What a week.
As per usual, President Joe Biden's State of the Union "speech" was an incoherent mishmash of inane nonsense, manufactured hysteria, irrelevance, and outright lies.
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders provided a hard-hitting, no-nonsense response that went after the worst excesses being inflicted on the country: weakness in foreign policy, completely unenforced immigration laws, illegal drugs pouring across our borders, raging inflation, top-down economic meddling under the guise of "green" "investments," and the absolute insanity of the culture wars.
"Whether Joe Biden believes this madness or is simply too weak to resist it," Sanders said, "this administration has been completely hijacked by the radical left." She drove the point home with one of her best barbs: "The dividing line in America is no longer between right or left. The choice is between normal or crazy."
Kudos to the governor for saying what millions of Americans have been thinking for quite some time now. But in truth, we are way past "normal" versus "crazy."
This is good versus evil.
It isn't just Biden's deeply destructive policies, or the Olympic-level gymnastics our profoundly deceitful press engages in to pretend that his bald-faced lies are the truth.
It's everywhere.
U.S. Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) tweeted a "thumbs up" photo of himself headed to the State of the Union Address, sporting a pin that was the word "Abortion" with a cut-out heart for the first "o" in the word; a gift from Planned Parenthood. "Abortion is essential healthcare," Markey's tweet read, "and we need to codify this right."
I remember when Democrats maintained that abortion was a sad but sometimes necessary circumstance. Former President Bill Clinton sought to make abortion "safe, legal, and rare." Now it's celebrated; it's a fashion statement; it's jewelry. Legislation being passed in blue states is legalizing abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy, and those calling to "codify" Roe v. Wade want the same kind of law passed by Congress.
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Celebrating the destruction of our children -- including full-term, viable babies in utero -- is not just "crazy"; it is evil.
Every day, the Twitter account Libs of TikTok exposes more of the attitudes and actions of so-called progressives -- often teachers with the responsibility for shaping young minds -- who are exposing children to their sexual predilections, their gender confusion, and their insecurities about their own identities, and demanding that children be forced to "accept" it all as part of their "education." That is not education; it is indoctrination. Encouraging sexual promiscuity and gender confusion in minors, promoting the mutilation of healthy bodies, hiding classroom behavior from parents, and deliberately driving a wedge between children and their families is not just "crazy"; it is evil.
A State University of New York at Fredonia professor is under scrutiny; he's been arguing for the normalization of pedophilia for at least 20 years. Other academics and activists insist that we should now use the term "minor-attracted persons" rather than "pedophiles." Society should be more sympathetic, they say; the law should be more lenient.
Query: Do you think that the arguments pushing the "gender transition" of children over the objection or without the knowledge of their parents will not be also used to justify covert sexual activity with children if the law and cultural mores move in that direction?
This isn't just "crazy"; it is evil.
With disturbing frequency, the "radical left" Sanders referenced in her speech is honest about the side it has taken. One need look no further than this week's Grammy Awards. Award nominees Sam Smith and Kim Petras performed their duet titled (wait for it ...) "Unholy," complete with ominous red lighting and dancers writhing amid flames. Smith was dressed like Satan in a red cape and top hat with horns. He tweeted photos of himself during rehearsal saying, "This is going to be SPECIAL." To which CBS, the network broadcasting the show, responded with the tweet, "You can say that again. We are ready to worship!"
Worshipping Satan? Is that supposed to be funny?
And in a bit of irony that couldn't be scripted, Smith's performance was followed by a commercial break with the tagline, "the Grammy Awards are sponsored by Pfizer." (Pfizer has seen its share of bad publicity over the past few months, most recently with Project Veritas' hidden camera video footage of one of Pfizer's employees stating that the pharmaceutical giant is considering deliberately mutating COVID-like viruses in the lab because the vaccines for those viruses are "cash cows.")
The internet went ballistic. CBS deleted the tweet. Pfizer issued a statement saying that they sponsored the awards show, not any individual's specific performance -- which is not exactly the same they think it is.
Even Madonna -- a sad manifestation of excessive plastic surgery and unflattering style choices -- was there to reinforce the message and her cultural relevance. In introducing Smith and Petras, she said, "If they call you shocking, scandalous, troublesome, problematic, provocative, or dangerous, you're definitely on to something."
Really? Still? In the artistic struggle to be more and more "shocking," "scandalous" and "dangerous," what's left? Do we even want to find out?
Sanders said, "Most Americans simply want to live their lives in freedom and peace, but we are under attack in a left-wing culture war we didn't start and never wanted to fight."
True. But our reservation and restraint have been our undoing. We may not have wanted this battle, but we are in it now, and our only choices now are to fight or surrender.
In 1867, John Stuart Mill said: "Let not anyone pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends than that good man should look on and do nothing."
We must not surrender. We've been "doing nothing" for too long.
To find out more about Laura Hollis and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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