Media critics have for years decried the proliferation of “fake news” and have been especially critical when quotes and comments were ripped out of context. J.J. McCullough recently wrote about another related issue that isn’t given enough coverage. A liberal press often runs photos that are “obviously ripped out of context.”

Since he is a Canadian, McCullough begins his piece by talking about a deceptive photo of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Donald Trump. They are seated in those two famous chairs in the Oval Office. Trump is extending his hand for a handshake, and Trudeau is merely looking at his hand. The photo went viral because it showed Trudeau’s dislike of Trump and his unwillingness to shake the president’s hand.

But that’s not what happened. “The damning photo was surgically extracted from the split second in which the Trump’s hand extended just before Trudeau’s rose to meet it.” Of course, that’s not what the photo showed.

Which brings us to the worst editorial photograph of the year. John Moore accompanied the US Border Patrol to the bank of the Rio Grande to get a photograph that he believed would convey “the emotional impact of family separation.” He took a picture of a toddler crying as her mother from Honduras was patted down by border agents.

The picture went viral because it showed the pain of separating children from their parents at the border. There was just one problem. The mother and daughter were not separated. They were detained since she is seeking asylum. The photo not only went viral, but Time magazine put the same image of the child on the cover with President Donald Trump under the caption “Welcome to America.”

We are told that a picture is worth a thousand words. Unfortunately, we are also seeing that a photo ripped out of context can be as erroneous as fake news.

Liberals have been engaged in Nazi name-calling for more than a half-century. It has been a way to vilify and marginalize Republican candidates and their conservative supporters.

Harry Truman claimed his 1948 Republican opponent, Thomas Dewey, was a “front man” for fascists. During the 1964 presidential campaign, the governor of California suggested Republican candidate Barry Goldwater had “the stench of fascism.” Two years later Ronald Reagan replaced him as governor and was called a Nazi so many times (first as governor and then as president) that it would be hard to get an accurate count. And it will be hard to count all the times George W. Bush and Donald Trump have been given the Nazi label.

The purpose of calling candidates and supporters Nazis was to intimidate them and back them off of their agenda. But times have changed. Donald Trump and many of his supporters don’t seem to care what you call them. Moreover, many other politicians have been called Nazis for so long, that it hardly has any meaning or impact.

This turn of events has put Nazi name-callers in a difficult situation. Is this all just rhetorical hyperbole, or do they really mean what they say? If it is the former, then they really are just name-calling and don’t really believe the president, other candidates, and their supporters are equivalent to the Nazi regime.

But they may really believe that what is happening in America is similar to what was happening in Germany in the 1930s. If that is the case, they will feel a moral obligation to take violent action against Trump, Trump’s cabinet, and Trump supporters.

The recent speeches and actions by members of Congress and liberal political leaders indicate that they aren’t just name-calling. They really do seem to believe they are fighting evil incarnate. That’s why the conflict is increasing.

We seem to be witnessing the decline of governmentally sanctioned compelled speech. Three Supreme Court decisions and the prospect of a new justice on the high court are the reasons.

As we discuss so often on the Point of View Radio Talk Show compelled speech is perhaps the worst form of anti-free-speech. It is bad enough to censor an American citizen from being able to express his or her opinion. But it is even worse to force an American citizen to voice, create, or fund contrary ideas or activities.

The Supreme Court ruled against the state of Colorado for punishing Christian baker Jack Phillips. He was fined for refusing to use his artistic talents for a homosexual ceremony. Justice Kennedy was appalled that the Colorado bureaucrats described the baker’s faith as “the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use.”

The court also ruled against the state of California for mandating that pro-life pregnancy centers must advertise for free abortions. In addition to the majority opinion written by Justice Thomas, was a concurring opinion by Justice Kennedy that encouraged the legislators to go back and read the Bill of Rights.

In a third case, the Justices ruled against an Illinois law that forced state employees to subsidize public-employee unions that take political and labor positions contrary to the views of the employees. Justice Alito twice quoted the famous phrase from Thomas Jefferson that “to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

The new justice on the court is likely to uphold each one of these precedents and will continue to rule against other examples of compelled speech. That is why it is reasonable to expect to see a decline in these attempts to force people to voice, create, or fund ideas contrary to their deeply held beliefs.

Nigeria is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a Christian. The phrase used most often to describe what is happening to Christians in Nigeria is “pure genocide.”

Nigeria is a country divided. The north is predominantly Muslim. The South has many more Christians. In the north and elsewhere, Christians have been killed and maimed in what Open Doors calls “religious cleansing.” Muslims are attempting to eradicate Christianity from the country.

The greatest threat to Christians in the past has been from Boko Haram. Now an even greater threat has come from radical Muslim Fulani herdsmen who have murdered more than 6,000 people (mostly women and children). Unfortunately, the world’s media has generally ignored this human rights tragedy or even portrayed it as a land conflict between community groups. Christian leaders in the country assure us this is not a “farmers/herdsmen clash” but a targeted effort to rid the land of any Christians.

Raymond Ibrahim says, “Christians are the most persecuted people on earth.” You can read what he says in Jihad Watch or see his Prager University video. He believes the mainstream media often ignores the genocide in Nigeria and other countries because it doesn’t fit the narrative of radical Muslims fighting back against colonial imperialism. Even attempts to educate the Christian community through Twitter and other social media platforms are met with a backlash from Muslim apologists.

It has been encouraging to see that the Nigerian president and President Trump have spoken out on this issue a few months ago. And there are more news articles appearing in some media outlets, like the Christian Post and Breitbart News.

The world eventually took note of genocide in Rwanda in the mid-1990s, but governments did too little/too late to stop the massacre of one million Tutsi people. We cannot ignore what is happening in Nigeria today.

There has been lots of fear mongering from the Left about how the newly constituted Supreme Court would rule on various social issues. Justices that attempt to apply the original intent of the Constitution to legal issues are called originalists. Here are a few suggestions about how an originalist court might rule on cases before it.

1. Abortion – Despite the fears being spread that the next court would overturn Roe v. Wade, there isn’t any likelihood it will happen soon. First, there has to be a significant case that would come before the court. Then, there would have to be at least five justices willing to use that case to overturn the 1973 abortion decision that has been a precedent for over four decades.

2. Religious liberty – The narrow decision in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case suggests that future religious liberty cases will be decided in favor of the First Amendment, even when it appears to conflict with LGBT issues. In fact, the Kennedy opinion in the case suggests that further confirmation of religious liberty will come when future cases come before the court.

3. Gun laws – An originalist court will probably provide clearer definition for the Second Amendment rights of citizens. The court has already ruled in two cases (Heller and McDonald) about the right to own weapons that are “in common use for lawful purposes.”

4. Affirmative action – An originalist court would probably be a color-blind court. The original meaning of equal protection in the Constitution would suggest that attempts to favor one race over another would be unconstitutional.

These few examples conform to what most Americans would desire from the Supreme Court. In fact, they match up closely to various opinion polls taken over the last few decades. An originalist court will not be as controversial as many liberals say that it would be.

Our nation’s intelligence gathering is in the news, so I read with interest a transcript of a speech Herbert Meyer did for a Hillsdale College leadership seminar. He served as a special assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and was the Vice Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council.

Meyer reminds us that “From the end of World War II until 1982, every president’s objective had been not to lose the Cold War.” When President Ronald Reagan came into office, he wanted to change that mindset. He switched from playing defense to playing offense.

“So Reagan’s director of Central Intelligence, Williams Casey, asked the CIA’s Soviet Division two obvious questions: Where is the Soviet Union weak? and Where is it most vulnerable?” The surprising answer they received was “We don’t know. No one’s ever asked this before.”

Over the years, the CIA and other intelligence gathering agencies were able to gather lots of information about Soviet strengths (infantry divisions, nuclear missiles, tanks, submarines) but never collected information on Soviet weaknesses.

Meyer says that under Casey’s leadership, they refocused collection efforts and found all sorts of Soviet vulnerabilities. President Reagan used these weaknesses and vulnerabilities to put more pressure on the Kremlin. “Eight years later the Berlin Wall came down, and two years after that the Soviet Union ceased to exist.”

There is a lesson to be learned here. Sometimes the important information is out there but never collected because it doesn’t seem relevant to the intelligence gathering mindset the president or the bureaucracy might have.

Meyer says that intelligence work is like science. You don’t collect random information and hope that something will pop up. You need an informed view of the world and know what you want to accomplish.

Your children are facing an onslaught of profanity through the media. Movies are one place where profanity reigns. One survey has been tracking profanity in movies from the first swear word on film (1939’s Gone With the Wind) to The Wolf of Wall Street, which holds the record with 798 swear words. There has been a 500 percent increase over these many decades.

The Parents Television Council has documented the fact that the number of expletives on television programs has doubled in just the last decade. Kids and adults use more profanity simply because they hear it more than ever before.

Let’s start with a definition. The word “profane” means: to treat something that is sacred with abuse or contempt. It means to desecrate. Something profane is unholy. It is certainly not a positive attribute. What does the Bible teach?

Paul says in Ephesians 4:29, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs.” Colossians 3:8 says, “Rid yourselves of all things such as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.”

Sometimes we hear young people say that it really doesn’t matter what you say, it is only words. Words make a difference. Make a joke in public about hijacking a plane and see if words have consequences. Make a derisive comment about people’s appearance to their face and see if they merely ignore it.

As believers, we should submit our vocabularies to the Lord. The world is watching us. Peter (2:12) admonishes us to keep our “behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.” In a world awash in profanity, Christians should watch what they say.

A library in Oregon is providing a six-part course called “Adulting 101.” If it becomes popular, I suspect we will be seeing more of these courses nationwide.

Maybe I need to back up and define the term “adulting.” Last year, the term began to be used more frequently. It means to “behave in an adult manner” or it can also describe the attempt to “make someone behave as an adult.” It gained some attention because millennials often go through various life stages (getting married, starting a family) much later than previous generations.

Adulting is one way of acknowledging that eventually millennials have to engage in adult behaviors like paying taxes or buying a house. Sometimes they aren’t prepared for that next step. That is where a course on adulting becomes important.

The Oregon course covers some basic tasks, like checking your oil, setting a budget, cleaning your oven. It also ventures into tricky topics like spotting fake news and learning how to get along with your roommate.

The first part of the series is “Bare Essential Cooking.” It begins as a standard culinary course, but also veers away into lots of creativity since millennials may not have a fully stocked kitchen. In fact, they might be trying to function in a dorm or an efficiency. They even learn how to make quesadillas using a towel, aluminum foil, and an iron. This isn’t exactly Home Economics 101.

Other adulting courses help millennials develop life skills. They include topics like “Getting a Job” and “Financial Know-How” and “Moving Out.” If students have already learned some of this, there is the “Inside the Lines Adult Coloring Club.”

You may be wondering if we really need to provide courses on adulting. Apparently, there is a need, and we may see more of these courses in the future. In the past, we had extended families, involved parents, and classes in shop and home economics. Now, it seems, we are destined to see more courses on adulting.