Posted by Eeyore.
This is extraordinary. France is truly a police state and the laws are arbitrary and made up to please Macron as needs be.
Make sure you have the captions on and turn on the auto translate and set it to English. The translation is unusually good.
I may do a hard coded version anyway for posterity.
Merriam-Webster Anarchy:
1 a : absence of government
b : a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority
// the city’s descent into anarchy
c : a utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government
Quote from Willem Van Spronsen’s Manifesto:
i am antifa, i stand with comrades around the world who act from the love of life in every
permutation. comrades who understand that freedom means real freedom fro all and a
life worth living.keep the faith!
all power to the people!
bella ciao
Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) posted this tweet after Willem Van Spronsen, 69, a member of Antifa was shot and killed by Washington State police after throwing firebombs at cars and at a federal detention facility on July 13, 2019.
CNN recently aired a documentary about the antifa militia whose member was killed in an ICE firebombing attack yesterday. You can see Mr van Sprossen at the 4 second time stamp in this trailer. https://twitter.com/wkamaubell/status/1124397498389356544 …
It was Democratic Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who tweeted on June 18, 2019,
This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants, where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying. [Emphasis added]
Before being shot to death von Spronsen sent his Manifesto to friends (see full text below). Von Spronsen uses the words “concentration camps”multiple times in his Manifesto. Many of the news agencies picked up on this but they missed something more important.
The real reason for von Spronsen’s attack – violent class warfare leading to an anarchist uprising against our government.
Von Spronsen hated successful people among them Tesla CEO Elon Musk. In his Manifesto Spronsen wrote:
fascism serves the needs of the state serves the needs of business and at your
expense. who benefits? jeff bezos, warren buffett, elon musk, tim cook, bill gates, betsy
de vos, george soros, donald trump, and need i go on? let me say it again: rich guys,
(who think your’re not really all that good,) really did government, (every government
everywhere, including “communist” governments,) because they make the rules that
make rich guys richer.
simple.
don’t overthink it. [Emphasis added]
Von Spronsen was not only a member of Antifa but promoted a hate for the successful like Elon Musk. Why? Because the Democratic Party has made class warfare a part of their public policy. Tax the rich to give free stuff to those who can’t or don’t work for it.
Von Spronsen warned in his Manifesto, “beware the centrist.” This has become the mantra of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party has abandoned any semblance of being centrist and has gone toward calling for anarchy and attacks on their political opponents. Anyone who supports the President of the United States Donald J. Trump is fair game. Watch this June 2019 video of Rep. Maxine Waters:
Violence begets violence. There are members of Congress who hate America, embrace Americas enemies and support those who would do America harm. This verbal hatred has turned into the firebombing of a federal facility.
Satyros Phil Brucato on his blog wrote:
Unlike the right-wing “patriots” who have turned our nation into Mass Shooter Central this past decade-and-then-some, Will van Spronsen did not unload bombs and bullets at innocent crowds. He staged a militarized attack against a militarized target that has violated national and international laws as well as the rules of decency and the social contract. He has done what our police should be doing, and the fact that cops and this administration continue to protect and justify these outrages is a greater crime than anything van Spronsen committed there.
This kind of rhetoric leads to more violence against “militarized” targets. This leads to anarchy.
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Antifa bomber’s Manifesto
there’s wrong and there’s right.
it’s time to take action against the forces of evil.
evil says one life is worth less than another.
evil says the flow of commerce is our purpose here.
evil says concentration camps for folks deemed lesser are necessary.
the handmaid of evil says the concentration camps should be more humane.
beware the centrist.
i have a father’s broken heart
i have a broken down body
and i have an unshakeable abhorrence of injustice
this is my clear opportunity to try to make a difference, i’d be an ingrate to be waiting for
a more obvious invitation.
i follow three teachers:
don pritts, my spiritual guide, “love without action is just a word.”
john brown, my moral guide, “what is needed is action!”
emma goldman, my political guide, ‘if i can’t dance, i don’t want to be in your revolution”
i’m a head in the clouds dreamer, i believe in love and redemption.
i believe we’re going to win
i’m joyfully revolutionary. (we all should have been reading emma goldmamn in school
instead of the jingo drivil we were fed. but i digress.) (we should all be looking at the
photos of the YPJ heroes should we falter and think our dreams are impossible, but i
double digress. fight me.)
in these days of facist hooligans preying on vulnerable people on our streets, in the
name of the state or supported and defended by the state,
in these days of high profitable detention/ concentration camps and a battle over the
semantics,
in these days of hopelessness, empty pursuit and endless yearning,
we are living in visible fascism ascendant. (i say visible, because those paying attention
watched it survive and thrive under the protection of the state for decades. [see howard
zinn, “a people’s history of the united states.) now it unabashedly follows its agenda with
open and full cooperation from the government. from governments around the world.
fascism serves the needs of the state serves the needs of business and at your
expense. who benefits? jeff bezos, warren buffett, elon musk, tim cook, bill gates, betsy
de vos, george soros, donald trump, and need i go on? let me say it again: rich guys,
(who think your’re not really all that good,) really did government, (every government
everywhere, including “communist” governments,) because they make the rules that
make rich guys richer.
simple.
don’t overthink it.
(are you patriots in teh back paying attention?)
to my comrades:
i regret that i will miss the rest of the revolution.
thank you for the honor of having been in your midst.
giving me space to be useful, to feel that i was fulfilling my ideals, has been the spiritual
pinnical of my life.
doing what i can to help defend my precious and wondrous people is an experience too
rich to describe.
my trans comrades have transformed me, solidifying my conviction that we will be
guided to a dreamed of future by those most marginalized among us today. i have
dreamed it so clearly that i have no regret for not seeing how it turns out. than you for
bringing me so far along.
i am antifa, i stand with comrades around the world who act from the love of life in every
permutation. comrades who understand that freedom means real freedom fro all and a
life worth living.
keep the faith!
all power to the people!
bella ciao
audio manifesto: theSuper8.bandcamp.com
don’t let your silly government agencies spend money “investigating” this one. i was
radicalized in civics class at 13 when we were taught about the electorial college. it was
at that point that i decided that the status quo might be a house of cards. further reading
confirmed in the positive. i highly recommend reading!
i am not affiliated with any organization, i have disaffiated from any organization who
disagree with my choice of tactics.
the semi automatic weapon i used was a cheap, home built unregistered “ghost” ar15,
had six magazines. i strongly encourage comrades and incoming comrades to arm
themselves. we are not responsible for defending people from the predatory state.
ignore the law in arming yourself if you have the luxury, i did.
when i was a boy, in post war holland, later france, my head was filled with stories of the
rise of fascism in the 30’s. i promisted myself that i would not be one of those who
stands by as neighbors are torn from their homes and imprisoned for somehow being
perceived as lesser.
you don’t have to burn the motherfucker down, but are you just going to stand by?
this is the test of our fundamental belief in real freedom and our responsibility to each
other.
this is a call to patriots, too, to stand against this travesty against everything that you
hold sacred. i know you. i know your hearts, you see dishonor in these
camps. it’s time for you, too, to stand up to the money pulling the strings of every
goddamn puppet pretending to represent us.
i’m a man who loves you all and this spinning ball so much that i’m going to fulfill my
childhood promise to myself be noble.
here it is, in these corporate for profit concentration camps.
here it is, in brown and non conforming folks afraid to show their faces for fear of the
police/migra/ proud boys/the boss/beckies…
here it is, a planet almost used up by the market’s greed.
i.m a black and white thinker.
detention camps are an abomination.
i’m not standing by.
i really shouldn’t have to say any more that this.
i set aside my broken heart and i heal the only way i know how-by being useful.
i efficiently compartmentalize my pain…
and i joyfully go about this work.
(to those burdened with the wreckage from my actions, i hope that you will make the
best use of that burden.)
EDITORS NOTE: The ICE Bomber’s manifesto: I am Antifa was posted by Jack Posobiec on Twitter: @JackPosobiec
Several cities and states have passed legislation or taken steps to help women obtain abortions despite a variety of restrictive abortion legislation passed in 2019.
Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio, Georgia, and Louisiana have all passed bills banning abortions after a heartbeat can be detected. Republican Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed a bill into law in May criminalizing abortion procedures for doctors. Meanwhile, Missouri’s last abortion clinic may close due to failure to comply with the Missouri Department of Health and Human Services requirements.
In response to this restrictive abortion legislation, both New York City and Illinois have taken steps to make abortion more accessible for women traveling from other states. Maine, Vermont and Nevada have also passed laws that enable abortion access on a smaller scale, NBC News reported.
New York City
The New York City Council allocated $250,000 to the New York Abortion Access Fund (NYAAF) in June to help women travel to New York City and obtain abortions.
Pro-abortion activists claim this allocation was the first time that a city allocated money specifically designated for abortions, The New York Times reported.
Officials said that the allocated money would enable about 500 women to obtain abortions, the Times reported.
NYAAF board member Janna Oberdorf told NBC that the funds can be used by any women in or traveling to New York City and is intended to cover the abortion procedure rather than travel or lodging costs.
Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo also signed the Reproductive Health Act in January, allowing non-doctors to perform abortions according to the Times. The bill also allows women to obtain late-term abortions — after 24 weeks — if their health is in danger or if the fetus is not viable.
Cuomo did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Illinois
Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the Reproductive Health Actinto law in June, a law that makes abortion “a fundamental right” in the state of Illinois.
The law is designed to alert women in surrounding states that they can travel to Illinois to receive abortions if they cannot receive them at home, according to NBC.
The Reproductive Health Act allows non-doctors to perform abortions, abolishes Illinois’ parental notification law, forces religious and private health care organizations to provide abortions, and eliminates required investigations into deaths of mothers.
The law also eliminates requirements to publicly report abortion data, including “the number of abortions performed on out-of-state women or underage girls” according to a press release from the Susan B. Anthony List. (RELATED: Lawmakers Repeal Abortion Safeguards To Build ‘A Firewall Around Illinois To Protect Access’ To Abortion)
“Should you live in a state that has restricted your right to a safe and legal abortion, we want to make sure you know that Illinois is a place where it is safe and legal,” Democratic state Sen. Melinda Bush said to NBC News. The publication reports that Bush sponsored the bill.
“We want it to be clear that Illinois is a beacon for women’s reproductive rights,” Bush added.
Guttmacher Institute state policy analyst Elizabeth Nash told NBC that protecting abortion access in Illinois “means you’re protecting access not just in Illinois” but also in the surrounding conservative states.
Pritzker did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.
Maine
Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills signed “An Act To Authorize Certain Health Care Professionals To Perform Abortions” into law in June, a law that permits non-doctors to perform abortions in Maine.
The law will allow physician assistants and advanced practice registered nurses to perform abortions, according to a press release from Mills’ office, and is set to go into effect in September. (RELATED: Maine Will Allow Non-Doctors To Perform Abortions)
“Allowing qualified and licensed medical professionals to perform abortions will ensure that Maine women, especially those in rural areas, are able to access critical reproductive health care services when and where they need them from qualified providers they know and trust,” Mills said in a statement.
“Expanding who is allowed to perform an abortion does not expand the safety of the procedure,” Republican state Sen. Stacey Guerin of Maine said in June, according to the New York Post.
Mills did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.
Vermont
Republican Vermont Gov. Phil Scott intends to allow bill H.57 to become law, his communications director told CNN.
The bill would “recognize as a fundamental right the freedom of reproductive choice” and “prohibit public entities from interfering with or restricting the right of an individual to terminate the individual’s pregnancy,” according to CNN.
The bill also would protect women’s “rights to choose or refuse contraception or sterilization or to choose to carry a pregnancy to term, to give birth to a child, or to obtain an abortion.”
“The Governor is and has been pro-choice and believes in a woman’s right to choose, so he has ruled out vetoing the bill — it will become law,” Scott’s communication director, Rebecca Kelley, wrote in an email to CNN.
Kelley also told CNN the governor has not received the bill and has not received notice of when he will be given it.
Scott did not yet respond to a request for comment from the DCNF, and his office did not respond to questions as to the bill’s status.
Nevada
The Nevada Assembly passed a bill in May that would no longer require doctors to inform women about the “emotional implications” involved in abortions according to CNN. Democratic Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak signed the bill into law on May 31.
The bill, SB179, “removes the requirement that a physician certify a pregnant woman’s marital status and age before performing an abortion” and “also removes the requirement that a physician certify in writing that a woman gave her informed written consent.”
Democratic Nevada Rep. Dina Titus praised the bill in May, calling restrictive abortion legislation “dangerous anti-choice agenda.”
While some states across the country are passing restrictive abortion bans, Nevada is standing up to the dangerous anti-choice agenda. #StopTheBans https://t.co/TLyPm2RIgQ
— Dina Titus (@dinatitus) May 21, 2019
Sisolak did not yet respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.
EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
Over the last few days, the decision of San Francisco School Board to destroy the mural at the George Washington High School on one hand, and the objection of a group of university professors, artists and writers on the other, have reminded me of stories from my motherland, Iran. For the last forty years, a fanatical and oppressive government has been on a campaign of destroying art, history and culture which is not Islamic and/or is from pre-Islamic times in Iran. The Islamic regime while celebrating their brand of Islam, has attempted to destroy anything that is not religious and/or belongs to a different religion in different ways; destroying some while deliberately abandoning others and allowing them to be destroyed by nature. Many times in a state of disrepair and exposed to wind and rain resulting in their destruction over time.
As advocates of preservation of cultural heritage, historical sites and art, my colleagues and I regularly make declarations and protest, and send letters to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) asking them not to let the history of Iran to be destroyed. Through a not-for-profit organization, World Cultural Heritage Voices, which I founded, we work on maintaining a cultural heritage record and focus on preservation of world heritage sites, especially in the areas of the world suffering from war, poverty and conflict and mainly in the hands of negligent governments.
I am an Iranian-American, who strongly believes in non-discrimination based on race, religion, and cultural background, I strongly object to the upcoming destruction of the George Washington mural by the San Francisco Education Board. According to the basic text of the 1972 World Heritage Convention, “Considering that deterioration or disappearance of any item of the cultural or natural heritage constitutes a harmful impoverishment of the heritage of all the nations of the world,” therefore, cultural heritage of anywhere (any location) in the world is considered a universal heritage of all humans living on Earth, and destruction of any one heritage site or item would have universal adverse impact.
While I understand, and recognize the suffering and anguish that African slaves (and ancestors of many today’s African Americans) and Native Americans experienced in our common history, I have to also acknowledge that history is not just full of positive and good experiences. We cannot just focus on preservation of “good” cultural heritage. If that was the case, then we should destroy half of our museums and many historical monuments of the world. Over the last few decades we have seen how the so-called Islamic State destroyed “un-Islamic” monuments and world heritage sites in Syria and Iraq. We saw how the Taliban destroyed the world heritage designated Buddha carved on the side of mountain in Afghanistan. We have seen how the Islamic government in Iran has even destroyed the cemeteries of people from other religions in addition to several thousands of Zoroastrian temples. While the founding fathers of our nation including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson lived during times that many land owners were also slave owners, we should not forget the sacrifices they made in order to create and build our country. Let’s remember history and learn from it.
Even if we were so naïve to think that our 21st century children are so gullible and impressionable that seeing a mural on the wall could have a long-lasting impact on their lives, would it not be better if these murals could be used as a way of teaching them about history, our country and the world? And suppose that instead of destroying the mural, we could add a large panel with the following text inscribed on it:
“We Americans are proud that in the last two centuries we have made major progress towards equality that today, people of any color and background has equal rights under our Constitution. And we will keep these paintings to be reminded every day of the courage and sacrifice that many have had to make so that we could live as free citizens of this country.”
You don’t have to fly to China to find real skeptics of freedom. Turns out, there are plenty right here at home. They pop their heads up every time the Trump administration does something meaningful on religious liberty or human rights — which, thanks to this president’s priorities, means we hear from them, a lot. Sticking up for freedom used to be America’s calling card. Now that we have a State Department who takes that mission seriously, the country is finally starting to see who the real radicals are.”It would be hilarious if it weren’t so ominous.” That’s what one New York Times columnist described Secretary Mike Pompeo’s new commission on unalienable rights. To most people, last Monday’s announcement was the perfect compliment to this week’s second annual Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom. The State Department explained that it was appointing a new group of advisors, whose job would be helping the country get back to basics on human rights. In an age when liberals want that freedom to include everything from free health care to college tuition, Secretary Pompeo believes — and we agree — that it’s time to reel in our foreign policy to freedom that’s universal and God-given.”When we start to talk about… thousands of rights, we diminish these things like religious freedom that are so fundamental to humanity… [They get] sort of lost in the shuffle. And I want to make sure we get this right. And so that’s what the Unalienable Rights Commission is going to do.” On today’s “Washington Watch,” Pompeo told me that he thinks the administration is putting together “a good panel that will go back to take a look at — what are these basic rights, and how do we define them here in the United States? And then, how do we think about it around the world?” Our founders, he said, “thought about this an awful lot. They wrote about it in the Federalist Papers. They talked about it in the Declaration of Independence with the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There’s a declaration and International Declaration of Human Rights to which we will study and refer.” It’s really important, he insisted, that the kind of freedoms America defends around the world are based on discussions that are “careful and thoughtful and grounded.”
Of course, the critics could care less about what the founders intended. Their focus is imposing their extremism on as many people as possible. If that means passing off abortion as a “fundamental human right,” they’ll try. And until President Trump was elected, the global Left had tremendous success cloaking social activism in the language of freedom. But that era is over — and the abuse of these sacred truths, Pompeo insists, ends now. Roger Cohen and other liberals can wring their hands over the administration’s decisions — like removing “reproductive rights” from the annual State Department Country Reports on Human Rights or withdrawing from the U.N. Human Rights Council. But as Secretary Pompeo would say, it’s time to get back to the principles that matter.
“I’m very optimistic than when we complete this work, even those who’ve taken shots at what we’re trying to do, will see that it was sincere and important and deeply consistent with our constitution and our founding here in the United States of America.” If the U.S. wants to help the persecuted and suffering families around the world, it has to get rid of the distractions standing in the way of freedom.
That’s why the administration is putting such a strong emphasis on religious liberty. “President Trump has made it a priority,” the secretary explained, “so our team does as well.” Thanks to events like the ministerial, where a thousand government, faith, and civil leaders will gather, religious freedom is “at a higher level in the conversation,” Pompeo explained. “It’s more of a priority in many countries. I think they understand the United States’ expectations and our encouragement for them to behave in [certain] ways…” It’s also important, he went on, for other nations to see “that affording this right — this right of religious freedom — will make their country stronger, will make their country more powerful. It will make the citizens in their nation more capable. So this is certainly something that one nation ought to do because it’s the right thing to do — but it’s also something that benefits each and every country.”
All across town, Pompeo explained, people are already meeting to talk “about things that are going right in their countries, things that are not going well, [and] how we can collectively deliver on this fundamental human right… [Y]ou’ll have people like Pastor Brunson talking about his experiences. You’ll have individuals who were persecuted in certain countries talking about what happened to them and how it is we can prevent that. The conversations will be lively. They’ll be intellectual. They’ll be very powerful, because we’ll hear firsthand accounts of people who have suffered where religious freedom did not exist. And hopefully, we’ll come together to deliver on a set of objectives over the course of the next year. We’ve seen great progress… but as you well know, there’s much work to be done.”
Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.
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EDITORS NOTE: This FRC column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.
Sharia justice in the UK. My latest in FrontPage:
As Tommy Robinson headed into court for his sentencing Thursday, he wore a t-shirt that read: “Convicted of Journalism.” And it’s true. Tommy Robinson is heading back to jail for doing what journalists routinely do: ask questions of defendants heading into courtrooms. The gaggle of establishment media journalists who peppered Tommy himself with questions as he entered the court have not been arrested.
British authorities claimed that Tommy Robinson had prejudiced the outcome of the trial of several members of a Muslim rape gang. This is arrant nonsense: the trial had been completed, and Tommy was asking them what they thought of their having been convicted. There was, however, a gag order on the proceedings, and it was on the basis of the claim that Tommy violated that gag order that he is now back in prison.
Why was the gag order put into place? The obvious reason is that the British government and law enforcement authorities are deeply embarrassed by their abysmal record in dealing with Muslim rape gangs. In just one city, Rotherham, British officials “described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought as racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so.”
Nor did this happen only in Rotherham; all over the country, authorities let Muslim rape gangs run rampant for fear of being charged with “racism” and “Islamophobia” if they did anything about them. That is just what happened to Tommy Robinson when he dared to call attention to these gangs and the Islamic motivation behind their activities. The Muslim rape gangs went unreported, unprosecuted, and in general unstopped because of far-Left organizations including Hope Not Hate, Faith Matters, and Tell Mama, which waged relentless war against anyone and everyone who spoke out about this issue. They demonized as “Islamophobic,” “hateful” and “bigoted” anyone who said that there were Muslim rape gangs at all, and that they had to be stopped. They led the campaign to ban Pamela Geller and me from entering the country, when one of the events we had discussed going to was a rally against the Muslim rape gangs.
Hope Not Hate has scrubbed the evidence, but it used to be possible to search for “grooming” (as these gangs are usually called “grooming gangs” in the British media) at Hope Not Hate’s site. You would have seen that the vast majority of the articles mentioning this practice were attacking those who were calling attention to it and protesting against it.
The lives of tens of thousands of British girls are ruined today because of fascist “anti-hate” crusaders Nick Lowles and Matthew Collins of Hope Not Hate, Fiyaz Mughal of Faith Matters and Tell Mama, and their friends, supporters, and allies. Yet it is Tommy Robinson who is in prison. If Britain were even close to being a sane society today, Lowles, Mughal, and company, not Tommy Robinson, would be being subjected to scorching criticism, and there would be a thorough public reevaluation of how much the Left’s alliance with Islamic supremacism and smear campaign against foes of jihad terror has harmed the nation and its people.
But Britain is not a sane society today, and these sinister individuals — Lowles, Mughal, and the rest of them — continue to wield their considerable power and influence in British society. If Britain is ever to recover itself and stave off chaos, civil war and Sharia, Lowles, Collins, Mughal and others like them must be decisively repudiated and removed from all positions of influence, and their organizations exposed for what they are.
Instead, Tommy Robinson is back to jail, with a sentence that could be a death sentence at the hands of Muslim inmates who threatened and menaced him when he was in prison before.
The British government is clearly making an example of him in order to try to deter more Britons from protesting against its policies of mass Muslim immigration and its covering up of crimes perpetrated by Muslims in the name of Islam and in accord with its teachings. This conviction and sentencing shows not Tommy Robinson’s contempt of court, but the contempt of the British government for its own citizens, and particularly for the victims of Muslim rape gangs.
Britain has become a shabby little police state in which it is illegal to criticize Islam and mass Muslim migration in Britain today. Its death as a free society is by its own hand.
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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.
Another GOP ad is writing itself as Democrat-supporting protesters took down an American flag over an ICE facility in Colorado, defaced it and raised it upside down, vandalized a Blue Lives Matter flag and then raised the Mexican flag above the federal facility. The Mexican flag.
I would like to say these are just fringe extremists, but are they?
A leading Democrat presidential contender, U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris (from California) calls this basic, at one point bipartisan law enforcement “crimes against humanity.” Sure, that’s not overboard at all. And it’s not like she was California Attorney General or anything in charge of law enforcement. She is obviously not fringe. In fact, most of the Democratic candidates have come out opposed to the ICE law enforcement actions and for de facto open borders.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (also from California, naturally) the second most powerful leader in the country and most power Democrat at the moment, is openly advising people here illegally who have retainer warrants on them how to avoid arrest by ICE agents. She has the ability to move legislation changing the law if she does not like it. But instead, she is helping people violate the law — which last I knew means she is an accessory to crime, along with endless other Democratic officeholders, such as the new mayor of Chicago, who are doing the same thing. Again, not at all on the fringe.
No, this is more mainstream Democratic Party, at least among leadership if not rank-and-file.
In fact, you are hard-pressed to find a Democratic leader who will condemn it.
Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, who is running for the 2020 Democrat presidential nomination, was asked Sunday if the protesters should be condemned. He refused to say they should be.
“Well, I certainly respect the American flag, and my whole life I’ve been fighting to make this country…and to make sure this country welcomes everybody, and that this flag represents everyone,” Hickenlooper said on “America’s News HQ.”
When pressed on whether he would say they were wrong and shouldn’t do it, the best he could muster was: “I think there are better ways to unite us.”
I realize the knee-jerk reaction of the Democratic Party today is that if Trump says up, they say down; if he says black they say white; if he says cancer is bad they say he’s a racist (because that’s just the default comeback when stymied.)
But this is an amazing position.
Long, long ago, in the ancient days of the Republic when Barack Obama was president, ICE conducted these actions all the time. Obama defended himself against the activists masquerading as journalists on Telemundo by saying he had to, because he’s “not a king.” It’s good to know he actually realized that. His Department of Homeland Security chief, Jeh Johnson, said these law enforcement actions are right because all of the judicial appeals have been exhausted and these people are in the country illegally. It’s the frickitydiddle law.
Further, some of these illegal immigrants have also committed other crimes while here. Because lawless sanctuary cities by Democrats will not hold a criminal if ICE has a retainer on them, these criminals need to be rounded up by ICE through special law enforcement actions. But Pelosi and other Democrats (who were fine with Obama doing the exact same thing) are actively working to help criminals avoid law enforcement.
Incredible. If Democrats keep acting like this, the GOP won’t even need people to message for them. They can simply run on Democrats’ words and actions — previously listed in this space in terrifying detail — and let the justifiable fear of lawlessness take its natural course.
Oh, and use the picture of the defaced American flag and Mexican flag over a federal facility. Democrats will huff and puff that they don’t approve of that. Why should anyone believe them? Their actions on this issue mean they are totally aligned with the sentiment and the people who did it.
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EDITORS NOTE: This Revolutionary Act column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.
While you were enjoying your Fourth of July weekend, I was attending a national conference on socialism.
Why? Because socialism is having its moment on the left.
Since there’s often confusion as to what socialism really is, I decided to attend the Socialism 2019 conference at the Hyatt Hotel in Chicago over the Fourth of July weekend.
The conference, which had the tag line “No Borders, No Bosses, No Binaries,” contained a cross-section of the most pertinent hard-left thought in America. Among the sponsors were the Democratic Socialists of America and Jacobin, a quarterly socialist magazine.
The walls of the various conference rooms were adorned with posters of Karl Marx and various depictions of socialist thinkers and causes.
Most of the conference attendees appeared to be white, but identity politics were a major theme throughout—especially in regard to gender.
At the registration desk, attendees were given the option of attaching a “preferred pronoun” sticker on their name tags.
In addition, the multiple-occupancy men’s and women’s restrooms were relabeled as “gender neutral,” and men and women were using both. Interestingly enough, the signs above the doors were still labeled with the traditional “men’s” and “women’s” signs until they were covered over with home-made labels.
One of the paper labels read: “This bathroom has been liberated from the gender binary!”
While the panelists and attendees were certainly radical, and often expressed contempt for the Democratic Party establishment, it was nevertheless clear how seamlessly they blended traditional Marxist thought with the agenda of what’s becoming the mainstream left.
They did so by weaving their views with the identity politics that now dominate on college campuses and in the media and popular entertainment. The culture war is being used as a launching point for genuinely socialist ideas, many of which are re-emerging in the 21st century.
Here are six takeaways from the conference:
A common line from those on the modern left is that they embrace “democratic socialism,” rather than the brutal, totalitarian socialism of the former Soviet Union or modern North Korea and Venezuela. Sweden is usually cited as their guide for what it means in practice, though the reality is that these best-case situations show the limits of socialism, not its success.
It’s odd, too, for those who insist that “diversity is our strength” to point to the culturally homogenous Nordic countries as ideal models anyway.
It’s clear, however, that while many socialists insist that their ideas don’t align with or condone authoritarian societies, their actual ideology—certainly that of those speaking at the conference—is in no sense distinct.
Of the panels I attended, all featured speakers who made paeans to traditional communist theories quoted Marx, and bought into the ideology that formed the basis of those regimes.
Mainstream politicians may dance around the meaning of the word “socialist,” but the intellectuals and activists who attended Socialism 2019 could have few doubts about the fact that Marxism formed the core of their beliefs.
Some sought to dodge the issue. One was David Duhalde, the former political director of Our Revolution, an activist group that supports Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and that was an offshoot of Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign.
Duhalde said that Sanders is a creation of the socialist movement—having had direct ties to the Socialist Party of America in his youth—but hasn’t maintained an official connection to socialist political organizations throughout his political career.
Sanders’ position, according to Duhalde, is “anti-totalitarian” and that he favors a model based on “neither Moscow, nor the United States, at least in this formation.”
It’s a convenient way of condemning capitalist-oriented societies while avoiding connections to obviously tyrannical ones.
It was also difficult to mistake the sea of red shirts and posters of Marx that adorned the walls at the conference—or the occasional use of the word “comrades”—as anything other than an embrace of genuine socialism, but with a uniquely modern twist.
Transgenderism, gender nonconformity, and abolishing traditional family structures were huge issues at Socialism 2019.
One panel, “Social Reproduction Theory and Gender Liberation,” addressed how the traditional family structure reinforced capitalism and contended that the answer was to simply abolish families.
Corrie Westing, a self-described “queer socialist feminist activist based in Chicago working as a home-birth midwife,” argued that traditional family structures propped up oppression and that the modern transgender movement plays a critical part in achieving true “reproductive justice.”
Society is in a moment of “tremendous political crisis,” one that “really demands a Marxism that’s up to the par of explaining why our socialist project is leading to ending oppression,” she said, “and we need a Marxism that can win generations of folks that can be radicalized by this moment.”
That has broad implications for feminism, according to Westing, who said that it’s important to fight for transgender rights as essential to the whole feminist project—seemingly in a direct shot at transgender-exclusionary radical feminists, who at a Heritage Foundation event in January argued that sex is biological, not a societal construct, and that transgenderism is at odds with a genuine feminism.
She contended that economics is the basis of what she called “heteronormativity.”
Pregnancy becomes a tool of oppression, she said, as women who get pregnant and then engage in child rearing are taken out of the workforce at prime productive ages and then are taken care of by an economic provider.
Thus, the gender binary is reinforced, Westing said.
She insisted that the answer to such problems is to “abolish the family.” The way to get to that point, she said, is by “getting rid of capitalism” and reorganizing society around what she called “queer social reproduction.”
“When we’re talking about revolution, we’re really connecting the issues of gender justice as integral to economic and social justice,” Westing said.
She then quoted a writer, Sophie Lewis, who in a new book, “Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family,” embraced “open-sourced, fully collaborative gestation.”
It’s perhaps not surprising that socialists embrace open borders. After all, that’s becoming a much more mainstream position on the left in general.
The AFL-CIO used to support immigration restrictions until it flipped in 2000 and called for illegal immigrants to be granted citizenship.
As recently as 2015, Sanders rejected the idea of open borders as a ploy to impoverish Americans.
But Justin Akers-Chacon, a socialist activist, argued on a panel, “A Socialist Case for Open Borders,” that open borders are not only a socialist idea, but vital to the movement.
Akers-Chacon said that while capital has moved freely between the United States and Central and South America, labor has been contained and restricted.
He said that while working-class people have difficulty moving across borders, high-skilled labor and “the 1%” are able to move freely to other countries.
South of the border, especially in Mexico and Honduras, Akers-Chacon said, there’s a stronger “class-consciousness, as part of cultural and historical memory exists in the working class.”
“My experiences in Mexico and my experiences working with immigrant workers, and my experiences with people from different parts of this region, socialist politics are much more deeply rooted,” he said.
That has implications for the labor movement.
Despite past attempts to exclude immigrants, Akers-Chacon said, it’s important for organized labor to embrace them. He didn’t distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants.
For instance, he said one of the biggest benefits of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was that there was a brief boost in union membership amid a more general decline in unionism.
Besides simply boosting unions, the influx “changed the whole AFL-CIO position on immigrants, [which was] still backwards, restrictive, anti-immigrant,” Akers-Chacon said.
“So, there’s a correlation between expanding rights for immigrants and the growth, and confidence, and militancy of the labor movement as a whole,” he said.
The magazine Teen Vogue has come under fire recently for flattering profiles of Karl Marx and promoting prostitution as a career choice, among other controversial pieces.
It would be easy to write these articles off as mere “clickbait,” but it’s clear that the far-left nature of its editorials—and its attempt to reach young people with these views—is genuine.
Teen Vogue hosted a panel at Socialism 2019, “System Change, Not Climate Change: Youth Climate Activists in Conversation with Teen Vogue.”
The panel moderator was Lucy Diavolo, news and politics editor at the publication, who is transgender.
“I know there’s maybe a contradiction in inviting Teen Vogue to a socialism conference … especially because the youth spinoff brand is a magazine so associated with capitalist excess,” Diavolo said. “If you’re not familiar with our work, I encourage you to read Teen Vogue’s coverage of social justice issues, capitalism, revolutionary theory, and Karl Marx, or you can check out the right-wing op-eds that accuse me of ‘clickbait communism’ and teaching your daughters Marxism and revolution.”
The panel attendees responded enthusiastically.
“Suffice to say, the barbarians are beyond the gates. We are in the tower,” Diavolo boasted.
It’s perhaps no surprise that an openly socialist member of Congress is pushing for the Green New Deal—which would essentially turn the U.S. into a command-and-control economy reminiscent of the Soviet Union.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti recently said, according to The Washington Post: “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.”
“Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Chakrabarti asked Sam Ricketts, climate director for Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who is running for president in the Democratic primary. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”
Economic transformation barely disguised as a way to address environmental concerns appears to be the main point.
One of the speakers on the Teen Vogue climate panel, Sally Taylor, is a member of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-oriented environmental activist group that made headlines in February when several elementary school-age members of the group confronted Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., about her lack of support for the Green New Deal.
The other speaker on the Teen Vogue climate panel was Haven Coleman, a 13-year-old environmental activist who has received favorable coverage for leading the U.S. Youth Climate Strike in March. She was open about the system change she was aiming for to address climate change.
She noted during her remarks that she was receiving cues from her mother, who she said was in attendance.
Haven said the answer to the climate change problem was moving on from our “capitalistic society” to something “other than capitalism.”
Interestingly, none of the glowing media profiles of Haven or the Climate Strike mentioned a link to socialism or abolishing capitalism.
According to a recent Gallup survey, 4 in 10 Americans have a positive view of socialism. Support among Democrats is even higher than among the general population, with a majority of Democrats saying they prefer socialism to capitalism.
But many who say they want socialism rather than capitalism struggle to define what those terms mean and change their views once asked about specific policies.
As another Gallup poll from 2018 indicated, many associate socialism with vague notions of “equality,” rather than as government control over the means of production in the economy.
What’s clear from my observations at Socialism 2019 is that traditional Marxists have successfully melded their ideology with the identity politics and culture war issues that animate modern liberalism—despite still being quite far from the beliefs of the average citizen.
Socialists at the conference focused more on social change, rather than electoral politics, but there were still many core public policy issues that animated them; notably, “Medicare for All” and government run-health care, some kind of Green New Deal to stop global warming (and more importantly, abolish capitalism), open borders to increase class consciousness and promote transnational solidarity, removing all restrictions on—and publicly funding—abortion, and breaking down social and legal distinctions between the sexes.
They were particularly able to weave their issues together through the thread of “oppressor versus oppressed” class conflict—for instance, supporting government-run health care meant also unquestioningly supporting unfettered abortion and transgender rights.
Though their analyses typically leaned more heavily on economic class struggle and determinism than what one would expect from more mainstream progressives, there wasn’t a wide gap between what was being discussed at Socialism 2019 and the ideas emerging from a growing segment of the American left.
COMMENTARY BY
Jarrett Stepman is a contributor to The Daily Signal and co-host of The Right Side of History podcast. Send an email to Jarrett. Twitter: @JarrettStepman.
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Dear Readers:
With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.
However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.
If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.
This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.
We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.
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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.
The #WalkAway Campaign published the following commentary and video of it’s Town Hall held in Harlem, New York.
Panel: Brandon Straka, David Harris, Jr., Angela Stanton King, Yahanseh George (aka YG Nyghtstorm), Christoper Wright, Hotep Jesus.
To donate to the campaign: give.classy.org/walkaway
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Human beings think with words. We express our thoughts with words.
What truly differentiates humans from all other creatures is our ability to use language and preserve our thoughts in writing, thereby enabling us to pass down our knowledge from one generation to the next. This is why the study of history is so important, but it is not only history that is passed from generation to generation but knowledge in general.
We often say that “There is no need to reinvent the wheel.” Consider that if not for written language, each generation would, in effect, be forced to reinvent the wheel and all other forms of technology.
The study of history can help keep us from making the same tragic mistakes, but only if history is accurately written.
As George Orwell sagely observed, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
The words that we use have real impact.
In 1974 an important psychological experiment was conducted that illustrated how altering words can not only have a significant impact on how the test subjects perceived the severity of a car crash but even ultimately impact how they remember the accident creating false memories.
The impact of word choice is not, however, limited to car accidents but applies virtually everywhere.
The report of that experiment Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction: An Example of the Interaction Between Languageand Memory’ included this synopsis:
Two experiments are reported in which subjects viewed films of automobile accidents and then answered questions about events occurring in the films. The question, “About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?” elicited higher estimates of speed than questions which used the verbs collided, bumped, contucted, or hit in place of smashed. On a retest one week later, those subjects who received the verb smashed were more likely to say “yes” to the question, “Did you see any broken glass?”, even though broken glass was not present in the film. These results are consistent with the view that the questions asked subsequent t o a n event can cause a reconstruction in one’s memory of that event.
Not long after that experiment the Carter administration ordered that INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) employees stop using the term “illegal alien” to describe illegal aliens but use the term “undocumented immigrants.” There is no way to know if any one in the Carter administration had read the report I noted at the beginning of my commentary, but it certainly causes me to wonder if there is a connection.
In any event, years earlier George Orwell wrote an important novel, “1984,” that was required reading when I was a high school student, too many years ago. It must be considered “required reading” for all Americans today.
That novel about a fictitious totalitarian government included the creation of the ultimate form of propaganda known as “Newspeak” and an all-pervasive government known as “Big Brother.”
The “Ministry of Truth” was the arm of the government that administered Newspeak.
Today function of the Ministry of Truth is served by the Mainstream Media.
Though the internet, license plate readers, and a variety of other forms of surveillance, the control exerted by Big Brother in 1984 has been far surpassed by our society today.
I wrote about Newspeak and the efforts of those in political power as well as their allies in the mainstream media to alter public perceptions in my extensive article, Language Wars: The Road to Tyranny Is Paved with Language Censorship.
In that article I noted that:
A detailed explanation of Newspeak is found in this paragraph from the Appendix to Orwell’s novel, under the title , The Principles of Newspeak:
The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc (English Socialist Party) but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc — should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever. To give a single example. The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as ‘This dog is free from lice’ or ‘This field is free from weeds’. It could not be used in its old sense of ‘politically free’ or ‘intellectually free’ since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless. Quite apart from the suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction of vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could be dispensed with was allowed to survive. Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.
Today, deceptive language is frequently written off as simply being “politically correct” language designed to not insult anyone while, the truth is far more treacherous. The deceptive language is actually the manifestation of Orwellian Newspeak.
The term “Alien” has been all but expunged from the immigration vernacular, even though it is a term that is an integral element of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
In point of fact, 8 USC 1101 is a section of the INA that provides definitions for terminology that has a direct bearing on our immigration laws and defines the term “Alien” this way:
The term “alien” means any person not a citizen or national of the United States.
There is no insult in that term, only clarity. The sort of clarity the immigration con artists are determined to eliminate at all costs.
Therefore the radical left branded the term Alien “Hate Speech!”
Incredibly and hypocritically,, however, the supposedly despicable term “alien” was used to create the acronym DREAM Act. (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act) pushed vigorously by the same radical leftists.
The media now uses more obfuscating terms to describe illegal aliens. In addition to referring to them as immigrants (thereby insulting and impugning lawful immigrants) lately they refer to them as “asylum seekers” and “migrants.”
The term “migrant” is not unique to aliens. Indeed Caesar Chavez who founded the United Farm Workers Union did so to protect the interests of American migrant farm workers and railed against illegal aliens who took the jobs of American migrant workers. As for the notion that the aliens who run the U.S./Mexican border are “asylum seekers” while many will falsely claim “credible fear” only a very small percentage will actually qualify for asylum and many of these aliens don’t even show up for their hearings because they know that they won’t be approved. They just make those bogus claims as a tactic to gain entry into the U.S. and make there way to cities across the United States where they easily hide in “plain sight,” knowing that ICE lacks the resources to look for them and Sanctuary Cities will help shield them from detection.
For many Americans, however, the term “asylum seeker” falsely engenders legitimacy and creates sympathy for illegal aliens.
“Sanctuary Cities” promise to protect “immigrants” from ICE. Immigrants need no such protection. Those jurisdiction protect illegal aliens including criminals, fugitives and potentially terrorists.
Americans are well-known for being compassionate and thus using such terminology is designed to generate empathy and obfuscate the truth.
Americans historically root for the “underdog.” Today what many Americans don’t realize is that while they have been manipulated and conned into feeling sympathy for millions of illegal aliens, in reality, they and their fellow American citizens have become the true underdogs, suffering the greatest harm from rampant immigration anarchy at the hands of their own corrupt government.
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EDITORS NOTE: This FrontPage Magazine column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.
Online leftists can’t help themselves. No matter how “woke” a company or person is, they are never “woke” enough to live in a leftist’s world.
This week’s example is the boycott over Home Depot (1.9 – Liberal) co-founder Bernie Marcus’ recent statement about plans to donate to President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign. The boycott trended for at least two days this week on Twitter, with tens of thousands of Tweets.
But what is the boycott going to actually accomplish? Frankly, not much.
Here are three reasons the boycott is destined to fail:
First, it won’t hurt Marcus, who stepped down as Chairman of Home Depot’s board in 2002. Boycotting his old company just hurts Home Depot employees, many of whom are low-paid. The actual goal of the boycott – to harm Marcus – is totally and completely irrelevant when compared with reality.
Second, it won’t convince Home Depot to be more liberal. The company ranks a paltry 1.9 on the 2ndVote scale because of its financial support for attacks on life, religious liberty, and the 2nd Amendment. The company is already liberal!
Third, the boycott may convince some companies to not sell out to the Left. Companies should be politically neutral participants in the marketplace. Despite this, even “woke” firms like Twitter, Starbucks,and Home Depot are not immune to being sacrificed on the Left’s altar of wokeness.
Home Depot responded to this boycott by clarifying that they don’t endorse presidential candidates and that Marcus was speaking on his own behalf. They should go one step further and say that this boycott has convinced them that they should go back to serving all Americans equally instead of using conservative dollars to support liberal causes.
Until Home Depot recognizes that it is not good corporate policy or leadership to support social agendas which alienate a large portion of your customers, 2ndVote Americans have another choice of hardware store which isn’t kowtowing to leftist wokeness. ACE Hardware (4 – Lean Conservative) ranks a “4” on our scale because they allow franchises to sell firearms, and is totally neutral in all areas!
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In response to my clarion call for citizens to push back against anti-Americanism and cultural assassins, several of you have asked how. Some believe the battle is already lost. Some think violent resistance is the only solution. I disagree with both mindsets.
We are a Christian nation founded upon the rock of biblical principles. This is why unlike any other form of government, our constitution has survived over 243 years. It is up to each of us to pray, asking God to reveal our personal role in restoring America back to His original intention for our exceptional great nation.
In the gospel song, “Ordinary People” the lyric says, “Your little becomes much when you place it in the Master’s hand.” My younger brother is a perfect example of this truth. He is a deacon in a church in Baltimore with an all black congregation. His pastor and the congregation hate Trump, Republicans and trend towards anti-Americanism. On numerous occasions, my black Republican brother has confronted his pastor and fellow parishioners about how their loyalty to the Democratic party conflicts with their supposed commitment to Jesus Christ and biblical teachings. Their response has been to impugn him, calling him an Uncle Tom. A church member laughed at my brother for wearing a tiny American flag lapel pin.
My brother said rather than leaving his church of 25 years, he feels led to stay to provide salt and light. He teaches a class at church for new Christians, taking every opportunity to explain how the Democrat’s agenda is contrary to God’s agenda. My brother said more and more members are secretly coming to him, thanking him for opening their eyes to the truth. Praise God. This is how we restore America folks, each of us doing what we can from where we are. In his own way, my brother is pushing back.
For decades, Republicans and Christians have passively allowed leftists to infect our youth with anti-Americanism and instill a culture of glorified debauchery while systemically secularizing our government. All references of America’s Christian founding have been removed from public education. Historian David Barton is pushing back by publishing his Founder’s Bible.
Nike, sports apparel company, pulled their new Betsy Ross flag shoes off shelves because spoiled-brat anti-American multi-millionaire Colin Kaepernick absurdly claimed Ross’s flag celebrates slavery.
Renowned conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh pushed back. He launched a “Stand Up for Betsy Ross” t-shirt campaign featuring the Betsy Ross flag. Proceeds benefit the Tunnel to Towers Foundation. Sales have gone through the roof. Thousands of Americans relished the opportunity to join Rush in pushing back against leftists’ relentless assaults on our great homeland.
Thank God for President Trump. Push back is in his DNA.
Democrats sought to destroy Bernie Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot for donating to Trump’s reelection campaign. Unlike most Republicans, Trump pushed back. He boldly defended Marcus and Home Depot with the following tweet.
“A truly great, patriotic & charitable man, Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot who, at the age of 90, is coming under attack by the Radical Left Democrats with one of their often used weapons. They don’t want people to shop at those GREAT stores because he contributed to your favorite President, me!”
“These people are vicious and totally crazed, but remember, there are far more great people (‘Deplorables’) in this country, than bad. Do to them what they do to you. Fight for Bernie Marcus and Home Depot!”
Trump is righteously pushing back against illegals invading our country. Democrats and fake news media desire to corrupt our elections with illegal alien voters. Their sinister scheme began with President Obama removing the citizenship question from the census. Despite enraged Democrats and fake news media having a temper tantrum, Trump plans to issue an executive order to put the citizenship question back in the 2020 census. This is what courageous push back looks like.
I am seeing more and more signs that Americans are finally waking up, pushing back on the front lines of leftists’ war on babies, religious liberty, patriotism and freedom.
For decades we have allowed leftists to dumb down public education; removing true American history and biblical morality from our schools. Consequently, ignorance of the biblical roots of our Constitution and the huge price paid for our freedoms poses the greatest threat to preserving American exceptionalism. We are literally one election away from losing our Founder’s divinely inspired vision of America. It is imperative that each of us push back; doing our part to restore and preserve this unique extraordinarily successful experiment called America. bit.ly/2LhQHf2
Remember, “Your little becomes much when you place it in the Master’s hand.”
Imagine sending your daughter off to school only to find out that she was headed for an abortion appointment instead. Then imagine this: her teachers knew and never told you. In California, parents don’t have to imagine it. Thanks to a new undercover video, they know — it’s already happening.
It’s unreal footage, even by the ACLU’s standards. When the meeting between state teachers and the far-Left group was leaked, most people had a hard time believing it. And that, the team at Our Watch said, was the point. “[We] know what it’s like to say, ‘Okay, well, I heard somebody said this is happening, but I want to see it for myself.'” So the organization sent someone into a training session and pushed “record.” What they caught was a coordinated effort to keep parents in the dark about one of the most dangerous decisions a teenager could ever make.
“Regardless of how old the student is,” ACLU attorney Ruth Dawson starts off (at 21:08 of this video), “they can walk into a doctor’s office and consent to services without their parental consent. Those services are pregnancy and prenatal care, contraception and emergency contraception, abortion — and for these there is no parental notification.” As school officials, Dawson goes on, “I think a good way to think about this is that these are services that California has decided are so important that… students really need to be able to access them.” So no matter what, she said, “Young people have the right to leave school and seek confidential medical services without the consent or notification of their parents and guardians.”
But Dawson didn’t stop there. Every school, she argued, has a responsibility to keep these secrets — at all costs. “The key thing to remember here is about Confidential Medical Release. The right belongs to the young person. It doesn’t belong to the parent. It doesn’t belong to the school. The right lies with the young person. The most important piece of this is that schools cannot share this information with parents or guardians. Also no parent calls. So a teacher or attendance office can’t call home and say, ‘So-and-so was out at the doctor’s office receiving [whatever procedure]. Did you know about this?’ You cannot do that.” In fact, Dawson goes on, California schools should be in the habit of covering up these appointments on the district record.
Teacher: “So are they considered absent?”
ACLU: “I think it qualifies as, like, an excused absence.”
Teacher: “But once they’re absent, the school calls automatically.”
ACLU: “Right, so I think what has to happen is that the school must develop a policy so that doesn’t happen. When it comes to online attendance tracking, it gets a little trickier, because schools — as everyone in this room knows — have to report attendance.”
Administrator: “Because attendance is financial…”
ACLU: “Right. But if you say [it’s] medical, that’s actually a violation of the student’s privacy rights. If you say ‘unexcused absence’ and penalize them, that’s a violation of state law. So what the heck are you supposed to do? Some districts do things, like, they’ll say the student was with an administrator… and they won’t answer further questions. It’s a little tricky though, which is why it’s more of an art than a science… But saying it was an ‘excused absence’ does not, like, directly violate the law.”
Since when has falsifying state records not violated the law? What if there’s a medical emergency while a girl is off getting her excused-absence abortion? Can you imagine the liability issues if a parent found out the school not only knew about the appointment but covered it up? “No, it turns out, she wasn’t ‘with an administrator.’ She was taking the life of your future grandchild.” This is a world where giving a teenager a Tylenol without asking could launch a thousand lawsuits. Yet somehow, it’s okay to send them on a deadly field trip that destroys one life and forever alters the other without ever calling home?
Amazingly, the video doesn’t stop there. Dawson’s encore for the free lesson in abortion deception is a dose of radical sex ed. She goes through the state’s controversial new guidelines, taking great pains to remind teachers that even when it comes to the most extreme material (which one parent insists is so graphic, he could be brought up on charges for showing it to a child), it’s illegal for parents to opt students out. “In grades K-12, no matter where you teach sex ed… no matter whether you’re teaching fifth graders or twelfth graders, all of that has to be inclusive of LGBTQ…” Schools, she insists, “may not facilitate a selective opt-out just of the queer stuff. We’ve heard, unfortunately, from a lot of parents who say, ‘I want my kid to learn sex ed — it’s important. However, none of the gay stuff. They can’t do that. Practically, it should be impossible.”
By now, you shouldn’t need convincing that your involvement in the local school district matters. If you do, this video is more than enough proof that the Left is targeting your children. But if there’s one thing the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and every other liberal is afraid of, it’s engaged parents. There’s a reason they’re hosting these hush-hush trainings and passing laws to keep moms and dads in the dark. They understand that the more you know, the harder you’ll fight. And in a world where the other side will do anything to get to our children, that’s exactly what we need — fighters.
Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.
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Preview:
People are dying all over the country from opioid overdoses. There’s a movement to have the antidote naloxone available in all ambulances and even over the counter. This temporarily reverses the fatal effect of opioids, which stop the patient’s breathing. First responders themselves may need a dose because of contact with a tiny amount of fentanyl, an extremely potent narcotic, while attending a patient.
No, the fentanyl does not come from the patient’s bottle of legal prescription drugs.
Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.) introduced a proposal that he claims would “go a long way to fight the practice of doctor shopping for more prescription pain pills amid a deadly opioid crisis.” Doctor shopping “involves visiting multiple doctors.” Hardly new, this proposal, now passed by the House of Representatives as an amendment to a $99.4 billion Health and Human Services appropriations bill, lifts the ban on funding a Unique Patient Identifier (UPI).
The UPI is part of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996. You don’t have one yet because former congressman Ron Paul, M.D., (R-Tex,) sponsored a prohibition on funding it as part of a 1999 appropriations bill. Rep. Foster’s amendment repeals Dr. Paul’s prohibition.
So how is this 1996 idea supposed to work? And why would it be better than the Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) now in effect in nearly every state? Every prescription for a controlled substance must be reported to the PDMP, and the doctor must check it before writing a prescription, to be sure the patient is not lying about having prescriptions from other doctors. This costly program that creates time-consuming hassles for doctors has not prevented opioid deaths.
PDMPs are ineffective because doctor shopping is not the cause of the problem. Only 2.5 percent of misused prescription pain medicine was obtained by doctor shopping. And this small percentage apparently increased after PDMPs. More than 97% of misused medications are obtained from a single physician—or from an illicit source. The spike in opioid deaths after 2013 was caused by illicit fentanyl, as Dr. John Lilly concludes from painstaking analysis of official data.
If Rep. Foster’s amendment is not removed, you might have to have a UPI to get legitimate medical care—“no card, no care”—but the drug cartel won’t mind. You can shop drug dealers as much as you like. There is a flood of fentanyl, mostly from Mexico or China, coming across our borders. Rep. Foster is apparently unaware of the armed lookouts protecting the smuggling routes in the Tucson sector. And once here, the drugs go to distributors—such as illegal aliens protected in sanctuary cities.
So, what about the other touted benefits of the UPI? “Specifically, assigning a unique number to a patient would give doctors a way to immediately identify a patient’s medical history,” said Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.). He says it “would lower the cost of medical mix-ups due to misidentification.” His elderly father was nearly given the wrong medication.
To prevent medical errors, you need to alert nurses and doctors—and the UPI is not going to fix the hazards of the electronic health record. The EHR, touted as the solution that will bring efficient, quality care, has created its own type of errors.
There is no guarantee that a UPI will improve access to the record, and critical information will still be buried in voluminous, repetitious data of dubious reliability, some of which may have been cut-and-pasted from another patient’s record. There may be critical gaps as patients withhold information they don’t want in a federal database. The new problem that brings the patient to the hospital won’t be in the old record—but may be the result of an old misdiagnosis that should be corrected instead of copied.
Patients need to be able to shop for doctors, especially if the one they have has not solved their problems. Some of them desperately need opioids, which are increasingly difficult to obtain. They do not need a UPI, and neither does their doctor.
The UPI is ideally suited for government tracking and control of all citizens. People like J. Edgar Hoover or Lois Lerner might find it very useful. But it would be the end of privacy, and the foundation for a national health data system.
United States Constitution, the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
President Trump just concluded a summit at the White House on freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is the bedrock of our Constitutional Republican form of government. To speak freely is tantamount to creating and maintaining a civil society. Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer, Ph.D., executive director emerita of the National Institute for Civil Discourse found:
I attend a weekly prayer fellowship group. We meet to discuss and learn from the Bible’s lessons. I have always said that there is nothing you will see, read or hear that has not been told or foretold in the Bible. By coincidence, or divine providence, this week’s lesson was from Daniel 3 (NKJV).
As we read Daniel 3 out loud I wondered if our Founding Father’s took the lessons of the Image of Gold from it when they wrote the First Amendment to the Constitution. The ideas contained in the First Amendment are being discussed today in Washington, D.C. just as they were during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon and leader of the Chaldean Dynasty, from 605 BC – c. 562 BC.
There are three lessons from Daniel 3 that are fundamental to understanding why we have a First Amendment.
Let me explain further what I took from reading Daniel 3 with my fellowship.
First: he idea of creating images of gold. Daniel (NKJV):
3 Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold, whose height was sixty cubits and its width six cubits.
We have seen men worship images of gold either by consensus or by force. Nebuchadnezzar used force to have his people worship his image of gold:
“To you it is commanded, O peoples, nations, and languages, 5 that at the time you hear the sound of the horn, flute, harp, lyre, and psaltery, in symphony with all kinds of music, you shall fall down and worship the gold image that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up; 6 and whoever does not fall down and worship shall be cast immediately into the midst of a burning fiery furnace.”
The fiery furnace reminded me of the Holocaust, where Adolf Hitler and the Nazis cast millions into the burning fiery furnaces of Auschwitz, Dachau and Buchenwald.
Second: Disobeying the king.
In every society there are those who stand up and defy a King. So it was for the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence. The signers of the Declaration of Independence concluded with this, “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
So too it happened in ancient Babylon:
12 There are certain Jews whom you have set over the affairs of the province of Babylon: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego; these men, O king, have not paid due regard to you. They do not serve your gods or worship the gold image which you have set up.”
When Nebuchadnezzar heard this he:
[G]ave the command to bring Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego. So they brought these men before the king. 14 Nebuchadnezzar spoke, saying to them, “Is it true, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the gold image which I have set up? 15 Now if you are ready at the time you hear the sound of the horn, flute, harp, lyre, and psaltery, in symphony with all kinds of music, and you fall down and worship the image which I have made, good! But if you do not worship, you shall be cast immediately into the midst of a burning fiery furnace. And who is the god who will deliver you from my hands?”
16 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego answered and said to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. 17 If that is the case, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O king. 18 But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up.”
Third: Two wrongs do not make a right.
King Nebuchadnezzar made two mistakes as outlined in Daniel 3. The first was creating the golden image, making government God. The second mistake was not learning from his first mistake and ordaining one monotheistic religion superior to all other religions.
After Nebuchadnezzar cast Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego into his fiery furnace something amazing happened, the three were not burned. Then Daniel 3 tells us:
29 Therefore I [Nebuchadnezzar] make a decree that any people, nation, or language which speaks anything amiss against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego shall be cut in pieces, and their houses shall be made an ash heap; because there is no other God who can deliver like this.”
Nebuchadnezzar created a new “state religion.” The King went from worshiping his golden image to worshiping the God of Abraham. Creating a state religion violates the First Amendment’s Establishment clause, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
I believe that our Founding Fathers understood the lessons of Daniel 3. They understood that none of the three branches of the newly created federal government must have the power to create either golden images or a single religion that is superior to all others.
This is why freedom of religion is the foundation from which is built the house that contains freedom of speech, the right to assemble and the right to petition government.
Without freedom of religion nothing else matters.
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