The Sponge of Vinegar and Gall

 

Sept. 14, 2025 vigil for Charlie Kirk in Ozark on the square

By Gretchen Garrity

I knew her demons would drive Professor Elizabeth Dudash-Buskirk to another rant. Once you see the pattern…

She numbers her points, which I follow below. Her Facebook post HERE. Do read it before going on, as I select certain quotes to note for the sake of brevity.

1) Elizabeth said, “Please stop talking about 'us' and 'we' being 'brothers and sisters in Christ' to mourn a man who used a platform to engage divisive language for the purpose of gaining attention/money/followers…” She makes it clear that her Christ is not the Christ of the Bible. It is another Jesus. Woke Jesus. Do not be fooled: “For there shall arise false Christs…” (Matt. 24:24).

2) Elizabeth says, “Please stop trying to have things all ways, all the time, all at once. Either Kirk was a political figure and we SHOULD NOT hold memorial services on public school property, or he was not a political figure and memorial services do not need to be public.” Here she is squirming angrily over the fact that there have been vigils and memorials for a public figure on public property. She cannot abide that our public spaces are being used to honor a public figure...publicly. I wonder if she would have moaned about the public vigils for Martin Luther King Jr on public property, including the US Capitol. Imagine what she thinks about all the public memorial sites for him. Honestly.

3) She says, “Please do not tell me I am not patriotic because I do not think a flag should be flown at half mast for a non-political figure that never served our country in any way, shape, or form.” Here she attempts to diminish the impact that Charlie Kirk had on our citizenry. His patriotism and love for America, and his tireless work to impact young people to engage in the political process is another thing her Marxist ideological framework cannot abide. Tough. He did serve his country and his country is grateful. One can serve one’s country in a myriad of ways, and thousands of people from artists and writers to soldiers and politicians have been honored by our nation.

4) Elizabeth says, “Please stop telling me that academics are all about spreading their ideology. I wish I was.” The disingenuousness! The amount of Leftist institutional capture of our schools (from K through to university) is legion. It has been documented extensively. Elizabeth is lying to you. That is what Communists do. Communism is Satan’s religion, and Satan is a liar. The professor’s false piety is just silly. Way too late to fool us again.

5) Elizabeth writes, “Stop asking me to have empathy or sympathy for Charlie Kirk. I refuse to have EMPATHY because HE told me that empathy is a ‘made-up, new-age term that does a lot of damage.’” Elizabeth takes something Charlie Kirk said about empathy and twists it. Here is the context: . Again, she is lying in order to justify her disordered hatred against Charlie Kirk. As a Catholic, Elizabeth should know what a disordered passion entails.

 

6) Elizabeth next states, “I refuse to sit back and allow people to just continue to run over our freedoms.” She does not enumerate any freedoms that have been run over, but that is beside the point. The point is to state the assertion, and you, dear reader, are to assume it is true because the professor/expert told you it was true.

7) Here she says, “If you want to have vigils for whoever you want, you go right ahead, but stop saying they are for one individual and then when people ask why there weren’t vigils for the children, the victims of violence, the immigrants, the poor, the marginalized, respond “it’s for everyone.” NO. IT. ISN’T.” First, I don’t know who is having these conversations with her. I hope she reads this and points us to them. Elizabeth again attempts to suggest that every time there is a victim of violence, there should be a vigil for them, or something like that. With crime stats as they are, there would be vigils ongoing every day.

Perhaps we should build a chapel where we could light candles and pray for victims. Oh wait, that’s the local Catholic Church of which Elizabeth professes to be a member. No, what bothers her so much is the unprecedented outpouring of grief and love that Charlie Kirk’s death has brought forth. It galls her. Her words drip with it like vinegar on a sponge.

8) Getting down to brass tacks here. Elizabeth is a champion of civil civic discourse, but not Charlie? She writes, “I 100% believe in and support a civil civic discourse. Charlie Kirk DID NOT.” She “proves” this by again lying about his words on empathy. You have the video, watch it for yourself. She lies yet again. She accuses Charlie of not having goodwill. The arrogance! There are hundreds of videos of Charlie speaking with diverse people in a clear and calm manner—with goodwill. Elizabeth’s problem, like all communists, is that Charlie used logic and reasoning to defeat her ideology. Therefore, the only thing left for Leftists like her is to attack him personally and misrepresent him to her audience.

And lastly, she challenges readers, “Come at me, if you will, but do it understanding that this is my stage, my soapbox, I can delete comments, I can ignore, I can respond, I can direct the spotlight, I can engage in discourse, I get to control the narrative. See how that works?” Honestly, is she trying to say that her Facebook platform was in the same vein as Charlie’s public debates on college campuses?

He let anyone come up and speak and challenge him. He didn’t censor them as she is threatening to do. Professor Dudash-Buskirk, the champion of free speech, the maven of all things democratic and civic-minded threatening to delete, ignore, direct and control the narrative? God forbid!

Perhaps she should begin having campus chats and allowing anyone to come up to her and challenge her on politics. She’s a professor. She has the cozy platform at MSU. Go for it!

Folks, this is the moral state of the Left. Charlie ate your lunch and you will never forgive him for it. What is most needed for those who are under the thrall of the religion of Satan (aka Communism), is to repent. When convenient Elizabeth falls back on her Catholic bonafides. Her political ideals, no matter how she likes to coat them with “empathy” and “democracy” and “freedom” and “civil civic discourse,” are simply evil.

They debase humanity, they call for not freedom but political and economic slavery. Not moral freedom but licentiousness. They set white against black, male against female, Muslim against Christian. Her ideas carve us up into groups without a unifying understanding of humanity and nationhood.

Her political ideology would take from both rich and poor, and concentrate wealth and power among an oligarchy of soulless demons, who care nothing for human rights. In short, Elizabeth is a vanity-ridden intellectual who has for too long gone unchallenged. There are many like her. It’s time to respond to them with clarity and truth.

They’ve lost the battle of ideas. Their ideology was and is defeated through debate and dialog and civic discourse on college campuses and over dinner tables. And Elizabeth knows it. And so she lies about Charlie in order to assuage her fractured conscience and comfort herself that she is doing the right thing by stomping on the Man.

Well, the devil stomped on the wrong man. There is power in the blood of Jesus, and when evildoers spill the blood of one of His champions, you unleash a power you will never recover from. The best thing you can do is repent and come over to His side. Otherwise you will eventually end up wailing and gnashing your teeth with no peace and no hope in the world.

There is Power in Words

By Gretchen Garrity

The educated and sophisticated Left have run out of arguments to deny responsibility for the violence they incite. The martyrdom of Charlie Kirk has changed everything. There was a momentous shift in ways we cannot yet fathom.

As some on the Left continue to celebrate the murder of someone with whom they disagreed, other more reasonable individuals are working through the event in a more thoughtful way. MSU Professor Elizabeth Dudash-Buskirk continues to opine on her Facebook page HERE. While I disagree with much of what she writes, it is a hopeful thing to see the admission that "empathy" must go both ways.

The long-time illogical idea that it's guns that kill has been modified to 'people with guns.' We moved them an inch, fellow thinkers. Celebrate!

But with that admission, the argument must deflect to a side issue, that of selective outrage. Professor Dudash-Buskirk cannot admit that certain speech, or as she says with her professor pants on--rhetoric--can sway people to commit acts of violence.

Of course rhetoric can move people to great good or great evil. Ask Edward Bernays. As someone who has "studied communication for 30 years," she is deeply aware that rhetoric has been used to inflame dissent, rally armies, calm a populace, etc.

 

The classical definition of rhetoric is simply the "art of communication," according to Sister Miriam Joseph, C.S.C., Ph.D. in her book "The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric."  Wikipedia defines rhetoric as the art of persuasion.

Professor Dudash-Buskirk writes in her latest Facebook post, "Get PISSED OFF at the gun violence, stop blaming the world for RHETORIC and start reflecting on the DEATHS.

What caused these? Rhetoric? NO. People with guns caused these." 

Methinks the good professor is justifying calling those with whom she disagrees "bigots" and other equally defamatory appellations. If it is true that rhetoric--the art of communication or persuasion--did not affect the beliefs and actions of people, why does the Left in academia cling so deeply to their rhetoric? In fact, most colleges and universities these days actively suppress any other views than those of the Left.

They suppress and mock and censor others because rhetoric has consequences.

Just now, because of the immense shift that has happened in this country since Charlie was martyred, she is calling for "mending [the] divide and understand the process of the two party system is based on PRODUCTIVE DEBATE, not violent division." 

Unfortunately, many people on both sides of the "two-party system," do not understand that there is only one party. It is the party of millionaires and billionaires and multi-national corporations and NGOs who some time ago usurped the two-party system. It is they who pull the strings and 'encourage' legislators to vote against their constituents time after time.

But back to rhetoric. 

Professor Dudash-Buskirk makes a call for outrage in all caps no less, "I AM CALLING ON ALL AMERICANS TO BE OUTRAGED AT THE DEATHS OF THE HORTMANS, CHARLIE KIRK, the attacks on PAUL PELOSI and PRESIDENT TRUMP, EVERGREEN HIGH SCHOOL, ANNUNCIATION SCHOOL, ANNUNCIATION CHURCH, and the FORTY-SEVEN SCHOOL SHOOTINGS…"

Note, that the professor deftly moves the issue from the spoken word to the selective outrage she claims is the problem. She equates the murder of the Hortmans to that of Charlie Kirk, who is magnitudes more well known than the murdered Minnesota state representative, and thus would naturally receive more attention. 

You see, vile rhetoric and incitement to hate isn't the problem. The problem is we all must be equally outraged at every act of violence.

The Oxford Learner's Dictionary defines "outrage" thusly: "To make somebody very shocked and angry." In an interesting twist, the etymology of the word means, "c. 1300, outragen, "to go to excess, act immoderately," from outrage (n.) or from Old French oultrager. From 1580s with meaning "do violence to, attack, maltreat." Related: Outraged; outraging."

In sending your sons and daughters to almost any university, parents are (unwittingly) paying to have their children radicalized.

— Larry Alex Taunton (@LarryTaunton) September 12, 2025

As a parent, I prefer that our children's professors do not use the rhetoric of outrage to influence them or anyone else. Toward the end of her Facebook post, she states (again in caps), "STOP TAKING THE EASY WAY OUT AND BLAMING RHETORIC. BLAME ACTORS AND ACTION..." 

Where does Elizabeth think the actors got the ideas for their actions?  The ether? When teachers and online 'friends' and bad actors and cultural Marxism all converge to spread hatred to other people groups, to demonize and dehumanize them, it is not surprising that political acts of great evil happen. We have seen this before throughout history.

The question for all citizens at this point: Will YOU dial down the hateful rhetoric? Will YOU refuse to dehumanize your political opponents? Will YOU seek truth regardless of where it leads? Will YOU be the model for civil dialog?

Who launched Mao’s bloody Cultural Revolution?

Radicalized students—the Red Guards. They quickly went from justifying violence to committing murder, leaving up to 20 million dead, including many of their own.

Who radicalized them? The Communist education system.

In America,… https://t.co/WQe2D6qW4N pic.twitter.com/tO7AgdLYAM

— Xi Van Fleet (@XVanFleet) September 12, 2025

 

Open Letter to Prof. Elizabeth Dudash-Buskirk

 

Dear Prof. Dudash-Buskirk,

I am writing in response to your Facebook comments following the Feb. 25, 2025 meeting of the Christian County Library Board of Trustees. You incorrectly ascribed the comments of a member of the public to the library board. I attempted to correct your statement above.

 

 Instead of acknowledging the error and correcting it, you doubled down:

 

 First, since you mentioned the First Amendment, I will quote it here:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Nowhere does the Constitution limit speech to "good" or "ethical." Indeed, to suggest that "Free speech is intended to protect speech of goodwill for the betterment of community" is to insert a censorship point of view into the equation.

Frankly, this is the type of teaching that encourages censorship of individuals, groups and ideas. Who shall determine what is "good" or "ethical" or "speech of goodwill?" Is it you? Is it me? Is it the government?

The library board's agenda always includes a public comment portion, which incidentally has been expanded by the new board in order to allow the public more opportunity to speak.

Second, you aver that the library board--an arm of our representative government--should take control of the public's speech. Indeed, you go so far as to blame the board for a citizen's words because they did not censor the content.

No one "screamed we are going to hell." The reference to USAID's transgender expenditures was used to correlate spending taxpayer dollars in our own library district. The public comment portion of the meeting is distasteful to you because speech can be uncomfortable and insulting when you do not agree with the content. 

Elizabeth, I understand perfectly.

Being doxxed, called a bigot, a Nazi, a book banner and so on is par for the course in our free speech society when one stands for something. But I would never attempt to censor your right to speak things that make me uncomfortable or angry.

I vehemently disagree with the American Library Association's stance that minor children should have access to all materials in the library. I have written extensively on that very subject. I have not seen you engage with the actual argument: Do children have the right to access ALL materials in the library?

You do not engage because you cannot. There are many books in the library that are not suitable for minors. Minors do not enjoy full rights as citizens until they reach the age of majority. You refuse to engage with the materials that are right now in our library's children and teen sections. You fail to reference the vile pictures, the early sexualization, the stories of incest and rape, the how-to scenarios and so on. And, you refuse to address the fact that parents have a right to curate--in taxpayer-funded schools and libraries--what materials are accessible to their children. It doesn't mean other parents are denied the right of access; it means the materials are restricted from the hands of children unless and until their parent agrees to provide them access.

It is ironic that you think nothing of publishing scurrilous articles on your website in the name of free speech, but would not grant your opposition the same right to speech with which you disagree. I have to conclude that you are falling back on pseudo-intellectual arguments about "ethical" and "good" speech because you have lost the high ground.

Third, you mention the separation of church and state. The library board, rightfully executing its constitutional duty not to censor speech, listened to a citizen speak of the eternal consequences of the decisions we make in this world. Every citizen, of whatever religion, has a right to speak about their faith in public spaces. The government has no business regulating such speech. What few restrictions there are on speech--such as threatening the life of others--is most certainly in place to protect the community from harm--but not offense.

It apparently bothers you greatly to hear fervent religious speech. I would suggest it discomforts you because your conscience has been pricked. And that is a very good thing. Whenever my conscience troubles me I see it as an indication I need to reflect on my thoughts and actions.

Fourth, to call for the suppression of free speech by our representative library board is antithetical to the rights of citizens and the lawful execution of the board's duties. Surely you see how ironic it is that you and your friends are insisting vulgar, age-inappropriate books be made available to children, yet in the next breath call for the censoring of adult citizens who disagree. This smacks of an indoctrination agenda because it is specifically aimed at vulnerable children.

Every single citizen who spoke at the library meeting was talking about the library. In the end, it was a certain type of speech with which you disagreed. No amount of couching the argument in terms of ethics or the common good can church up your intention to shut down speech you don't like. I urge you to rethink your position. The library board is not responsible for the speech of citizens during public comment, nor are they responsible for suppressing that speech.

Respectfully,

Gretchen Garrity