Inequality, Real and Imagined

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Alessandra Nucci: The Vatican’s response to poverty fails to acknowledge real-world examples of what has worked and, quite clearly, does not work.

Pope Francis’s headline-grabbing words last year – “inequality is disastrous for the future of humanity” – reflected the long doctrinal dialectic following Vatican Council II.  At the Council, the focus of social justice increasingly shifted from the tenets of Rerum Novarum – which recognized “the enormous fortunes of some few individuals, and the utter poverty of the masses,” but opposed State control of wealth. Pope Leo’s earlier encyclical specified that to give to the indigent “is a duty not of justice (except in extreme cases) but of Christian charity.” The Council, by contrast, focused on guaranteeing equality and, therefore, emphasizing wealth distribution over wealth creation.

Yet there is little correlation between poverty rates and inequality. Experience has shown that reducing economic inequality does not of itself lead to reducing poverty. On the contrary, since 2008 the worldwide recession has reduced inequality by reducing the wealth in the hands of the rich, without benefiting the poor.

This was confirmed in 2018 by a study conducted in the UK (“Living standards, poverty, and inequality”), which showed that inequalities were few in the poorer areas of Britain, while in places where the poor are better off there are also greater inequalities.

In the past fifty years, with the conviction that some sort of panacea lies in a sagacious redistribution of “resources,” about $1.1 trillion in development aid has been transferred from wealthy countries to Africa. Has this bettered the life of Africans? No, say many, among whom author Dambisa Moyo, who in her book, Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa, points to the well-being achieved by African countries which have refused the aid. Meanwhile, the ones that have become addicted to aid have remained trapped in the vicious circle of debt, corruption, market manipulation, continued poverty, and the need for more aid.

That poverty is not an incurable malady is demonstrated by a counterexample: the development of formerly poor countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and parts of India – to say nothing of the transformation of Ireland and of Poland.

The success of Nobel Prize recipient Mohammed Yunus’s microcredit programs was born of his refusal to take the easy way out by distributing the tiny sums of money required to help the poorest of the poor in Bangladesh. His method of not giving, but lending out the needed pennies and requiring prompt repayment of micro-interest, is geared to training the bank’s clients – mostly women – to run small businesses.  The virtues involved are straight out of the Parable of the Talents (Mt. 25:14-30): not coercion but self-reliance, thrift, honesty, cooperation, working to meet the needs of others.

As to the capitalist society par excellence, in 2018 the United States stood accused before the U.N. Human Rights Commission of doing “very little about the fact that 40 million of its citizens live in poverty, 18.5 million in extreme poverty and 5.3 million in third-world conditions of absolute poverty” despite being “the world’s wealthiest nation.”

Yet U.S. poverty thresholds are much higher than in most of the rest of the world: in 2019, a family of four was considered poor with an income of $25,750 (the individual threshold is $12,140). And this does not take into account non-monetary income, such as public housing, Medicaid or food stamps; nor does it consider people’s savings or property.

Research shows that 42 percent of “the poor” own the house they live in, with an average of three bedrooms, one-and-a-half bathrooms, and a garage. Eighty percent have air conditioning and cable or satellite television; three-fourths own at least one car or pick-up. Even families ranked “extremely poor” typically own a computer, a DVD, and a mobile phone. Over half of poor families with children have videogame consoles such as Xbox or PlayStation.

Moreover, the consumption of protein, vitamins, and minerals is practically the same for the children of poor families as for those belonging to middle-class families. On average, even children of “poor” U.S. families grow to be taller and sturdier than the GIs who landed in Normandy.  Despite whatever social, educational, and spiritual problems that may exist in a developed nation like the United States, inequality is hardly the outrage bodies like the U.N. Human Rights Commission apparently would like them to be.

And by comparison, China today, while having converted to capitalism (despite everything under the strict control of the Communist Party), is celebrated for its enormous macroeconomic growth. There are, however, no consistent estimates of the extent to which people have benefited from this (I quote the celebrated and far from conservative French economist Thomas Piketty). Hence, attempts at tracing inequalities in China are highly unreliable.

What we know is that there exists a level of non-income in China relating to the reportedly millions of slave laborers in the Laogai (i.e., work camps) and Uighur labor camps scattered across the country. Since its admission to the WTO in 2000, little has been done to force China to close down these camps. On the contrary, it has actually begun to propagandize its “re-education” programs at the U.N.

In a globalized world, the existence of slave labor anywhere is not only a moral disgrace for the global bodies that do nothing to stop it, it is also a major factor depressing working-class salaries across the rest of the world.

And this is to say nothing of recent revelations about the brainwashing, “re-education,” and outright repression of religious groups – Muslim, Christians, and even traditional Chinese Buddhists and Hindus.

Pope Francis, like the international organizations dedicated to responding to such things, is right to want to remedy poverty, inequality, and even outright exploitation wherever they may exist. But to solve a problem means, first of all, to understand it properly – and to look to the real-world examples of what has worked and what, quite clearly, does not.

COLUMN BY

Alessandra Nucci

Alessandra Nucci is an Italian-American writer and freelance journalist. She won the Golden Florin Award in Florence, Italy, for her book on antagonistic feminism, La donna a una dimensione: Femminismo antagonista ed egemonia culturale.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2020 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

Gallop Poll: American’s View of America Improves under Trump

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Gallop released a new poll that shows the views of Americans is improving. The poll states:

Average satisfaction across 27 issues is higher than when Trump took office

Gallop found:

President Donald Trump’s upbeat view of the nation’s economy, military strength, economic opportunity and overall quality of life will likely resonate with Americans when he delivers his State of the Union address to Congress next week. Most Americans say they are satisfied with each of these aspects of the country as 2020 begins. The majority also feel positively about the positions of women and gays in society.

Issues on Which Americans Are Broadly Satisfied at the Start of 2020

Ranked by “Net satisfied” (% satisfied minus % dissatisfied)
Satisfied Dissatisfied Net satisfied
% % pct. pts.
The overall quality of life 84 16 68
The nation’s military strength and preparedness 81 13 68
The opportunity for a person to get ahead by working hard 72 27 45
The nation’s security from terrorism 68 27 41
The state of the nation’s economy 68 29 39
The position of women in the nation 63 36 27
The influence of organized religion 59 38 21
The acceptance of gays and lesbians in the nation 56 40 16
GALLUP, JAN. 2-15, 2020

Issues where Americans are dissatisfied include:

  • The level of immigration into the country today
  • The amount Americans pay in federal taxes
  • The size and power of the federal government
  • The nation’s policies regarding the abortion issue
  • The quality of public education in the nation
  • The moral and ethical climate

Gallop reports:

Changes Since Trump Took Office

As Trump enters his re-election year, Americans are more positive on eight key issues than they were just before he took office in January 2017.

  • Gallup records double-digit increases in public satisfaction with the nation’s economy, security from terrorism, military strength and the state of race relations.
  • Satisfaction is also up by between six and nine points on crime, the position of blacks and other racial minorities, the distribution of income and wealth, and the opportunity for a person to get ahead through hard work.

Over the same period, Americans have grown slightly less satisfied on three issues: abortion (down 7 points), the level of immigration (-6) and the environment (-6).

Read the full Gallop report here.

© All rights reserved.

PODCAST: Understanding the Electoral College

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TRANSCRIPT

NOTE: As a candidate for president, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) recently raised eyebrows by calling for an end to the Electoral College. 

The college was one of the most brilliant inventions our founding fathers devised in order to create equitable representation in presidential elections.

Perhaps the senator is unfamiliar with the concept, or perhaps she knows it to be an impediment to her party’s regaining control of the White House. Whatever the case, here is what are founding fathers intended:

One of the biggest myths in American government is that the President and Vice President are directly elected by the people. Nothing could be further from the truth. Get it out of your head now. In fact, the Constitution mentions nothing of such a popular vote. Instead, the President and Vice President are INDIRECTLY elected by the people, and for good reason.

Allow me to explain…

The vote for President and VP is actually a vote for the electors of the state who will later cast the true votes. This is usually done in accordance with the wishes of the voters of each state. However, each state has their own set of rules for selecting electors and how they will vote. Their only restraint, from a federal perspective, is they can only appoint as many electors as there are members of Congress representing their state. For example, Florida has two US Senators and 27 members of the House of Representatives, for a total of 29 electors, none of which may be members of Congress. Since each state uses a “winner-take-all” approach, most electors are members of the winning party.

The “Electoral College” is not an educational institution, but all of the electors of all of the states in the union along with the District of Columbia, for a total of 538 electors and a minimum of 270 votes to elect a president. After each state ratifies its electoral votes, it is sent to the nation’s capitol for counting in a joint session of Congress on January 4th. The official count is later filed in the National Archives.

The big question though is, “Why do we vote this way?”

Many people believe a popular vote should suffice. Fortunately, our founding fathers thought otherwise. At the time of the writing of the Constitution, America was primarily a rural country. However, cities like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, and Charleston, had substantial populations. Conceivably, politicians could have won the popular vote simply by winning these urban areas. This would have meant the interests of the rural areas would have been ignored, or whole states completely. To overcome this problem, the framers of the Constitution devised the Electoral College to maintain parity between all of the states, including both rural and urban areas. In this way, the college protects the rights and interests of all states, not just those with large populations.

To illustrate, in the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore won the large metropolitan states, but George Bush won more of the smaller rural states. Based on the number of electoral votes, Bush won the election by a razor-thin number of votes, six. This meant that the interests of ALL of the states were considered, not just the “swing states.”

Following the 2000 election, then Senator-elect Hillary Clinton, feeling that Al Gore had been cheated of the presidency, called for the elimination of the Electoral College. According to Hillary, “We are a very different country than we were 200 years ago. I believe strongly that in a democracy, we should respect the will of the people and to me, that means it’s time to do away with the Electoral College and move to the popular election of our president.” (Nov 10, 2000)

Obviously, Mrs. Clinton fails to understand we reside in a democratically elected republic, not a democracy. Admittedly, most Americans misunderstand the concept of the Electoral College, thereby making it fodder for debate. Nevertheless, the electoral college remains a fair and equitable approach for representing the interests of ALL of the states in the nation, not just those with large metropolitan areas. Without the electoral college, the large metropolitan areas would decide the direction of the country, not smaller towns and villages. In other words, cities such as New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, San Francisco and Los Angeles would dictate the interests of the country, and not places like Des Moines, Scranton, Chillicothe, Morgantown and Macon.

Consider this, if an Electoral College did not exist, there would be little point in holding a primary in such states as Iowa, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, etc. as the candidates would only concentrate on the most populated states, such as New York, Michigan, Illinois, California, Texas, and Florida. Everyone else would be irrelevant.

It is not rational to discard or abandon something simply because we do not understand it.

Keep the Faith!

P.S. – Also do not forget my books, “How to Run a Nonprofit” and “Tim’s Senior Moments”, both available in Printed and eBook form.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Why Do We Have The Electoral College? Because More People Live in New York City Than in 40 of the 50 States.

The Danger of the Attacks on the Electoral College

New Hampshire Is Fighting Back to Defend the Electoral College

EDITORS NOTE: This Bryce is Right podcast is republished with permission. © All rights reserved. All trademarks both marked and unmarked belong to their respective companies.

VIDEO: Straight men must date trans or it’s a hate crime?

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An excellent example of why we can no longer make jokes of logical extremes. It is well on the way to becoming a hate crime for a straight person to refuse to have a sexual relationship with a ‘trans’ person.

Related: Watch CTV leftist savage a politician for saying the bleeding obvious. Of course his English ins’t perfect so he makes an easy target. But try complaining about a tech support person who you cannot understand at all and see what happens.

EDITORS NOTE: This Vlad Tepes Blog column posted by is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Russian Interference in the American Government (a.k.a. the Democratic Party)

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Yes, it is true, we have been infiltrated by the Russians for many decades. In my preceding columns, I have introduced you to two terms: Stalinist Political Charlatans and Socialist mafia for a reason. These devious people have a common agenda to establish Socialism in America and destroy our American values. You are witnessing today an attempt of Socialist Revolution in America taking place in the Senate Impeachment Trial. You will hear a lot of lies, false statements, deceptions, and paranoiac exaggerations repeated hundreds times without accountability, as an illustration of Soviet fascism in America—watch baseless accusations with intimidation Soviet Style, accusing the Senate’s members in a cover-up. In fact, the corrupt Dems are undermining and sabotaging the Constitution and the concept of Impeachment itself—very dangerous to our Republic.

It is painful to see how defenseless Republicans are, they confused and unable to fight the Dems, who are not the democrats any longer. While the Republicans had hibernated for two decades, a Truman’s Party was successfully infiltrated and transformed to a Party of Soviet Fascism. Republicans did not defend the morality of capitalism, allowing Bernie-Trojan Hours to legitimize the fraudulent ideology of Soviet Socialism. There is no difference between Bernie Sanders and Adam Schiff. They are lying identically through their teeth in favor of Socialism in concert against Trump. Read here my column October 31, 2019, Political Correctness and the Socialist Revolution in America. Now the members of Socialist mafia and Squad, Rep. AOC and Omar have joint Bernie’s rally and declared “to end Western Imperialism.” WOW!—this is a familiar to me statement, I’ve heard it from the Soviet apparatchiks half of my life in the Soviet Union!!!    To grasp the enormous significance of that, let me give you a history of the events.

History and the Russian Precedent

Brought up under the Soviet System and culture of Russia, I have learned the patterns of the system and the features of people’s social behavior dictated by the system. It comprises all kinds of dishonesty and variety of forms, shapes, methods to cover it up: from fraud and deceit intertwined with intimidation to an overwhelming corruption in a variety of methods. All of that had derived from two main postulates, the legacy of Joseph Stalin. The first is: Never admit crime committed, but accuse the opponent in that exact crime and the second: Blame America First. Escaping the Soviet Union in 1980, I had never thought to meet the system again, let alone in America. I was wrong—the system was spread across the world and it is reigning in America’s Democrat Party today… To grasp the reality of facts, let’s go to the beginning of Socialist Revolution…

With the victory of Russian Socialist Revolution in 1917, the world entered a new era of war—the promise and claim of Socialism to destroy Capitalism by “Stalinist Dogma–fighting Western civilization to create of One World Socialist Government under Kremlin’s rule.” Even more substantial was the way the Russian Socialist Revolution took place—it would remind you of the events in the current American Congress, to be more precise in America’s House of Representative…

Don’t be surprised—the Russian Socialist Revolution began in the Russian Duma (Parliament) in 1917. Under democratic slogans, using fraud and deceit in the Duma, Lenin and his Bolshevik faction began the Socialist Revolution in Russia in 1917. The surprise is that America’s Democrat Party repeated these exact tactics to destroy a successful American capitalism and political system of American Republic left to us by our Founding Fathers. The Democrat Party joined and support Putin’s KGB, which has been infiltrating America since the 20th century. Read my column: …and the KGB in the White House, June 1, 2017. The Dems continued to promote a fake ideology of Socialism, which has already collapsed and is  DEAD.

As a matter of fact, the Soviet Union did not collapse in 1991—it was Socialist economy, unable to produce that collapsed. Yet, the other part of the Soviet System, all security services have survived. I use the term KGB talking about them. It was the force of the KGB that helped Socialism to deceive and fool people by using Stalinist Political Correctness for seventy years. In 1991 the fraud died in the country where Socialism was born and practiced. Yet, the Soviet System continues functioning and controlling the population. The people of the KGB and the bureaucracy of the Soviet System were usurping governmental power, and prolonging the life of the fake ideology. They had wrapped themselves in the Russian flag and carrying a cross—religion and the force of the KGB together. The head of the entire Orthodox religion, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and Russia was a KGB agent.

Soviet Fascism vs. America

“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” Sinclair Lewis. What an incredibly amazing forecast by Sinclair Lewis! Actually, he predicted coming of Fascism after that total defeat of Nazi Germany in WWII. He was right. First fascism came to Russia in this exact way—“wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” Soviet fascism has been the main subject of my writings for thirty years to show the way and exhibit how it has happened in reality of Russia’s political life. It is the main subject of all my five books and over hundred columns. My forth book titled An Agony: Face to Face with Soviet Fascism had been published by Intermedia Publishing Inc. 2012.

In this respect, it is good to remind you Stalinist Political Correctness, as the Dems are using it full scale in the Senate today. PC is a concept much larger and wider in parameters than only America—it is a universal vehicle, a canon to fight political opposition conceived by Joseph Stalin—the maximum for all countries of the Axis of Evil run by the Socialist mafia. Today Anti-American PC is fighting the American Republic with a wealth of different tactics, forms, shapes, and methods… Stalinist Political Correctness is a mechanism of preventing the Truth from getting out. It is aimed at hiding or masking the Truth and replacing it with Socialist Dogma It came to our country decades ago from Russia to destroy us from within, and I feel obliged to share my knowledge with you, because the agenda of Political Correctness is Stalinist Dogma–fighting Western civilization to create of One World Socialist Government under Kremlin’s rule.”

Millions of Americans use the term Political Correctness, yet only a few know the author of PC. When I immigrated to the U.S. over thirty years ago, I did not know English. Yet, very soon I got a feeling that something wasn’t right, something very familiar to me was going on in America—it had the flavor of the Soviet Socialist system and the Soviet tactics. It took me many years to find a smart and knowledgeable academician to identify my feeling of something not good and familiar to me—Political Correctness. What I found sounded very accurate—it is an exact identification of the reality:

“In the early-to-mid 20th century, contemporary uses of the phrase “Politically Correct” were associated with the dogmatic application of Stalinist doctrine, debated between formal communists (members of the Communist Party) and socialists. The phrase was a colloquialism referring to the communist party line, which provided for “correct” positions on many matters of politics, according to American educator Herbert Kohl writing about debates in New York in the late 1940s and early 1950s.”

Thank you Herbert Kohl, you knew the truth seventy years ago. Alas, contemporary academicians don’t even mention Stalin and his legacy, discussing politics and economy today. Writing about Stalinism and watching its ubiquitous application in the 21st century America, I offered my vision of the matter in 2017:

“… Political correctness is a Stalinist policy, driven by the political agenda, a skillfully crafted design of a quintessential system of lies, fraud, and a long-term strategy of war against Western civilization to create of One World Socialist Government under Kremlin’s rule.”

From the Past to Present Senate Impeachment Trial

The agenda of Political Correctness would rule the impeachment process by Dems’ Stalinist Political Charlatans and their Socialist mafia, using the Stalinist methods of total lying, fraud, and deception in fighting Republicans, democracy, and the American Republic. Bill O’Reilly was right to warn us about Nazi Germany—fascism had destroyed Europe in the 20th century. It is another history and country that implemented fascism throughout the world today: It is Soviet fascism and Russia. I have warned you about Soviet fascism for many years and the more I learned about America’s Manchurian Presidents, the more I was convinced that the Soviet fascism is here in America. You’ll find the definition of Soviet Fascism on p.159 and please, continue reading pp. 183-221, Chapter 10: Face to Face with Soviet Fascism, What is Happening to America? Xlibris 2012.

You are witnessing today the result of the infiltration of the KGB for decades. Americans are finding out today that corrupt Democrats, the FBI and CIA had not defended them from the enemies foreign and domestic—on the contrary, they collaborated with them betraying America. The Dems’ leadership, the leadership of FBI and CIA had committed a crime against the American Republic. The team (including men and women), criminally collaborated in massive abuse of power against the leader of the Republican opposition Donald J. Trump and his campaign. Do you remember the first Stalin’s postulate? Impeachment was a necessary tool to divert attention from and cover up the crime committed by this team of Stalinist Charlatans. Ahead of us is the Biden/Ukraine case, inextricably tied to Impeachment, another epic crime against the American Republic committed by Soviet Fascism. Alas, Sen. Tom Cotton is not the FBI Director…

Ignorance Runs the Ball

Impeachment procedure revealed a spectacular ignorance on the Dems’ part. They have no knowledge pertaining to the real Russia and Ukraine. We, the former citizens of the USSR had known the KGB as a mind-control agency and we were stunned watching, what was familiar to us: deceit, distortions, sham, and abuse of the American system by the Dems’ House committee using one party-line vote impeachment as a political tool. Without any evidence, the Dems are trying to influence the public opinion before the upcoming election 2020, mocking and humiliating the U.S. President before the world. We were shocked to see Impeachment Spectacle performed by those hostile to the American Republic, familiar Stalinist Charlatans, using the KGB behavior. It was an aggressive performance of total ignorance pertaining geopolitics, Russia and Ukraine. Ignorance is running the ball. Please, read my column: The Ideology of Soviet Fascism VS. Trump, December 5, 2019.

The real Tragedy of Ukraine

When so-called Dems charged Trump on withholding help to Ukraine, I couldn’t listen to it—their ignorance was painful! Here are the facts.

In war time matters. The year 2014 was a tough and crucial year for Ukraine: Russia invaded and occupied Crimea and directed the Russian mob to attack the Ukrainian territory in Donbas and Lugansk—the war against the Ukrainian people had begun. And the tragedy is that Ukraine wasn’t ready to fight—the country didn’t have an army, weaponry and ammunition—Ukraine was naked due to the policy of Russian crony President of Ukraine Victor Yanukovych. Thousands of Ukrainians were killed, a lot of territory was lost. Death Toll up to 13,000 in Ukraine Conflict, Says UN Rights Office. KYIV — Some 13,000 people have been killed, a quarter of them civilians, and as many as 30,000 wounded in the war in eastern Ukraine since it broke out in April 2014, the United Nations says. My conclusion: The blood of those Ukrainians is on the hands of America’s Manchurian President Obama, who refused to help Ukraine and did nothing…

It was then that the Ukrainian people lost respect for the government of the U.S. It was then in 2014 the Ukrainian people took their destiny in their own hands. Volunteers with hunting rifles, some with knifes went to defend their country and died in the thousands, they sacrificed for their children to live in an Independent Ukraine. Patriots have saved their country with the help of another victim of Russia, the Georgian National Legion in 2014-2015. Books and movies will be produced about that tragic and heroic time in Ukraine and… America’s betrayal of Ukraine in 2014-2015. The Obama administration committed TREASON, betraying Ukraine fighting with the naked hands against aggressive and expansionist Russian forces in 2014-2015. Obama breached America’s legal obligation to help Ukraine against Russian aggression…

By 2019, four year later, due to Ukrainians effort, the situation has been stabilized; Ukraine built the army and elected a new President. Trump’s conversation with a new Ukrainian President was proper in all levels for those who know Soviet Fascism and current geopolitics. Knowledge of Russia and her Security Services is a MUST!!! This was explained in my book titled An Agony: Face to Face with Soviet Fascism, published by Intermedia Publishing Inc. 2012, but has been sabotaged and then killed by Stalinist Charlatans in America to prevent you to know the Truth: They submitted my name to the FISA Court and made me a foreign agent. What a Shame!

Goodness will Triumph!

Donald Trump made history on Friday, January 24, 2020, when he became the first president to attend the 47th annual March for Life on the National Mall. He was with forces of Goodness, joining hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Washington every year to advocate for the sanctity of life in our nation’s capital. While he was doing that America’s Senate was rendering his Impeachment trial. Contrary to Trump’s positive demonstration of the forces of Goodness, in the Senate, it was an open war with bullet-pens, prepared by Stalinist Charlatans against President Trump. They were wrapping themselves in the flag and carrying a Catholic cross. Moreover, instead of having the “Christmas Present” of missiles from North Korea, we had another “Christmas Present”–two Articles of Impeachment presented on Christmas Day by the team of Soviet Fascism in America, the Democrats… Oh, Mighty God! Please help America to fight Evil…!!!               

After a discussion with me, my friend wrote a poem. Here it is:

Fascism and Fanaticism

Some people want to rule the world

I.S.I.S and Putin are a few

They place no value on human life

They just crave power over you

They’re a cancer on the body of Man

They create nothing, they only destroy

By deception, murder and fraud

They gradually sap all life and joy

In the name of Socialism or religion

They steal all wealth and production

But very soon it’s all gone

Leaving only destruction

They need to be exposed and eliminated

Before it’s too late

Our very lives and liberty

Are now what’s at stake

To be continued www.simonapipko1.com and at www.drrichswier.com/author/spipko/.

© All rights reserved.

VIDEO #Expose2020 Part III: 2nd Bernie Staffer “I’ll straight up get armed” “Guillotine the rich”

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#Expose2020 Part III

Project Veritas Action

EXCLUSIVE UPDATES: http://Expose2020.com

  • Martin Weissgerber, South Carolina Field Organizer, Sanders Campaign: “Leave it to the Soviets to Make the Most Badass F***ing, Most Effective Gun in the World…AK (47)…The Destroyer of Imperialism and Colonialization…That’s Why I Want to Get it (AK-47) Tattooed on Me.”
  • Martin Weissgerber: “I’ll Straight Up Get Armed, I Want to Learn How to Shoot, and Go Train. I’m Ready for the F***ing Revolution…I’m Telling You. Guillotine the Rich.”
  • Weissgerber: “Let’s Force Them (Billionaires) to Build Roads…Rebuild Our Roads, Rebuild Our Dams, Rebuild Our Bridges. Let’s Force Them…” • Weissgerber: “What Will Help is When We Send All the Republicans to the Re-Education Camps.”
  • Weissgerber: “So, do We Just Cease – do We Just Dissolve the Senate, House of Representatives, the Judicial Branch, and Have Something Bernie Sanders and a Cabinet of People, Make All Decisions for the Climate? I Mean, I’m Serious.”
  • Weissgerber: “The Soviet Union Was Not Horrible…I Mean, for Women’s Rights the Soviet Union – I Think – the Most Progressive Place to Date in the World.”
  • Weissgerber Reveals That His Father is a Belgian Marxist Who Participated in the May 1968 Civil Unrest in Paris, France. • Weissgerber Says That His Mother is “Really Left as Well, but She Can’t Make Her Views Known Because She Works for WBUR, which is NPR…”

RELATED ARTICLE: Bernie Sanders Will Sign Executive Order on Day 1 Forcing Americans to Fund Planned Parenthood

EDITORS NOTE: This Project Veritas Expose 2020 video is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

We’re Forgetting: The Right To Bear Arms Is Essential For Life And Liberty

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As we remember Martin Luther King, Jr., let’s also remember he was denied the right to keep and bear arms, and many states, including some run by Republicans, are pushing more gun restrictions.

They have forgotten or never learned that the right to keep and bear arms is an essential protection for Life and Liberty.

Samuel Adams wrote in 1792: “Among the Natural Rights of the Colonists are these First life, secondly liberty, third property, together with the right to defend them in the best manner possible.”  Adams continued his point by noting that these rights are a direct product of the First law of Nature, the Duty of self-preservation.

Those who would stand for the Right to keep and bear arms do so with the interest of preserving life and liberty – not destroying it.  Those who support the Right to keep and bear arms support the Natural Right and duty of self-preservation, they support the ability to defend life and liberty not only for themselves but for their neighbors.  They support freedom and just government, they support ensuring that our future generations will be able to be a government of the people, not subject to a government over the people. They keep and bear arms, they train in the skill of defense because they love their children, their families, and their neighbors and want to defend the most precious gifts of life, at their own expense, if necessary.

Those who oppose the Right to keep and bear arms, whether intentionally or not, support the opposite of life and liberty – they support slavery, they support oppression, they support despotic government rule over the people.

Those who ignorantly support disarming the people do so because they have been convinced of one eternal error – that those in power respect the lives and liberties of the people and will protect them.  There is absolutely nothing in the history of man that ought to give someone that false delusion of hope.

History is ripe with one oracle of truth: When the people are disarmed they are inevitably enslaved by the more powerful, more able, or more populated groups.  Disarming the people never ever frees the minority. To the contrary, in a disarmed society the minority becomes the first to be converted to chattel. Slavery is not possible in a society where the people are well armed and well trained in the skill of defense and the knowledge of the value of life and liberty worth defending.

Those who knowingly support disarming the people do so because they are power hungry, lack respect for life, and wish to control and dominate life, liberty, and property.  They know just how to motivate the ignorant through the greatest human deception, contrived necessity. They know how to control the powerless, corral the weak, and convince a morally depleted population to organize and come against their own neighbors.

They are those among us who endeavor to rob the innocent of their God given rights to enrich and empower themselves and endanger most precious gifts of life and at the fatal cost of a free future.  They care only about themselves; they are the ones who pass by a neighbor in need and demand the right to take life out of a feigned excuse derived from the most selfish center of humankind. They seek to rob, kill, and destroy life, liberty and property and they are the very spirit that has caused the institutions of slavery and despotism to rise throughout history.

William Pitt, The Younger summed it up best when he said,

“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom, it is the argument of tyrants, it is the creed of slaves.”

There is a day where every American reflects on who they are, who they want to be, and takes the time to classify themselves.  Are you a slave? Are you a tyrant? Or are you a freeman?

If you have determined that you love your neighbor as yourself, if you love your children and your children’s children, if you wish to remain a freeman and not encourage slavery at the hand of the despot, then what comes next is your only choice…

John Adams wrote, “Liberty must at all hazards be defended, we have a right to it derived from our maker.  But if we had not, our fathers have bought and purchased it for us at the expense of their ease, their estates and their pleasure and their blood.”

So, first, you stand up for the weak and ignorant.  You stand up to say, we will not let you be enslaved.  We will defend you as well as our own because that is the call of Liberty that Makes America Great

Second, you Stand up to the tyrant.  You declare your Natural Rights just as we did on July 4, 1776 – That all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.  That these rights, being derived from Nature, a gift to all mankind, precede all government and all law; that all laws must be made to conform to our Natural Rights, or they are no law at all.  You tell the tyrant that you hold no ill will, that you love him and pray peace, and because you love him you will not allow him to enslave your neighbor and you will not allow him to deny us and our future a Right guaranteed by our Creator.

Mercy Otis Warren made this plea:

“America stands armed with resolution and virtue; but she still recoils at the idea of drawing the sword against the nation from whence she derived her origin. Yet Britain, like an unnatural parent, is ready to plunge her dagger into the bosom of her affectionate offspring. But may we not yet hope for more lenient measures!”

You see, it won’t be those who defend Liberty who pray violence.  Those fighting for the Right to keep and bear arms are armed, yes, with resolution and virtue to preserve life, not end it, to secure liberty, not destroy it.  It will be those who have no respect for life, that hold no love for their brother, who love self more than liberty and life – the tyrants and slaves – who will bring violence for violent ends.

These are the times that try men’s souls.  These are the days when choices must be made.  Today we choose peace. Today we choose Life. Today we choose Liberty.  And because we’ve made these choices, today we choose to defend our right to secure Life, Liberty, and Property from those who would come to rob, steal, and destroy.  Today we stand in defense of our Natural Right to keep and bear arms.

And if you find yourself in opposition to this essential Right.  If you find yourself thinking it’s necessary to deny us this Right or that someone must control and disarm the people, you have classified yourself… as either the tyrant or the slave.

You see if we are historically honest there is only one question necessary in the gun control discussion: Do you trust that the people in power will never use the force of government to take your Life, Liberty, or Property?

If the answer to that question is no, the discussion is over and you now finally know why we stand before you today and every day, armed with virtue and resolution to declare

244 years ago we took a stand and said, no more kings, and we’re not about to change our minds now.

COLUMN BY

KRISANNE HALL

KrisAnne Hall is a former biochemist, Russian linguist for the US 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. KrisAnne is the author of 6 books on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, she also has an internationally popular radio and television show and her books and classes have been featured on C-SPAN TV. KrisAnne can be found at www.KrisAnneHall.com.

EDITORS NOTE: This Revolutionary Act column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

The 3 things Democrats can’t change

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House Democrats have tried almost everything by this point. They’ve left no stone unturned in their effort to, as Impeachment Manager Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) put it, “send that charlatan in the White House back to the golden throne he came from.”

That promise came during his supposedly impartial impeachment probe, by the way.

Watch: House Democrats tell one story. Their evidence tells another. 

Each day comes with a new diversion, as Democrat leaders and their media surrogates try to distract you from the case at hand. They have no choice: The House’s Articles of Impeachment are historically weak, undermined from the start by a sham investigation more focused on politics than justice. Their only hope is to change the story.

It won’t work, because 3 facts are staying the same no matter what stunts they pull.

First, the impeachment inquiry itself was unauthorized and unconstitutional. Breaking with historical precedent, the probe began long before the House was even permitted to vote on it. Instead, Speaker Nancy Pelosi simply announced the inquiry with a press conference. It’s the only impeachment in American history to begin that way.

From there, Democrat-led House committees began issuing subpoenas with the unconstitutional demand that White House officials provide closed-door testimony without the right to executive branch counsel. House Democrats threw 150 years of precedent out the window, denying President Trump the basic due-process protections afforded to both Presidents Nixon and Clinton.

Second, their whole case is irreparably damaged by the person leading it. Adam Schiff, who supervised the “investigation,” should actually be called as a fact witness in the case. Far from a neutral referee, he and his team coordinated with the very whistleblower at the center of the Ukraine probe—before the complaint was even filed.

Even worse, he lied about it, earning 4 Pinocchios from The Washington Post fact-checkers for his attempt to cover it up. Schiff’s involvement in orchestrating this sham impeachment makes it obvious he should never have been in charge of investigating it.

Third, and most important: President Trump did nothing wrong, let alone broke the law.

Multiple witnesses affirmed that President Trump was right to worry about corruption in Ukraine. The President’s “deeply rooted” view of past Ukrainian corruption was a “reasonable position,” Ambassador Kurt Volker testified. “Most people who know anything about Ukraine would think that.”

That’s true. And despite Democrats’ insistence that even looking into Burisma and the Bidens was “baseless”—indeed, impeachable—the facts say otherwise. Here’s just a partial list of the people and organizations who found enough basis to look into it: the Obama State Department, The New York Times, The Washington Post, ABC’s White House reporter, the United Kingdom’s Serious Fraud Office, Hunter Biden’s business partner Chris Heinz, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent, and many more.

The bottom line is that a President has both the right and the responsibility to protect American taxpayers from foreign corruption, including in Ukraine. If the American people disagree with that policy decision, they have every right to say so—at the ballot box.

Democrats want to take that right away from you. They’re afraid of what you might say.

FACT CHECK: Even ABC News thought there was a basis to look into this.

Watch: Fastest impeachment in history . . . followed by the longest delay

Dems’ Impeachment Strategy isn’t to Win Over the Senate, but DEFEAT the Senate

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A common belief among conservatives is that Democrats have blundered in their impeachment trial argumentation, that they’ve shot themselves in the foot. Perhaps so. But we should remember that their goal cannot, logically, be to win over the Senate so President Trump can be ousted from office before November.

It would have to be that they want to win the Senate for Democrats in November.

It’s easy believing that the world’s Adam Schiffs and Jerrold Nadlers are ill-intended Inspector Clouseaus (without his luck), and no great genius should be ascribed to them. But they’re surely smart enough to realize that they’ll never get the votes of two-thirds of the Senate — 67 members — which are necessary to convict and remove Trump. Not happening.

So logic dictates that the smarter Democrats aren’t likely making a legal case to the senators to remove the president from power, but a political case to the people to remove the GOP senators from power.

This may place in perspective New York congressman Nadler’s supposed “huge blunder,” to quote legal scholar Jonathan Turley. “One of the things you teach law students is that when you make arguments to juries, make sure you don’t insult the jury,” Turley explained to CBS News. “That is, you don’t want to make statements that make them feel stupid or ascribe any bad motivations to them.”

Turley was referring to Nadler’s claim that the senators could be engaged in a “cover-up.” If you actually call the senators “traitors or conspirators in a cover-up,” Turley elaborated (video below), “it’s more likely they’re going to join together than break apart.”

Yet what if this is precisely what the Democrats want?

Of course, it’s entirely possible that some Democrats would love the moral victory, and a different kind of political one, of peeling off some wobbly GOP senators so that perhaps 52 members in total vote to convict. “Look, a majority of the Senate ‘knew’ the president was guilty and should be removed!” they could say during the coming campaign.

But what’s more likely for the Democrats this election: seizing the White House or the Senate? Remember that the economy is good and Trump strong, and rightly or wrongly people credit the commander in chief for the economy and often vote their pocketbooks.

Moreover, the current Democrat presidential frontrunners — Jumblin’ Joe Biden and Bolshevik Bernie Sanders — aren’t exactly inspiring confidence in the liberal establishment. On the other hand, 23 Republican Senate seats and only 12 Democrat ones are being contested. It’s simple math.

So smarter Democrats could possibly want Republicans to vote unanimously to acquit Trump. They can then say, “Every single GOP member put party before principle, ambition before Americanism, fealty to a president before faithfulness to the people.” This appeal could be particularly effective against vulnerable Republican senators in purplish states. And, of course, a way to achieve that unanimity is by alienating perhaps sympathetic Republicans with insults.

This doesn’t mean there aren’t Democrats — rabid, emotion-driven, hard-left rank-and-filers and even perhaps some Congress-dwelling dullards — imbued with genuine impeachment frenzy. But I’m always amazed how so many commentators, perhaps caught up in the “drama” (and wanting to maintain it to maximize ratings/readership) fail to emphasize that with the 67-vote conviction threshold unattainable, the probability is good that Democratic Party Machiavellians have something else in mind.

I’ve long believed that this impeachment had become about flipping the Senate. With control of both Houses of Congress the Democrats could completely stymie the president’s agenda — and rendering his office impotent would be the next best thing to driving him from it.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Gab (preferably) or Twitter, or log on to SelwynDuke.com.

© All rights reserved.

Chilean Crime Gang Arrested on Long Island

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This is pretty outrageous—how did this whole gang of international crooks even gain entry to the US in the first place?  And, why are we never given any information about which of our many ways of gaining entry was exploited?

From Chile, not the usual Mexican or Central American gang either!

Thanks to reader Jonathan for the tip:

From News 12 Long Island:

Police: 3 members of Chilean burglary crew strike homes in Nassau

(Don’t miss the news clip where authorities suggest they may have taken advantage of new bond laws.)

Three people were arrested Tuesday in connection to numerous home burglaries in Nassau County.

Police say the suspects arrested were part of a burglary organization from Chile.

Police arrested Boneek Alexander Quintero-Baeza, 32, Alexandra Ivonne Pizarro-Blanche, 23, and Levy Frank Maury Brugman, 23, at a residence in College Point, Queens. Police say all three are from Chile and were taken into custody after authorities received tips about a burglary in Hewlett Harbor.

According to police, Quintero-Baeza broke into the Hewlett Harbor home in September and stole $25,000 in cash, designer bags and jewelry. Quintero-Baeza and Brugman also committed a burglary in New Jersey and had been released without bond.  [Imagine that, an arrest of foreign nationals for burglary and they were released!—ed]

Prosecutors said in court that Quintero-Baeza has a long criminal record of burglaries in Spain and Argentina. [And, we let him in!—ed]

[….]

Authorities say they recovered jewelry, hand bags, electronic devices and clothing believed to have been taken from homes. Police say multiple identifications were recovered and are believed to be aliases for the defendants allowing them to operate within the United States.

Police say a fourth suspect, Bryan Maldonado, is still at large. Police believe Maldonado is the ring leader and say he is also from Chile.

Nassau police believe the Chileans may be part of a larger criminal operation that stretches across the U.S. They say detectives are now working with federal authorities.

More here.

EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

VIDEO: Impeachment Day 7 — Alan Dershowitz, ‘Nothing in the Bolton manuscript would rise to the level of an abuse of power or impeachable offense’

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Highlights:

Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz:

Nothing in the Bolton manuscript would rise to the level of an abuse of power or impeachable offense.

You cannot turn conduct that is not impeachment into impeachable conduct simply by using words like quid pro quo and personal benefit. It is inconceivable that the framers [of the Constitution] would have intended so politically loaded and promiscuously deployed a term as ‘abuse of power’ to be weaponized as a tool of impeachment. It is precisely the kind of vague, open-ended, and suggestive term that the framers feared and rejected.

Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi:

Not even 10 days after Hunter Biden joins the [Burisma] board, British authorities seize $3 million in British bank accounts connected to the oligarch Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma.

Did Hunter Biden leave the board then? No. The British authorities had also announced that it had started a criminal investigation into potential money laundering. Then, only then, did the company choose to announce that Hunter Biden had joined the board.

Hunter Biden [was] paid over $83,000 a month, while the average American family of four during that time each year made less than $54,000

Hunter Biden had no experience in natural gas, no experience in the energy sector, no experience with Ukrainian regulatory affairs. As far as we know, he doesn’t speak Ukrainian. So naturally, the media has asked questions about his board membership.

Eric Herschmann:

The House managers say that President Zelenskyy did not want to get mixed up in U.S. politics, but it precisely the Democrats who politicized the issue. Last August, they began circling the wagons trying to protect Vice President Biden and they are still doing it in these proceedings. They contend that any investigation into the millions of dollars in payments by a corrupt Ukraine company, owned by a corrupt Ukraine oligarch, to the son of the second highest officeholder in our land, who was supposed to be in charge of fighting corruption in Ukraine, they are calling that kind of inquiry a sham, debunked. But there has never been an investigation. So how can it be a sham? Simply because the House managers say so?

Ken Starr:

We are living in what can aptly be described as the age of impeachment.

In the House, resolution after resolution, month after month, has called for the president’s impeachment. How did we get here? With presidential impeachment invoked frequently in its inherently destabilizing as well as acrimonious way.

Presidential impeachment has become a weapon to be wielded against one’s political opponent.

© All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Trio of Dem senators considering vote to acquit Trump

Under Bolton Shadow, 6 Big Moments From Day 6 of Trump Impeachment Trial

5 Big Points by Trump’s Lawyers as Defense Opens in Impeachment Trial

7 Big Moments in Democrats’ Final Arguments to Remove Trump

7 Highlights From Day 3 of the Trump Impeachment Trial

5 Flash Points From Impeachment Trial’s Opening Arguments

What to Know About Democrats’ 7 Impeachment Managers

RELATED ARTICLE: Pam Bondi Blew Up the Democrats’ Narrative on Hunter Biden and Burisma

Confronting Trump Derangement Syndrome

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My wife Mary and I spent a wonderful weekend in California with fellow Trump supporters filming the music video for my Trump Train 2020 song. We boarded our flight back home to the east coast Sunday at 8pm, arriving at BWI airport in Maryland on Monday at 10:30am. We were exhausted.

The taxi driver taking us to our car was listening to NPR. A radio show host and his caller were lying about Trump, venomously declaring him a serial liar. Perhaps it was because I was so tired that I had zero tolerance. I spouted, “Those guys are lying jerks!” I launched into a rant defending my president.

The taxi driver pounced. In a heavy Middle-Eastern accent, with a smirk, he said,

“You actually believe the president is not a liar? I have lived in this country for 40 years. I am not stupid. Bush left Obama a horrible economy. Obama made things better for everyone.”

My feisty wife jumped into the conversation, passionately educating the duped driver. I tapped Mary on the leg, signaling her to stop talking because as their exchange grew more heated, the driver began flailing, taking his hands off the wheel and eyes off the road. I wanted him to calm down and focus on driving. Clearly, our taxi driver was crazed with fake news media inducted Trump Derangement Syndrome. He was not open to hearing truth. Some people are stuck-on-stupid.

Trump deranged black family and friends believe I am a traitor to my race for not worshiping Obama and supporting Trump. They ignore the truth that blacks moved economically backwards under Obama.

Blacks are thriving under Trump, enjoying the lowest black unemployment in U.S. history. And yet, my siblings are routinely asked by fellow blacks, “What is wrong with your brother who supports Trump and votes Republican?” Either these blacks are infected with Trump Derangement or stuck-on-stupid.

I’m a former Baltimorian. Several Baltimore blacks insist on remembering their Trump hating late Congressman Elijah Cummings as a hero. Because Cummings was black, they accuse me of betraying my race for writing about Cummings’ corruption. Cummings received over $15 billion in federal funds to clean up his rat-infested, record-breaking black on black homicide district which has endless blocks of rundown vacant houses. The federal funds magically disappeared without fulfilling its purpose. Cummings’ loyalists absurdly say I am the bad guy, an Uncle Tom tool of Trump and Republicans. These blacks are stuck-on-stupid.

The shocking truth is Elijah Cummings did not give a rat’s derriere about improving the lives or empowering blacks. The same thing is true about the Democrat party, NAACP, Congressional Black Caucus, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, fake news media and other faux advocates for blacks. To these leftists, blacks are nothing more than a faithful monolithic voting-bloc of useful idiots.

It does not take a genius to recognize that everything good, liberating and economically empowering for blacks is vehemently opposed by a coalition of leftist faux civil rights activists. The Evil Civil Rights Empire roll-out the red carpet, welcoming illegals which harms blacks economically.

The Evil Civil Rights Empire opposes school choice, sentencing urban black students to suffer in failing violent schools. They oppose traditional marriage and defunding Planned Parenthood which focuses on killing black babies. http://bit.ly/384GwBI They also oppose academic standards and black behavioral accountability.

By their bigotry of lowered expectations, the Evil Civil Rights Empire insinuates that blacks are inferior. They always insist that standards be lowered to make things fair for blacks. Remember, the insulting Democrat lie that requiring a photo ID to vote disenfranchises black voters?

When Trump announced at the State of the Union that black unemployment was at an historic low, the Congressional Black Caucus sat on their hands stone-faced while everyone else in the chamber applauded and cheered. The CBC does not care about blacks. The Evil Civil Rights Empire only cares about gaining power to control every aspect of Americans’ lives to implement their socialist/progressive and anti-Christian agenda.

The disgusting dirty secret is the Evil Civil Rights Empire want blacks solely dependent upon government and uneducated regarding their constitutional freedoms. They want blacks believing the lie that a majority of Americans are white supremacist, obsessed with concocting ways to suppress blacks. Their bogus, divisive, destructive and insidiously evil narrative is vote for Democrats to keep rabidly racist white America at bay.

Be of good cheer folks. I am extremely pleased to announce great news. Shockingly, 34% of blacks say they support Trump. Wow! That is awesome!

To blacks who have seen the light, welcome aboard the Trump Train! To blacks who insist on staying on the Democrats’ government plantation, “You can’t fix stupid.”

Even though the taxi driver was annoying, we tipped him.

© All rights reserved.

The Method to Their Madness

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“America will never be destroyed from the outside.  If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” – Abraham Lincoln.   January 27, 1838.

For different reasons and perhaps unknowingly, the leftist-supported LGBTQ movement and Islam are allied in a common goal of ridding the West of its Judeo-Christian ethos.  The former would abandon America to the tyranny of unrestrained freedom, the latter to the prison of a mullahcracy – strange bedfellows united by a common goal.

Our school systems countrywide have long been moving away from our Biblically-inspired culture – gradually eliminating our own values to make way for the chaos of the Left and the tenets of dehumanizing Islamic laws, sharia.  It began in the 1960s, but it was never so insidious and efficient until the Obama years and the implementation of Common Core standards and other deviations from our Founding Principles and Virtues.

With an influence on all aspects of students’ lives, schools have been discouraging close friendships within the classroom for quite some time, preparing the children for dependency on and development of a group mentality, in which opinions are insinuated into the entire class rather than encouraged to be formed by the individual.  Longer time spent on computers and away from critical peer interaction stunts the brain development necessary to form and defend their own thoughts.  Kept from reading quality literature that would expose them to the experiences and hard-won wisdom of previous generations, they are instead confined to the propaganda du jour.

Further disengagement from amity is accomplished with the introduction of intersectionality, whereby the children are emotionally divided into conflicting groups determined by superficial characteristics, such as race, religion, ethnicity, sex/gender, social or political group membership.  The  dissimilarities rouse their distrust, envy and intolerance, which in turn trigger their resentment, anger and violence.  Their rational judgment abandoned, they look to the leader (schools, textbooks, instructors) for protection.  This becomes the “wolf pack” from which they gain their relevance, acceptance, power and invincibility.  Their blind need for harmony overrides all desire for alternative ideas and viewpoints.  The product of their schooling, implemented long before we understood the Left’s control over academia, is more stressing and devastating than we had imagined.

The removal of literature authored by “old white men” has decreased their language skills and reading comprehension, killing the inspiration that once empowered further investigation and learning.  It was also used to instill a resentment for the “old white men” – our Founding Fathers and all Caucasians.  The reading skills of many of today’s high school graduates are no better than fourth-grade level.  They cannot read their own diplomas, but have been promoted in the name of “equality,” and disposed to listening to mind-bending oration on whom to hate and blame for their plight, their incompetence, unemployability, and social station – the true culprits being their educators.

Hearing a persuasive speaker can preclude research and critical thinking, and prevent the development of the vital ability to discern fact from misinformation. Consequently, they are rendered defenseless against, for example, the simpler Arabic-published, antisemitic material that damns Israel and Jews worldwide.  The unrelenting emphasis on equality has leveled the learning field and produced mediocrity in the students.  The resultant “Brave New” American unexceptionalism is indistinguishable from the capabilities of the Third World, and is fatally vulnerable to the confident assertions of Islam.

Beware of Islam, but beware equally of an education that disarms our youth.

The other attack is against the essence of the children’s identity, their family heritage, their ability to bond with others in a mutually supportive friendship or marriage and parenthood, their God-ordained role in human society.  Leftist-controlled academia have been laying the groundwork for this destruction patiently over time, eroding the core and spirit of their personality, even to removing their sexual identity, making them vulnerable to assaults, humiliation, and total dominance.  Although homosexuality and its various effects are publicly considered haram (prohibited, impure and sinful) in Islam, some unspoken acceptance exists, so that, even here, these two evils of Islam and Marxism (the Green-Red Axis), may still work conjointly – at least until the final accounting.

With homosexuality and deviance now becoming acceptable, the exposure of the very young to bizarre behaviors, the appearance of Drag Queens at libraries’ Storytime, the gay-rights activists are being allowed to condition our young children (including Kindergartners) to accept masturbation, transgenderism (to some deadly results) and pedophilia.  The behavior of a pedophile, now innocuously termed a MAP (Minor Attracted Person), is being hailed as acceptable, without giving thought to the victimized child.  We need not leave it up to imagination to consider the effects of rape at an early age.

In the Islamic world, the mother has complete control over her son for his first seven years, during which time she may take him to the local bathhouse where he will be assaulted, raped and humiliated, and bond violently to sexual relations.  The result is a lack of intimacy and empathy, animosity toward his mother’s betrayal, feelings of aggression against all women, and confusion that extends into his adulthood.  The act becomes synonymous with power, control and domination.  The infamous mass attacks and sexual assaults by Arab migrants on the women in Cologne, Germany, have revealed the Arab man’s sick relationship with women.  His rage is nurtured by his family life and encouraged by imams and Mahmoud Abbas’s Days of Rage, and western cultures are still denying this form of combat.  The Islamic woman who is raised to be subservient is valued only when she has borne a son and when he has been martyred in suicide while murdering the perceived enemy of Islam.

The objectification of children is a commonality shared between the Left and Islam, the attitudes now being overtly introduced into our culture as we descend into a godless darkness.   The LGBTQ community’s activists, supported by the Left and Islam, have no reservations about allowing pedophiles to conduct a dehumanizing assault on our most vulnerable.  Robbed of their childhood, these children are to be exposed to a deviance for which they are disastrously immature, so that they, too, may react with terrible fear, abandonment, shame and degradation, their anger paralleling that of the jihadi’s.  Pedophiles and their victims are to be added to the progressives, anarchists, communists, prematurely released criminals, uncontrolled migrants, Antifa, Black Lives Matter – the mainstream media’s darlings – as the homegrown warriors rise up against capitalism, citizen sovereignty, freedoms and individuality.

Abraham Lincoln warned us to beware that we could be destroyed from within, but never, in his wildest nightmares, could he have envisioned how it would be attempted.  Those who are so fearful as to remain in denial may never know what hit them.

© All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: How Drag Queen Story Hour Expanded Across America–

What comes after transgender theories? Radical feminists have a game plan for destroying the family.

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Today’s dispatch comes from two remote outposts of stellar gender gobbledegook in the Galaxy of Improbable Lunacy. It suggests that some academics are navigating so deep in space that  they have outpaced even the light emitted by the transgender supernova.

Feminism is a broad church. There are feminists who are strongly pro-family and pro-life; they fight for the human and spiritual dignity of women. There are feminists who are pro-choice and pro-divorce; they fight to right injustice and for absolute autonomy. But you can have a conversation with them.

And then there are ultra-radical feminists who will not rest until they have destroyed femininity, motherhood and the family. This calls for a certain amount of ingenuity, or loopiness. A conversation with them is almost unimaginable.

Here are two recent examples culled from academic publications.

Consider surrogacy. Some feminists argue, à la The Handmaid’s Tale, that it is sheer exploitation of desperately poor women. But others contend that surrogacy is the quintessence of bodily autonomy and choice.

No better example of the latter can be found than Sophie Lewis, a British theorist living in Philadelphia. Last year she published Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family, a blistering attack on the family from a Marxist perspective.

The yawning history of so-called “unassisted” bio-kin provides the statistics, poems, songs, pamphlets, and novels detailing the discomfort, coercion, molestation, abuse, humiliation, depression, battery, murder, mutilation, loneliness, blackmail, exhaustion, psychosis, gender-straitjacketing, racial programming, and embourgeoisement. The private family is the headquarters of all of these.

Yes, surrogates are terribly exploited, she says. But we need more surrogacy, not less!

If more children are born to surrogates, the capitalist notion that children “belong” to those whose genetics they share will break down. Collective responsibility for children would radically transform our notions of kinship, “until they dissolve into a classless commune on the basis of the best available care for all.”

Lewis wants to reimagine pregnancy “as something to be struggled in and against towards a utopian horizon free of work and free of value”. She looks forward to the dissolution of the mother-child bond and to embracing “polyparental abundance.” Unsurprisingly she also wants to dissolve the notion of “woman” and “female”.

Some readers will probably have noticed by now that the terms “women” and “female” appear only infrequently in this text. The reason for that is simple: I feel there’s no call for them. The formulation “pregnant people” is just as good as the alternative “pregnant women, men, and non-binary people,” and it is more precise than “expectant mothers” or “pregnant women.” Precision is important, I firmly believe, because there can be no utopian thought on reproduction that does not involve uncoupling gestation from the gender binary.

So what does she think about Margaret Atwood’s novel? The dystopian tale presents a very dark vision of surrogacy. Religious conservatives in the United States point to the US$1 billion surrogacy industry and lament that “we’re already living in The Handmaid’s Tale”. It seems that Atwood’s fans are victims of “false consciousness”, as Marxists put it. Defining misogyny as “womb-farming” conceals less artistic forms of violence against women based on class, race and binary gender.

“In the mood created by The Handmaid’s Tale, fans can instrumentalise commercial gestational surrogates fleetingly as mascots for reproductive rights and quintessential victims of patriarchy, without ever feeling the need to engage a critique of capital.”

Full Surrogacy Now is a bracing read, with something to offend nearly everyone.

And what about ectogenesis, or gestating babies in artificial wombs? This was, you may recall, the way that children entered the world in the dystopian novel Brave New World.

Women will never be free until they have been freed from the tyranny of reproduction. This was the audacious claim made by 1970s radical feminist Shulamith Firestone.

This utopia seemed unimaginably distant then, but technology could make it a reality with ectogenesis, or artificial wombs, contends Kathryn McKay, of the University of Sydney. She published her proposal in Bioethics.  This is not feminist samizdat photocopied on yellowing paper, but an influential academic journal. Here’s what she has to say:

… a foundational piece of women’s oppression is the conceptual link to female reproductive function, and this link should be targeted for destruction. … ectogenesis holds the potential to radically challenge dominant notions of gender categories and family roles by allowing us to break the conceptual links between ‘woman’, ‘mother’ and female biology.

In fact, McKay argues not simply that ectogenesis is a good idea, but that “we have a moral imperative to develop ectogenesis as a means to assisted gestation”. Apart from being part of patriarchal oppression, natural childbirth is risky and dangerous. The alternative, gestational surrogacy, is dangerous and exploitative, and “contribute[s] to the maintenance of pronatalist social pressures to produce genetically related offspring”.

Ectogenesis would also help to destroy the patriarchal disaster that is the nuclear family by eliminating “motherhood” as an exclusively female experience.

Insofar as adoptive, kinship, and same‐sex parents are already pushing against pronatalist and geneticist assumptions, ectogenesis will further put pressure on this view. Ectogenesis reveals the possibility that what has hitherto been a major component of female reproductive function—gestation—might not involve a woman at all. If an infant might not be ‘carried’, or ‘birthed’ by anyone as such, then carrying and birthing are undermined as relevant factors in being a woman or mother.

Ectogenesis, therefore, is the ideal means of reproduction in a society which accepts fluid gender roles:

If an infant is not of woman born, but ‘decanted’ from an artificial womb, then the primary caring role cannot be determined de facto by who gave birth to it. So, it encourages an understanding of ‘mother’ and ‘father’ as social roles, not as specifically gender‐ or biologically‐determined identities.

Alas! The reality of ectogenesis is still a distant possibility at the moment. But McKay points out that the mere possibility of it puts pressure on oppressive patriarchal norms. Imagining it is a thought experiment which underscores the absurdity of biologically-based gender norms.

Where do these people live, you might ask. Their proposals are so absurd that they could have been written by aliens from a distant galaxy. It makes one despair of a university education if people with PhDs are scribbling such nonsense.

But they are a painful dig in the ribs for people who believe in the vital importance of the nuclear family. No, abortion is not the end of the world. No, same-sex marriage is not the end of the world. No, transgenderism is not the end of the world. The end of the world will confront us with scenarios even more bizarre – the abolition of marriage, of motherhood, of procreation, of sexuality. It’s worthwhile fighting on these other issues, because if we lose those skirmishes, something much worse awaits us.

COLUMN BY

Michael Cook

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.

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EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

I am a pro-life Democrat, preparing to hold my nose and vote for Trump

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There seems to be no place for people like me in the party.

I am a pro-life Democrat. From where I sit, I continue to be horrified by the Democratic Party leadership. They seem to be behaving in ways calculated to drive away all but the most ideologically committed members.

Let’s start with Hillary’s defeat in the 2016 elections and the victory of Donald Trump. This came as a terrible shock because if political reality had been what they thought it was, she should have won by a landslide. Identity politics and the phantom of the “rainbow coalition” had a firm grip on Democrats. Women should rally to the first female presidential candidate and she thought she could depend on those who had traditionally been the backbone of the Democratic Party to remain loyal. But, surprise! Identity politics backfired. Trump was able to appeal to the interests and viewpoint of working-class white people (male and female), who were fed up with the sort of elite superciliousness shown by the leadership of both parties. Plebeian white people had an identity as well that could be appealed to.

That issues like abortion and same sex marriage are hot button issues about which many Democrats differed passionately should have inspired the Democrats to search for some sort of compromise.  Instead they “doubled down” on the most controversial issues, attempting to throw pro-life democrats out of the party, thereby driving enormous numbers of Democrats out of the party entirely into the arms of the Republicans. Their behavior since continues to show an extraordinary lack of a sense of political reality.

Among the proposed Democratic candidates for 2020 there is not one seriously pro-life candidate, and most of them favor more extreme positions, such as requiring tax payer funded abortion (Biden), or expansion of “abortion rights” to a point where it is indistinguishable from infanticide. Elizabeth Warren, whom some regard as “Hillary lite” spent her birthday at Planned Parenthood and said she would wear a scarf showing her support of them at her inauguration (if she wins). The fear of giving any moral weight to the life and health of the fetus in the womb has even led  Democrats to oppose environmental regulations that would protect wanted children in the womb. Then, we have a supposed “progressive” who thinks the human extinction movement has a point – hardly a cause for which people are going to run to the barricades – and one which makes nonsense of the idea of progress.This sort of behavior is hardly calculated to make peace among warring factions.

The Democrats then decide to launch a campaign for Trump’s impeachment before he has even taken office. And, when they do get a majority in the House of Representatives, for some unaccountable reason, they fail to bring into it the important issues which cause many people to oppose him, such as Trump’s treatment of immigrants or his horrible environmental policies.  Instead, they decide to focus on obscure issues about the Ukraine and Russia, attempting to revive the Cold War. They argue that that we need to support the Ukraine to protect us against the Russians. The idea that the Russians still entertain aspirations to world dominance is silly. They can barely maintain control within their borders.

It being inconceivable that Hillary should lose, they tried to blame it on the Russians. But American voters, especially white working-class people and African-Americans, did not need the Russians to tell them to be dissatisfied with the failures of the Obama administration.

Then, stoking the fires of racial resentment and white self-hatred, they have put forward a ludicrously inaccurate version of history called the 1619 Project, according to which slavery and racism are at the core of our national identity, so that the United States as a country began to exist only when the first African slaves were brought here, that the slaves fought alone for their freedom (forget about the Union army) and that racism is in the American DNA.  (For a detailed critique see the interviews the World Socialist Website, wsws.org.) Again, hardly a theory likely to inspire anyone to change; if we are racist in essence, there is nothing we can do about it but die. It merely adds guilt to the pot to pressure people to go further down the path toward divisive programs such as affirmative action and, perhaps even reparations, for which the white working class, as usual, will be asked to pay.

Any one of these blunders would be enough to make me hesitant to get on board for electing a Democrat, but putting them all together I fear they lead to despair. Merely obsessing about how they hate Trump will get them nowhere. The way the Democrats have been behaving could make even the most devoted Democrat hold her nose – hard – and vote for Trump.

COLUMN BY

Celia Wolf-Devine

Celia Wolf-Devine is a retired philosophy professor (www.celiawolfdevine.com). See also her blog http://www.celiawolfdevine.com/prolife/ titled Progressive, Pro-Woman, Pro-life.

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EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.