Cardinal Timothy Dolan was recently the source of one of the most unprincipled and well-orchestrated attacks against a bishop to surface in many years. The politics that underscored the campaign were palpable.

The trigger for this onslaught was a conference call that 600 Catholic educators had with President Trump on April 24. The president asked Cardinal Dolan to begin the exchange; the New York archbishop obliged. Days later Dolan appeared on “Fox and Friends” and took the opportunity to praise the president for his outreach to the Catholic community and for what he has done to promote religious liberty.

This is pretty standard stuff. The president of the United States wants to curry favor with religious leaders and religious leaders want to curry favor with the president. They both have something to gain by coming together, at least on some issues.

Conversely, both parties have much to lose if they decide not to play ball. Grownups understand how this works. Indeed, many bishops (including Cardinal Dolan) did not hesitate to praise President Obama, even though they disagreed strongly on some key issues.

It is hardly a secret to acknowledge that there are those in the Catholic community who hate President Trump—many of them are delirious—and that is why they cannot stomach any kind words said about him. They saw a chance to try and intimidate Cardinal Dolan (good luck with that) and so they pounced. Their own politics drove this campaign.

The first salvos came from two reporters for the National Catholic Reporter, a publication that is Catholic in name only; it rejects many Church teachings. One columnist said Dolan was “seduced by power and celebrity” and that he, and the other bishops on the conference call, were “masterfully manipulated.” This gay activist then criticized the Church’s teaching on marriage. The other columnist sounded hysterical, warning the bishops to “Stay away from the president.”

Cardinal Dolan is used to this type of criticism. In 2012, he accepted an invitation to speak at the Republican National Convention and was vilified for doing so. He also spoke at the Democratic National Convention that year and was blasted by left-wing Catholics for simply recognizing the unborn.

President Trump is a lightning rod for criticism, and he does much to inspire it. But like him or not, any fair assessment of his record on religious liberty would conclude that no president has done more. For our bishops not to recognize this would be delinquent.

Cardinal Dolan acted responsibly. His critics did not. Worse, many are part of an agenda-ridden crowd of dissidents (see p. 4).

If there were a gullibility record, it was recently broken by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).

This Church-hating band of professional victims’ advocates—which the Catholic League played a key role in effectively destroying (it limbers on but few pay it any heed)—proved how easy it is to seduce when it bought, hook, line and sinker, a parody about Cardinal Timothy Dolan that appeared in a dissident publication.

The columnist was unhappy that Cardinal Dolan agreed to a conference call with the president. What he said about Dolan was meant in jest.

“The archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, announced he was resigning as the spiritual leader of the ‘capital of the world’ in order to dedicate all his energies to his new position as co-chairman of the Committee to Re-elect the President. The resignation has yet to be accepted by Pope Francis, but there is little doubt the Supreme Pontiff will grant Dolan’s request to be relieved of his spiritual duties.”

The dunces at SNAP thought this was true. Here is what they said.

“New York’s top Catholic official is reportedly resigning from his position to help lead the re-election committee for President Donald Trump. We believe that New York Catholics will be better served by just about any other prelate and are glad that this longtime enemy of transparency will no longer lead the Archdiocese of New York.”

Those with an IQ in double figures weren’t fooled. SNAP was.

William A. Donohue

For almost four decades, I have given countless interviews to reporters and have appeared on thousands of television and radio shows. Most of the people I have met have been wonderful; others less so. Many have been fair, but increasingly many are not.

Those who work in the electronic media—radio and TV—and those who, like me (activists or academics) have had their career shaped in large part by it, are what constitute the chattering class. They make their living, directly or indirectly, by talking.

The chattering class is cracking up. Many have gone off the deep end, driven by ideology. They lie with abandon. They spin stories. They craft dishonest headlines. They deny the obvious. They distort. They sin by omission, failing to report newsworthy events. They are partisans posing as non-partisan observers. They are not to be trusted.

It wasn’t always this way. There was a time when, allowing for important exceptions, most of those in the chattering class were professionals, content to offer a sober analysis of current events. They were honest. Today there are too many dishonest men and women in this line of work.

Technology has something to do with the change. When I was growing up, there were only a few broadcast TV channels and no cable shows. There was no internet. There was no social media. No one knew what a blogger was. The news cycle was not 24/7, as it is now. In other words, the competition today to get into the news, either as a host or a guest, is severe. It is this milieu that invites sensationalism.

Our culture has changed, too, and not for the better. The second book I wrote (while at The Heritage Foundation), The New Freedom: Individualism and Collectivism in the Social Lives of Americans, was an analysis of how radical individualism was disfiguring our society. This problem has only gotten worse. It is so much harder for Americans to come to a consensus today than ever before, so divided have we become.

The chattering class is more than a reflection of this environment: they helped to create it.

Social media has allowed everyone who has a half-baked opinion to sound off. The same is true of bloggers, those whose essays are posted on the internet. These people, who typically have no credentials and no expertise—in any field—are quick to lecture us on what should be done about every problem in society. (They love to bash me.)

There is a huge difference between an uninformed opinion and an informed one. It is the difference between rookies and pros. Yet social media and the blogosphere are dotted not only with uninformed opinions, they are loaded with advice that is downright dangerous.

These charlatans who opine have no background in their subject matter. Worse, they pass off their uninformed opinion as if it were factual. As the late Harvard professor and New York Senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, said, we are all entitled to our own opinion, but not to our own facts.

Then there are those who have credentials and expertise, such as reporters, but are unwilling to abide by the norms of their profession, traditionally understood. A reporter is not supposed to be a commentator: he is supposed to tell us the news, not interpret it. But today reporters can’t seem to resist editorializing, telling us what to think.

In times past, when a reporter interviewed a politician who said something that may have been untrue, he would seek out someone to interview who would offer a totally different perspective. Now the reporter quotes the politician, and then he immediately informs us that what he said was false. That is not his job. And it is particularly odious when only some politicians—this happens to Trump daily—are subjected to this kind of scrutiny while others get off scot-free.

We also have professional commentators, both conservative and liberal, who are quick to tell us how wrong some decision makers are, and how they would handle matters if they were in charge.

Typically, these members of the chattering class—late night talk-show hosts, cable-TV talk-show hosts, and college professors—have never run anything. They have never run an organization and have no idea what it is like to be pressured from both above and below, and from the right as well as the left. To top it off, they are increasingly arrogant and judgmental about matters they know nothing about.

Regarding this last point, a good example would be those who recently piled on Cardinal Dolan. He has to work laterally with Democrats and Republicans. He has to deal with those from below, parishioners, and with those from above, the pope. He must cooperate with his fellow bishops, make appointments, balance budgets, address tough issues, and meet with people he’d rather not meet with at all. This is the kind of balancing act that the chattering class never experience.

Be wary of those who have never run anything. Talk is cheap. Getting things done is exacting.

Ronald J. Rychlak

One of the Soviet Union’s most effective disinformation campaigns was the charge that Pope Pius XII, leader of the Catholic Church during World War II, failed to provide moral leadership during the Holocaust. This has been variously attributed to anti-Semitism, attraction to Nazism, fear of Hitler, a desire to centralize papal power, and maybe half a dozen other false motivations. This disinformation campaign was instituted after the pope’s death in 1958, despite the enormous praise that he had received from Jewish leaders and other Catholic and non-Catholic sources during and after the war.

Of course, the Soviets were not actually concerned about the reputation of an already deceased pope. However, by associating any pope with the Nazis, they could discredit the papacy, the Catholic Church, Christianity, and maybe even the concept of religion itself. That served the interests of atheistic Soviet leadership, and it was the same approach that had been used after World War II to discredit religion in heavily Christian areas that were suddenly under the Soviet thumb, such as Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Croatia.

When the disinformation campaign was launched in the early 1960s (building significantly on the post-war efforts in Eastern Europe), Pope Paul VI authorized four Jesuit priests access to still-sealed Vatican archives so that they could publish the “Acts and Documents of the Holy See” in 11 large volumes. Those documents reveal many heroic efforts to save victims (Jewish and other) from the Nazis. However, despite this publication, until quite recently most of the archives relating to the war years remained sealed.

On March 2 of this year, the archives were made available to accredited scholars. Unfortunately, due to the coronavirus, they remained open for only about a week. So, not many scholars got to see them, and not many new relevant documents were discovered. (My own appointment, scheduled for June, seems unlikely to happen.)

One researcher however, Father Hubert Wolf, a professor of Church history at the University of Münster, found a document that he claims proves the pope was an anti-Semite. His “new evidence” is from September 1942, when Myron Taylor, President Roosevelt’s personal representative to the pope, gave the Vatican a report on the mass murder of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto. It said about 100,000 Jews had been massacred in and around Warsaw and that an additional 50,000 were killed in the Ukraine. The Allies asked whether the Vatican could confirm this information. That report isn’t new. I first wrote about it in the 2000 edition of Hitler, the War, and the Pope, and I expanded on it in the 2010 edition.

The new part is an “Appunto,” an internal memo written by Msgr. Angelo Dell’Acqua. He would later (1967) go on to become a high-ranking official, but at this time he was a simple prelate in the Secretariat of State.

Dell’Acqua had been ordered to look into the claims that the Nazis were “systematically evacuating the ghettos, the Jews were being transported to death camps and shot, their bodies were being turned into fat and their bones into fertilizers, and not a single Jew is alive in East Poland and the German occupied parts of Russia.” Dell’Acqua could not confirm all the claims. He could confirm massacres but not death camps. As such, he said that the U.S. report could not be automatically accepted, “since exaggerations easily happen, also among Jews.” Wolf claims that this statement captured Pius XII’s anti-Semitic motivation for not openly condemning the Nazis. The argument is preposterous.

As an initial point, the statement was not from the pope but from Dell’Acqua. As such, there is no reason to attribute such sentiments to the pope. Digging deeper, however, it must be noted that exaggeration had been common in similar reports during the First World War, so caution was warranted. Moreover, the accounts of rendering the bodies and bones in this report were exaggerations. Most telling, however, is that Dell’Acqua warned that “any joint American-Vatican protest could be harmful, not so much for the Holy See as for the persecuted Jews, fearing retaliation measures by the Nazis.”

Looking across Dell’Acqua’s life, he was no anti-Semite. Rising through the ranks to become a bishop and then a cardinal, he eventually was one of Pope Paul VI’s closest associates and joined the pope for his historic visit to the Holy Land. In fact, according to his New York Times obituary, Dell’Acqua “was a guiding administrator” at Vatican II, which clarified and strengthened Catholic-Jewish relations.

The Vatican, by the way, did not dispute the American report on Nazi atrocities. The immediate response was that it too had received reports of “severe measures” taken against the Jews, but that it had been impossible to verify their accuracy. The reply went on to note that “the Holy See is taking advantage of every opportunity offered in order to mitigate the suffering of non Aryans.”

In an official summary prepared by Myron Taylor of conversations that he had with the Pope in that month – September 1942 – the U.S. diplomat spoke of how “the parallel efforts of His Holiness and President Roosevelt for the maintenance of peace were energized by their very spiritual qualities.” Reporting on Pius XII’s attitude, Taylor wrote: “Despite all propaganda, His Holiness would never propose or approve of peace by compromise at any cost” and “there can be no compromise of moral principles.” He added that “we need have no fear that any pressure from outside the Vatican will ever make it change its course.”

At this very time, Pius was working through Cardinal Spellman of New York with the American bishops on a statement regarding persecution of the Jews. The US bishops had two things going for them that neither the pope nor the European bishops did. They lived with a free press, and neither they nor their people were subject to retaliation from the Nazis. So, their words could do some good and would not cause great harm.

In November (about six weeks after the report from the Allies), the American bishops published their statement, announcing:

“Since the murderous assault on Poland, utterly devoid of every semblance of humanity, there has been a premeditated and systematic extermination of the people of this nation. The same satanic technique is being applied to many other peoples. We feel a deep sense of revulsion against the cruel indignities heaped upon Jews in conquered countries and upon defenseless peoples not of our faith…. Deeply moved by the arrest and maltreatment of the Jews, we cannot stifle the cry of conscience. In the name of humanity and Christian principles, our voice is raised.”

The bishops repeatedly invoked Pius XII’s name and teachings with favor. In a letter published at this same time, Pius expressed his thanks for the “constant and understanding collaboration” of the American bishops and archbishops.

Six weeks later, in his 1942 Christmas statement broadcast over Vatican Radio and reprinted around the globe, Pope Pius XII said that the world was “plunged into the gloom of tragic error,” and that “the Church would be untrue to herself, she would have ceased to be a mother, if she were deaf to the cries of suffering children which reach her ears from every class of the human family.” He spoke of the need for mankind to make “a solemn vow never to rest until valiant souls of every people and every nation of the earth arise in their legions, resolved to bring society and to devote themselves to the services of the human person and of a divinely ennobled human society.” He said that mankind owed this vow to all victims of the war, including “the hundreds of thousands who, through no fault of their own, and solely because of their nationality or race, have been condemned to death or progressive extinction.”

Everyone who cared understood the papal message that year. The Polish ambassador to the Holy See thanked the Pontiff, who “in his last Christmas address implicitly condemned all the injustices and cruelties suffered by the Polish people at the hands of the Germans.” British records reflect the opinion that “the Pope’s condemnation of the treatment of the Jews & the Poles is quite unmistakable….” The Dutch bishops issued a pastoral letter in defense of Jewish people the following February, making express reference to the Pope’s statement. Moreover, a well-known Christmas Day editorial in the New York Times praised Pius XII for his moral leadership in opposing the Nazis:

“No Christmas sermon reaches a larger congregation than the message Pope Pius XII addresses to a war-torn world at this season. This Christmas more than ever he is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent…. When a leader bound impartially to nations on both sides condemns as heresy the new form of national state which subordinates everything to itself; when he declares that whoever wants peace must protect against “arbitrary attacks” the “juridical safety of individuals”; when he assails violent occupation of territory, the exile and persecution of human beings for no reason other than race or political opinion; when he says that people must fight for a just and decent peace, a “total peace”–the “impartial judgment” is like a verdict in a high court of justice.”

A similar editorial from the Times of London, pre-dating the Christmas address and commenting on the Pope’s statements in general, said:
A study of the words which Pope Pius XII has addressed since his accession in encyclicals and allocutions to the Catholics of various nations leaves no room for doubt. He condemns the worship of force and its concrete manifestation in the suppression of national liberties and in the persecution of the Jewish race.

Even the Axis powers knew to whom the Pope was referring. The Germans were conspicuous by their absence at a Midnight Mass conducted by the Pope for diplomats on Christmas Eve following the papal statement. According to a Nazi report on the Christmas address by Heinrich Himmler’s Superior Security Office to Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop’s office:

“In a manner never known before, the Pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order…. It is true, the Pope does not refer to the National Socialists in Germany by name, but his speech is one long attack on everything we stand for…. God, he says, regards all people and races as worthy of the same consideration. Here he is clearly speaking on behalf of the Jews…. [H]e is virtually accusing the German people of injustice toward the Jews, and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals.”

German Ambassador Diego von Bergen, on the instruction of von Ribbentrop, warned the Pope that the Nazis would seek retaliation if the Vatican abandoned its neutral position. When he reported back to his superiors, von Bergen stated that the pope “is no more sensible to threats than we are.”

Despite all of this, Wolf would have us believe that Pius XII was an anti-Semite who did not make his opinion of the Nazis or the Jews known for reasons mentioned in a report from a low-level assistant. Ridiculous.

Ronald J. Rychlak is Distinguished Professor at the University of Mississippi School of Law and one of the world’s most noted scholars on the heroics of Pope Pius XII. He also serves on the advisory board of the Catholic League.

The most egregious attack on Cardinal Timothy Dolan came by way of a letter to the New York archbishop lecturing him on putting “access to power before principles.”

The letter campaign was funded by the number-one enemy of the Catholic Church: George Soros. The atheist billionaire funds John Gehring’s Faith in Public Life, and the letter to Dolan was written on the organization’s letterhead. Gehring was the first to sign it.

In 2012, Bill Donohue outed Gehring when he sought to manipulate the media against the bishops. In a document that was leaked to Donohue, Gehring sent a memo to reporters on June 7 instructing them how to frame their questions to the bishops concerning their “Fortnight for Freedom” initiative, a religious-liberty series of events. For example, he recommended they ask, “Are you willing to sacrifice Catholic charities, colleges and hospitals if you don’t get your way on the contraceptive mandate?” Once Donohue unmasked Gehring, the bishops ripped him in a long statement.

Gehring previously worked for Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (perversely, he also worked for the bishops’ conference). It was a dummy Catholic front group, funded by Soros, that was created by John Podesta. Wikileaks disclosed that Podesta launched this group so they could infiltrate the Church and ultimately undermine it. This was part of the “Catholic Spring” revolution sought by the enemies of the Catholic Church.

Sister Simone Campbell was next to sign the letter. She showed how principled she was when she spoke at the 2012 Democratic National Convention supporting President Obama’s Health and Human Services mandate: it required Catholic non-profits to pay for abortion-inducing drugs in their healthcare plans. Campbell is also on record saying abortion should not be illegal—she would never say this about racial discrimination—and more recently she has thrown her support behind the Equality Act, the most anti-religious liberty piece of legislation ever written.

Sister Pat McDermott, President of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, is the third name listed on the letter. She proudly defended Sister Margaret Farley when the Vatican concluded that her book on sexuality contradicted the Church’s teachings; the nuns are big fans of gay marriage.

Another signatory, Father Bryan Massingale, is so wedded to the gay rights movement that he gave a talk in 2017 on this subject before New Ways Ministry. It is a rogue Catholic entity that has been condemned by senior bishops in the United States, as well as the Vatican, for its promotion of homosexuality. He teaches at Fordham, a Jesuit school where the chairman of the department of theology claims to be married to his boyfriend.

Sam Sawyer, a Jesuit who works at America, the Jesuit magazine was in anguish. Dolan’s comments have caused “actual pain,” “fear,” and “suffering.” Was he really suffering? Or was he playing us?

Sawyer was unhappy that Dolan and other bishops on the call “did not challenge the president or voice reservations about his policies.” He branded this a “pastoral failure,” and was particularly piqued at Dolan for the manner in which he made his remarks (they were too cheery).

Here is what America said in 2009 when some Catholics, including bishops, reacted negatively to the news that President Obama was invited to speak at the University of Notre Dame. “If the president is forced to withdraw, will that increase cooperation between the Catholic Church and the Administration, or will it create mounting tensions and deepening hostility?” Sounds like they wanted our side to play ball. So why the double standard?

“The bishops and the president serve the same citizens of the same country. It is in the interests of both the church and the nation if both work together in civility, honesty and friendship for the common good, even where there are grave divisions, as there are on abortion.” Why doesn’t this principled stand apply to Dolan?

The editorial says that “it does not improve the likelihood of making progress on this and other issues of common concern if we adopt the clenched fist approach.” That is exactly what all of these critics did—they adopted a “clenched fist approach” to President Trump, hammering Dolan for not punching back.

When Pope Francis came to the U.S. in 2015, he made an impassioned speech to some 300 U.S. bishops. He implored them to “face [the] challenging issues of our time,” hastening to add that they refrain from using “harsh and divisive language.” He understood that if the bishops are going to participate in the public square, they need to do so without alienating those they seek to persuade.

A conference call is not the right place to settle differences. That can be done in other settings. This entire attack on Cardinal Dolan was unseemly.

If Joe Biden were a priest, he would have been removed from ministry pending a more thorough investigation. Instead, he is holed up in his basement talking to the media. Until May 1, no one from the media asked him one question about sexually assaulting Tara Reade.

On April 29, the Free Beacon reported that in 19 interviews he granted over a 5-week period, he fielded 142 questions, but not one was about Reade. In fact, when Biden was interviewed on April 28, even though he teed it up for reporters by discussing domestic violence and challenges that women face, none asked him about his accuser. That changed when Biden was questioned by Mika Brzezinski on the MSNBC show, “Morning Joe.”

At least five people have corroborated at least some parts of Reade’s account. She says Biden, then a senator, digitally penetrated her against her will in 1993. She says she reported the assault to three of his staffers. She also filed a Senate complaint. What happened? She was subject to reprisal. She said her assignments were downgraded, and she was moved to an isolated workstation. She was also told she had 12 months to find another job.

Biden denies the accusation. One way to find out who is telling the truth is to unearth the Biden documents that are sitting in the University of Delaware Library to see what Reade’s Senate complaint says (assuming it has not since miraculously disappeared). According to the Washington Post, there are 1,875 boxes, including 415 gigabytes of electronic records.

Biden told Brzezinski that if there were a complaint made by Reade, it would be in the National Archives, but that turned out not to be true—they don’t have such papers. But what about papers on his public career stored at the University of Delaware?

Brzezinski asked him why it would not be acceptable to simply do a search of Tara Reade’s name in the University of Delaware papers? He dodged the question on two occasions, refusing to give the okay. She also noted that the university papers were initially slated to be made public, but then that decision was reversed: it was decided to keep them under seal. Biden had no comment.

For decades, critics of the Catholic Church have said that it has gone too easy on accused priests. They want to see every piece of paper in an accused priest’s personnel file. Furthermore, they demand that the name of every accused priest be posted on the website of his diocese.

Joe Biden is not stepping down pending an investigation. Moreover, he refuses to ask the University of Delaware to release its secret files on him (they are being kept secret until he “retires from public life”), yet every journalist in the world insists that the Church should not be allowed to keep secret files on priests. And not only will Biden’s name not be posted on any website of the accused, no one will demand that it should be.

Is Biden guilty of sexual assault? We do not know. Is there a way to find out? Certainly. But not until he is treated with half the scrutiny afforded accused priests, and not until we see the secret files at the University of Delaware.

“More than 12,000 Catholic Churches in the U.S. Applied for PPP Loans—and 9,000 Got Them” (cbsnews.com)
“9,000 Catholic Churches Received PPP Loans Meant for Small Business” (drudgereport.com)
“Thousands of Catholic Churches Received PPP Loans: Report” (thehill.com)
“Almost Half of All Catholic Churches in the US Were Given Small Business Loans as Part of Coronavirus Emergency Funding” (thesun.com.uk)
“More than 12,000 Catholic churches in the US Applied for Federal Small Business Relief Loans” (dailymail.com.uk)

All of these media outlets evince an anti-Catholic bias. The first to do so was CBS; others followed. As often happens, the bias is in the headline, not the story.

Take the CBS News story. The first few paragraphs focus exclusively on Catholic churches which have received federal funds, but then it mentions that Protestant and Jewish houses of worship have received funding as well.

So why did CBS give the impression, in its headline, that Catholic churches were the only ones benefiting? And why did Drudge falsely suggest that Catholic churches managed to get money not targeted for them?

It’s not as though the biased media stories were unaware of the federal government explicitly stating that houses of worship were eligible for relief under the Small Business Administration guidelines—CBS actually published an excerpt from them.

It is common practice in the media for someone other than the reporter to write the headline. This needs to stop. It is what causes sensationalistic and often biased headlines. If the reporter writes the headline, it is more likely to accurately reflect the story. In addition, readers would know who is to blame when wildly inaccurate headlines are published.

On April 14, 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci was asked the following question on Snapchat’s “Good Luck America.” “If you’re swiping on a dating app like Tinder, or Bumble or Grindr, and you match with someone that you think is hot, and you’re just kind of like, ‘Maybe it’s fine if this one stranger comes over.’ What do you say to that person?”

Here is Fauci’s response. “If you’re willing to take the risk—and you know, everybody has their own tolerance for risks—you could figure out if you want to meet somebody.” He concluded, “If you want to go a little bit more intimate, well, then that’s your choice regarding risk.”

This is the same man who made a name for himself seeking to combat AIDS, so he should have learned something about the consequences of anonymous sex. Just as important, he is the same man who tells us not to shake hands with people, and to stay six feet away from each other. Unless, it now appears, we are having sex with someone we met online.

This raises serious questions about Fauci’s judgment skills.

“There are two things which kill the soul,” wrote St. Augustine, “despair and presumption.” Despair takes command when hope is jettisoned, when we give up on God. Presumption is more typically a characteristic of atheism, the conviction that we have no need of God, and are quite capable of going it alone.

The faithful do not despair. Secularists do. The faithful are also at home when they look to God for comfort. Secularists have no idea what this means.

It is for reasons like these that many studies have shown that those who believe in God are more likely to be optimistic than secularists. And in the case of secularists who are activists, typically in left-wing circles, pessimism is something they wallow in, always looking at the dark side.

Interestingly, those on the left who are not secularists have much in common with non-believers during this time. For example, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams upset some people when he opined that “God doesn’t put you where you’re going to be comfortable. God puts you where you need to be.” He added, “God always has a plan.” For this he not only incurred the wrath of secularists, he ticked off left-wing Christians, including a Jesuit priest.

The Nation, a Stalinist magazine, lashed out at Ben Carson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, for noting that during this time of trial, it is important to develop “your God-given talents to the utmost.” This innocuous remark was branded as an example of “religious nationalism.”

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, an ex-altar boy, told us that the coronavirus numbers were getting better. He made sure God got none of the credit. “The number is down because we brought the number down. God did not do that. Faith did not do that.” Yes, he is just that self-righteous.

The secular left is happy about one element of the coronavirus pandemic: it allows them to exploit this tragedy for political purposes.

Slate ran an article describing how hard life is at this time in Riker’s Island, the New York prison for serial murderers and rapists. The title of the piece is, “Everyone’s Coughing, Everyone’s Agitated.” No doubt that is true. It is also true that those in nursing homes are lucky if they can cough, though that is not a community of any interest to the left.

“Advocates Worry As ICE Says Only Around 300 of its 32,000 Detainees Have Been Tested for COVID-19.” Daily Kos gave us this gem. The advocates, of course, want to abolish ICE, and the “detainees” are those who crashed our borders illegally.

The Nation took up the cause of “sex workers,” a.k.a. prostitutes, saying they “are among those most affected by the social distancing and lockdown policies.” These poor victims, we learn, are “consistently and unfairly stereotyped as diseased, so even mild epidemics can hurt business.” Trump should declare this a national emergency.

“Amazon Tribes Say Christian Missionaries Threaten ‘Genocide’ During Pandemic.” This Huffington Post beauty blames those intrusive Christians for bringing their lousy diseases with them, threatening to wipe out “isolated peoples.”

Daily Kos beat them all with this post: “Trump Faces Credible Accusations of Knowingly Spreading Coronavirus to the Maya of Guatemala.” Why he hasn’t been placed under house arrest is a mystery. The least he can do is authorize reparations for the Maya.

Finally, we have Richard Wigmans of Texas Tech University. He wants coronavirus to kill Trump. “I am personally an atheist,” the physics professor says, “but if #45 would die as a result of this virus, I might reconsider.”

Wigmans no doubt speaks for many of his ilk. This is what it takes to bring about optimism among these miserably unhappy people. A sicker bunch cannot be found, anywhere on earth.

Those who truly care about the poor, such as Mother Teresa, have always had some skin in the game. In her case, it was more than a little: she gave her life to the dispossessed. She risked her own well-being caring for lepers; she carried the sick up flights of stairs; she founded hospitals; and she tended to the dying. By contrast, left-wing champions of the poor never lift a finger. They simply agitate.

It’s worse than this. The average American has no idea just how left-wing radicals operate. Their goal is not to help the poor: it is to destroy our market economy in the name of championing their cause. The economy they seek to plunder is the same system that has made the lifestyle of the poor in the United States the envy of middle class peoples—never mind the poor—throughout much of the world. For left-wing activists, coronavirus is a gift: they can exploit it to promote socialism.

No sooner had coronavirus been seen as a crisis when a left-wing website introduced, “A Socialist Program to Fight COVID-19 and the Economic Crisis.” It called for (a) doubling the wages of essential workers and quadrupling their ranks with new hires (b) socialized health care (c) price controls (d) a moratorium on utilities, rent, mortgage payments, and evictions (e) an end to the two party system (f) a complete write-off of all debts incurred by working people, and (g) a national minimum wage of $1,000 per week.

If anyone thinks that this is just the meanderings of economic illiterates, consider what the “Squad” congressional members had to say.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib announced that “corporate greed is the disease in our country alongside what is happening with coronavirus.” She saw something to exploit. “This is our moment” she said, echoing Rahm Emanuel’s famous quip, “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

With fewer drivers on the road, the declining demand for gas has rocked the stock market; the price of oil has plummeted. This brought a smile to the face of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who tweeted, “You absolutely love to see it.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar introduced a bill to cancel rent and mortgage payments during the pandemic. What about payments already made? They will be reimbursed, she said.
The “Squad” is on the hunt, looking to take advantage of this crisis by driving the economy to collapse. Why would they want to do that? To force the country to adopt socialism. This is not a novel idea.

In 1966, two Columbia University professors wrote an article for the Nation, a far-left magazine, imploring social workers and administrators to find every person in New York City who might even remotely qualify for welfare and sign him up immediately. Their goal—they were quite explicit about it—was to force the city to go bankrupt. That way the federal government would have no other choice but to step in and institute socialism.

The strategy worked, at least in part. Welfare rolls spiked, and New York City almost went bankrupt, but socialism never materialized. It did succeed, perversely, in devastating the poor.

The mayor, John Lindsay, accepted the reforms as outlined by the professors: every person who applied for welfare was put on the rolls, and none was required to provide evidence of his economic status.

Predictably, welfare recipients rose from 531,000 to 1,165,000 in a few years. This happened at a time when poverty was declining and unemployment was low. The truth is that welfare rolls expanded not because of economic conditions—they ballooned for purely political reasons.

David Horowitz was a radical activist during this period (fortunately, he has been on our side for decades), and he recalls how the left approaches crisis situations: “the worse the better.” In other words, make conditions worse, forcing revolutionary changes.

That is what the left is doing now—they want to make matters worse so they can force socialism down our throats. They are the polar opposite of Mother Teresa. They are not only a threat to working Americans, they are an absolute menace to the poor.