OPINION:
The victims who were killed and wounded in the Annunciation Catholic School shooting in Minneapolis were the latest casualties in the left’s war on God.
From the beginning, the left knew it had to destroy religion or turn it into something unrecognizable to triumph. The French Revolution tried to replace Christianity with a Goddess of Reason. Karl Marx called religion “the opium of the people.” The Bolsheviks did their best to purge religion from Russian life. Antonio Gramsci, the father of cultural Marxism, said communism would never succeed as long as faith and family stood in the way.
Adolf Hitler privately dismissed Christianity as a Jewish invention, which he planned to replace after the war with a race-based creed.
The war on religion is crucial to advancing the Democrats’ agenda. Their response to the Annunciation school shooting is instructive. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, an uberliberal, sneered: “Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying.”
Former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki posted on X: “Prayer is not freaking enough. Prayer does not end school shootings.” Vice President J.D. Vance, a Catholic convert, responded: “Literally no one thinks prayer is a substitute for action. We pray because our hearts are broken and we believe that God is listening.”
Instead of praying, Democrats want us to get behind the latest push for gun control, thus paying homage to one of their gods.
The killer, 23-year-old Robert Westman — a man who thought he was a woman — was filled with rage. That he hated Catholics is unsurprising. The left has a special animus for Catholicism for its defense of traditional values.
He hated Jews, who introduced humanity to the idea of one, universal God. He also hated President Trump, who has done so much to revitalize public expressions of faith.
Minneapolis was in many ways a replay of the 2023 Covenant School shootings in Nashville, Tennessee. For two years, the Nashville police refused to release the manifesto of the transgender shooter there, 28-year-old Audrey/Aiden Hale. On March 27, 2023, Hale killed six people at the school she once attended.
In the 1999 Columbine, Colorado, massacre, the killers asked one of their victims whether she believed in God. When she said she did, they shot her.
The war on religion rages in public education. The left’s weapons include sexuality education, LGBTQ indoctrination, attacks on women’s sports and privacy, normalizing pornography and obscenities such as Drag Queen Story Hour. That’s why teachers unions and school boards go ballistic when challenged by parents.
Liberals use anti-discrimination laws to punish people of faith. Same-sex couples have targeted Christian florists and bakers, forcing them to choose between their conscience and their livelihood. Big Tech censors conservative Christians. The mainstream media misrepresent their views. Hollywood vilifies them. Having recently discovered that Orthodox Jews tend to be politically conservative, it has added them to its list of villains.
The left demands absolute loyalty. French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said evangelicals were “a very important problem” because they “refuse to write on paper that the law of the republic is superior to the law of God.” If you’re not willing to worship the state, you are the problem.
Focus on the Family President Jim Daly observed in 2021: “It’s obvious to many of us that left-leaning thought leaders in our country’s power centers — educational faculty, political leaders, business leaders and sports organizations — are attempting to ensure that religious expression does not challenge the state’s ideological narratives.”
Hate is the left’s driving force.
There is a scene in the 1993 movie “Tombstone” where Wyatt Earp asks Doc Holliday what makes a man like the sadistic killer Johnny Ringo. Holliday replies: “A man like Ringo has got a great big hole, right in the middle of him. He can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.” Earp: “What does he want?” Holiday: “Revenge.” Earp: “For what?” Holliday: “Being born.”
Westman said he “learned to hate what life is.”
Transgender killers want revenge for being born in what they think is the wrong body. The left wants revenge on God for creating a world at odds with its ideology, one where the laws of nature are immutable and inequality is a natural part of existence.
That great big hole in the middle of liberals — where their heart should be — continues to grow.
• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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