Cowardice and Bigotry

The US Army’s 10th Mountain Division has a Facebook page, and its main page used to have videos posted by Division chaplains Major Scott Ingram and Captain Amy Smith suggesting some prayers.

Of course, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation objected, demanding the posts be taken down and put somewhere else. Such religious bigotry is standard fare for the Left.

What’s especially despicable, though, is the response of those in charge of the Division. Instead of fighting the bigotry, those managers answered the objections by taking the posts down.  Michael Berry, General Counsel for First Liberty Institute, has the right of it.

I cannot believe the legendary US Army’s 10th Mountain Division raised the white flag of surrender to an anti-religious freedom zealot.

Perhaps the Division commander needs to be relieved of his duties. He plainly doesn’t have the…heart…for a leadership post.

“This is about a public health crisis”

That’s what Progressive-Democrat Governor Laura Kelly, ruling in Kansas, said about her Executive Order barring churches and church-goers from gathering in groups greater than 10 folks after a Federal judge enjoined her (temporarily) from enforcing her diktat.

More completely, she said,

We are in the middle of an unprecedented pandemic. This is not about religion. This is about a public health crisis.

Because religion and public health have nothing to do with each other, or maybe because they stand in opposition to each other.

I’ll set aside the Constitutional argument for the injunction and for eliminating the EO altogether. This is about a Progressive-Democrat’s refusal to recognize the well-documented research that comfort and support are major factors in fighting any disease, whether from boosting an immune system or from fighting a disease in progress. Strengthening the mind, helping build and maintain the emotional strength necessary to keep resisting, to keep fighting, a disease is a critical component in that resistance, that fight.

Religion plays a central role in that support. Isolation, which includes limiting group sizes, is antithetical to that. Denying free access to emotional support, to the succor available in churches, synagogues, mosques, is antithetical to that.

Any doctor knows this. Any man of the cloth, whether minister, priest, rabbi, imam knows this. Any parishioner knows this.

Only a Progressive-Democrat governor ignores this.

A Progressive-Democrat Governor’s View

…of the intelligence and responsibility of American citizens, including particularly Kentucky citizens.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear (D) has said he’s going to identify, track, and isolate Kentucky citizens who dare go to their church’s Easter services. His excuse—and that’s all it is, a cynical rationalization—for his government’s surveillance of a broad swath of citizens is the present Wuhan Virus situation.

It’s for the greater good, you see.

I hear people say, “It’s my choice”. Well, it’s not the person next to you’s choice….

That’s plainly not true. It was the person next to you’s clear choice to be there, also, knowing full well the nature and the proximity of the company both of those individuals, and it was the clear choice of all of the rest of the congregation.

Neither is there anything in either the Free Exercise Clause or the Establishment Clause that says “except for when a State governor thinks better.” This is simply a confluence of two Progressive-Democrat ideologies: American citizens are too grindingly stupid to make their own decisions or to act intelligently (here, to govern their own post-service behavior), and religious freedom is just a phrase that’s gone out of vogue because, after all, the Constitution isn’t binding on anything.

Senator Rand Paul (R, KY) is on the right track:

Taking license plates at church? Quarantining someone for being Christian on Easter Sunday? Someone needs to take a step back here[.]

The Progressive-Democrat Beshear has no faith in the citizens of Kentucky or their ability to act intelligently, he wants Government to identify and surveil them and then control them, and he has no respect for Law.

Kentuckians might want to remember this at the next election for Governor, in three more years.

A Bit of NLMSM Racism

Surgeon General Jerome Adams, in last Friday’s Wuhan Virus situation update, talked about the need, especially for minorities, to observe the CDC’s recommendations for staying at home as much as possible and staying safe.  He did so, too, in vernacular.

I want to close by saying while your state and local health departments and those of us in public service are working day and night to help stop the spread of COVID-19 and to protect you regardless of your color, your creed, or your geography, I need you to know that you’re not helpless and that it’s even more important in communities of color, we adhere to the task force guidelines to slow the spread. Avoid alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. And call your friends and family. Check on your mother, she wants to hear from you right now.
And speaking of mothers, we need you to do this if not for yourself than for your abuela. Do it for your granddaddy. Do it for your Big Mama. Do it for your Pop-Pop. We need you to understand, especially in communities of colors, we need you to step up and help stop the spread so that we can protect those who are most vulnerable.

Naturally, the NLMSM decided to jump on that and cry ra-a-aci-i-i-st.  Here’s NPR…journalist… Yamiche Alcindor:

You said that African Americans and Latinos should avoid alcohol, drugs, and tobacco. You also said do it for your abuela, do it for Big Mama and Pop-Pop. There are some people online who are already offended by that language and the idea that you’re saying that behaviors might be leading to these high death rates. Do you, I guess, have a response to people who might be offended by the language that you used?

Wow.

The Surgeon General wasn’t intimidated by Alcindor’s racism slur.

Adams responded by telling Alcindor that he had spoken with The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and stressed that they need “targeted outreach to the African American community” and that he was using language that he uses in his “own family.”
“I have a Puerto Rican brother-in-law. I call my Grand Daddy ‘Grand Daddy.’ I have relatives who call their grandparents ‘Big Mama.’ So that was not meant to be offensive, that is the language that we use and that I use, and we need to continue to target our outreach to those communities….

Alcindor is well aware of that. She’s well aware that she has no foundation whatsoever for her racist beef.  That she’s making up her racist beef out of thin air is an especially pernicious and despicable form of racism.

And she was caught at it. AG Hamilton:

This is pure art. In her first tweet as soon as he said it, she insisted “some will find this language offensive” and by the time she wrote her second tweet suddenly “many” had already “found this language offensive.” She discovered those many people awfully quickly[.]

Ryan Saavedra also noticed.

You posted your tweet just so you could get people pissed off so you could turn around and say that people online were “offended[.]”

NPR‘s silence speaks very loudly. It cries out for cutting off any and all public funding for this outlet.

United Nations and Racism

The UN’s World Health Organization has come under fire for its pandering to the People’s Republic of China over the latter’s mishandling of the Wuhan Virus situation, a pandemic that originated in the PRC’s Wuhan, Hubei Province.

Now the WHO’s chief, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is crying racism by the Republic of China because the RoC has been one of the vocal critics.

Tedros claimed he had been personally attacked, had suffered racist abuse and had even received death threats.
”This attack came from Taiwan,” said the WHO chief, who is a former Ethiopian health and foreign minister and the organization’s first African leader.

Having made his racist beef, though,

The basis of his allegations were unclear and neither the WHO, nor Tedros provided specific examples.

Never mind that Tedros’ WHO, at the PRC’s behest, ignored the RoC’s early warnings about the nature of the virus’ outbreak in Wuhan, and that Tedros, also at the PRC’s behest, has excluded the RoC from participating in research related to the Wuhan Virus.

Now, with no one at the UN’s WHO willing to provide any evidence of RoC racism toward Tedros, it’s clear that, unable to defend the WHO’s own mishandling of the Wuhan Virus situation, Tedros is making up his racist beef out of whole cloth.

Which is racist.