Commentary Archives - Page 339 of 519

Time to Remove Socialist ‘Huddled Masses’ Plaque from Statue of Liberty

February 2, 2018/in Commentary, Immigration, Policy, Politics/by Dr. Rich Swier

With storied statues having come down from sea to shining sea the past year, it’s time for the same to happen with something somewhat newer: the socialist-born plaque in the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal.

Yeah, it’s the one with the “huddled masses” bit. There are good reasons for it to be removed, too — above and beyond the fact that our whole nation is being turned into a huddled mass.

The plaque contains the poem “The New Colossus,” written by socialist writer Emma Lazarus. It didn’t come with the statue, a gift from France unveiled in 1886, but was slapped on smack dab in the middle of the “Progressive Era” (in 1903). This was also the period that gave us other things as American as Lazarus’ poem, such as entry into WWI, the income tax and the notion that the Constitution could be considered a “living document” (Woodrow Wilson loved to bloviate about this).

The poem remained relatively obscure for decades, and we’d be well served if it stayed that way. Alas, though, it’s now well known. What’s not so well known is that the Statue of Liberty had nothing to do with immigration. That the poem helps create the confusion that it does is enough of a reason to remove it, but there are others as well:

Many now see the poem’s most famous line, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,” as a policy statement. In fact, former secretary of state Madeleine Albright (Halfbright?) tweeted last year, “There is no fine print on the Statue of Liberty. America must remain open to people of all faiths & backgrounds. #RefugeesWelcome.”

“Fine print,” of course, is the way you speak of law or a contract. That the poem is being used this way should give everyone pause.

“The New Colossus” was an example of 19th-century virtue signaling. It’s also more than troubling that policy is being influenced by sentiments that most don’t even know have a socialist pedigree. In fact, as a socialist, Lazarus could be seen as having been an (unwitting) enemy of America.

Having said this, she’s not the only 19th-century socialist shaping policy — there’s Bernie Sanders, too.

Today, the huddled masses aren’t yearning to breathe free; they’re yearning for free stuff. Immigration ain’t what it used to be, and romanticizing immigrants distorts reality; being people, they include the good, the bad and the ugly. I’d sooner see the romanticizing of citizens, though truth beats incessant pep talks any day.
Created by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the Statue of Liberty was originally intended to symbolize the principles of international republicanism; again, it had nothing to do with immigration. And as with the Constitution, we’d do well to return to original intent.

This is especially true because the huddled-masses bit now buttresses what I dubbed immigrationism, the bizarre notion that immigration is always good, always necessary and should be the one constant in an ever-changing universe of policy. Yet with 85 to 90 percent of today’s immigrants hailing from the Third World and 70 to 90 percent of them voting for freedom-squelching Democrats upon naturalization, there’s an irony here: The phenomenon now represented by the Statue of Liberty is destroying liberty.

This, of course, is why leftists love today’s immigration. If most of these huddled masses voted GOP, the Democrats would have long ago changed the statue’s plaque to read, “America is full. Stay wherever the heck you are.”

Regardless, immigration is far from as American as apple pie. In fact, 21 years after Lazarus’ poem was placed on the statue, immigration was severely restricted via the enactment of the National Origins Act in 1924. Back then our population was only 114 million, mind you.

Now, having almost tripled, it’s 327 million — and counting.

And with our stable fertility rate, it only grows because of immigration. When will we say enough is enough? When our population is 400 million? A half-billion? One billion? George Soros may want to make our population stats look like his bank account, but, c’mon, really, talk about “teeming shores.”

This is yet another reason why the socialist plaque should be removed from the Statue of Liberty. Oh, don’t worry, I’m not proposing it be destroyed. To echo the opponents of Confederate monuments, it can be put in a museum — where it belongs.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of the Statue of Liberty is seen in New York harbor in a June 2, 2009 photo. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Bizarre Sleeping Habits of 61 Famous People [Infographic]

February 2, 2018/in Commentary, Culture War, Science/by Dr. Rich Swier

By Raj Vardhman

We’re constantly reminded how important getting seven to eight hours of sleep is in order to function normally. Yet, for some of the most successful people on Earth, sleep is a precious commodity. Their sleeping habits often affect how well they perform on the job and they do everything they can not let it get on their way. Sacrificing the sleeping time or cracking an individual sleeping pattern that feels right for them is a common thing for many famous people.

For example, Thomas Edison and Leonardo da Vinci thought sleep is a waste of time and only took power naps during the day. On the other hand, Obama and Schwarzenegger get a six hours solid sleep.

From creating a special atmosphere to establishing a specific positioning manner, this CelebJury infographic illustrates the bizarre sleeping habits of some of the most famous people.

State of the Union Unveiled the Democrats Last Night, the Media Today

January 31, 2018/in Commentary, Culture War, Immigration, Policy, Politics/by Rod Thomson

Last night’s State of the Union was revelatory — not in the substance of the speech, which was powerful, emotional, energetic and hopeful — but in the stoney responses of Democratic leadership seated in the chamber and in the wildly negative, unrealistic media reporting today.

President Trump was at his very best, delivering an optimistic, bold, energetic, accomplished, emotional speech, the “presidential” act so many people have been claiming to want. It is possible we are seeing a guy not only learning how to govern in a deeply corrupt environment, but also perhaps showing a different way forward for America from here that looks more like the later 1980s than the 2000s.

That was some of the best Trump ever…unless you are in the media or a partisan Democrat. Americans agree with that assessment.

A CBS Poll found that the speech was very well received by Americans who watched it, with 75 percent being positive and 25 percent negative. Even 44 percent of self-identified Democrats found it positive. Similarly, a CNN Poll found 48 percent positive to 22 percent negative, the rest being “somewhat positive.” Those polls will likely shift with media “coverage.”

These have always have partisan affairs, with the party out of power not standing or clapping for elements. But last night was something totally different. At least 11 Democrats boycotted it, and one walked out during it. There was virtually no unity, even in the most basic patriotic, flag-waving, mom-and-apple-pie moments.

The speech and Democrats

The high points:

➡ For everyone who wanted Trump to be more presidential, there it was. In fact, that was almost a classic speech, quintessentially conservative, traditionalist and, most importantly, pro-American. Most Americans outside D.C. and the media don’t have a problem with a pro-American policy.

➡ There is nothing Trump, or Republicans, can do at this point to try to unify the most partisan Democrats (which is most of those in Congress.) The media is overboard in its bias, and Americans who watch the speech and then see the “reporting” realize just how little they can trust these media outlets. This is the largest driving cause of the bifurcation in the country — those who watch, trust and believe the media and those who do not.

➡ There were at least three tear-swelling moments. The very real stories of tragedies stemming from terrible policies. There was the story of two black girls brutally murdered in their school by six MS13 gang members who came into the country illegally. (Democrats embarrassingly groaned and the Congressional Black Caucus was stoney-faced.) There was the tragedy of the American student tortured and killed by North Korea and the North Korean defector who was tortured and escaped across China and Asia on crutches to reach freedom. These are brutalities previous presidents could have prevented or limited. If you didn’t feel something when the four parents of the girls’ murdered and the parents of the Ohio student killed by North Korea were trying to hold it together, unsuccessfully, you have no heart. Step far, far away from politics, far away from Trump news, and reassess your life.

➡ I kept wondering how many votes Democrats were losing with each of their sourpuss, angry, muttering, seething faces. How does that win support? And this all happening during a speech touting an awful lot of good stuff going on — and popular decisions taken, according to the CBS Poll. It’s not clear that the Democrats’ slam-dunk to win the House in November is any more assured than their (non) victories in November 2016.

➡ The Congressional Black Caucus stayed angry and hateful when Trump reported the black unemployment rate is the lowest in 45 years and incomes are rising. This was not a good look.

➡ Trump encouraged patriotism, standing for the flag, etc. Democrats sat on their hands. Perhaps the driving hatred of Trump by Democrats and the media is that he is pursuing traditional conservative policies at a rapid rate and seeing success, while wrapping those policy successes around an unusual and sometimes abrasive presidential personality.

➡ Trump proposed $1.6 trillion in infrastructure (which is a totally liberal policy) and amnesty for about four million illegal immigrants (DACA former kids, which is supportable, and chain migration for their families, which is also liberal.) So two liberal policies Democrats love and push for and both go beyond what Obama even tried. And still Democrats sat on their hands and seethed. It doesn’t really look like they want what is best for America — even when they are the very policies they think are best — if it comes from Trump.

The State of the Union media coverage

The high points:

➡ First, if you did not watch the address, do not watch or read any media coverage. It is a partisan divorce from reality. Watch the speech on Youtube, so you aren’t deceived. Even moderate, media-loving Hugh Hewitt has finally seen it, saying this morning “the media has totally thrown in with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. This is very bad for the country.” Yes. First I’ve heard anything like that from him.

➡ ABC’s Martha Raddatz called the speech “gloomy.” (How much do you have to hate Trump to listen to the content of his speech and call it “gloomy?” That’s a rhetorical question.)

➡ A CNN analysis called it “open-handed and clenched fist.” Clenched fist? The analysis went on to spend time on the “corrosive daily toll of the Russia investigation” and then returned to it later “as the Russia scandal races to a crisis point.”

➡ NBC Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd said that : Trump’s speech “set things back,” and “offended a lot of Democrats.”

➡ ABC News’ Chief Political Analyst Matthew Dowd said, “The last time (a super blue blood moon) was visible in the United States was in the 1860s and I think we are as divided now as we were then, back when that rose the last time in the United States.” That was a clumsy reference to a unique astronomical event.

➡ NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel conflated Trump’s comments on illegal immigration with a discussion of all immigration. “It’s the anti-immigrant rhetoric from a nation of immigrants that has many world powers confused,” he commented. Well yes, there is confusion here.

➡ Bloomberg’s headline and lead focused on the “divisive tone.”

➡ Fox News’ Chris Wallace immediately labeled the speech “way too long.”

➡ CNN’s Editor-at-Large Chris Cillizza‏ made fun of how Trump read the speech: “Trump reading the teleprompter is an odd thing. He always seems sort of surprised by the next words.”

➡ And amazingly, CNN White House reporter Kate Bennett pondered out loud why First Lady Melania Trump went to the capitol separately from the president, implying problems, and then actually tried to suggest Melania wore white to protest her husband’s policies against women because last year female members of Congress wore white to the event.

You get the picture. The media response to the speech was as pre-ordained as the Democrats’ official rebuttal and is totally unrelated in a fair and honest way to the content of the speech.

Last night, the veil was pulled back on Democrats. Today, it is pulled back on the media.

Our country is not in a good place on the unity front. But less and less does it appear to be on Trump and more and more on the wildly inappropriate reactions to Trump by a deeply dishonest, partisan media and almost shockingly hate-filled Democrats.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The Revolutionary Act. Please visit The Revolutionary Act’s YouTube channel.

Why and how we must fight to subdue FacebookGoogleTwitter

January 30, 2018/in Commentary, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by The Peoples Cube

Just last week I read a story by John Hawkins, How Conservatives Are Being Destroyed by Facebook, Twitter and Google Without Even Realizing It, where the author announced that he’d been forced to shut down his Right Wing News website and explained that in today’s social media environment, a conservative’s chances to get a political website off the ground are infinitesimal.

Then I read a story on The Daily Caller about Google having an actual secret speech police that blocks, demonetizes, and otherwise censors conservative content.

Then I received a screenshot from one of my readers, who is a U.S. Army officer, showing that my People’s Cube has been blocked by the DoD Enterprise-Level Protection System – not because of our silly anti-Left humor, but because of “hate and racism” – a blatantly false label, probably transferred from one of the blacklists shared by social media and the government (or at least the Deep State part of it). I’ve recently written about it in FrontPage Mag.

And just this morning, I received dozens of messages from my readers that Facebook wasn’t allowing them to post or share any People’s Cube links.

Different people, posting different links throughout the day, received this standard response: “We removed this post because it looks like spam and doesn’t follow our Community Standards.” The user has an option to contest this assumption. Not everyone has the time or patience for it, but a few readers persisted and sent me the screenshots.

At some point in the past Facebook had also started to limit the number of shares on our posts, explaining it by a new proportional algorithm. As a result, our traffic had dropped significantly. Many people have told me that, even though they “follow” our Facebook page, they never receive updates (but some still do). And now this.

One could say, “Forget FacebookGoogleTwitter, we shouldn’t have to rely on them anyway.” In an ideal world, maybe. But in this world, it’s the same as saying “We don’t need Amtrak to take a train to another city” when we know that Amtrak has replaced all other intercity train operators.

Back in 2005, when I started the People’s Cube, there existed a wide variety of online communities and forums where people shared links and gave us traffic, and we responded in kind. Now that variety has been almost entirely replaced by FacebookGoogleTwitter.

Why we must stop them

Visualize a field with blooming wild flowers; it seems to be endless. This is a national preserve, which means it’s public property and everyone is allowed to go there for a walk, pick flowers, or house a beehive and make honey. There is a great diversity of native plants of all colors, with bees and other small creatures flying from flower to flower, feeding on the nectar and transporting the pollen.

Now imagine that a young scientist makes an accidental discovery and creates a genetically modified blue flower that is stronger, healthier, and yields more nectar, allowing bees to make tastier honey. The seeds get thrown into the field and since the new plant has superior qualities, it soon outcompetes and replaces all other plants. Slowly but surely, the previous natural diversity is supplanted with a genetically modified monoculture. Some people sound an alarm, but they are told not to worry because it’s all for the common good. The bees are still thriving and the field is still blooming, except that now it’s all blue.

A few years go by. Suddenly people begin to notice that the blue flowers prefer some bees over others. They investigate and discover that the young scientist, who now runs a big company, has colluded with a honey-making conglomerate (identified by the letter “D”) and added another genetic modification to his blue flowers so they would only feed the D-bees and repel the competitors’ bees. The field is now surrounded with sleek billboards that promote the D-conglomerate as the only worthy maker of honey, and disparage the competition as the makers of poison. Independent beekeepers suffer losses and many go out of business.

People realize they’ve been duped. They miss the variety of choices that came with competition and freedom. They’d like to bring the original scents and colors back, but the blue monoculture won’t allow anything else to grow in its midst. Uprooting the entire new species would destroy the field and disrupt the wildlife that now lives in a symbiotic relationship with the blue flowers. And most of the previously thriving plants are extinct anyway, with the rest having mutated to survive on the preserves’ edges.

People petition the scientist-turned-businessman to stop colluding with the D-conglomerate and to re-engineer the blue flower so it can coexist with other plants and bees. He responds through his lawyers that his private company has a right to make its own rules, he can associate with whomever he wants, and everyone is absolutely free not to use his services.

He is correct on all counts, except that he doesn’t own the field. He has every right to compete and win, but not the right to use underhanded trickery in order to limit people’s equal access and choices.

If a contractor moved into a village and built superior houses for every family, people would be very grateful. But if they were to find out that at some point he started injecting chemicals into the walls so as to modify people’s behavior to his liking, that contractor would’ve been tarred and feathered. The FacebookGoogleTwitter situation is similar, minus the pitchforks and torches.

The idea that “we don’t need FacebookGoogleTwitter to drive traffic” is silly because FacebookGoogleTwitter has already replaced most pre-existing sources of Internet traffic, just like the blue monoculture has replaced all other flowers, and the new tainted housing has replaced the old one. There’s very little left on the Internet that is not in some way connected to these media giants. Unless something even more superior comes along very soon, which seems unlikely, we are stuck with FacebookGoogleTwitter.

Forcing them to change their manipulative ways may be difficult, but not impossible. We just need to make them an offer they can’t refuse. I’m not a fan of regulating businesses, but if something was bent by force, it requires force to unbend it, so please hear me out.

How we can fight and win

We use the internet to obtain and share information. But what is information? Is it a tool, a commodity, a weapon, a toy, a luxury item, or a basic necessity? It is all of the above and more.

Essential human needs result in the existence of products of dual nature and value. For example, a house can be a commercial product bought and sold on the market, but its other value is that of a family dwelling where children grow up and create their first impressions about the world – a home that becomes an inseparable part of their lives. That’s why “primary residence” has a different status from other houses you may own; the latter are valued only as financial assets. This also explains why taking away a family house or kicking out a tenant for nonpayment is legally more complicated than repossessing a car, a boat, or any other nonessential commercial product.

A similar duality exists in healthcare, which can be a commercial service provided to a customer at market prices, but it can also be a matter of life and death, essential to our wellbeing and quality of life. This is why healthcare is regulated more than any other commercial service and often must be provided regardless of the patient’s ability to pay for it in the emergency room.

Other examples of such duality include food, pharmaceuticals, and education – all having simultaneously a commercial and an existential value. But we somehow rarely think the same way about information, and that is to our detriment.

Throughout history, the human mind has been our main tool of survival. To live, we depend on accurate information about our surroundings. This makes the objective truth a basic human need. Truthful information is as essential to our existence as food, shelter, and clothing. In societies where information is distorted and suppressed by totalitarian governments, people usually die in large numbers.

But information can also be a commercial product, bought and sold at market prices by specialized organizations that have amassed great fortunes in doing so. Good for them. However, as the historian Robert Conquest pointed out, “Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.” And the Left by default is prone to manipulate information in a way that suits its agenda at the expense of the general population.

Leftists in the government are obsessed with regulating all products and services, essential or not. They’d like to regulate information as well – see the Fairness Doctrine and Net Neutrality. Conservatives have always instinctively opposed that trend, guided by the principle, “Whatever the Left does, we must do the opposite.” This kneejerk impulse to take the “diametrically opposite position” has often allowed the Left to toy with conservatives and lure them into absurd situations where they fought phantom causes. In part, due to such “diametrical” thinking, the anti-regulation conservatives withdrew themselves from the regulatory process, effectively giving the Left free reign in shaping government regulations.

Enter Donald J. Trump. Right off the bat he introduces what I call “perpendicular thinking,”meaning that instead of jumping to the opposite, he goes vaguely perpendicular. This disorients the Left (as well as some anti-Trump “diametrical” conservatives), forcing them to take unpopular and ridiculous positions on the opposite side of his choosing. And while Trump is beating the Left at their own game, keeping them confused and unable to deal with their new role of the “diametrical opposition,” we should move in and do some “perpendicular” regulation.

Let’s agree for the sake of argument that information, having the dual commercial and existential value, must be regulated the same way we regulate other dual-value products like food, housing, or healthcare.

Emergency rooms are required to accept all patients regardless of their income. Housing regulations require landlords, realtors, and mortgage bankers to serve all customers equally, even if it goes against their subjective judgment. Food companies are required to label their products with precise quantities and daily values of ingredients.

At the same time, the product called “information” is regulated in the exactly opposite fashion. It is being filtered, altered, rejected, or exaggerated according to arbitrary and subjective markers and biases, creating a distorted and fraudulent picture of reality. If a food manufacturer tried to label his products the same way, he would be sued out of existence. Imagine buying fruit juice labeled with 0% sugar instead of the actual 100% and 100% of vitamin C instead of the actual 0%.

This clearly falls into the jurisdiction of the newly reformed Bureau of Consumer Protection, whose stated goal is to stop unfair, deceptive and fraudulent business practices by:

collecting complaints and conducting investigations
suing companies and people that break the law
developing rules to maintain a fair marketplace
educating consumers and businesses about their rights and responsibilities.

Some have proposed to regulate the Internet through the FCC, but that is fraught with equating the web with a public utility, which is subject to government rationing of free speech – a pitfall avoided by the recent repeal of Net Neutrality.

In contrast, the Bureau of Consumer Protection would treat the Internet as a marketplace for commercial products, one of which is information. Instead of regulating free speech, it would protect consumers against fraud.

On June 19, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court rendered unconstitutional any restriction of speech based on the so-called “hate speech” allegations, unanimously reaffirming that there is no “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment. Justice Anthony Kennedy explains this decision as follows:

A law that can be directed against speech found offensive to some portion of the public can be turned against minority and dissenting views to the detriment of all. The First Amendment does not entrust that power to the government’s benevolence. Instead, our reliance must be on the substantial safeguards of free and open discussion in a democratic society.

And yet, the unconstitutional and deceptively named “hate speech” gimmick is being excessively used to suppress conservative and libertarian speech by social media moderators and by algorithms embedded in FacebookGoogleTwitter code. The same gimmick is also being widely used today by speech police in many organizations, including educational and government entities, in clear violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Media giants may beg to differ and remind us of their status as private companies that can make their own internal rules. But if their main product is information, which has an existential value to our society, they can no more hide behind their private status than the landlords or mortgage bankers can.

That means that FacebookGoogleTwitter and other media giants can be forced by law to discard their manipulative “hate speech” and other ideological filters and to allow a free flow of information lest they be sued by the Bureau of Consumer Protection for violating consumer rights. Wikipedia can be sued for its grotesquely biased suppression and misrepresentation of political reality, which creates a very skewed image of the world. For added entertainment value, CNN with its “Facts First” brand campaign can probably also be sued for false advertisement.

Unhinged hateful rhetoric coming from the Left never gets to be branded “hate speech,” nor is it ever blocked on social media. This alone makes the “hate speech” label meaningless and exposes the one-sided ideological agenda behind it. Of course, no logical argument will ever convince the leftist agenda-driven “hate speech police” to give up their dominance over the national debate voluntarily. Instead, this unethical practice must be outlawed legislatively, as an unconstitutional impediment to free exchange of information.

If we outlaw the corrupt system of “hate speech” policing, it will do a lot more than just free up the Internet and the rest of the media. It will pull the rug from under various demagogues who profit from the harassment of conservatives. It will clear many honest people of libelous allegations. It will demolish the sordid cottage industry of “hate speech watchers,” like the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose fundraising is directly proportional to how many honorable people they can defame as “haters” and who compile dubious blacklists, which are then used as guidance by FacebookGoogleTwitter and the mainstream media to silence or disparage conservative figures.

Social media should certainly continue to block real spam and clickbait sites with fake news (they do exist). The trick is that online reprobates aren’t likely to file a complaint and seek government protection from being blocked – unlike legitimate content providers who can and should request an investigation if they are being suppressed. Terrorist messaging can be dealt with by working with law enforcement professionals, not with SPLC and similar amateurs who have a shady agenda.

Before conservatives are erased from the Internet, legal minds in the conservative movement had better select an appropriate case of content suppression and stage an exemplary class action lawsuit that would create a seminal precedent for all future cases. If no legal ground for such a lawsuit exists, we must work with our legislators to create it.

The Left has been using such legal tactics and winning the culture wars ever since the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial – an orchestrated court drama which was later mythologized by Hollywood in Inherit The Wind.

Conservatives who are philosophically opposed to regulation may not like this method, but realistically and objectively, this seems to be the least worst solution to get out of the memory hole designated for us by the leftist media giants.

People on our side should stop pretending that we are not in the middle of an all-out war waged by the Left against conservative media. We won’t survive if we continue to react to leftist attacks by lying down and taking positions whose only value is in being diametrically opposite to those of the attackers. It’s time we went perpendicular.

RELATED ARTICLE: Google Partners with Anti-Semitic Islamists

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on FrontPage Magazine.

This Junk-Science Approach to Sexual Assault Cases Would Trample on Rights of the Accused

January 30, 2018/in Commentary, Courts & Law, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by The Daily Signal

A group of bipartisan congressmen have introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that would award monetary grants to law enforcement and related agencies that use so-called “trauma-informed investigation” for handling cases of sexual violence and stalking.

The money distributed under H.R. 4720 would directly fund training programs that instruct relevant personnel on a “trauma-informed” approach to crimes of sexual violence, informed by “the fundamentals of the neurobiology of trauma [and the] impact of trauma on victims.”

H.R. 4720 pursues the admirable goal of promoting justice in the interests of victims. However, despite these good intentions, it fails to achieve that goal and instead promotes a scientifically unsound pseudo-science and a criminal justice theory completely at odds with well-established concepts of procedural due process.

Congress should reject this effort to fundamentally alter the role of the impartial police investigator.

What is a ‘trauma-informed’ investigation?

Trauma-informed investigative practices are an offspring of the “Start by Believing” campaign, launched in 2011 by End Violence Against Women International as part of its goal to “transform the way we respond to sexual assault.”

As the name suggests, the basic premise of the campaign is to dramatically reconstruct the role of law enforcement officers, detectives, and other investigators of sexual assault by training them to focus on how the complainant could be telling the truth despite evidence to the contrary.

Under this approach, investigators should no longer be neutral, third-party fact-gatherers, but agents of the person alleging sexual assault. They should assume all complainants are genuine victims and must find ways of making even inconsistent, inaccurate, and exculpatory evidence support the complainant’s allegations.

“Trauma-informed investigation” theory attempts to cloak “Start by Believing” with an air of scientific credibility, instructing investigators and adjudicators of assault claims to consider the “neurobiology of trauma” and how it affects an alleged victim’s behaviors and ability to recall information.

Proponents of this theory claim that trauma—such as being sexually assaulted—often causes a disabling physiological response that severely inhibits victims’ memories of an event, limits their cognizance of time frames, and results in actions otherwise considered abnormal by a passive observer.

In layman’s terms, “trauma-informed” investigators are told to ignore standard red flags, such as inconsistent accounts, counterintuitive behavioral responses, and even factually wrong statements, because these things are normal from trauma victims.

In fact, because these are the exact type of responses expected of “real victims,” their presence should be interpreted as evidence that the complainant experienced psychological trauma and must be telling the truth.

‘Trauma-informed investigation’: Scientifically and legally problematic

There are two substantial problems with the use of a “trauma-informed” approach to criminal investigations.

First, it is based on “junk science” with no grounding in reality. Second, its use necessarily destroys very important due process safeguards, effectively stacking the deck against any person accused of sexual assault and increasing the risk of erroneous convictions.

It is absolutely true that victims of trauma will respond to the experience in a variety of ways, some of which may be out of step with how even the victim thought he or she would react.

It is also true that people who experience the most severe cases of trauma—such as those who spend time in war zones—may have gaps in their memory of the events. Such gaps can also exist due to the presence of drugs or alcohol, which limit the brain’s ability to form and retain memories.

However, there is no scientific support for claims that victims of trauma store infallible, but “fragmented,” memories, as proponents of the neurobiology of trauma contend.

In fact, many studies seem to indicate an opposite conclusion. As Richard McNally, a Harvard psychology professor and expert on trauma and memory, notes in his book “Remembering Trauma,” extreme stress is known to often enhance the subsequent recall of life-threatening incidents.

This is not to say that this enhanced recall will always be present, but it is certainly not evidence tending to support a theory that victims of trauma suffer from memory-recall problems as a general rule.

Equally disturbing is the apparent lack of concern from proponents about the well-documented malleability of memory, or the very real likelihood that complainants can be vulnerable to post-event suggestions that lead them to label consensual acts as rape.

As one writer from The Atlantic has noted, the neurobiology of trauma theory is eerily reminiscent of the “repressed memory” scare of the 1980s and 1990s, which is now widely regarded as “psychiatric folklore devoid of convincing empirical support.”

The use of “trauma-informed investigation” in criminal cases also poses significant, perhaps even irreconcilable, constitutional problems. Under the Fifth and 14th Amendments, no person may be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

Procedural due process ensures that a defendant facing criminal charges receives adequate and fair proceedings for the determination of his guilt or innocence. Although what constitutes “fairness” is relative and may depend on the circumstances of the particular defendant (Snyder v. Massachusetts), there are certain safeguards that the Supreme Court has determined are absolutely necessary to the provision of procedural due process.

The presence of an impartial investigator concerned with separating fact from fiction—one who does not take sides, but who gathers and analyzes evidence in a neutral light—is a principle vitally important to the concept of fundamental fairness.

Like the presumption of innocence and the use of a reasonable-doubt standard, the use of neutral investigators is a prime instrument in reducing the risk of convictions based on factual errors.

But this is, in fact, the very purpose of “trauma-informed” investigation. In the words of Janet Halley, a professor at Harvard Law School, the intended effect of “trauma-informed” investigation training is “100 percent aimed to convince [training recipients] to believe complainants, precisely when they seem unreliable and incoherent.”

One poignant illustration of just how devastating “trauma-informed” investigations can be to due process is the case of a male former student at the University of Oregon who is now suing the school and several school officials after finally having his suspension for sexual assault overturned by a judge.

The student, known only as John Doe, was accused of rape by a female student, whose inconsistent—and sometimes blatantly false—testimony was either ignored or, worse, weaponized under the “neurobiology of trauma” theory as proof that she was raped.

The stunning ways school investigators managed to ignore the overwhelming weight of the evidence is detailed in John Doe’s complaint, which was filed in federal district court.

If Congress is truly worried about helping victims of sexual assault, it will not fund training programs designed to obfuscate the due process rights of every person accused of this heinous crime.

Due process safeguards are not obstacles to be overcome or avoided. They are, on the contrary, precious protections of liberty to be cherished in a free society that values justice and equality before the law.

Depriving defendants of due process rights does not make justice easier to obtain, but harder to obtain, because it taints convictions with the most conscience-damning burden known to a just society; namely, doubt.

When the even-handed and fair nature of a society’s justice system sits in doubt, its legitimacy as an institution sits equally in doubt.

This article has been corrected to reflect the political parties of the lawmakers introducing the bill.

COMMENTARY BY

Amy Swearer

Amy Swearer is a visiting legal fellow at the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Twitter: @AmySwearer.

A Note for our Readers:

Trust in the mainstream media is at a historic low—and rightfully so given the behavior of many journalists in Washington, D.C.

Ever since Donald Trump was elected president, it is painfully clear that the mainstream media covers liberals glowingly and conservatives critically.

Now journalists spread false, negative rumors about President Trump before any evidence is even produced.

Americans need an alternative to the mainstream media. That’s why The Daily Signal exists.

The Daily Signal’s mission is to give Americans the real, unvarnished truth about what is happening in Washington and what must be done to save our country.

Our dedicated team of more than 100 journalists and policy experts rely on the financial support of patriots like you.

Your donation helps us fight for access to our nation’s leaders and report the facts.

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Transgender Ideology Hurts Kids

January 30, 2018/in Commentary, Culture War, Policy, Politics, Science, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by The Daily Signal

Properly understanding sex, gender, gender identity, and gender dysphoria will continue to be pressing concerns in 2018.

A proper understanding is a prerequisite for properly forming people in the truth and properly ministering to people in need.

As new gender ideologies are promoted throughout America, their lies will impact not only those who suffer from gender dysphoria, but all children who need to mature in their self-understanding as a boy or girl, man or woman, a potential husband or wife, father or mother.

In 2007, Boston Children’s Hospital “became the first major program in the United States to focus on transgender children and adolescents,” as its website brags. A decade later, more than 45 pediatric gender clinics have opened their doors to our nation’s children.

Parents are told that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones may be the only way to prevent their children from committing suicide.

Never mind that the best studies of gender dysphoria show that between 80 and 95 percent of children who express a discordant gender identity will come to identify with their bodily sex if natural development is allowed to proceed.

Never mind that “transitioning” treatment has not been shown to reduce the extraordinarily high rate of suicide attempts among people who identify as transgender (41 percent, compared with 4.6 percent of the general population).

Never mind that people who have had transition surgery are 19 times more likely to die by suicide.

These statistics should be enough to halt the headlong rush into “transitioning” and prompt us to find more effective ways to prevent these tragic outcomes. Most of all, we shouldn’t be encouraging children to “transition,” or making heroes and role models of those who have done so.

We should be tolerant—indeed, loving—toward those who struggle with their gender identity, but also be aware of the harm done to the common good, particularly to children, when transgender identity is normalized.

Transgender activists are not merely asking for tolerance or kindness. They are demanding affirmation, not just from adults but from children and adolescents who are already challenged by the normal process of sexual development.

In a culture where transgender identities are not only affirmed but celebrated, everyone will be compelled to construct their own gender identity, unaided by a common understanding of sex differences and why they matter.

In my new book “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment,” I show that the best biology, psychology, and philosophy all support an understanding of sex as a bodily reality, and an understanding of gender as a social manifestation of bodily sex. Biology isn’t bigotry.

A sound understanding of gender rejects sex stereotypes on the one hand and androgyny on the other. The virtuous mean is a view of gender that reveals meaningful sex differences and communicates the difference they make—a view that takes sex differences seriously while upholding the fundamental equality of the sexes as complements to one another.

The most helpful therapies do not try to remake the body to conform with thoughts and feelings—which is impossible—but rather to help people find healthy ways to manage their tension and move toward accepting the reality of their bodily selves.

My book provides a nuanced view of our sexed embodiment, a balanced approach to policy issues involving transgender identity and gender more broadly, and a sober and honest survey of the human costs of getting human nature wrong.

COMMENTARY BY

Ryan T. Anderson

Ryan T. Anderson, Ph.D., is the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow in American Principles and Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation, where he researches and writes about marriage, bioethics, religious liberty and political philosophy. Anderson is the author of several books and his research has been cited by two U.S. Supreme Court justices in two separate cases. Read his Heritage research. Twitter: @RyanTAnd. For more on how to understand transgender issues, get a copy of Ryan Anderson’s new book “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment.”

RELATED ARTICLES:

Planned Transgenderhood

The Ugly Truth About Sex Reassignment the Transgender Lobby Doesn’t Want You to Know [+video]

A Note for our Readers:

Trust in the mainstream media is at a historic low—and rightfully so given the behavior of many journalists in Washington, D.C.

Ever since Donald Trump was elected president, it is painfully clear that the mainstream media covers liberals glowingly and conservatives critically.

Now journalists spread false, negative rumors about President Trump before any evidence is even produced.

Americans need an alternative to the mainstream media. That’s why The Daily Signal exists.

The Daily Signal’s mission is to give Americans the real, unvarnished truth about what is happening in Washington and what must be done to save our country.

Our dedicated team of more than 100 journalists and policy experts rely on the financial support of patriots like you.

Your donation helps us fight for access to our nation’s leaders and report the facts.

You deserve the truth about what’s going on in Washington.

Please make a gift to support The Daily Signal.

SUPPORT THE DAILY SIGNAL

Why Do Black People Allow the Mainstream Media to Choose their Leaders?

January 29, 2018/in Commentary, Culture War, Policy, Politics/by Raynard Jackson

I am fond of saying, “weak people take strong positions on weak issues.”

There is no better example of this than the embarrassing behavior of the weak Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the National Urban League (NUL).

These groups have all feigned righteous indignation about the alleged negative comments made by President Trump two weeks ago about Haiti, Africa, and El Salvador.

Yes, our president can be extremely hyperbolic at times, but the essence of what he said was very true. Those countries, including many in Africa, are basket cases.

So, all of the aforementioned radical liberal groups ran over their mothers to get to a news camera to denounce the president for his alleged statement.

With all the issues facing the Black community, CBC members joined other Democrats to attempt to pass a resolution through the U.S. House of Representatives to censure Trump for his comments, a symbolic gesture that must have kept Trump awake all night.

Derrick Johnson, the president and CEO of the NAACP called Trump a “racist.”

Wow. I am sure that Trump is going to change his ways now.

Marc Morial, the president and CEO of the NUL, said that “President Trump’s crude comments further reveal the repugnant racial motivations behind his administration’s immigration policies.”

Trump must be shaking in his boots.

I challenge my readers to find any issue directly related to Blacks in the U.S., i.e. American citizens, that these groups have put so much political and emotional capital in. It seems that these “media-appointed” Black leaders care more about those in the country illegally, homosexuals, or other groups that have no connection to America than they do the very people they “claim” to represent.

Juxtapose their reactions to Trump’s alleged comments to their relative silence on the murder of Laquan McDonald in Chicago in 2014. He was murdered by Chicago police; they claimed that it was in self-defense, but the actual video revealed that the police lied and that McDonald posed no threat to the policemen.

Former Democratic congressman and Obama’s first chief of staff and Chicago mayor at the time of the police murder, Rahm Emanuel refused to release the video until after his campaign for re-election in 2015 (which he ultimately won).

Emanuel has proven his total disdain for Blacks with his actions, not his rhetoric. Chicago is one of the most dangerous and violent cities in America. Where was the CBC’s outrage at this? Why was there no attempt to censure Emanuel? Why are they not marching through the streets of Chicago?

The NAACP and the UL have not convened a meeting or massive demonstration against Emanuel to denounce him as a racist. Oh, I forgot, he is a Democrat, therefore, he can’t be racist.

Just because you are the head of an organization, doesn’t mean you are a leader. Can you name me the leaders of the White community? But, I digress.

Members of the CBC are willing to oppose the short-term, Republican-sponsored spending bill, because that bill didn’t include a long-term fix for President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program; even though this move would have devastating effects on the Black community, the same group they “claim” to represent.

Can you name me one issue that was of specific urgency to the Black community that the CBC has ever shut down the government for? Name me one member of the CBC that has a bill passed in his name? Name me one member of the CBC that has his name attached to a bill that became law, i.e. Sarbanes-Oxley, or the Hyde Amendment.

To the NAACP and the UL: Why is amnesty for illegals a “moral” imperative, but the high crime rate in the Black community isn’t? Why wasn’t the double-digit Black unemployment rate under eight years of Obama a “moral” imperative?

Remember the famous quote from former chair of the CBC and congressman from Mo., Emanuel Cleaver from September 2011: “If Obama were White, we’d be marching on the White House.” This remark was made in regard to Obama doing nothing to reduce the Black unemployment rate, which was around 17 percent at the time.

Why do these “media-appointed” leaders make everyone else’s issues their issue? When have you heard the illegals speaking out against the high unemployment rate in the Black community or discrimination in college admissions?

When have you seen the homosexual community speak out against housing discrimination towards Blacks or lack of access to capital for Black business owners?

Can anyone explain to me why these radical, Black liberal groups are ignoring the needs of their own community to focus on the issue of those who have absolutely no connection to our community?

Your first obligation as a parent is to take care of your own family. Period. Do you really think Michael Jordan gave a damn about Magic Johnson getting injured during a game in which they were playing against each other? Hell, no.

So, then, why are we fighting everyone else’s battles at the expense of our own community?

RELATED VIDEO: Jay Z slaps and hits a little black girl after she takes a picture of him.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in Black Press USA.

Media Ignorance on Capitalism Hurts Low-Wage American Workers

January 29, 2018/in Commentary, Policy, Politics, Science/by Rod Thomson

For whatever reason — ignorance, socialist-leaning worldview or laziness — basic economics of free market capitalism seems all but impossible for most of the mainstream media to grasp. And that is a shame. It means they fall for the emotional appeal of fellow Democrats and others who lack an understanding of capitalism, which ultimately ends up hurting low-wage American workers the most — purportedly the people they are trying to help.

Let’s walk through this. Because it becomes blindingly obvious this is exactly what happens. It’s just that consumers of the legacy media may never understand — and alas, they’re unlikely to read this article.

First, the basics on capitalism. At its most foundational, capitalism functions on supply and demand and the ability of a company to make a profit meeting the demand, and the person creating the demand to have multiple supply options to create competition.

Simple, right?

Let’s say I need a pair of shoes. Bob sells shoes. The shoes cost him $20 to make. With all of his overhead — building, electricity, employees, benefits, etc. — he needs to sell each pair of shoes for $35 to break even. He puts the shoes on display for sale at $40, to make a $5 profit. I go to Bob’s store in my tattered shoes and decide if I am willing to pay $40. If so, we’ve created a market and a transaction. Bob makes $5 profit and I get my shoes for $40. Everyone is satisfied.

At each step in the shoe-production process, and the building where Bob displays them and pays for electricity, there are more markets of demand and supply happening, creating a broader economy. Now let’s say Bob gets greedy — like many liberals tell us corporations are — and tries to sell his shoes for $60 to make a $25 profit. I may go to a different shoe store to find something more affordable. Enough people do this, and Bob is forced eventually to lower his price. This is the role of competition in capitalism, with hundreds of shoe stores vying for my purchase and that of thousands of other consumers.

These capitalism concepts of supply, demand, profit and competition seems to elude most media reports, allowing people like Sen. Bernie Sanders to claim corporations are evil, gouge employees and make outrageous profits. If you are making $9 per hour and working for a company making billions of dollars in profits without any media explanation of the fuller context, this is very enticing to believe.

But it is also largely and demonstrably untrue.

Obviously corporations are not evil. They are legal entities made up of people with vested interests in those entities earning a profit so they can stay in business. Corporations generally pay their employees through the same forces of supply and demand, but for workers not products. They don’t gouge, they make decisions based on their employee needs and their profit needs. This is obviously rational, albeit a little hard to objectively quantify.

What is not hard to quantify is that corporations make outrageous profits. Liberal politicians such as Sanders, and many in the media, always use the anecdote corporation that just made a huge profit, rather than actual data points.

The average corporation’s profit margin is about 7 percent, according to a New York University Stern database. Grocery stores and retailers make much less, about 2.5 percent profit. And your local liberal’s favorite evil corporation, Walmart, squeezes out a paltry 2.1 percent profit. Walmart’s profit margin is less than one-third of what it pays in taxes.

Yet a 2013 Reason-Rupe Poll found that the average American guessed the typical corporate American profit to be 36 percent — more than four times reality. How did Americans get such a wildly inaccurate impression?

The media.

The socialist-leaning, capitalist-ignorant, liberal-sympathetic mainstream media swallowing the nonsense of Sanders and many other Democrats and reiterating it as fair, objective news. This is surprisingly common as media bias and distortion consistently leads media consumers to have opinions that are embarrassingly divorced from reality. For instance, according to a 2011 Gallup poll, Americans estimated that 25 percent of the people in America were homosexual. In 2015, it was 23 percent. The actual number is about 3-5%.

The corporate profits disconnect is a combination of economic ignorance and liberal agenda. The gay disconnect is pure propaganda by the media and Hollywood.

But while the gay agenda has its share of downsides, the economic ignorance and agenda has done material damage to the working poor in America — by the very people claiming to be watching out for the working poor in America. And it would do a lot more if it could.

Let’s take the minimum wage as an example. Compassionate liberals and their media allies constantly strut around such nonsense as seriously intoning that a family cannot live on the minimum wage. Well, no duh! None were ever supposed to. (And FYI, the vast majority of minimum wage workers are young people still living at home and second incomes.)

Let’s look at what happens when the government passes a law to dramatically raise the minimum wage to, say, $15, which has been all the liberal protester/union rage the past few years. And because they have many workers near minimum wage, let’s force that on Walmart.

If Walmart, with a profit margin of 2.1 percent, has to increase the majority of its employees’ pay by 50 to 100 percent, how will they be forced to respond? Remember, the company needs to meet demands while making a profit. Grade school capitalism. It has four options, which it may combine:

1) It can raise prices. Since all of its competitors will be facing a similar problem because of liberal government action, this will almost assuredly happen for some portion of the cost offset. So the price of everything from bread and milk to shoes and shirts will rise — maybe a lot. Who shops at Walmart the most? Low-income workers, including likely everyone trying to support a family on minimum wage. See the problem? If so, you’re ahead of liberals and the media.

2) Cut the number of workers, particularly full-time workers with benefits. Add more part-time workers and employ the use of technology to replace low-skill workers. Who does this hurt? Right. The very people liberals say they want to help.

3) Cut hours. Walmart is open 24 hours, 365 days per year right now. It’s particularly convenient for people working strange hours — which are most often lower-wage workers. If Walmart reduces the number of open hours to 12 or even eight, which would be one shift, that would save money in many areas, including by cutting employees substantially. Who would be hurt? You guessed it!

4) Close the least profitable stores and keep open the most profitable. Closing large numbers of Walmart stores clearly impacts Walmart consumers, the lower end working class.

The ignorant will say, “Walmart makes billions of dollars! It can pay its workers more!” But remember, their margin is only 2.1 percent. The billions comes from scale. Walmart stores just in the United States employ 1.4 million employees. Without some or all of the four adjustments above, Walmart could dole out only about a $3.50-per-hour raise before it erased all of its profits and began losing money.

And no company can do that for long.

But liberals and socialists like Sanders can’t advocate for higher costs, fewer options and reduced employment for low-skill workers. That would be political insanity. Yet that is exactly what would result from a minimum wage hike. It’s also what results from high taxes and too much regulation. But you don’t know any of this if you rely on mainstream media sources such as the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, the networks or your local news and media outlets.

The final, real-life proof in the pudding is that the GOP tax reform package President Trump recently signed has triggered an avalanche of employee bonuses, reinvestments in domestic production, tens of thousands of new hires and, ironically, several companies choosing to voluntarily increase their own minimum wage to between $12 and $15 per hour.

None of this is because of government fiat and control, but because government go out of the way.

Hopefully, it is getting harder and harder for the media to obfuscate that reality.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The Revolutionary Act. Please visit The Revolutionary Act’s YouTube Channel

Are We Free to Discuss America’s Real Problems?

January 29, 2018/in Commentary, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Imprimis Digest

The following is adapted from a speech delivered on December 12, 2017, at Hillsdale College’s Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, D.C., as part of the AWC Family Foundation Lecture Series.

By Amy Wax
University of Pennsylvania Law School

There is a lot of abstract talk these days on American college campuses about free speech and the values of free inquiry, with plenty of lip service being paid to expansive notions of free expression and the marketplace of ideas. What I’ve learned through my recent experience of writing a controversial op-ed is that most of this talk is not worth much. It is only when people are confronted with speech they don’t like that we see whether these abstractions are real to them.

The op-ed, which I co-authored with Larry Alexander of the University of San Diego Law School, appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on August 9 under the title, “Paying the Price for the Breakdown of the Country’s Bourgeois Culture.” It began by listing some of the ills afflicting American society:

Too few Americans are qualified for the jobs available. Male working-age labor-force participation is at Depression-era lows. Opioid abuse is widespread. Homicidal violence plagues inner cities. Almost half of all children are born out of wedlock, and even more are raised by single mothers. Many college students lack basic skills, and high school students rank below those from two dozen other countries.

We then discussed the “cultural script”—a list of behavioral norms—that was almost universally endorsed between the end of World War II and the mid-1960s:

Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.

These norms defined a concept of adult responsibility that was, we wrote, “a major contributor to the productivity, educational gains, and social coherence of that period.” The fact that the “bourgeois culture” these norms embodied has broken down since the 1960s, we argued, largely explains today’s social pathologies—and re-embracing that culture would go a long way toward addressing those pathologies.

In what became perhaps the most controversial passage, we pointed out that cultures are not equal in terms of preparing people to be productive citizens in a modern technological society, and we gave some examples of cultures less suited to achieve this:

The culture of the Plains Indians was designed for nomadic hunters, but is not suited to a First World, 21st-century environment. Nor are the single-parent, antisocial habits prevalent among some working-class whites; the anti-‘acting white’ rap culture of inner-city blacks; the anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among some Hispanic immigrants.

The reactions to this piece raise the question of how unorthodox opinions should be dealt with in academia—and in American society at large.

It is well documented that American universities today, more than ever before, are dominated by academics on the left end of the political spectrum. How should these academics handle opinions that depart, even quite sharply, from their “politically correct” views? The proper response would be to engage in reasoned debate—to attempt to explain, using logic, evidence, facts, and substantive arguments, why those opinions are wrong. This kind of civil discourse is obviously important at law schools like mine, because law schools are dedicated to teaching students how to think about and argue all sides of a question. But academic institutions in general should also be places where people are free to think and reason about important questions that affect our society and our way of life—something not possible in today’s atmosphere of enforced orthodoxy.

What those of us in academia should certainly not do is engage in unreasoned speech: hurling slurs and epithets, name-calling, vilification, and mindless labeling. Likewise we should not reject the views of others without providing reasoned arguments. Yet these once common standards of practice have been violated repeatedly at my own and at other academic institutions in recent years—and we increasingly see this trend in society as well.

One might respond, of course, that unreasoned slurs and outright condemnations are also speech and must be defended. My recent experience has caused me to rethink this position. In debating others, we should have higher standards. Of course one has the right to hurl labels like “racist,” “sexist,” and “xenophobic” without good reason—but that doesn’t make it the right thing to do. Hurling such labels doesn’t enlighten, inform, edify, or educate. Indeed, it undermines these goals by discouraging or stifling dissent.

So what happened after our op-ed was published last August? A raft of letters, statements, and petitions from students and professors at my university and elsewhere condemned the piece as racist, white supremacist, hate speech, heteropatriarchial, xenophobic, etc. There were demands that I be removed from the classroom and from academic committees. None of these demands even purported to address our arguments in any serious or systematic way.

A response published in the Daily Pennsylvanian, our school newspaper, and signed by five of my Penn Law School colleagues, charged us with the sin of praising the 1950s—a decade when racial discrimination was openly practiced and opportunities for women were limited. I do not agree with the contention that because a past era is marked by benighted attitudes and practices—attitudes and practices we had acknowledged in our op-ed!—it has nothing to teach us. But at least this response attempted to make an argument.

Not so an open letter published in the Daily Pennsylvanian and signed by 33 of my colleagues. This letter quoted random passages from the op-ed and from a subsequent interview I gave to the school newspaper, condemned both, and categorically rejected all of my views. It then invited students, in effect, to monitor me and to report any “stereotyping and bias” they might experience or perceive. This letter contained no argument, no substance, no reasoning, no explanation whatsoever as to how our op-ed was in error.

We hear a lot of talk about role models—people to be emulated, who set a positive example for students and others. In my view, the 33 professors who signed this letter are anti-role models. To students and citizens alike I say: don’t emulate them in condemning people for their views without providing a reasoned argument. Reject their example. Not only are they failing to teach you the practice of civil discourse—the sine qua non of liberal education and of democracy—they are sending the message that civil discourse is unnecessary. As Jonathan Haidt of NYU wrote on September 2 on his website Heterodox Academy: “Every open letter you sign to condemn a colleague for his or her words brings us closer to a world in which academic disagreements are resolved by social force and political power, not by argumentation and persuasion.”

It is gratifying to note that the reader comments on the open letter were overwhelmingly critical. The letter has “no counterevidence,” one reader wrote, “no rebuttal to [Wax’s] arguments, just an assertion that she’s wrong. . . . This is embarrassing.” Another wrote: “This letter is an exercise in self-righteous virtue-signaling that utterly fails to deal with the argument so cogently presented by Wax and Alexander. . . . Note to parents, if you want your daughter or son to learn to address an argument, do not send them to Penn Law.”

Shortly after the op-ed appeared, I ran into a colleague I hadn’t seen for a while and asked how his summer was going. He said he’d had a terrible summer, and in saying it he looked so serious I thought someone had died. He then explained that the reason his summer had been ruined was my op-ed, and he accused me of attacking and causing damage to the university, the students, and the faculty. One of my left-leaning friends at Yale Law School found this story funny—who would have guessed an op-ed could ruin someone’s summer? But beyond the absurdity, note the choice of words: “attack” and “damage” are words one uses with one’s enemies, not colleagues or fellow citizens. At the very least, they are not words that encourage the expression of unpopular ideas. They reflect a spirit hostile to such ideas—indeed, a spirit that might seek to punish the expression of such ideas.

I had a similar conversation with a deputy dean. She had been unable to sign the open letter because of her official position, but she defended it as having been necessary. It needed to be written to get my attention, she told me, so that I would rethink what I had written and understand the hurt I had inflicted and the damage I had done, so that I wouldn’t do it again. The message was clear: cease the heresy.

Only half of my colleagues in the law school signed the open letter. One who didn’t sent me a thoughtful and lawyerly email explaining how and why she disagreed with particular points in the op-ed. We had an amicable email exchange, from which I learned a lot—some of her points stick with me—and we remain cordial colleagues. That is how things should work.

Of the 33 who signed the letter, only one came to talk to me about it—and I am grateful for that. About three minutes into our conversation, he admitted that he didn’t categorically reject everything in the op-ed. Bourgeois values aren’t really so bad, he conceded, nor are all cultures equally worthy. Given that those were the main points of the op-ed, I asked him why he had signed the letter. His answer was that he didn’t like my saying, in my interview with the Daily Pennsylvanian, that the tendency of global migrants to flock to white European countries indicates the superiority of some cultures. This struck him as “code,” he said, for Nazism.

Well, let me state for the record that I don’t endorse Nazism!

Furthermore, the charge that a statement is “code” for something else, or a “dog whistle” of some kind—we frequently hear this charge leveled, even against people who are stating demonstrable facts—is unanswerable. It is like accusing a speaker of causing emotional injury or feelings of marginalization. Using this kind of language, which students have learned to do all too well, is intended to bring discussion and debate to a stop—to silence speech deemed unacceptable.

As Humpty Dumpty said to Alice, we can make words mean whatever we want them to mean. And who decides what is code for something else or what qualifies as a dog whistle? Those in power, of course—which in academia means the Left.

My 33 colleagues might have believed they were protecting students from being injured by harmful opinions, but they were doing those students no favors. Students need the opposite of protection from diverse arguments and points of view. They need exposure to them. This exposure will teach them how to think. As John Stuart Mill said, “He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.”

I have received more than 1,000 emails from around the country in the months since the op-ed was published—mostly supportive, some critical, and for the most part thoughtful and respectful. Many expressed the thought, “You said what we are thinking but are afraid to say”—a sad commentary on the state of civil discourse in our society. Many urged me not to back down, cower, or apologize. And I agree with them that dissenters apologize far too often.

Democracy thrives on talk and debate, and it is not for the faint of heart. I read things every day in the media and hear things every day at my job that I find exasperating and insulting, including falsehoods and half-truths about people who are my friends. Offense and upset go with the territory; they are part and parcel of an open society. We should be teaching our young people to get used to these things, but instead we are teaching them the opposite.

Disliking, avoiding, and shunning people who don’t share our politics is not good for our country. We live together, and we need to solve our problems together. It is also always possible that people we disagree with have something to offer, something to contribute, something to teach us. We ignore this at our peril. As Heather Mac Donald wrote in National Review on August 29: “What if the progressive analysis of inequality is wrong . . . and a cultural analysis is closest to the truth? If confronting the need to change behavior is punishable ‘hate speech,’ then it is hard to see how the country can resolve its social problems.” In other words, we are at risk of being led astray by received opinion.

The American way is to conduct free and open debate in a civil manner. We should return to doing that on our college campuses and in our society at large.

Amy Wax
University of Pennsylvania Law School

Amy L. Wax is the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where she has received the Harvey Levin Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence. She has a B.S. from Yale College, an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and a J.D. from Columbia Law School. She is a former assistant to the United States Solicitor General, and her most recent book is Race, Wrongs, and Remedies: Group Justice in the 21st Century.

Senator Marco Rubio fires his Chief-of-Staff immediately upon learning of allegations of improper conduct

January 28, 2018/in Commentary/by Dr. Rich Swier

Clint Reed

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) on Saturday, January 27th, 2018 released the following statement on the firing of his Chief-of-Staff Clint Reed:

“Yesterday afternoon, I was made aware, for the first time, of allegations of improper conduct by my Chief of Staff while under the employment of my office. These allegations were reported directly to me instead of our General Counsel or the Congressional Office of Compliance. Immediately upon receiving this complaint, I along with our General Counsel, began an investigation of this matter.

“By early this afternoon, I had sufficient evidence to conclude that while employed by this office, my Chief of Staff had violated office policies regarding proper relations between a supervisor and their subordinates. I further concluded that this led to actions which in my judgement amounted to threats to withhold employment benefits.

“This evening, I traveled from Florida to Washington D.C. and terminated his employment effective immediately.

“We have taken steps to ensure that those impacted by this conduct have access to any services they may require now or in the future. Pursuant to the wishes of those victimized by this conduct, we will not be disclosing any further details about the incidents which occurred. We will be formally notifying the appropriate Congressional and Senate administrative offices of this matter when they return to work Monday morning.”

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., speaks during Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad’s annual birthday fundraiser, Nov. 17, 2012, in Altoona, Iowa.

NFL Commissioner Blasted by AMVETS National Commander

January 27, 2018/in Commentary, Culture War, Policy, Politics/by 2ndvote .com

The National Commander of American Veterans (AMVETS) has sent National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell an excoriating letter in response to the league’s refusal to print his organization’s ad in this year’s Super Bowl program.

AMVETS, a 501(c)19 non-profit organization that was formed by World War II veterans, submitted a one-page advertisement with the simple request: #PleaseStand. In response, an NFL spokesman said, “The Super Bowl program is designed for fans to commemorate and celebrate the game, players, teams, and the Super Bowl. It has never been a place for advertising that could be considered by some as a political statement.”

Apparently, the NFL considers a request to stand for the national anthem to be too much of a “political statement,” despite institutionalizing the kneeling protests on live television as part of pregame ceremonies earlier this season. It would seem the NFL is conveniently ignoring the original motivation behind the national anthem protests was indeed very much a “political statement.”

In the letter to Goodell, AMVETS National Commander Marion Polk writes:

Mr. Goodell, Veterans are good for more than just military aircraft flyovers, photo opportunities during halftime, or props to sell camouflage-style NFL apparel; although, the NFL’s stance on not allowing the veterans’ unfiltered voice to be heard says otherwise.

Moreover, the fact that the commissioners of the National Basketball Association and National Hockey League have allowed the very same #PleaseStand ad to run in their respective program books only makes the NFL’s decision to reject the ad that much more inexcusable.

Click here to read the letter in its entirety.

With plummeting ratings over the past season and NFL brand’s unpopularity, can the league really afford to alienate veterans in such a way? Last week’s conference championship games hit nine-year lows for viewerships and fans deciding not to watch games have cost advertisers $500 million this year. This is certainly not the kind of PR the NFL wants going into it’s most lucrative game of the year.

Reach out to Roger Goodell and tell him why the NFL’s double-standard on “political statements” is bad for business.

Contact the NFL! Reach Out to the NFL on Facebook!

Help us continue holding corporations and non-profits accountable for their activism by becoming a 2ndVote Member today!

Putin’s KGB on American Soil

January 26, 2018/in Commentary, Policy, Politics/by Simona Pipko

“America is like a healthy body and its resistance is Threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual Life. I you can undermine these three areas, America will Collapse from within.” — Joseph Stalin

When Attorney General Jeff Session recused himself from the Russian probe, I wasn’t surprised, but angered. Some Republicans, especially from the old establishments are not aware of the crucial role Russia plays as a principle destabilizer in the world affairs. Regrettably, our AG like them is ignorant about our mortal enemy, who harms and fights us for the last hundred years. If AG doesn’t know Russia and its KGB, he cannot control DOJ. AG made a monumental error and I was furious, understanding the circumstances of his mistake in the future, as all our troubles today caused by Russian KGB…

Today in 2018 you are witnessing that my prediction was right on the money. The Russian factor is a crux of the matter in all our world affairs. In my preceding column, The Global Spy Ring, I have presented the KGB’s world activities, now I want to give you some history of the KGB. I have been a witness of that history and a witness of monumental incompetence of our Intel, all seventeen in the post-Reagan and pre-Trump era. History is the Mother of all sciences, and I’ll try to show you the nature of the KGB full of intrigues, deception, corruption, and murders, its inextricable connection of the past with the present Trump era.

A Brief History of the First KGB Chairman

Ten years ago, when I started writing What is Happening to America? I gave you some history of the KGB. Yet, today, I want to introduce a document that will give you a huge panorama of the ruthless Russian Intelligence, full of intrigues, deception, corruption, and murders. The portrait of the first KGB Chairman Ivan Serov exposes the bloody nature of the agency. Those who know Soviet history will find familiar names here:

“Ivan Serov, an officer of military intelligence, at the time of the purges of the GRU he managed not only to survive but also to transfer to work in the NKVD. On 12 June 1937 he appeared in the capacity of executioner of Marshal Tukhachevski and other leading figures of the Red Army. Amongst all the protagonists of the terror he distinguished himself as the most fervent exponent of ‘scenes on a massive scale’. He took part in the pursuit and liquidation of the inhabitants of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 1940 and in 1944-47.

Data exists as to his personal involvement in the murder of the Polish officers in Katyn. During the war Serov was one of the leaders of Smersh, and in August 1946 he personally took part in the execution of the command of the Russian Liberation Army under Lt.-General Vlasov. Subsequently he betrayed his leaders in Smersh and the NKGB, going over in time to the camp of the victorious groups. He deserted Abakumov’s group for that of Beria and betrayed him (as did General Ivashutin – the present GRU leader).

In 1953 he was deputy chief of the GRU and one of the conspirators against Beria. After the fall of Beria, Serov became Chairman of the KGB. Together with Ambassador Andropov he seized the leaders of the Hungarian revolution by deceit and took part in their torture and execution. In December 1958 Serov became chief of the GRU. As an ex-KGB and Smersh officer he had many enemies in the GRU. Under Serov’s leadership, corruption in GRU attained unbelievable proportions. In 1962 he was dismissed and quietly liquidated.”

What a vivid picture of Stalinist Gestapo, we’ve lived under! Serov was a typical Stalinist cadre of the oppressive apparatus of Soviet Socialism, the Soviet system couldn’t survive and exist without. Don’t be confused by the year 1954 and the first KGB Chairman. This apparatus was established by the Socialist Revolution in 1917 to fight capitalism, the apparatus had changed its name eight times to cover-up the crime committed during its entire existence… I am an eyewitness of this and a witness of the KGB crimes—the reason I use the name of the KGB …

Yuri Andropov—the Chairman of the KGB 1967-1982

This man played a crucial role in the life of the Soviet Union and… mankind. A Chairman of the KGB, started his career in 1956. My young readers, perhaps, have no idea of the significance the year 1956. Alas! It was the year when the Soviet tanks sunk in blood the Hungarian Revolution. Yuri Andropov was there as an Ambassador and a representative of the KGB in the Budapest Russian Embassy. Then, in 1956, Yuri Andropov have already been the globalist without borders, spreading Soviet Socialism globally. And this is perhaps the major difference between him and Ivan Serov, who was a simple executioner. A devoted disciple of Stalin, Andropov had thought globally from the top of incredible “prior achievements of the KGB.” He had brought the KGB to real sophistication, becoming a conduit between Stalin and Putin. At the Andropov time Putin was a student of law and consequently joint the KGB with the recommendation from the Communist Party.

Andropov’s personality was quite unusual for the Chairman of the KGB: he loved music, poetry, and often demonstrated his love. His appointment was a usual trick-deception of the Communist Party to change the image of the agency, but the reality illustrated the diabolic nature of the KGB by rivers of blood spread across the world in Andropov’s tenure. Under his watch and coordination there occurred the bloodiest terrorists’ attacks in the world, from the Munich murder of Israelis in the Olympic Village to the Johnstown tragedy in America, when nine hundred people had been poisoned and killed…

Andropov’s task was two-fold: to spread recruitment and infiltration globally, which he successfully achieved. Being a member of a law community for 25 years, I had the opportunity to discuss and watch his “successful achievements,” constantly communicating with lawyers, the rank-and-file members of the KGB. As a result, I defined Chapter 9 in 2007 as Evil Empire of Global Terrorism, What is Happening to America? Xlibris, 2012.

Andropov has changed drastically the protocol and scale of recruitment and infiltration. Though, the agenda of Socialism stays the same, the intensity of the KGB to prevent, disrupt, obstruct, and finally stop social mobility of capitalism has doubled if not quadrupled by sabotaging any achievements of capitalism, primarily American capitalism. Learning American behavior, the emphases was to recruit from a certain group of people: addicts of drugs and sex, people with Slavic names, Jewish women, siblings, bankrupts, and so on.

The main targets were American Intel and Security apparatus to paralyze their normal functioning. And of course, using legal and illegal immigration, an easy way to infiltrate and implant political operatives, and gangs into a targeted country. Like sleeping cells used by the Soviets during the revolution, Andropov’s cell consists of political operative, political agitator, and political organizer. The last two planned to be local citizens. It is not a coincidence that immigration is the most divided issue in the American politics today. Please, remember KGB’s main tools: lies, fraud, deceit, intimidation and psychological manipulations. …

Andropov planned to infiltrate and subordinate American social media, making it a dominant political force. He intended doing that by recruiting the journalist’s a-la Walter Durante, who was fooling and deceiving the West for several decades, helping Stalin to annihilate millions Russian souls. For this reason, Andropov was trying to plow into life an idea of equality and justice of Socialism, and implant the idea into traditional people’s consciousness, to cultivate new social mentality, and to low standards of morality. In the time the Eastern Europe has already been under Warsaw Pact and KGB’s primary targets England and France. Andropov’s target became the world and America to disrupt capitalism and create chaos. Andropov needed the social media, to act the way it was implemented in the Easter Europe by the Soviets—a coordinated effort of several institutions against the opposition.

Andropov became the KGB Chairman in 1967. It was a tragic time in America our boys and girls were dying in Vietnam. Besides that President Nixon came to White House–Andropov’s a personal enemy. (The story of their personal animosity deserves a separate column.) As a matter of fact, Andropov working in Europe in the 1950s had known the strength of human protests, he met them in Hungarian Revolt; it was very hard to extinguish people’s wrath. Based on his knowledge of Europe, Andropov began planning coordinated attacks on American soil and hurting American interests across the globe. Please, pay attention to Andropov’s opinion about Americans— “they are naïve, gullible, and crazy.”

Besides military help to Vietnam and extensive anti-war propaganda on American soil, under Andropov, a massive expansion of the Soviets took place in the Middle East and neighboring areas. Created, coordinated, and navigated by the KGB terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Shabbat began their destabilizing activities in the area against Israel. Look at the map of Andropov’s time and compare it with the events in Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Turkey today:

Remember that Uri Andropov is Putin’s “spiritual mentor!” they are “superior to the ordinary people” based on Stalin’s teachings. Consider the Soviets’ criminal intent, and the big picture of the Soviet mafia with all its tentacles and ideology would appear before you in America! Knowledge is the only SOLUTION for our survival. You can also see that venom of the KGB’s superiority is alive and well—from the first Chekist, Felix Dzerzhinsky to Yuri Andropov and Vladimir Putin. Just look at the Soviet henchmen around the world—they all were well-trained and inherited an audacity of arrogance and superiority in their behaviors from the Stalinist Chekists.

Andropov knew well Stalinist rule of “Divide and Conquer” to achieve a needed result, and he used and implemented them in all his plans. In America it was a visual and simple one—Black vs. White. In my column a couple months ago, I asked you to find and read the document titled Message to the Black Movement, A Political Statement from the Black Underground, designed by the KGB to inflame the black underground in America. I wanted you to see for yourself the language of the KGB and origin of the notion of “White Oppressors” that affected several generations of Black America. It is for this reason I was constantly writing about WW III and Soviet Socialism, I named lately-Soviet Fascism to show you this war on American soil.

If you have any doubts in my identification of Soviet Fascism and WWIII, the first person to confirm the identity of both will be the Chairman of the KGB, Yuri Andropov. I will give you a conversation of two KGB Generals, Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking KGB officer ever to defect to the U.S, with Yuri Andropov:

“In 1972 the Kremlin decided to turn the whole Islamic world against Israel and the U.S. As KGB Chairman, Yuri Andropov told me a billion adversaries could inflict far greater damage on America that could a few millions. We needed to instill a Nazi-style hatred for Jews throughout the Islamic world, and to turn this weapon of the emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel and its main supporter the United States. No one within the American/Zionist sphere of influence should any longer feel safe.” (“Russian Footprints,” by Ion Mihai Pacepa, National Review Online, August 24, 2008.)

General Pacepa wrote in the same article: “According to Andropov… the Muslims had a taste for nationalism, jingoism, and victimology. Their illiterate, oppressed mobs could be whipped up to a fever pitch. Terrorism and violence against Israel and her master, American Zionism, would flow naturally from the Muslims’ religious fervor, Andropov sermonized.” What can better confirm both of my terms Soviet Fascism and WWIII than those words? They summarized my entire writings. I remind you again that under Andropov the infiltration into Western civilization had tripled or quadruple. Under his watch occurred the bloodiest terrorists’ attacks in the world, from the Munich murder of Israelis in the Olympic Village to the Johnstown tragedy in America.

Don’t you think that Andropov’s words are racist with a fascist intent? I can tell you, Andropov just acknowledged the official Soviet policy that was running all minorities that way in the Soviet Union. You can tell me that there is no Soviet Union any longer. You are right. But the system of oppression has not changed: we are dealing with the Russian KGB Government, run by Putin today. Moreover, the agenda to destroy capitalism is alive and well as ever for hundred years after the Socialist Revolution. Allen West counted seventy Socialists in our Congress. I know more KGB agents in our government, predominantly Democrats and WW III begun hundred years ago against capitalism is going on. Just watch how Socialist Leadership of the Democrat Party is fighting capitalism in the 21^st century…

Allow me now to go to a new spiral in WWIII and its roots. This war took a different form and scale in 2016-2018—the deadly war against President Trump. And again we are talking about the Democrats a “criminal cabal,” as Judge Jeannine called it. The Democrats have an audacity to call Trump a racist—their incompetence is staggering—they know nothing about Yuri Andropov! Now there is rumors that Trump had a connection with the agent from Kremlin. It is possible that this agent is Barack Obama, who I had been writing about his Russian connection for the last nine years. Please read Socialist Lies: from Stalin to the Clintons, Obamas, and Sanders, Xlibris, 2016.

I have also heard the question: “is this FBI or KGB?” asked by a member of the Congress, after he had read documents from the FBI. I can answer this question too—It IS the KGB, I have been writing and warning you for the last twenty-five years… The recent unmasking of over two hundred Americans for many people was an unusual and strange event. It’s absolutely clear to me: the major objectives of the KGB is the INFORMATION, in this case information about Americans to learn the approach to recruit them… This is another evidence of the Russian connection and Barack Obama…

Washington D.C. is currently boiling with the extraordinary new information about the FBI and the Democrat Party, which I called the party of Soviet fascism. The major task is the correct interpretation of the exposed information. It is not the FBI acting like the KGB. The crux of the matter is that—the KGB is running the war against Donald J. Trump within the FBI facilities by the FBI’s staff. Like Dossier on Trump, Putin’s KGB is freely acting on American soil. Plus watch the leadership of Democrats and especially Trojan Horse-Sanders. To get it right, you have to know the roots-history of the KGB, its nature and agenda described in my books and columns…

The Post

Several days ago, I saw the movie The Post—a well done wonderful thriller, reflecting political events in the 1970s. At the end of the movie the Left audience clapped. Why not? After all it was Spielberg, Hanks and Streep overcoming attempted presidential censorship of the press and the Streep character standing up to men. Everything in the movie proceeding smoothly, like it had been managed behind the scene by a magic wand and we do not know this mysterious outside force. It was anti-war, anti-Vietnam, anti-men and a kick at Nixon of the Watergate scandal. We are “left” with the impression that The Washington Post and the New York Times dig deep, that presidents always lie and try to censor the press, which is really just trying to uncover the truth. We are to take that emotionally charged picture and apply it to today’s events.

But what if we dig deeper. What if the audience is being emotionally manipulated. Hanks and Streep apply their tricks of the trade, with Streep way over the top. If we look deeper at the “true” story, why would the Streep character’s husband commit suicide if he loved the paper, fit perfectly in his job and apparently had a happy loving family? What if his death wasn’t suicide? Who would benefit from his death to be the head of a newspaper, which could shape public opinion? I believe Mrs. Graham and through her Andropov’s agency would be a beneficiary…

Is the audience of this movie not being manipulated to compare the events then with the current political scene? That we are currently engaged in another unwinnable war in Afghanistan, that the current President is trying to muzzle The Post, New York Times (and CNN) from telling the “truth”?; a position already held by the majority of the Left minded audience. No wonder they clapped, no wonder this movie will be a big hit and might spark further action from the Left to pressure for impeachment. The country is indeed divided like never before.

I was sitting on tension the whole movie, intrigued by the smooth occurrence of the events. Yet, only awareness and knowledge can interpret the movie and the current events in Washington D.C.–an abuse of power of the FBI and the FISA Court. But returning to movie, I have read another live-story of the Post’s owner Katherine Graham. People close to her had suspected that she killed her husband, when he wanted to divide their assets and leave her for another woman. She definitely did not want to lose The Post.

The real history of her live is quite interesting. Eugene Meyer, her Father handed over the newspaper to his son-in-law. Her Father gave the Post to Philip Graham, her husband rather than her in 1959. There are should be the reasons for such a strange decision: Katharine was quite an educated woman, working within the Post for many years. Please, look at her words said in 1970: “The thing women must do to rise to power is to redefine their femininity. Once, power was considered a masculine attribute. In fact, power has no sex.” Katharine Graham.

No doubts, she had a strong character. Maybe her Father had also suspected something? By the way, all suspicions of the people, pertaining to her murder of the husband, have never been refute or rebutted by the family.

The people who watched the movie and clapped did not know Katharine Graham’s real live, they also haven’t read my books; information of them was suppressed by the FBI. Moreover, the editors of both The Post and the New York Times had admitted in the movie that they did know the real source of the information they both had printed. For me, knowing a deep infiltration of the KGB into all strata of American society and the Democrat Party, it was clear that the entire story in the movie was created and run by the KGB in 1971, like they run Trump’s Dossier in 2016.

I recommend the people after reading this column to go and see the movie The Post and then find the real information about Katharine Graham. I took information about her from Wikipedia and The True Story of The Bilderberg Group by Daniel Estulin. I believe the author and his research, he is from Russia and knows the subject. For me the movie was the First Act of the spectacle performed by the KGB in1971, dethroning President Nixon. We are witnessing today the Second Act of the same spectacle by the KGB trying to dethrone American President in 2018.

Yet, the truth has its magic way to come to surface and sometimes with the touch of irony. Katherine Graham had allowed publication of the information beneficiary to the Andropov KGB in 1971. Today, our Congress debates a publication of the FBI material, exposing the activities of the FBI, the Democrats, and the Putin KGB. We will know the traitors of the 21st century. But nothing can be compared with the “golden goose” that Andropov got in 1960. It could’ve been an accidental occurrence, but Andropov and his “golden goose” had changed the world and not to the better… Stay tune!

To be continued at www.simonapipko1.com.

P.S. Timing is helping me to educate all Americans. When I completed the column, our government had already been shutdown by the Democrat’s using Andropov’s promised plan to disrupt, obstruct, and use “potential momentum” to stopped social mobility of capitalism. They are pretending to fight for DACA. They lie—this is a typical KGB play book, maneuver for the Democrat to survive, knowing about upcoming classified material, a document showing criminal intent committed by the FBI and Obama’s administration. The question, of whether it is the FBI or old KGB? Will be answered by me: It is Putin’s KGB on American soil. We are witnessing, as I predicted, another Watergate—this time, a quadruple and international one. This kind of doings will continue until the Democrat Party is exposed for what it really is…

As Palestinian children ‘starve’ Mahmoud Abbas is set to take possession of a new $50 million private jet!

January 26, 2018/in Commentary, Culture War, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Damon Rosen

Amid U.S. funding cuts to UNRWA, and threats to cut direct Palestinian Authority (PA) funding, Mahmoud Abbas is set to take possession of a new $50 million private jet.

Half of PA foreign aid goes towards payments to imprisoned terrorists or dead terrorists’ families, while Palestinian “leadership” claims Donald Trump is starving children by withholding funding for the regime in Ramallah.

The illegitimate leader of the fictitious state will need his new wings to fly around the world begging for the money lost from shunning the U.S.

Amid funding cut fears, PA purchases $50 million private jet for Abbas — report

By TOI STAFF from The Times of Israel

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas speaks during a meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah on January 14, 2018. (AFP PHOTO / ABBAS MOMANI)

Even as the Palestinian Authority faces major funding cuts from the US, it has purchased a new luxurious $50 million private jet to be used by President Mahmoud Abbas, Hadashot news reported Wednesday.

The report, which did not provide sourcing, said the plane was set to be delivered to Amman within weeks, and will be stationed there for use by the PA chief.

Funding for the plane was said to have been provided both from the PA budget ($20 million) and from the Palestinian National Fund ($30 million).

The report comes amid deep cuts to US aid to the Palestinians, and reports that further cuts may be coming.

When US President Donald Trump originally threatened to cut aid earlier this month, top PLO official Saeb Erekat said it would lead to starvation among Palestinian refugee children.

Europe Comes Up With Perfectly Orwellian Responses to ‘Fake News’

January 24, 2018/in Commentary, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by The Daily Signal

In their zeal to stamp out “fake news,” European governments are turning toward Orwellian solutions that are worse than the disease.

The European Commission recently created a 39-member panel to explore avenues to eliminate fake news. On Twitter, it announced that it seeks to find a “balanced approach” to protecting free speech and making sure citizens get “reliable information.”

This follows in the footsteps of individual governments in Europe that have decided that the way to defeat fake news is to have the government decide what the truth is.

Germany recently enacted a law that allows the government to censor social media and fine related companies that won’t take down what government officials deem fake news or hate speech.

France isn’t far behind. French President Emmanuel Macron proposed a ban on fake news, especially around election time, “in order to protect democracy.”

And on Tuesday, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May announced the creation of a commission to respond to fake news called the National Security Communications Unit.

A spokesperson for the May government said:

“Digital communications is constantly evolving and we are looking at ways to meet the challenging media landscape by harnessing the power of new technology for good.”

The key problem with these proposals is obvious, as the Washington Examiner highlighted in an editorial.

“One must ask who will decide which news is real and respectable, on the one hand, and which, on the other, is fake and must be censored?” the Examiner asked, before referring to George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984”:

Will it be bureaucrats in a censor’s office in a bigger agency? Or, will their work be so extensive and important that they will need a new agency of their own? Will they go the full Orwell and name it the Ministry of Truth?

As Alexis de Tocqueville, the famed 19th-century French observer of American institutions, wrote of such government-controlled speech:

Whoever should be able to create and maintain a tribunal of this kind would waste his time in prosecuting the liberty of the press; for he would be the absolute master of the whole community and would be as free to rid himself of the authors as of their writings.

Censorship of this sort is what the Founding Fathers feared. They knew that despite the problems occasionally caused by the proliferation of fake news and false ideas, it was far more dangerous to make the government the arbiter of what is true and false rather than citizens.

Therefore, the Founders created the First Amendment and instilled a culture that respected the individual right to free speech. This was the best and perhaps only way, in the fallible world of men, ultimately to get to the truth.

There is ample evidence that the proliferation of fake news has far less consequential impact than doomsayers would admit.

A recent study concluded that while fake news often spreads far with the help of tools such as social media, it has a shallow impact on what Americans believe. This begs the question of why near-authoritarian measures would be implemented that so badly undermine free speech rights.

For all the worry over foreign, authoritarian regimes manipulating our elections with propaganda, by implementing government-run commissions on fake news we will simply be turning to repressive means to solve this perceived problem.

The proposed commissions to weigh free speech rights against delivering the “correct” news would likely have shallow utility even if they somehow could provide “accurate” stories to citizens. However, giving such panels the power to do so would be Tocqueville’s worst nightmare: a license to impose government’s views on the people and squash potentially legitimate dissent.

This is why it’s particularly absurd that the Committee to Protect Journalists, a group dedicated to promoting free speech for journalists, labeled President Donald Trump as the world’s greatest threat to press freedom.

The Federalist’s David Harsanyi wrote:

“Trump’s attacks on journalists—some of it brought on by their own shoddy and partisan behavior—are often unseemly and unhealthy, but it hasn’t stopped anyone from engaging, investigating, writing, saying, protesting or sharing their deep thoughts with the entire group.”

Though Trump has proposed strengthening libel laws, a more traditional way of curbing intentional media falsehoods, his administration has made no widespread legal attack on the ability of Americans to disseminate news and views.

Saying mean things on Twitter isn’t an attack on free speech, but censorship by an unaccountable government board certainly is.

For all the hyperbole and hysteria following the coverage of the president, it has ultimately been our celebrated friends across the pond who’ve decided to take an ax to free speech, cloaked in the soothing rhetoric of protecting democracy.

At times like this we can be thankful for the Founders and the First Amendment, but this shouldn’t lull us into thinking that these terrible ideas won’t make their way here too.

COMMENTARY BY

Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman is an editor for The Daily Signal. Send an email to Jarrett. Twitter: @JarrettStepman.

RELATED ARTICLE: The History of Fake News in the United States

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The Humanitarian Hoax of DACA: Killing America With Kindness

January 24, 2018/in Commentary, Courts & Law, Immigration, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Linda Goudsmit

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

Obama, the humanitarian huckster-in-chief, weakened the United States for eight years presenting his crippling Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) advocacy as altruistic when in fact it was designed for destruction. His legacy, the Leftist Democrat Party with its ongoing Resistance movement, is the party of the Humanitarian Hoax attempting to destroy the capitalist infrastructure of American democracy through deceitful immigration reforms. This is how it works.

DACA Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals was the 2012 product of Obama’s illegal executive overreach. The lesser known DAPA Deferred Action for Parents of Americans was Obama’s 2014 expansion program that legalized illegal alien parents whose children became legal American citizens through birthright citizenship.

Amnesty programs for illegal immigrants guaranteed Democrat votes but Obama had a problem selling the idea to Congress even though Democrats had control of both Houses. Illegal aliens needed a new image. No problem for Obama – his Leftist image-makers went to work.

Soon illegal aliens became undocumented aliens, then undocumented workers, then unauthorized immigrants, then undocumented immigrants, and finally the loftiest brand of them all – Dreamers. Obama’s rebranded illegal aliens were transformed into Dreamers and protecting them was merchandised as the humanitarian imperative for America. Millennials signed on in droves but here is the problem.

Rebranding is a marketing tool used by advertisers to sell products that don’t sell. Rebranding changes the name but it does not change the product. Dreamers are still illegal aliens. So why would Obama resort to executive overreach to sell rebranded illegal immigration?? Because Obama needed the positive image of Dreamers to sell DACA and DAPA as altruistic programs when they were actually deceitful Democrat power-grabs designed to tip red states blue. It was always about the votes.

USA Today reports that according to Migration Policy Institute there are 3.6 million Dreamers living in the U.S. today – not the oft-repeated 800,000. “The 3.6 million estimate of undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. before their 18th birthday comes from the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit think tank that studies global immigration patterns. That is roughly a third of all undocumented immigrants in the country and does not include millions of their immediate family members who are U.S. citizens.”

The Democrat narrative is that deportations of illegal aliens would be amoral and an economic calamity. The reality is that under-educated non-working unauthorized immigrants whether they are Dreamers or not drain the economy instead of improving it. The undisclosed underbelly of the Leftist narrative is that most illegal aliens living in Republican states if awarded amnesty would vote Democrat and tilt red states to blue. If amnesty and chain migration pass, the additional Democrat votes would put several red states in play particularly Florida, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina.

Michael Cutler warns us about the consequences of DACA to national security and argues that DACA is the Immigration Trojan Horse. Cutler contends that, “The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) created a massive amnesty program that ultimately led to the greatest influx of illegal aliens in the history of our nation. It has been said that insanity is doing the same things the same way and expecting a different outcome.”

So it is with DACA. Millions of illegal immigrants awarded amnesty will vote to elect a Democrat President who will open the borders and flood the country with more immigrants who will be granted voting rights and will vote Democrat. This chain will accomplish the Leftist goal to destroy our constitutional republic and replace it with socialism. The United States of America is the greatest experiment in individual freedom and upward mobility the world has ever known. Protection of our republic is the essence of President Trump’s America-first policies.

President Trump revoked DAPA in June 2017 and ended DACA in September 2017 saying “The legislative, not the executive branch writes these [immigration] laws.” Yet DACA continues to be discussed and marketed to a trusting public by Obama’s Resistance movement as the altruistic responsibility of compassionate American citizens.

For 241 years America has said NO to monarchies, NO to oligarchies, NO to totalitarianism, NO to authoritarianism, and NO to illegal immigration. We are a country of LEGAL immigrants not a country of illegal immigrants. We have fought to preserve our constitutional republic with its checks and balances on power codified in our Constitution to protect our individual rights and way of life. Socialism is the great leftist scam being perpetrated on the American people and implemented through destructive leftist immigration policies.

Millennials have no idea what socialism is in practice. Socialism is most definitely not the Bernie Sanders fantasy of free stuff or the John Lennon song “Imagine” that they are being indoctrinated with. Socialism is an infantilizing political structure in which there is no private property and the government owns all means of production. Citizens are wards of the state and subject to the whims of the government. The government tells its dependent subjects what they can have and how much they can have. There is no freedom or upward mobility in socialism because there is no private ownership. There is only the ruling elite and the enslaved population who serve them. The American dream is dead in socialism.

Unrestricted immigration particularly Dreamers and chain migration will ultimately transform America the beautiful into a socialist state. The American dream will be sacrificed to DACA Dreamers. Why? The answer is that socialism is the prerequisite political infrastructure to internationalize sovereign countries in preparation for one-world government. Globalism’s one-world government is the hidden motive for the Leftist Democrat policies that endorse the humanitarian hoax of DACA and chain migration.

Socialism is deceitfully marketed as the great equalizer – the social system that will provide social justice and income equality. Socialism is the big lie of the 21st century because in reality socialism only benefits the elitists who rule the country. All anyone has to do is look at Cuba and Venezuela where the rulers live like kings and the ruled suffer shortages, deprivation, and poverty.

We cannot allow DACA Dreamers to tilt America toward leftist socialism which robs all Americans of their liberty except the elitists in power. Choosing the Dreamer’s dreams over the American dream is a lethal choice that will end our constitutional republic – but that was always the point of the humanitarian hoax of DACA – to kill America with “kindness.”

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the Goudsmit Pundicity.