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The culture wars nationwide have been ramped up significantly with the coming and going of Pride month. In my home city, Philadelphia, the after effects of that war were plainly evident when I grabbed a special Pride edition of the local LGBTQ newspaper.

Featured in the paper was a piece on the city of Kyiv, Ukraine, and its hosting of a LGBTQIA+ queer festival, a first for that city. Next was an angry op-ed by a lifelong Democrat on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. entitled, “The Shaming of a Legacy,” in which the writer, a lesbian of considerable talent, calls Jordan Peterson a homophobe and castigates the Democratic presidential candidate for stating on MSNBC that,

“I am against people participating in women’s sports who are biologically male. I think women have worked too hard …over the past 30 years…I don’t think it’s fair.”

The writer then goes on to call Kennedy a transphobe.

The words ‘xenophobia, homophobia and transphobia’ fly through this Kennedy op-ed like a plague of locusts.

Another item in this groupthink Pride edition was a piece about the protests planned for the Moms for Liberty convention in Philadelphia, called the Joyous Warriors National Summit, at the Philadelphia Marriott from June 29 to July 2. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump and Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, are scheduled to be among the speakers there.

The last time DeSantis was in Philadelphia was in January 2023 when he received the Union League’s gold medal award.

In times past, the Union League was much more of a conservative club than it is today. But Trojan horse maneuvers among well connected city Democrats have paved the way for woke intrusions there. Wokeness injected itself into the League like the proverbial worm in the apple. When it was announced that DeSantis would be receiving the League’s highest honor in January, over one hundred members signed a letter in protest. They wanted the League to cancel the award. These woke activists in clip-on bow ties (aping the superior dress habits of conservatives) threatened to resign.

It’s too bad they didn’t.

DeSantis’ visit also instigated volatile protests in the street, mainly grunge activists in t-shirts and baseball hats, women with underarm hair and short feminist haircuts with long earrings and angry, sneering faces.

These were the same people, of course, who took to the streets in 2020 and turned a blind eye to the burning up of downtown businesses in the name of Saint George Floyd.

City Council members, politicians, teachers, union reps and a host of other self appointed citizen SJW types urged the League to send DeSantis back to Florida. That didn’t happen because the Union League held strong.

The Union League protests reminded me of the time in August 2018 when Candace Owens and a colleague of hers were attacked by Antifa outside a Philadelphia restaurant in the city’s Gayborhood. The incident was so ugly that police had to escort Owens and her friend to safety.

Welcome to the City of William Penn, a city of tolerance and diversity—but wait, that was yesterday’s slogan. Philadelphia is a cultural Marxist city now. It’s a new day. It’s an ugly day. It’s always dystopian in Philadelphia.

While a moderate Democrat, Cherelle Parker, may have won the city’s Democratic mayoral primary, beating the woke candidate, Helen Gym (endorsed by Jane Fonda and Bernie Sanders) by a significant margin, the mop slop contingent of street Marxists in the city of William Penn continues to expand.

These disparate radical groups and organizations respond well to cultural alarm bells like ‘DeSantis’ and ‘Trump.’ They’re good at buying up all the sharpies in town and making up protest signs and special t-shirts for the occasion.

They’re also really, really good at showing up and protesting while shouting “F*ck You!”

When Philadelphia’s Museum of the American Revolution opened its doors in 2017, I felt a certain conservative vibe there. Although the museum’s reenactment displays of (mannequin) Revolutionary War soldiers in dress uniforms holding bayonets may have a tacky appeal, much about the museum is fascinating.

Since 2020, however, the museum has taken a slightly leftward turn. It recently hosted a forum on the city’s Democratic mayoral candidates from a radical Black perspective, hosted by a black journalist who recently published a book in defense of Cancel Culture.

But surprisingly and miraculously and in the spirit of true American freedom, the museum refused to back down when radical groups in the city—the same people who wanted DeSantis banned from the Union League—began harassing the museum in editorials, tweets, protests, and emails to send Moms for Liberty packing.

News reports stated that many of the lower staff at MOAR supported banning Moms for Liberty, while the top brass refused to budge. The numbers of lower staff were never specified but having attended many press events at MOAR, I can attest to spotting various woke factions among them. It helps to have a hound dog’s scent when it comes to sniffing out social justice warriors, even in a very soft conservative environment. SJW’s are not always recognizable; they don’t all dress in black and have blue streaks in their hair.

Needless to say, I headed down to MOAR on the first day of the Moms for Liberty convention, but since it was before the opening ceremonies, the protesters hadn’t yet arrived. Police officers, however, surrounded the building in double lines in preparation for the sounding bell when the angry, obscenity shouting faces would arrive with their protest signs.

“Philly is a Trans City! Philly is a Trans City! F-ck Your Fascism!” many protesters screamed when the convention finally kicked off.

The night before the opening of the convention, a number of windows in the museum were broken by vandals.

Some news outlets attributed the violence to a trans group, but trans or non-trans, it’s not surprising that what with all the pre-convention hysteria in the left progressive press prior to the start of the convention, that some leftists would resort to violence.

Nearly every mainstream news station in their reports about the Moms for Liberty convention cited the Southern Poverty Law Project’s condemnation of Moms for Liberty “as a hate group.”

Over and over again, it was like a mantra: “SPLC says Moms for Liberty are a hate group.”

These news outlets know next to nothing about the SPLP; they merely tap into ‘bubble gum’ superficialities about the organization, that being: when you want to know what ‘hate,’ is, find out through SPLP.

Never mind that in 2018, The National Review published an in-depth report on why the SPLP is a “hyper-partisan scam.” Never mind that in 2020 an excellent summing up of SPLP was published, Tyler O’ Neil’s, “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” a resource book that should be on the shelf of every news agency.

Moms for Liberty tweeted about the violence at the museum:

“We are devastated to see the Museum of the American Revolution targeted last night by hateful vandals who broke windows and destroyed historical symbols of our country’s freedom. The core of a free republic is to allow for the peaceful discussion of different ideas. We pray for peace in the days ahead.”

The Washington Examiner also reported that Tiffany Justice, a cofounder of Moms for Liberty, received the following threat,

“Your whole f***ing family needs to be f***ing shot, f*** NAZIS. Can’t wait for someone to unalive you and your f***ing kids.”

In a letter to MOAR signed by two woke Philadelphia social studies teachers (reprinted by various news organizations), Clarice Brazos and Charlie McGeehan (both of whom use pronouns), the activists reminded MOAR that:

“In July 2020, we facilitated workshops at the Finding Freedom Summer Teacher Institute hosted by the Museum of the American Revolution. Our sessions focused on developing antiracist work in our classrooms and schools. We led a session titled ‘Talking about Race in the Classroom.”

The letter writers then added:

“We find it disconcerting that museum leadership is now renting space to Moms for Liberty, an organization working to ban the teaching of these topics in our schools.”

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Mayor Jim Kenney said that the city,

“will prioritize the safety of participants and members of the public and protect the constitutional rights of all individuals without regard to the views expressed by any group that choose to demonstrate or protest.”

A big thank you to the Museum of the American Revolution for standing firm in the face of so much opposition.