BREAKING: Jack Phillips Wins His Case

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The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor today of Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado, who declined to bake a custom cake to celebrate a same-sex wedding because of his religious beliefs.

Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission is a historic case involving religious liberty, LGBT rights, and the First Amendment.

In the 7-2 ruling, the high court said the Colorado Commission of Civil Rights, which had ruled against Phillips, demonstrated “clear and impermissible hostility” toward the baker and cake artist’s Christian belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.

“The Civil Rights Commission’s treatment of his case has some elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs that motivated [Phillips’] objection,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy in the majority opinion.

As The Daily Signal previously reported, in 2014 Colorado Civil Rights Commissioner Diann Rice compared Phillips’ not making a cake to slavery and the Holocaust. Rice apparently didn’t know that Phillips’ father fought in World War II and was part of a group that helped liberate Buchenwald concentration camp.

“For her to compare not making a cake to the Holocaust, knowing what my dad went through, is ludicrous, and personally offensive,” Phillips, 62, told The Daily Signal.

“This is a big win for the religious liberty of all Americans,” says Ryan Anderson, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation. “The Court held that the state of Colorado was ‘neither tolerant nor respectful’ of Jack Phillips’s beliefs about marriage. But as the Court also noted ‘religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression.’”

“Americans should be free to live their lives, including at work, in accordance with their belief that marriage unites husband and wife. Congress and the states should make this crystal clear by passing legislation, such as the First Amendment Defense Act, which explicitly prevents the type of government intolerance that took place in Colorado,” Anderson added.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

COLUMN BY

Portrait of Kelsey Harkness

Kelsey Harkness

Kelsey Harkness is a senior news producer at The Daily Signal and co-host of “Problematic Women,” a podcast and Facebook Live show. Send an email to Kelsey. Twitter: @kelseyjharkness.

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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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TSA Ignores Feckless Congress, Bullies States In Power Grab

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By KrisAnne Hall

The Transportation Security Administration is now standing virtually alone, above the law, above Congress and above the Constitution.

It is ignoring the law which created it and bullying any airports that attempt to deploy a private security force — which they are allowed to do under the law — with the threat of creating an effective “no-fly zone” at that airport. It is bullying states such as Texas that try to ban pat-downs.

In reality, there is absolutely no oversight or accountability of the TSA, now a rights-threatening monster created by a Congress intent on looking the other way.

I wrote recently about the secret list that the TSA has created to identify any passengers who have offended TSA agents. Congress is not privy to this secret list, or apparently that it even existed. Congress is not establishing the policies that get someone on the list, nor have they established that people are noticed and a procedure created to petition to be removed. This is a purely arbitrary power resting in the hands of individual, unaccountable agents.

But this not a new dynamic. For the TSA and Congress, it is actually a designed one.

Most Americans do not know that the very congressional act that created the TSA, also established that airports could replace federal TSA agents with private security two years after the law was enacted. However, in January 2011, when more than 16 airports had tried to opt out, TSA refused to leave these airports and the director of the TSA put a “freeze” on the airports’ ability to opt out, violating the very Act that created the TSA.

When the TSA violated this Act with their policies and actions, Congress didn’t step up and remind them of the existing law. Instead, Congress passed a new law, HR 658, reasserting the “right” of the airports to opt out of TSA screeners and required the TSA to notify all airports of this “right.” Yet, in a questionable move, Congress also then gave the Secretary of Homeland Security, the directing agency over the TSA, the authority to approve or deny an airport’s “request” to transfer to private security screening.

In summary, Congress told the airports they had a “right” to opt out of federal screening and then put the TSA in charge of approving or denying this “right.” If the TSA has the authority to approve or deny their own employment, then the airports do not possess a right to transfer to private screening, they merely possess a privilege granted by those they wish to remove.

Would that not mean that by all form and function, our airports are now occupied through force by the federal government? That, by definition, is despotism.

Unfortunately, this point is proven by the fact that in 2011, Texas lawmakers attempted to pass a law outlawing TSA pat downs. The FAA responded immediately by threatening to turn Texas into a de facto “No Fly Zone” if the law was signed. Of course, Texas backed down. If the federal government can deny a State’s right to internally govern itself, this is a violation of the delegation of Constitutional powers expressly enumerated and a violation of the reserved powers of the States expressly identified in the 10thAmendment.

There is no constitutional authority for the TSA to exist, much less wield unchecked power within the states. This unconstitutional agency was created by Congress through the pretense of “national security” and it is failing miserably.

According to James Bovard in the Los Angeles Times,

“the Department of Homeland Security concluded last year that TSA officers and equipment had failed to detect mock threats roughly 80% of the time. In Minneapolis, an undercover team succeeded in smuggling weapons and mock bombs past airport screeners 95% of the time. An earlier DHS investigation found the TSA utterly unable to detect weapons, fake explosives and other contraband, regardless of how extensive it’s pat-downs were.”

Americans have been deceived into trading their essential liberties for a completely non-existent security. We have a private or state option that would likely be more effective and one that could more closely be overseen through the states.

Congress has created this monster. They have made TSA above check and balance, above the law and Congress, and above the Constitution itself: not only the 4th Amendment, but also the 1st Amendment, 6th Amendment, 7th Amendment, 8th Amendment, and 10th Amendment. It is time for the American people to stand up to Congress, the DHS, and the TSA and assert our Right to keep ourselves “secure.”

It is time Americans replace this ineffective, intrusive and secretive unchecked system with one that follows the law and the Constitution, and where the States protect the internal security of the people while the feds are limited to the specifically enumerated powers.

ABOUT KRISANNE HALL

KrisAnne Hall is a former biochemist, Russian linguist for the U.S. Army, and former prosecutor for the State of Florida. KrisAnne also practiced First Amendment Law for a prominent Florida non-profit Law firm. KrisAnne now travels the country teaching the foundational principles of Liberty and our Constitutional Republic. She is the author of 6 books on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and has an internationally popular radio and television show. Her books and classes have been featured on C-SPAN TV. KrisAnne can be found at www.KrisAnneHall.com. Get the book “Sovereign Duty” to learn what the designers of our Constitution wanted Americans to do when their federal government became bloated and out of control. Find this book on Amazon, Barns & Noble, Wal-Mart, and many other merchants.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The Revolutionary Act.

THE B-1 ‘FRANKEN-VISA’ NIGHTMARE: The little-known visa program that is sabotaging American workers.

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It is important to give credit where credit is due.  I have not been alone in voicing frustration over how the mainstream media rarely, if ever, provides accurate coverage about immigration-related issues.  Today we will focus on an example of solid journalism.

On July 31, 2017, CBS News posted an important and hard-hitting investigative news report titled, “Made in America: How the U.S. Auto Industry Was Built with Foreign Labor.” A YouTube video of the report was aired by CBS News under the title, “Foreign workers being used to build auto plants in the U.S.”  It is a video that I urge you to watch.

The CBS News report caught the attention of Paul Mitchell, a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, who, on May 16, 2018, issued a press release to announce a roundtable discussion into visa fraud that was predicated on the CBS News report.

Immigration fraud was identified, by the 9/11 Commission as the key entry and embedding tactic for terrorists who sought to carry out deadly terror attacks in the United States.  This concern served as the prediction for my recently published booklet, “Immigration Fraud: Lies That Kill.”

Immigration fraud not only costs lives but American livelihoods.

This is the brief press release:

“It’s important that we identify, examine, and fight the fraudulent use of visas by employers. Specific visas are designed for specific purposes, and when companies abuse or deceive the visa system, they hurt American workers and the American economy, as well as the foreign workers they hire under fraudulent pretenses. This morning’s roundtable was a good start to shining a light on visa fraud so the relevant government agencies can take effective steps to enforce our laws.”

Background

  • In July 2017, CBS News released an investigative report providing compelling evidence that certain foreign automobile manufacturers are hiring subcontractors who intentionally employ workers admitted under “B-1 in lieu of H-1B” visas to bypass foreign labor laws and increase company revenue. The report further alleges these workers were paid substantially less than American workers would have been paid performing the same jobs.
  • Today, Rep. Mitchell hosted the Departments of State, Labor and Homeland Security to learn more about what options are appropriate for hiring foreign workers, as well as what efforts are underway to identify, investigate and mitigate the fraudulent use of visas by foreign employers and employees. While the issue of securing the U.S./Mexican border against illegal (un-inspected) entry into the United States figures prominently in the news, nearly half of all illegal aliens did not run our borders thereby entering the U.S. without inspection, but were admitted into the United States and then, in one way or another, went on to violate the terms of their respective admissions as stipulated by the various visas they used to enter the United States.

The State Department provides a Directory of Visa Categories.

Nonimmigrant visa holders are admitted for a limited period of time, depending on the category of visa they used to enter the United States.  Many of these visas prohibit these aliens from being gainfully employed in the U.S.

Most politicians and pundits say that such illegal aliens, who violate their terms of admission, simply “overstayed” their authorized period of admission.

However, while nonimmigrant aliens who fail to depart from the United States before their temporary authorized period of admission expires are indeed illegally present and subject to removal, this violation by itself has little real-world consequence for America and Americans.

What is seldom discussed is that most such “status violators” violate other provisions of their lawful admission and this does profoundly impact our nation and our fellow Americans.  In point of fact, many of these illegal aliens also work illegally.  This not only displaces American and lawful immigrant workers and may result in wage suppression or even wage reduction, but also hammers the U.S. economy as these aliens wire tens of billions of dollars out of the U.S. economy to their home countries.

Often these illegal aliens sought visas and entry into the United States fully intent on violating our immigration laws from the outset, but concealed their ultimate goals from the Department of State consular officials who granted them their visas and the CBP (Customs and Border Protection) who interviewed them when they applied for admission.  False statements and the concealment of material facts, and/or the creation of false and misleading evidence in support of their lies to obtain visas and gain entry into the United States constitutes fraud, a serious crime.

Such was the case where these hundreds of European construction workers are concerned.

A partnership exists between the Department of State and the elements of the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) that enforce and administer the immigration laws.  The State Department is responsible for issuing visas to aliens and CBP inspectors have the authority to admit aliens into the United States and are guided by the provisions of Title 8, United States Code, Section 1182 which enumerates the categories of aliens who are to be excluded.

The CBS News report focused on the B-1/B-2 visa and a supposed hybrid visa known as the B-1 in lieu of H-1B visa.  I have come to refer to this hybrid visa as a Franken-visa because it is a monstrosity that has no legal underpinning and in my judgment, undermines the integrity of the visa process and suborns fraud and malfeasance, hurting American workers.

A B-2 visa generally permits the bearer to remain in the U.S. for up to six months.  The B-1 visa is a business visa that permits the alien to conduct business in the United States and attend training sessions and conferences, review corporate procedures in the United States and carry out other such functions.  However, they are not authorized to be gainfully employed in the United States.  Typically an alien entering the U.S. for business purposes is issued a B-1/B-2 visas so that after they complete the business that brought them to the U.S. they may spend some time as tourists.

The USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) website provides an explanation of the B-1 Visa.

The State Department’s consular officers who issue visas, are supposed to be a part of the process to keep aliens, who are likely to violate the terms of their visas, from receiving those visas in the first place.  These consular officers are supposed to be on the “same page” as the CBP inspectors who make the decision at America’s ports of entry as to whether or not to admit those aliens.

Now it would appear that not only are consular officials not on the same page as CBP inspectors, but are apparently not even reading from the same play book. And once again, America and Americans are paying the price.

The number of controversial H-1B visas that are issued each year are limited by a CAP.  The B-1 in lieu of H-1B visas are not capped and these visas, unlike virtually all other visas are not based on an underlying law.  Visas categories are established by law, not a hunch or a desire to play favorites for those with political clout.

Representative Mitchell’s press release noted that the predication for that Congressional roundtable discussion was a CBS News investigative report that had been broadcast in July 2017 that disclosed how European automakers got huge tax breaks to build brand new factories to manufacture their cars in the U.S., but used European labor to construct those factories.

The European automakers hired agencies such as the German contractor Eisenmann which then outsourced the hiring process to other subcontractors who then gamed the visa process, thereby committing apparent visa fraud that brought thousands of Eastern European construction workers to the United States with B-1/B-2 visas.

These workers were paid approximately ten dollars per hour while it was estimated that American tradesman would command wages of between $45 and $50 per hour.

CBS News explained how these workers were hired:

When a carmaker like Mercedes wants to expand its plant, they hire a contractor, like the German corporation, Eisenmann, to build parts of it. Eisenmann then subcontracts smaller companies to build parts of the plant and some of those companies hire labor from Eastern Europe.

It is a common practice for a company to hire contractors and subcontractors to hire workers.

Here, however, it was shown how many of these foreign workers were coached by those contractors to lie to the consular officers who interviewed them when they applied for their visas and how to lie to the CBP inspectors at ports of entry.

At least one of the companies justified its hiring practices by noting how the B-1 in lieu of H-1B visas made what they did legal.  Of course this is not true, but nevertheless an in-depth investigation must be conducted to determine how and why this visa category was created in the first place.

Clearly ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) needs many more agents to ramp up investigations of worksite immigration violations.  This would be consistent with President Trump’s plan to put Americans first.

Immigration law violations are not “victimless crimes.”

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine.

The most disturbing thing on TV. Your children are the target audience.

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Despite pleas from pro-family groups to cancel the second season of the original Netflix series 13 Reasons Why, it was released May 18. All 13 hours of it. At one time. For the whole world to devour … or be devoured by.

Season 2 is a continuation of the first season of the series that was based on a young adult novel by Jay Asher. Season 1 focused on the graphic suicide of teenager Hannah Baker who slits her wrists in a bathtub full of water. Her decision to end her life is explained through a collection of cassette tapes that she leaves behind blaming the people responsible for her death.

Season 2 picks up months after Hannah’s suicide, and characters are seen dealing with the aftermath of her death; a lawsuit and court case make up the overarching storyline. This time the focus is sexual assault, and suicide takes a back seat. But sadly the filth and gratuitous content from season 1 is only exacerbated in season 2.

Both seasons have received mixed reviews – some praising the writers and creators for their efforts to address taboo topics and bring awareness to sensitive and relevant issues such as mental illness, teen suicide, substance abuse, and sexual assault while others are calling for the series to be removed from Netflix because of the detrimental effect it is having on young people and their families.

Take, for example, the Bright family from Alabaster, Alabama. Fourteen-year-old Anna Bright committed suicide after binge-watching the first season of 13 Reasons Why. She patterned her suicide after Hannah Baker’s. Bella Herndon and Priscilla Chiu, both 15-year-olds from California, also took their own lives after watching the first season, as did a 23-year-old Peruvian man who also left behind recordings similar to those Hannah left behind.

Anna Bright Story from American Family Studios on Vimeo.

More recently, a Florida mother spoke out blaming the series for her teen daughter’s suicide attempt on Mother’s Day. According to Fox News, “The teenager sent a video of her cutting herself … and reportedly complained that ‘it’s taking too long … It’s not like on 13 Reasons.'”

But if the reports of those deaths are not enough to convince you of the darkness and evil that enshroud this series, AFA’s Rebecca Grace has written a compelling blog which exposes the dark, disturbing and demonic content found in season 2 of 13 Reasons Why.

Do all you can to help stop it. Join us in our efforts. Use your voice to be part of the solution, not your silence that ignores the problem.

  1. If you haven’t already, sign a petition to Netflix demanding the streaming giant pull both seasons 1 and 2 of 13 Reasons Why.
  1. Learn more about the dangers of 13 Reasons Why. Read Rebecca Grace’s cautionary blog on AFA’s blog site, The Stand.
  1. Share this alert with your family, friends and church members, especially those who have children at home.

If our mission resonates with you, please consider supporting our work financially with a tax-deductible donation. The easiest way to do that is through online giving. It is easy to use, and most of all, it is secure.

Canada: Conflicts growing between Indigenous people and refugees

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Diversity is strength alert!

This isn’t supposed to be happening in welcoming Canada!

Aren’t we led to believe that poor and oppressed minority people feel for each other, that there couldn’t possibly be racism when neither side is white European?

“It’s further colonization,” Wirch said of refugee resettlement. “We [Indigenous people] are further being displaced from our lands, from our food, from our waters. And it’s wrong.”

Here is a bit of the story at Refugees Deeply where the author is working really hard to get the message out that the two minority groups (Indigenous people and refugees) are working on their tensions.

CANADA HAS A reputation as a welcoming haven for refugees. But for some Indigenous Canadians, public support and funding for displaced people stands in stark contrast to their own communities, which remain impoverished and overlooked.

Notice how the author immediately has to get a whack in at Donald Trump!

Last year the nation welcomed 300,000 newcomers, including about 43,500 refugees and asylum seekers. Faced with President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration policies, thousands of migrants have left the United States to seek asylum in Canada.

Many arrived in Manitoba, whose capital Winnipeg has the largest Indigenous population of any Canadian city. The city also faces problems with violence, drugs and homelessness. [So of course it is the perfect place to insert Middle Eastern refugees!—-ed]

Refugees compete with the local low income people for government services. Where have I heard this before?

Screenshot (480)

Indigenous peoples’ leader Jenna Wirch

Refugees in Winnipeg often settle in low-income and predominantly Indigenous neighborhoods. Many of the residents fear they will be forced to compete with their new neighbors for resources that are already scarce.

Last year, a group of Indigenous children pepper-sprayed a group of young refugees outside an Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization of Manitoba (IRCOM) housing facility in the mainly Indigenous Centennial neighborhood of Winnipeg.

[….]

Jenna Wirch, 26, an Indigenous woman from Winnipeg and a community development worker at IRCOM, works with both communities. She is also the youth engagement coordinator for Aboriginal Youth Opportunities, an organization working in Winnipeg’s North End.

“It’s further colonization,” Wirch said of refugee resettlement. “We [Indigenous people] are further being displaced from our lands, from our food, from our waters. And it’s wrong.”

Keep reading, there is much more about how this grand experiment in creating a multicultural dream land is not going so well.

Who Was the Biggest Mass Murderer in History?

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At least 45 million were starved, shot, tortured, and worked to death.

Ilya Somin

by Ilya Somin

Who was the biggest mass murderer in the history of the world? Most people probably assume that the answer is Adolf Hitler, architect of the Holocaust. Others might guess Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who may indeed have managed to kill even more innocent people than Hitler did, many of them as part of a terror famine that likely took more lives than the Holocaust.

But both Hitler and Stalin were outdone by Mao Zedong. From 1958 to 1962, his Great Leap Forward policy led to the deaths of up to 45 million people—easily making it the biggest episode of mass murder ever recorded.

The Vast, Cruel, Deliberate Extinction of Millions

Historian Frank Dikötter, author of the important book Mao’s Great Famine, recently published an article in History Today, summarizing what happened:

Mao thought that he could catapult his country past its competitors by herding villagers across the country into giant people’s communes. In pursuit of a utopian paradise, everything was collectivised. People had their work, homes, land, belongings and livelihoods taken from them.

In collective canteens, food, distributed by the spoonful according to merit, became a weapon used to force people to follow the party’s every dictate. As incentives to work were removed, coercion and violence were used instead to compel famished farmers to perform labour on poorly planned irrigation projects while fields were neglected.

A catastrophe of gargantuan proportions ensued. Extrapolating from published population statistics, historians have speculated that tens of millions of people died of starvation. But the true dimensions of what happened are only now coming to light thanks to the meticulous reports the party itself compiled during the famine…

What comes out of this massive and detailed dossier is a tale of horror in which Mao emerges as one of the greatest mass murderers in history, responsible for the deaths of at least 45 million people between 1958 and 1962.

It is not merely the extent of the catastrophe that dwarfs earlier estimates, but also the manner in which many people died: between two and three million victims were tortured to death or summarily killed, often for the slightest infraction.

When a boy stole a handful of grain in a Hunan village, local boss Xiong Dechang forced his father to bury him alive. The father died of grief a few days later.

The case of Wang Ziyou was reported to the central leadership: one of his ears was chopped off, his legs were tied with iron wire, a ten kilogram stone was dropped on his back and then he was branded with a sizzling tool – punishment for digging up a potato.

The basic facts of the Great Leap Forward have long been known to scholars. Dikötter’s work is noteworthy for demonstrating that the number of victims may have been even greater than previously thought, and that the mass murder was more clearly intentional on Mao’s part, and included large numbers of victims who were executed or tortured, as opposed to “merely” starved to death. Even the previously standard estimates of 30 million or more would still make this the greatest mass murder in history.

While the horrors of the Great Leap Forward are well known to experts on communism and Chinese history, they are rarely remembered by ordinary people outside China, and have had only a modest cultural impact. When Westerners think of the great evils of world history, they rarely think of this one.

In contrast to the numerous books, movies, museums, and and remembrance days dedicated to the Holocaust, we make little effort to recall the Great Leap Forward, or to make sure that society has learned its lessons. When we vow “never again,” we don’t often recall that it should apply to this type of atrocity, as well as those motivated by racism or anti-semitism.The fact that Mao’s atrocities resulted in many more deaths than those of Hitler does not necessarily mean he was the more evil of the two. The greater death toll is partly the result of the fact that Mao ruled over a much larger population for a much longer time. I lost several relatives in the Holocaust myself, and have no wish to diminish its significance. But the vast scale of Chinese communist atrocities puts them in the same general ballpark. At the very least, they deserve far more recognition than they currently receive.

Why We so Rarely Look Back on the Great Leap Forward

What accounts for this neglect? One possible answer is that the most of the victims were Chinese peasants—people who are culturally and socially distant from the Western intellectuals and media figures who have the greatest influence over our historical consciousness and popular culture. As a general rule, it is easier to empathize with victims who seem similar to ourselves.

But an even bigger factor in our relative neglect of the Great Leap Forward is that it is part of the general tendency to downplay crimes committed by communist regimes, as opposed to right-wing authoritarians. Unlike in the days of Mao, today very few western intellectuals actually sympathize with communism. But many are reluctant to fully accept what a great evil it was, fearful—perhaps—that other left-wing causes might be tainted by association.In China, the regime has in recent years admitted that Mao made “mistakes” and allowed some degree of open discussion about this history. But the government is unwilling to admit that the mass murder was intentional and continues to occasionally suppress and persecute dissidents who point out the truth. This reluctance is an obvious result of the fact that the Communist Party still rules China. Although they have repudiated many of Mao’s specific policies, the regime still derives much of its legitimacy from his legacy.

I experienced China’s official ambivalence on this subject first-hand when I gave a talk about the issue while teaching a course as a visiting professor at a Chinese university in 2014.

Why It Matters

For both Chinese and westerners, failure to acknowledge the true nature of the Great Leap Forward carries serious costs. Some survivors of the Great Leap Forward are still alive today. They deserve far greater recognition of the horrible injustice they suffered. They also deserve compensation for their losses, and the infliction of appropriate punishment on the remaining perpetrators.

In addition, our continuing historical blind spot about the crimes of Mao and other communist rulers leads us to underestimate the horrors of such policies, and makes it more likely that they might be revived in the future. The horrendous history of China, the USSR, and their imitators, should have permanently discredited socialism as completely as fascism was discredited by the Nazis. But it has not – so far – fully done so.

Just recently, the socialist government of Venezuela imposed forced labor on much of its population. Yet most of the media coverage of this injustice fails to note the connection to socialism, or that the policy has parallels in the history of the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and other similar regimes. One analysis even claims that the real problem is not so much “socialism qua socialism,” but rather Venezuela’s “particular brand of socialism, which fuses bad economic ideas with a distinctive brand of strongman bullying,” and is prone to authoritarianism and “mismanagement.”

The author simply ignores the fact that “strongman bullying” and “mismanagement” are typical of socialist states around the world. The Scandinavian nations—sometimes cited as examples of successful socialism- are not actually socialist at all, because they do not feature government ownership of the means of production, and in many ways have freer markets than most other western nations.

Venezuela’s tragic situation would not surprise anyone familiar with the history of the Great Leap Forward. We would do well to finally give history’s largest episode of mass murder the attention it deserves.

This article first appeared at the Volokh Conspiracy.

Ilya Somin

Ilya Somin

ILYA SOMIN is Professor of Law at George Mason University. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, and the study of popular political participation and its implications for constitutional democracy.

Why Capitalism Is Morally Superior to Socialism

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Several recent polls, plus the popularity of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., demonstrate that young people prefer socialism to free market capitalism.

That, I believe, is a result of their ignorance and indoctrination during their school years, from kindergarten through college. For the most part, neither they nor many of their teachers and professors know what free market capitalism is.

Free market capitalism, wherein there is peaceful voluntary exchange, is morally superior to any other economic system. Why? Let’s start with my initial premise.

All of us own ourselves. I am my private property, and you are yours. Murder, rape, theft, and the initiation of violence are immoral because they violate self-ownership. Similarly, the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another person, for any reason, is immoral because it violates self-ownership.

Tragically, two-thirds to three-quarters of the federal budget can be described as Congress taking the rightful earnings of one American to give to another American—using one American to serve another. Such acts include farm subsidies, business bailouts, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, and many other programs.

Free market capitalism is disfavored by many Americans—and threatened—not because of its failure but, ironically, because of its success. Free market capitalism in America has been so successful in eliminating the traditional problems of mankind—such as disease, pestilence, hunger, and gross poverty—that all other human problems appear both unbearable and inexcusable.

The desire by many Americans to eliminate these so-called unbearable and inexcusable problems has led to the call for socialism. That call includes equality of income, sex, and race balance; affordable housing and medical care; orderly markets; and many other socialistic ideas.

Let’s compare capitalism with socialism by answering the following questions: In which areas of our lives do we find the greatest satisfaction, and in which do we find the greatest dissatisfaction?

It turns out that we seldom find people upset with and in conflict with computer and clothing stores, supermarkets, and hardware stores. We do see people highly dissatisfied with and often in conflict with boards of education, motor vehicles departments, police, and city sanitation services.

What are the differences? For one, the motivation for the provision of services of computer and clothing stores, supermarkets, and hardware stores is profit. Also, if you’re dissatisfied with their services, you can instantaneously fire them by taking your business elsewhere.

It’s a different matter with public education, motor vehicles departments, police, and city sanitation services. They are not motivated by profit at all. Plus, if you’re dissatisfied with their service, it is costly and in many cases, even impossible to fire them.

A much larger and totally ignored question has to do with the brutality of socialism. In the 20th century, the one-party socialist states of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Germany under the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, and the People’s Republic of China were responsible for the murder of 118 million citizens, mostly their own.

The tallies were: USSR, 62 million; Nazi Germany, 21 million; and People’s Republic of China, 35 million. No such record of brutality can be found in countries that tend toward free market capitalism.

Here’s an experiment for you. List countries according to whether they are closer to the free market capitalist or to the socialist/communist end of the economic spectrum. Then rank the countries according to per capita gross domestic product. Finally, rank the countries according to Freedom House’s “Freedom in the World” report.

You will find that people who live in countries closer to the free market capitalist end of the economic spectrum not only have far greater wealth than people who live in countries toward the socialistic/communist end but also enjoy far greater human rights protections.

As Thomas Sowell says, “Socialism sounds great. It has always sounded great. And it will probably always continue to sound great. It is only when you go beyond rhetoric, and start looking at hard facts, that socialism turns out to be a big disappointment, if not a disaster.”

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Walter E. Williams

Walter E. Williams

Walter E. Williams is a columnist for The Daily Signal and a professor of economics at George Mason University. Twitter: .

RELATED ARTICLE: Who Was the Biggest Mass Murderer in History?

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

Second Thoughts on First Amendment?

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If there were a book on how to agitate an anti-faith extremist, chapter one would almost certainly recommend talking about the importance of religious liberty in America. That definitely worked on LA Times’s opinion writer Michael McGough, who was so perturbed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s speech on international religious freedom report that he spent 446 words quibbling over the order of our First Amendment.

What did the secretary say that was so offensive, exactly? Nothing that isn’t common knowledge to everyone who’s taken fifth grade history. “Religious freedom is in the American bloodstream,” Pompeo said. “It’s what brought the pilgrims here from England. Our founders understood it as our first freedom. That is why they articulated it so clearly in the First Amendment.”

McGough, who must have missed the class on religious persecution in 17th century England, took issue with Pompeo’s observation that religious liberty was the key to all other freedoms. “Not quite,” he fired back.

“[B]y linking ‘first freedom’ to “First Amendment,” the secretary of state seemed also to be suggesting — erroneously — some connection between the two ‘firsts.’ If so, he wouldn’t be alone. In 1993, during a debate on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said: ‘It was no accident that the Framers of our Bill of Rights chose to place the free exercise of religion first among our fundamental freedoms.'”

“It’s true that the 1st Amendment mentions religion before it moves on to guarantee freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the right to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances… But the idea that this makes either the First Amendment, or freedom of religion, more important than other constitutional rights is a pious fiction.”

Of course, the freedom of religion was of preeminent importance to the framers. They were only a century and a half removed from the nightmare that drove 102 people to take a two-month journey to an unforgiving land on a ship the size of a volleyball court. They didn’t do that because they were adventurers — or in search of great riches. They came here for the freedom King James I denied them: the ability to worship freely and in peace. Years later, Samuel Adams talked about the relationship between these liberties when he said, “Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum.”

If McGough wants to squabble over the order of our First Amendment freedoms, let him. But that still doesn’t alter the reality that a free society hinges on free religion. And, ironically, by invoking Jerrold Nadler (who is as liberal as they come), McGough is exposing just how far outside the mainstream his position really is. If the importance of religious liberty is acknowledged by even the fiercest of New York Democrats, then this reporter is only marginalizing himself by attacking it. That — not Pompeo — is the real extremism.

Religious liberty is for everyone — not just for conservatives, and certainly not just for Americans. It’s a human right on which all other freedoms are built. “God who gave us life gave us liberty,” Thomas Jefferson said. “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God?”

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

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NBC’s Law & Order: White NYPD cop says black judge comes from ‘Planet of the Apes’

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A reader sent us a heads up that NBC’s Law & Order- Special Victims Unit is not politically correct. In an email our reader said:

I was watching Hulu last night​ – rerun of NBC Law and Order SVU.

I was shocked when 33 minutes in a cast member says: What planet is the judge from” (referring to a black judge)

Olivia character says: “Planet of the Apes” chuckles all around.

This exchange happens in Season 1 Episode 19.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL EPISODE – FAST FORWARD TO 33:00 MINUTES.

Mariska Hargitay

The detectives that are part of the NYPD’s Special Victims Unit investigate crimes of a sexual nature.

The judge in the case is black. After the judge dismisses a case against a rape suspect, someone asks, “What planet is he from?” New York City police detective Lieutenant Olivia Benson, played by Mariska Hargitay, replies, “Planet of the Apes.”

Fast forward to Rosanne Barr’s tweet. Suddenly saying someone is from the Planet of the Apes is racist. Will NBC apologize for using this comparison to a black judge?

Stand Up America’s Ray DiLorenzo in an article titled “Lighten Up, America. It’s Not Your Fault” writes:

The United States and other Western nations have been assaulted with Political Correctness (PC), the repudiation of saying what you think. It seems to have come from nowhere and on the surface it appears to protect minorities or the disadvantaged from being marginalized. In reality, it is designed to create dissatisfaction with the status quo, culturally, politically, socially, and economically, while creating victimology and deep division among people and groups. It is a loss of proportion, an absence of humor and the freedom to laugh at oneself. It pits good people against each other. [Emphasis added]

DiLorenzo notes, “PC is not a new phenomena. It is at least 100 years old and finds its genesis in Marxist theology during World War I.”

Joseph Stalin wrote, “Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.”

Political correctness can kill

Marian Pilatowicz

Being politically incorrect killed my cousin Marian Pilatowicz. According to my families records Marian was a factory worker in occupied Poland during WWII. Marian told a joke to some of his fellow workers about the Germans who controlled his country. Marian was reported to the Gestapo, arrested and executed in the notorious Auschwitz-Berkinau concentration camp on November 3rd, 1942. Marion was 23-years old.

As Voltaire wrote, “To learn who rules over you, simple find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”

DiLorenzo concludes, “Political Correctness is intolerance in the name of tolerance…The next time someone tells you they are offended, tell them to lighten up. Hopefully they won’t report you.”

Knock, knock. Who’s there? The thought police!

‘Right to Try” Law Provides Access to Experimental Treatment to 1 Million Terminally Ill Americans

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SAN DIEGO, CA /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Congressional Candidate, and San Diego “Top Doctor,” Dr. James Veltmeyer announced today that his wife, cancer patient, Laura Veltmeyer may be one of the one million Americans that stand to benefit from President Trump’s recently signed “Right to Try” Law.

The Law, formally known as “Trickett Wendler, Frank Mongiello, Jordan McLinn, and Matthew Belllina Right to Try Act of 2017” amends existing Federal law to allow certain unapproved, experimental drugs to be administered to terminally ill patients who have exhausted all approved treatment options and are unable to participate in clinical drug trials.

“One of the biggest failings of the Health Care System is that there are hundreds of experimental drugs that potentially benefit terminal patients, but until now, they have been withheld from patients because of bureaucratic processes and red tape. While the FDA must be applauded for their diligence in preventing harmful medicines from entering the USA market, every year terminal patients are forced to go offshore in search of promising treatments that are not available in our own Country,” said Dr. James Veltmeyer, Republican Candidate for the 52nd Congressional District.

President Donald Trump stated in reference to the law “People who are terminally ill should not have to go from country to country to seek a cure — I want to give them a chance right here at home.”

“My wife and mother of my 2 children, is currently suffering from Stage IV Breast Cancer. As her condition advances, it is comforting to know that my wife now has the choice to receive treatments that can potentially save her life,” said Dr. Veltmeyer.

Dr. Veltmeyer is on the Scientific Advisory Board of Therapeutic Solutions International, a biotechnology company that recently announced its intention to provide access to its StemVax product for terminal patients under the newly passed Law.

“I am running for Congress to represent our community and to fix the Health Care system. The 52nd District houses some of the most advanced biotechnology companies that are developing new treatments for terminal diseases.  It is saddening that the current Congressman for the 52nd District, Scott Peters, not only ignored the rights of terminal patients, but also of biotechnology companies, in voting against this Bill.”

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of President Trump kissing Jordan McLinn, a Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy patient, after signing the “Right to Try” act on May 30, 2018 in Washington, D.C. (Photo/AP/Evan Vucci)

UK Busybodies Target Pointed Kitchen Knives, Gun Tattoos

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Don’t ever underestimate the British capacity for combining the oppressive with the doltish. This week, the United Kingdom’s decades-long campaign against all things martial sunk to a fresh low when one of the Queen’s more domineering subjects floated a ban on the sale, and possibly the possession, of traditional kitchen utensils. Not to be outdone, other British busybodies demanded satisfaction from a professional athlete whose firearm body art they found objectionable.

In recent months, the UK, and London in particular, has found itself in the grip of a violent crime wave. During February and March of this year, there were more murders in the UK capital than in New York City. Statistical data from the Office for National Statistics released in April noted that in England and Wales crimes “involving a knife or sharp instrument” were up 22 percent in 2017. The report added, “The past three years have seen a rise in the number of recorded offences involving a knife or sharp instrument…” Despite the island nation’s ever-increasing gun control measures, police also recorded an 11 percent increase in firearms offences for the year. UK criminals have also been using household acids to maim their victims.

A closer look at the data shows that of the offences involving a knife or sharp instrument, robberies involving these weapons increased 35 percent over the previous year. Homicide and sexual assault increased 26 and 24 percent, respectively. Regarding knife and firearms offences, the report indicates that these crimes “tend to be disproportionately concentrated in London and other metropolitan areas.”

In response to the increased bloodshed, last July the UK’s Home Office declared their support for knife turn-in programs and new restrictions on mail order knife sales. The UK prohibits knife sales to those under 18. Under the new Tory proposal, the government would enforce this rule by requiring subjects who order knives through the mail to pick them up at a retailer, where their age would be verified. In response to the acid attacks, last October Home Secretary Amber Rudd announced the Tory government’s intent to restrict the sale of corrosive substances.

These heavy-handed tactics aren’t enough for one UK official. In mid-May retiring Luton Crown Court Judge Nic Madge used his valedictory speech as an opportunity to advocate for a ban on the sale, and potentially the possession, of common kitchen knives.

According to a report from the Telegraph, Madge told his audience that the reason why the current knife restrictions have had little effect on violent crime is because “the vast majority of knives carried by youths are ordinary kitchen knives.” Upping the rhetoric, Madge added, “Every kitchen contains lethal knives which are potential murder weapons.” Paralleling a common gun control refrain, Madge asked, “why we do need eight-inch or ten-inch kitchen knives with points?”

To combat this ever-present culinary threat, Madge proposed, 

I would urge all those with any role in relation to knives – manufacturers, shops, the police, local authorities, the government – to consider preventing the sale of long pointed knives, except in rare, defined, circumstances, and replacing such knives with rounded ends.

To address the countless pointed kitchen knives already owned by British subjects, Madge explained,

It might even be that the police could organise a programme whereby the owners of kitchen knives, which have been properly and lawfully bought for culinary purposes, could be taken somewhere to be modified, with the points being ground down into rounded ends.

Madge failed to address the issue of shanks. UK subjects are likely to have little difficulty constructing the homemade knives, having spent their lives in a prison.

In any other corner of the globe, Madge’s ludicrous policy proposal would have been the week’s most foolish commentary on weapons control. Not so in the Land of Hope and Glory, where even the mere depiction of a firearm is cause for panic.

On Sunday, Jamaica-born UK professional soccer player and English national team member Raheem Sterling posted a photo of a training sessions to his Instagram account. In the photo a tattoo of an M16 rifle is visible on Sterling’s right leg.

On Tuesday, British tabloid The Sun put the photo on the front page of the paper, with the headlines, “Raheem shoots himself in foot,” and “GUN TAT FURY.” According to the paper, the tattoo “triggered fury among anti-gun campaigners.”

Anti-gun activist and founder of UK group Mothers Against Guns Lucy Cope told the Sun that Sterling’s tattoo is “totally unacceptable” and that the footballer “should hang his head in shame.” Revealing the extent of her and her group’s anti-gun lunacy, Cope stated, “We demand he has the tattoo lasered off or covered up with a different tattoo… If he refuses he should be dropped from the England team. He’s supposed to be a role model but chooses to glamorise guns.”

In their race to attack Sterling for his choice of body art, the Sun and Cope neglected to take into account the athlete’s life story. Sterling, who appears to be no fan of firearms, explained, “When I was two my father died from being gunned down to death… I made a promise to myself I would never touch a gun in my life time, I shoot with my right foot so it has a deeper meaning.” According to the New York Times, the way in which Sterling was criticized for his tattoo has led some to wonder whether the outcry was fueled by racial animus.

For their part, the English Football Association has supported Sterling during the anti-gun tantrum, with a spokesperson noting, “He and the rest of the squad are focused solely on preparing for the forthcoming World Cup.”

U.S. gun owners should take careful notice of the UK’s ongoing experience with civilian disarmament. No amount of compromise or appeasement will satisfy anti-gun advocates’ urge for control.

Google Blames Wikipedia for Listing Nazism as One of California Republican Party’s Ideologies

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Google reportedly identified one of the ideologies of the California Republican Party as “Nazism” on its highly popular search platform.

The piece of inaccurate information, which is hyperlinked to presumably take web browsers to more information about the hateful, fascist persuasion, is found in the “knowledge panel,” a sidebar widget that presents further, more immediate information.

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The feature has had problems before, specifically when an embedded fact-check feature tried to erroneously pin specious claims on articles written by The Daily Caller.

Google eventually suspended the fact-check project after The Daily Caller News Foundation investigated and pressed further.

The most recent misattribution was first reported on by Vice News. Other ideologies listed besides Nazism, according to a screenshot obtained by Vice’s Alex Thompson, include “Conservatism, Market Liberalism, Fiscal conservatism, and Green conservatism.”

Many, especially those on the right, will suspect that it may have been done by a rogue Google employee or inadvertently through a flawed algorithm.

Google, however, told The Daily Caller News Foundation that it’s because sometimes “people vandalize public information sources, like Wikipedia, which can impact the information that appears in search.”

Wikipedia is for the most part open-source, meaning that almost anyone with only limited verification can add, amend, and delete information.

“We have systems in place that catch vandalism before it impacts search results, but occasionally errors get through, and that’s what happened here,” a Google spokeswoman said.

Nevertheless, it comes at an inopportune time for the subject as California primaries are less than a week way. It’s not clear how long the tag was up for, but absentee ballots have been casted for some time ahead of the elections.

The listing caught the attention, particularly the ire of many, of course, who are Republican or on that end of the political spectrum.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, for example, took notice and equated it to an apparent bias.

The listing has since been removed, but how much damage it may have done is not clear. Google says it was only up for a short period of time.

“This would have been fixed systematically once we processed the removal from Wikipedia,” the company representative concluded. “But when we noticed the vandalism we worked quickly to accelerate this process to remove the erroneous information.”

COLUMN BY

Eric Lieberman

Eric Lieberman is a reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation.

EDITORS NOTE: 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 for this original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. The featured image is by Charles Platiau/Reuters/Newscom.

3 Million People Have Found Jobs Since Trump Took Office

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The good economic news just keeps rolling in.

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a positive May jobs report, announcing the U.S. economy added 223,000 jobs and the unemployment rate reached its lowest level since 2000, dipping to 3.8 percent.

While this report shatters expert predictions by nearly 30,000 jobs and continues to show signs of a strong economy, it also makes clear that as people continue to leave the workforce, employers will need to step up their game in order to attract workers to fill open positions.

The strong jobs report shows that a record number of Americans are employed, nearly 3 million people have found a job since President Donald Trump took office, and over the past 12 months we have averaged 191,000 new jobs per month.

In addition to this, African-American unemployment has fallen dramatically from 7.8 percent when Trump took office to 6.6 percent in April, and now to 5.9 percent. This represents a record low.

In addition, Hispanics continue to experience near historic lows in unemployment, reaching 4.9 percent. The unemployment rate for women, now at 3.6 percent, is also at its lowest point in decades.

This brings the unemployment rate down 0.5 percent over the last year, unemployment down by 772,000, and long-term unemployment down by half a million.

The top gains in the report are in retail trade (+31,000 jobs), health care (+29,000 jobs), construction (+25,000 jobs), manufacturing (+18,000 jobs), and mining (+6,000 jobs).

A year and a half into his presidency, Trump continues to add jobs to key sectors he targeted during his campaign. Since he was elected, the U.S. has added 322,000 manufacturing jobs and has reversed the trend of losing mining jobs, adding 91,000 jobs since November of 2016.

On a more troubling note, the labor force participation rate (the number of people who could be working, but choose not to) ticked down a 10th of a percentage point to 62.7 percent. This shows that the labor market is tightening. In fact, the number of people counted not in the labor force reached a record high of nearly 96 million people.

With more and more staying out of the workforce, employers have been steadily raising employee pay. In May, average hourly earnings for all private-sector employees rose by 8 cents, totaling a 71-cent increase over the year. This is the largest 12-month increase since 2009.

What does this mean? To fill open jobs and continue growing the economy, employers need to make work more appealing. How? Pay more and offer more.

One example of this can be seen in Walmart’s recent decision to increase pay, add maternity and paternal leave benefits, and introduce a college tuition program. To attract and keep talent, companies like Walmart will have to offer better and better deals to workers.

Those better deals are made all the more feasible when the government implements pro-growth policies, like the recent tax reform and regulatory reductions. Businesses now have more money and flexibility to be creative in how they attract and maintain their workers.

To date, over 4 million Americans have received a pay raise and/or a bonus because of tax reform. This is not just employers being altruistic, it’s a market-driven response to a need to attract and maintain workers—enabled by the government taking less money away from businesses.

One thing is certain: When businesses have more, they can and will do more. While there are some challenging aspects to the latest jobs report, the overarching theme shows that pro-growth policies are giving employers the flexibility they need to innovate and solve problems.

Let’s keep the momentum going.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Timothy Doescher

Timothy Doescher

Timothy Doescher is associate director of coalition relations at The Heritage Foundation’s Institute for Economic Freedom.

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

Shareholders Grill Zuckerberg at Meeting Over Alleged Liberal Bias

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Shareholders peppered Facebook’s top executives during an official gathering Thursday with questions, complaints, and protests after the company’s past year has been littered with scandal and backlash.

One investor told Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to lead less like Vladimir Putin and more like George Washington so Facebook doesn’t become a “corporate dictatorship,” according to Bloomberg.

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Another said the alleged mismanagement of data evoked a human rights violation. One woman was kicked out for constant interruptions in the very beginning of it all. And a plane flew over the premises in Menlo Park, California, dragging the message “You Broke Democracy,” along with an ad from an anti-monopoly activist group, reported Bloomberg.

“A lot has happened since last year when we were here … We didn’t do enough to be proactive about how people can abuse these tools,” Zuckerberg said, adding that the company is doing more to try to protect elections from interference and the social media platform from bots.

“We’re also very focused on being more transparent,” Zuckerberg said, while alluding to the multiple announcements and disclosures the company has made in areas like content moderation.

Zuckerberg was challenged on that exact topic, specifically if there is a bias among leadership or general staff based on ideology and if that affects what content is ultimately allowed on the site used by billions.

Citing apparent examples of an ideological bent, like former Facebook workers saying they constantly restrained news stories of interest to conservatives in the trending news section, Justin Danhof of the Free Enterprise Project urged Zuckerberg to consider fostering more diversity of viewpoint.

“It’s really important to me and to the company that Facebook and our systems are platforms for all different ideas,” Zuckerberg said. “And I noted that there are a number of concerns about that kind of bias. Silicon Valley generally is a very left-leaning place, without knowing or asking specific people at Facebook for their views, I think that’s a reasonable assumption.”

Zuckerberg conceded it’s certainly more likely that many employees within the Silicon Valley headquarters hold liberal viewpoints, but that content moderation is done by people from around the world where there is a more varied outlook on life and politics.

“We have very strict guidelines on how these policies need to be enforced, so if people aren’t doing what the guidelines say, they’re not going to be able continue doing that job,” he continued. “We’re very serious about that.”

Another area of concern broached during the reportedly tense meeting was Facebook’s impact on the local community, a highly strained point of contention in recent weeks as protesters complained the city government cares more about big tech than its own people.

Toward the end of the meeting, according to Bloomberg, after being pressed as to why the company always comes off as defensive, Zuckerberg admitted that while he doesn’t agree with all of the negative news coverage, “some of it is very fair.”

COLUMN BY

Eric Lieberman

Eric Lieberman is a reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation.

EDITORS NOTE: 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 for this original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. The featured image is by ulien Mattia/NurPhoto/Sipa USA/Newscom.

San Diego Parents Pulling Their Kids From School Over Inappropriate Sex-Ed Curriculum

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“We’re going to ask them to suspend this new curriculum because it’s not a curriculum for the adolescent brain, it’s an adult curriculum,” mom Angela Beaver says about a sex-ed curriculum in San Diego.

San Diego parents pulled their kids from school and rallied outside the district’s headquarters Tuesday, expressing anger and frustration over a sex-ed curriculum they allege is completely inappropriate for their young children.

The sixth grade curriculum includes lessons on gender identity, birth control, the stages of sex, STDs, HIV, and pregnancy. Parents are calling the material “too much, too soon” and age-inappropriate while San Diego officials defend the curriculum by arguing that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention supports the lesson plans, CBS News 8 reported.

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“We’re going to ask them to suspend this new curriculum because it’s not a curriculum for the adolescent brain, it’s an adult curriculum,” mom Angela Beaver told CBS 8 News.

The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more >>

San Diego parents also loudly rallied in February, asking the district to change its sex-ed curriculum to make it age-appropriate, but the district board did not acquiesce. Parents also began an online petition asking the school district to abandon the curriculum.

“This is absolutely appropriate for our students,” said Isabella McNeil from the San Diego Unified School District, maintaining that the parents are getting upset over material that should in fact be taught to young students.

San Diego parents can opt their child out of the sex-ed curriculum if they choose, but no substitute curriculum will be provided.

Fort Worth schools have also been reeling after a sex-ed lesson for sixth-graders entailed gender transitions and sexual fluidity, according to the Star-Telegram.

Sex-ed programs in other states have also been causing chaos. A California school district told parents in February they can’t opt their kids out of a new sex education course covering abortion, homosexuality, and transgender issues. Despite California’s 2015 Healthy Youth Act, which lets parents opt their children out of sex-ed classes, the Orange County Board of Education decided parents don’t have that right.

Delaware is considering adopting a policy allowing young school students to choose whatever name, gender, or race they want under a veil of school protection mandating the parents not be informed of these decisions unless the student explicitly wishes the parent be included.

COLUMN BY

Grace Carr

@gbcarr24

Grace Carr is a reporter for The Daily Caller News Foundation.

EDITORS NOTE: 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 for this original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. The featured image is by dolgachov/Getty Images.