The Nihil Rule

 “In one important sese, Marxism is a religion. To the believer it presents, first, a system of ultimate ends that embody the meaning of life and are absolute standards by which to judge events and actions; and, secondly, a guide to those ends which implies a plan of salvation and the indication of evil from which mankind, is to be saved. We may specify still further: Marxist socialism also belongs to that subgroup which promises paradise on this side of the grave. The religious quality of Marxism also explains a characteristic attitude of the orthodox Marxist towards opponents. To him, as to any believer in a Faith, the opponent is not merely in error but in sin. Dissent is disapproved of not only intellectually but morally. There cannot be any excuse for it once the Message has been delivered.” -Joseph Schumpeter,  Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy  (1950)  

Compiled from anonymous sources.     This is the follow-on to the leaked email from Rev. Dr. Ken Fischer addressing woke shenanigans at the Black History (month) Presentation. According to my sources, more went on than was alluded to in Ken's email to delegates and pastors of the WLHS conference.  There were several rap songs performed including "This is How We Do It" by Montell Jordan and "Crank Dat" by Soulja Boy.  "This is How We Do It" is a party song. The protagonist drinks a "40" (ounce bottle of liquor) and spends time admiring "honeys" in their "summertime skirts." Themes inappropriate for teenagers. "Crank Dat" is more concerning. Soulja Boy uses the word "ho" quite liberally throughout and uses two sexually loaded phrases. The first is "superman dat hoe" which Urban Dictionary defines as  "When a male ejaculates on a blanket and sticks it on a female's back, creating a cape...

An anonymous source forwarded the following email regarding a Black History (month) Program at Wisconsin Lutheran High School on Tuesday, March 14th: ========================================================= Dear delegates and pastors of the WLHS Conference, I am writing to apologize for any offense and harm that was caused by parts of our Black History Program from last Tuesday. On behalf of the school’s administration, I ask for your forgiveness for our failure to preview all of the details of the final program. Although Principal Leyrer and I had met with our faculty advisor and the choreographer early in the process and the principal met several times later with the faculty advisor, we never saw, nor reviewed the final product. Next year’s final program will be reviewed completely by the principal and president for content. Please understand we were proud to showcase student-led presentations celebrating Black history in honor of Black History Month. The students worked for months...

Dr. Ken Fisher is the president of Wisconsin Lutheran High School (aka WISCO). He was the co-presenter with Dr. Joan Prince ( see these posts) as keynote speaker at the WELS Lutheran Leadership Conference in January.  Today I'd like to look at the " January 20, 2021 Thanksgiving for Civil Rights " which Ken officiated and I feel has some concerning elements to it. In a future post we'll look at the 2022 service. Curiously, the 2023 service was not posted although chapel services the day before and after were posted, the 2023 service just has a one second clip of an image of MLK with a quote. We'll start with the call and response which juxtaposes MLK quotes (read by 'M' for 'Minister') with Bible passages (read by 'C' for 'Congregation') ... First, this juxtaposition seems to impute MLK as a church authority, since his comments are flanked with 'supporting' scripture. Typically, this kind of call-and-response it is either ...

 Dear Eli,  Thank you for being the first commenter on the blog!  >>> Although you claim to be taking Dr. Prince's words in the kindest possible way, I do not believe you have actually done that. In "Real Talk Virtual Summit on Racial Injustice", Dr. Prince did not support the riots. She says, "the first two days of total chaos... took away from the message." She says that the riots were not in support of the message that they wanted to convey. And if you continue listening, she said if she didn't have health concerns related to COVID she'd be ' out there marching with them .' The riots were happening as Dr. Prince was speaking and went on for weeks thereafter. If you want to nit and say the first two days were 'riots' and the subsequent days were 'protests', I disagree with that characterization. >>> Dr. Prince has spoken out on some issues about which others might disagree. But disagreeing with someone's p...

I've been reading James Lindsay's The Marxification of Education for reasons that will become clear in future blog posts. In chapter 6, "Generative Themes and the Theft of Education" on pages 135-138, James quotes Gloria Ladson-Billings. I thought to myself, that name rings a bell.... Gloria... Gloria... ...Joan Prince! Indeed, Gloria and Joan appeared together on the Real Talk Racial Justice Summit . Gloria published two seminal papers in 1995 entitled " Toward a Critical Race Theory in Education " and “ Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy .” The latter according to Lindsay 'is a simple repackaging of [Paulo] Freire's generative-themes model that uses racial and other identity politics as the source for generative material'. I read her paper on culturally relevant pedagogy. To quote Gloria "Teachers... must help students recognize, understand, and critique current social inequities" (pg. 476). "Knowledge is not static...

Cremation and burning of remains in the OT is almost universally a condemnation of the individual (the lone exception being the burning of Saul's remains after they were recovered from the Philistines - perhaps we can consider this "neutral"). The early church rejected cremation. Christ was buried. Col 2:12 and Rom 6:4 identify burial with Christ in baptism. No, cremation won't send you to hell, but one should think about what the practice confesses. God will resurrect all regardless of the condition of their remains. But we also believe the body is a good thing, and that our earthly bodies will be restored to glorious bodies in Heaven. Carefully burying a body intact, in my opinion, makes the best confession outside of extreme circumstances. Facing east, of course...

Continue Reading: Rev. Dr. Adam Koontz - A Plea for America