Faith, fury, and flash mobs

Once upon a time in America, Minnesota’s Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis delighted in being America’s most neighborly cities. Today, it is the proud home of the new Twin Cities: Minneapolis and Mogadishu.

Last weekend at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota leftists protesters turned a Sunday Christian church service into a political flash mob.  Nothing says reverence like storming a sanctuary to score points over a church elder’s job at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  Such debauchery underscores that mixing politics and pews is less civic engagement and more leftist performance art.

About three dozen protesters who invaded Cities Church on January 18 violated the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE), that protects worshippers, “to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.”

Minnesota’s Attorney General, Keith Ellison, seemed perplexed that FACE might actually apply to church protests. That “outside my purview” moment is leadership that thrills academics who enjoy such evasions as it leaves constituents wondering whether Ellison, Minnesota’s chief law enforcement officer, is truly that incompetent.

Enter the Department of Justice (DOJ) that sent prosecutors citing FACE. Meanwhile, media personalities and politicians arrived to bless the chaos. Don Lemon, who has reinvented himself as a roaming commentator for the left, declared the protest protected speech because nothing says “First Amendment” like barging into a church service. Then, right on cue, Lemon breaks out the race card with sweeping talk of “entitlement and white supremacy.”

In recognition of this civic-minded chaos, Minnesota’s DMV is reportedly updating the state motto to Land of 10,000 Screaming Karens.  In keeping with politically correctness run amok, the NFL is petitioning the Minnesota Vikings ownership to change the name of their franchise to the Somali Pirates. 

In case you were wondering about asylum policy, rumor has it the Ayatollahs of Iran have been offered the opportunity by the city’s leftist mayor to open a series of child daycare centers.  That is the kind of partisan hospitality that keeps the national conversation lively and absurd.

The constitutional conundrum is simple: either the federal government enforces immigration law, or the state does. Pick a lane. If you claim to be compassionate, direct your compassion at the nation as a whole, including the citizens who live here legally.

Novel idea, indeed.

The city’s ICE shooting has been unfolding exactly how these narratives always do with dramatic flair for a fresh martyr to fuel the unrest.

By intentionally creating disorder in hopes of drawing ICE into a confrontation, the left has crossed from protest into calculated chaos.  In addition, Minnesota has sued the DOJ to stop ICE from doing its job and to block FBI probes into Somali fraud.

When anarchy becomes a tactic, the claim of peaceful protests collapses upon itself.

The legal reality check is as simple as it is concise. ICE can make arrests in houses of worship, as disrupting a church service remains illegal. The performative outrage and hypocrisy that typically follows is as selective as it is predictable.

The left is not fighting ICE to change what they are or what they do; rather it is about protecting an immigration policy of open borders that serves their electoral calculus and political goals.

It is no coincidence such theatrics are sold as reform, rather it is by design.

Historically, authoritarian revolutions begin by undermining religious institutions and destabilizing social norms.

From the debates of the Founding Fathers to the cultural struggles of the Cold War, Americans have repeatedly confronted threats to our nation’s core principles.

It is the responsibility of any society committed to the rule of law and the protection of religious liberty to stand firmly against such a cultural Marxist cancer that are undermining the very foundations that have sustained American freedom.