Black Lives Matter. Absolutely. But the BLM Foundation may have far deeper agenda

"Black Lives Matter?" Absolutely.

The phrase and its intent to draw focus to the plague of racism, is not debatable. It's even honorable.

But BlackLivesMatter Foundation, the organization, goes way beyond that. It's stated foundational and core values embrace a whole lot more than laudatory racial justice.

I wept when he was martyred. His message of peace endures

Indeed, it is not too much to argue that its online mission statement, on display in the organization's "About" section (https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/) seems to suggest abandoning the traditional family unit in favor of some sort of "village/utopian nursery; a sort of "woke" bigotry when it comes to law enforcement, the justice and economic systems; and a communal mindset that reminds this student of history (and child of the Sixties) of Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution.

And, as recent statements from BLM leadership has indicated, there is no room for orthodox Christianity in this new global village, unless it is a faith devoid of moral pillars in areas of abortion, marriage, family, and by extension, sacramental standards. (https://www.gotquestions.org/black-lives-matter.html)

It is part of a trend, a social and cultural devolution that has accelerated over the past decade as materialism, situational ethics, and other "progressive" tenets have captured and enslaved the Western souls of many.

It is no longer a matter of loving individuals, even as you do not sign on to their choices in matters of political, religious, or sexual attraction. Now, you must, to be on the "right side of history," ignore the millennia of human history and culture that has preceded us on what was generally known to be Natural Law and Nature's God.

You no longer are allowed to "agree to disagree." Differences of opinion are "hate speech," and what defines "free speech" has become an Orwellian conundrum. Biology? Na. It is not your genitalia that determine your sexual identity, in the biological sense . . . that, despite our living in an age of "scientific truth," is an exception.

You are what you feel.

You may smile, shrug, and say you while you don't share that illusion, you still value such individuals as friends and co-workers. Not good enough today. No room for disagreement, that's "hate speech". You are bullied online, and occasionally in the physical world, too, to buy into altered reality, or you are a "transphobic" bigot, and should be "canceled."

Perhaps one day, that term will come to have a darker, deadly meaning. After all, the Nazis spoke of "resettlement" and meant death camps. Soviet, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese Communism spoke of "re-education" and killed millions of dissidents in prison camps.

If you prefer to persist with the idea of marriage being between a male and a female, and two-parent families as the preferred norm -- previously a no-brainer for all of recorded history? It's no longer allowed to respectfully disagree; you must now promote and endorse the opposite of your convictions . . . or you are a "homophobic" fascist.

Those too young to remember -- or in the case of a new generation of American youth, those who were never taught about history's dark lessons by those ironically designated "free thinkers" who educated them -- seem doomed to repeat the errors of the past, to unearth failed social schemes from the dust bin of history.

So, back to Black Lives. Who can argue with the pure meaning of the phrase? As a grandfather of four bi-racial grandkids, for whom I would willingly give my own life, of course! I hate the climate where my son-in-law has been repeatedly stopped for jogging or driving "while being black," by police who first seen skin color -- not his U.S. Army Captain's bars, or his advanced medical degrees.

I don't want my grandkids to grow up in a world where they, too, will be judged first by the color of their skin before an authority figure learns of the content of their character.

So, yes, peacefully protest injustice. But if you are thinking of donating to BLM, make sure ALL is stands for -- beyond the phrase itself -- is clear to you. Be informed.

Your choice, of course.

As for myself, I will not give to BLM, the organization. Rather, I will seek out local and specifically focused programs not polluted by a potpourri of socially destructive and anti-democratic, and yes bigoted causes trying to hop aboard.

History: Are we doomed to repeat it, after all?

Philosopher/writer George Santayana is famously (infamously, on a deeper level) credited with the quote, “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.”

Well, he sort of said that. Like so many popular aphorisms, the “doomed to repeat” statement is more of a paraphrase/variant. To quibble, the genesis quotation actually is this:

“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

I like to know from whence things came, and how they came to be. I also like to occasionally show off the results of inquiry. Forgive me.

All a tortured, too-long means of saying that however the more pithy version of Santayana’s observations developed, it remains true, nearly 67 years after his death.

We have a new generation, “informed” by the predominantly “progressive” worldviews of their public school teachers and university professors, that can weep for endangered whales and desert tortoise (good causes, don’t get me wrong), yet cheer abortion, and most recently even extending it to infanticide in cases of unwanted or genetically/intellectually “imperfect” babies who survive birth.

Various forms of socialism, some as potentially extreme in usurping individual freedoms as anything the failed USSR, Mao’s China, Castro’s Cuba or the chaotic disaster of modern Venezuela wrought, are being pushed by the extreme left (and currently loudest) wing of the Democratic Party.

Rational discussion about sexual identity, gender and all that goes with that has gone by the wayside. It’s not how you are born physically, but what you imagine. Put on a blindfold, it seems, and genitalia disappear. Question any aspect of that “self identity,” and you become a bigot, someone guilty of “hate speech” for stating the obvious:

You may be gay, but you are still male. You may be lesbian, but you are still a female. If you are transsexual, you can undergo operations to physically change to what you believe, perhaps, should have been born to be. Beyond that, it gets rather complicated;  a few years ago, for example, Facebook added no less than 50 “gender options” for its users.

The popular saying goes, “Sex is a matter of the body, while gender occurs in the mind.”

Well, OK. Let’s just say I question that. I think my skepticism about this, informed by both my faith and reason, is solid. That said, I will not condone treating anyone as less of a human being (after all, we all are created to bear the image of God) because their struggle for meaning takes them on, to me, are bizarre journeys.

I’m much too busy, as I should be, fighting to subdue and root out from my own mind and life the frailties and sins of my fallen, broken humanity.

So, back to history. I grew up in the Cold War period, the ashes of Nazi Germany’s crematoria and destruction of multiple millions of Jews, Slavs, Roma and others deemed undeserving of existence by Hitler. Millions more innocents died in the decades following WWII, among them many condemned for holding to their Christian faith in the purported Soviet socialist paradises of the USSR and China.

Yet here we are, well into the 21st century, and antisemitism, religious persecution, and philosophies and political movements dedicated to eradicating freedom of thought, belief and action all are on the rise.

Truly, we do not seem to learn from history, because we ignore it. Intellectual sloth and intentional concessions to political correctness gone mad, the kind of thing warned about (predicted?) by George Orwell – “Newspeak,” “thoughtcrime,” “Doublethink” all come to mind as hauntingly familiar today, in intent and application if not precise terminology.

In light of all this, let's return to Santayana, where we started – and some of his other thoughts seemingly applicable today?

“Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.”

“The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.”

And, this: “All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.”

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*Santayana defined himself as atheist, but he was no hater of God nor faith; a benign skeptic, he sometimes saw religion as poetry. Indeed, he spent his last decade of life in the care of nuns, He was a flawed human being, as are we all; for example, he held views about racial superiority and toying with eugenics.