Tommy Robinson’s Full Letter from Prison

Before being moved from HMP Hull to HMP Onley, Tommy Robinson wrote this heart wrenching, though inspiring letter from prison.

Tommy’s Team has transcribed it below, in full, for you to read and share.

If you would like to send Tommy and email please go to: emailaprisoner.com.

TOMMY ROBINSON’S LETTER FROM HER MAJESTY’S PRISON ONLEY

So here we go again! Its Sunday night 10/6/18, the news of the amazing scenes yesterday in London are just filtering their way to me.

But before I start on the positives of yesterdays demonstration let me 1st start with some negatives. Let me share with you part of my wife’s letter I received yesterday:

“School rang me today though, before I went to work and said Spencer was really upset at school, to be honest he isn’t managing mate. Sam said to him ‘I’m doing a 5k run with my dad’, and Spencer said well I can’t do it with my dad and ran off crying. He cries himself to sleep. Sleeps with your pillow and ask me 50 times a day what day is dad coming home? I can’t even give him a rough date yet because you haven’t been give any! Just hope to keep telling him its not for long, nothing will change and he needs to be brave to make you proud. He said to me last night ‘I’m going to go and do something bad so I can be put in jail with dad at least then I will be with him’.”

I’m not going to lie, reading this broke my heart. The prison removed my wife’s phone number over a week ago so I have not even been able to speak with my children, it also upsets me that in my son’s head he must think his dad has done something bad to end up in prison.

Before I sit and feel too sorry for myself I should put it into perspective. I’m away from my family for a short duration. Members of our armed forces’ children must go through this all the time which is why I admire the sacrifices they make, past and present.

I’m not going to go too much into my case as my appeal is just being lodged. What I will talk about is the difference you have all made to me. When I landed in this prison I was totally gutted. Gutted about what my family were about to go through. Gutted for those who I was in discussions with who rely on me to tell their stories. I was also adamant I would be killed on this prison sentence.

When I was leading the [English Defence League] I waas sentence to 10 months in prison in 2012, I was separated from everyone for my own protection and kept on solitary confinement for 22 weeks. I believe this was because the government feared what may happen on the streets if I was murdered in prison.

Lee Rigby was beheaded in 2013 and our government witnessed that a soldier can be beheaded and no one will really react. I was then sent to prison in 2014 for 18 months. I was literally fed to the wolves. I was lucky to escape alive, fighting my way through violent beatings at the hands of Muslim inmates.

The government knew I could be killed and no one would really do anything. It was a sad moment for myself, realising that if I’m murdered my death wouldn’t make much difference or change. I also realised my family would not be looked after and would go on to struggle for safety and stability.

OH WHAT A CHANGE 4 YEARS MAKES!

In the first few days here I began to hear that thousands are protesting outside 10 Downing Street. This was within 24 horus of my abduction by the state. I was told ‘your petition has 100,000’, then ‘hey its now at 300,000’ and then half a million. I heard people were climbing the gates of Downing Street.

I thought the people telling me must be getting it wrong. They must be confused with our Day for Freedom demo. I was completely unaware what was unfolding outside of the prison was a world wide FREE TOMMY movement.

I was in danger in my first days in this prison, housed with Muslim prisoners, then something changed. I was whisked from my cell and wing and taken and separated to safety. I believe now this was the moment Lord Pearson spoke up about my safety. His actions could have literally saved my life.

I then heard protests were spreading across the globe. I heard politicians, police and barristers were speaking out. I’ve heard so many people who have sat on the fence for years were now speaking out. To hear that 20-30 thousand people travelled to London this weekend to stand in solidarity with me is an amazing feeling. I truly am gobsmacked at the reaction from the public. I feel so loved!! Loved and appreciated.

I receive a bag of letters and emails every day. I read every one. I’m so grateful, I want to say a thank you to every single person who has supported me.

I understand how difficult it is to speak out. I understand hat many people would have faced a backlash from friends, or even from work for speaking out on my behalf and I am truly grateful to people for standing with me.

Free speech is not free when it has social consequences. I sit here happy, happy that this sentence has backfired on the establishment. Happy that the public reaction has sent a message of the consequences if they have me murdered on this sentence.

I have said for so long that there will be a moment in our country, none of know what that moment will be but it will change the direction of our nation.

I think deeply about this and for a while now I’ve been sure that I will be murdered for opposing Islam. A scary thought. But not as scary as thinking it will make no difference. Although now I sit here smiling with the belief that my murder would start a revolution, I’m standing laughing out loud — that may seem mad — but knowing this is so satisfying.

I’ve always said I’d sacrifice my life tomorrow if it would end the Islamic takeover of our beautiful land. Our battle is not as simple as against flesh and blood, but we battle a system! A corrupt system. Sitting here gives you so much time to think. We can no longer be looking from the outside in. We must involve our voice and our movement into politics. I have so many plans on what I want to do when I get out. To hear that Geert Wilders travelled and spoke in London is so exciting for me.

When I started my activism I looked to Geert and the life changing decisions he made to speak out against Islam. He has been an inspiration to me. I can’t list all the people I need to thank as there are so many but I know Alex Jones at InfoWars would be leaidng the shout for my freedom. I love him, he cracks me up.

Gerard Batten of UKIP, Lord Perason, Raheem, Ezra, Katie Hopkins, my cousin Kevin Carroll jumping straight in with the demo. Danny for organising it. DONALD TRUMP JUNIOR for tweeting. I’d have done 6 months just for that recognition.

The list could go on and on. I’ll do my proper thank yous upon my release. One person I have to thank, my wife!

When I finally got through to her on the phone from prison I asked her, “Have you had enough yet?” Ha ha. I’ve not been a great husband but she has been a perfect wife and an amazing mother.

I simply couldn’t get through any of this without my family.

So Jenna, if you are reading this letter online then know I LOVE YOU and I MISS YOU.

My mates will ruin me for this soppy shit ha ha.

Lots of people say I give them hope, but I want you all to know that your reaction, whether it be supporting my family, paying for legal costs, or even just sharing videos or tweets, you have all given me hope and an absolutely priceless feeling.

Please excuse my handwriting but my hand is failing me. I’m using my time to put pen to paper and detail out my next book. I was already working on it before this sentence. Working title: “The Battle for Britain”. Basically bringing Enemy of the State [Tommy’s first book] up to date and also looking into the future.

So I’d like to thank Her Majesty for giving me the time alone on my own to work on it. Knowing that there are more plans for demonstrations unil my release is great. It’s great to know that I’ve not been forgotten and their attempts to silencce me won’t work. It’s now Monday evening and I’ve just watched LOVE ISLAND ha ha.

My wife’s number was put back on the system so I have spoke with my children today so I’m less stressed and more relaxed. My children will come to visit me in the near future.

Thank you all for the support. It’s your outcry and reaction that will keep me safe. Please know how inspired and grateful I am. I’m hoping Lord Pearson and Gerard Batten will also be visiting me here and lads if you are reading this ask Geert to pop into HMP Hull with you. My appeals have gone in, appeal sentence, appeal conviction and bail app.

Oh yeah thank you Pauline Hanson, thank you AFD for the offer of asylum.

The establishment thought this would close the book. Instead the public have just turned the page to continue the next chapter.

I love and thank you all.

Mum and dad sorry about the stress I give you ha ha.

Thank you to the free world.

It’s Tuesday, I’m being moved prison so my kids won’t see me this weekend.

ENDS

RELATED VIDEO: #FreeTommy Protest

EDITORS NOTE: Copyright © 2018 Tommy Robinson, All rights reserved.

Francis Condemns ‘Eugenic’ Abortions and Fake Marriage

Robert Royal praises recent pro-life words by Pope Francis. But why was the Holy Father all but silent about abortion votes in Ireland and Argentina? 

I’d been on the road for much of the past week and hadn’t been very carefully following the news. But I woke yesterday to the heartening news that Pope Francis had strongly condemned selective abortion and the various attempts to redefine marriage as something other than a life-long commitment between one man and one woman.

Even more, he did so off-the-cuff, departing from the text he had prepared to deliver to the Forum delle famiglie, an Italian family association. It’s usually been on just such occasions – when he speaks spontaneously and “from the heart” – that he’s delivered the most troubling remarks of his pontificate. It was largely because of those remarks and his early criticism of Catholics who are constantly “insisting” and “obsessing” on life issues and marriage that he alienated and, sad to say, even lost the confidence of many active Catholics – even before the ambiguities and implied infidelities of Amoris laetitia.

He has, of course, condemned abortion and gay “marriage” on multiple occasions. But the world, Catholic and not, seemed to sense that his heart wasn’t in it. The coverage of his recent remarks in the main secular outlets was very brief, usually just reproducing parts of an Associated Press story – quite a contrast to the extensive coverage when he seemed to be moving towards modern culture.

The Wall Street Journal made the obvious observation that the latest remarks were “unusually strong for a pope who has generally played down medical and sexual ethics and taken a strikingly conciliatory approach to gay people.”

The question arises: why now? There was the humiliating spectacle last month of the Irish overwhelmingly voting to rescind a law prohibiting abortion, after voting for gay marriage in 2015. Perhaps more to the point, just this past week, legislators in Argentina’s Chamber of Deputies approved a bill allowing abortion up to fourteen weeks by just four votes.

Pope Francis was silent about Ireland – a very odd reticence by a man who has no qualms about weighing in on public issues like climate change, fossil-fuel exploration, immigration, Middle Eastern politics, Hindu persecution of Muslim Rohingyas, international economics – the list goes on. All these have moral dimensions, of course, though it’s hard to see what expertise or insight the Vatican brings to such complex situations. By contrast, allowing abortion in Ireland means the direct and immediate killing of thousands of innocents.

The pope was (perhaps) not entirely silent on this question in his native country. Back in March, he sent a letter to Argentina. It was only five paragraphs in length and mostly a thank-you for a letter he had received congratulating him on completing five years as pope. It was quite mild and, even when he turned to the question of abortion, mixed together multiple issues:

I ask you all that you be channels of the Good and the Beautiful, that you lend your support in defense of life and justice, so that peace and fraternity may appear, so that you make the world better by your work, so that you care for the weakest, and share with full hands all that God has given you.

You would have to be an Argentinean to know for certain whether this was read as strong opposition to impending abortion changes, or whether this was the right tone given the way particular nations respond to papal comments – but the official Vatican News account didn’t even mention abortion.

Perhaps that was one reason why the latest comment was not at all subtle, more in keeping with what many Catholics expect from the occupant of the Chair of Peter. Pope Francis went to the modern touchstone of evil, comparing “selective” abortions (usually because of fetal abnormalities, sex, etc.) with the Nazi eugenics program of race purification. This time, he says, we are doing the very same thing “with white gloves,” as if it’s just a medical procedure. (If you read Italian, there’s a transcript of the spontaneous remarks as well as the prepared speech here.)

Though it comes too late for the millions of innocents who will die now in Ireland and Argentina, still, it’s good that Francis gave this full-throated affirmation. We might add it wasn’t only the Nazis who practiced eugenics in the named of racism: Margaret Sanger, hero to so many American abortion advocates and founder of Planned Parenthood, took the same view – though maybe she wore lace-gloves.

It’s interesting that Francis was also so vocal about marriage. The off-the-cuff remarks refer a lot to Amoris laetitia, the very text that many of us feel both seeks answers to current troubles with marriages and – despite the announced intention of pursuing a path of mercy and discernment – weakens, perhaps implicitly contradicts, Our Lord’s strong words about the indissolubility of marriage. And will likely lead to even further confusion and breakdown.

Still, there are very good things in the recent remarks: “Life in a family: it’s a sacrifice, but a beautiful sacrifice. Love is like making pasta: you do it every day. Love within matrimony is a challenge, for the man and the woman. What’s the biggest challenge for a man? To make his wife more a woman. More woman. That she grow as a woman. And what is the challenge for a woman? To make her husband more of a man. And thus they go forward, both of them.”

This insistence on growing into being men and women will not win the Holy Father any awards at the U.N., or the E.U., or the various gender activist groups that have half-welcomed the tone he adopted from the first days of his papacy. There are other things in these off-the-cuff remarks less straightforward. But he’s affirmed “male and female He created them” and supported traditional marriage.

Where would the Church be now if only, as pope, he had stayed close to these sorts of peasant insights and not been drawn into the swamps of modernist German theology?

Robert Royal

Robert Royal

Dr. Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing, and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent book is A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century, published by Ignatius Press. The God That Did Not Fail: How Religion Built and Sustains the West, is now available in paperback from Encounter Books.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Pope Francis in the Clementine Hall on Saturday receiving and addressing the members and children of the Forum delle famiglie [Photo credit: ANSA]. © 2018 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.orgThe Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

Pope and World Council of Churches to hold conference on xenophobia, migration, and populism

This should be fun to watch!

WCC logo

The Marxists at the World Council of Churches and Pope Francis think they are going to bring the world together in harmony and love with a conference in September on defeating xenophobia and the menace of political populism (just as a major power shift fueled by populism is sweeping Italy).

Maybe they would get a lot farther in bringing peace to the world if they cut out the insulting language….just saying!

From Breitbart:

The World Council of Churches (WCC) has announced a joint venture with the Vatican to co-host a meeting next September on “migration, xenophobia, and politically motivated populism.”

pope and WCC head

The Pope and Rev. Tveit joining forces to defeat political populism…..

The WCC said it is partnering with the Vatican department for Promoting Integral Human Development in preparing the conference to be held September 17-20 as part of ongoing work toward“peace-building and migration.”

The General of the WCC, Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, said the meeting would be a “very useful and significant workshop to dig a bit deeper” into the problems of xenophobia as an expression of populism, as well as its links to racism, conflict, and violence in countries around the world.

Last September, the Vatican launched a two-year campaign to change people’s minds about migrants and to encourage a more welcoming attitude toward them worldwide.

“Brothers, we mustn’t be afraid to share the journey! We mustn’t be afraid to share the hope!” Francis said in his weekly General Audience on September 27, in which he inaugurated the new project, titled “Share the Journey.”

[….]

The stated goal of the project is to shed light on both the challenges and effects of migration at every stage of the journey to provoke a “shift in thinking” on the issue.

Do they really think they will get a shift in thinking when they continue to denigrate people as xenophobes who disagree with them about immigration?

Part of this shift in thinking involves dispelling common “myths about migration,” the organization declared, before laying out “some common myths around migration and the facts behind the myths.”

Caritas said these myths include the idea that there are more migrants than ever before, that migrants live off welfare benefits and steal jobs from citizens, that closing borders will stem migrant flows, and that “people from poor countries migrate to rich ones.”

Wcws logoe are told daily by these very same people that the number of migrants worldwide is greater than ever before. 

Myths? Migrants live off welfare benefits—-of course most of them do!  Would they be flocking to generous welfare states like Sweden and Germany (and in the US Minnesota!) if they were denied all welfare?

And, do they really expect us to believe that people are migrating to poor countries instead of rich ones.  Nuts!

By the way, if you didn’t know, US resettlement contractor Church World Service is a member of the World Council of Churches.

Both CWS and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops financially benefit from the movement of migrants from the third world to America, something never mentioned by them when they lecture us about “welcoming the stranger.”

Once Again, Obamacare’s Constitutionality Comes Into Question

Readers might recall that, in 2012, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, colloquially known as Obamacare, by a 5-4 vote in a case captioned NFIB v. Sebelius.

Last year, Congress revised Obamacare. In the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, Congress eliminated the penalty imposed on people who do not purchase health insurance by reducing the penalty to $0 effective January 2019.

What makes that 2017 law interesting for present purposes is this: Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the controlling opinion in NFIB v. Sebelius; he concluded that the Obamacare penalty can be characterized as a “tax”; and he decided that, so viewed, Obamacare was a constitutional exercise of Congress’ power to raise taxes.

Enter Texas. In February of this year, Texas and several other states filed a lawsuit alleging that, by reducing the Obamacare tax to zero, Congress eliminated the only basis on which the Supreme Court had upheld the constitutionality of Obamacare. A sine qua non of a tax is that it generates revenue, Texas argued, and beginning in January 2019 Obamacare will no longer do so.

Accordingly, concluded Texas, starting next year Obamacare can no longer be upheld as a lawful exercise of Congress’ taxing power, so the federal courts should hold the law unconstitutional now.

The possibility that Obamacare could yet be consigned to the ash heap delighted some and troubled others. (For my opinion on the matter, see here.) Recently, the Department of Justice filed its answer to the Texas complaint. In it, the department agreed with the plaintiffs that Obamacare will become unconstitutional once the individual mandate penalty effectively disappears next year.

The Justice Department believes that, as a result, several provisions of Obamacare must go, such as the requirement that insurance companies provide coverage to someone with a pre-existing condition—but the Justice Department thinks that the rest of the statute can stand.

Texas disagrees. It argues that the Obamacare statute is like the base in Jenga: Once you remove the critical elements, the entire superstructure falls apart.

So what happens now? Here is how the case might proceed.

The district court is likely to act without delay. Why? There are no facts in dispute, only (at most) two legal issues: Is Texas right that Obamacare can no longer be upheld as a lawful exercise of Congress’ taxing power? If “No,” game over. If “Yes,” then is Texas also right that the unconstitutional portion(s) of the law cannot be severed from the remainder without leaving Obamacare a jumble of words that does not make sense?

Those issues may be difficult to resolve legally, but there is no need for a trial over the facts. Plus, the district court knows that, in all likelihood, the Supreme Court will ultimately have to resolve this dispute and that, the closer it gets to January 2019, the more attention there will be on the effect of eliminating the “tax” on the insurance markets.

The Supreme Court will need to decide this issue because of the odd way that it upheld the constitutionality of Obamacare in NFIB v. Sebelius. Four justices concluded that Obamacare was a lawful regulation of commerce, and four disagreed. Roberts was the fifth vote to uphold Obamacare. He decided that the health care law could be upheld as a tax, but not as a regulation of commerce.

The result was that five justices found the law constitutional, but they disagreed about why.

Given the odd nature of the court’s lineup in NFIB v. Sebelius and the pending disappearance of the “tax,” it is incumbent on the Supreme Court to take up the issue once again and—hopefully—come up with a majority opinion that puts the matter to rest.

Once the district court issues its decision, it is possible for one or more parties to ask the Supreme Court to review the case even before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit does.

How? One of the parties could file in the Supreme Court what is known as a “petition for a writ of certiorari before judgment,” a mechanism that allows a party to leapfrog over the appeals court and go directly to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court does not have to grant such a petition, and it prefers to have at least one appeals court review an issue before taking it up, because it likes the help that comes with having three circuit judges write about a problem. But it may not make much of a difference because the court of appeals is also likely to act expeditiously.

Regardless of how the case reaches the Supreme Court, it is likely that the Supreme Court will revisit the constitutionality of Obamacare this fall. With luck, the whole matter will finally be resolved before the end of this year. Stay tuned.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Paul J. Larkin Jr.

Paul J. Larkin Jr. directs The Heritage Foundation’s project to counter abuse of the criminal law, particularly at the federal level, as senior legal research fellow in the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. Read his research.

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.

ACTIVATE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY

If Twitter and Facebook ban all hate speech, what will Democrats do for social media?

I saw this tweet from Bill Mitchell (@mitchellvii),

If Twitter and Facebook are gonna ban all hate speech, what will Democrats do for social media?

This is a very good question.

As Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) noted in a tweet:

“Accuse your opponent of what you are doing, to create confusion and to inculcate voters against evidence of your own guilt”

Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

Guardian News posted the below YouTube video stating, “The actor and long-time critic of Donald Trump receives a standing ovation at Sunday night’s Tony awards in New York after attacking the US president on stage at Radio City Music Hall.” WARNING GRAPHIC LANGUAGE.

Has the political and social media rhetoric escalated from being anti-Trump to being anti-American?

Here is an interview with former Governor Mike Huckabee and Jessie Waters on the rising level of vitriol.

As Governor Huckabee notes, there are three bubbles in the United States. They are New York, Washington, D.C. (the Swamp) and Hollywood. There was a time when hate like this was only seen in foreign lands.

Now hate is the only tool left for Democrats and their supporters.

Sad but true.

EDITOR NOTE: The featured image is by Shoreditch, London, United Kingdom

Antitrust Matters Matter

United States antitrust laws regulate the organization and conduct of business corporations on state and national levels to provide fair competition for the benefit of consumers. Why are they necessary?

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has the answer.

“Free and open markets are the foundation of a vibrant economy. Aggressive competition among sellers in an open marketplace gives consumers – both individuals and businesses – the benefits of lower prices, higher quality products and services, more choices, and greater innovation. The FTC’s competition mission is to enforce the rules of the competitive marketplace – the antitrust laws. These laws promote vigorous competition and protect consumers from anticompetitive mergers in business practices. The FTC’s Bureau of Competition, working in tandem with the Bureau of Economics, enforces the antitrust laws for the benefit of consumers.”

The Sherman Antitrust Act, passed by Congress in 1890 under President Benjamin Harrison, was the first Federal act that outlawed interstate monopolistic business practices. It is considered a landmark decision because previous laws were limited to intrastate businesses.

In 1890 Utah, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska, and Hawaii were not even states. The Transcontinental Railroad that connected the eastern United States with the Pacific coast was in its infancy. That was then, this is now. Today there are 50 states, world travel is commonplace, and antitrust matters matter to every person on Earth.

Why? What do antitrust matters have to do with me? The answer is EVERYTHING.

The protections of antitrust laws focus on the unfairness of business monopolies on consumers. What about the unfairness of political monopolies on citizens? America broke free from the monopolistic centralized power of the British monarchy and won its independence after years of war and death. Why? To create a country based on the principles of individual freedom and liberty.

Every freedom articulated by our Founding Fathers was designed to protect the citizenry by promoting individualism and fairness. The Constitution and Bill of Rights are the greatest antitrust documents ever written providing:

  • Freedom of religion
  • Freedom of speech
  • Freedom of the press
  • Freedom of assembly
  • Freedom to petition
  • Right to keep and bear arms
  • No quartering of soldiers
  • Freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures
  • Right to due process
  • Right to speedy trial
  • Freedom from cruel and unusual punishment

The United States Constitution protects citizens from anticompetitive mergers in government practices. The United States of America is the greatest experiment in individual freedom and liberty the world has ever known specifically because of its antitrust antimonopolistic infrastructure. The Constitution defines the checks and balances of power and the individual rights of its citizens.

The current battle for our national sovereignty is an antitrust struggle against global governance. Globalism must not be confused with fair global trade between independent nations. Globalism is the monopolistic anticompetitive political practice of concentrating world power in the hands of a few globalist elite rulers. It is a return to the feudal infrastructure of a paternalistic pyramid with the few elites at the top and the masses of enslaved people at its base.

In 1890 antitrust legislation was necessary to protect consumers from exploitive business practices that focused on goods and services in the interstate marketplace. In 2018 the competition is over the world of ideas. Political systems of national sovereignty supporting individual freedom are battling political systems supporting collectivist globalism.

Globalists are selling planetary governance. They are facilitating the sale by concentrating their power with mergers and acquisitions that limit the information the public is offered. Monopolistic information through censorship and partisan program content on the Internet, television, radio, films, and particularly in academic curricula indoctrinate the unsuspecting public toward collectivism and planetary governance.

Today’s consumers need protection from exploitive political practices to provide fair competition for the benefit of consumers. The American public needs to become aware of how protective antitrust legislation that prevents monopolistic concentration of power affects them. Global governance is a worldwide concentration of power that eliminates individual freedom in the same way global monopolies on goods and services eliminate fair competition. Free and open markets are the foundation of a vibrant economy just like the free and open marketplace of ideas is the foundation of freedom.

The choice that Americans must make is between “free” stuff in a monopolistic collectivist political system of global governance that will enslave them, or freedom in an independent sovereign United States of America. The coordinated effort to delegitimize and overthrow President Donald Trump is the coordinated effort to delegitimize and overthrow our national sovereignty. Antitrust matters matter because monopolistic oppression is never good for the consumer whether they are buying goods, services, or their freedom.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of President Donald Trump arrives for the official welcoming ceremony the G7 Summit in the Charlevoix town of La Malbaie, Quebec, Canada, June 8, 2018. (Christinne Muschi/Reuters) This column originally appeared on the Goudsmit Pundicity.

Free Speech Case Involving Twitter Moves Forward

I first told you about the case filed by Jared Taylor (American Renaissance) against Twitter here in February.

Now we learn that Taylor’s lawsuit can advance as a California judge refuses Twitter’s effort to dismiss the case.

Twitter-Jail-300

NOTE: I use Twitter almost daily and was steadily moving upward in follower numbers until a few months ago.  It isn’t my imagination, I know that Twitter is doing something (maybe shadow-banning to some of my 14 thousand followers) to keep my numbers down. So they don’t have to ban you outright as they did Taylor, they simply make sure you can’t expand your reach.

Here is the news from AP at ABC News:

Lawsuit over white nationalist’s Twitter ban clears hurdle

A California judge has refused to throw out a lawsuit that accuses Twitter of violating the free speech rights of a leading white nationalist figure by banning his social media account.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Harold Kahn ruled in Jared Taylor’s favor during a hearing Thursday on Twitter’s request to dismiss the suit, court records show.

Taylor claims Twitter permanently suspended accounts belonging to him and hundreds of other far-right users in December based solely on their political views and affiliations.

The judge described Taylor’s case as a “classic public interest lawsuit” and said it “goes to the heart of free speech principles that long precede our constitution,” according to a transcript of the hearing.

Jared Taylor 2

Jared Taylor

“Now, it may be speech that you and I don’t wish to enjoy, but that’s not germane to the determination of whether it’s public interest. Public interest doesn’t have a flavor of ideology to it; public interest is whether it benefits the public,” Kahn said.

Company attorney Patrick Carome argued that platforms like Twitter have a First Amendment editorial right to choose what kind of content to distribute.

[….]

The judge asked Carome if he was arguing Twitter has an “absolute First Amendment right” to remove anybody from its platform, including on the basis of their religion or gender.

“Twitter doesn’t do that,” Carome responded, “but that is what the First Amendment guarantees to First Amendment actors.”

Taylor is a Yale-educated, self-described “race realist” who founded an Oakton, Virginia-based, tax-exempt nonprofit called the New Century Foundation. He operates American Renaissance, an online magazine that touts a philosophy that it’s “entirely normal” for whites to want to be a majority race.

Taylor’s lawyers argue access to Twitter is “essential for meaningful participation in modern-day American democracy.”

More here.

LOL! I’m wondering if the SPLC is going to say AP and ABC News are racist outfits for publishing this important news about free speech.

This should be good—-stay tuned!

By the way, even if you aren’t on Twitter, you can see my Twitter feed in the right hand column of RRW. I post all of my RRW articles there plus other things that interest me.

If you are on Twitter, I am @RefugeeWatcher.  Yesterday’s post about the Maine man murdered by Somali ‘youths’ in Lewiston went viral on Twitter.

RELATED ARTICLES: 

Lewiston, ME: Man attacked by gang of Somali teens dies

In new age of ‘Aquarius’, Mama Merkel between a rock and a hard place

Ronald Reagan was NOT responsible for Refugee Act of 1980; fake news from The Salt Lake Trib

Senators Announce Bill to Protect States’ Legalization of Marijuana

One likes to think of policymaking as a deliberative process, one where legislators base their debates on scientific information to craft evidence-based bills. Au contraire, mes amis.

For several years, an emerging marijuana industry has poured money into sponsoring ballot initiatives and lobbying state legislators to legalize marijuana. Industry’s money not only legalized pot for medical use in 31 states and for recreational use in 8 of those states, but also silenced the nonprofit voices of prevention, treatment, and public health that lack the wherewithal to compete. The legislative playing field is by no means level.

In January, Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded the Obama Administration’s Cole Memo, which gave the industry a pass from federal enforcement so long as it adhered to eight conditions (all of which were violated within weeks without follow-up enforcement).

Infuriated by Sessions’ action, Colorado Sen. Cory Gardener put a hold on all judicial candidates nominated by President Trump until he capitulated in April, promising he would uphold states’ rights to legalize pot.

Last week, Senators Gardener and Elizabeth Warren (MA) introduced the Strengthening the Tenth Amendment Through Entrusting States (STATES) Act. Representatives Jared Polis (CO), David Joyce (OH), and Earl Blumenauer (OR) introduced the companion bill in the House. President Trump announced he would support the bill.

The STATES Act would exempt states that have legalized marijuana from the US Controlled Substances Act. If Congress passes the Act, the marijuana industry will not only be able to expand in states that have made pot legal, it will amass even more money to lobby for full legalization in the 42 states that haven’t.

Americans have no idea how much money is being spent by the marijuana industry to get what it wants: full legalization nationwide at the expense of public health.

Read ABSNews story here.


Yes, You Can Become Addicted to Marijuana. And the Problem is Growing.

Although many Americans are unaware that marijuana can cause addiction, in the public health and medical communities, “it is a well-defined disorder that includes physical withdrawal symptoms, cravings and psychological dependence,” and increasing numbers of people are seeking treatment for it, notes this Pew Charitable Trusts story.

Experts are trying to find out why. Some think the intense levels of THC in marijuana strains (up to 20%) and concentrates (up to 80%) are responsible for the upsurge. Others think it may be because more users are taking the drug multiple times a day.

Nearly 3 million Americans meet the diagnostic criteria for marijuana dependence.

This article chronicles the trajectory of marijuana addiction in one young man, Quintin Pohl, pictured above, now age 17. Quintin began smoking marijuana in middle school and is now free of the drug thanks to treatment at a California residential treatment center and extensive follow-up aftercare.

Read this Pew Charitable Trusts story here.


Vermont Marijuana: What Parents Should Know about Pot and Juuling THC

The latest fad for teens and tweens is “to Juul.” Picture above, Juuls are e-cigarettes popular with young people who often post pictures of themselves on social media inhaling candy-flavored liquids from them. Juuls and other e-cigarettes heat the liquids and produce vapors which can then be inhaled.

The liquids can contain nicotine or cannabis oil. No one can tell the difference, but both can be harmful to health. Some chemicals in e-cigarette liquids are carcinogenic.

Schools are developing policies that ban Juuls on campus and recommend that parents reinforce that message at home with their teenagers. Legal marijuana will soon be available in Vermont but not for anyone under age 21. This article offers six tips to parents to help them talk with their teenagers about marijuana.

Read the Burlington Free Press article here.


Helping to End Addiction Over the Long-term (HEAL)

The directors of the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; and the National Institute on Drug Abuse lay out a research plan for ending addiction over the long term.

Read the JAMA article here.

The Marijuana Report is a weekly e-newsletter published by National Families in Action in partnership with SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana).

Visit National Families in Action’s website, The Marijuana Report.Org, to learn more about the marijuana story unfolding across the nation.

Subscribe to The Marijuana Report.

Our mission is to protect children from addictive drugs by shining light on the science that underlies their effects.

Addictive drugs harm children, families, and communities.

Legalizing them creates commercial industries that make drugs more available, increase use, and expand harms.

Science shows that addiction begins in childhood.

It is a pediatric disease that is preventable.

We work to prevent the emergence of commercial addictive drug industries that will target children.

We support FDA approved medicines.

We support the assessment, treatment, and/or social and educational services
for users and low-level dealers as alternatives to incarceration.


About SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana)

SAM is a nonpartisan alliance of lawmakers, scientists and other concerned citizens who want to move beyond simplistic discussions of “incarceration versus legalization” when discussing marijuana use and instead focus on practical changes in marijuana policy that neither demonizes users nor legalizes the drug. SAM supports a treatment, health-first marijuana policy.  SAM has four main goals:

  • To inform public policy with the science of today’s marijuana.
  • To reduce the unintended consequences of current marijuana policies, such as lifelong stigma due to arrest.
  • To prevent the establishment of “Big Marijuana” – and a 21st-Century tobacco industry that would market marijuana to children.
  • To promote research of marijuana’s medical properties and produce, non-smoked, non-psychoactive pharmacy-attainable medications.

SPLC’s Dangerous Bigotry: Empowered by Facebook, Twitter, Google, & Amazon

2ndVote readers are familiar with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The famed civil rights organization has devolved into little more than a left-wing fundraising machine, naming Christian organizations “hate groups” for doing nothing more than holding to traditional values on sexuality.

In a rational world, SPLC would be out of business for its dangerously false designations, which have been linked to at least one attempted mass shooting. Instead, it has massive corporate supportis regularly given credibility by mainstream media outlets, and — as was uncovered last week by The Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) — is consulted by Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon for censorship purposes.

The DCNF reports that of the four organizations, Amazon gives SPLC the greatest free rein:

“We remove organizations that the SPLC deems as ineligible,” an Amazon spokeswoman told TheDCNF.

Amazon grants the SPLC that power “because we don’t want to be biased whatsoever,” said the spokeswoman, who could not say whether Amazon considers the SPLC to be unbiased.

The Smile program allows customers to identify a charity to receive 0.5 percent of the proceeds from their purchases on Amazon. Customers have given more than $8 million to charities through the program since 2013, according to Amazon.

Only one participant in the program, the SPLC, gets to determine which other groups are allowed to join it.

Christian legal groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom — which recently successfully represented a Christian baker at the Supreme Court — are barred from the Amazon Smile program, while openly anti-Semitic groups remain, The DCNF found in May.

One month later, the anti-Semitic groups — but not the Alliance Defending Freedom — are still able to participate in the program.

The other social media giants are not far behind in using SPLC to punish groups with which don’t follow left-wing ideology. Google uses SPLC to police alleged hate speech on YouTube even as it has been accused of demonetizing YouTube videos with conservative content. Facebook and Twitter both consult with SPLC to police alleged hate speech.

Conservatives at the Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom, and the Ruth Institute haven’t bowed to SPLC’s bullying, and the DCNF’s new report gives more credibility to conservative concerns. The refusal to back down has brought adherents from the mainstream press. The Atlantic published a defense of one of SPLC’s Muslim targets while former Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger and former Bloomberg columnist Megan McArdle criticized SPLC’s overall methodology.

Now it’s your turn. We urge you to use your second vote to let SPLC’s corporate backers know that you won’t stand for the SPLC’s dangerous bigotry against conservatives:

ICYMI: Facebook Is Still Targeting Conservatives, Protecting Planned Parenthood’s Abuse Cover-Ups

Last week, we told you that Starbucks is still funding Planned Parenthood despite the abortion giant’s cover-ups of sexual abuse of underage girls. We’ve now been made aware that Live Action — the amazing organization which has exposed this illegal and immoral practice — has been blocked from promoting one of their videos on Facebook!

Check out that video here.

Live Action’s exposure campaign may be followed here and here.

We all know that Facebook doesn’t like conservatives. But blocking access to exposing a taxpayer-funded organization’s shocking cover-ups is just too far. Planned Parenthood has long protected its abortion bottom line by sending little girls back to sexual abusers. One abortion center in Mobile, Alabama gave two abortions to one girl in 2014 in just four months — and only admitted it to state authorities after they were caught.

That’s illegal. But authorities let Planned Parenthood slide, just as corporate backers have. This must stop. We urge you to spend your second vote dollars at companies that don’t back Planned Parenthood. This is an abortion company which protects sexual abusers, kills unborn children, and has illegally sold babies’ body parts.

You can see all the companies that support Planned Parenthood’s abortion industry on 2ndVote’s resource page here. Let them know they won’t be getting your second vote!

Help us continue developing the content and research that conservatives are using to hold corporations for their activism by becoming a 2ndVote Member today!

Immigrate Expectations

Now that President Trump’s scored big points for his historic meeting with Kim Jong Un, his opponents are desperate to change the subject. Anxious to turn the country’s attention away from the administration’s diplomatic success, they’ve returned to an issue that the Congress has repeatedly failed to resolve — immigration.

Yesterday’s Washington Post got the ball rolling with an inside look at one of the 100 shelters where children, whose parents were arrested for entering America illegally, are housed. The article couldn’t help but tug on heartstrings, since almost 1,500 boys are living in a warehouse-sized summer camp, separated from their parents when they crossed the border illegally. What was once a Walmart super center is now full of classrooms, medical rooms, basketball courts, and even a pool hall. Juan Sanchez, who manages the nonprofit that’s housing the kids, says that the circumstances are difficult, especially for kids struggling to adapt, but promises, “We’re trying to do the best that we can taking care of these children. Our goal ultimately is to reunite kids with their families,” he said. “We’re not a detention center… What we operate are shelters that take care of kids. It’s a big, big difference.”

Obviously, the situation is a tragic one for thousands of children, who are the innocent victims of their moms’ and dads’ decision to break the law. It’s impossible to feel anything but compassion for these kids, who must be dealing with a great deal of pain and confusion. But the origin of that pain and confusion isn’t U.S. law or the Trump administration. That burden lies with their parents who knowingly put them in this position. “If you are smuggling a child,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said, “then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law. If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border.”

Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended the White House’s position on Wednesday, telling a gathering, “Persons who violate the law of our nation are subject to prosecution. I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order.” Critics quickly attacked the AG’s comments — with particularly harsh criticism from those on the Far Left, many of whom don’t appreciate scriptural references unless it can be twisted to justify their agenda.

Thursday, reporters took out their frustration on Press Secretary Sarah Sanders press conference, asking how the administration could possibly defend a policy that prosecutes adults for crossing the border illegally. Sanders stood her ground. “…[It’s] very biblical to enforce the law. That is actually repeated a number of times throughout the Bible,” she said. “It’s a moral policy to follow and enforce the law.” And, she went on, if you’re looking for someone to blame for this situation, try Democrats. “The separation of illegal families… is the product of the same legal loopholes that Democrats refuse to close, and these laws are the same that have been on the books for over a decade. The president is simply enforcing them.” President Trump echoed that sentiment earlier: I hate the children being taken away. The Democrats have to change their law. That’s their law… That’s the Democrats’ law. We can change it tonight. We can change it right now.”

When all else is equal, of course we want families to stay together. But let’s also remember that this situation isn’t unique to the border. I can tell you from my time in law enforcement: If a parent or parents are arrested here in the states, the children are turned over to Child Protection Services, who holds them until a foster family can be identified. In both circumstances, the children are compassionately cared for — not held in dank rooms behind bars, as some liberals would have you believe. As immigration officials have said, “Our goal is to reunite these children with their families as soon as we can do that.” But if parents aren’t deterred by the consequences of breaking the law, the fault lies solely with them. If these families are looking for a way to stay together, here’s an idea: come to America through the legal immigration process rather than crossing the border illegally.

Let’s also consider the precedent it would create if we didn’t enforce the law. Are liberals suggesting that we shouldn’t incarcerate anyone who has kids? Are children the new get-out-of-jail-free card? As Sessions said, “If you bring a child, it is still an unlawful act. You don’t get immunity if you bring a child with you. We cannot have open borders for adults with children.”

I’m not suggesting that our laws don’t need work — or that this crisis isn’t urgent. They do, and it is. I’ve felt strongly about this issue for years, so much so that I included immigration as a core value in my first bookPersonal Faith, Public Policy. Maybe these new small faces of the immigration crisis will prompt Congress to work across lines and unite in an effort to reform an immigration system that’s dividing families and our country.


Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.


RELATED ARTICLES:

Federal Subject of Investigation

Happy Dad’s Day!

Pew poll on European attitudes on immigration interesting, but flawed

The Rolling Stone Continues its Inaccurate Anti-NRA Reporting

It is by no means a closely held secret that Rolling Stone magazine has aggressively promoted an anti-gun agenda for many decades. It started in 1980, with the death of John Lennon at the hands of Mark David Chapman, when the magazine’s founder, Jann Wenner, decided he wanted to “make something good come out of (the murder).” Wenner started the Foundation on Violence in America, which was apparently designed to promote a public-relations campaign aimed at convincing Americans to accept restrictions on handguns.

This effort to cast handguns in a negative light came just before Californians were set to go to the polls in November 1982 to vote on Proposition 15, a referendum that sought to implement a handgun registration scheme in the Golden State. The Times wrote that police chiefs were supporting the measure, a poll conducted in April of that year showed support for Prop 15 at 60%, and the editorial crowed, “The gun lobby is running scared.”

For those unfamiliar, rather than cowering in fear, NRA mounted an aggressive education campaign in opposition to Proposition 15, designed to dispel the myth that ratcheting up restrictions on law-abiding gun owners would have any discernible impact on criminals. Voters listened, and Prop 15 was soundly defeated, with 63% voting against it. Clearly, Californians were not interested in the kind of gun control promoted at Rolling Stone, nor were Americans in general. Wenner must have got that message, at least, and his Foundation on Violence in America faded into obscurity.

Given this history, another anti-gun/anti-NRA article from Wenner’s magazine should come as no surprise.  But a recent one titled “A Brief History of Pro-Gun Rallies at Sites of Mass Shooting” is wrong on so many levels that it warrants mention.

First, the title suggests there were “rallies” held at the actual sites where a large number of people were killed by a violent, deranged person or persons using a firearm. Of the five examples cited, however, none were planned to take place at the actual site. One event, planned in Toronto, Canada (and 28 years after the actual crime took place), was eventually moved from a location Rolling Stone even describes as merely “nearby the site of the tragedy.”

The article takes even greater liberties with the definition of a “site of mass shooting” when it seems to scold students who support the Second Amendment in Colorado and Utah for organizing events in those states to show support for our Right to Keep and Bear Arms. These students chose to get involved in the political dialogue on guns as a response to the anti-gun messaging and rallies that had been promoted in response to the horrific events that took place at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School earlier this year. As virtually everyone in America knows, that school is in Florida, not Colorado or Utah. Apparently, roughly 2,000 miles away equates to being on the “site of a mass shooting” to Rolling Stone.

But Rolling Stone saves its worst assault on journalistic integrity for its description of the NRA Annual Meeting that was held in Denver, Colorado in 1999.

First, it should be pointed out that the NRA Annual Meeting is not really a “rally.” As a non-profit corporation, NRA is subject to both its own bylaws and the laws governing non-profit corporations. One of the many things NRA is required to do each year is hold its Annual Meeting of Members, where it conducts critical functions, such as holding the election for members of its Board of Directors, as well as determining who will hold key positions as NRA officers.

These Annual Meetings, as NRA members are aware, are enormous events, regularly drawing tens-of-thousands of members from across America. This year’s meeting in Dallas reached nearly 90,000 attendees. Events of this size take years to schedule and organize.

In 1999, NRA was scheduled to hold its Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado, in May. The site and date had been determined years before. Less than two weeks before NRA’s Annual Meeting was to begin, however, ten miles away in the town of Littleton, Colorado, two deranged students of Columbine High School murdered 12 of their fellow students, one teacher, and wounded 21 others.

NRA grieved with the rest of the nation over this tragedy, and out of respect for those who suffered, virtually every aspect of the NRA Annual Meeting was canceled. What wasn’t canceled, however, were the functions required under both our bylaws and the laws governing non-profit corporations.

In its latest screed against NRA, however, Rolling Stone states, “The NRA had a major gun rally planned in Denver just two weeks after the attack.” The article is clearly intended to imply that our Denver Annual Meeting was simply a pro-gun rally, coordinated after the horrific events in Littleton, rather than a required function of a non-profit corporation that had been scheduled years in advance. The article also ignores the fact that the Denver Annual Meeting was scaled back dramatically out of respect for the community.

But the coup de grace comes with the absolute lie that, at the Denver Annual Meeting, “Charlton Heston himself took the stage, hoisted a rifle in the air and shouted to a packed crowd that it could only be torn ‘From my cold, dead hands!’” That simply did not happen. Heston famously made that pronouncement the following year, at NRA’s Annual Meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Of course, Rolling Stone is hardly a bastion for journalistic integrity. In 2014, the magazine famously published a sensationalized article about an alleged rape on the University of Virginia campus. When many questions began to arise regarding the story, Rolling Stone published an apology, apparently blaming the source of the story. An updated apology followed a day later, with the magazine now taking the blame for mistakes. A deputy managing editor soon resigned. A number of lawsuits against the magazine popped up. One found for the plaintiff and awarded $3 million in damages. One was settled for $1.65 million.

While it is unlikely we will see an apology from Rolling Stone for its grossly misleading article, perhaps we will at least see a correction regarding Mr. Heston. The magazine clearly has no love for the rights of law-abiding gun owners, and a deep hatred of NRA. But does it also support rewriting history? Well, probably, but being exposed for publishing a blatant lie should at least inspire someone at the magazine who has even a modicum of journalistic integrity left to encourage doing what is right, and have a correction about Mr. Heston’s speech posted.

Trump Challenges NFL Players to Put Up or Shut Up

President Donald Trump gave an interesting answer to a reporter about the National Football League’s national anthem problem.

“I’m going to ask all of those people to recommend to me—because that’s what they’re protesting—people that they think were unfairly treated by the justice system,” Trump said at the White House before departing for the G-7 summit, according to the New York Post.

“I’m going to take a look at those applications, and if I find—and my committee finds—that they’ve been unfairly treated, then we’ll pardon them,” the president said. “Or at least let them out.”

Trump already has posthumously pardoned boxing legend Jack Johnson and said he’d consider Muhammad Ali as well, whether that’s necessary or not.

He’s clearly been on a pardon spree.

The response to Trump’s proposal to the players will be quite telling.

One of the problems with the NFL’s kneeling movement is that it has a specific target—the national anthem and the American flag—yet nebulous demands.

Despite players’ claims otherwise, many fans say they believe the players are protesting America, the military, and law enforcement in general.

Trump’s proposal puts players on the spot. If they have specific concerns that they want addressed, certain injustices that are intolerable, the president says he will work with them to rectify those issues.

It has been said that baseball is America’s pastime, but football is America’s passion.

Major League Baseball doesn’t quite sit at the cultural height it once did in this country. The game has receded during the seemingly inevitable rise of the National Football League in particular.

But now the NFL has a huge problem on its hands.

The national anthem controversy has damaged the league among its most passionate fans. And it clearly has played a key role in the swift decline in viewers, especially in the past year when the protests and media coverage of them exploded.

This statistic, noted by New York Daily News, should be particularly concerning:

A survey conducted by The Wall Street Journal and NBC News revealed that adults who say they follow the league closely have dropped 9 percent since 2014. And strikingly, men aged 18 to 49—the league’s core demographic—who say they follow the NFL closely are down from 75 to 51 percent over the same period.

This is not a league that can thrive without a passionate fan base.

The NFL notably changed its policy for the upcoming season, electing to fine teams—though not individuals—for kneeling in protest during the anthem. Players who wish to protest now will be allowed to stay in the locker room while the song is played.

This is no guarantee that angry fans will suddenly be pleased again. And as we saw with the aborted White House visit by the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles, the protests and contention haven’t abated.

While many of these fans may never come back to the NFL, Trump has offered at least one resolution to the league’s problem.

Protesting players who are sincere about their goals should take the president’s challenge seriously.

If, instead, the movement is simply focused on protesting America as a racist country or is just resistance to Trump from the sports world, then the players and league will become further isolated from their unhappy fans, who mostly dislike the protests.

And if the league wants to save itself from constant protest, declining fan interest, and permanent politicization, then the players would be wise to at least consider Trump’s proposal and look to work with the president when he offers an olive branch.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman is an editor and commentary writer for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Send an email to Jarrett. Twitter: .

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.

ACTIVATE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by Curtis Compton/TNS/Newscom.

The Importance of Dads in an Increasingly Fatherless America

There is a growing split taking place among American fathers today.

On the one hand, more and more children are growing up without a dad in their lives. But on the other hand, fathers who are involved in their kids’ lives have actually become even more active.

The Pew Research Center reports that fathers who live in the same home as their children have become increasingly engaged in the lives of their kids over the past half-century. In 2015, fathers reported spending an average of 7 hours a week interacting with their children, compared with 2.5 hours in 1965.

Today, 57 percent of dads say they see parenting as a central part of their identity.

This encouraging shift in fatherhood involvement could be owing, at least in part, to the greater amounts of research showing the importance of a father’s role in the life of his child. Nonprofits like Focus on the Family have championed the role of fathers and have promoted well-researched materials to back up their claims.

While it’s true more fathers are taking the time to come home from work and throw the football around with their kid, an increasing number of children find themselves without an active paternal presence in their lives.

Pew reports that only 11 percent of American children lived apart from their dads in 1960. Today, that number has grown to 27 percent. One in every three American children are now growing up in a home without their biological father.

There is a “father absence crisis in America,” according to National Fatherhood Initiative, and the results are sobering.

Studies have found that children raised without a father are:

  • At a higher risk of having behavioral problems.
  • Four times more likely to live in poverty.
  • More likely to be incarcerated in their lifetime.
  • Twice as likely to never graduate high school.
  • At a seven times higher risk of teen pregnancy.
  • More vulnerable to abuse and neglect.
  • More likely to abuse drugs and alcohol.
  • Twice as likely to be obese.

From education to personal health to career success, children who lack a father find themselves at a disadvantage to their peers raised in a two-parent household.

A 2017 Heritage Foundation article reported that “routine family bonding activities like reading bedtime stories and eating meals together have a profound effect on children’s educational development and psychological well-being.”

Simply put: Dads, we need you.

As I reflect back upon my own childhood and the role my dad played, and is still playing in my life, I find myself overwhelmed with gratitude. My father is far from perfect, but he was present.

School was challenging for me as a kid, so my dad often took time to help me with my homework after he got home from work. I remember sitting on our living room couch struggling to understand my math homework with my dad’s instruction.

To be honest, I’m not sure he was much of a help—but he was there. I have always known that my dad was there for me, not just because he told me he was, but because he showed me. The greatest gift my father has ever given me was his time.

So to the fathers who have sacrificed for their children, who have worked to be involved in each day of their child’s life, thank you. Your children will always remember your involvement in their lives.

And to the fathers who would like to do more, remember the importance of your role. It is not about being perfect, but being present.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Virginia Allen

Virginia Allen is an administrative assistant at The Heritage Foundation.

RELATED ARTICLES:

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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.

ACTIVATE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is by AleksandarNakic/Getty Images.

Does Conscience Exist?

A few days ago the U.S. Supreme Court made a ruling in the case of a Colorado baker who had refused, for reasons of religious conscience, to bake a wedding cake for the same-sex wedding of two men. Unfortunately, the Court ruling did not address the question of whether the baker, or anybody else similarly situated, has a First Amendment right to follow his conscience in cases like this.

The Court limited itself to ruling that the Colorado civil rights tribunal that decided to punish the baker exhibited undue anti-religious bias in arriving at that decision.  So we may expect that this question will present itself again to the Court in the not-too-distant future, namely, does the “free exercise” clause of the First Amendment protect merchants who refuse to provide goods or services because they are honestly convinced that it would be sinful or immoral to do so?

In the Anglo-American world, the issue of the rights of religious conscience goes back many centuries, perhaps as far back as the time of the Lollards (followers of that rebellious priest John Wycliffe) in the 14thcentury.  It was first clearly formulated in the 17thcentury when, among others, Roger Williams and his friend John Milton argued that individuals, provided they are otherwise law-abiding, have a right to obey their conscience even if that conscience happens to be in error.  In the generation after Independence, that view had become almost universal in the newly founded United States.

In America, there is a long tradition of allowing persons who belong to a pacifist religion (Quakers, for instance) to obey a conscience that tells them to avoid military service.  During the Viet Nam War, conscientious objector (CO) status was often extended to persons who did not belong to a pacifist religion – for example, Catholics and thoroughgoing secularists – provided they made a convincing case that they had an honest conviction that it would be immoral for them to participate in this particular war.

So much have we believed in the importance of conscience, even an erroneous conscience, that we have been willing to tolerate COs even when the fate of the nation was at stake.

But that attitude of tolerance seems to have changed.  Many Americans today believe that the law should compel people like the Colorado baker to violate their consciences.  And not because the fate of the nation is at stake.  And not even because the gay couple would have to do without a wedding cake. (They could easily have got the cake they wanted at another bakery, and they could have got a non-customized cake even at the bakery in question.)

Image: Shutterstock

I am astonished at this lack of appreciation for the importance of conscience.  Don’t these people realize that the right to obey one’s conscience is a fundamental human right, perhaps the most fundamental of all?  These are the same people who think that abortion is a fundamental human right.  And they think that sodomy is a fundamental human right.  But they don’t think there is a fundamental human right to obey one’s honest conscience?  Astounding. What kind of world are we living in?

I am even further astonished that these people don’t see that conscience is a great social good.  The rest of us are better off when our friends and neighbors and fellow citizens pay attention to the voice of their conscience.  There is, of course. such a thing as a too-strict conscience, and we don’t want to encourage that.  But the social harm done by too-strict consciences is as nothing compared to the harm done by consciences that are too lax.   It is madness for a society to discourage conscientiousness.  But tens of millions of Americans are willing to do this in order to make the world safe for customized same-sex wedding cakes.

Why would anybody fail to appreciate the value of conscience?

Well, what is conscience?  In the traditional meaning of the word (a tradition that goes back at least a few hundred years in English), it is thought of as a faculty of moral knowledge.  We are unable to know rightness and wrongness the way we know things in the material world, that is, by means of our sense powers (sight, hearing, touch, etc.). But don’t worry.  In addition to these sensory faculties, we have a faculty of moral knowledge.  We usually call it conscience (though it has sometimes been called the moral sense).

Now many people who are secular humanists (or post-Christians, as they may also be called) don’t believe that there is a non-sensory faculty that provides us with moral knowledge.  All knowledge, they hold, comes from the senses.  Convictions that don’t come from the senses are not knowledge but are based on feelings or prejudices or whims.  When people say, “My conscience tells me to do this or not to do that,” what they really mean (in this perspective) is, “My feelings or prejudices or whims tell me to do this or not to do that.”

If that’s all there is to conscience, there is no great reason to revere it.  If some social good can be better accomplished by compelling people to disregard their consciences, why not compel?

Those who most passionately believe in same-sex marriage are likely to be secular humanists or post-Christians, who in turn are likely to believe that there is no such thing as a special faculty of moral knowledge – that is, no such thing as conscience that needs to be respected and legally protected.  Who can be surprised, then, that champions of same-sex marriage are untroubled by the idea of visiting legal punishments on bakers who, for reasons of conscience, refuse to make customized same-sex wedding cakes?

Theirs is a common view, but a common view that directly threatens the moral core of every one of us.

David Carlin

David Carlin

David Carlin is professor of sociology and philosophy at the Community College of Rhode Island, and the author of The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America.

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