The Obama Administration’s Church of Relativism

If I were a betting man I would wager that very few people who have ever known, or worked around, President Obama are surprised by his incredibly offensive comments at the recent National Prayer Breakfast. In case you missed them, while speaking about terrorism, the President stated:

“Unless we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.”

Sadly, the President was not kidding with this outrageous statement. Is it really getting “on our high horse” to condemn beheadings and setting people aflame while they are still alive?

As a former Secret Service agent and, more recently, as a candidate for public office myself, I have heard some really dumb things exit the mouths of people in the political class but this one may take the cake. Incredibly though, to many of the Obama administration acolytes, this outrageous statement makes perfect sense. It makes sense to them because they too worship in the church of relativism and the pews of this church are packed with today’s far-left liberals.

Relativism is the bedrock of modern liberalism because the far-left can neither recognize nor abide by any standards of behavior, and when standards are “relative” they’re really not standards at all. Standards of behavior are a necessity for any society that codifies and respects individual liberty. And individual liberty is the bête noire of the far-left.

The far-left cannot acknowledge that there are standards of behavior, which all of us should strive for, because it would dismantles their core belief that individual malevolence is caused by larger societal failings, not individual ones. The far-left has always run from the idea that genuine evil exists because that would require them to acknowledge that good exists as well, and admitting this would open up Pandora’s Box and expose their nonsensical ideology. Once the far-left’s Pandora’s Box is opened, they would be forced to acknowledge the existence of other “troublesome” individual characteristics such as individual effort, individual aggression, individual competitiveness, individual extraversion, self-reliance, and other traits which may lead to a person’s success or failure in life’s journey. More importantly, it would reject their assertion that humanity is fixable if only we would let them “fix us.”

The ideology President Obama subscribes to is one where individual characteristics are to be ignored ideologically and subjugated legislatively. This is why people close to him, who are believers in the same ideology, were not surprised at all by his relating of 21st century Islamic beheadings and immolations, to the Crusades beginning in the 11th century. To them, these recent ISIS atrocities are the result of some societal ill which can only be cured by visionary academics, intellectuals, and a political aristocracy not bound by the limits of a constitution. Individual liberty is seen by them as an obstacle to be overcome, not a gift from God to be cherished and defended. They see individual liberty as nothing but a vehicle to express a human greed which can only be suppressed through the path to “progress” which only they can guide us on.

Not coincidentally, this is why the far-left reserves most of its enmity for any culture, state, religion, or organization associated with success. Success to them is a zero-sum game and it must have been earned at the expense of some subjugated population who they will vigorously defend, facts be damned. Wealthy entrepreneurs, successful free market states, and competitive sports have all seen the bull’s eye of the far-left appear on their chests at some point yet, special vitriol is reserved for Israel.

A successful free market democracy in a region marked by sectarian strife, war, and economic hardship cannot be allowed to persist with the far-left because it would disprove their rigid belief that prosperity is zero-sum. The far-left is absolutely committed to the idea that prosperity must have been taken from someone else in the region, and Israel’s success in the same neighborhood as their neighbor’s legendary failures is an eyesore for them.

When you consider all of this, it’s no surprise that President Obama and his followers saw no problem with his incredibly offensive statements at the National Prayer Breakfast. To the far-left, evil is always going to be the by-product of some societal failing. President Obama blaming the Crusades, and the Inquisition, was a natural starting point to uncover blame because one of the world’s most successful and generally peaceful religions, Christianity was a dominant societal force of the time.

The real tragedy in all of this is that the far-left is corrupting an entire generation with this relativism and deconstructionist nonsense. If it continues, there will be no celebration in the future of the incredible American success story as every tale of the heroics of George Washington will be accompanied by an asterisk.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the Conservative Review. Featured image of President Obama is by Jacquelyn Martin/AP.

Kabah: The People’s Cube of Mecca

In the beginning of the world, there was the Cube. Every Muslim will tell you that, and we are not making this up. They call it Kabah, which is Arabic for “the Cube.”

People from all corners of the earth gather to the Cube in Mecca for education and enlightenment. Only instead of rotating it like we do with the People’s Cube, they run in circles around it, like the unionized electricians of a certain non-Muslim ethnic minority who rotate the stepladder while changing the light bulb.

Since the rest of the Islamic narrative about the Cube’s origin is not in compliance with the Marxist theory of Historical Materialism, below is a korrekted version, developed by the scientists of the Karl Marx Treatment Center.

Adam, the first man to evolve from the ape, built the Cube as a symbol of equality, making sure that each side was equal to the next and painted with the same colorblind-friendly black pigment.

During the Great Flood the Cube sustained significant water damage. It was then further scrambled by Islamophobic non-unionized idolaters, but later unscrambled back by Abraham and Ishmael (the first Arab to evolve from the Jew™). Finally, Allah hired Mohammed to liberate the Cube from the unenlightened corporate rednecks and the white-collar Jews who inhabited Mecca.

Kabah door

Arab scientists invented a door; they have yet to invent stairs.

Today 97 percent of scientists believe that the Cube did not acquire its cubic shape until the year A.D. 605 when Mohammed was 35 years old.

According to Historical Materialism, the original site was built some centuries earlier by non-Hispanic immigrants from Yemen, as an enclosure made of stacked rocks, so low that goats and immigrants could jump over them. In later centuries Arab scientists also invented a door.

In one corner, atop a pillar of rocks, was the Black Stone meteorite discovered by Arab scientists who believed it was a moon sample redistributed to them by the moon-person Hubal.

With time the walls and the door grew taller, and a statue of the moon-person Hubal was made with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

After Muhammad revolutionized Mecca, he made the Cube central to the agitation and propaganda of his concept of equality, based particularly on his stunning capacity for getting even. The toiling masses no longer orbited the moon shrine in imitation of celestial objects, but as an educational experience teaching them the value of sameness represented by the equality of the Cube’s squares.

Kabah swirl

RELATED ARTICLES:

The Cube of Mecca and How it Got That Way
It’s All About Muhammad, A Biography of the World’s Most Notorious Prophet
www.itsallaboutmuhammad.com

Moon god

 EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The Peoples Cube.

The Love of Power versus the Power of Love

Today’s Love of Power Has Eroded Our Freedom by LAWRENCE W. REED.

December 29, 2014, is the 205th anniversary of the birth of William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898), quoted below. This article appeared in the May 2007 issue of The Freeman.

“We look forward to the time when the power of love will replace the love of power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.”

So declared British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone more than a century ago. His audience surely responded then the same way audiences would today—with universal, nodding approval. But the world, perhaps more so now than when Gladstone spoke, seethes with hypocrisy. Though we say we prefer love over power, the way we behave in the political corner of our lives testifies all too often to the contrary.

Gladstone was eminently qualified to say what he did, and he sincerely meant it. He was a devout man of faith and character, lauded widely for impeccable integrity in his more than six decades of public life. Four times prime minister, he still ranks as one of the few politicians who really did “grow” in office. He came to Parliament in the early 1830s as an ardent protectionist, opponent of reform, and defender of the statist status quo. As he watched government operate from its highest levels, he evolved into a passionate defender of liberty. When he died in 1898 his admirers were proud of a Britain strengthened by his legacy of cutting taxes, bureaucracy, and intrusive regulation. The Irish loved him because he fought hard to restrain London ‘s heavy hand over Irish life. Biographer Philip Magnus believed that he “achieved unparalleled success in his policy of setting the individual free from a multitude of obsolete restrictions.”

Gladstone knew that love and power are two different things, often at odds with each other. Love is about affection and respect, power about control. Someone who pursues power over others for his own personal advancement is rightly deserving of opprobrium. Gladstone ‘s friend Lord Acton warned about how absolutely corrupting this can be. If love is a factor in such instances, it’s more likely love of oneself than love of others.

When real love is the motivator, people deal with each other peacefully. We use force only in self-defense. We respect each other’s rights and differences. Tolerance and cooperation govern our interactions.

Suppose we want to influence or change the behavior of another adult, or want to give him something we think he should have. This person has done us no harm and is in full command of his faculties. Love requires that we reason with him, entice him with an attractive offer, or otherwise engage him on a totally voluntary basis. He is free to accept or reject our overtures. If we don’t get our way, we don’t hire somebody to use force against him. “Live and let live,” as Americans used to say with more frequency than they do today.

When we initiate force (that is to say, when self-defense is not an issue), it’s usually because we want something without having to ask the owner’s permission for it. The nineteenth-century American social commentator William Graham Sumner lamented the prevalence of the less-noble motivators when he wrote, “All history is only one long story to this effect: Men have struggled for power over their fellow men in order that they might win the joys of earth at the expense of others, and might shift the burdens of life from their own shoulders upon those of others.”

Adults necessarily exert great power over infants, whose very existence requires nearly constant attention tempered by a strong and instinctive affection. By adolescence, the adult role is reduced to general supervision as the child makes more of his own choices and decisions. The child eventually becomes an adult empowered to live his life as he chooses and bear all the attendant risks and responsibilities.

In normal, healthy families during this nearly 20-year maturing process, a parent’s power over a child recedes but his love only grows. Indeed, most people understand that the more you love a child, the more you will desire him to be independent, self-reliant, and in charge of himself. It’s not a sign of love to treat another adult as if he were still an infant under your control.

A mature, responsible adult neither seeks undue power over other adults nor wishes to see others subjected to anyone’s controlling schemes and fantasies: This is the traditional meaning of liberty. It’s the rationale for limiting the force of government in our lives. In a free society the power of love, not the love of power, governs our behavior.

Consider what we do in our political lives these days—and an unfortunate erosion of freedom becomes painfully evident. It’s a commentary on the ascendancy of the love of power over the power of love. We have granted command of over 40 percent of our incomes to federal, state, and local governments, compared to 6 or 7 percent a century ago. And more than a few Americans seem to think that 40 percent still isn’t enough.

We don’t trust the choices parents might make in a free educational marketplace, so we force those who prefer private options to pay twice—once in tuition for the alternatives they choose and then again in taxes for a system they seek to escape.

Millions of Americans think government should impose an endless array of programs and expenses on their fellow citizens, from nationalized health insurance to child daycare to subsidized art and recreation. We’ve already burdened our children and grandchildren, whom we claim to love, with trillions in national debt—all so that the leaders we elected and reelected could spend more than we were willing to pay.

We claim to love our fellow citizens while we hand government ever more power over their lives, hopes, and pocketbooks. We’ve erected what Margaret Thatcher derisively termed the “nanny state,” in which we as adults are pushed around, dictated to, hemmed in, and smothered with good intentions as if we’re still children.

Resolutions for Liberty

If you think that these trends can go on indefinitely, or that power is the answer to our problems, or that loving others means diminishing their liberties, you’re part of the problem. If you want to be part of the solution, then consider adopting the following resolutions for this year and beyond:

  • I resolve to keep my hands in my own pockets, to leave others alone unless they threaten me harm, to take responsibility for my own actions and decisions, and to impose no burdens on others that stem from my own poor judgments.
  • I resolve to strengthen my own character so I can be the model of integrity that friends, family, and acquaintances will want to respect and emulate.
  • If I have a “good idea,” I resolve to elicit support for it through peaceful persuasion not force. I will not ask politicians to foist it on others just because I might think it’s good for them. I will work to free my fellow citizens by trusting them with more control over their own lives.
  • I resolve to offer help to others who genuinely need it by involving myself directly or by supporting those who are providing assistance through charitable institutions. I will not complain about a problem and then insist that government fix it at twice the cost and at half the effectiveness.
  • I resolve to learn more about the principles of love and liberty so that I can convincingly defend them against the encroachments of power. I resolve to make certain that how I behave and how I vote will be consistent with what I say. And I resolve to do whatever I can to replace the love of power with the power of love.

A tall order, to be sure. Let’s get started.

larry reed new thumbABOUT LAWRENCE W. REED

Lawrence W. (“Larry”) Reed became president of FEE in 2008 after serving as chairman of its board of trustees in the 1990s and both writing and speaking for FEE since the late 1970s. Prior to becoming FEE’s president, he served for 20 years as president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Michigan. He also taught economics full-time from 1977 to 1984 at Northwood University in Michigan and chaired its department of economics from 1982 to 1984.

The Dawn of the Surveillance State

America has been spying on its citizens for a hundred years by GARY MCGATH.

We think of mass surveillance as a product of modern technology—applying computing power to scoop up communications and metadata in bulk. But large-scale spying on Americans got its real start in 1917, when the United States entered World War I. The government wanted to build up an apparatus to crush all criticism.

In his 1917 Flag Day speech, President Wilson claimed that Germany had “filled our unsuspecting communities with vicious spies and conspirators and sought to corrupt the opinion of our people in their own behalf.” He warned, “Woe be to the man or group of men that seeks to stand in our way in this day of high resolution.” The next day, Congress gave teeth to his warning with the Espionage Act, which criminalized opposition to the war. In 1918, the Sedition Act made prohibitions on dissent even broader.

The apparatus for searching out people with supposedly disloyal tendencies was already in place. The Council of National Defense, created in 1916, had begun urging the states to create their own Councils of Defense. Some of them paid close attention to everything people were saying and promoted persecution of anything sounding disloyal or foreign. In Iowa, elderly women were jailed for speaking German over the telephone, and a pastor was imprisoned for giving part of a funeral service in Swedish.

In Oklahoma, Governor Robert L. Williams formed an extralegal state Council of Defense, which in turn created an Oklahoma Loyalty Bureau, employing secret service agents to find sedition in communities. The Tulsa County Council of Defense formed a secret organization to look for dissidents.

The Bureau of Investigation (later called the FBI) got into the act, creating the American Protective League (APL)—a private, quasi-official espionage organization. The APL boasted that it was “organized with approval and operating under the direction of the United States Department of Justice, Bureau of Investigation.” Because it was nominally private, the government didn’t have to take responsibility for its actions. Its 1,200 branches put local public schools under surveillance, checked on people who didn’t buy war bonds, and investigated Lutheran clergymen who didn’t express public support for the war. APL members detained over 40,000 people, opened mail, and raided factories, union halls, and private homes.

The federal government did its own share of outrageous searches and seizures. A 1918 pamphlet, “War-time Prosecutions and Mob Violence,” by the National Civil Liberties Bureau, cites numerous raids, with vast amounts of printed materials confiscated, from September 1917 onward. The International Workers of the World (IWW) and the International Bible Students’ Association—a branch of what’s now known as the Jehovah’s Witnesses—were targeted repeatedly.

The Feds also took control of all radio stations when the United States joined the war. Amateur radio was shut down, along with many commercial stations. In 1918 the federal government nationalized telephone and telegraph service, an act that Postmaster General Burleson declared necessary “to prevent communication by spies and other public enemies.”

Most of the surveillance apparatus was dismantled after the war was over, and communications returned to private hands. However, the Sedition Act, which made it all possible, still remains on the books, though in a more limited form. In 1971, it was used to indict Daniel Ellsberg for leaking the Pentagon Papers, which showed that the government had been systematically misleading the public about the Vietnam War. In 2013, it was the basis for bringing charges against Edward Snowden.

And even if most of the organizations created during this wave of hysteria are now defunct, as historian Lon Strauss has written, we can “see the foundation that influenced subsequent decisions…. There’s a direct connection with the type of surveillance state that produced the NSA; that foundation was created in the First World War.”

Mass surveillance might be grabbing headlines, but unfortunately, it’s nothing new.

ABOUT GARY MCGATH

Gary McGath is a freelance software engineer living in Nashua, New Hampshire.

Hands Off the Secret Service

Each time we witness a disaster or a scandal of one kind or another, especially those involving politicians or government agencies, we find Monday morning quarterbacks pounding the table, shouting, “Somebody do something!”  That is certainly true of the latest mini-scandal involving the once-vaunted Secret Service, a government agency with a long and storied history of service to the nation… until recent years, of course.

On November 24, 2009, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, of Warren County, Virginia, crashed a black tie event at the White House honoring Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singhon.  Although they were uninvited, the Salahis passed through two Secret Service’s checkpoints, one of which required guests to provide photo IDs which were then checked against a list of invited guests.  Their gate-crash set off a firestorm of criticism of the Secret Service protective detail.

On April 14–15, 2012, the sixth Summit of the Americas was held at Cartagena, Colombia.  However, the misbehavior of Secret Service agents and U.S. military personnel, members of the presidential advance party, overshadowed the event.  In the days that followed, it was learned that some twenty Colombian prostitutes were suspected of having spent the night with Secret Service agents and U.S. military personnel at the Hotel Caribe in Cartagena.  The episode first came to light when one of the prostitutes complained that, even though she had upheld her end of the bargain, she had been inadequately compensated by one of the agents.  The central theme of the summit was, appropriately enough, “Connecting the Americas: Partners for Prosperity.”

On December 10, 2013, as Barack Obama spoke at a memorial service for former South African president Nelson Mandela, a fake sign-language interpreter joined Obama on stage, standing just feet to his left.  The impostor, Thamsanqa Jantjie, later told the Johannesburg Star that while he was on stage with Obama he heard strange voices and began to hallucinate, causing him to make signing gestures that were pure gibberish.  Obama’s unintelligible remarks left bewildered deaf viewers around the world scratching their heads and wondering, “What the hell did he just say?”

On March 23, 2014, three Secret Service agents were recalled from the Netherlands after one of the agents was found passed out drunk in the hallway of his hotel.  The agents were part of an advance team sent to the Netherlands in preparation for Obama’s upcoming visit to The Hague.  According to a story in the Washington Post, the three agents were members of the elite Counter Assault Team (CAT).  If the president or his motorcade is ever under attack, the CAT’s job is to draw fire, providing an opportunity for Obama and others in his party to escape unharmed.  One of the three agents recalled was a CAT “team leader.”

On September 16, 2014, Obama visited the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta to receive a briefing on the Ebola crisis in Africa.  What he and his protective detail apparently did not know was that a local security guard, armed with a concealed handgun, rode on an elevator elbow-to-elbow with Obama, totally unaware of the security breach.

On September 19, 2014, just three days later, a mentally-disturbed veteran, Omar J. Gonzalez, climbed the White House fence on Pennsylvania Avenue, sprinted across the lawn, entered the double doors on the north portico, and rushed into the mansion.  Armed with a folding knife with a 2½ inch blade, Gonzales was well inside the White House, in the hallway leading to the East Room, when he was tackled by an off-duty Secret Service agent.

On March 12, 2015, two senior Secret Service agents, including a senior member of Barack Obama’s protective detail, crashed a car into a barricade at the southeast entrance to the White House following a late-night retirement party for Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan.  It was immediately suspected that the agents were under the influence of alcohol.  However, a report in the Washington Post tells us that the agents were allowed to leave the scene after a supervisor overruled uniformed officers who wanted to arrest the agents and conduct sobriety tests.

The two agents, who were on their way home from the retirement party, were responding to a radio report saying that an active bomb investigation was underway on the White House grounds.  It was reported that, shortly before the agents crashed their car into the crime scene barricade, a woman had thrown a package at the security gate, shouting, “It’s a bomb!”  When the intoxicated agents careened onto the scene they reportedly ran their vehicle over the suspect package.  Fortunately, it contained a book, not a bomb.  To the best of our knowledge, the book was not a copy of Obama’s memoir, Dreams from My Father.

Contrast these uncharacteristic “Keystone Cops” foul-ups by the Secret Service to the conduct of the well-turned-out Marines who stand guard at the White House and at embassies around the globe.  A Marine Corps website tell us, “Missions have changed over the years, but what has remained constant since November 10, 1775 is our unyielding commitment to protecting the lives of our citizens and the interests of our nation.”  The website goes on to say, “Honor requires each Marine to exemplify the ultimate standard in ethical and moral conduct… And, above all, honor mandates that a Marine never sully the reputation of the Corps.”

However, when one begins to contrast Marine Corps conduct with Secret Service lapses during the Obama era, it comes down to a question of constancy.  And while Secret Service personnel know as well as the Marines that Barack Obama is ineligible to serve in the office he holds, and that he is totally incompetent as our commander in chief, there is a difference.  While the young Marines, who dutifully salute as Obama steps down from Marine One on the south lawn of the White House, have 240 years of exemplary Marine Corps tradition to sustain them, the same is not true of the men and women of the Secret Service.  Although their duties and their obligation to the security of our nation’s leaders remain the same, the level of respect they hold for  presidents and first ladies undergoes a major transformation every four years.

In his book, In The President’s Secret Service, former agent Ronald Kessler provides insights into the presidents and first ladies of the modern era.  Having interviewed dozens of agents, past and present, Kessler tells us that “Gerald Ford was a true gentleman who treated the Secret Service with respect and dignity.  Agents found Ford to be a ‘decent man who valued their service.’ ”

He describes Jimmy Carter as being “a complete phony who had disdain for the Secret Service and was very irresponsible with the ‘football’ nuclear codes… a ‘moody and mistrustful’ person who distanced himself from the agents who were sworn to protect him and his family.”

He describes Ronald Reagan as “moral, honest, respectful, and dignified.  The Reagans treated (the) Secret Service and everyone else with respect and honor.  Nancy Reagan was very nice but very protective of the President… he treated the Secret Service agents, the Air Force One Crew, and the staff of maids and butlers at the White House with respect.”

“George H.W. Bush was extremely kind, considerate and always respectful towards Secret Service agents.  The Bushes took great care in making sure the agents’ comforts were taken care of and even brought them meals.”

Kessler writes that, “Bill Clinton’s term in office was one giant party; he was not trustworthy, (he was) adulterous, and was only nice because he wanted everyone to like him.  Hillary Clinton was another phony whose personality would change the instant cameras were near.  She hated with open disdain the military and (the) Secret Service.”
“George and Laura Bush were loved by the Secret Service… The Bushes made sure their entire administrative and household staff understood to respect and be considerate of the Secret Service.  Laura Bush was one of the nicest First Ladies, if not the nicest…”

From interviews with current agents, Kessler writes, “Barack and Michelle Obama look down on the Secret Service and hate the military.  He is egotistical, cunning, and untrustworthy, and has temper tantrums.  Michelle… hates anybody who is not black, hates the military, and looks at the Secret Service as servants.”

What is immediately evident is that the last four Republicans presidents are described by the men and women who protect them as being “considerate,”  “decent,” “dignified,” “honest,” “kind,” “moral,” and “respectful,” while adjectives used to describe the last three Democratic presidents include “adulterous,” “cunning,” “hateful,” “disdainful,” “egotistical,” “elitist,” “irresponsible,” “moody,” “phony,” “temperamental,” “untrusting.” and “untrustworthy.”  What it tells us is what we’ve always known, which is that, compared to Republicans, Democrats are, in every respect, an entirely different “breed of cat.”

So let’s not overreact to an occasional Secret Service hiccup.  It is understandable that agents may not be at the top of their game when they’re called upon to lay their lives on the line for men and women who fail to command their respect.  What they suffer from and what makes their jobs so difficult is, more than anything else, a lack of constancy in the personal characteristics and the worthiness of those they protect.

Once the Obamas have packed up and left the White House on January 20, 2017, whether willingly or in handcuffs, the Secret Service will quickly regain its honored and well-deserved reputation.  In the meantime, until we can get the next Republican family moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, let’s keep our hands off the Secret Service.  If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.

Top 5 Clinton Hypocrisies

One of the most glaring hypocrisies of big government liberals who manage to get elected or appointed to high-ranking government positions is that their professed love for the positive power of big government rarely matches their actions when their own skin is in the game.

Our country is at another significant turning point. A stagnant economic recovery, a failed national healthcare initiative, and legions of foreign policy failures have left our great country in a weakened state. What makes this special country different is that we never stay weakened for long. Out of the ashes has always arisen a far better tomorrow.

It’s tough to keep America down. But, this better tomorrow is going to need principled leaders as guides. Not because Americans need a hand out from the political class but because they need principled members of the political class to have the courage to step aside and acknowledge that Washington doesn’t have all of the answers. They must acknowledge that many problems are best left solved by strong, economically healthy American families and their communities. Unfortunately, in an era of quasi-political family dynasties, we are about to enter a 2016 election cycle with Clinton, round 2. A family dynasty grossly unprepared for the principled leadership task.

Sometimes we need to be reminded where we’ve been, to see where we DO NOT want to go. Do we really want to go back to another potentially eight years of Clinton rule?

The Clintons believe that reducing income inequality should be a top priority, unless you’re a Clinton making $250,000 per speech.

Here’s a short list of 5 glaring hypocrisies of which the Clintons have yet to provide any reasonable explanation:

  1. The Clintons have been open about their disdain for money in politics, until you take into account that they take millions in foreign donations for their foundation.
  2. The Clintons have campaigned on the premise that taxes should be raised out of “fairness,” until those taxes impact the Clintons who then proceeded to set up complicated schemes to conveniently avoid paying said taxes on their still accumulating pile of wealth.
  3. The Clintons believe that reducing income inequality should be a top priority, unless you’re a Clinton making $250,000 per speech and own multiple, spacious homes in wealthy neighborhoods.
  4. There’s a “war on women” according to the Clintons, but the Clintons are not telling you that Mrs. Clinton is a frontline warrior in waging it by paying her female staff far less than the men on her staff.
  5. The Clintons have fought for more government intrusion into your lives, all while maintaining a private email server, in violation of the rules, to keep said government out of their lives.

Like the Obamas, the Clintons seem to love hashtag diplomacy, rather than doing the real work, so here’s my contribution: #Hypocrites.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the Conservative Review.

Why Moral Values Matter

“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.” — John Adams (1735 – 1826), second President of the U.S.A.

It’s hard to consider the success of the book and film “Fifty Shades of Gray” without thinking that America has become morally bankrupt in terms of its views toward sexuality and, of course, in other ways as well.

At about the same time I was thinking this, a recent issue of The Wall Street Journal had an article titled “Unmarried…With Children.”

AA - Hollywood is SickLet me say up front that, having spent the bulk of my life in the last century, I have been a witness to the changes that have occurred and they portend a society that in many ways is in deep trouble. It is not one in which I would want today’s generation of children to grow up. That said, today’s children are drenched in all manner of information for good or ill that was simply not accessible to earlier generations. Since it reflects the views of popular culture, it often conveys the wrong lessons.

In my youth and up to around the 1960s, some thirty years, the America in which I grew up disapproved of casual sex, abortions, unmarried people living together, pornography, and comparable issues. That has changed.

The article cited the fact that “More than a quarter of births to women of childbearing age—defined here as 15 to 44 years old—in the past five years were cohabiting couples, the highest on record and nearly double the rate from a decade earlier, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 2011 to 2013.”

And here’s a statistic that really caught my attention: “Cohabiting parents now account for a clear majority—59%–of all births outside marriage, according to estimates by Sally Curtin, a CDC demographer. In all, 40% of the 3.93 million births in 2013 were to unmarried women.” Moreover, “It is mostly white and Hispanic couples who are driving the trend, not black couples, experts say.”

“Affluent, highly educated Americans still largely marry before starting families, and single mothers remain more common among the poor.” There was a time when the vast majority of Americans regarded marriage as the bond that had to first exist before a family was started.

There was a time when single motherhood was considered shameful from a moral point of view and understood to be harmful to society in general. According to a 2013 Pew Research Center study, a third of single mothers aren’t working, meaning they are likely to depend on government welfare. Feminists may call this “liberation”, but for those experiencing it, it is called poverty. The median income of working single mothers these days is $23,000 and 44% are never-married moms.

Demography, the study of how a society is composed, looks at the statistics related to age, gender, race, employment, earnings, and other factors may sound like dry stuff, but it reveals where a society is and where it is going.

In a 2012 article by Michael Snyder, “Which is Better—A Society with Loose Sexuality or a Society with Strict Rules for Sexuality?” the author notes that “Today, the percentage of U.S. adults who are married is at an all-time low. According to the Pew Research Center, only 51% of all Americans who are at least 18 years old are currently married at this point. Back in 1960, 72% of all U.S. adults were married.”

The U.S. has the highest divorce rate in the world “by a wide margin” noted Snyder. “What that means is that there are a lot less ‘family units’ than there used to be, and America has become a very lonely place.”

It is also a place which has huge rates of illiteracy. You may not connect literacy, the ability to read, and sexuality, but both relate to the behavior of people. For example, more than 70% of America’s inmates cannot read above the 4th grade level. It means that 75% of Americans who receive food stamps perform at the lowest two levels of literacy, and 90% of high school dropouts are on welfare. One in four children in America grow up without learning how to read.

Now the connection; teenage girls between the ages of 16 to 19 who live at or below the poverty line and have below average literacy skills are six times more likely to have children out of wedlock than girls their age who can read proficiently. These statistics are courtesy of DoSomething.org.

None of the statistics regarding sexuality in America are good for the future of America.

There are other issues that worry my generation. One of them is the legalization of same-sex marriage. The mere use of the word “marriage” to identify such a relationship signals the further destruction of the key element of any healthy society.

From the point of view of health, the legalization of marijuana use is another threat to the welfare of society. There was a reason it was considered dangerous and was illegal. A decade from now we will likely read about the affect it has had on the brains of young people now using it. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, currently 2.7 million Americans age 12 and older meet the clinical criteria for marijuana dependence or addiction.

For those of us old enough to remember an America where the statistics and trends cited here did not exist because public opinion guided people, particularly the young, toward a more cautious and responsible attitude about sex and marriage, what is occurring is troubling to say the least.

Morality may be ignored, but it never ceases to provide the foundation and guidelines for a healthy society.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

A Pox on Politicians

Nobody likes politicians, but everybody votes for them.

Perhaps the most quintessential American theme throughout its history has been the role politicians have played in creating it—we call them our Founding Fathers—and the endless role of those who have wanted to take us in the wrong direction or at least tried to.

I have known a few politicians and some were very good men and others reflected the very human goal of gaining wealth and power. The fact that voters have often made some very good choices says much about democracy and we need to be a bit more optimistic about it.

What differs today from the past is the enormous, indeed obscene, amount of money required to get elected and reelected. In general, it has always helped to have a bankroll to serve in public office and our first President was not only the most highly regarded man of his times, but a very wealthy plantation owner from Virginia.

Cover - The Great DivideI love reading history because, as the Chinese philosopher Confucius advised, “Study the past if you would define the future.” One of America’s finest historians, Thomas Fleming, has had a new book published, “The Great Divide: The Conflict Between Washington and Jefferson that Defined a Nation.” It is very entertaining and, over all, very astonishing. Most of the things we learned in school about them and their era are, generally speaking, wrong.

These two great figures of our Revolution, the creation of the Constitution, and their terms in office ended their lives disliking one another. As Fleming notes, “Most Americans are unaware that such discord ever existed.”

“A series of political clashes had gradually destroyed their friendship and mutual respect the two men had enjoyed at the start of Washington’s presidency. Ultimately, they became enemies. Small, slight James Madison, whose brilliant political theorizing won the admiration of both men, was forced to choose between these two tall antagonists.” America owes Madison an eternal debt of gratitude, but it was Washington and Jefferson who tend to dominate the teaching of our early history.

How different are history would have been had there not been a George Washington. Eleven years older than Jefferson, he had no formal education but read voluminously to prepare himself for the leadership that was a natural part of his character. He relentlessly pursued the Revolutionary War for seven years against the greatest power of his time and he won it.

Jefferson, by contrast, never put his life on the line. He studied law and became a passionate revolutionist most famed for his authorship of the Declaration of Independence. As Governor of Virginia, he was a failure.

“Washington,” says Fleming was “first, last, and always a realist…but he combined this realism with a surprisingly strong faith that America was destined to become a beacon of freedom for men and women everywhere.” By contrast, “Jefferson tended to see men and events through the lens of a pervasive idealism.”

It may be an over-simplification to say that Washington was politically conservative while Jefferson was a liberal. Washington had a long relationship with the Continental Congress that gave him a thorough understanding of its failures, not the least of which was to not pay the soldiers putting their lives on the line for a new nation, nor providing pensions. He understood how necessary it was to have a strong central government that could and would pay its bills.

The need for a Constitution to replace the generally useless Articles of Confederation was evident to men like Washington. His ex-aide, Col. Alexander Hamilton, quit Congress in disgust. A rebellion led by a former Continental Army captain, Daniel Shays, needed to be put down and twelve of the thirteen semi-independent legislatures ignored his demands for payment. Disaster was averted when “wealthy men in Massachusetts raised enough case to hire a local army.”

Washington was delighted that many of the delegates to the convention to revise the Articles agreed that they needed a major overhaul. Many were former Continental Army officers. They would adopt Madison’s outline of our current government called “The Virginia Plan” and “its most innovative feature was a president to serve as head of the new government, with powers coequal to Congress.”

While we are inclined to believe that the Constitution was easily achieved by the members of the convention who came together to forge it, as Fleming tells us, “With both sides weighing each word, the compromise was hammered out. “The final vote was 89-79. A shift of six votes would have condemned the Constitution to oblivion,” notes Fleming. What this tells us is that the politicians of those times were often sharply divided in ways that reflect the divisions and debates that fill our newspapers and news programs today.

Congress sent the Constitution to the states by a unanimous vote, with neither criticism nor praise.” What followed was a campaign to secure its ratification.

It was the promise of a Bill of Rights, ten Amendments submitted to the first Congress by Madison, that encouraged its acceptance and ratification in 1788. They were approved in 1789 and sent to the states. It was not until Virginia ratified the Bill of Rights on December 15, 1791 that they became part of the Constitution.

This early history is worth knowing as we debate today’s issues and as we look to today’s politicians to resolve them.

We may not like our politicians, but the early ones were not that different. We may want to say a pox on them all, but we need them and, given the right leadership, they will continue to protect and preserve our young republic.

Today’s headlines are about a Congress, elected to resist a President who has demonstrated his ignorance and indifference to the Constitution. He will be gone in two years and America will still be here to resume its leadership of the free world and spread its message of freedom and liberty.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

Netanyahu wins, New York Times crestfallen

Against all odds, life and freedom have won, and Netanyahu has emerged the victor over those who would appease and accommodate the forces who proudly proclaim that they love death and destruction. The New York Times couldn’t be more furious, and vents its bile against Netanyahu in this spiteful piece charging him with running a “racist” and “divisive” campaign. Does anyone still persist in the fantasy that the New York Times is an objective, nonpartisan reporter of the news? If so, note the words and phrases I have highlighted in this petulant piece lamenting that the jihad enablers didn’t prevail.

“Netanyahu Ahead in Israel Election Over His Chief Rival,” by Jodi Rudoren, New York Times, March 17, 2015:

TEL AVIV — After a bruising campaign focused on his failings, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel emerged from Tuesday’s elections in the best position to form a new government, though he offended many voters and alienated allies in the process.

While the results were still incomplete early Wednesday, Israeli news sites reported that Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party was likely to wind up with 30 of the 120 seats in Parliament, and that his chief rival, the center-left Zionist Union alliance, would take 24 seats.

The official Central Elections Committee site showed that with just over 68 percent of the votes counted, Likud had 23.3 percent of the vote to the Zionist Union’s 18.8 percent.

Earlier, exit polls had reported that the race was much closer, with Likud clinging to a narrow lead. But the actual results showed a surge for Likud and Mr. Netanyahu.

Mr. Netanyahu and his allies celebrated with singing and dancing. While his opponents vowed a fight, Israeli political analysts agreed that he had the advantage, with more votes having gone to the right-leaning parties likely to support him.

It was a turnabout from the last pre-election polls published Friday, which showed the Zionist Union, led by Isaac Herzog, with a four- or five-seat lead and building momentum. To bridge the gap, Mr. Netanyahu embarked on a last-minute scorched-earth campaign, promising that no Palestinian state would be established as long as he remained in office and insulting Arab citizens….

But it remained to be seen how his divisive — some said racist — campaign tactics would affect his ability to govern a fractured Israel.Citing the exit polls, Mr. Herzog celebrated what he called “an incredible achievement,” noting that his Labor Party had not won as many seats since 1992. He said he had formed a negotiating team in hopes of forming “a real social government in Israel” that “aspires to peace with our neighbors.”…

Mr. Netanyahu may be able to form a narrow coalition of nationalist and religious parties free of the ideological divisions that stymied his last government. That was what he intended when he called early elections in December. But such a coalition, with a slim parliamentary majority, might not last long.

In the coming days, President Reuven Rivlin will poll party leaders to see whom they prefer as prime minister and then charge Mr. Netanyahu or Mr. Herzog with trying to stitch together a coalition, though Mr. Rivlin said Tuesday night that he would suggest they join forces instead.

“I am convinced that only a unity government can prevent the rapid disintegration of Israel’s democracy and new elections in the near future,” he told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz….

Tuesday’s balloting came just 26 months after Israel’s last election, but the dynamic was entirely different. In 2013, there was no serious challenge to Mr. Netanyahu. That changed this time, when Mr. Herzog teamed up with Tzipi Livni to form the Zionist Union, an effort to reclaim the state’s founding pioneer philosophy from a right-wing that increasingly defines it in opposition to Palestinian aspirations….

Mr. Netanyahu talked mainly about the threats of an Iranian nuclear weapon and Islamic terrorism, addressing economics only in the final days. That was also when he made a sharp turn to the right, backing away from his 2009 endorsement of a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict and sounding an alarm Tuesday morning that Arabs were voting “in droves.”

Many voters complained about a bitter campaign of ugly attacks and a lack of inspiring choices….

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Is John Kerry a Moron?

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John Kerry testifying before Congress on Vietnam War.

I can recall John Kerry, Obama’s Secretary of State, from the days he testified to a congressional committee and slandered his fellow soldiers as the spokesman for Veterans Against the Vietnam War in 1971. I was appalled then and my opinion of the man has not changed since those days. I opposed the war, too, but I did not blame it on the men who were conscripted to fight it, nor did I believe the charges he leveled against some of them.

These days Kerry is engaged in securing an agreement with the Iranians, if not to stop their program to make their own nuclear weapons than to slow it to a later date. Never mind that the Iranian government is listed by our own government as a leading sponsor of terrorism worldwide or that they have signed such agreements in the past and then tossed out the inspectors.

Kerry is convinced that the Obama administration can get an agreement that is, in his own words, “not legally binding”, nor is it a treaty that the U.S. Senate would have to vote for or against. In point of fact, President Obama can make the deal—sign the agreement—just as Presidents have done for over two hundred years. It can then be abrogated by whoever the next President will be.

Why Obama and Kerry are doing this defies my understanding. It gives the Iranians more time to reach nuclear capability. It is opposed by every nation in the Middle East. It puts every nation within reach of Iran’s missiles at risk and it virtually guarantees the destruction of Israel, a goal of Iran’s Islamic Revolution from the day it was born. Kerry is negotiating with people who took our diplomats hostage in 1979 and have played a role in the deaths of many Americans since then.

Is John Kerry a moron? I think so.

I asked myself this question in regard to another area of U.S. policy which the Secretary of State is also championing even if millions around the world have concluded otherwise.

On March 2nd, Kerry addressed the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C, telling them what he has been saying in many forums. Let us understand that “climate change” is the name being used to replace “global warming”, because the Earth has been in a cooling cycle for the past 18 years or so. And let us understand that “climate change” has been happening for 4.5 billion years.

Kerry said, “So when science tells us that our climate is changing and human beings are largely causing that change, by what right do people stand up and just say, ‘Well, I dispute that’ or ‘I deny that elementary truth’?”

The problem with this is that human beings are not causing the planet’s climate change. Forces far greater than humans are involved, not the least of which is the Sun.

As for science, its most fundamental methodology is to constantly challenge the various ‘truths’ put forward as theories until they can be proved to be true by being independently reproduced. Nothing about the “global warming” theories has been true. All of the computer models on which it was based have been proven inaccurate. In some cases, they were deliberately rigged.

On television meteorologists remind us that every day, indeed, from morning to night, the temperatures of the area about which they are reporting are in a constant state of change. They show us satellite photography and mapping that demonstrates how dynamic the weather is on any spot on Earth. The climate, however, is measured in decades and centuries. Every one of the doomsday predictions of the global warming “scientists” and propagandists have been wrong.

The enemies of the use of energy to enhance and improve the lives of the residents of Earth began to claim in the 1970s and 80s that carbon dioxide (CO2) was threatening the climate.

At best, CO2 is a very minor element of the Earth’s atmosphere, about 0.04%, which gets it rated as “a trace gas.” As such, it plays no role with regard to the climate.

Kerry asserted that climate change is “one of the biggest threats facing our planet today” and should be ranked with terrorism, epidemics, poverty and nuclear proliferation…” Oh, wait! Isn’t this the same Secretary of State negotiating with Iran to allow it to become a nuclear power?

And what “solution” does he offer to reduce the “threat” of climate change? Kerry urged that the U.S. transition away from “dirty sources of energy” such as coal, oil and natural gas.

Writing in a recent issue of The Wall Street Journal, Matt Ridley noted that “In 2015, about 87% of the energy that the world consumed came from fossil fuels, a figure that—remarkably—was unchanged from 10 years before. This roughly divides into three categories of fuel and three categories of use: oil used mainly for transport, gas used mainly for heating, and coal used mainly for electricity.”

Fossil fuels have made the difference between modern life and burning cow dung to cook dinner. A billion people on Earth still do not have electricity.

Less obvious, but significantly more threatening is the White House effort to get the U.S. signed up for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its International Climate Justice tribunal. This is a follow-up to the 1977 Kyoto Protocol that was unanimously rejected by the U.S. Senate. Why? Because such treaties threaten the sovereignty of the U.S. and, just as importantly, because the entire United Nation’s climate program is a huge fraud.

This is what John Kerry wants the U.S. to agree to, just like the Iran deal, and just to be sure the U.S. Senate, as mandated by the U.S. Constitution, doesn’t have a say in it, he and the President are calling these deals anything other than a treaty.

Is John Kerry a moron? Maybe not as dumb as he seems to be, but surely cynical and devious.

Unfortunately, he is the Secretary of State.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

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California professors support ban of U.S. flag on campus as racist symbol

The University of California, Irvine basketball team will be heading to the “Big Dance.” Ok, for those of you who have no clue, that’s March Madness, the NCAA Basketball tournament. It starts this Tuesday with the “play in games” – in the vein of every kid gets a trophy. I remember when the NCAA tourney was just 32 teams — then it went to 64, and now it’s up to 68 teams. So congrats to the UC-Irvine hoops team, but I am perplexed. As Irvine cheers on its team, would they also cheer on their country? I’m not so sure.

Last week we shared the story about how the U.C. Irvine student government association voted 6-4-2 to remove Old Glory from a campus lobby for the sake of cultural inclusivity. When the U.C. Irvine Student Government leader stood against that ban, we all thought that was the end of it — but not so fast my friend. It seems these little progressive socialist leftists in training have garnered the support of the grown-up leftists.

As Fox News reports, “A group of university professors has signed a letter showing their solidarity with students who tried to ban the American flag at the University of California, Irvine – because they said Old Glory contributes to racism.”

“U.S. nationalism often contributes to racism and xenophobia, and that the paraphernalia of nationalism is in fact often used to intimidate,” read a letter obtained by the website Campus Reform. Hundreds across the nation have signed the letter – including some U.C. Irvine professors, Campus Reform reported.

“We admire the courage of the resolution’s supporters amid this environment of political immaturity and threat, and support them unequivocally” the letter stated.”

I don’t know what to say about this, but it truly attests to what is dangerously permeating our country — those who rant about a baby being swaddled in an American flag by his Navy dad — while there are those who disparage our national symbol.

To believe that the American flag is a symbol of colonialism and nationalism, to see the American flag as a symbol of racism and xenophobia is just beyond comprehension.

This is the same American flag that draped my own dad’s casket when he passed away in May 1986. That American flag gave Herman West Sr. a sense of purpose and dedication to this great nation that he passed on to several generations in his blood line — there was nothing to do with racism — save for the Democrat party that promoted such practice.

So maybe it’s time we say, fine, the flag will be banned from your campus –along with any American taxpayer dollars. Maybe it’s time we look at these professors who feel that America is so bad, and stop sending them any American taxpayer dollars grants for their research. After all, why should they want the funding of a racist and xenophobic country? They don’t want to be tarnished by such a demeaning currency that states something so repulsive as “In God We Trust.”

“Even Breitbart quoted an unnamed student who said the student government association feared the flag might hurt the feelings of illegal aliens. “There were people who were like, ‘the flag triggers me’ – that was their exact wording, too,” the student said.”

Meanwhile, a group of Californian lawmakers is working on a bill that that would prohibit publicly funded universities from banning the American flag. I just hate to ask the question, how many of these students who want to ban the American flag and support those who wish that are on federal student loans? Oops, forgot, since the Affordable Care Act, those are the only loans available.

Combine this with Brown University student Peter Makhlouf who referred to ROTC students as criminals — and we have the next generation of far left progressive socialist America haters.

So does this cycle ever stop, does it end? You know, I have no problem with freedom of speech and expression — that is what I served to protect. But all this reminds me of quote from George Washington in a letter to James Madison in 1785:

“We are either a United people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all maters of general concern act as a nation, which have national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending to it.”

So, do we still believe that we have national objects and a national character? Is American exceptionalism just like everyone else? Should we get off our high horse?

Are the days of America over and should we just stop acting the farce? Nah, we are far from being over. The fight has only begun. It is one worth having and we, the American patriots, shall not lose. It may seem the progressive socialist left is winning – but only because they’ve been very adept at manipulating the culture of entertainment, politics, and media. But there is a groundswell out there and something is building in this country which will reverse the fundamental transformation of America — and recommit to our Constitutional principles and values.

There is just one need: a courageous, resolute American who will lead the charge. The troops are ready, and the liberal progressive left will have no idea what hit them.

Molon Labe.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on AllenBWest.com.

Effecting Change Outside the Law

4 things more important than the written code by JOSEPH S. DIEDRICH.

What change do you want to see in the world? Maybe you want marijuana to be legal. Or you want to curtail police brutality.  Or perhaps you want to reduce the racial disparity in prisons.

One way to effect these changes is to get the law amended on paper. To do that, you’ll need a bill, a committee, a vote, and a signature — not to mention time and toil. In 2012, candidates and interest groups spent nearly $4 billion influencing congressional elections. And that’s only at the federal level.

What a waste of time and money.

The focus on legislation belies how justice — particularly criminal justice — actually works. Codified law is one small cog in a giant machine. Discretionary application of statutes, regulations, and judicial opinions determines so much more than written words. Even within the legal system, individual choice and action rule the day.

You see, the written law barely matters. It’s just words on a page. If you want to change something in society, focus on influencing the cogs that matter. Here are four of them:

1. Police

A law means nothing if it’s not enforced. Police departments have limited resources. They must prioritize. In practice, they enforce some laws with an iron fist, and they completely ignore others. Hopefully, they pay more attention to dead bodies than to doobies. But often their incentives are just the opposite.

Police officers need “reasonable suspicion” to stop you and “probable cause” to arrest you, both of which are very low standards. Yet, even if there is probable cause to make an arrest, an officer does not have to act on it.

Discretion allows traffic cops, for example, to issue a warning instead of a citation. And nobody (except maybe dairy farmers) wants cops arresting restaurateurs for not serving margarine just because the legislature says margarine is mandatory. Theoretically, officers are able to examine a situation and forego using the arrest power unless absolutely necessary.

If exercised diligently, discretion enables police to improve relationships with communities. As University of Wisconsin Law School professor emeritus Herman Goldstein observed in 1963,

Police officials too often fail to recognize that there are many in the communities which they serve who have an inherent distaste for authority — and especially police authority.… It behooves law enforcement officials to refrain from unnecessarily creating a situation which annoys such individuals.

The limited exceptions to discretion demonstrate its importance. For example, some states mandate an arrest for domestic violence calls. The complicated nature of such situations often leads to dual arrests, which leaves children without their parents. Mandatory arrests disempower victims by revoking choice. In general, they promote an overreliance on criminal problem-solving strategies by precluding other means of conflict resolution.

By the way, police officers don’t actually need to know the law. The Supreme Court’s 2014 ruling in Heien v. North Carolina confirmed that when stopping or arresting someone, officers are allowed to make “reasonable” mistakes about the law. For better or worse, the law on the streets amounts to what an officer reasonably believes it is, not what it actually is on paper.

After making an arrest, police have further discretion. They can release you. They can refer your case to a district attorney. Sometimes they can refer your case to a city attorney to prosecute it as a civil ordinance violation. That means no criminal record and no threat of jail time — just a fine.

2. District attorneys

District attorneys don’t do anything until the police send the accused their way. Without a referral, a DA probably won’t even know anything happened. Even when the police do refer a case, the DA often tosses it out.

DAs have full discretion over which “perps” to prosecute and which to completely ignore. They also have discretionary power over what charge to bring against the accused. A DA can legally charge any version of an offense for which probable cause exists — from an aggravated felony to a minor misdemeanor.

The charging decision depends on multiple factors. First, resource restraints require DAs to make conscious decisions about what cases are economically worth pursuing. Second, political pressure forces elected DAs to be “tough” on certain crimes — which means being lenient on others. Third, a particular DA may have a moral or ethical reason for forgoing charges.

3. Juries

The vast majority of criminal cases end in plea deals. But in the statistically rare cases in which juries are actually empaneled, they obviously matter a lot.

A jury can convict you if it finds guilt beyond a reasonable doubt on every element of a charged offense. Stated differently, if all 12 jurors agree that there is legally sufficient evidence to find a defendant guilty, theycan convict him.

But they don’t have to.

That’s because juries have the implicit power to nullify unjust laws. Even if there is enough evidence to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, a jury can still choose to acquit. Over time, repeated jury nullifications can lead to the de facto repeal of a law. On the eve of the Civil War, juries repeatedly practiced nullification in protest of the Fugitive Slave Act. For example, juries refused to convict runaway slaves in the Shadrach Rescue Cases, which the late Penn State York scholar Gary Collison credits with ruining Daniel Webster’s presidential aspirations.

However, the state does everything it can to prevent juries from exercising their right to judge the law itself in addition to the facts of the case. Judges have no obligation to inform jurors about their nullification powers, and they don’t. Defense attorneys are prohibited from informing jurors about nullification in the courtroom. Still, if a juror already understands the theory and legal status of jury nullification before entering the courtroom, he or she can be a powerful agent of social change.

4. Judges

After conviction come the consequences — both legal and collateral. Legal consequences of criminal conviction often include a fine, a term of imprisonment (probation or incarceration), or both. Depending on the crime, collateral consequences may include difficulty getting a job, loss of voting rights, ineligibility for welfare benefits, and deportation.

Except for a few mandatory minimum-sentencing schemes, judges retain discretion over sentencing, especially in state courts. In Wisconsin, for example, a person convicted of second-offense marijuana possession faces up to a $10,000 fine, 3.5 years imprisonment, or both. More serious felonies have an upper range of several decades. However, a judge can mete out a much lighter sentence. In many cases, regardless of the jury’s decision, the judge decides whether a man will be able to raise his infant son — or never again take a free breath.

What it means

On one hand, realizing that the law doesn’t matter can be frightening. So much time, money, and hot air went into debating it and writing it. Was it all for nothing?

On the other hand, it can be liberating. Society isn’t governed by laws. It’s regulated by individual human beings making conscious decisions. As always, human actions dwarf inanimate words.

Most importantly, it means that changing society — however you envision such change — isn’t necessarily about revising the written law. More often than not, legislation is probably the least effective (and least efficient) option. Instead, focus on the actions of individuals: police officers, attorneys, judges, jurors, or anyone else. In the end, one liberty-minded DA can be worth an entire chamber of libertarian legislators. Department hiring practices can alter police conduct more than reactionary judicial decrees. Better yet, an educated jury pool can cast a bad law into oblivion.

Laws don’t need to be changed for us to change the world.

ABOUT JOSEPH S. DIEDRICH

Joseph S. Diedrich is a Young Voices Advocate, a law student at the University of Wisconsin, and a strategic consultant at Liberty.me. He is also the creator of the podcast Sage City Today.

Oklahoma University Student’s Misplaced Outrage

My fellow Americans, please forgive me for not being able to feign any anger at Parker Rice and Levi Pettit. Rice and Pettit were two of the University of Oklahoma (OU) students and members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternity who were caught on video tape making racially tinged comments about Blacks and lynching.

As usual, most of the media and most Americans have reacted so emotionally to this incident that no one is having a rational conversation about what happened. The coverage by the media and the discussions by Americans have been overly simplistic and lacking of context.

As someone who lived in Tulsa, OK while attending Oral Roberts University, I am very familiar with OK and its culture. Oklahoma is a very laidback, welcoming state, with periodic issues of hostility towards Blacks in it’s past (the burning down of the Black Wall Street section of Tulsa in 1921).

Two weeks ago a video was released on the internet showing members of SAE using the “N” word (it rhymes with the word “trigger”) when referring to Blacks and making references to hanging Blacks from trees before ever allowing them to join their fraternity.

The fraternity and the students who participated in the video were roundly condemned by most and the president of Oklahoma University, David Boren, quickly suspended the fraternity and summarily expelled both Rice and Pettit from school.

Now, let’s dissect this event and the public’s response, especially within the Black community and see if we can actually have an intelligent, dispassionate discussion of what happened.

Was the video rant by the members of SAE reprehensible? Yes. Did Rice and Pettit deserve to be expelled from school? Not so fast. The video shows a busload of frat members singing the same song. So, should not all the students from the video be expelled? I say yes.

But I must admit, I do like the fact that the president of the university, David Boren made a swift, decisive response to the video; even though I think he should have gone further.

Boren comes from a long line of elected officials in Oklahoma. He served in the state house, as governor of the state, and in the U.S. Senate. He is a conservative Democrat with a reputation for seeking consensus. He is well regarded by those in both political parties and has earned enormous goodwill within the Black community.

So, in many ways, Boren is the perfect person to lead the response to the SAE controversy.

I refuse to engage in the silly arguments of whether what the students said were “racists” or whether the students are “racists.” It is totally irrelevant. We can all agree on the fact that what was said was indefensible and reprehensible. That is all that is relevant.

Black students at OU, members of the Oklahoma Black Caucus, and the state NAACP were emotionally apoplectic about the video.

Students organized all kinds of marches and protests, feigning moral outrage at their fellow Sooner classmates. But, many of these same students who were leading the marches justify their usage of the “N” word. Many have even justified it as a term of endearment when used Black to Black; but it is racist if used by a White. Either it is wrong for all or it is wrong for none. There is no circumstance in which the word should ever be used. Period!

Oklahoma state senator, chairman of the state’s Black Caucus, the only Black female lawmaker, and alumnus of OU, Anastasia Pittman (D-Oklahoma City) has been all over TV denouncing the students who were in the video.

The President of the Oklahoma State Conference of the NAACP, Anthony Douglas has been all over the media shown being filled with righteous indignation over this video.

Righteous indignation over this video, really? Really? Excuse me, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

These same students, Oklahoma Black Caucus members, and the Oklahoma State Conference of the NAACP has not uttered a word about how Obama is devastating Black colleges and universities with the policies coming out of his Department of Education; not a word about the high unemployment rate in the Black community; not a word about how giving amnesty to 20 million illegals will further exacerbate many of the pathologies negatively impacting the Black community.

Should we ignore what these White students did at OU? Of course not. I am happy to see students engaged in protest over an act of stupidity. But why do these groups give Obama a pass on issues that are more relevant to their lives than a silly video? It’s not an either or proposition; but rather a both and proposition. As Obama is fond of saying, “we can walk and chew gum at the same time.”

As it is written, “weak people take strong positions on weak issues.”

Ferguson is NOT America

The wounding of two police officers in Ferguson, Missouri, and earlier in New York City the assassination of two police officers are disturbing events for all Americans as they represent a hostility that threatens a safe, secure society wherever one lives.

Shooting police is an invitation to anarchy. That there have been protests and parades of late advocating this should be a matter of deep concern to all of us, no matter our race.

Ferguson, however, is NOT America if one looks at its population and the incredibly poor governance they have endured. You get the government for which you vote or when you neglect to vote.

Cover - America in CrisisFerguson is atypical of the nation. As James Langston notes in his book, “America in Crisis”, in Ferguson “the growth of the black population relative to whites is a recent occurrence. In 1990, blacks comprised 25 percent of the city’s population but that percentage grew to 52 percent in 2000 and 67 percent in 2010.”

“The demographic transition was not followed by a corresponding transition in black access to political positions, the police force, union representation, and the like. The recency of the demographic transition likely has altered the city in ways that do not characterize other contemporary major cities in the United States, especially those that are majority black like Detroit or Atlanta.”

As noted in the Department of Justice report of an investigation occasioned by the shooting of Michael Brown by a white police officer, local governance was a factor in the lives of its black citizens that has invoked protest and resentment.

“Ferguson,” notes Langston, “is unusual in the degree that the city uses the municipal court system and the revenue it generates as a way to raise city funds. This created a financial incentive to issue tickets and then impose excessive fees on people who did not pay.” For the record, this occurs in other comparable communities.

“Data bears this out. Ferguson issued more than 1,500 warrants per 1,000 people in 2013 and this rate exceeds all other Missouri cities with a population larger than 10,000 people. Ferguson has a population of just over 21,000 people but issued 24,000 warrants which add up to three warrants per Ferguson household.”

Heartland Tax & Budget NewsThis, however, is not that unusual in Missouri. An article by Joseph Miller, published in the March edition of The Heartland Institute’s Budget & Tax News noted that excessive use of traffic fines is not that uncommon in Missouri. “Of the 20 cities in the county with fine collections exceeding 20% of total revenue, 13 are contiguous with one another in a 25-square-mile section” and described this as “a daily burden for local residents.”

What the media has reported regarding the number of blacks killed in police shootings is a bit deceptive. There is no question that “the disproportional number of blacks that are killed in police shootings”, says Langston. “Blacks comprise 13 percent of the U.S. population, but represent 32 percent of those killed by police between 2003 and 2009.” That’s more than double the number of whites killed.

One must, however, consider the greater number of criminal events that bring together blacks and the police responding to them.

Being black in America inherently evokes the historical fact that this nation practiced slavery prior to and since its founding in 1788 when our Constitution was ratified, to Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. It wasn’t until 1964 when the Civil Rights Act was passed, followed by the Voting Rights Act in 1965 that the discrimination affecting the black community was fully addressed.

Two generations of Americans, black, white and other racial groups, have been born since then and these new generations have no living memory of the Civil Rights movement or the riots that occurred in cities like Los Angeles and Philadelphia. Between 1955 and 1977 there were more than thirty race riots in America. Younger Americans did not experience them. Older Americans recall them and the protests in Ferguson evoked disturbing memories.

As reported in a 2007 study released by the National Urban League, “African-American men are more than twice as likely to be unemployed as white males. They are nearly as likely to be incarcerated, with average jail sentences about 10 months longer than those of white men.” Between the ages of 15 and 34, the civil rights group noted that “black males are nine times more likely to be killed by firearms and nearly eight times as likely to suffer from AIDS.” The unemployment rates are comparable to those today, eight years later.

A 2007 report by the U.S. Bureau of Statistics noted that, while only 13 percent of the U.S. population, blacks “were the victims of 49 percent of all murders and 15 percent of rapes, assaults, and other nonfatal violent crimes nationwide.” Significantly, “Most of the black murder victims—93 percent—were killed by other black people” while 85 percent of white victims were slain by other white people.

One might conclude that murder is rampant in America, but the reality is that homicides are at a 50-year low. The peak homicide rate was in 1980. The rate began to grow in the mid-1960s, but steadily dropped by the 1990s. Today’s murder rate is at the lowest point in the past century.

What we are witnessing, however, is the result of cultural issues that afflict the black community. Juan Williams, a Fox News analyst, writing in 2007 noted that “One hard, unforgiving fact is that 70 percent of black children are born today to single mothers.” The school dropout rate is “about 50 percent nationwide for black students.”

“Black youth culture is boiling over with nihilism. It embraces failure and frustration, including random crime and jail time,” wrote Williams.

Ferguson is an example of far larger problems that afflict the black community. Only blacks can solve these problems.

One might have thought—and many did—that the election of America’s first black President was going to make these problems go away. Many blacks have entered the middle class, but the majority encounters the problems endemic to the black community and, until its culture and lifestyle choices change, those problems will be around for a long time to come.

With a black President, a black Attorney General, black members of Congress, black mayors and others demonstrating how different 2015 is from 1965, laying blame on white racism is no longer a valid excuse.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

RELATED ARTICLE: Ferguson protesters destroy U.S. flag: ‘Burning my flag should result in NO MORE WELFARE’

Obama’s Legacy of Failure

Is it too soon to begin to sum up President Obama’s “legacy”? Possibly, but after six years we know enough to draw some conclusions.

There is much to protest on any given day Obama sits in the Oval Office with all its powers at his disposal. The Constitution granted the executive branch considerable power, particularly in the conduct of foreign affairs but the Founders also created a system to offset the office when it comes to domestic affairs.

It is clear that Obama has virtually no interest in foreign affairs, preferring to tell lies about Islamic terrorism and to ignore Russia’s seizure of Crimea and its support of insurgents in eastern Ukraine. Instead he has devoted most of his time, when not vacationing and playing golf, to his domestic agenda. It has proven to be a failure.

The failure of ObamaCare, introduced with a series of lies, is the most dramatic feature of his legacy. While it remains a law, it has been so plagued with problems that one can easily imagine it being repealed once Obama is out of office. It has seriously harmed what was widely understood to be a costly system. By now, thanks to Jonathan Gruber, one of its architects, we know that both he and the President knew it would be largely unaffordable back in 2009 and both regarded Americans to be “stupid.”

The Supreme Court will hear a case, King v. Burwell, on March 4 and will likely rule in June. As The Wall Street Journal opined, “As a matter of ordinary statutory construction, the Court should find that when the law limited subsidies to insurance exchanges established by states, that does not include the 36 states where the feds run exchanges.” That many states refused to set up their own exchanges and that tells you just how poorly it was received.

Fundamentally, “if the subsidy foundation is undermined, the rest will collapse of its own weight…The subsidies are crucial to ObamaCare because they offset the added costs of the law’s regulations.” Suffice to say, Republicans who now control Congress had better have some measures to enact to replace ObamaCare. And, yes, if it was passed in whole, it can be repealed in whole.

While 36 states refused to participate in ObamaCare’s exchanges, 26 states joined together in a legal suit against the legitimacy of Obama’s unilateral executive order intended to alter the laws regarding illegal aliens, but only Congress can change those laws. No President has the authority to do so.

Ironically, on President’s Day, February 16, Federal Judge Andrew Hanen enjoined Jeh Johnson, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, from implementing “any and all aspects of phases of the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents program as set out by Johnson in a November 20, 2014 memorandum.

The injunction was based on “the failure of the defendants to comply with the Administrative Procedure Act.” That Act governs the issuance of new rules and regulations by government agencies, including requirements that public notice be posted and opportunities to comment exist before a substantive rule can be enacted. The routinely arrogant Obama administration ignored this.

The greater issue, of course, has been Obama’s refusal to obey the existing immigration laws in order to add five million or more illegal aliens to the U.S. population without their going through the process that millions of others have obeyed.

If Obama won’t obey the law, why should he expect the states or anyone else to do so? The suit was brought by the states on the grounds that “the Government has abandoned its duty to enforce the law” and Judge Hanen concluded that “this assertion cannot be disputed.” The case will now move up through the court system because, of course, Obama’s Department of Justice will seek an appeal. By the time a ruling is made, Obama is likely to be out of office and his amnesty efforts will have failed.

Obama’s two key initiatives will go down in flames and that is very good news.

Beyond them is the astonishing amount of debt he had added over the past six years, starting with a failed “stimulus” program that wasted a trillion dollars on non-existent “shovel ready” jobs, the bailout of General Motors that left taxpayers with a loss of $11.2 billion, and grants to “clean energy” companies, many of which went belly up.

As of this writing, not only has the credit rating of the U.S. been downgraded for the first time in its history, but U.S. debt stands at $18 trillion and growing. That is definitely not good news.

We can, however, as Obama’s term of office recedes with every passing day, know that his “transformation” of America into a socialist state will end in failure. When gone, whoever replaces him will have a huge job of reestablishing America as the leader of the free world.

It will not likely be a Democrat. Obama’s legacy will include—as it already has—a major voter shift to support of Republicans in Congress, in the governorships, and many state legislatures throughout America. And that is good news.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is courtesy of AP/J. Scott Applewhite/Salon.