market Club for Growth rated her at 4 percent and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce gave her 52 percent.  Who is Kamala Harris? Perhaps her most infamous role has been as President Joe Biden’s “border czar,” the person he tapped to oversee border-crossing enforcement. According to the House Committee on Homeland Security, America’s southern border under Harris no longer was a border but an open gateway. Over ten million people have illegally entered the country on her watch. Tens of thousands with criminal convictions. Hundreds of known gang members, including members of MS-13. Tens of thousands of pounds — tons — of fentanyl. As far back as 2006, she has supported San Francisco’s designation as a “sanctuary city.” Who is Kamala Harris? She boasted that she was the “last person in the room” with Biden as they finalized plans on withdrawing from Afghanistan. No one knows where she stands on Israel’s existential war against Hamas’ terrorism. When speaking to Jewish groups, she says she stands solidly with Israel, even adding that she went around the Bay area as a youth to raise money to plant trees in Israel. When she speaks to Arab audiences, she condemns Israel. She refused to attend a speech by Israel’s prime minister before a joint session of Congress, even though, as vice president, she is president of the Senate. When an Arab Muslim anti-Zionist accused Israel of perpetrating “genocide,” Harris encouraged her to continue speaking “your truth.” In an interview with the Nation, Harris said that anti-Israel protesters at university encampments are “showing exactly what the human emotion should be…. I understand the emotion behind it.” She voted to condemn former President Donald Trump for authorizing the attack that killed the world’s then-leading terrorist, Qasem Soleimani, who was the head of the Iranian regime’s Quds Force. Who is Kamala Harris? Her handlers desperately prevent her from speaking impromptu in unscripted news conferences or interviews. When even left-wing media outlets intensify pressure for her to appear, her handlers limit Harris to a discrete interview with a “friendly” TV station. Even in that controlled setting, they demand that her running mate, Tim Walz, be co-interviewed. Thus, while creating the facade of Harris giving an unscripted interview, they ensure that Walz will consume half the interview time and cover her mistakes.  Who is Kamala Harris? Despite her chameleon-like effort to shift from the woke Left to the center as the 2024 presidential election looms, her record exists. In 1996, California’s citizens overwhelmingly passed Proposition 209, by a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent, to ban “affirmative action” statewide. Kamala Harris fought and opposed them. As San Francisco district attorney, she refused to request the death penalty for a convict who murdered a police officer. At the officer’s funeral, then–Senator Dianne Feinstein criticized Harris to her face, drawing a standing ovation from the hundreds of officers attending. Harris likewise endorsed a decision by Los Angeles Mayor Gil Garcetti to defund the Los Angeles Police Department by $150 million.  Who is Kamala Harris? She opposed President Trump’s tariffs against China. She stated in a TV interview that she would end the Electoral College. She stated that the only reason Stacey Abrams lost her race for Georgia governor and Andrew Gillum lost his for Florida governor was voter suppression. Who is Kamala Harris? Perhaps the greatest clue of all is that, during a single three-week period in June 2020, her Wikipedia page was changed 408 separate times, mostly by a single person, to present her in a more favorable light. That’s who. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our fall 2024 print magazine. The post Who Is Kamala Harris? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

You were probably unaware that there was anything of note going on at the Vatican this month. Even if you’re a diehard Catholic interested in the inner workings of Church politics, there’s enough going on in the wider world to keep you distracted. We’re less than a month away from a major national election here in the United States (early voting is underway at this point), two hurricanes just wreaked havoc across North Carolina and Florida (and the current administration has failed epically at responding appropriately), and the war trumpets of World War III seem to be getting louder and clearer much more rapidly than any of us would like. Meanwhile, at the Vatican, just under 400 clerics, religious, and lay Catholics are sitting at round tables, seeking to finish a process that began nearly three years ago and which we were promised would come to an end last year. For those of us who are watching the proceedings from home, it’s still just a “meeting on meetings” — a process that Cardinal Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the U.S. reportedly compared to a lower ring of hell in Dante’s Inferno — and interest in it is slowly petering out. The synod’s agenda is not entirely clear to those of us who aren’t sitting at round tables in the St. Pope Paul VI Hall, but we do know a couple of things: First, the female diaconate (perhaps the controversial issue the synod was supposed to comment on) is not on the agenda. Back in March, the pope handed that issue to a study group, but he never gave it a deadline for when to turn in a report. Then, in May, he told 60 Minutes in no uncertain terms that a female diaconate involving the sacrament of Holy Orders was not in the works. So it seems the issue is mostly resolved. One imagines the media will continue to stir up controversy over female ordination for years to come, but at least there’s a definitive statement that one can point to as assurance that major changes to the way women are involved in parish life are not coming to the Catholic Church anytime soon. What may be on the agenda, whether the Vatican hierarchy likes it or not, is blowback to Fiducia supplicans, the document released by the Dicastery of the Doctrine of Faith (DDF) last December, which allows Catholic clergy to bless homosexual couples (although it does not permit them to bless the union between those couples). (READ MORE: Vatican Scrambles to Clarify Same-Sex Blessings. Is It Enough?) The Pillar reported that during a press briefing last week connected with the Synod on Synodality, the archbishop of Rabat, Morocco, Cardinal Cristóbal López Romero, criticized the way Fiducia supplicans was released. “It would’ve been better that [it] underwent a synodal path. It didn’t come out of the synod, but from the Dicastery of the Doctrine of Faith, without us bishops knowing it was coming, without being consulted. That’s why it’s not strange that there were many reactions against some parts,” he said. One imagines that discussion of the document, which had left many African clerics annoyed (ultimately, the Vatican saw fit to exempt the entire continent from Fiducia supplicans), is likely to take place — especially since it was something of a betrayal of the synodal way. Here, it would be remiss not to say that the Synodal Way may have had some positive outcomes in the last couple of years. As Ed Condon pointed out at the Pillar, “[I]f one wanted to point to a visible fruit of ‘synodality’ over the course of the process, it would seem to be the ability of bishops from places like Africa to assert themselves, and the weight of the Church moral authority, with confidence in the face of minority calls for radical change.” Condon is, of course, right. African bishops have proved themselves far more traditional than some of their loud European (and even sometimes American) counterparts. The Synodal Way has given them yet another opportunity to make their voices heard. Not only have African bishops pushed back against minority calls (usually coming from Germany) to embrace radical change in Church teaching or practice, it’s likely due to their influence that there won’t be major and permanent structural change to the way the Catholic Church runs things — the Vatican doesn’t seem inclined to develop a permanent parliamentary system for governance anytime soon. Even though we have yet to define what “synodality” looks like in the long term (stay tuned for more in July 2025) and even though there is plenty that the Synod should probably address in terms of global issues to avoid being condemned by future generations, nobody’s worst fears from 2021 and 2022 have been realized. Instead, the synod seems to have petered out into irrelevance, the way most “meetings on meetings” tend to do. The post The Synod on Synodality: Petering Out Into Irrelevance? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

I subscribe to John Adams’s view of the relationship of religion to the politics in our republic. The country needs people who govern their own lives in the light of God. Only such people are competent to steer the ship of state away from the shoals of corruption and ruin. Without people having an inner map, the country would survive only by chance. My first political concern, then, has been deeply tied in with my own religious commitment, in which life comes first — Therefore choose life, said Moses in Deuteronomy.  The greatest disasters to the human cause in the times that have informed me were the great dictatorships. I was born when Hitler was already dead and Stalin had but a year to go. The stench of their shambles, however, permeated the air, and clung to the people who had been through their dark night and who bore its wounds. To show that the evil was real, Mao was just ready to make his run at the record of total deaths caused — the Babe Ruth of death. So as haunting memory and as unfolding horror, they figured large, unparalleled in their voracious appetite for human life and their contempt for the human spirit.  Jewish traditions teach that our public concerns must build upward from what is closest and best known, the place where we are most knowledgeable, competent, and, most importantly, loving. I saw the people whom the horror had touched, and I lived with the knowledge that such things are possible, and even probable if we fail to recognize the next one rising, and accept full responsibility for pre-empting the existential threat that he represents. Hitler’s Holocaust eradicated a full third of all the Jews in the world; Stalin killed off many, especially the religious, and had Soviet Jews in his crosshairs when, blessedly, he died. Hitler and Stalin both had interests in the Middle East, and so did more than a few Nazis as well as the Soviet government. Like the Wuhan laboratory, they were cooking up virulent, function-enhanced viruses of the mind. Linking onto the worst of religious tradition, just as Hitler had done in Germany, they developed the exterminationist Jew hatred that for more than a century has tried to eliminate what is now the world’s largest Jewish community, Israel, after having destroyed and expelled other Jewish communities that had been present elsewhere in the region since the days of Nebuchadnezzar, millennia ago. America has identified itself at its inception with the ancient people of Israel — look at the hundreds of Biblical place names all across our land. Read the early sermons of the earliest preachers. America identified itself with the fight against the Jew hatred that was at the core of Nazism. Our young men and women gave their lifeblood to extinguish that regime of hate from the earth. America has stood with Israel for decades as it has been relentlessly targeted for extinction by its relentless and hate-filled enemies. This is at the top of my own political commitment, ahead of any party. I voted for Carter in ’76 because of Gerald Ford’s notification to Prime Minister Rabin that he was going to cut off aid to Israel for not yielding back more land to Egypt, which had nearly extinguished Israel in its Yom Kippur surprise attack. Carter led me to vote for Reagan in ’80 through his increasing siding with Sadat against Menachem Begin as well as his colossal blunder of enabling the antisemitic mullahs to take over Iran. Bush the Elder replaced the magnificent George Schulz with the Israel-hating James Baker and so lost my vote in ’92. In this light, the argument for Trump is a simple one for me.  Obama initiated a policy of deliberately downgrading America’s relationship with Israel while simultaneously (and at first secretly) planning on appeasing Iran. Donald Trump reversed both policies: Israel was backed warmly, and Iran was isolated and impoverished due to effective sanctions. As a result, the Sunni states felt empowered to warm their relations with Israel, eventually resulting in the Abraham Accords, the first peace treaties with Israel and its Arab neighbors that resulted in warm partnerships rather merely an end to open hostilities. Iran’s penury severely crimped its ability to fund its terrorist clients in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, and its global reach (such as the bombing of the Jewish community center in Argentina that had resulted in 85 deaths).  When Joe Biden took over, he immediately reversed the Iran policy, taking its Houthi clients off our terrorist list, opening up its frozen cash and allowing its oil exports, with a total cash flow during his presidency of hundreds of billions of dollars. Flush with money, Iran opened up the pipelines to its terror clients, and as a direct result, we had an ever-accelerating missile bombardment of Israel from Hamas, Hamas’ October 7 orgy of murder, rape, and kidnapping, Hezbollah’s massive bombardment of Israel, Iran’s first two direct attacks on Israel via missiles and drones, the Houthis’ takeover of the Red Sea shipping lanes, and the Houthis’ attacks on Israel. Biden presided over this disastrous collapse of the peace into fiery chaos. But this was not enough: he tossed gasoline on the fire through tolerating the UN’s alignment with Israel’s enemies, through taking no decisive steps to deter Houthi pirating closing of the sea lanes, and through ineffective resistance to international tribunals taking up vicious lawfare against Israel that defies the norms of international law and of our own concepts of sovereignty and liberty.  What’s to choose? Ms. Harris is on every side of the Israel issue, as she is on every other issue of import. For her, it is all just a laugh on the way to unmerited promotions, the story of her career and about the only thing for which she has displayed a real talent. She has the feeling of a character fresh out of the pages of Brave New World, ready to pop some soma, play a round of centrifugal bumblepuppy, give a tug on the zipper, and sing “Orgy Porgy, Ford and Fun.” The Obama/Biden crew would be left unmolested to cut Israel loose and join the young Ivy Leaguers in getting a warm Facebook commendation from the Khomeini for helping him finally destroy the Little Satan, Israel, as his first step towards destroying the Great Satan — America. As long as we hold fast to our First Amendment, none of us are compelled to accept any one religious framework to guide our politics. That allows us to see that one of the most important blessings of our shared religious heritage is to realize the only valid compulsion when it comes to God is the inner voice of our soul, created in God’s image. America’s soul has long aligned it with the cause of the Jewish people. This was true at its start, when George Washington wrote to Newport’s Jews that all were citizens here on an equal basis. It was true though our mighty and successful effort to shatter Nazism. It is the soul of our long commitment to securing Israel’s security in the face of Nazism’s Middle Eastern heirs.  This last year has made it clear that this commitment to Israel is nothing less than the choice for civilization against a new barbarianism, armed by science and defended by a new sophistry that exudes a nihilistic contempt for all we have ever valued. Forget the noxious froth of the Harris campaign — that is where the actual danger to democracy crouches, ready to pounce. That’s the choice that I see. My vote will express this viewpoint and my affirmation of the civilization that depends upon us to carry on a few more years, while we raise a new generation who knows its precious value.  I trust and pray you see it this way as well. My prayers are with you and this great country as you make the solemn and consequential choice this election offers. The post For Israel and Civilization, Vote Trump appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

My favorite charities are those that feed people. In recent years I have taken up the custom of delivering holiday packages to indigent Jews in Toronto in behalf of Chabad and did so again last week just before Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. At some point during this holiday most Jews gather together with family and friends for a festive meal. The packages that I delivered contained all of the fixings that a single person needed to enjoy such a holiday meal plus some traditional greetings, prayers and blessings. In a few rare instances where the recipient was not living alone, I delivered two and, in a couple of instances, as many as three packages to one address — but these were rare exceptions to the rule. For the most part these impoverished Jews live alone.  Chabad’s Outreach and Inclusion Chabad is technically a Hasidic sect. If one looks at a gathering of hardcore members one observes a sea of black hats, black suits, and unkempt beards, all of which to the unknowing eye makes this branch indistinguishable from other Hasidic camps. These are just a few of the reasons why the UN, like the League of Nations before it, deserves to be disbanded. At prayer services the rabbi will wear a bekishe, the traditional long black frock coat, and usually there are a few black suited men among the congregants — but as for the rest of the congregation anything goes. The head is covered but beneath that one finds novelty t-shirts, jeans, occasional tattoos (which, by the way, are forbidden in Jewish law) and all sorts of sundry attire up to and including designer sneakers. Chabad is very much about outreach and inclusion and has been very successful in this respect. It has become legendary among Jews, almost a joke, that Chabad shuls are to be found everywhere, even in the remotest parts of the world, and it is by far the fastest growing denomination among Jews. The delivery of these packages is part of its outreach. It is designed to bring comfort to poor Jews and connect them with the wider community. (READ MORE from Max Dublin: Has Canada’s Taxman Been Weaponized?) This year when I arrived to pick up my packages the rabbi asked if I could handle twenty-five, a rather larger number than usual, and when I said that I could he added another one for good measure. To the reader this may not sound like a large number but this is not a door-to-door operation in a Jewish slum. There is no such thing in Toronto. The Jewish poor are pinpricks scattered all over town and this year I found myself driving all the way down to the waterfront and then up again through Liberty Village and the Junction in the west end. Moreover, there’s seldom anywhere to park legally and it’s often difficult to gain access to the designated abodes. As one might expect these are marginal and not super functional people. Some suffer from what would appear to be a mild form of mental illness or come from a foreign land such as Russia and have not managed to acclimate themselves to their adopted country. Some live in public housing but due to shyness or fear are reluctant to answer their buzzer if, in fact, they have one. I remember one Russian émigré who answered the door dressed in his best shabby suit. When I tried to hand him his package, he refused to take it because he said he could not afford it. It took a while till I was able to bring home to him that it was a gift but then he decided that he was too proud to take it. In the end I prevailed upon him to accept the package and he was ever so grateful, but I wished he hadn’t been. Another one was an elderly lady who answered the door wearing a threadbare housecoat. She was very welcoming and spoke to me effusively in the Yiddish dialect of a Polish Jew. Her sweetness, warmth, and enthusiasm and the cadence of her language reminded me of my own mom of blessed memory.  Those who did not live in public housing lived in slummy little buildings, the shabbiest of rooming houses that by their crumbling, musty, smelly nature smacked you in the face as soon as you entered the front door. Following years of gentrification there is not much of such housing stock left in Toronto, and the landlords should long ago have been cited. On the other hand, the rent must still be very cheap if it can be afforded by those on public assistance, and what is most striking in such circumstances is that the occupants are trying their best to live independently and with dignity. Their look and circumstance are reminiscent of the photographs taken by Roman Vishniac in Poland before the Holocaust. They are also reminiscent of the photos taken by Bruce Davidson in his magnificent album East 100th Street. What is most striking about these Jews is their lack of grievance coupled with quiet dignity. They are not the angry poor who sometimes, if one examines their situation closely, aren’t really poor at all but just like playing the victim card. They are the invisible poor, hidden because they have basically retreated from a world that has proven too much for them. Chabad’s influence and work is not lost on rather more secular Jewish and non-Jewish leaders. When its spiritual leader Rabbi Menachem Schneerson was alive top world leaders used to seek audiences with him just as they do with the Pope. On July 2 Chabad of Toronto sponsored a big event in Toronto’s Roy Thomson Symphony Hall, and I attended because David Friedman, Trump’s ambassador to Israel, was the keynote speaker. In his speech Friedman stated that though he was not a member of Chabad — and nor, incidentally am I — he considered it to be the most important Jewish organization in the world. He recounted his role in the behind-the-scenes activity in the Trump administration leading up to moving the American embassy to Jerusalem. Before making the final decision Trump canvassed his cabinet for advice and every last one of his cabinet members said that they were against the idea because they feared that it would light up the Arab street. Trump summoned Friedman to Washington for a month to try to persuade them to go along but to no avail. In the end Friedman counselled that he should go ahead anyway. He said that one must not give in to fear of the crybullies in the Arab street. Trump proceeded with the move and, as it turned out, there were very few fireworks in the Arab street. There is a fringe faction of Hasidim called Neturei Karta (NK) that repudiates the legitimacy of the Jewish state basically by claiming that it was reestablished by Jewish people and not through the coming of the Messiah. I have seen them — or perhaps imposters of them — mingling with pro-Hamas Jew-hating demonstrators. On the other hand, the philosophy of the Chabad movement is quite the opposite of that. Chabad has long maintained that Israel should never exchange land for empty, treacherous, and manipulative promises of peace. Nothing more than the present war in which Israel is painfully clawing back lost territory in both the south and the north has vindicated the Chabad position. (READ MORE: A Very Unhappy Anniversary) The Fading United Nations At the Chabad event Friedman told the audience that his advice to Trump was inspired by the famous passage in Isaiah, “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” He maintained that it was the successful moving of the American embassy that laid the groundwork for the ensuing Abraham Accords. This famous passage is carved on what is known as the Isaiah wall of the United Nations. But like its predecessor the League of Nations, the UN has failed miserably in keeping the peace. On the contrary, members of its agencies, UNRWA in Gaza and UNIFIL in Lebanon, have collaborated with terrorist war mongers Hamas and Hezbollah. Now UNIFIL, which was supposed to keep Hezbollah north of the Litani river, is refusing to get out of the way during the IDF ground operation in south Lebanon. Moreover, by espousing and promoting the crazy covid lockdown and the green agenda — that, among other things, calls for the curtailing of food production on the planet — the UN has exacerbated the problems of the poor rather than alleviate them. These are just a few of the reasons why the UN, like the League of Nations before it, deserves to be disbanded and replaced by a truly worthy and moral world body. The post Chabad Fulfills Its Mission, the UN Does Not appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

We are in the midst of quite a storm — with the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Hurricane Milton, and the political climate this election season. In this episode of The Weekend Spectator, Paul and Grace address various topics, including the recent hurricanes, euthanasia in Canada, Elon Musk, Bob Casey Jr., and the crucial Pennsylvania race. This past week, Paul Kengor stopped by the Butler Farm Show grounds, the site of the infamous assassination attempt, as former President Trump held one of his largest rallies of all time. Elon Musk’s special appearance at Trump’s rally made headlines, as he has become heavily involved in the effort to re-elect President Trump. Watch the full episode to find out more: READ Paul and Grace’s work here and here. Hurricane Outrage: Where is Harris? Kamala Seeks Shelter From Hurricane Donald The Weekend Spectator Ep. 15: Iran Steps Out From Behind the Proxies The post <i>The Weekend Spectator</i> Ep. 16: Hurricanes, Trump in Butler, the Rise of Euthanisia in Canada, and Bob Casey Jr. appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Venice, Italy — A few days ago, when Ethel Kennedy passed away, I was in faraway Italy. Padua to be exact. But I did not want her passing to go unnoticed by me. She was a special kind of Democrat to me. Her sense of humor and sense of fun extended to Republicans. Even the Wall Street Journal noted that in its sparkling obit of her. She was famous for her sense of fun, which she kept up despite being struck by tragedy after tragedy. She had a sense of fun which she maintained especially after the grind of politics was over for the day. I remember one particular evening at her home, Hickory Hill, when she stood in the doorway greeting guest after guest at that historic manse. She had even included me among her guests as improbable as that might sound. She could not have been more effervescent when she greeted me. “Oh, I know why you are here,” she smiled. “You are Kathleen’s guest, and she is so-oo conservative.” Ethel laughed. Kathleen is her daughter and former lieutenant governor of Maryland. She may be conservative on some things, but I had utterly failed to convince her of Milton Friedman’s free market economics. We settled on human rights violations and Catholic values. But Kathleen and Ethel for that matter shared with me the belief that friendship (and patriotism) always trump politics. Theirs was of the kind that recently was seen in the splendid movie, Reagan. In that film there is a scene where Tip O’Neill appears at the bedside of the recently shot President Ronald Reagan and slips a Rosary over the President’s hand. They shared a joke about both being Irish. Politics could wait for the next day. That night at Hickory Hill and on other memorable occasions we all abjured politics for the evening. The only thing Ethel would not abjure was joking about the Rosary. She was a daily communicant and now her journey is over. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. The post Ethel Kennedy, RIP appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Following daily polls on this year’s election can lead to intellectual vertigo, especially among those who picture Mr. Trump sporting a Hitler mustache, or others who struggle to decipher policy views buried in cackling Kamala’s word salads. America’s media noise machines breathlessly report that this or that state is Trump’s to lose; no, make that Harris’ to lose, who last night or last week “surged” to a one-point lead, or two points, or something. In fact, if Groseclose’s work is considered devastating, Attkisson’s review of The Narrative is no less than horrifying. It’s the same story for the rest of the battleground states: either candidate is up here, down there, gains a point or two someplace in the Midwest, only to be knocked down a statistical smidgeon somewhere else that experts insist is a “must-win” contest. The only constant in this babble fest of numbers is confusion among many voters who try to make sense of it all. Those whose brains haven’t been fried by the fabricated insanity of Trump hatred might conclude that the election shouldn’t be close, especially since Kamala Harris and her ilk have supported policies that no sane, normal person would entertain for a second: massive invasion of illegal aliens — including thousands of felons, defunding police, coddling criminals, showing disdain for women who object to males changing in their locker rooms, funding surgery for mentally ill youngsters suffering from sexual dysphoria, mandating that everyone be judged on the basis of race, class, or gender — the list goes on. For all that, however, one hears about the importance of voting against Trump. What about voting against Harris? The Media Noise Machine Shapes Elections Inconceivable, Vizzini might say (The Princess Bride), and for good reason. Democrats have had the electoral deck stacked in their favor for a long time, as Tim Groseclose documented in his meticulous study about political bias, Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind, published in 2011. (READ MORE: Reagan Conservatism Is Alive and Well) Among Professor Groseclose’s conclusions, two points stand out. First, in his words: “My results suggest that media bias aids Democratic candidates by about 8 to 10 percentage points in a typical election. I find, for instance, that if media bias didn’t exist, then John McCain would have defeated Barack Obama 56 – 42, instead of losing 53 – 46.” And presumably, Republicans would have won elections after Obama’s “transformational” exploits in office, including the 2020 contest that advanced a senile cypher to the presidency. Indeed, given Groseclose’s documentation, it’s surprising that Republicans win any elections, especially at the national level. The second point centers on reactions to Groseclose’s work, which he labeled a “firestorm:” denunciations by “hundreds, and maybe thousands, of left-wing blogs.” His study was “highly flawed,” and he should “be fired IMMEDIATELY” from his position as professor of political science at UCLA for “that cockamamie load of bulls**t.” Groseclose’s editor said that he had never seen anything like the reaction to Left Turn, and he hoped the author’s home address wasn’t available. Groseclose himself characterized such responses as “vicious,” certainly an understatement, given the arrogance of his detractors and the vitriol they heaped upon him. For all his efforts, he still received several job offers from other universities, in spite of the considerable smearing of his work and reputation. Speaking of which, scholars at odds with their left-wing colleagues should take some comfort in the fact that half of the country regularly receives the same treatment by liberal luminaries, especially those ensconced in America’s media complex. Perhaps the most trenchant observer is investigative reporter, Sharyl Attkisson, whose career brought her into the belly of the beast, populated by denizens committed to safeguarding The Narrative at all costs. This term has been bandied about frequently over the past decade, but casual listeners might not appreciate its prevalence or its devotees’ ferocious determination to defend it at all costs. In fact, if Groseclose’s work is considered devastating, Attkisson’s review of The Narrative is no less than horrifying. The Narrative is the story line that embraces every event in society, public and private. Its goal, in her words, “is to embed chosen ideas so deeply within society that they are no longer questioned — scratch that — so that questions are not permitted … Contrary views, facts, and science must be shoved down the memory hole — disappeared — as though they had never existed.” No wonder that she begins her recent book, Slanted, with copious examples from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. In fact, Attkisson’s review of American media practices is as chilling as Orwell’s fictional treatment of Soviet totalitarianism. And efforts by liberal elites to demonize opposition (especially Donald Trump), eradicate “disinformation,” and expunge the Second Amendment are inspired by identical goals, best summarized by Orwell: “To conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought.” Anything but a Landslide In short, with the goals clear and the methods set in place, the liberal media establishment has been cranking the machinery to ensure close elections, regardless of the quality of their candidates, the messages they deliver, or the characteristics of their opposition. (READ MORE: Democrats’ Homicidal Rhetoric Inspires Trump-Hating Gunmen) The last thing rulers of the controlling heights of American institutions want is a Reagan-like landslide, even though the administrative apparatus is mostly unaffected. The best way to prevent such a possibility undoubtedly lurks in liberal thoughts, bringing to mind a comment made by Franklin Roosevelt when he began his presidency. An adviser suggested that if he solved the Great Depression, he would go down in history as the country’s best president. FDR said that if he didn’t, he would be America’s last president, presumably ending the possibility of future elections. It is a tragedy of American politics that FDR’s fear is the current liberals’ dream. Marvin J. Folkertsma is an author of several books, retired professor, and former longtime chair of the Department of Political Science at Grove City College.     The post The Race Is Close Due to Our Shameless Media appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Democrats Are Hitting the Panic Button Early

Why Aren’t Christians Voting This Year?