Uyghur Olympian Lights Torch is China’s “Cynical Move”

As NBC News reported via Twitter, the Chinese Communist Party chose a member of the Uyghur minority to complete the torch relay and deliver the Olympic flame to the opening ceremonies of the winter Olympics.  

The Uyghurs are a mostly Muslim ethnic minority in China’s western regions that have been targeted in Chairman Xi Jinping’s nationalistic and totalitarian agenda. Uyghurs are being sent to concentration camps, subjected to systematic rape, forced abortions, and sterilization. By every measure, it’s genocide.  

Going into the games, the world already knew that the Uyghurs were being subjected to the same sort of atrocities that defined evil in the last century. The Chinese Communist Party also employs the same sort of propaganda. As CNN’s Jake Tapper put it, it’s “hard to imagine a more cynical move.”  

We can’t keep tyrants from being tyrannical, but we can refuse to pretend that what they’re doing is normal. And, we can call on our leaders to do the same. Anything less would be, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it, to live by lies. Something we must never do.

Copyright 2022 by the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Reprinted from BreakPoint.org with permission.

City of Marshall Passes Resolution, Affirms It Is Pro-Life

On Tuesday the City of Marshall, Arkansas, passed a resolution affirming that it is pro-life.

Marshall joins a growing list of Pro-Life Cities and Counties in Arkansas.

Act 392 of 2021 by Rep. Kendon Underwood (R – Cave Springs) and Sen. Gary Stubblefield (R – Branch) affirms that cities and counties can designate themselves as Pro-Life.

Act 392 also makes it clear that Pro-Life Communities can install signs or banners announcing that they are Pro-Life.

Since Act 392 was enacted last year, Arkansas has seen a rapid expansion of Pro-Life Cities and Counties across the state.

Washington, Benton, CrawfordCleburnePopeJacksonSalineFaulknerPerrySebastianLeeWhite, and Prairie counties have adopted Pro-Life resolutions — and so have MariannaRussellvilleSpringdaleLaGrange, Moro, Aubrey, and Haynes.

In 1977 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in its Poelker v. Doe decision that communities can adopt pro-life resolutions and policies.

Marshall’s Pro-Life Resolution says,

WHEREAS, the Declaration of Independence declares that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, including the right to life; and

WHEREAS, Amendment 68 to the Arkansas Constitution states that the policy of the State of Arkansas is to protect the life of every unborn child from conception until birth; and

WHEREAS, it is the duty of state and local governments to protect the unalienable right to life of every person within their respective jurisdictions; and

WHEREAS, the United States Supreme Court stated in Poelker v. Doe, 432 U.S. 519 (1977), that the United States Constitution does not forbid a municipality, pursuant to democratic processes, from expressing a preference for normal childbirth instead of abortion;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED by the City Council of the City of Marshall, Arkansas:

Section 1: It is the policy of the City of Marshall to promote and protect the dignity and humanity of all persons at all stages of life from conception until natural death.

Section 2: The City of Marshall declares itself to be a Pro-Life County.

We know from public opinion polling that the vast majority of Arkansans believe abortion ought to be either completely illegal or legal only under certain circumstances. With that in mind, it makes sense that communities in Arkansas would vote to affirm that they are Pro-Life.

Stay tuned as other cities and counties pass their own resolutions declaring that they are Pro-Life!