Details

Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 09 June 2024

Does it feel like to you, an American citizen, that you are losing freedoms? Is the US setting aside freedoms we will not be able to restore?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #153 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.

It seems to me that America, if not the West including Europe, is losing its freedoms at an exponential rate.

The free-fall of freedom has been in the works for most of my lifetime back into the 1960s but moved to warp speed just five years ago with the advent of COVID-19. This virus, no matter what its source, though even the mainstream media now admits it began in a lab in Wuhan, China, created an opportunity for government officials to seize power with one inane mandate after another, all in the name of public safety.

Now we know, and again even many mainstream media sources acknowledge, that masks accomplished very little, that vaccines were of limited utility, and keeping children home from months of schooling is a set-back they will endure for their generation. Most of these government mandates were unilaterally handed down from on high by executive powers: governors, state health officials, school boards, mayors, and more with limited or no actual constitutional authority to do so. Edicts were issued and the American public acquiesced.

They went farther. People were pushed to stay in their homes, churches were ordered – “ordered” I said – to not open, and when finally they did open, people were expected to sit in every-other-pew or not sing hymns or function only via online streaming. You’d be forgiven if you asked, whatever happened to the First Amendment?

But all this was only a spike in the curve of government overreach and the consequent loss of personal freedoms that has been our lot in the new millennia.

During COVID, we thought we saw the threshold of the violation of basic rights, but the pandemic was only a springboard. During the summer of 2020, the horribly named “Summer of love” that actually was a summer of Black Lives Matter riots and lawlessness in the wake of George Floyd’s death while in custody, then his subsequent deification by the Left and mainstream media.

Prosecutors stopped prosecuting, police became the enemy and were in many communities “defunded” followed since by significant drops in recruitment, coupled with significant increases in early retirements by law enforcement officers who have seen the writing on the wall – public officials no longer back them up, no longer hold the criminal accountable even as they seem to believe victims have no rights at all.

“Non-prosecuting rogue prosecutors” – an oxymoronic mouthful that really does describe reality – are destroying the American legal system, minority communities, and peace and tranquility in cities across the country—and with it our freedoms. We the citizens have elected these leftist ideologues to do their jobs enforcing the law, but they have independently decided to do what they think is best, which is nothing in the face of crime and violence.

Gun control advocates argue for removing all guns from society, even as criminals continue to acquire guns and use them against law-abiding citizens. Journalistic attacks on so-called “Assault rifles” have become a red herring masquerading as intelligent discussion about crime. Meanwhile, “an assault rifle is not really a thing. It’s a look.” It’s just a symbol of a lot of heated talk surrounding guns that does not address the real issues in the streets that result in more killings, like those, every weekend in Chicago.

Educrats in public education at all levels now think they know what’s best for children and youth. Certainly, parents are not to be trusted. No, schools promote a host of morally degraded woke practices: drag queen story hours for children under 7 years of age, affirmation of all manner of gender ideology, including keeping any changes of pronouns, names, or other transitioning hidden from parents, sex education that is anything but age-appropriate taught in Kindergarten, race division and distrust supposedly to advance something called “antiracism,” teachers promoting leftist political activism that is anti-Israel and often antisemitic or blame America philosophies that destroys students’ confidence, much less patriotism, for their own homeland.

Social media has been coopted by government. No crisis is too small for government to exploit and to expand its power. Print and online media have descended into depravity, no longer focusing upon the best and highest of cultural achievements but the most debauched, not simply reporting these developments but propagandizing them, not only propagandizing them but championing them to teenagers and children. A one-time “focus on beauty and health morphed into a constant running celebration of sexual excess and abortion, with frequent criticism of men tossed in for good measure.” 

Pride Month is ubiquitously visible during the month of June. It is pushed by government agencies, even the US Armed Forces, local police forces, public schools, hospitals, retail businesses, entertainers or politicians making virtue-signaling comments, and otherwise forced upon almost every American citizen. Yet Pride Month has no legal standing.

What we’ve seen, though, is people losing their jobs for expressing different views, law enforcement being further defunded for noncompliance, people being “canceled,” meaning shunned or suppressed because they chose not to fly a pride flag or put a pride sticker on equipment or helmet. To ostensibly promote the freedom and acceptance of an immoral minority of the population, the majority is losing its freedom to disagree.

All this is only a part of the tectonic philosophic shifts underway in American culture, moving rapidly from an understanding of and respect for the traditional Judeo-Christian moral consensus that made education, law and order, economic progress, and civil tranquility possible in the first place, the same morality that birthed Western Civilization, energized discovery and free enterprise, held Americans accountable to their wrongdoing in slavery, Jim Crow, and discrimination, liberated science and gave education purpose, reinforced the famed Protestant Work Ethic, these traditional, time-tested values and verities have not only been rejected, but they are also being suppressed.

In the name of doing what’s right in our own eyes, truth is rendered relative and stripped of its power. In the name of equality, something called equity, has displaced blind justice in favor of weighted, identity politics wherein there is no justice, only chaos. In the name of diversity, we often get mediocrity.

In the name of antiracism, high schools and universities going retrograde on integration to hold separate Black and White commencements. In the name of freedom, freedoms are being taken away. Perhaps George Orwell was even more prescient than we thought.

The moment you think it can’t get worse, it does. It’s like there is no bottom to this madness.

To test this conclusion, one only needs to pay attention to what’s happening in Canada. What was once a free country is now a socialist, government dominated, left-leaning society. Or you can look at what’s happening in European cities – Berlin, Brussels, Paris, London, and more – every week. Vast numbers of illegal aliens marching in the streets, destroying property, chanting about sharia law or antisemitism, demanding free goods and services on top of the ample amount they’ve already been awarded, tearing down the country’s flag and raising Hamas flags, engaging in crimes against persons, including rapes, and screaming obscenities or harassing passers-by. This in cities once known for their refinement and culture.

Now do we despair? No, for like the Apostle Paul in Athens on Areopagus, we note the culture around us: “What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. And (God) made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.” (Acts 17:23-28). 

God placed us in year 2024. He knows the challenges of our culture, the loss of freedoms, the zeitgeist of our age.

It is our privilege to know and to share that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor 3:17). It is our privilege and responsibility to communicate “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (Jn 8:32). It is our privilege to proclaim, “so if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (Jn 8:36).

There are three ways to turn this around:

1. Ask God to send a spiritual awakening like he did in the 19^th
2. Vote out of office every radical, anti-God, anti-liberty politician and fire every bureaucrat who embraces the same.
3. That “for freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm” (Gal. 5:1).

Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends. For more Christian commentary, check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com. 

And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2024   

*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers or https://twitter.com/RexMRogers.

Details

Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 31 May 2021

I am blessed with freedom.

1–Political freedom because I was born in this country. I did nothing to earn it. Thousands sacrificed their lives so I could experience this freedom. 

2–Spiritual freedom because I was born again. I did nothing to earn it. One Savior sacrificed his life so I could come to know him and experience temporal and eternal freedom. 

Freedom is a profound gift, for which I am more grateful each year on earth. In this fallen world, freedom is not free but paid in blood. This is not morbid philosophy. It is truth...that can set you free.

Celebrating this Memorial Day is perhaps more important than any in recent memory. 

Reason is we’re coming off months of centripetal forces, trends that push away from the center and tear us apart. We don’t just disagree. We’re questioning our national identity, history, and fundamental values. 

We lived these centripetal forces: lockdowns, government overreach, racial and civil unrest, unemployment, Big Tech elitism, uncertainty regarding election integrity, nasty politicians, politicization of sports, medicine, and about everything else. The division has been brutal.

So pausing to celebrate e Pluribus Unum, to be grateful for our timeless ideals, to express patriotic appreciation for the great gift of opportunity all Americans have been given is a balm our nation needs. 

What Lincoln said at Gettysburg applies today:

“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2021    

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.    

Details

Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 27 May 2021

Memorial Day is coming, a time for remembering those who sacrificed for freedom. 

Patriotism is one of the world’s most powerful emotions. It comes from the Greek word patrios, “of one’s father,” meaning love of one’s home or fatherland. 

I was blessed to be born an American, am red, white, and blue patriotic, and deeply appreciate the founding ideals that defined America, i.e., life, liberty, freedom of religion, speech, mobility, enterprise.

But my love for my country does not mean I believe Americans are better than people from other countries, that we’ve always done everything right, or that our leaders past and present were always right. Critique is part of freedom of conscience and thought.

For me, celebrating Memorial Day is a form of gratitude. Freedom is a most precious gift, one easily lost.

Sadly, in the past eighteen months or so in our country, people have critiqued, or rather I should say attacked, not just policy but the country’s founding ideals, i.e., they have questioned the country’s very legitimacy, and even besmirched the names and legacies of those who sacrificed for the freedom we now enjoy and the potential available to all including those who dismiss it. 

This full-on rancor directed toward America’s founding and ideals has been difficult to endure, and it presents some great dangers going forward if the pendulum does not swing back in a corrective fashion.  

Calling for racial reform and progress are one thing.  Calling for the institution of racist ideas and practices in the name of “anti-racism” is another.  So, too, is arguing America’s founding was not about freedom but about slavery and white supremacy and that new “woke” ways of dealing with human beings (“critical race theory”) must be instituted in every aspect of American life before racial progress can be made.  These arguments are not only inaccurate and ahistorical, they are pernicious.  

Calling for “equity” rather than “equality” before the law is a bait and switch that demands sameness, taking from those who have earned and giving to those who have not, suppression of creativity, and a new definition of tolerance and inclusiveness to mean anything goes, especially if it is racialized.

Then, too, we’ve endured months of government overreach in the name of public health, restrictions on personal freedoms, even efforts to undermine the freedoms guaranteed to Americans in the First Amendment.  Thankfully, some of this is beginning not only to abate but to be retracted.

So, in the face of all this it becomes both more difficult – sad and disillusioning – to celebrate Memorial Day patriotism, and it becomes all the more important to celebrate Memorial Day patriotism because the ideals, the fundamental freedoms and those who sacrificed for them, that this day commemorates are as important as ever. 

Thank you, those who gave the last full measure.  Long may freedom reign.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2021    

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.    

Details

Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 15 May 2021

Religious freedom is experiencing a global crisis. 

Restrictions on the freedom to choose a religion or to choose no religion at all are under serious threat or are already restricted.  So, also, is the free exercise of religion in manifest worship or practice, not only in autocratic regimes like North Korea, China, or several Middle Eastern countries, but increasingly also in Western democracies.

Globally, “40 percent of world countries suffer high restrictions to religious freedom or freedom of belief.  Since many of them are populous nations, however, this adds up to 5.9 billion of the world population.” And among Christians, “more than 300 people are murdered monthly throughout the world because of their religious faith.”  

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Christianity is “the most persecuted religion in the world.” Some 215 million Christians are being persecuted due to their faith, according to Open Doors, about 1 in 12 Christians worldwide. 

While Christians may be the most persecuted religion in the world, they are followed closely by Muslims, Jews, and other religious minorities. 

In the U.S., “according to Pew Research, more than a third of all Americans born after 1980 identify with no religion. That is the highest percentage ever. In a recent Gallup Poll, only 47% of American adults said they were members of a church, mosque or synagogue. It was the first time since Gallup began asking Americans about religious membership in the 1930s that a majority of Americans said they were not members of a church, mosque or synagogue.”  What this means for the future of religious freedom in the US is uncertain, but it does not appear to be a positive trend.

Religious freedom in the West, or what we call “free societies,” is becoming politicized.  Now, religious freedom or religious liberty are even being denigrated as just code words, or worse, “dog whistles.” For example, in 2016 the chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, created by Congress to protect the civil rights of all Americans, issued the following statement: “[t]he phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ [are…] code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, [and] Christian supremacy….” Such attitudes would have been unheard of just a few short years ago.

America’s Founders considered the fact of and practice of religion the best means of maintaining personal responsibility, social order, and self-government.  Without the moral compass religion provides, they believed, there is no restraint.  Men and women do what’s right in their own eyes, which is to say, chaos.

So, the need to protect the precious God-given unalienable right is not just something to worry about in authoritarian countries elsewhere in the world but right here at home.  

Recently it was my privilege to host a webinar for SAT-7 called “Collaboration for HOPE: Religious Freedom, the Most Precious God-given Right.” Our guests were Shirin Taber, Director of Empower Women Media, Rita El-Mounayer and Phil Hilditch, both of SAT-7 International. It was an enjoyable learning experience and can be accessed here:

Religious freedom is the bedrock freedom.  To lose religious freedom is to lose our foundation and potential as a free and open society.  Without religious freedom, the liberty to think, decide, worship as one’s convictions direct, how can we say we are truly free?

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2021    

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.    

Details

Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 05 April 2021

In the past year, we’ve witnessed the wholesale politicization of media, science, law and order, Big Tech, entertainment, public education in the grades and higher academia, professional sports, and culture. 

This politicization is largely driven by a new ideology of identity (Woke or Leftist), i.e., “social justice” re race and ethnicity, SOGI=sexual orientation and gender identity, age, and class (group or collectivist mentality, especially “intersectionality,” not individualism, is the rule). It’s an ideology that rejects moral or objective truth and rationality, American ideals and patriotism, science, capitalism, and the traditional family.

This new ideology has pulled off a coup of immediate and immense cultural implications. 

Ironically, the new ideology pushes victimhood re the offense du jour as its path to power, wielding cancel culture to silence opposition.

Reasonableness, appeals to historical evidence, science, or even rationality are passe. 

It’s now nearly impossible to conduct a discussion or debate, based on reason or any respect for demonstrable evidence because feelings or “lived experience” or demography count more. This is apparent every day in what we still euphemistically call “the news.” Now someone might share what’s called “his truth” or “her truth,” but no objective determination of right or best or good or honorable can be made, unless of course it is the currently acceptable ideological narrative backed by the power of media.

The same is now the case for politicians: a lie or “alternative facts” are as useful as “the truth,” because no one knows, or seemingly cares, what that is. This is especially the case with race, sexuality/gender, and climate change, all on the current ideological holy list. 

Politicians, celebrities, and corporations rush to virtue signal their “social justice” bona fides because they are deathly afraid of being labeled “not inclusive,” or worse “racist,” the ultimate all-purpose Scarlet Letter for anyone who dares question the logic or evidence behind the latest oppression story. 

(I’m not saying racism does not exist. Of course, it does. I am suggesting that not every development every day is about race, even when two or more races are involved, nor is it necessarily about hate. This, too, exists, but the root cause is sin in the human heart across all races, ethnicities, and genders. If you think of social problems traceable to human depravity it is harder to make the leap that every ill, every crime, every negative development is somehow about the oppression of one race over another, particularly in what is, while not a perfect society, certainly one with lofty and timeless ideals and a track record moving toward liberty and justice for all.)

Big Tech rushes to censor anyone who dares to question government mask mandates and lockdowns or who discusses something like the merits of Hydroxychloroquine. And Big Tech labels as “misinformation” people’s post that question a lack of authorized police response or absence of prosecution of those who orchestrated race riots, which destroyed property and stymied businesses, largely based on false narratives about police. Similarly, Big Tech wielded its censorship power against politicians or stories, like the Hunter Biden laptop, that it considered unacceptable prior to the 2020 election.

Add to these trends, a pandemic that partisan politicians, stoked by media, have used to increase government intrusion via inconsistent “mandates” limiting civil liberties, closing businesses, schools, and churches, and more in the name of public health. These questionable and draconian lockdown orders decimated the American economy even as certain politicians, public health officials, and cultural elites ominously call for continuing restrictions, seemingly oblivious of, or at least not accountable for, the innumerable negative side-effects these pandemic orders generate, like social isolation and increases in depression and suicides, school children falling farther behind, and a surge in domestic abuse. 

This ideology argues anti-racism as it advances a racist re-segregation. It argues tolerance while expressing bigotry toward religion and religious moral views. It promotes victimhood and oppression mentality in the name of “equity,” while in essence arguing government should grant special awards and status to certain groups. It preaches “trust the science” but ignores science re sexuality and gender. It used the pandemic to argue for vaccines based on race. It promotes freedom while pushing for ever-greater control, power, and the capacity to silence opposition. Virtually everything about this ideology is anti-Christian, anti-American, and anti-freedom.

Meanwhile, the American public seems to have gone along to get along, apparently unaware of the singular changes afoot that threaten much that has been good in the American way of life. 

The issue here is not simply assessing a given response to the pandemic. It’s not to deny the existence of racism or to suggest people embracing hybrid sexualities should be denied their civil liberties. It’s not to argue a partisan point or align with a given political leader. 

The far greater issue is the long-term impact upon the ideals and aspirations of the American republic and whether it can continue to exist as a free and democratic society.

If the First Amendment can be willy-nilly set aside in the name of fear-mongered public safety—suppressing freedom of religion and assembly, 

If freedom of speech can be trampled by Big Tech and some governments and universities because the ideas being expressed don’t fit an acceptable narrative,

If objective truth really does not matter as much as subjective, i.e., changeable, feelings,

If American culture does not have enough moral and rational belief and understanding that we no longer think there is a difference between men and women, even contrary to biology and DNA,

If demography matters more than truth or right and wrong or knowledge and expertise, 

If the American people can no longer be trusted to make sensible decisions based upon accurate information to care for themselves,

And we need big government, oligarchs, elites, or ideological mobs to sustain us,

the United States of America is in trouble and may not have a future as a free and independent society.

If this sounds alarmist and exaggerated, how else would you describe the trends of Years 2020-2021 and how would you describe what’s next?

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2021    

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.