Pim, a 6-year-old little girl from Pittsburgh, has always wanted to be a Girl Scout. She’s big into school fundraising, and her popcorn sales accounted for 10% of the school’s total sales last year, her family told People. Pim’s parents met at Niagara Falls and always wanted to take Pim there. But when her dad fell ill, the expenses were too much for the family. When Pim found out one of this year’s top prizes for Girl Scout Cookies sales was a trip to Niagara Falls, she was all in. Pim’s dad, Lucas Anorak-Neill, explained that Pim had achieved some of her goal by selling door-to-door with family and through Facebook groups. No one expected Pim to go wildly viral on TikTok. @lifeofapim ♬ original sound – Luke Mandel Anorak-N The Little Girl Scout Sold Thousands of Boxes of Girl Scout Cookies Overnight We aren’t exaggerating, she sold thousands of Girl Scout Cookies in a matter of hours after her parents posted a TikTok video. “We posted it at 8:30 a.m.” Lucas said. “We woke up to more insane sales. She sold 20,000 boxes in 24 hours. Things got even more intense. Not only did Pim start breaking Girl Scout Cookie sales records for the year, but she’s also edging on breaking the all-time cookie sales record. Of course, there are plenty of naysayers out there who think Pim had an unfair advantage thanks to the success of her TikTok. But all is fair in love and cookies, right? The Girl Scouts of Western Pennsylvania certainly think so. They released a statement about Pim’s success to WAND. “Girl Scouts Western Pennsylvania sent WAND News a statement saying, “Girl Scouts Western Pennsylvania is so proud of Pim’s success in reaching her goals in the cookie program and excited about all the fun things her and her troop will do with the proceeds. The Girl Scout Cookie Program helps provide amazing experiences for girls of all ages, even for girls as young as kindergarten, like Pim. If you want to support Girl Scouts selling cookies in your area, visit girlscoutcookies.org to find a local booth, purchase cookies and/or to donate cookies for local community causes. All proceeds from cookie sales stay with local councils and troops to power Girl Scouts’ amazing experiences year-round,” the organization shared. If you’d like to support Pim, you can purchase cookies here. This story’s featured image can be found here.

In the service of the People of God, St. John Paul II was the Pope of the family. Throughout his life, he incessantly pointed out to the Church and to society the need to protect and promote the family as the vital cell of humanity. His pontificate has distinguished itself in its commitment to make people understand the nature and meaning of the family as a domestic Church, where spouses are called to form a community of persons, growing continually through daily fidelity to the marriage promise of total mutual self-giving. The magisterium of this great pontiff on family issues represents a sure point of reference for finding concrete solutions to the many difficulties and countless challenges that families have to face in our day.” For the Polish pope, the communion of the family was characterized not only by unity, but also by its indissolubility, and within this communion, one understands the nature and meaning of the family as the domestic Church. The family, therefore, realizing itself, that is, becoming an authentic community of persons united in God, is the revelation and specific realization of the community of the Church.” In the apostolic exhortation “Familiaris Consortio,” St. John Paul II highlighted the “social” task given to the family: “The family is the privileged environment where each person learns to give and receive love and it is a necessary good for peoples, an indispensable foundation for society and a great treasure of spouses throughout their lives.” In today’s world there are increasing attacks on the institution of the family. Modernity proposes a life without commitments, without fundamental principles and values derived from divine and natural law. A sign of this is the many divorces and cohabitations, and the consequent difficulties in raising children. Educating the younger generations to live the values is an enormous challenge today. Children—the future of society and of the whole world—learn in the family the first lessons of interpersonal coexistence, mutual respect and solidarity, which are the basis of peaceful coexistence between individuals, peoples, and entire nations. Alongside the religious dimension of the family, there is also a social dimension and today, unfortunately, we are witnessing the spread of distorted and very dangerous visions, fueled by relativistic ideologies, pervasively spread by the media. It is exactly because of this that here at The Heritage Foundation we worked hard on producing a new report arguing that American families are in crisis (declining birth and marriage rates, especially) and strengthening marriage and family formation should be a core focus of federal policy. The question that will determine the course of America’s future is: what happens to a nation when its citizens largely stop having children? The only way for America to thrive in the future is to rebuild the family and revive the institution of marriage. “The families of our time need to get back on track! They must follow Christ!” St. John Paul II used to say. In these words, we feel a strength and a conviction that cannot leave us indifferent and pushes us not to give up. Power will do everything to silence our voice, but we are certain that the commitment that we sow today in the hardened furrows of history will sprout and bear abundant fruit. The family, St. John Paul II repeated incessantly, is the “hope of humanity,” because in it, life is welcomed, from its conception to its natural end.It’s undeniable that the future of humanity passes through the family. It is therefore indispensable and urgent that every person of goodwill commit himself to saving and promoting the values and needs of the family.  Christians who fear of being labeled as enemies of humanity because they proclaim the truth, bow to diplomatic compromises with the world and distort the sacramental character of the Church. Saint Pope John Paul II wrote this beautiful prayer: Lord God, from You every family in Heaven and on earth takes its name. Father, You are love and life. Through Your Son, Jesus Christ, born of woman, and through the Holy Spirit, the fountain of divine charity, grant that every family on earth may become for each successive generation a true shrine of life and love. Grant that Your grace may guide the thoughts and actions of husbands and wives for the good of their families and of all the families in the world. Grant that the young may find in the family solid support for their human dignity and for their growth in truth and love. Grant that love, strengthened by the grace of the sacrament of marriage, may prove mightier than all the weaknesses and trials through which our families sometimes pass. Through the intercession of the Holy Family of Nazareth, grant that the Church may fruitfully carry out her worldwide mission in the family and through the family. We ask this of You, Who is life, truth and love with the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. May we all come together today reciting this powerful prayer, remembering ultimately what family is all about: Forget About Me I Love You! The post Saint Pope John Paul II Gave Us Timeless Lessons About Family appeared first on The Daily Signal.

There is a growing sense of frustration coursing through American politics, and it is no longer confined to one party or ideology. That frustration has real roots. Major institutions badly damaged their credibility during the COVID-19 pandemic, the excesses of the Black Lives Matter movement, and years of breathless coverage of Russiagate. At the same time, artificial intelligence looms over the labor market with few clear answers about what comes next. Add to that a political class that often appears shamelessly corrupt, and the result is a public that feels misled, ignored, and exposed. But frustration does not remain static. In the United States today, it is mutating into something darker: nihilism. This nihilism is built on an enormous lie. It tells people that America’s problems are unsolvable, that their personal struggles are not the result of bad decisions, bad luck, or even fixable structural flaws but of an all-encompassing evil system. In this story, shadowy elites control everything, success is impossible without “piercing the matrix,” and anyone who talks about personal responsibility or moral restraint must be part of the conspiracy itself. This mindset does not produce solutions. It prevents them. It short-circuits thought, discourages effort, and ultimately leads to personal and national self-destruction. Its political consequences are already visible: incoherence, radicalization, and a growing number of young Americans searching for meaning at the edges of society—sometimes with violent results. On Monday, Washington Post reporter Peter Whoriskey described a troubling pattern behind a series of recent attacks: “Amid a wave of high-profile killings and political violence in the United States, investigators have been confounded regularly by the absence of a recognizable agenda. … They were not Democrat or Republican, or Islamist militant, or antifa or white supremacist. “They were something new. In their manifestos, these attackers declared their contempt for humanity and a desire to see the collapse of civilization. Law enforcement officers and federal prosecutors have begun to describe these attacks as a contemporary strain of nihilism, an online revival of the philosophical stance that arose in the 19th century to deny the existence of moral truths and meaning in the universe.” History offers a warning here. Periods of upheaval have long been fertile ground for nihilistic violence. Fyodor Dostoyevsky captured this phenomenon in “Notes from the Underground” in 1864, describing the human impulse to reject reason, order, and even self-interest simply to assert independence. Strip people of the belief that they have meaningful choices, Dostoyevsky warned, and they will lash out—not despite the destruction that follows but because of it. This insight remains painfully relevant. When people are convinced that nothing they do matters, destruction begins to look like agency. The modern version of this thinking often takes the form of what philosopher Karl Popper famously called the “conspiracy theory of society.” Writing in the mid-20th century, Popper argued that as belief in divine forces faded, people replaced gods with sinister elites—imagined groups blamed for every social ill, from economic hardship to personal failure. There are, of course, real conspiracies. They involve identifiable people, specific actions, and evidence. What dominates American discourse today is something far more corrosive: The belief that everything is rigged, nothing is within individual control, and violence or pseudo-revolution is the only path forward. That belief is spreading quickly—and not by accident. This wave of nihilism is being actively cultivated by influencers and politicians who practice ideological arson and then market themselves as firefighters. They profit by persuading audiences that their lives are unfixable unless they surrender attention, money and power to the very figures stoking the despair. Nihilism is lucrative. Influencers monetize it. Politicians harness it—at least until it turns on them. The message being sold is simple: Society is rigged, the system is evil, and only by following the right personality, the right movement or the right “truth-teller” can you break free. It is a con dressed up as enlightenment. And it is one of the most dangerous cons of our time. America is living through an era thick with grift, cynicism, and manufactured despair. The real threat is not frustration itself but the lie that nothing can be done—and that burning everything down is the only remaining choice. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.  The post The Con Consuming American Politics appeared first on The Daily Signal.

This Post is for Paid Supporters Reclaim your digital freedom. Get the latest on censorship and surveillance, and learn how to fight back. SUBSCRIBE Already a supporter? Sign In. (If you’re already logged in but still seeing this, refresh this page to show the post.) The post The Best Discord Alternatives to Reclaim Control appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

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