True to Type

George Orwell's World No Longer Fiction

We are, by now, well used to the ways communistic groups pervert language.  Thus, we find it normal for extreme-left organizations and movements to brand, say, their version of the police as the Ministry of Truth.  Why?  Because in a left-wing world there is no higher nexus of authority than the left wing.  By definition, therefore, anything and everything the Left does is truth incarnate.

Mollie Hemingway, writing in The Federalist, describes a modern version of this trope.

Far-Left Media Group Asks FCC To Censor Trump Press Conferences

The spectacularly misnamed "Free Press" group seeks government control over conservative speech and conservative media.

An influential far-left media group has petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to develop a wide-ranging censorship plan of President Donald Trump’s press conferences. “Free Press,” the group calling for the censorship of broadcasts of the press conferences, says in its petition that it’s a “life and death” issue. They are asking the FCC to limit the public’s right to hear directly from the president about the federal government’s handling of the global pandemic, that any broadcasts of his press conferences come with a pronounced disclaimer, and that media figures with different political views than the progressive organization be further censored.

“This is a sweeping and dangerous attempt by the far left to weaponize the FCC against conservative media outlets and elected officials. They want to turn the FCC into a roving speech police empowered to go after the left’s political opponents,” says FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr.

While the requests are extreme, Free Press has previously taken far-left views about government control of the media and turned them into orthodox Democratic Party positions.

Official Idiocy in the UK

Dumb, Dumber, and Dumbest

The Crown Prosecution Service in the UK has provided a definition and explanation of a "hate crime".  It's now illegal, if not to hate anything in general, certainly any specific individual or class or category of human being for his/her beliefs, thoughts, words, dress, behaviour, and so forth. 

Hate Crime: What is it?
The Association of Chief Police Officers and the CPS have agreed a common definition of hate crime:

"Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a person's race or perceived race; religion or perceived religion; sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation; disability or perceived disability and any crime motivated by hostility or prejudice against a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender."
[Emphasis, ours]

Worse, it is to speak or act in such a way that a direct, or indirect, auditor of the speech or actions believes the speech and actions to be motivated by hostility or prejudice.

Human "Ancestors" Talk Up a Storm

Raining Cats and Dogs

Evolutionism is in really desperate straits.  The longer it hangs around, the more preposterous its claims and portents.  Now, it is asserted, if you go study baboon grunts you can see primitive human speech patterns.  Well, it had to be said: the religion of evolutionism demands it so.

This ground breaking discovery was reviewed in an AP article.

PARIS (AP) — Baboon grunts and mating calls may hold secrets about human speech, according to a new study suggesting that the origins of human language could reach back as much as 25 million years.  The barks, yacks and wa-hoos of the Guinea baboons reveal distinct human-like vowel sounds, according to the study published Wednesday in the journal Plos One by scientists from six universities in France and Alabama.

Who would thought that barks, yacks, and wa-hoos contain human-like vowel sounds.

Doxologies Alone Are Appropriate

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

The Bible declares that man is made in God's image.  We are the only creature upon the earth so designated.  But what does that designation mean?

One thing it does not mean is that part of man has the spark of the divine.  Thinking along these lines always degrades human beings, on the one hand, and curses humankind by heading straight into neo-platonic heresies, on the other.  Rather, the Word of God declares unequivocally that man, in body, soul, spirit, heart--that is, man in all his aspects--reflects and bears the image of God Himself.

To strike out the neo-platonism that lurks always at the edges of Christian doctrine we repeat that our body reflects the image of God, despite the fact that God Himself is "without body, parts, and passions".

As Douglas Kelly puts it:

. . . while the image of God is not corporeal as such, yet man's body does correspond to that divine image in a way not true of even the highest animals.  Koenig summarizes these corresponding features of man's body to the divine likeness:
a.) man's countenance which directs his gaze upwards.
b.) a capacity for varying facial expressions.
c.) a sense of shame expressing itself in the blush of man;
d.) speech.
[Douglas F. Kelly, Creation and Change: Genesis 1:1--2:4 in the Light of Changing Scientific Paradigms (Fearn, Ross Shire: Mentor/Christian Focus Publications, 1997), p.197.]

 It is the last aspect (speech and language) which seizes our attention as being particularly after God's image.