Monthly Archives: June 2022

Memorial Day is a profound American holiday because it connects the present with so many different points of our past. It was originally known as Decoration Day, a day set aside to honor those who lost their lives in the Civil WarAmericas most costly war, taking the lives of at least 620,000 men. Among American holidays, Memorial Day is unique also in that it originated from the vanquished, not the victor.

After the war was over, women from the SouthColumbus, Mississippi and Richmond, Virginiaset out to decorate with flowers the gravesites of their fallen Confederate soldiers. But they became so moved in the process that they decided to equally decorate the gravesites of Union soldiers buried alongside their loved ones. That expression was profound, for it showed an amazing forgiveness toward even a merciless Union victor, like Gen. William Sherman, whose scorched-earth military campaigns had committed so many atrocitiesravaging the lives of non-combatants and unnecessarily destroying swaths across five southern states.

Although Abraham Lincoln could have blamed the South for starting the war by seceding from the United States and firing the first shots on Fort Sumter, he expressed no accusation nor bitterness toward the South and held that both sides were to blame for the Civil War. With malice toward none, with charity for alllet us bind up the nations wounds, said Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Address.

Decoration Day would not become a national holiday for nearly a century, until after the two World Wars and the Korean War cost America another 559,000 lives. During the Vietnam War, Decoration Day was renamed Memorial Day to honor all servicemen who died in the line of duty in any war or engagement. It became an official national holiday when Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act in 1968.

While remembering those who lost their lives serving America in wartime is a central purpose of this holiday, Memorial Day takes on its deepest meaning when we connect it with our heritage and roots. A takeaway from the Civil War era is not only acknowledging the magnanimity and quality of character of most leaders of those earlier times, but also the respect and civility that allowed healing and moving forward as a nation.

One glaring difference between those times and the present is that we have lost much of the civility that facilitated keeping our diverse peoples together in earlier times. The qualities of character and societal norms shaped by Christian influence that were taken for granted through the mid-20th centurywhich included grace, respect, tolerance, and mannershave been increasingly crowded out by a coarse secular culture, and more recently by a surrogate woke religion that has added to the aforementioned rigid closed-mindedness and loss of spontaneity, humor, and joy.

The deepest meaning of Memorial Day can be found in simply remembering that when Americans sacrificed their lives in military service, it was not just to defend the United States, but it was also to uphold the natural God-given rights of all people that were articulated in the nations founding documents. Those established a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. As a result, America became an inspiration for others around the world. Some likened America to being a light to world, like acityon a hill that cannot be hidden.

One cannot help but see and feel this Memorial Day 2022 that Americas light has dimmed with our countrys leadership losing its way on many fronts and even betraying the people. So, it is fitting to reflect on our past and rediscover the threads that not only hold us together, but also provide strength to the patchwork of our national fabric to withstand the storms ahead.

A discussion of Memorial Day would just not be complete without appreciating the significance of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, formally established on what was then known as Armistice Day, three years after the end of World War I. The U.S. Congress had approved the burial of an unidentified American soldier who had fallen somewhere on a battlefield in France at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier came to be recognized as the most hallowed grave at Arlington Cemeterythe most sacred military cemetery in the United States. Here, one of the profound ironies of our history is that this hallowed and sacred ground came from vanquished Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, who despite his defeat in leading the Confederate cause in the Civil War ended up with the highest unspoken national honor.

That honor unexpectedly came from the great loss of giving up his familys Arlington House plantation, which he and his wife forfeited to the federal government after they sided with Virginia and the South. The 1,100 acres of that seized plantation land would later become the Arlington Cemeterythe most hallowed ground in Americaproviding a final resting place for future patriots who gave their lives for the cause of freedom and the American republic.

The selection process for the World War II Unknown proved more difficult than that of World War I since American soldiers had fought on three continents. Then the process was interrupted by the Korean War, which resulted in numerous dead who could not be identified.

Finally on May 28, 1958, caskets bearing the Unknowns of World War II and the Korean War arrived in Washington. The caskets were rotated such that each unknown serviceman rested on the Lincoln catafalque, a raised platform that held President Lincolns casket in April 1865. Two days later on May 30, then the official date of Memorial Day, those Unknowns were transported to Arlington Cemetery, where they were interred in the plaza beside their World War I comrades.

With so many missing in action in the Vietnam War, it was decided that the crypt designated Unknown for that war would remain empty. It was rededicated to honor all missing U.S. service members from the Vietnam War on September 17, 1999, with the inscription on the crypt reading, Honoring and Keeping the Faith with Americas Missing Servicemen, 1958-1975.

The inscribed words on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of Here Rests in Honored Glory an American Soldier Known but to God are an uplifting reminder that all those who died for the American cause should have a special place in our hearts as they do in Gods. The tomb is guarded 24 hours a day, 365 days a year regardless of weather by special armed Tomb Guard sentinels.

Anyone who visits the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier cannot but be humbled and even tearfully reminded of what Lincoln said at Gettysburg, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotionthat we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vainthat this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedomand that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Memorial Day reminds us that U.S. military personnel are asked to put their lives on the line. Defending the nation and fighting wars is the most serious and important job of all. There should be no acceptance of political and military leadership ineptitude, such as what led up to throwing away a long and hard-fought victory in Iraq by withdrawing all U.S. forces in 2011enabling the rise of ISIS; or what led up to the hasty retreat from Afghanistan in August 2021, which unnecessarily cost 13 American soldiers and left behind some $80 billion of U.S. military equipment in what was effectively a surrender to the Taliban.

Similarly, there should be zero tolerance for policies or programs that divide and demoralize our troops such as critical race theory indoctrination, which has been the willful policy choice of Joe Bidens secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In sum, this year2022Memorial Day takes on a greater two-fold meaning than it has previously. We are called to remember those who died in military service to the country and recommit to the conviction that those lives lost shall never be in vain. Equally important, we should remember and deepen our appreciation of a heritage that began with a courageous, brilliant, and faithful group of founders and those that followed who were willing to give their lives to establish, preserve and protect the United States and what it stands for.

While many of us now feel that the light from the City on a Hill has grown dim, our Constitution still stands, and we the people are still in charge. In the face of internal and external enemies seeking our demise, we cannot falter or retreat. We have much to do.

Let us go forward with the biblical admonition that if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I willforgive their sin and will heal their land.

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By Keeping The Past Alive, Memorial Day Can Help Us Save The Future - The Federalist

There is no question that the Southern Baptist Convention is facing a moment of reckoning. The SBC is a free association of churches, and trust is its connective tissue. The release of the Guidepost Solutions report on the Executive Committees response to Sexual Abuse Allegations has revealed horrifying accounts of broken trust. It is clear that our local churches and some of our SBC leaders have at times failed by mishandling or even covering up abuse allegations involving their friends.

My heart breaks for those who have suffered abuse, which was made all the worse because it came from the hands of those they should be able to trust the most: their own pastors and convention leaders. I have sought to weep with those who weep, as we are instructed to do in Romans 12:15. I pray that justice true justice will be done in each and every instance of abuse accounted for in the report and for any that have gone unreported. There is no question that trust has been broken.

The question, then, is how should the SBC respond?

Southern Baptist leaders, the entities they serve, and the trustees who oversee them are supposed to function as stewards. They are entrusted with significant resources by local churches and, ultimately, by God.

More importantly, they are stewards of the gospel and of the spiritual well-being of those they represent. Trust and transparency are essential qualities of a steward. If there is no trust, then how can we expect resources, both material and spiritual, to be entrusted? And if there is no transparency no thorough accounting given how can there be trust?

Events in recent years have called into question the trustworthiness and transparency of many SBC entities. As a result, a growing number of Southern Baptist churches and pastors are finding it harder and harder to trust those in positions of leadership. To restore trust and transparency, we will need to prayerfully seek both spiritual renewal and structural renovation.

We must begin by admitting that many of the issues within the SBC are ultimately traceable to a lack of the fear of God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding (Psalm 111:10). People who genuinely fear God will hold themselves and their leaders to the highest standards of ethical behavior and will not cover up for abuse, plagiarism, or quid pro quo behavior.

If we have churches with pastors who are not meaningfully accountable to their own congregation, and we do not expect our members to grow in holiness, how can we expect our convention leaders to change their behavior when they take the reins of convention leadership?

The repentance that we need must begin in the pulpits and the pews of our local churches. The biblical practices of regenerate church membership, diligent discipleship, and when necessary, corrective church discipline are the bedrock on which a culture of accountability must be built that would then flow down through the SBC and its entities as a necessary consequence.

Indeed, as I wrote back in 2019 when the Houston Chronicle first broke its story regarding abuse cases within the SBC, the presence of sexual abuse in our churches is a disturbing symptom of the underlying condition: our lackadaisical attitude toward Gods blueprint for the church reveals that we do not fear Him.

While genuine repentance and faithful ecclesiology are of paramount importance, we should also prayerfully consider how we can implement biblically informed structural renovations that will encourage trust and transparency in the SBC. In general, what we need to do is make structural changes to create a culture of accountability, rather than bureaucratizing the SBC.

Abuse is covered up because there are incentives to look the other way when problems arise. So, the necessary structural renovations will address sex abuse and many of the other problems weve seen in the SBC recently. Too often, entity leaders disregard the will of the messengers and the churches they represent. They do not act in a transparent manner, even withholding information from boards of trustees who cannot provide accountability without information.

Among the many alarming revelations contained in the recent Sex Abuse Task Force (SATF) report is one glaring organizational problem that exacerbates all the rest. I am speaking of the complete failure of the trustee-staff relationship on the Executive Committee (EC). The report makes clear that the staff hid vital information from the EC trustees, even deceiving them at points, which is in clear violation of bylaws.

Thats not how it is supposed to work. The trustees of all of our entities need to receive better training to understand their fiduciary responsibility to hold the entities accountable to the churches that make them possible. We desperately need to implement structural board reforms so boards provide meaningful oversight to their entities, as stewards, and get all the information they need to do the job.

We should strictly require that conflicts of interest be disclosed and that trustees recuse themselves from voting on matters where they are conflicted. Perhaps it would be appropriate to limit (or prohibit) employees of SBC entities from serving on the boards of other entities. We should also implement a schedule of periodic forensic audits to encourage entities to act with the utmost integrity with the funds with which theyve been entrusted.

To return to the pressing issue of sex abuse, these structural renovations will help us get to the heart of the cultural rot evidenced in the SATF report and will give us the information and processes necessary to hold individuals accountable for abuse (or covering for abuse). Boards of SBC entities need to be proactive, asking hard questions and having outside investigations performed if necessary. In these matters, we need to be able to look sex abuse squarely in the eye and call it a grievous sin and heinous crime which should have no place in our churches or our convention.

At the same time, we can do so in a fashion thats more effective, biblical, and consistent with our longstanding Baptist polity. The tools I mentioned above are surgical they will help us to create a culture of accountability among SBC leaders without fundamentally transforming the SBCs longstanding polity.

We may want to consider some other specific methods by which the SBC could serve its member churches. For example, it may be prudent and helpful for the SBC to facilitate access to background checks, training materials, and model policies that local churches could implement on a voluntary basis while still respecting their autonomy.

Yet, even while we consider biblically informed structural renovations, we should be cautious about some of the SATF reports more sweeping recommendations that could broadly transform the polity of the SBC on the basis of a report that focuses solely on the behavior of the executive committee and its staff. To be sure, it may seem tempting (and easier) to propose sweeping changes to SBC governance, but doing so creates diffuse responsibility for current leaders; failures can be blamed on the system rather than on individuals. We should also be concerned about how the SATF report recommends the creation of an offender list that, as others have pointed out, does not appear to provide due process to the people who would potentially be listed.

The scriptures give us the right framework for addressing abuse in our midst. Without question, sexual abuse should be reported to civil authorities immediately by anyone who becomes aware of such abuse, as those authorities rightfully wield the sword to punish evil-doers. Individuals in leadership (whether in local churches or convention entities), if proven to have engaged in sex abuse, are fully and permanently disqualified from being leaders in the church under biblical criteria.

Yet, in our zeal to ban the disqualified, we must not violate the biblically informed due process provisions embedded in American law (see 2 Corinthians 13:1, in which the Apostle Paul subjects himself to evidentiary standards when dealing with sin in the Corinthian church). As people of the Book, we must not disregard scriptures wisdom by casting aside concern for due process in our quest for justice.

In close, though some will squander the moment by rushing to adopt recommendations informed by the logic of the world, those who fear God must humbly seek the path of righteousness. What is needed is a repentant return to biblical ecclesiology and a courageous and relentless rooting out of the bureaucratic rot that has too often prevented the heeding of scriptures wisdom.

We have a Book, but it seems like its been collecting dust in recent years. If Southern Baptists continue to ignore that Book in favor of concocting our own plans, we will not restore trust and transparency but will instead lead the SBC down a path of destruction.

Tom Ascol is the senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church and President of Founders Ministries and the Institute of Public Theology. He is a candidate for president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

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The SBC Must Respond To Reports Of Abuse With Full Transparency - The Federalist

More than one week after an 18-year-old gunman stormed Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, state officials are still struggling to set the record straight on what really happened that led to the deaths of 19 kids and two adults.

For a week now, the public, the press, and politicians have been on a wild goose chase to find out why it took more than an hour for good guys with guns to take down a school shooter in a small school in the small South Texas town last Tuesday.

Unfortunately, Texas safety officials have traded the truth for multiple false, misleading, and vague statements that have significantly undermined the publics trust in law enforcements ability to protect children like the fourth-graders who lost their lives in the attack.

Not only have they severely undercut the trust of Americans, theyve infuriated the mourning Uvalde community.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he felt misled and livid after hearing that a poor police response significantly contributed to the delay in action against the shooter. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick also lamented that No one mentioned the fact that there was this 45-minute to an hour hold by the chief of the police of the school district while there were still shots being fired.

Here are eight lies Texas officials told about the Uvalde shooting that should get them immediately fired.

Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Director Steve McCraw originally said a school resource officer engaged the suspect before he entered the school.

At one point, McCraw switched tracks and said the officer was not on campus at the time of the shooting.

Elsewhere, officials were reported saying the school officer simply confronted the shooter instead of actively engaging him.

Texas DPS was forced to walk back both accounts a couple of days later when word got out that the school resource officer completely failed to notice the shooter when he drove past the suspect who was hunkered down behind a vehicle.

[The shooter] walked in unobstructed initially, Texas DPS Regional Director Victor Escalon eventually admitted. So from the grandmothers house, to the [ditch], to the school, into the school, he was not confronted by anybody.

Escalon said last week that the shooter lingered outside of Robb for 12 minutes after crashing his car into a nearby ditch. Days later, McCraw said the gun-wielding teen was inside the school within five minutes of wrecking.

Original reports from the shooting scene at Robb Elementary suggested that a teacher left a back door at the school propped open with a rock which is how the shooter entered the building.

McCraw volunteered the information during his Friday press conference and claimed that DPS obtained video evidence to support this theory.

We know from video evidence, at 11:27 the exterior door suspected for what the where we knew the shooter entered, Ramos was propped open by a teacher, he said.

Recent statements from Texas state police,however, suggest that the teacher accused of neglecting the back door went back to close it after seeing Ramos. The door, however, did not automatically lock properly. The unnamed teachers lawyer also denies that his client left the back door open.

In a complete contradiction of DPSs original claim, some outlets are even reporting that security footage obtained from the area has backed up the claim that the teacher closed the door at this time.

DPS spokesman Sgt. Erick Estrada claimed shortly after the shooting that the suspect carried a rifle and [had] body armor on.

Another DPS spokesman, Lt. Christopher Olivarez, later claimed that the gunman was wearing a vest designed to carry extra ammo but did not have any plates on him.

McCraw originally said that the first law enforcement officers who arrived at the school did engage the shooter immediately.

The bottom line is law enforcement was there, McCraw said the day after the shooting. They did engage immediately. They did contain [the gunman] in the classroom.

UvaldePolice Chief Daniel Rodriguez also claimed that hisofficersresponded within minutes.

It wasnt until three days after the tragedy that McCraw admitted local law enforcement shied away from helping students and staff after taking fire from the suspect. McCraw claimed that officers misclassified the suspect as a barricaded shooter and that there were no kids at risk. Officers reportedly stood outside of the school and then outside of the classroom for nearly an hour while waiting for a Border Patrol tactical team to show up at the scene where students were repeatedly calling 911 for help.

By the time BORTAC arrived and used a janitor key to enter the afflicted fourth-grade classroom, the shooter had been on school property for more than an hour.

Oliverez claimed that local law enforcement officers retreated because they couldve been shot and wanted to wait for specialized backup. Records, however, show that Chief Pete Arredondo of Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, who ordered officers to stay outside of the classroom where the gunman was, was trained to respond in active shooter situations.

Records show Arredondo recently completed eight hours of active shooter training in December of 2021. He also went through eight hours of the same training in 2020 and 16 hours of Terrorism Response Tactics Active Shooter in 2019. Furthermore, the Uvalde Police Department bragged on Facebook in 2018 about a grant that equipped every officer with body armor.

DPS claimed on Tuesday that Arredondo has not responded to investigators over his role in delaying a law enforcement response to the Robb shooting.

The Uvalde Police Department and Uvalde [school district] Police have been cooperating with investigators, DPS said in a statement. The chief of the Uvalde [school district] Police provided an initial interview but has not responded to a request for a follow-up interview with the Texas Rangers that was made two days ago.

On the same day, multiple law enforcement sources told ABC News that The Uvalde Police Department and the Uvalde Independent School District police force are no longer cooperating with the Texas Department of Public Safetys investigation.

Arredondo, however, told CNN on Wednesday that Ive been on the phone with them every day.

Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin denied that local law enforcement misled the public about their actions during the school shooting.

Local law enforcement has not made any public comments about the specifics of the investigation into the incident or [misled] anyone, McLaughlin said. Statements by Lt. Governor Dan Patrick that he was not told the truth are not true. All statements and comments made to date about the ongoing investigation are being handled by DPS/Texas Rangers.

Local law enforcement may not have directly said much about the Uvalde shooting, but officers failed to clarify any of the blatant misinformation parroted by DPS, allowing the public to be misled for days.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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8 Lies Texas Officials Told About Uvalde That Should Get Them Fired - The Federalist

Its never been easy to have a dissenting opinion, but its been getting harder and harder. Today, countless people face social and professional consequences for expressing their political views, and many more self-censor because they fear the consequences of candid dialogue (see here, here, and here).

Harassment, racial demonization, and social ostracization are becoming more frequent as woke culture spreads. And as people critical of leftist orthodoxy face more antagonism, they experience more stress and more isolation, and theyre more likely to need psychotherapy.

Rather than helping, the mental health field has often been antagonistic toward this population. Now, theres a growing population of people who need mental health services at the same time that providers are most likely to mistreat patients with non-leftist views.

A few years ago, I worked at a psychotherapy clinic in New York City. A couple of weeks after starting, a therapist of color described his Jewish graduate-student patient in a clinic-wide meeting (in all clinical examples, the identifying information of patients and providers have been changed to protect patient confidentiality).

This patient had come for help with depression and social anxiety, but he also expressed frustration because he felt he lost out on a research fellowship based on affirmative action. The ethnically diverse group of about two-dozen providers (psychiatrists, social workers, and psychologists) discussed the patient and then came to an apparent consensus: the patient needed to be confronted about his racism and then be told that if he didnt want to overcome his biases, he would be asked to leave therapy.

They argued it would be unfair for a non-white therapist to have to provide therapy to such a racist patient unless he changed his views. No one seemed to consider that it might be unethical to turn a patient away from therapy for his opinions about affirmative action.

Another example: In a case conference at a different clinic, one therapist described a session with a black high school student who was the daughter of African immigrants. This patient reported speaking in one of her classes to say that all people are the same regardless of race. In response, her teacher called her racist and condemned her views in front of the class.

The patient was tearful and felt humiliated. Yet the providers at the clinic responded to the situation by debating whether the therapist should focus on supporting the patient or advocating for her teachers views. Crazy as it may seem, convincing the patient of her teachers views on identity politics was seen as therapeutic. Supposedly, guiding her toward correct thinking was necessary for therapeutic healing.

Years ago, I saw a white, male patient who had a significant history of facing anti-white hate racial bullying in school, hateful professors in college, white and non-white colleagues making insulting comments about white people at the workplace. Yet he was hesitant to share these experiences in therapy because he thought I would react the way others had: by minimizing his experience or framing him as fragile and privileged.

He also wondered if I would be able to hear his anger, disillusionment, and pain without feeling the need to invalidate him. Who could blame him?

Recent data suggest that about 40 percent of Americans self-censor, and about 40 percent of college students report being very or somewhat reluctant to discuss a controversial political topic. But if a friend or colleague were to ask me for a referral for a patient who had been attacked for having unorthodox political views or for a patient who was closeted about her political beliefs, I wouldnt know where to look.

There seem to be no resources at all. As the above examples demonstrate, these patients cant assume that their therapists will be supportive or understanding. Patients with unorthodox views face problems such as bias, judgment, conflict, value divergences from their therapist, and even outright rejection in therapy.

Having an unorthodox viewpoint is often painful and stressful. Many have had to sit through academic or professional events in which their beliefs were ridiculed by the people in charge. Increasingly, people are insulted at work or school for being white or male (theyre inherently fragile, ignorant, immoral, toxic, etc.) while every other group is praised and celebrated (theyre strong, wise, virtuous, beautiful, etc.).

The hostility and contempt are often palpable, but dissent can lead to harassment. Other times people experience aggression thats less direct everything from malicious gossip to having complaints filed about them for seemingly unrelated issues.

Many patients with unorthodox beliefs have experienced public shaming, ostracization by colleagues, and professional limitations, among other problems. Even when they face less overt aggression, people can suffer simply from having to stifle their thoughts and feelings. Therapists need to be aware of these experiences and their effects on patients, but there is currently little research about these issues.

Holding a dissenting viewpoint can also be accompanied by loneliness and a lack of social support. Many people hold closeted political beliefs that they share only with a select few. Its hard to know who will be accepting and who could react aggressively, so every disclosure about ones beliefs is fraught. Some people are even afraid to tell their spouses about their views. For many, their therapist is their only support related to these experiences, another reason being rejected in therapy can be so damaging.

As with other stressors, one would expect that holding unorthodox views could contribute to mental illness anxiety, relationship problems, depression, anger, etc. But, as far as I know, no individual therapists specialize in these issues.

If you look for a therapist online, youll see that many of them have tags indicating populations they specialize in: women, LGBTQ+, immigrants, Latinx, etc. Ive never seen a tag related to unorthodox or non-woke viewpoints. There appear to be no group therapies that focus on this topic no clinics, no programs to train clinicians, no consultation groups for providers, no professional organizations, no competency standards for providers, no community resources. If any of these exist, their visibility is extremely low.

Most patients are sensitive to their therapists judgments, and many can tell when their views are being judged even if the therapist never says anything explicitly. Nonetheless, many continue with their therapist despite these judgments. Often theyre vulnerable and develop some dependency on their therapists, so leaving isnt always as easy as it might seem.

Others internalize the stigma about their beliefs. Some quietly hope their therapist will ignore their political views or religious beliefs. Others simply lie.

Ive witnessed numerous acts of therapist insensitivity about these issues. Ive heard therapists proudly acknowledge that theyve criticized patients as sexist for their word choice. Ive heard of clinical supervisors saying that anyone who could vote for Donald Trump must be crazy, stupid, or evil. Ive heard patients with conventional spiritual beliefs labeled as having magical thinking, and religious patients labeled as bigots because they feel their faith is superior to others.

While there certainly are instances in which religious and political beliefs are linked to symptoms, these labels obviously cant be applied to all voters of a given party or all people of faith. This should go without saying, but often it doesnt.

Some of this may be changing. A new organization, the International Association of Psychology and Counseling, has a stated goal of advocating for viewpoint diversity. There is an opportunity for organizations such as these to begin building resources of patients and providers.

But more is needed. We could use journals, grants, and conferences to develop best practices. We need to document case studies, do research, and develop evidence-based protocols. Ive recently begun offering services related to these issues, but we need clinics offering these services in every locale.

If people knew that therapy for these issues was available, many more would likely seek care. It can be revolutionary to have confidential spaces where people can speak together openly about taboo thoughts, conflicted feelings, dilemmas, and questions. This could help people speak up and organize against work orthodoxies in powerful ways.

Therapy is often a place where people find their voice. As they open up about controversial questions and feelings, they learn more about who they are and what they believe. They can learn to work through difficult feelings, develop their ideas, engage in dialogue with others, and communicate their experiences in a productive way, rather than acting out destructively.

A lack of mental health services for people with unorthodox viewpoints can affect peoples mental health, but it can also affect our culture more broadly. As more people feel voiceless and unable to process difficult experiences, dialogue and relationships can suffer. Over time, these problems can corrode discourse throughout society. Most likely, they already have.

Andrew Hartz, Ph.D., is a clinical psychology professor at Long Island University inBrooklyn, a writing fellow at Heterodox Academy, and a psychotherapist in privatepractice in New York City.Michael Olan provided research and editorial assistance to this article. Hes adoctoral student at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology.

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Therapy Needed For The Non-Woke - The Federalist

Transgender-identifying swimmer Lia Thomas a man who claims to be a woman and recently dominated his NCAA female competitors finally broke his silence with an interview on ABCs Good Morning America, and heres what he wants you to know: Im happy.

Thomas was thrust into the limelight after the lackluster male swimmer took wrong-sex hormones for a year and subsequently the womens Division I swimming title, causing quite a stir. When ABC interviewer Juju Chang asked about his competitive advantage the question Thomass teammates, opponents, and critics cant get past Thomas shrugged it off.

Theres a lot of factors that go into a race and how well you do, and the biggest change for me is that Im happy, Thomas said in an undeniably male pitch. This happy theme permeated the whole interview, interspersed with an air of entitlement from the swimmer.

I also dont need anybodys permission to be myself and to do the sport that I love, Thomas declared, adding later, Trans people dont transition for athletics. We transition to be happy and authentic and our true selves.

The kicker for Thomas, which is obvious to the watching world, is that actually, yes, you do need permission to be yourself and play the sport you love when that self defies the laws of biology and that sport is a collegiate program designed for the very real, immutable category of women. Any other student-athlete knows that if her authentic self is obese or jacked up on steroids, for instance, she will not get permission to play a collegiate sport, her sincere love for it notwithstanding. Where does the gender-bending left get the idea that theyre entitled to inclusion without permission?

The sorry state of the NCAA and the countrys cultural mores at large are actually in many ways a result of the Lia Thomas mindset, more commonly known as narcissism. When science and empirical data have said, like Chang, that males have a competitive advantage over females, the transgender-allied left, like Thomas, have dismissed it with a Theyre happy! and a Let them be their authentic selves!

The rejoinder is obvious and unavoidable: What about the very real women whom Thomas dominated by virtue of him being a man? What about their happiness and their authentic selves as the best female swimmers? What about his troubled peers who have been flashed by Thomass penis in the womens locker room and been forced to expose themselves in front of him? Although a happy Thomas insists, Trans women are not a threat to womens sports, what are the runners-up supposed to do with the mountain of evidence to the contrary?

The rules of the game have been set not by logic nor reason nor basic and once-widely accepted facts, but by the narcissism of the minority. Perhaps if their entitlement and lack of empathy rise to the level of diagnosable narcissism the correlation of that narcissism with the trans-allied left should be no surprise.

After all, research shows a leftist ideology, mental health issues, and LGBT identity go hand in hand in whats known as the mental health-sexuality-liberalism nexus. If Thomas actually has gender dysphoria, perhaps that mental health issue corresponds with other mental health problems, narcissistic personality disorder being no exception.

The predictability of the narcissism, however, is no excuse for it. Nor is empathy for those with mental health problems a license to indulge them, especially when it comes at the expense of others. Thomas and the swimmers gender-bending allies have declared that their delusional and norm-shattering behavior is fine because theyre happy, but thats textbook narcissism, and weve enabled it far too long.

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Lia Thomas Is 'Happy' To Force Everyone Else To Deal With Narcissism - The Federalist

Democrats are silent after more than 30 people lost their lives this weekend to violent crime waves that continually sweep through the nations cities.

Why hasnt President Joe Biden, who recently visited Uvalde, Texas, after 19 children and two adults died in a school shooting, tweeted something or planned trips to Nebraska, Illinois, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania, where violence and shootings took the lives of dozens of people including children? Why hasnt Robert Francis Beto ORourke executed another political stunt at a local press conference somewhere to call attention to a rise in domestic altercations that escalate into shootings? Mostly because none of the violence was politically advantageous for them.

The violence that took the lives of dozens of Americans over Memorial Day weekend either did not involve firearms such as AR-15s, which the left has openly admitted they want to confiscate, or occurred under the wrong conditions for grandstanding. Democrats pick and choose which tragedies to milk for their anti-gun agenda based on how much political leverage firearm-related deaths grant them.

In the case of Uvalde and every other school shooting, Democrats see the deaths of children to erroneously labeled assault rifles as an opportunity to move their gun-control agenda forward. They use families mourning to push do-somethingism on the American public and beg for compromise from their congressional peers.

As a result, squishy Republicans cede key ground in the Second Amendment preservation fight. Instead of hosting a constructive debate on the root causes of school shootings perpetrated by young males, they let their Democrat colleagues steamroll them into submission to pass legislation that only restricts law-abiding citizens right to buy and use guns.

This selective virtue-signaling is condemnable considering the record crime most U.S. cities have faced over the last two years. Where were the Twitter warrior AOCs and Sen. Chris Murphys of the world when urban crime and violence skyrocketed in 2020? They were cheering on, or at least caving to, the rioters who looted and set fire to government buildings during the summer of rage. They didnt care that dozens of people died as of result of the mostly peaceful protests that caused an estimated $2 billion in damages.

Its the same reason Biden avoided visiting Waukesha after a black man with a well-documented vengeance against white people plowed through a crowd of them at a Christmas parade with his vehicle. Sixty-two people left that day with injuries and six died, but all the president could muster was a small mention of the horrific act of violence during his presidential remarks on Covid-19 and the economy.

And its the same reason why corporate media largely ignores any stories detailing how good guys with guns prevent bad guys from hurting others.

Just last week, a West Virginia woman shot and killed a man who began firing his illegally obtained AR-15 at a crowd. Local officials acknowledged that her quick thinking and courage saved many lives, but the left will ignore it because it hurts their case to disarm Americans.

Democrats speak out against violence only when its useful for them and their anti-gun agenda. Their sadness about the lives lost in Uvalde might be authentic, but their outrage that Americans are losing lives to crime is not equally applied.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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You Can Tell Democrats' Gun-Control Goals Based On Which Tragedy They Exploit - The Federalist

By now its maddeningly clear a perfect storm of institutional failure allowed the Uvalde shooter to carry out his ugly plan. The school was not adequately secured and the police were unacceptably slow. Every day, their bungled response looks worse. If the school door had been locked, if the police had been there sooner, if the resource officer had responded, if every classroom had been locked

At so many steps leading up to the first victims death, the bare minimum of protocol seems likely to have stopped the shooter before the killing began.

His trail of warning signs, both online and offline, is equally maddening. Of course, its easy for Monday Morning Quarterbacks in media to cast judgment with the benefit of hindsight. The shooter is to blame for these deaths; they are not the fault of anyone who followed him on social media or had a strange discussion with him.

We have no idea if anyone could have changed this outcome. We dont know all the facts. We dont know what people did or did not do to intervene.

Still, a student who dressed in all black, attended school rarely, and recently went to live with his grandmother after fighting with his mother to the point where law enforcement intervened, should not have been showing off his weapons online without a parent or school counselor knowing and acting. A community should function as a net, knit tightly enough to catch people at risk of falling. Were all part of that social fabric, burdened with a duty to our community.

In many American communities like Uvalde Countywhere poverty exceeds the national average while education and income levels lag itthat social fabric is frayed and more people are falling through the cracks. From single parenting to the trauma of divorce to religious involvement, the civic fabric of America has frayed since the 1960s in ways that have disparately affected poor and working-class Americans, as Brad Wilcox once wrote.

People rightfully feel like we fail to learn from these tragedies, allowing the pattern to repeat itself year after year with insufficient change. The public is welcome to debate guns, but wherever you fall on that question, we shouldnt be distracted from also looking inward. All of us have a lot to learn about contributing to communities so tightly knit, they create fewer monsters and catch the ones that exist before tragedy unfolds.

This list comes with the important caveat that we dont yet know definitively what any individual knew or did about his concerning encounters with the shooter. We also dont know if anything would have turned out differently. Indeed, families of the Parkland shooting victims accused the FBI of negligence for failing to act on tips and won a major settlement.

As a whole, however, these examples paint a shocking picture of how many people knew from different information the failing high school senior was clearly volatile and arming himself. Could more have been done? In the future, we should all learn to be attentive students and adults, asking for people to check in on struggling peers and then making sure those check-ins result in longterm oversight from family, friends, and schools when warranted.

From the New York Times: It did not go without notice when an 18-year-old who frequently sparred with classmates before dropping out of high school posted a picture of two long, black rifles on his Instagram story. The image was startling enough that a freshman at Uvalde High School sent it to his older cousin on Saturday morning and asked who would have let the former student obtain the weapons.

Its not snitching to tell a school counselor that a volatile classmate with a history of strange behavior is posting guns on Instagram. Ramos wasnt an untroubled young sportsman getting into sharpshooting or hunting.

Schools can sort through reports made in bad faith and determine whether to get in touch with someones parents. Kids should be comfortable taking that step when its so obvious they said days before the tragedy the shooters behavior made them scared to go to school.

Tell someone. A counselor, a pastor, a parent. Theres no guarantee itll work, but this particular warning sign is a hard one to read about knowing how many students likely saw it.

Authorities say the shooters sister flatly refused to buy him a gun last September. Without casting judgments on an individual who 1) made a good decision and 2) could have made other good decisions we dont yet know about, its fair to at least say that ideally a sister who knew enough to reject the September request would also be sure to track whether her unstable brother had successfully gotten ahold of weapons after his 18th birthday. Maybe she feared her brother, I dont know.

But hed recently fought with his mother and moved in with his grandparents. If not for the sake of the community, a sister would ideally be concerned enough to closely monitor her brother for the sake of their loved ones in close proximity. Thats understandably more difficult when your immediate family unit is physically split up and relationships are strained.

In March, the shooter apparently told friends he planned to buy a gun. Again, when students become aware a classmate who is clearly trouble is also planning to buy a gun, its worth at least letting an adult know they might want to check in.

According to CNN, A former classmate said the gunman texted him photos of a firearm he had and a bag full of ammunition days before the attack.

I was like, bro, why do you have this? and he was like, Dont worry about it, the friend who said he was somewhat close to the shooter, told CNN.

In a healthy friendship, that would ideally not happen without some action being taken to check in with adults who then could have pieced together the puzzle.

Summarizing a Washington Post report, the Daily beast noted: Former high school classmate Nadia Reyes recalled to thePostthat he had posted an Instagram story showing himself screaming at his motherwho has not commented publiclyand calling her a bitch as she tried to kick him out of the house. He posted videos on his Instagram where the cops were there, Reyes told thePost. Hed be screaming and talking to his mom really aggressively.

This establishes that some cross-section of the shooters Instagram followers saw him both verbally abusing his mother to the point where law enforcement got involved and saw him with firearms. That combination is obviously cause for alarm, sufficient to warrant at least a note to a school counselor.

Teenagers can share their deepest secrets with strangers on the other side of the world in a matter of seconds on social media. Its an uncharted territory for human interaction.

In the Uvalde shooters case, hed been telling a 15-year-old girl in Germany for days he had a secret. According to the Times, she said that even when he said he was about to attack the elementary school, she was not sure if he was serious and did not ask a friend to contact the police until after she saw the shooting had taken place, something she regrets.

Nobody wants schools or the feds to create an abusable snitch network. Most people who make crazy threats on the Internet probably dont act on them. Its a sad day when children on the other side of the world are a last resort for communities here at home.

This girl was in Germany, but if she happened to be in America, Im not sure the shooters threat would have been taken seriously either. Students likely need clearer guidance on what constitutes a reportable warning sign and how to report them without fear of retribution.

A 17-year-old California girl who met the shooter on Instagram said he would reply to my stories with things like i wanna kill u or like i hate you.

Heres more from the Times: Late last year, she said, Mr. Ramos asked her out. When she turned him down, she said Mr. Ramos began creating different accounts on Instagram to send her harassing messages such as I hate you or Im going to hurt you. Still, though, Ms. Baxter said that she had not been afraid of Mr. Ramos, saying she had never expected him to pursue violence, let alone a mass killing.

The shooter reportedly moved in with his grandparents after fighting with his mother.

According to the Daily Beast article, the shooters grandfather Ronald Reyes toldABC Newsthat his grandson didnt go to school last year and spent a lot of time alone in his room in his grandparents modest bungalow in Uvalde. He didnt talk very much, said Reyes.

A kid with that many problems, who fought so much with his mother than cops were involved, shouldnt be able to use the internet without supervision, nor should he be able to buy and post pictures of weapons without triggering some recourse from his immediate family. The shooter nearly killed his grandmother, so he may have known she would be an obstacle to his plan. Heightened supervision, which was clearly warranted, could have stopped him from getting to that morning in the first place.

Again, we may learn in the weeks and months ahead that someone did flag this post to adults in the community. Theres no guarantee any of these actions would have prevented the shooting, as we learned tragically in Parkland. Most importantly, the Uvalde community has been remarkably strong and supportive since unthinkable evil visited their doorstep.

At the very least, all of the above examples still could haveshould havetriggered reasonable measures that may have made a major difference for the Uvalde community. Working to create a strong family, strong marriage, and strong community ties at church or school may be difficult in downtrodden localities with fewer resources. Theres room for individuals and governments to address those disparities.

But while it may also feel small to take those steps in your own life, social science tells us the ripple effect is huge.

Emily Jashinsky is culture editor at The Federalist and host of Federalist Radio Hour. She previously covered politics as a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner. Prior to joining the Examiner, Emily was the spokeswoman for Young Americas Foundation. Shes interviewed leading politicians and entertainers and appeared regularly as a guest on major television news programs, including Fox News Sunday, Media Buzz, and The McLaughlin Group. Her work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Real Clear Politics, and more. Emily also serves as director of the National Journalism Center, host of The Hills weekly show Rising Fridays, and a visiting fellow at Independent Women's Forum. Originally from Wisconsin, she is a graduate of George Washington University.

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6 Times A Stronger Civil Society Might Have Prevented Tragedy In Uvalde - The Federalist

When Top Gun came out in 1986, it helped drive a surge of interest in flying for the U.S. military, including a 10 percent spike in service academy applications. Its sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, which came out just ahead of Memorial Day weekend, is chock-full of the same feel-good heroics, guts, and patriotism that made a generation of boys (and a few girls) dream of becoming fighter pilots nearly 40 years ago.

The Pentagon collaborated with producers on the movie, as it has with myriad other military flicks. Now, from ads lined up to accompany the movie to recruitment tables set up outside theaters, the Navy and Air Force are making no secret of using Top Gun: Maverick as a recruiting tool, as well they should. Its a far better promotion for the U.S. military than the embarrassing, woke garbage that equity consultants have been churning out.

A year ago, the U.S. Army released a 2-minute cartoon narrated by Cpl. Emma Malonelord and ostensibly depicting her childhood.

It begins in California with a little girl raised by two moms, she says. Although I had a fairly typical childhood, took ballet, played violin, I also marched for equality. I like to think Ive been defending freedom from an early age, she adds, before detailing the day her moms were married (complete with a colorfully animated wedding).

She then talks about being a sorority girl surrounded by other strong women, before realizing she had so much privilege that she finally decided to have her own adventures like her friend that was studying abroad in Italy. So, Emma joined the Army.

The ad makes our military the members of which I deeply respect appear instead like a bunch of kindergarteners. Emmas reason for joining up is selfish; its not because she wants to sacrifice for a cause she believes in, its because her friends are studying abroad in Italy or climbing Mount Everest and she wants to do something exciting too.

Its painfully obvious that the point of the ad was to check boxes in the Armys department of showing how much the Pentagon loves lesbian weddings. The animation is reminiscent of a B-list kids TV show, and so is the sugary tone of the voiceover.

There is zero in the video to inspire any kind of bravery, sacrifice, duty, honor, integrity, excellence, teamwork, or respect. Like the short-lived Army of One slogan of 20 years ago, this ad is all about being your best self and fulfilling your personal needs and desires. Its more evocative of a cheesy Instagram caption than a profession that is aptly described as service.

Unlike that dumpster fire of an ad campaign which was only one video in a series of five Top Gun (both movies) gave viewers something to be inspired by besides themselves. There are strong themes of sacrifice, bravery, and overcoming personal challenges for the good of the mission and your team. While Maverick and Iceman might be a smidge too cocky, they have the exploits to back it up; theyre not talking about their sororities or shattering some stereotypes.

Besides that, theres the fact that Top Gun actually makes the military look cool. Who sees the epic dogfights, the sharp uniforms, the shiny aviator glasses, the daring flybys, or the dramatic takeoffs without wanting to be that legendary? I doubt anyone who watched the Armys cartoon walked away with the same impression.

It turns out, Tom Cruise and company are far better at making a compelling promo for the U.S. military than Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion-crazed bureaucrats at the Pentagon are. (The ad is no one-off; Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley told Congress he wanted to understand white rage, while Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday defended the Navys inclusion of Ibram X. Kendis How to Be an Antiracist as recommended reading for sailors.)

The military isnt going to fix its alarming recruiting lull with kitschy be yourself cartoons. Nor are movies like Top Gun enough to combat our cultural war of attrition on concepts like duty, responsibility, and sacrifice. But at least the latter is speaking the right language.

Elle Reynolds is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.

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'Top Gun' Is A Better Recruiting Ad Than That Woke Army Cartoon - The Federalist

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On "Fox & Friends Weekend," The Federalist senior contributor Asra Nomani recapped nearly 500 pages of emails from the National School Board Association and former interim executive director Chip Slaven's claims regarding a letter sent to the White House that compared parents to domestic terrorists. Normani claimed Slaven and the NSBA were part of a "political operation" designed to target parents.

MAN BEHIND INFAMOUS NSBA LETTER SAYS ORGANIZATION'S LEADERS COMPLETELY BACKSTABBED HIM

People gather to protest different issues including the boards handling of a sexual assault that happened in a school bathroom in May, vaccine mandates and critical race theory during a Loudoun County School Board meeting in Ashburn, Virginia, U.S., October 26, 2021. Picture taken October 26, 2021. (REUTERS/Leah Millis)

ASRA NOMANI: The 500 pages of emails are filled with the executive office email addresses because they were White House staffers that were involved in it. I didn't know all of these people because these are those unknown people that are behind the scenes in the Biden administration right now. But they're all folks that are high up in the Education Department, Justice Department, White House, as a Democratic political operative. So this was absolutely a political operation. And again, parents, we prevailed because we ended up dismantling this very toxic, toxic machine that was brought against us. And just to keep it real. I just want folks to know that we have got parents from Texas to Massachusetts and Oregon still rapping on the doors of school boards, trying to be heard, and please don't ever give up.

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How parents took down the toxic machine of the National School Board Association - Fox News