Religions are not tolerant by design. In fact, they are extremely intolerant. They have to be, otherwise, what would be the point? A religion, after all, is a set of rules. Adherents agree, as a condition of admission to the faith, to follow that list of rules. To be a Catholic, for example, means doing things required of Catholics and not doing things prohibited by the Church. That’s how all religions work.

Like a baseball team, if you will not obey the rules, then you can’t be on the team. There can be no tolerance for the systematic breaking the rules as a matter of logic. Things, including religion, are defined by their limits. A baseball team has uniforms and they must show up at certain times and do certain things. If they can dress as they please, they are not a team. They are a bunch of guys in a park.

Religions also have an obligation to recruit new members. If you believe your way of doing things leads to salvation, the afterlife, eternal bliss or even just a discount at the local deli, you are obligated to encourage others to join. The reason for that is simple logic. If your customs are the right ones, rational people will want to join you. The test of that is to recruit new members to your faith.

The exception would be those based on race. Black Muslims will not be recruiting white people to their faith. Jews do no recruiting. Norse pagans were not interested in spreading their faith for a number of reasons, but primarily because they saw their gods as unique to them. With the exceptions noted, the general rule holds. Religions are covetous and seek to push out other faiths and dominate society.

We see this with the Left. It tries to chase off any faith that it sees a threat to its dominance or to its prosperity. It’s why the Left hates Christianity. America is a country founded by Christians. The founders, with a few exceptions, took their religion quite seriously and they wanted the people to do likewise. They expect America to be a Christian nation in that it was populated with Christians, white Christians.

They were men of their times and understood the danger of state religion. Continental Europe tore itself to pieces over state religion. The Thirty Years War left parts of Europe depopulated. Other parts were reduced to cannibalism. There was also the suppression of Catholics by Protestant monarchs and the persecution of Protestants by Catholics at various times. A limited government, in the minds of the Founders, could have no opinion about the religion of the Christian people.

To the Founders, it clearly meant that the national government would be indifferent to religion. The states had official religions and the people, could and should insist on members of their faith running their communities. As the ideas of the French Revolution  washed up on the shores of America, the new religion was born and spread among the ruling classes. This is the religion we call liberalism today.

Thus the war on Christianity has been with us for a long time now. Few members of the ruling class are Christian. The religion of the ruling class is liberalism, a mix of socialism, managerial-authoritarianism and cultural Marxism. Because it is a pagan faith, the rules are always changing, but one thing never changes. That’s the continued focus on Christianity as the enemy of the faith. No matter how much Christianity fades from public life, they will continue to hunt it wherever they can.

Way back when the Left was starting to ban Christianity from schools and public places, Christians made the argument that it was part of a larger assault on their religion. First it was kicking Christmas out of public buildings and then it would be banning Christianity from private life. This was laughed off with the claim that freedom from religion was ensured in the Bill of Rights. It was not an assault on Christianity, but rather a defense against it. At least that was the claim.

It looks like the Christians were right all along. The Left’s assault on middle class health care arrangements has provisions designed to weaken Christianity. Forcing Catholic charities, for example to fund things they believe are sins has nothing to do with health and everything to do with religion. What the Left learned about their destruction of Protestant sects like the Episcopalians is that once you stop enforcing the rules, people stop showing up, so they are forcing churches to break their rules.

They also learned that banning public displays of Christianity makes it really hard to get and keep members. That’s what is behind this new front opened by some outfit ironically calling itself The Freedom From Religion Foundation.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has sent a letter of complaint to Clemson University, citing “constitutional concerns about how the public university’s football program is entangled with religion.”

According to the foundation, Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney has promoted a culture in the program that violates constitutional stipulations of the separation of church and state.

No, he has promoted the wrong culture. That’s really what this is about. If he were preaching about the joys of sodomy, you can be sure the Cult would applaud him for promoting their culture.

The foundation said it had submitted an open records request in February and reviewed emails and published articles.

The foundation, a national nonprofit educational charity based in Madison, Wis., says it is the nation’s largest association of atheists and agnostics. According to Elliott, the organization does not intend to infringe on Swinney’s beliefs, but to ensure that the players’ constitutional rights are protected.

The foundation has recommended the elimination of Clemson’s chaplaincy position, currently held by former Clemson player James Trapp. It contends that Swinney and Trapp have used their positions in the program to proselytize, by arranging Bible studies, organizing devotionals and distributing Bibles and other religious materials.

“What we have observed in the records is that the football coaching staff is doing a number of things to promote Christianity to their student-athletes,” foundation staff attorney Patrick Elliott said.

“While student-athletes can pray, conduct Bible studies and engage in religious activities, the coaching staff, as public employees, should not be doing that with their student athletes.

In other words, Christianity must be banned from all public places. What logically must follow is you cannot be a Christian outside your home. After all, if a bunch of Christians were employed at a firm and were permitted to be Christian outside of their home, wherever they congregated, like the office, would take on the culture of Christianity. That, under the rules of liberalism, is forbidden. therefore, the only solution is to restrict the practice of Christianity to the home and approved places of worship.

What comes next is the last bit. If you cannot be a Christian outside, your worship houses cannot be Christian outside either. Unless Christians wise up, it will not be long before zoning boards dominated by ululating lunatics from the Left begin banning crosses and other religious iconography from public view. If freedom from religion is to be taken seriously, how can such public displays ever be tolerated?

Every once in a while you see a story that illustrates the madness of our times. This is a good example.

Two Long Island high school students have been suspended for allegedly bringing a Confederate flag to school.

Brother Gary Cregan, principal of St. Anthony’s High School in South Huntington, said the two seniors walked in with a Confederate flag draped around their shoulders during an after-hours sporting event at the school.

As CBS 2′s Kathryn Brown reported, there is outrage and disgust on Long Island.

Outrage? Disgust? Really?

“The African-American students who immediately saw it really exercised heroic restraint and fortunately a teacher immediately confiscated the flag and took the students out of the gym,” Cregan said.

The unintended racism at work here is amusing. Blacks, like feral animals, immediately fly into a rage upon seeing a flag. No one every stops to think about this. You see this assertion all over left-wing media. They believe blacks are so incapable of controlling themselves that they immediately go crazy when seeing a flag. In fact, they cheer when blacks go berserk over these things.

The students were initially suspended for 10 days, but Cregan decided Tuesday they won’t be allowed back, Brown reported.

Cregan wrote a letter to parents saying the use of any symbols “designed to revive past injustices or to inflame discrimination or racial intolerance, is completely unacceptable and profoundly offensive,” Newsday reported.

Cregan said he sees the flag as a symbol of hate.

“I find it just very hard to even imagine why any student in 2014 would even consider or think that a Confederate flag would be anything other than a symbol of hate,” Cregan said.

He is right. The flag does symbolize hatred. It is the hatred of southern whites by northern whites. Up until 25 years ago, displaying the Confederate flag was a non-event. As the South began to prosper, northern whites decided that southern whites were getting too uppity so they had to put them in their place. A big part of the new anti-white wave is the fact that the old confederate states are now the destination.

“It’s absolutely absurd, I don’t understand why you would bring up things from the past that are hateful,” student Jessica Flynn said.

Of course, asking the students is out of the question. They are hateful haters and must be banished from society. Ignorance is the price of freedom or something.

“It represents slavery to us. It represents racism and prejudice to us,” parent JuJu Quinnonez added. “Believe me, I am all for freedom of speech but to have someone come in to school with that flag draped around their shoulder – I’m not really sure what the intent was.”

This is ridiculous on a few levels. For starters, “JuJu” does not get a say in the matter, as his people clearly have no dog in the fight. Note the nonsensical statement from young JuJu.  He is for freedom of speech, but not if he does not understand it. In other words, his ignorance is a veto on speech. That’s probably not what he meant, but that’s what he is saying. He’s all for free speech maybe. Who knows?

“I certainly think this particular symbol of hate falls in the category of something that should be excised from our culture,” Cregan said.

“Symbol of hate” is one of those magical phrases that means “forbidden for reasons no one understands.” People are trained to think the symbol is evil and they go along with it, because they think that’;s what is required. In another age, they would have accused these boys of cavorting with the devil Today, the devil is white.

The students haven’t explained why they did it. St. Anthony’s is a private Catholic school and isn’t bound by the First Amendment right to free speech.

Still, the New York Civil Liberties Union said all people should be able to express their views freely, even the offensive ones.

“Our motto is more speech, not censorship or punishment,” NYCLU director Donna Lieberman told Brown. “Helping children understand the impact of this patently offensive expressive activity.”

Tensions are so high among students at St. Anthony’s that the principal said he has security concerns once the suspension is over. He’s made the decision that the students involved aren’t coming back at all.

This is where the madness of these adults is dangerous. In some weird attempt to take a silly prank and make it into a public act of piety, they are encouraging very bad behavior among their students. If these adults had any sense or self-respect and cared about their students, they would stop this nonsense. You take the flag from the kids and carry on like it was no big deal. In an age of madhouse superstition and irrational fear of the unseen, carrying on like a teenage age girls is the highest virtue.

Humans are a product of their culture and their genetics, both of which are thoroughly tangled up with one another. One of the more ridiculous things about the Left is they are convinced evolution stopped at the neck. They think all people are the same between the ears. It is why they chant about ethnocentrism and diversity. Yet, as our elites make war on the rest of the world’s cultures, they barely stop to listen to the complaints from those cultures. The recent troubles in the Ukraine are one such case.

Another is the Middle East, particularly Islam. This story from Iran is a good example. In the West, it has been a matter of faith that we have too many humans. Therefore, setting up abortion mills in the schools, putting girls on birth control and severely limiting our “carbon footprint” are ways to thin the herd. It’s eugenics with a smiley face. It’s also worked. If you look at the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) by country, you see that the West is well below replacement just about everywhere.

The ruling class thinks this is just a good start. They would like to see the population decimated, particularly the white portion. Iran, particularly, and the rest of Islam is generally of a different mind. Iran has a TFR of 1.67 and that may be overstated, given how they collect this data. Persians are the majority population, but not the only population. Their TFR is certainly much lower than the whole, as the minority populations are in the countryside,w here fertility is higher.

Iran’s parliament is seeking a ban on vasectomies and a tightening of abortion rules as the country moves away from its progressive laws on family planning in an attempt to increase the birthrate.

Two decades after Iran initiated an effective birth control programme, including subsidised male sterilisation surgeries and free condom distribution, the country is to make a U-turn.

Last year the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, criticised existing policy on contraception, describing it as an imitation of western lifestyle.

The 74-year-old has urged the government to tackle what he believes to be an ageing population and to double the number of people in Iran from 77 million to at least 150 million.

This week Tehran’s conservative-dominated parliament, the Majlis, voted to discuss banning vasectomies and introducing punishments for those involved in encouraging contraceptive services and abortions, local agencies reported.

The semi-official Fars news agency reported that an overwhelming majority of Iranian MPs had consented to consider the bill. Given the influence of Khamenei among MPs, the proposals are likely to pass.

“If we move forward like this, we will be a country of elderly people in a not too distant future,” Khamenei said in October, according to Fars. “Why do some [couples] prefer to have one … or two children? Why do men or women avoid having children through different means?

That’s what the numbers tell us. In fact, Islam in general is headed for a demographic nightmare never seen on this planet. They have stopped making babies. This comes after a couple of decades of astronomical birth rates. The result is nations full of young middle-aged people right now. Two decades from now it means nations full of people on the cusp of old age. In the West, technology and stored wealth will permit us to get past the Baby Boom retirement without societal collapse – maybe.

In Iran, this is not a possibility. They need a steady birth rate in order to maintain their economy and social cohesion. In America, Iran’s obsession with babies seems strange and barbaric, but they are actually ahead of the game a little. The Iranians understand the relationship between culture and biology. They also understand the need to maintain their culture. Western ruling elites think they have transcended these biological truths, so they look at Iran as a land of barbarians.

That’s what Iran gets and what the Russians get. Putin is further ahead in this game because he knows something the Iranians can’t quite grasp. That is the old Greek saying. “A successful people have old men who plant trees in whose shade they will never rest.” In other words, men who think their decedents will remember them act differently than men who can’t imagine having decedents. A whole lot of men in Russia see no reason to have decedents and that’s what Putin is trying to change.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of those guy people like talking about, but seldom ever engage with his arguments. Beautiful people will name drop him in conversation, for example, without mentioning what it is they like about him. Progressive writers will reference him in their writing, but never actually talk about his writing. In a way, he is like the Atlantic Magazine, his current employer. Like the magazine, his value is symbolic.

Eve n accounting for the magical black guy stuff, Coates is a rather callow person.  His style is mostly conventional black whining about whitey with a heavy dose of references intended to imply erudition. He likes to mention how he can order food in French (and how the always white waiter is shocked to see a black speak such great French!), but there’s never a reason for  mentioning in his posts.

Similarly, he drops references to writers the reader is expected to think he has read, but he never actually writes anything that says he learned anything but the book title. It is the type of name dropping you get from college sophomores. He’s a weird combination of magical black guy and ridiculous dilettante. His magical status means he does not have to work to hard at being a convincing phony. This post is a good example.

If you haven’t yet, it’s work checking out Barack Obama’s address before the National Action Network, last week. I think it’s one of the most significant and morally grounded speeches of his presidency. I think we will eventually regard this current effort to suppress the vote through voter-ID laws, ending early voting, restricting voting hours, etc., in the same way we regard literacy tests and poll taxes. (It’s worth recalling this piece for the magazine by Mariah Blake which helps historicize voter suppression.)

There are two assertions here. One is that this speech, that has been ignored by everyone, is his most significant as president. That’s not a very high bar for a president who has exactly zero memorable speeches according to his fans. Ask yourself, when was the last time you heard anyone quote an Obama speech? When have you heard anyone talk about one of his speeches a month after it was given?

As far as “morally grounded” is concerned, that’s simply emotive gibberish the Left uses to signal. The signal in this issue is not debatable. The people pushing voting reform are evil and those opposed are good. There can be no compromise. The fact that Coates misses this entirely suggests he is not the thinking man he would like us to believe, but instead is just decorating his word salad with emotive language.

The second claim is that cleaning up voter fraud, a well documented problem in every state, is voter suppression. He is correct in so far as requiring positive identification suppresses the dead vote and other methods for stuffing the ballot box. Otherwise, comparing these measures to Democratic efforts to keep blacks from voting is the sort of thing very stupid people repeat because they heard a flak on TV say it.

I saw this on Drudge and I could not help but laugh. The breathless reporting of the “gay slur” like it is a violation of a sacred taboo is sad and funny. That and the reportette’s unwillingness to actually report what it is the guy put on the sign. That’s how nutty this religion of liberalism is now. They put being rude to homosexuals up at the top of the list of taboos, as if the gays are a sacred class of shamans.

Of course, the ridiculous reporter is probably easily outraged. That’s what happens when you live your life isolated from large swaths of reality. According to her biography, she popped out of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and she has a JD from Yale. Smart gal, who does not have a lick of useful experience in the world in which most of us live. She may as well be a space alien covering earth.

Up until recent, reporters were plucked from the ranks of the working class. A boy with something on the ball, but lacking the resources or interest in academics could become a reporter. That typically involved a long apprenticeship working with experienced reporters. It also meant living among the people they covered. Then the job of reporter became a profession and a dumping ground for upper middle-class kids, who could not cut it in professions like finance or law. The result is a media full of precious sissies.