Stand with Päivi Räsänen against censorship

Päivi Räsänen

In recent months, Wyoming’s public discourse has crackled with accusations and counter-accusations of “censorship.” My own name has been invoked in the Letters to the Editor on more than one occasion. While I take no pleasure in being the center of controversy, it is gratifying to see the awakening of a frank and civil discussion about First Amendment principles and the realities of censorship. 

There is legitimate censorship and there is illegitimate censorship. Civil discourse requires that we know the difference. Flinging out the word “censorship” to silence ideological opponents debases public discourse. 

Social taboos, state laws, and institutional rules all have legitimate reasons to exclude certain words and subjects. Public servants—such as teachers, coaches, and elected officials—are rightly called out for using vile invective against students on the field, or colleagues on the floor. This is proper censorship. Children, likewise, should be turned away from the box office of an R-rated, or X-rated movie. This is proper censorship.

Such cases should be distinguished from improper censorship. Examples of this also abound in news media, on social media, in schools, and in the halls of government. Viewpoint discrimination on the editorial page, shadow banning in social media, exclusion of the Bible from the classroom and hate-speech laws are all examples of illegitimate censorship.

Legitimate censorship builds a better society. Illegitimate censorship leads to barbarism. Looking outside of our immediate context can illumine this distinction. Common to the most murderous regimes of the 19th and 20th centuries is the censorship of religious speech. Totalitarians require such censorship because religions tend to teach loyalties that are above the nation (“one nation under God.”) Religions also appeal to unchangeable ethics rooted in principles beyond the current regime.

As prelude to World War II, Europe’s state churches were, one-by-one, censored by the regime. This did not happen without dissent. Nazis first silenced the state church’s opposition to anti-semitism by lavishing favors on clergy. Those who continued to speak the truth, were de-platformed, imprisoned and murdered. Only after the historic doctrine of the state church was replaced by so-called “German Christianity,” did the real evil begin.

The Nazi project, for instance, did not use Lutheranism to murder millions. It silenced Lutheranism in order to weaponize its hollow-out institution. That’s why it should concern the entire world when long-accepted Christian doctrines suddenly become the object of censorship. And this is happening both in America and abroad--in both subtle and overt ways.

Last Monday, Jan. 24, 2022, a diminutive woman, named Päivi Räsänen, stood before a tribunal in Helsinki, Finland to face formal charges. Dr. Räsänen is a family physician who was elected as a Member of Parliament. Later, she rose to be the interior minister of Finland (2011-2015). Her education, public-mindedness, and popularity with the Finnish people cannot be questioned. Now, if convicted, she faces two years in prison and up to €10,000 ($11,300) in fines. 

While several charges were leveled by the Finnish prosecutor general, the most alarming, from a censorship point of view, is the charge that she criticized the leadership of Finland’s state church by tweeting a photograph of the state church’s own Bible opened to Romans 1:24-27. 

The state does not take issue with words that she wrote, but with the words of the Bible itself. This demonstrates, from the outset, that it is not a charge that hinges on “interpretation.” Rather, the state church of Finland admits that the uninterpreted words of the Bible are themselves offensive to the state. 

Räsänen, herself, understands that this blatant censorship is an attempt to outlaw any principle or any god who stands over the Finnish government. Would that there were more people like her who stood for the Christian doctrine that the Nazis wanted to silence! We cannot stand in judgment of societies that were overcome by lies and murder if we are unwilling to stand in support of those willing to stand for life and truth today.

Today, Finland’s prosecutor general is seeking to censor the quiet and kind voice of Dr. Räsänen. She teaches us all how a good citizen should respond: “Now it is time to speak. Because the more we are silent, the narrower the space for freedom of speech and religion grows. If I’m convicted, I think that the worst consequence would not be the fine against me, or even the prison sentence, it would be the censorship.”

While Päivi Räsänen stands against totalitarian tendencies across the pond, let us follow her brave example in opposing illegitimate censorship wherever it may raise its totalitarian head.

* A previous version of this article inaccurately described Päivi as the wife of Bishop Pohjola who has also been charged by the prosecutor general.

Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, January 28, 2022.

National School Choice Week in Wyoming

Photo by Kimberly Farmer on Unsplash

National School Choice Week is a charitable and non-partisan effort to raise awareness of effective K-12 education options. This year, it runs from January 23-29. According to its website, “Every child is unique, and all children learn differently. Some children might succeed at the neighborhood public school, while others might fit in better at a charter, magnet, online, private or home learning environment.”

Education is important to Wyoming. Our constitution requires that the legislature “provide for the establishment and maintenance of a complete and uniform system of public instruction embracing free elementary schools of every needed kind and grade” (Art. 7, Sec. 1). 

While much attention is focused on Wyoming’s 48 school districts and their 364 schools, we would do well to give greater attention to “schools of every needed kind and grade.” Children would benefit from greater choices. And budgetary difficulties could be eased by the competition that additional options provide.

One way of providing school choice is the “charter school.” These are publicly funded and publicly regulated but, unlike neighborhood schools, they must compete for students. When parental choice, rather than lines on a map, determine the student body, a school is more responsive to parental expectations and input. 

There are only five charter schools in Wyoming, concentrated in Cheyenne, Laramie, and Riverton. While these have proven helpful, many parents—and entire regions of the state are frozen out of this beneficial choice. Magnet schools have more direct oversight from the county school boards, but are otherwise similar. However, there are zero magnet schools in Wyoming.

Online learning is another way of empowering school choice. It provides computer-based learning modules that parents and students can use in the privacy of the home. This allows parents to be much more involved in monitoring curriculum and tutoring for success. It can also serve to mitigate some of the most toxic social dynamics of the school environment.

While the legislature seeks to expand school choice to benefit the public, it should not overlook the important role that private schools can play. Education is more than about reading, writing and arithmetic. Education is about morality. Under the heading of Education, Wyoming’s Constitution specifies that it is the “Duty of [the] legislature to protect and promote health and morality of people.” This is “essential… to the peace and permanence of the state” (Art. 7, Sec. 20).

All education is inherently religious. But the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution prohibits the state from setting up one religion over another, and the Free Exercise Clause prohibits the state from regulating a religious school. State educators, in the best case, are reluctant to speak of God at all. In the worst cases, they may denigrate God before impressionable students. Either way, the constitutional and essential duty to promote morality is hobbled.

Therefore, Wyoming’s 30 private schools are better situated to serve the public in this capacity than anything that the state can do directly. They can freely speak of God who, according to the Declaration of Independence, creates all men equal. Homeschooling, too, allows open discussion of God in the classroom. Moreover, it boasts the longest history, and the greatest parental involvement of any other sort of school choice. 

Churches unable to establish a private school can still serve parents by enhancing educational choice. They can offer their buildings as a space for homeschoolers to gather and enlist non-parent volunteers for assistance. Such creative initiatives can encourage parents who are otherwise intimidated at the prospect of homeschooling. Cooperative learning environments like these can utilize the expertise of young parents and retirees who have much to offer to the next generation.

Legislative support for private schools and homeschools is tricky but should not be neglected. Money is power. Tax dollars taken from parents and given exclusively to schools that they have not chosen violates the spirit of the First Amendment. Every dollar given to a school that never mentions God is a tacit Establishment of a godless religion. And every dollar taken from parents who want a religious education for their children inhibits the freedom to exercise their religion.

The courts are beginning to see this inequity and to remedy the injustice. In a 2020 landmark case, the Supreme Court (Espinoza v. Montana) effectively struck down “Blaine Amendments.” These laws restrict education funding to religious schools and unconstitutionally discriminate against certain religions. Since Wyoming’s own Constitution contains one of these provisions (Art. 7, Sec. 12), our legislature should rethink funding models accordingly.

National School Choice Week is an opportunity to have a serious conversation about Wyoming’s Constitutional commitments to education. Parents wrote and ratified the Constitution for their children. Expanding educational choices will uphold Wyoming’s constitution and strengthen the state by strengthening the family. 

Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, January 21, 2022.

Pandora’s Box and the Innocence of Minors

Pandora's Box, Sebastian Becker

Before there was “Crosby, Stills, and Nash,” Stephen Stills and Neil Young spent two years in a band called “Buffalo Springfield,” which released three albums and one smash hit. Exactly 55 years ago, “For What It’s Worth” was on its way to a No. 7 peak on Billboard’s hot 100 list.

“There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.” This iconic song became the anthem of Vietnam war-protests. But when it was first performed on Thanksgiving Day, 1966, Kent State was four years in the future. Stills was talking about the Sunset Strip Riots.

Pandora’s Box, a nightclub that catered to teenage partiers, was about to be bulldozed. On November 12, 1966, teens staged a sit-in that turned violent. Stills witnessed it on his way to a gig, and the song was born. Later, he mused, “Riot is a ridiculous name, it was a funeral for Pandora’s Box. But it looked like a revolution.”

That, I think, is why the song is so famous. It captured a feeling in the air. While revolutionary events are in process, few contemporaries notice. Stills did, and his words beckon us to do the same.

Buffalo Springfield

There is, indeed, something happening today. Pandora’s Box has been opened and has unleashed war upon us. In the fog of that war, it is difficult to know exactly “what it is.” But our moment screams for everybody to “look what’s going down.” If we don’t, we will fall under the same harsh judgment that we pronounce on others. 

Consider past cultures that failed to understand their own times and to stand against massive evils that we now see with 20/20 hindsight. How could the denizens of France not predict that a Reign of Terror would result from murdering priests and kings? Why didn’t more Russians stand against the murderous Bolsheviks who were gaining power? That mistake cost 100 million lives over the next 70 years. What devilry gripped the cultured, Bach-loving Germans? They allowed a madman to turn their industry and efficiency into a murder machine.

While Stills thought the Sunset Strip Riots were hardly riots at all, he couldn’t shake the sense that “something’s happening here.” They were more than another salvo in the Sexual Revolution. They crossed a new and significant line. On that night, the Sexual Revolution enveloped minor children.

The sit-in remained a peaceful protest until the stroke of 10 o’clock. At that time, the LAPD was tasked with enforcing the city’s curfew on minors. The people of Los Angeles had passed an ordinance to protect the innocence of children younger than 18. Push came to shove, and the Sunset Strip Riots were born.

The opening salvos of the Sexual Revolution were attacks on marriage. Its philosophical leaders, going back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and Percy Shelley (1792-1822), were intent on destroying the sacred bond between husband and wife. Divorce, fornication, and adultery were means toward that end. 

But as the Revolution advanced, the crosshairs shifted to the children. “Free Love” was never the ultimate goal. It has always been a means toward an end. The goal is the breakdown of the family. Once the marriage vow is obliterated, the battle must shift to the natural bond between parent and child. While that remains, family bonds still have precedence.

Maybe Stills knew this consciously—maybe, only subconsciously. But children were the focus of his haunting refrain, “I think it’s time we stop, children. What’s that sound? Everybody, look what's going down.” Whether Stills intended this, or not, Carl S. Trueman painstakingly documents the sexualization of children in his new book, “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.”

This book is a must-read for parents and policy makers who are interested in the health and well-being of children. It helps to explain how the innocence of children came under attack through the militantly atheist philosophy of people like Shelly. It, further, documents how Sigmund Freud deliberately sexualized every aspect of childhood development—from breast-feeding to potty-training.

It is precisely at this point that school boards and library associations come into the picture. Statutes protecting minor children obligate state actors to respect parental rights. But these statutes hinder the agenda to dissolve the natural family and replace it with the state. 

Those who tell you that the arguments over objectionable books and curricula are about “free speech,” or about “access to information,” are either deceived, or deceiving. The fact remains that statutory age restrictions on sexual consent (statutory rape) and access to sexual content (e.g. Restricted films) are legal recognition of parental rights. Violation of these laws violate parental rights. Nobody has the right to interfere in the sacred relationship between parents and their own children.

Will we, as a lawful society, respect parents who guard the innocence of minors? Will we help them maintain their sole authority to educate their own children in family formation and emotional health?

Or, will we undermine parental rights and give ever more power to teachers’ unions and library associations to indoctrinate our children in the philosophical thought-stream that brought us the French Revolution, the Bolsheviks, and the Hitler Youth? 

According to legend, Pandora’s Box contains war. The nightclub that circumvented parental rights and brought the sexual revolution to minor children could not have been more appropriately named.

Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, January 14, 2022, the Cowboy State Daily, January 13, 2022, and the American Thinker. 

Honoring the Constitution means honoring the innocent.

Photo Mike Haupt on Unsplash

We are now a year away from a series of illegal and deadly events that happened on January 6, 2021. Ashli Babbitt, Roseanne Boyland, Kevin Greeson, and Benjamin Phillips all died on a single afternoon. Yet, we are still light-years away from a full accounting of the deaths of four American citizens.

Millions of Americans hoped that a non-partisan investigation would identify both the criminal actors in the crowd while also giving attention to credible accusations of police brutality. Sadly, those reasonable hopes have gone unaddressed.

Instead, irresponsible journalists and politicians—including our own Representative, Liz Cheney—hastily attributed motives and crimes to individuals that they could not possibly know. Only shameless posturing would presume to ascribe motive and intent to millions of individual citizens that you have neither interviewed nor even met. It has now been revealed that Cheney hysterically declared her final judgement while the events were still unfolding and has not budged from this prejudice.

Re. Liz Cheney

Undoubtedly some went to protest, but which ones? Some went to be part of history. Some went out of curiosity. Some went to cause trouble. Some died on the wrong side of a police line. But death renders them incapable of telling you why they were there. 

Clearly, there were some who criminally breached police lines by force. Others crossed the same line, hours later, without even knowing that it had once been a police line. Some entered the Capitol through a broken window. Others were ushered into the rotunda by smiling police officers. Some found themselves trapped by the crowd in places they did not want to be. Others took an active part in agitating that same crowd.

Justice requires knowing the difference and judging accordingly. Anything less means to lose the stories and lives of four innocent Americans in partisan cacophony. This is disgraceful.

The cornerstone of American justice is that all people are innocent until proven guilty. Reputable media establishments used to be so diligent in the application of this principle that even the most serious crimes, with the most overwhelming evidence, would be called, “alleged.” Until a defendant has had the opportunity to defend himself in open court, he is truly innocent.

The presumption of innocence is no mere formality. It fundamentally keeps a constitutional republic from becoming a banana republic. Those who act otherwise destroy both our Constitution and their fellow citizens. 

While this is true of all people, it is especially true when judging the dead. The living can testify and call witnesses in their own defense; the dead are not so privileged. Unfounded accusations leveled at these four Americans leave them libeled with no way to defend themselves. 

To defend their names is not to defend every action that happened that day, nor is it to defend any politician associated with them. Rather, to defend these Americans is to defend the Constitution itself. No one can wrap herself in the Constitution who refuses to do so.

Ashli Babbitt (left), Michael Byrd (right)

While the shooting death of Ashli Babbitt was the news that stopped most Americans in their tracks, she was not the first to die. Before that thunderclap, three others were already dead. Statistically speaking, these deaths should have set off alarm klaxons even if Lt. Michael Byrd had never fired his service pistol at the unarmed woman.

Nevertheless, the untimely deaths of three Americans barely made a blip on the national radar. Their cries were drowned out by shrill and inaccurate reporting about deaths that happened days, weeks and months later.

Most troubling was the death of Rosanne Boyland, 34, and the ever-shifting stories explaining it. Before leaving for Washington, D.C., she assured her sister, “I’m going to stand on the sidelines. I’m just going to show my support.” How she died in the Capitol Tunnel despite these intentions should be the subject of serious investigation. 

Instead, the New York Times published a false report on January 29 that “Capitol rioters trampled [her].” Two months later, the D. C. Medical Examiner claimed she died by “acute amphetamine intoxication.” Her body was cremated shortly thereafter, rendering an independent autopsy impossible.

In November, attorney Joseph McBride finally won his court battle to see hours of video footage that was hidden from the public. This footage tells an altogether different story. It shows merciless police brutality against unarmed people who were desperately trying to retreat from their assailants. 

Philip Anderson (left), Rosanne Boyland (right)

The video evidence is supported by two eyewitnesses who have come forward to tell their stories. Philip Anderson, a black Trump supporter, was holding Boyland’s hand as she died. His testimony contradicts both the NYT and the Medical Examiner. Victoria White was there as well. Her public testimony is utterly harrowing. But Cheney’s J-6 Committee has not asked to hear them.

The J-6 Committee has turned the first anniversary of J-6 into a partisan circus. That does not honor the four citizens who died there. Neither does it uphold the Constitutional principles that they are being denied in death. 

Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, January 7, 2022.