VIDEO: Boycotting bad businesses is a patriotic duty…and it works!
Boycotting bad businesses is one of the few ways conservatives have of hitting back. Vote with your dollars and you can do it every day.
VIDEO: A Taxing Week for Republicans
“Tax reform is a noble goal but an ugly process,” Howard Kurtz said, almost sympathetically. He won’t have to convince Republicans of that, as they slog through one of the biggest tax rewrites since Ronald Reagan. It’s a grueling process for the members and staff, who not only feel the weight of the task — but the weight of expectation. For a party who hasn’t delivered on its key promises to voters, this debate is the debate for changing that.
While the rest of the city was emptying out for Veterans Day, the light on the Capitol dome was still on, signaling the ongoing work of the chambers underneath. That work turned out to be incredibly good news for families, as the House Ways and Means Committee passed a much-improved version of the tax reform package Americans were introduced to last week. Heeding the chorus of conservatives’ concerns, Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) made the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act even stronger — thanks to a 29-page amendment that addresses everything from the Johnson Amendment to marriage penalties and the adoption credit. Happy with the work of his committee, Brady told reporters that this proposal “reflects the consideration and thought we’ve heard on both sides of the aisle.”
It was a big win for families, who stand to keep a lot more of their hard-earned money, and it was a win for free speech. Unlike the earlier draft of the bill, churches aren’t the only ones that’ll have the opportunity to speak freely in the political process — so will nonprofit and faith-based groups. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.) were able to expand the old language and incorporate their Free Speech Fairness Act into the bill, which stops the IRS from policing the speech of churches and other charitable organizations. That’s a huge relief for men and women of faith, who watched the Obama IRS breathe down the necks of nonprofits and religious entities, threatening to take away their tax exempt status if they dared to talk about moral or political issues.
Most importantly, the House plan recognizes that families are at the heart of our economy. By increasing the child tax credit (the most popular piece of the proposal, according to polling), moms and dads can provide better for their children. And with the changes to education savings accounts, that includes unborn children. Now, expectant parents will be able to put aside money for their babies’ future learning. Marriage tax penalty rates are significantly reduced — something that pro-family groups like FRC have been advocating for years.
Ivanka Trump, who flew back early from her dad’s Asian tour, was thrilled to see the tax relief for parents.
“The average American family,” she points out, “spends almost 30 percent of pre-tax income on the cost of childcare. So the cost of childcare has gone through the roof and families just can’t afford it… The GOP idea is not to have government become more involved in providing affordable childcare services but rather to deliver a tax plan that will empower parents to better care for their kids — which means leaving parents with more of the money they’ve earned rather than allowing the government to take it via taxation and reallocating it as it sees fit.”
Americans overwhelmingly agree, Politico shows in a new survey. While the liberal media is busy panning the plan, they may be the only ones. According to the poll, 45 percent of the country supports the GOP’s proposal, an almost 10-point gap from the 36 percent who don’t. Most Americans think it would have a positive impact on them (36 percent) than negative (25 percent). And with the greatest enthusiasm, most say it would benefit the economy (42 percent); only 22 percent disagreed.
That’s good news for House Republicans, who have plenty of hurdles to go before H.R. 1 is a reality. The Senate, with its own draft of tax reform, may be the biggest. But House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) is still confident the two chambers can work something out. “Yes, the Senate bill is going to be different than the House bill, because you know what? That’s the legislative process. But what’s encouraging in all of this is… we have a framework that we established with the White House and the Senate, and these bills are being written inside that framework.” Ironing out the differences won’t be easy, but it is doable. “The House will pass its bill, the Senate will pass its bill, and then we will get together and reconcile the differences, which is the legislative process, and that’s how this process will continue.”
In the meantime, we tip our hats to House Republicans for listening to voters and giving conservatives a plan they can be proud of. For more on the tax debate, check out FRC’s Ken Blackwell on Fox Business.
Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.
Also in the November 10 Washington Update:
The Heart of a Warrior
Ninety-nine years ago today, when Americans celebrated the end of World War I, people hoped it would be the war that ended all wars. Unfortunately, that wasn’t to be. Since that first Veterans’ Day, hundreds of thousands of brave men and women have worn the uniforms of the United States military in defense — not just of our liberty — but of the liberties of countless nations and people around the world. In peacetime and in war, our soldiers have missed birthdays, Christmases, and other memories with their families in order to protect ours.
Every night of every day, Americans sleep in peace because of men and women they’ve never met — and some they’ll never have the chance to. These are good and decent people who’ve performed remarkable acts of heroism for a cause they’ve decided is bigger than themselves. This year, they have the honor of serving under a commander-in-chief who respects the selflessness of our military and is doing everything he can to show it through policies that rebuild the proud tradition of their service. We join them in thanking the president for showing the courageous leadership our military needs to put their mission first.
From the Greatest Generation to the troops serving today in posts all over the world, we are profoundly grateful to so many of you who have dedicated your lives — and the lives of your families — to preserving America’s ideals. As a veteran of the Marine Corps, I thank God that our nation has been blessed with an effective, dedicated force that’s freed the world from some of history’s fiercest enemies. There were no guarantees in 1776 that America would make it to 2017 as a free nation. That freedom had to be protected every day by courageous citizens, who often pay the ultimate price. Today, we honor that sacrifice — and pray God’s protection on the red, white, and blue.
NOTE: Don’t miss the Federalist column by FRC’s Travis Weber, a former Navy pilot, who thinks the courts should celebrate Veterans Day by respecting their memorials. Check it out here.
Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.
Also in the November 10 Washington Update:
GOP Tax Reform is Democrat-Lite. Where’s the Conservatism?
When the GOP unveiled the outline of their big tax reform plan last week, they billed it as one of the largest tax cuts in history. If only that were true. It cuts the corporate tax rate which even Democratic economists (not politicians, they have to demagogue everything) see as necessary. This is easily the strongest point in the plan. But there’s now a hitch even there.
All of our western nation competitors have cut their corporate tax rates in recent years (Germany went from 40% to 15%!) leaving the U.S. as the highest rate in the industrialized world at 35%. That makes U.S. soil uncompetitive, and that’s bad for American jobs, companies and the economy. So, yes, that is good and necessary — but more later as even it may be imperiled.
Once we get past that corporate tax cut, there is very little cheer from a conservative perspective for individual American taxpayers. There’s an actual tax increase for the wealthy with a bubble tax rate of 46% for those earning more than $1 million until they make up for a tax cut at the lower ends — which pay hardly any taxes now at all. So an actual tax increase! How is that in any way conservative? Does anyone need reminding that the rich are already carrying most of the income tax load — far more than their “fair share?” Or that it is the rich who are the job-creators? Apparently just the party representing conservatism.
It will change from here for the worse as it looks to get votes in both chambers. But overall, it looks a lot like the GOP tax cut plan is largely a sop to class warfare, a totally swampy cave from the most basic principles of conservatism. Outside the corporate tax cut, it is nothing more than Democrat-lite. It looks like one big shell game to ensure that the government keeps growing and the “rich” get soaked, because rich people are, you know, evil.
Getting into the details is not worthwhile as it will change. Essentially, it reduces tax brackets except the highest one and eliminates some deductions — that latter of which means more taxes paid.
Fortune magazine fact-checked the middle class cuts and found a mixed bag:
“But the proposal’s conflicting provisions and phase-outs of certain benefits suggest that taxes could rise for some middle-class earners over time. Middle-income people in states with high state income taxes or who have many children, high medical bills or heavy student debt are particularly at risk of a bigger tax hit. Others may benefit modestly from the lower tax rates and revamped credits and deductions.”
Shell game.
Remember, this proposal is essentially the starting negotiating point. If the swamp acts as normal, what will happen from here is that this proposal will be larded up with more special interests and hidden garbage like the bubble tax and become worse. Bottom line: We could end up with even worse than we have right now.
Good job, guys. Glad we gave you a majority so you could act like little Democratic class warfare warriors and make sure leviathan keeps chewing us up — while pitching it as this huge tax cut. More and more conservatives outside the ruling class are catching on as the details get examined.
This all is more than disappointing. Just like repealing Obamacare (although that was really on a small number of Senate Republicans who lied during re-election, including John McCain.) Just like keeping the Dreamer Act (Trump.) Just like no money for building the wall (Congress.)
The only big promises kept so far are by Trump on deregulation and appointing conservative justices and judges — few of which have been confirmed, yet. That’s a pretty short list of promises kept, and none of them from the GOP-controlled Congress.
The Republican Party used to stand for basic conservative principles: limited government, reduced tax burdens, de-regulation over an overly regulatory state, personal responsibility, individual freedoms, equality under the law.
Where are these to be found in this tax plan? Where are they found in the budget outline approved previously? Where are they in the various (and failed) Obamacare repeals? Where are they in building a wall and enforcing existing laws?
Do we have a party of limited government or do we have Democrats-but-burden-Americans-more-slowly?
Where is President Trump on the tax proposal?
Populists and conservatives look at the tax code differently.
Since Trump is more populist than conservative in philosophy — although a lot of his policies have been conservative — it was incumbent on actual supposed principled conservatives such as Speaker Paul Ryan to come through with strong tax reform that made American corporations more competitive, gave all Americans tax relief and for goodness sake, shrank government.
This does the first, but whiffs on the next two.
However, Trump was the avatar for Americans who wanted change, who knew we needed change. Washington was a place filled with self-promoting creatures who cared first and only about re-election as their pathway to power, prestige and wealth. They feed the beast.
And it works great for them, for lobbyists, for bureaucrats, for the nest of hangers-on that feed off ever burgeoning government. But not for Americans. And many Americans know this. Washington long has been out for only Washington. Trump was seen as someone who might be able to at least take a step forward in draining a little of the scumminess out, shake up the status quo.
So while he is a populist, it was still disappointing to see him so strongly onboard with this “biggest tax cut in history” nonsense. Part of this may be because Republicans aren’t presenting what he wanted. But part is because of the mantra that “Republicans need a win!”
Here’s an idea. How about if Americans get a win?
Starting to make any real change in Washington, D.C. requires an almost revolutionary vision for a Capitol that works for Americans. Trump rightly identified the problem being the seedy Washington culture. But tweeting and complaining about it doesn’t change anything. And calling a questionable class warfare tax plan the biggest tax cut in history doesn’t change the swamp, either.
Potential saving grace — repeal Obamacare mandate
Republicans are looking to include repealing the Obamacare individual insurance mandate. That would totally change the dynamics and value of the tax plan…if they actually do.
This is a two-fer winner. The first and most important part is that it is a win for individual American liberties. Personal freedoms from heavy, distant government intrusion is a bedrock conservative principle.
The individual mandate is maybe the most onerous element of Obamacare. Forcing all Americans to buy a private-sector product was always an atrocity — upheld 5-4 by an outrageous U.S. Supreme Court decision that put the reputation of the Court above the rights of the American people by calling the mandate a “tax.” The result was that it ended up eroding both. A terrible decision. Getting rid of this monstrous assault on individual liberties is a huge benefit.
Second, it’s good for Americans’ wallets by allowing millions to choose not to have insurance, or traditional health insurance, and keeping money they earn to spend how they choose.
Democrats would undoubtedly demagogue such a move — they laughably denounced the original proposals as tax cuts for the rich before even seeing it, because they are on autoplay — and the media would report the move as “throwing 13 million off their health insurance.” But of course it does no such thing. It allows people the choice, and an estimated 13 million Americans would choose not to have insurance. See how that works, media? Americans should have that freedom.
House leadership seems onboard with doing this, although it was not in their initial proposal. It still may be. However, the Senate plan revealed today does not include the mandate, and delays the corporate tax — the only strong element — for a year. Any delays are problematic because too often it has meant that it never actually happens.
The entire tax “reform” efforts just further reveal how badly the swamp needs draining — and how difficult that is to do.
EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Revolutionary Act.
California NAACP Calls ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ ‘Racist.’ Here’s Why Frederick Douglass Loved It.
Editorial Note: California’s NAACP has launched a campaign to remove “The Star-Spangled Banner” as America’s national anthem because it is “one of the most racist, pro-slavery, anti-black songs in the American lexicon.” The organization expressed support for NFL player Colin Kaepernick, who launched the recent movement to kneel for the national anthem before sports events. The following is a reprint of an August 2016 Daily Signal article about why the song was beloved by former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
National Football League player Colin Kaepernick created a stir on Friday when he refused to stand for the national anthem at the start of a preseason game. The San Francisco 49ers quarterback cited the prevalence of racism and oppression in America as the primary reasons he sat during the playing of the song.
The Bay Area football star has been fading over the last few years and he’ll likely be doing a lot of sitting this season—for the national anthem or otherwise. But Kaepernick’s protest has initiated a national debate over patriotism and respect for the American flag.
“The Star-Spangled Banner” was written by Francis Scott Key during the War of 1812; it was officially adopted as the national anthem in 1931 and has been a staple at sports events for more than a century. The song is filled with martial and patriotic references, finishing with a stanza that makes an ode to America as the “land of the free, and the home of the brave.”
EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick who started the modern movement to kneel for the national anthem at sports events. Photo: Loren Elliott/ZUMA Press/Newscom.
Here’s Why an Unborn Baby Was Counted as a Person in the Texas Massacre
The sheriff deputies who assessed the fatalities at the bloody crime scene at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, counted the death toll as 26 because one of the victims was a mother carrying an unborn child inside of her.
The federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 recognizes unborn children as separate victims for federal and military crimes. Texas law also defines a human being to include “an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth,” and recognizes an unborn baby as a potential crime victim.
“This has been a longstanding priority for us, and something we were instrumental in pushing,” said Jennifer Popik, a director for the National Right to Life, according to The New York Times. “The principle here is that there’s two victims. For a family already invested in the child, for the grandparents, this is a loss.”
Abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America defends harsher penalties for perpetrators who commit crimes against pregnant women, however, the group strongly opposes crime victim laws and “personhood” laws that give unborn babies separate legal status from the mother. These laws are an attempt to prevent women from getting abortions, according to NARAL.
“We need tougher laws on the books that increase criminal penalties for individuals who target pregnant women, and we stand with our allies in support of meaningful legislation to prevent future acts of gun violence,” said NARAL spokesperson Kaylie Long.
President Donald Trump’s administration has also defined life at conception. The Department of Health and Human Services “accomplishes its mission through programs and initiatives that cover a wide spectrum of activities, serving and protecting Americans at every stage of life, beginning at conception,” according to a draft plan from the agency.
Even New York’s World Trade Center memorial includes the words “and her unborn child” after the names of the pregnant women who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Thirty-eight states currently have fetal homicide laws.
Grace Carr
Grace Carr is a reporter for The Daily Caller News Foundation. Twitter: @gbcarr24
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Culture is Downstream of Politics
By Maggie Gallagher and Frank Cannon
Walk into any room full of Christian conservative donors, and someone will say, “Politics is downstream of culture.” Every head in the room will nod. Nothing is more entrenched as conventional wisdom among Christian conservatives. Like most truisms, this one is only partly true. As people change their beliefs about what is true and good, politics changes as well. But putting culture above politics as a distinct sphere is profoundly mistaken, for politics is part of culture.
Politics allows the American people to give public form to what they believe to be true, good, and important; it is also the main way Americans decide which views are “within the pale” and which are beyond it. Elites of the left dominate most other domains: the mainstream media, the academy, the arts, Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and increasingly the Chamber of Commerce and corporate suites. When an idea or issue drops out of politics, therefore, progressives can easily stigmatize it as outside the mainstream, extremist, and intolerable, effectively ending conversation. But election results feed back into culture. Political realities can override the dictates of the left, as Trump’s election reminds us.
Politics is full of cultural content. When our ideas find success at the polls, traditional believers find out that they are not alone, isolated, or on the fringe. This strengthens our voice in the public square. When voters swept Ronald Reagan into the White House, the New York Times could no longer define conservatives as outside the mainstream.
Electoral victories have other cultural consequences. Harvard Law School recently established an Antonin Scalia chair. Has Harvard suddenly been persuaded that Scalia’s ideas are sound? Probably not. Harvard publicly acknowledges the intellectual legitimacy of Scalia’s textualist and originalist approach to constitutional interpretation only because, thanks to politics, the Federalist Society has a great deal of influence on Republican nominations to the federal bench, including the Supreme Court.
The give-and-take of politics also tells Americans what views their fellow citizens hold and care about. In November 2016, many liberals were shocked to discover that their preoccupations were not shared by many voters in swing states. Politicians who want to win elections respond to this information and adjust to win the votes they need to gain office. That’s why Bill Clinton signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993. He was tired of watching Democrats lose elections because they were outside the mainstream of middle America. As a consequence, religious liberty became a bipartisan commitment for at least a decade.
This is not to say that culture does not influence politics. The left can use media power to intimidate Republicans, encouraging them to fall silent about particular issues. But this is almost always matched by political spending for issues and candidates, which reinforces cultural messages. Fairly quickly, this combination leads to cultural change. When only one side is willing to speak enthusiastically about a prominent issue, people begin to believe there really is only one side. The polls shift quickly as the hearts and minds of the mushy middle move toward the only visible position. If only one team is on the field, it wins by default.
The push for gay marriage provides a case study. In the years leading up to the Obergefell decision, Republicans stopped talking about the substance of the issue. Instead of vigorously defending marriage, they increasingly sidestepped, briefly acknowledging their support of traditional marriage or reverting to federalism (“leave the matter to the states”). This approach communicated clearly to voters that defending marriage was not an issue of central concern. Meanwhile, Democratic candidates trumpeted “marriage equality” and “love is love.” Not surprisingly, opinion polls shifted toward approval of gay marriage.
For this reason, “truce strategies” damage the causes religious and social conservatives support. When our positions are not articulated in politics, opponents can easily caricature and dismiss them. Truce strategies also forgo opportunities to effect substantive change. As political scientists Edward G. Carmines and James A. Stimson have pointed out, issues that change partisan alignments and re-orient the electorate’s views have three characteristics:
“Issue preferences must be deeply felt.” A passionate minority can move mountains in elections. Indeed, the notion of activating a moral majority has been one of the weak points in Christian conservatives’ political model. Consider the polling on the proposal to ban “assault-style weapons.” Eighty percent of Democrats and those who lean Democratic favor such a ban, and so do 54 percent of Republicans and those who lean Republican. Yet the NRA can block such a ban because they are able to rally a minority of voters who feel very strongly—and are politically organized.
The Christian conservative movement has taken a different approach, encouraging a “mass uprising,” a moral majority that feels strongly that it can win elections without political organization or targeted action. This never worked very well, leading to threats that voters would stay home if the GOP didn’t implement our priorities—mass defection as a model of political influence. Neither idea amounts to a plan, certainly not a plan for our times. Meanwhile, the broader culture disintegrates on sexual matters and the LGBT community tightens its hold on culture-shaping institutions that channel and intensify hatred against traditional believers.
“Parties and candidates must take up visibly different positions on the issue.” Carmines and Stimson point out that the cultural and political consequences are most dramatic when the two parties take clearly articulated, opposing stands. But cultural consequences also follow when “one of the parties chooses to ignore the issue while the other party takes a strong stand.” Either way, “the degree of objective party differentiation on major issues” is “very critical in the shaping of public opinion.”
To keep our moral principles in the mainstream, we need high-profile political commitments that command the loyalty of significant chunks of the electorate. The sanctity of life provides the most obvious example. The left would like to brand the pro-life position as outside the mainstream, but cannot. The reason why rests in the political salience of our position, not the left’s “fair-mindedness.” The unwillingness of Republican politicians to sustain a clear commitment to traditional marriage illustrates what happens when our views are not put forward as clear political commitments. The position that until almost yesterday was nearly universal now has been branded as bigotry. If we do not change our strategy, religious liberty will soon be in the same position. Legal strategies without a political strategy will not be enough.
“The issue must be long on the political agenda.” To sustain the cultural impact of political involvement, Christian conservatives must keep their commitments on the political agenda over time. The pro-life community learned to move from the Human Life Amendment to smaller legislative issues such as late-term abortions and taxpayer funding, winning important victories and keeping the pro-life cause in politics for decades. This is one of the reasons the pro-life movement has gained ground culturally. The scandal of abortion remains before the public, working against the pro-abortion forces that would like to hide the reality of the killing of the unborn.
Political scientists in the seventies predicted that public opposition to abortion would collapse as older generations died off. Abortion polling looked about as dismal at that time as gay marriage polling does now. In 1972, 66 percent of those under age thirty felt there should be no restriction on abortion at all. But predictions about the direction of history turned out to be wrong. The cause of life has been able to win a large share of succeeding generations in part by keeping abortion alive as a political issue.
Today, just a few short years after Mitch Daniels, then-governor of Indiana, tried to persuade the GOP to adopt a truce strategy on abortion and other social issues, Democrats are acknowledging their abortion extremism is costing them votes. Both Bernie Sanders and DNC Chair Tom Perez publicly supported a self-described pro-life Democrat, Heath Mello, for mayor of Omaha. Perez admitted that abortion extremism is hurting the Democrats politically: “In order to execute a 50-state strategy, we need to understand what’s going on in all 50 states, and attract candidates who are consistent with their messages but perhaps not on 100 percent of the issues.” Attacks by pro-abortion groups caused Perez to walk back his support, and Mello promised to vote for only pro-choice legislation. But a few months later, Rep. Ben Ray Luján, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, announced that a pro-abortion position would no longer be required for its support: “There is not a litmus test for Democratic candidates.”
All of this suggests that culture is in some sense also downstream of politics, not just the other way around. Data from other countries reinforce this conclusion. Americans are nearly twice as likely as Canadians to say abortion should not be permitted at all. We are three times more likely than the British to say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. In Great Britain, according to another poll, support for a ban on abortion actually fell between 2005 and 2013 from 12 percent to 7 percent. Religious people in Great Britain were about as likely to support legal abortion as other citizens. These striking differences no doubt reflect some cultural differences, but surely the specifically political influence of a vigorous pro-life movement that can win elections in the United States is an important factor.
The left seems to have learned this lesson. They approached gay marriage in ways designed to shut it down as a political issue. Progressives invested heavily in innovative direct political action, which, combined with its media influence, helped them defeat major social conservative leaders who spoke out against gay marriage, most prominently Sen. Rick Santorum. It was a strategy described in the now-famous March 2007 Atlantic essay “They Won’t Know What Hit Them.”
Others have been targeted. As a Colorado Congresswoman, Marilyn Musgrave sponsored the federal Marriage Amendment in the House of Representatives, where she introduced it in 2003. The gay left’s campaign against her began in 2006 when the multimillionaire tech entrepreneur Tim Gill and his fellow pro–gay marriage donors poured $2 million into negative ads opposing her reelection. These ads never mentioned gay marriage. Instead, they criticized Rep. Musgrave for voting against a pay raise for Iraq War veterans.
She hung on with 51 percent of the vote in 2006, but with the template established, gay mega-donors returned in 2008 with a similar strategy. They worked to defeat her because of her opposition to gay marriage, but that remained invisible. The voting public saw only ads driving up her negatives on every conceivable issue. “Musgrave took over $183,000 from Big Oil and gave them billions in tax breaks,” one ad said. Another had a voiceover intone, “A citizen watchdog group named Musgrave one of the most corrupt members of Congress.” As Musgrave told one of us, “They even started fake pro-life organizations to claim I’m not pro-life enough.”
In the face of these sophisticated and well-financed attacks, pro-family Christian conservative organizations continue to do politics as usual, investing most of their resources in pastor organizing, voter guides, voter registration efforts, referendum efforts, and policy papers. This is all to the good, but it is not good enough, at least not in today’s political climate.
After Musgrave and others were punished politically, Republican elites concluded that opposing gay marriage would hurt them. They were able to wiggle away from a public stance on the issue because social conservatives did not appear to have political resources to help them fight back against the kind of tactics that defeated Musgrave. We talk with many intelligent Evangelicals who see candidate recruitment as the key to electing politicians who will not betray us. But electing faithful Christians like Marilyn Musgrave won’t help if we do not have the political resources to defend and protect them.
Pat McCrory, the North Carolina governor who was the lone Republican in 2016 to stand up against Obama’s transgender edict requiring public schools to let biological males in girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams, went down to defeat because of the same lack of astute tactical support from social conservatives. The left does not have to defeat everyone. They only need to demonstrate they can defeat one of our leaders. This sends other Republicans scurrying for political cover.
Republicans silenced themselves on marriage not after they lost the support of the American people but before. In 2009, Americans opposed gay marriage 54 percent to 37 percent according to a Pew poll. By 2010, when Mitch Daniels publicly announced that the next president “would have to call a truce on the so-called social issues,” Americans were still evenly divided. When the other side keeps fighting, “truce” is another word for surrender. Today, more than three-fifths of the American people support gay marriage, including 40 percent of Republicans.
The left has now moved on to redefining religious liberty as a license to discriminate, using the same successful tactics. There remains a substantial reservoir of support for religious liberty. As recently as July 2015, according to an AP poll, a third of Democrats and 59 percent of independents say religious liberty should trump gay rights where they conflict. But if we continue to respond to challenges with our failed tactics, religious liberty will lose too, not just politically but culturally as well.
The last decade has made one thing clear: Nonpolitical cultural strategies without a new, better, deeper, and more effective investment in direct politics will fail. At a minimum, to sustain religious liberty, we will need an effective political arm to win legislative battles for our schools, charities, and businesses. We cannot preserve our cultural consensus about the First Amendment without making it clear that those who wish to undermine religious liberty will pay a dear price at the polls.
Apolitical movement needs many things: messaging shops, coalition builders, policy reports, candidate recruitment, attractive spokesmen, and voter registration drives. But these exist to support, not replace, the central act of democratic politics, which is winning elections. This is precisely what social conservatives lack. We lack the capacity to elect our friends and defeat our opponents. Which means we need to build the organizational structures that can engage directly in politics: PACs, super PACs, and 501(c)(4) independent expenditures.
We need to propose specific legislation that forces politicians to defend our positions. If elected officials have to vote, they will need to explain and justify their votes in public. When they do so, the general public will hear someone defending our commitments as true and our policies as good. By contrast, when we organize around generic principles rather than specific legislation, it is easy for politicians to mislead or confuse voters. The rhetoric of “judicial restraint” and “federalism” are classic instances. They may be good principles, but in recent decades they have been ways for elected officials to suggest they are pro-life, pro-marriage, or pro–religious liberty without actually saying so in public.
The 2012 election demonstrated the need for change in the way we address politics and culture. Mitt Romney was nominally against gay marriage, but he ran no ads on the issue. Obama and the Democrats were all-in for gay marriage. What happened? Did any national social conservative organization go into Ohio or North Carolina and spend even $2 million to demonstrate the issue could deprive the Democrats of the White House? No. We accepted our role in the aging Reagan coalition, which has become that of a silent partner. We let the Republican operatives in D.C. dictate electoral strategy, which advised promoting economic issues and downplaying social issues.
We have a long way to go. Our research shows that between 2007 and 2014, conservative organizations dedicated to changing public policy on life, marriage, and religious liberty spent just under $75 million in direct political spending. By contrast, the leading gay-rights political organization, Human Rights Campaign, recently pledged to spend $26 million in 2018 on direct political action. Emily’s List, one of the largest pro-abortion PACs, spent $36 million in 2016 and is likely to spend as much or more in the upcoming electoral cycle. In other words, only two organizations on the left will spend in one year almost as much on direct political action as all socially conservative organizations combined spent between 2007 and 2014. Comprehensive data for 2015 and 2016 are not yet available. But the preliminary data suggest political spending by social conservatives is falling, not rising.
This must change. We need to invest resources in direct political spending that helps us focus the 2018 elections on the left’s threats to religious liberty and its transgender extremism. We need to show that the outspoken representatives of these views can be defeated in elections. Defeats of just a few hardcore culture warriors on the left will sober up other Democratic politicians. Persuading even 3 percent of those who usually vote Democratic to turn against the left in close purple-state elections will have a far greater impact, politically and culturally, than any “rally the base” strategy.
The Democratic party pushes deeply unpopular policies because rich donors who support LGBT and abortion extremism provide them with direct political money. They have come to rely on Republican silence on these issues. They cash the checks and are not held accountable at election time. We’ve lived through a counterproductive cycle of elections in which Republicans gave us green-eyeshade issues such as deficit reduction and tax cuts for those with higher incomes, while Democrats hammered away at us as “bigots” and “haters.”
It is past time to set aside the failed truce strategy of recent decades. We need a political strategy that will take our case to ambivalent Democrats and independents. This will make social conservatives more politically influential—and more culturally influential as well, for politics is part of culture.
EDITORS NOTE: Maggie Gallagher is a senior fellow and Frank Cannon is president at the American Principles Project. The full report and data on which this article is based are available at CaseForPolitics.com.
Colonel Leland Bohannon Needs Your Help!
Dear Fellow American,
Leland Bohannon
Leland Bohannon is a decorated colonel who has devoted decades of his life to serving our Air Force, including flying missions in the B-2 stealth bomber. He’s been ranked first on his performance reports, has been bestowed numerous honors, and trusted with oversight of nuclear weapons. In other words, he’s the model Air Force officer.
Yet Colonel Bohannon’s life and service are about to be completely derailed because he could not in good conscience sign a “certificate of spouse appreciation” for a service member in a same-sex marriage. Despite the certificate obtaining a signature from an officer of even higher rank, when the service member saw that Colonel Bohannon had not personally signed it, he filed an Equal Opportunity complaint against him.
The Equal Opportunity investigator claimed that Colonel Bohannon violated Air Force regulations by supposedly discriminating against the service member based on sexual orientation. The investigator acknowledged that Colonel Bohannon had asked for a religious accommodation, but claimed—unbelievably—that even had the accommodation been granted, Colonel Bohannon would nonetheless be guilty of unlawful discrimination.
As a result, his superior suspended Colonel Bohannon, withheld his decoration, and submitted a poor performance appraisal to the Air Force Brigadier General promotion board—the rank for which Colonel Bohannon is eligible—recommending that he not be promoted.
Not only is all of this a big waste of time for everyone involved, it is clearly unlawful and unconstitutional. The Equal Opportunity investigator completely failed to understand the nature of how religious accommodations work. Moreover, religious freedom law and military policy demand that he be granted an accommodation in an instance like this—where the objective is easily fulfilled with another signature on the certificate.
At best, this entire matter is a distraction for Colonel Bohannon. At worst, it could end his career.
Please sign the petition below. Colonel Bohannon needs your help!
God bless,
Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin
Executive Vice President
Family Research Council
Remembering the Horrors of Kristallnacht – Lest we as human beings ever forget
This week marks a cruel yet hopeful anniversary. On November 9-10, 1938, a two-day period now known as Kristallnacht, Nazis plundered Jewish homes, schools and businesses across Germany. My grandfather, only 14 at the time, recalled seeing Jewish stores looted, books burned, and signs saying “kill the Jews.” Two days later, he received a letter from his family saying that his father, my great-grandfather, had been taken to Dachau, which we now know was the equivalent of a death sentence.
It has never been easy to come to grips with my family history. My aunt recently completed a family tree going back centuries; many of its branches end abruptly in the late 1930s and early 1940s. These names, no more than entries on a piece of paper to me, represent my heritage, my family—much of it lost in the hollow corridors of concentration camps. I can only imagine how my life would have been different had my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins never experienced the merciless brutality of the Holocaust.
My grandparents shared bits and pieces of their experiences with me as I grew up, careful to say only as much as they thought I could handle. One day, while riding around on my grandfather’s lap in his electric wheelchair, I asked him, “What is that number on your arm?” Transforming a physical characteristic designed to make him less human into a source of feigned pride, he told me it was a number that made him unique because he was the only person in the world who had it. Only later, as I approached my teenage years, did my grandfather tell me that a fellow prisoner tattooed the number—117022—on his left forearm when he arrived at Auschwitz.
Four years ago, on the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, I spoke publicly about my grandparents’ experience for the first time. Standing in the rotunda of the Minnesota Capitol, I read my grandfather’s account of being transported on a freight car to Auschwitz, stripped of civilian clothes upon arrival, and forced to run naked through a cold April rain.
My grandfather had the uncommon gift of being able to see the light of human generosity in the midst of near-total darkness. He recounted his experience at the camp hospital, sick and malnourished: German nurses reported to their superiors that they had discharged my grandfather when they in fact transferred him to another room until he was able to recover. Their kindness, he said—which they undertook at great risk to their own lives—saved him from the gas chamber.
My grandfather again saw the best and worst in humanity after he agreed to participate in an escape plot. The guards captured three co-conspirators, who were hanged in the middle of the camp as a prisoner orchestra played German songs to accompany the spectacle. The men took the secret of my grandfather’s involvement to their graves.
Only after years researching their stories and reflecting on their lives do I understand the message my grandparents had tried to impart—one of hope and gratitude, not bitterness or pity. As my grandfather said in a memorial service speech in 1979, we remember those who “lost their lives while fighting for their freedom, the freedom of us and the freedom of mankind.” He emphasized that “we, the survivors, have to let the world know that we will never again allow another Holocaust” and told the audience that “you, and you alone, have the responsibility to speak up for our fallen relatives and friends.”
My grandparents always said they were the lucky ones, and that they were left on earth to speak for those who had perished. Their guidepost was humanity, not indulgence in their own sorrow and suffering.
They spoke for their friends and family members who were not “lucky” enough to make it, and to ensure that the stories of those who perished did not become footnotes in a dusty history book in the library. Theirs was a message of optimism, intended to ensure that their children and grandchildren were able to lead a life free from the atrocities that they had witnessed. I get it now, grandma and grandpa, and I hope the world gets it now too.
Justice Stras serves on the Minnesota Supreme Court and is a nominee for the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
‘What is that number on your arm?’ I asked my grandfather one day, too young to have heard of Auschwitz.
In Beijing, Trump Meets a Man Who Just Quietly Achieves
By NSS staff
Imagine being lost somewhere and not even knowing what country you are in. Pretty scary, wouldn’t you say?
And yet that is precisely where most of us Westerners are in our world with regard to where we stand, to the unseen powers holding sway over us and to the powers in the East that oppose the Western elites. Most imagine that Washington (or Brussels) is the centre of the power that protects us and that the US dollar (or euro) pays for this protection and always will. As for the world of ideas, we imagine that there is this thing called “Western values” and it is the centre of our intellectual and moral universe, the collection of all those things we hold dear and are prepared to defend against their enemies – as long as no blood is shed.
We generally believe that there is this thing called freedom of speech, and yet if a Western pastor dared to say from the sanctuary of his pulpit that marriage is designed by God solely as a union between a man and a woman, he would soon be challenged, gingerly at first perhaps but shortly a group of defenders of Western values would likely descend on him and his family demanding that he cease and desist from preaching this obsolete truth and would make it clear in no uncertain terms that they are not kidding. There is no longer debate, just “settled truths.” But the people are not the ones doing the settling.
Thus, paradoxically, while “Western values” includes the concept of free speech, this only applies to speech confined to the narrowing realm of “Western values,” which, under a law that is unwritten but strictly enforced by radical members of the populace, some speech is in fact unavailable to ordinary people.
And this is because the entire West is locked into an ideology, which New Silk Strategies has, in a reference paper, posted in the following 3 parts:
To recap, the West dances to the tune of the radical school of the Enlightenment, which in the real world of past centuries turned out to be anything but enlightened. It led in fact to the bloody French Revolution and indirectly to Bonaparte’s bloody romp across Europe and Russia. It is an ideology that could be aptly called Benighted Enlightenment or to coin a neologism, Benightenment.
The ideas represented in this benighted enlightenment deny common sense, traditions – Christianity and traditional family in particular – traditional manufacturing-based economics, morality, decency and human kindness and sentiment, and promote a foreign policy that is devoid of any palpable diplomacy, being designed to punish countries that resist “Western values” and to avenge the West of any who dare defy its sacrosanct systems, particularly the banking system, or sully any of numerous economic, political or military interests of the US.
The problem for the “Belightened” Ones is that, while in their tiny make-believe world, all traditions must go, there still persist in their ambiance nuisance countries that nurture traditions, including the most offensive, ie, Christian faith and a traditional definition of marriage and family. Not because traditional methods fail to solve problems – because in fact, they work – but because they see these as hangovers of a Christian world that must be destroyed at all costs because Christianity was peopled by people and not saints, proving that God had failed them. It was a baby to be discarded with the bath water because the bath water is dirty, so the baby must be not clean but defective.
Unlike traditional governments, the US defends its economy not so much through economic development and growth but more by attempting to impoverish others in a zero-sum game based on the belief that wealth is finite, so that there can only be winners and losers and no such thing as a win-win situation. Thus for the US, competition from other countries is more of a declaration of war than a challenge to be met with improvements and growth in the US economy. There’s only room for one of us in this town.
The biggest offenders at this time are Russia and China, who reject this aggressive US ethnocentrism and treat competitors, even those like the US that seek conflict, with respect, calling them partners.
It was in this context that Donald Trump’s former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon told the Economist in an interview shortly after his dismissal (or resignation, depending on whose version you believe): “Let’s go screw up One Belt One Road.” (Bannon apparently did not know that the latest designation was Belt and Road Initiative, BRI). Briefly, the BRI is a massive Chinese infrastructure project designed in part to lift both China and Africa, for example, out of poverty.
Bannon’s statement can be understood and interpreted only in the context briefly described above. It was not just a reflection of his personal ideology but in fact is perfectly in line with the West’s irrational benighted “enlightenment” ideology.
This is the Western world where you are now, a world where hate holds sway over love and profound ignorance over knowledge and wisdom.
But there is a new sheriff and deputy in town.
In the context of Trump’s upcoming visit to China, CNN posted an article on Chinese President Xi Jinping which declared that almost nothing is known about the man. Of course they said that not only because they are ignorant of the East, but also because if they had told the truth about Xi it would present an embarrassing contrast between an Easterner, a truly enlightened man who is challenging the zero-sum US economics with a deeply held belief in a win-win for everyone, and a West that seems not to comprehend this. This simple idea is explained in Xi’s book “Up and Out of Poverty,” which no one in the West seems to have read and no one has meaningfully reviewed. Which is perhaps why CNN thought nothing was known about Xi. The book, written in 1992 and later translated into English and French, tells of Xi’s experience as a social worker in Ningde in Shaanxi Province where he was sent as a youth by the government in a program along the lines of a domestic Peace Corps.
Xi, the son of a Chinese functionary from a relatively well-off city, was shocked at the grinding poverty he found in this town but immediately set about to change this situation. In short, thanks to his efforts, that town, which once had an annual average income of 198 USD, wound up with an average income of 8000 USD last year – virtually unheard of for rural China. Xi thinks he has reason to believe this miracle can be duplicated elsewhere.
Xi has stated in public that the poor concern him more than anything else. But unlike Western politicians, he was not just flapping his jaws.
A Chinese site reported:
“A total of 55.64 million Chinese rural residents were lifted out of poverty from 2013 to 2016 and at least another 10 million will shake off poverty this year, which means the number of rural Chinese lifted out of poverty in five years will exceed 65 million – roughly the population of a major European country such as Britain, France or Italy.”
While CNN admits it knows nothing about this, Xi’s dream is a nightmare to the West, where a Steve Bannon can get away with saying they want to screw up Xi’s dream to raise Africa out of poverty through his Belt and Road Initiative. Bannon was in fact saying to hell with the African poor, probably without even realizing it (the Western narrative is that the BRI is just a way of allowing China to rule the world like a despot, the way the US does now). Even worse, Bannon admitted he wants to destroy Xi’s chances of helping them. These thoughtless statements stick around in the history books. Let them eat cake?
But if the West ignores, wittingly or not, that Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative is aimed at raising Africa and other nations out of poverty, Africa is keenly aware of this and anxiously awaits its culmination.
In June of 2017, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi gave a keynote address to a meeting at the opening ceremony of the High-Level Dialogue on Poverty Reduction and Development held at the African Union Conference Centre in Addis Ababa, and said that China’s goal is to simultaneously lift the poor in both China and Africa out of poverty. Wang also delivered an inspiring talk about Xi’s book on his experiences working with the poor in Ningde. So unlike US media, the Africans are aware that much is known about President Xi and that Xi is a veteran in battling poverty, with success. Can you name an American president who has successfully lifted anyone out of poverty in the last half-century? Lyndon Johnson birthed welfare, but the ghettos grew in proportion to the money paid out because no attempt was made to allow the poor to lift themselves out of poverty. Xi, however, says that is what he did in Ningde and what he intends to do in the future. He also uses the expression “win-win” often in his speeches, as if to rebuke the West for its zero-sum nonsense.
The US is the leader of the World Bank and the IMF, organizations that have been involved in Africa for decades, issuing loans but not making a dent in African poverty. The reason for their failure is perhaps best summed up in the book “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” by John Perkins, the CEO for a CIA front company working for the World Bank whose trainer at the beginning of his career bluntly told him the goal of his company was to bankrupt Third World nations, making them dependent on these banks for more and more loans. Thus the West’s policy was self-defeating because — as Xi knows — banks make more money off of rich customers than poor ones. And this is the secret behind China’s policy: I make you rich, you make me richer.
A brief explanation of how the IMF and World Bank keep Africans poor is found here. This is consistent with our report on Iraq: Part 1 and Part 2.
By contrast, Xi’s China has lifted millions out of poverty from 2013 to 2016. The English-language Chinese site CGTN reports:
“A total of 55.64 million Chinese rural residents were lifted out of poverty from 2013 to 2016 and at least another 10 million will shake off poverty this year, which means the number of rural Chinese lifted out of poverty in five years will exceed 65 million – roughly the population of a major European country such as Britain, France or Italy.”
So when Trump goes to Beijing, a man who boasted about making America great again will meet a man who, without a word of boasting, simply made China a better place to live – and hopes to replicate that experience elsewhere.
East vs West: Who are the Enlightened Ones?
By Vince Dhimos
Thus the old radical school of the Enlightenment had not died out. It not only survived, it acquired more force than ever, despite the removal of the abuses that had prompted the movement in the first place. This was one of the many examples of movements that outlived their raison d’être but continued to exist on sheer inertia and stubbornness.
In 1917 and thereafter, the movement to establish a Soviet Union instead of a renewed and dynamic Russia was led by the Bolsheviks, who were imbued with the ideals of the more radical Enlightenment. As such, once in power, they immediately set about eliminating all older Russian ideas, and history came to see a variation on the theme of the French revolution. Most of these leaders secretly hated Russia, as described here, and wanted a modern European system to replace all old institutions and popular beliefs and behaviors. Thus, at variance with accepted anti-Russian propaganda, the Soviet Union was in no way a product of Russianness. In fact it was due to all things Russian being suppressed.
The Chinese under Mao took this radical Enlightenment idea still further and, again, while focusing on punishing transgressors rather than solving problems, it aimed to destroy the Chinese culture. The Cultural Revolution was in fact a movement to eliminate all of Chinese culture and thought, even smashing precious antiques, and extirpating the wisdom of ancient philosophers like Confucius from the Chinese psyche. As a result they lost a generation that could have been dedicated to education, science and research. Though imbued with Enlightenment ideals, Mao knew nothing about science, which is why his method of collecting metal for industry, by melting down pots and utensils, including antique ones, failed colossally. He discovered late what ancient Chinese metallurgists had always known, namely, that many different kinds of metals when melted together form a useless malleable or brittle material with virtually no strength. The result of his grand experiment wound up on the slag heap.
However, besides a lack of scientific knowledge, what the leaders were missing in their dealings with the people was the old Confucian ideal of harmony. The favorite tactic for keeping people in line was to stir up people with a hysteria against “capitalist running dogs” and former landlords or wealthy people. People were dehumanized, induced to manufacture all kinds of false charges and rat out their friends, neighbors and family members to deflect suspicions from themselves. It was a rein of terror akin to the black-white hysteria that sometimes causes American streets to boil. The accused were generally taken out with a sign around their neck indicating their supposed crime and then beaten by a disorderly crowed, even killed at times. (Further reading here on the Cultural Revolution). But after Mao’s death, the next generation of leaders realized that they had thrown out the baby with the bath and they dusted off the old banned books about Confucius, studying them diligently but without publicising this or admitting that the party policies had changed (they did not intend to sully Mao’s memory).
You may have read about Xi’s response to Trump as they sat over cake at Mar-a-Lago and Trump informed Xi that he had just fired 59 Tomahawks at Khan Sheikhoun. Now Assad is a close ally of China, which has had ties to Syria for decades. In fact, China has plans to rebuild Syria (as shown in our translation of an unusually candid report here). Thus Trump’s obtuse words must have hurt Xi to the quick. But far from confrontational, Xi’s response to Trump was Confucian and harmonious.
According to Trump in a media interview. Xi said:
‘Anybody that uses gases’ —you could almost say or anything else — but ‘anybody that was so brutal and uses gases to do that to young children and babies, it’s okay.’ He was okay with it.”
I suspect even Confucius would have choked at this insincere response. (It reminded me of Will Smith as Hancock, who was advised by a psychologist to compliment his coworkers by saying “good work” after they carried out an assignment, and then proceeded to say this even when it was he who had done the job). Xi’s government later expressed bitter criticism of the Tomahawk attack in its state-owned media.
President Donald J. Trump and President Xi of China | November 8, 2017 (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
Both China and Russia seek harmonious relations even with the most difficult partners. This is the wave of the future and it is the result of the East learning from their earlier mistakes and the mistakes of the West, notably the total rejection of all past thought and behavior. China has turned back to Confucius and Russia has turned back to Christ. The result is the same.
Nietzsche, an old school radical philosopher who, while he criticized the Enlightenment, was focused on shocking people with an across the board rejection of the past, including past wisdom. He made no attempt to be conciliatory. As he wrote, he was a suffering soul confined to his bed, with advanced syphilis, which eventually killed him. Being hopelessly ideology bound, he had apparently rejected the notion that promiscuous sex can be harmful, thinking this taboo to be an outmoded Christian idea rather than the universal truth that it was. Despite years of agony that would have caused others to regret their dissipated past, he had learned nothing from his own mistakes, and many of his readers – worshippers really — are attempting to duplicate his failed experiment.
The West today is imbued with that malignant spirit. Thus, we find swaths of American society, for example, where anyone advocating for traditional marriage can be ostracized or worse, verbally – or even physically — assaulted, or even lose their job (as reported here); a person entering certain parts of their downtown can be beaten for belonging to the wrong race, as described here; and criminals or gang members of a certain national origin will never be arrested because they are assigned to a victim group. The old notion of law and order, decency and politeness has collapsed. The West is now closer to the ideals of perpetual revolution than even Mao’s China and unlike China, where the insanity finally ended with Mao’s death, there is no promise of a respite because the movement is led not by one person but by a faceless mob.
In stark contrast to the ideology-bound West, the East has moved beyond and is now easily winning the war of ideas by focusing on common sense and doing the will of the people. It turns out that the wisdom of the past is still as valid today as it was then. But these countries are also completely focused on science, as both Enlightenment schools were.
Ironically, the one world power that unabashedly lays claim to a Christian foundation for its public policies is, in terms of science, head and shoulders above the US, which abhors Christianity and still clings to the absurd notion that Christianity is incompatible with science. Emblematic of this situation is the fact that the radically secular US is obliged to purchase rocket engines from the openly Christian Russia.
RELATED ARTICLES:
East vs West: Who are the enlightened ones? Part 1
Russia ushering in the Age of Grace
East and West: the twain shall meet
Making Saudi Arabia great again
In Russian, Their sons of bitches“: US and Britain arm 70 of the world’s dictators
City’s Illegal Alien Defense Fund Gives $17,500 to Terrorist Front Group
Ohio’s capital city has launched a defense fund for illegal immigrants facing deportation and thousands of taxpayer dollars will go to the local chapter of a terrorist front group that promotes itself as a Muslim civil rights organization. The pot of cash is known as Columbus Families Together Fund and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a national organization that serves as the U.S. front for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, will be among the recipients.
CAIR was founded in 1994 by three Middle Eastern extremists (Omar Ahmad, Nihad Awad, and Rafeeq Jaber) who ran the American propaganda wing of Hamas, known then as the Islamic Association for Palestine. In 2008 CAIR was a co-conspirator in a federal terror-finance case involving the Hamas front group Holy Land Foundation. Read more in a Judicial Watch special report that focuses on Muslim charities. Top FBI counter terrorism chiefs have described CAIR as an entity that not only promotes terrorism, but also finances it. One group has dedicated itself to documenting CAIR’s extensive terrorist ties which include a top official sentenced to 20 years in prison for participating in a network of militant jihadists, another convicted of bank fraud for financing a major terrorist group, a board member who was a co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a fundraiser identified by the U.S. Treasury Department for financing Al Qaeda.
Allocating public funds to assist illegal aliens with their legal problems is bad enough, but giving some of the cash to a group like CAIR is like pouring salt on the wound. The effort started when Donald Trump got elected president. Columbus City Councilwoman Elizabeth Brown vowed to help illegal immigrants fight deportation and posted this on her social media account on January 30: “In Columbus, we stand with immigrants! This morning I announced Council’s commitment to a legal defense fund to support our refugees and immigrants as they face an onslaught of new hurdles to keep their families together. I’m excited to get to work. Who wants to help?”
Last week the Columbus City Council made it official, establishing the new legal defense fund with a $185,000 infusion to help provide legal services to the area’s illegal aliens and their families. The money will go to various nonprofits that will also “educate detained immigrants on their rights under immigration law,” according to a local newspaper report. A nonprofit called Advocates for Basic Legal Equality Inc. will get the largest chunk of city money, the article reveals, but other groups will also benefit. Priority will go to Columbus-area illegal aliens facing deportation in Cleveland Immigration Court and preference will be given to cases involving children. CAIR will receive $17,500 to provide “legal services that help keep families together in the central Ohio immigrant and refugee communities.” This includes “know your rights” education sessions in Columbus that will cover encounters with federal immigration agents. Brown, the councilwoman behind the effort said “we’re sending a signal here tonight. We value our immigrants. We welcome you. We know that the demonization of immigrants throws them into the shadows and makes a class of silent victims. We won’t allow it.”
City leaders feel an obligation to protect immigrant and refugee families in Central Ohio from the financial and emotional devastation that results from aggressive immigration enforcement, according to a document describing the Columbus Families Together Fund. “The wellbeing of our immigrant communities is intertwined with the city’s overall wellbeing,” the document states. “Ultimately, Columbus is a safer, more just, and more economically vibrant city for everyone when we address the needs of all our residents.” It also says that, because an intact family is one determining factor in economic self-sufficiency and long-term child success, the city will also pay for additional services that help keep immigrant and refugee families together.
Columbus is not alone in allocating public funds to help those in the country illegally after the Trump administration announced a harder line on immigration enforcement. Last year two major U.S. cities that have long offered illegal aliens sanctuary allocated millions of dollars to help them avoid deportation. A few days after the Chicago City Council approved a $1.3 million legal defense fund to assist illegal aliens facing deportation, official in Los Angeles unveiled a similar program with a $10 million infusion.
EDITORS NOTE: Readers may donate to Judicial Watch by clicking here.
Responding to Jihad: Going about our Business or Getting Down to Business?
Friends: Thanks to all of you who responded – and so generously – yesterday to the first day of our end-of-year fund drive. We heard from readers in almost every state, and in countries from New Zealand to the Slovak Republic. But we’ve still got a long way to go – and I need a lot more of you to help us in our work. I mean it when I say that, without you, The Catholic Thing simply will not continue to exist. All of us these days feel that someone, somewhere has to step up and do something about the many and growing threats to Catholic faith and morals – and to the human future. And to lay out the truth, goodness, and beauty of our tradition. We’re here every day, without fail, working at those tasks. If you’re a TCT reader, you already understand the importance of what we’re about. Many of you have heard me say this before: we publish 30 articles a month, 30,000 words, the size of a substantial magazine. Most magazines would ask subscribers for $35 a year – and if all our readers could give that much, we could get to our goal quickly. But many cannot, which is why we have to ask those of you with greater means to give, not only for yourself. Can you donate $70, $105, or some other multiple of the minimum on behalf of your fellow readers – and to make sure that TCT is fighting the good fight for a long time to come? – Robert Royal
In the wake of the jihad truck attack on a New York City bike path, politicians and the press responded with the usual reassurances that follow – like night follows day.
NYC Mayor de Blasio said, “The last thing we should do is start casting dispersions [sic] on whole races of people or whole religions.” NY State’s Governor Cuomo said, “We’re not going to let them win. We’ll go about our business. . . .Live your life. Don’t let them change us.”
We’ve heard all this before, and after every terror attack we’ve also heard that “this has nothing to do with Islam.” Even figures in the Church – from the Vatican on down – have taken up this mantra.
The latest variation on that theme was NYC Deputy Police Commissioner John Miller’s assurance: “This isn’t about Islam, this isn’t about the mosque he attends.” Meanwhile, members of the press robotically recited from their own playbook. NBC News ran with the now familiar headline, “Muslim American’s Again Brace for Backlash.”
All of which seems to be a rather anemic way to respond to what is essentially a guerilla attack in a world-wide war. “We’ll go about our business.” That’s all? Most people intuit that “going about our business” is not going to solve the problem. “Don’t let them change us.” Seriously? They already have changed us. New York City now deploys thousands of police for public events; in Paris, soldiers patrol the streets. And still the attacks go on.
Most people realize that there are more streets than soldiers and police can possibly guard. Moreover, they understand that the origin of the trouble is not to be found on West Side bike paths or in boulevards in Nice. If you’re going to deploy more police, why not deploy them to the places where the attacks are planned?
That would mean sending more police into predominantly Muslim neighborhoods – not necessarily to patrol the streets, but to gather information, cultivate informants, and to pay visits to mosques and Islamic centers.
That, however, is exactly what the “Muslims-brace-for-backlash” headlines are intended to prevent. It’s what CAIR’s “Islamophobia” campaign is designed to forestall. And it’s why officials like Mayor de Blasio keep harping on the theme that the worst thing we can do is to cast aspersions on “whole races” or “whole religions.”
In fact, the NYPD did have a very effective program for monitoring the Muslim community until de Blasio shut it down in order to appease various Islamic pressure groups. That program included surveillance of the mosque in New Jersey that the attacker, Sayfullo Saipov, attended.
This is the mosque the Deputy Police Commissioner referred to when he said, “this isn’t about the mosque he attends.” But according to Bill McGroarty, a NYPD detective who worked on the investigation, more than twenty men at Saipov’s mosque have been radicalized.
To ordinary people, the NYPD’s canceled monitoring program makes perfect sense: if you want to catch terrorists before they strike, you go to the places where terrorists and potential terrorists live, and you start asking questions.
In an interview with Tucker Carlson, former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino pointed out that this is how the authorities broke up the Mafia. Police and FBI cultivated informants in the – gasp! – Italian-American community. They managed to infiltrate Mafia organizations and were not reluctant to shake some trees.
Bongino? Isn’t that an Italian name? Shouldn’t he have been incensed at this attempt to smear a whole nationality? Shouldn’t he have joined the “anti-Italiphobia” campaign instead?
Fortunately, Italian-Americans didn’t look at it that way. Most of them didn’t take the surveillance of the mob as a sign that America was anti-Italian. Most were happy to get out from under the thumb of the Mafia.
Bongino recommends a similar approach for flushing out the extremists in Muslim communities. Of course, we already know how some will respond. Those who fear being thought “Islamophobic” more than they fear Islamic terror will recoil at the thought. And they will claim that increased monitoring will offend moderate Muslims and maybe even drive them into the radical camp.
But if the vast majority of Muslims are moderate, as is so often claimed, won’t they be glad to cooperate with the police in exposing the handful of extremists who give the community a bad name? If Muslim-Americans are as patriotic as Italian-Americans, won’t they be happy to do their part in clearing the good name of Islam?
And if some are not quite sure of their loyalties, shouldn’t the police and the district attorneys apply some pressure – as police and attorneys undoubtedly had to do on occasion in the Italian-American community?
It’s not as though members of the Muslim communities aren’t already under pressure. Many are under pressure from imams and other religious leaders to put loyalty to the ummahfirst. Many are under similar pressure from their own families. Groups such as CAIR, ISNA, and the Muslim American Society also exert pressure to put Islam above every other loyalty. Some CAIR chapters have even advised Muslims not to cooperate with the FBI.
If the pressures and incentives only come from one side, the result is predictable. If no counter pressure is applied, the moderate influence will weaken, and Muslim communities will fall deeper and deeper under the influence of the more radical sort of Muslim. Eventually, their communities will end up like some areas in France and Belgium – places where the police fear to go, and where the Islamic version of the code of omertà keeps everyone in line.
Truly moderate Muslims will want to avoid that fate. They deserve all the help they can get in resisting it – even if that means putting some of their self-appointed representatives under closer scrutiny.
William Kilpatrick
William Kilpatrick is the author of Christianity, Islam and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West, and a new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Jihad. For more on his work and writings, visit his website, The Turning Point Project
Law Center Asks Supreme Court To Prevent Maine’s Persecution Of Pro-Life Pastor
ANN ARBOR, MI – The Thomas More Law Center (“TMLC”), a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday (11/06/17) to review a U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit’s decision that allows government officials to use a noise provision to prevent peaceful sidewalk counseling in front of abortion facilities. The petition for review is the latest step in TMLC’s legal battle to prevent the State of Maine from silencing peaceful, pro-life sidewalk counselors.
Kate Oliveri, the TMLC attorney who drafted the petition, commented:
“The First Circuit’s dangerous opinion would allow all levels of government to restrict any speaker with whom they disagree by creative legislation that targets the reason the speaker engages in speech rather than the actual words spoken. This, however, is a distinction without difference that affords governments the right to silence all speech they find disagreeable.”
In 2015, TMLC filed a lawsuit on behalf of Pastor Andrew March against the Maine Attorney General and several police officers challenging the constitutionality of a noise provision in the Maine Civil Rights Act (“MCRA”). That provision prohibits noise outside healthcare buildings made with the intent to interfere with health services. Under Maine law, the term “health services” includes abortions.
Accordingly, this seemingly innocuous statute gives law enforcement officials the power to stop pro-life counselors from speaking on the public sidewalk in front of abortion facilities because they equate an intent to discourage a woman from having an abortion as an intent to interfere with a medical procedure.
The federal district court agreed with TMLC’s legal position and barred the State from using the noise provision because it was a content-based restriction on speech in violation of the First Amendment. However, the Maine Attorney General appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which reversed the lower court and created the false dichotomy that the content of speech can somehow be separated from the purpose of the speaker.
Click here to read TMLC’s entire petition asking for Supreme Court review.
TMLC’s lawsuit on behalf of Pastor March is the third case in three years in which the Law Center has defended pro-life speakers on the public sidewalks of Portland, Maine. The first federal case, which was filed in 2014 on behalf of several sidewalk counselors, successfully challenged the constitutionality of Portland’s ordinance that established a 39-foot buffer zone around abortion facilities.
However, only two weeks after conceding that the buffer zone was unconstitutional, the Maine Attorney General filed a state lawsuit against Pastor Brian Ingalls under the noise provision of MCRA. TMLC is still defending Pastor Ingalls in the ongoing litigation.
The third case occurred less than a month after charges were filed against Pastor Ingalls. Police, citing the same noise provision in MCRA, issued an official warning to Pastor March, who had taken up Pastor Ingalls’ mantle preaching outside the abortion facility. TMLC filed the federal lawsuit that the petition asks the Supreme Court to review.
The Thomas More Law Center defends and promotes America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and moral values, including the religious freedom of Christians, time-honored family values, and the sanctity of human life. It supports a strong national defense and an independent and sovereign United States of America. The Law Center accomplishes its mission through litigation, education, and related activities. It does not charge for its services. The Law Center is supported by contributions from individuals, corporations and foundations, and is recognized by the IRS as a section 501(c)(3) organization. You may reach the Thomas More Law Center at (734) 827-2001 or visit our website at www.thomasmore.org.
Delaware, Beware, of Kids Choosing Their own Race
If it sounds unbelievable, that’s because it is. For the last few years, families have been shocked that they’d have to defend traditional biology in places as sacred as restrooms, showers, locker and changing rooms. Now, the proponents of this government-sponsored make believe are trying to make everything self-subjective. It’s the campaign for these “protected characteristics,” local liberals argue, that would give children the ability to redefine their most defining traits. And without ever calling home! Under “Regulation 225 Prohibition of Discrimination,” students can make these determinations without letting their parents know.
“Prior to requesting permission from a parent or legal guardian, the school should consult and work closely with the student to access the degree to which, if any, the parent or legal guardian is aware of the Protected Characteristic and is supportive of the student, and the school shall take into consideration the safety, health, and well-being of the student in deciding whether to request permission from the parent or legal guardian,” the proposal states.
“Literally,” Delaware Family Policy Council President Nicole Theis told Starnes, “if a parent affirms their child’s biological sex, and now race, they are [considered] discriminatory through policies like Regulation 225. These policies are setting parents up as… unsupportive, even abusive, if they affirm their child’s biological realities…”
Of course, the irony is that someone’s being abusive, according to the American College of Pediatricians — and it isn’t parents! This is exactly the kind of agenda they classify as “child abuse.” Theis is calling on people across the state to get involved in stopping state officials from putting kids in dangerous situations — and keeping parents in the dark about it.
By law, the people of Delaware have 30 days to “comment” about the regulation, but the agency is under no obligation to change it. Hopefully, parents can apply enough pressure to force the governor to back away from the idea. Join Nicole and other concerned citizens by pushing back on this madness! If you’re from Delaware, click here to speak up!
Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.
Also in the November 8 Washington Update:
To the majority of Americans, “The Star-Spangled Banner” is a moving tribute to what the country represents: freedom, duty, bravery, and commitment to the men and women serving in the armed forces. Clearly, Kaepernick—who makes millions of dollars playing the game he loves—has a different view of what the over two-century-old song represents.
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick told the NFL media. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
Lambasting “The Star-Spangled Banner” isn’t a new phenomenon. Liberal groups and commentators have tried to get the tune replaced for years, citing racism (Key was a slave owner) and the inherent “militarism” of the song.
An op-ed in The Intercept supported Kaepernick’s actions by dredging up a few stanzas, since removed from the modern rendition of the anthem, that explicitly mention slavery. Columnist Jon Schwarz wrote that the song “literally celebrates the murder of African-Americans.”
Hyperbolic reactions to one of America’s oldest patriotic songs fly in the face of what perhaps a dwindling number of Americans understand. Although the American republic was founded with many imperfections and contradictions—such as the institution of slavery—the timeless principles laid at its foundation have led to more human prosperity for a wider variety of people than any civilization in human history.
Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave who played a critical role in the abolitionist movement in the mid-19th century, had been a frequent critic of American policy and the existence of the “peculiar institution.” However, he believed that the dearly held principles of the Declaration of Independence, and its unequivocal statement that all men are “created equal,” would eventually lead to slavery’s dissolution.
Douglass pulled no punches in criticizing slavery as a massive contradiction in American life, but he understood the evils of the system would be corrected by embracing the country’s origins rather than rejecting them. He encouraged black Americans to sign up and fight for the Union under the American flag during the Civil War, played a crucial role in recruitment efforts, and convinced many former slaves to serve in the military and embrace the United States as the vessel—not the thwarter—of freedom.
Douglass was known to frequently play “The Star-Spangled Banner” on his violin for his grandchildren in the years after the war. He said in an 1871 speech at Arlington National Cemetery that “if the star-spangled banner floats only over free American citizens in every quarter of the land, and our country has before it a long and glorious career of justice, liberty, and civilization, we are indebted to the unselfish devotion of the noble army.”
For the most part, fans and players in the NFL embrace a similar view of the United States.
Rashad Jennings, a black athlete who plays for the NFL’s New York Giants channeled Douglass in his support for the national anthem and the American flag. He told the New York Daily News, “It’s nice to know that we live in a country where sitting down during the anthem won’t land you in jail or worse.”
Jennings said he was proud to stand for the song and continued to explain why he supports the values contained in its verses:
Jennings’ teammates made a point to stand at attention for the national anthem during a Saturday night game against the New York Jets.
Gallup polls indicate there has been a rapid decline of American pride in their country in recent years—a dangerous slide for a multiethnic republic bound together by principles and institutions rather than national origin.
Kaepernick’s outright attack on what the American flag exemplifies is just the latest sad episode of Americans’ abandonment of the hallmarks of their unity and love of country. This is why it is important for Americans who still believe in what the country was founded on to stand and support the symbols of our way of life.
COMMENTARY BY
Jarrett Stepman
Jarrett Stepman is an editor for The Daily Signal. Send an email to Jarrett. Twitter: @JarrettStepman