Winning! Winning! Winning!

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We measure ourselves from the time we are children. “Johnny grew three inches!” “Susie got all As in school!”

We compare ourselves with others to measure our accomplishments. “Johnny is faster than Fred.” “Susie is smarter than Mary.”

We compete with each other for advancement. “Johnny won a gold medal in swimming!” “Susie got into Harvard!”

We measure, compare, and compete with others as we establish our own individual identities. We also measure, compare, and compete with ourselves as we establish our own internal sense of self. So, what is the problem?

Competence is the mother of self-esteem. It is the foundation of the meritocracy and source of the American dream. Theoretically, when we study and work hard we achieve competence, feel good about ourselves and are rewarded with advancement. Competition is an integral and important part of establishing an individual identity, a family identity, a community identity, and a national identity.

There are rules in every competition because fairness is the essential qualifying element for the meritocracy. Individuals compete. Teams compete. Families compete. Countries compete. When the rules for fair competition are broken, the entire merit system breaks down and the competition is replaced with a counterfeit performance that is presented as fair and legitimate.

The breakdown in American society is a breakdown of the merit system. The radical leftist Democrats are trying to replace the merit system with identity politics. Here is the problem. Identity politics are inherently racist and prejudicial because they do not measure competence or performance, they are quota systems based on discriminatory elements like skin color, gender, religion, etc. Identity politics are diametrically opposed to individualism and the American dream.

Tuesday’s 2020 presidential election is a referendum on fairness and the American dream.

Biden/Harris represent collectivism. Biden’s globalism and Harris’ radical leftism are based on the collectivist model of top down control that denies the merit system. Technocracy is moving America and its individual accomplishments to the communist Chinese model of collectivism and sameness. It is the regressive descent backward to the feudal power structure of rulers and the ruled.

Under Obama, the radical leftist Democrats have already eliminated fair competition in public school because someone’s “feelings” might get hurt. Eliminating competition eliminates striving for excellence and competence. It is a deliberate assault on a child’s developing identity and self-esteem.

In The Book of Humanitarian Hoaxes: Killing America with ‘Kindness’ I discuss the sinister and interconnecting leftist, Islamist, globalist attacks on America that present destructive policies as altruistic. Hoax 16: The Humanitarian Hoax of Relativism (pp.56-59) and Hoax 50: The Humanitarian Hoax of Eternal Childhood (pp.248-252), explain the catastrophic dangers of valuing feelings over facts.

The oppressive and contrived Covid lockdowns have exposed public education’s curricula as dumbed down, anti-American, anti-individualism, pro-collectivist, and indoctrinating American children to be globalist citizens under one-world governance.

The 2020 election campaign has exposed the destructive Biden/Harris ticket and how it has broken every rule and eliminated any semblance of a fair political competition.

Joe Biden is a pathological liar and the most corrupt politician in the Washington swamp. If the globalist media weren’t protecting Joe Biden, he and his family would all be in jail where they belong! Biden’s paid political ads are shockingly dishonest attempts to frighten Americans into voting for Biden.

Biden is a fear mongering liar promoting political medicine NOT medical science. Consider OutKick’s September 2020 article, “Coronavirus Survival Rate Near 100% for Most Americans” that lists the stunning CDC statistics by age group.

Ages 0-19  99.99%
Ages 20-49 99.98%
Ages 50-69 99.5%
Ages 70+ 94.6%

Even the corrupt CDC has admitted that only 6% of the people the media reports as covid deaths have actually died FROM Covid. The others all died WITH Covid. The actual cause of death was anything from cancer to car accidents. The deliberately misleading statistics bombarding Americans every day are courtesy of the fake news media and Internet tech giants Why? They have massive financial investments in communist China, and are determined to defeat America-first Donald Trump.

Do not believe a word Joe Biden says. Joe Biden and his family financial involvement in China makes him a national security threat. Beijing Joe Biden belongs in prison – NOT in the White House! And what about his running mate?

Beyond Kamala Harris’ radical leftist ideology, she is married to Douglas Emhoff whose multinational law firm, DLA Piper, employs ex-CCP officials and “boasts nearly 30 years of experience in China and over 140 lawyers dedicated to its ‘China Investment Services.’”

Do not let lying Beijing Joe Biden and communist-linked radical leftist Kamala Harris kill the American dream! Embrace American authenticity and reject Chinese counterfeits!

WE THE PEOPLE are the American dreamers who can still make our American dreams come true. President Donald Trump’s America is built on the meritocracy. His economic policies are color-blind and put America first – all Americans. Yes, ALL Americans because ALL lives matter in Trump’s America.

Do not be ashamed to say it. ALL LIVES MATTER! Shout it from the rooftops!

Do not be ashamed to compete fairly. The meritocracy is the foundation of individualism and success.

Do not be ashamed to want to win. Never apologize for America or for wanting to be a winner.

Winning is important! Winning establishes our national American identity and national American culture of success. When Donald Trump wins America wins! Vote for Team Trump’s America-first policies and its stunning America-first record of success. Success is the winning, unifying principle that makes our American dreams come true.

Copyright Linda Goudsmit. All rights reserved.

Exclusive Footage of Protests at Joe Biden’s Home and at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall

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International Family News published the following on its website:

Protestors rallied in front of Joe Biden’s home on Halloween at the www.scaryjoeprotests.com event. Protest leader Moira Sheridan said that they were tired of the media blackout on Biden’s corruption and wanted to make a last ditch effort to get the word out.

One protestor was dressed as a nun who had a sign that read, “False Nun Pro-Biden” while another sported a sign saying “True Nun Pro Life.”

Law enforcement was present and shut down the road to Biden’s home to allow the protestors to gather.

One protestor was dressed as a convict with a laptop, another as the devil, and another as Biden himself.

A skit was played out in which the devil asks for Biden to sell his soul. He signs on the line.

Later in the day a protest occurred in front of Independence Hall. Some bystanders booed but others seemed supportive.

COLUMN BY

Brian S. Brown

Brian S. Brown is founder and publisher of International Family News. He is also president of the International Organization for the Family (IOF). Brian also serves as President of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) after having co-founded the organization in 2007. Brian has been quoted regularly in the The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Associated Press, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Post, and almost every other major newspaper in the country. He has also regularly appeared on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX News Channel, C-SPAN and MSNBC. An Oxford University-educated and articulate advocate for marriage, he is a sought-after speaker who has addressed hundreds of gatherings throughout the country, and internationally. Brian is a C. Phil. at UCLA in American History, earned his B.A./M.A. in Modern History at Oxford University, and received his B.A. in History from Whittier College. He and his wife Susan have nine young children.

Copyright: International Family News (IFN). All rights reserved.

Why I’m a One Issue Voter

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The issue of abortion has barely come up in the debates of Election 2020. But for many of us, it is still the issue that matters most.

I am a one issue voter, without apology, and that issue is abortion. I’m against it. If a politician thinks it is acceptable—whatever the rhetoric—to deliberately kill a living, developing human being in the womb, that politician is wrong. And he or she will never have my vote.

The issue of life is so basic. It is even the first Creator-given right listed in our nation’s birth certificate, the Declaration of Independence. Without life, how can there be liberty or the pursuit of happiness or the right to property? Or any other right?

Those politicians who get the issue of life wrong tend to get just about everything else wrong.

With the window to the womb that science provides today, the emperor has no clothes when they say that a baby is not being killed.

Remember the case of Abby Johnson, manager of a Texas Planned Parenthood clinic and “Planned Parenthood Employee of the Year,” who resigned her lucrative position when she saw a sonogram of an abortion in her own clinic? She suddenly realized that this was not a clump of tissue being cleansed away. This was a tiny little human being in the making, fighting a losing battle against a high-power suction machine. Her book (with Cindy Lambert), Unplanned, chronicles all this.

In this election, there has arisen a group that claims to be “evangelical” and “pro-life” that in reality supports pro-abortion politicians. Who are they fooling? What they claim is that the “pro-life” position goes beyond simply the issue of abortion to such issues as “climate change.” All they do is to attempt to dilute the phrase “pro-life” so that it loses its real meaning: opposition to abortion.

For example, they claim that being “pro-life” means being against racism, which they inconsistently argue somehow necessitates voting for pro-abortion candidates. Imagine that—fighting racism by supporting Black genocide. The fact is, abortion kills almost 30 percent of Black children in the womb—and more than half of them in New York City.

It is well documented that Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, was a racist.

On December 10, 1939, in a letter to her board member, Dr. Clarence J. Gamble, Sanger wrote,

“We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.”

Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King, Jr., told me in a television interview: “During her lifetime Dr. Margaret Sanger said ‘colored’ people are like weeds and they need to be exterminated.” No wonder that the vast majority of Planned Parenthood facilities—to this day—are in the minority neighborhoods.

Former Vice President Joe Biden used to be (supposedly) “moderately pro-choice.” But now he’s shifted to the position of accepting abortion up to the moment of birth. And he believes we the taxpayers should fund it. His running mate is fiercely pro-abortion. As attorney general of California, Kamala Harris prosecuted and persecuted David Daleiden, the pro-life whistle-blower who made “60 Minutes”-style undercover videos, documenting that abortionists were trafficking in baby body parts for profit.

In contrast, President Donald Trump has been described by Steven Ertelt, editor of Lifenews.com, as “the most pro-life president in history.”

Since a president chooses judges and the senate confirms or rejects them, abortion is definitely on the ballot in Election 2020. And there is stark contrast between where the parties stand on this life-and-death issue.

At D. James Kennedy Ministries, we provide a simple party platform comparison on a variety of key issues. Here’s the comparison on the issue of life:

  • Republicans: “We assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed.”
  • “Democrats believe that every woman should be able to access high-quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion.”
  • The Word of God: “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Psalm 139:13-14)

We hear endlessly about evils from Americans in times past—especially slavery. I firmly believe that future generations will look back at us and see the rampant practice of abortion, and they will judge us for the slaughter of millions of unborn babies—even more deplorable in light of the window to the womb we have through modern technology.

Christians need to vote our values, and the issue of life is the most important of these.

Thomas Jefferson said that he trembled when he considered that God is just and that His justice cannot slumber forever. No, indeed it won’t.

©Jerry Newcomb. All rights reserved.

PODCAST: COVID-19 — The Fearmongering Must End

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By FRC’s Ruth Moreno

Yesterday on Washington Watch, Tony Perkins sat down with Andrew Bostom, associate professor of family medicine at Brown University, to discuss the media’s politicization of the coronavirus.

It is no secret the media wants to use the pandemic as a club to wield against President Trump and the Republican Party going into the election, and one of their favorite tactics has been fearmongering. COVID is a serious disease, of course, but evidence is now surfacing that some governments, as well as the media have focused almost exclusively on the trends and numbers that paint a negative picture rather than a more balanced, honest look at the numbers.

“There’s lots of reassuring information they could be sharing in lieu of this fearmongering,” Bostom explained.

Florida, for example, was fully opened up by the end of September, and their hospitalization rate has remained low. There has also been little increase in positive tests, suggesting the lockdowns may not have as much of an impact on the virus as Democrats want them to. Nationwide, despite the steps taken toward reopening, only about two and half percent of hospital visits are for COVID-19, leading Bostom to conclude that “the broad picture for the United States is one of reassurance.”

Good epidemiologists agree that even amidst serious health crises, one thing you should never do is make people panic. President Trump and his administration have taken necessary precautions to slow the spread of the disease while still maintaining a positive outlook, even when the president himself was infected and hospitalized.

Bostom agreed that it’s been good for the country that President Trump has kept an even keel, calling the draconian lockdowns enforced by state governors “far worse than the disease itself.” And, as stated, they don’t seem to help very much even with the virus — all they do is block transmission for a short period of time. As soon as they are lifted, the virus spreads again.

None of this has stopped the media from painting the coronavirus as a death warrant for anybody infected.

The people who are really at risk from the coronavirus are, of course, the elderly. The old and sick must be protected. But keeping healthy people from the workplace is not helping anyone, especially the vulnerable. Hospitals must be kept running, and life, for most people, must go on.

Bostom went on to discuss the unfortunate fact that some governments are hiding their numbers regarding the coronavirus, preventing us from getting the true picture of what is going on. Bostom said he was “very disappointed” in his home state of Rhode Island, which has made it very hard to know how much the state has flattened the curve regarding hospitalization rates, death rates, and even infections.

Instead, as Bostom put it, “they will take any little uptick and stick that on the front of the web page. And I think this is being done all over the country.”

The media has hidden the truth about the coronavirus from the American people, but it is not too late to expose them for their politicization and fearmongering. People deserve to know the facts amidst this crisis, and the media should be ashamed that they are putting lives and livelihoods on the line for the sake of their left-wing agenda.

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EDITORS NOTE: This FRC-Action podcast is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Science Nazis Demand Obedience To Their Political Agenda

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We’ve seen this before.

Whether the issue is “Climate Change” or ways of dealing with COVID-19 the Radical Left ridicules anyone who would dare to question their positions on critical issues.  They accuse those who question them or their claims of not believing in science.

Consider the Yahoo News report that AOL posted on October 26, 2020, Bill Gates slams Trump’s COVID-19 adviser as  ‘pseudo-expert’ who’s ‘off-the-rails’ which began with this excerpt:

In a new interview, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates sharply criticized the Trump administration for muzzling experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) while instead listening to White House COVID-19 adviser Dr. Scott Atlas, whom Gates calls a “pseudo-expert” who’s “off-the-rails.”

Atlas, a member of the administration’s coronavirus task force who formerly appeared as a commentator for Fox News, reportedly opposes an expansion of COVID testing and earlier this month posted a tweet falsely downplaying the effectiveness of masks. Twitter later removed the post from Atlas, a Stanford University professor with a medical degree from the University of Chicago School of Medicine.

“We now have a pseudo-expert advising the president,” Gates, the former Microsoft (MSFT) CEO and a leading backer of global public health initiatives, told Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer in an interview that aired on Monday as part of the the news organization’s All Markets Summit.

After the interview, taped on Oct. 15, Gates confirmed that he had made the comments in reference to Atlas, who has opposed lockdowns and co-authored an op-ed in The Hill called “The COVID-19 shutdowns will cost Americans millions of years of lives.”

This article is important for a number of reasons.  First of all, Gates demonstrated colossal chutzpah to insult a medical doctor who graduated from a highly respected medical school and serves as a professor at Stanford University, while Gates, himself, never attended any medical school.

In fact, Gates has no degree of any kind!

What then, could possibly qualify Gates to pass judgement on the credibility of a medical doctor especially one with the clear credentials of Dr. Scott Atlas even as he castigated President Trump for challenging the contradictory and morphing advice of Dr. Fauci.

The AOL/Yahoo article stated that Twitter had removed what they claimed was a tweet posted by Dr. Atlas that they claim falsely downplayed the effectiveness of masks.

It is more than a bit disturbing that Twitter censored Dr. Atlas and, in so doing, prevented the general public from benefitting from his perspectives.  This should alarm everyone.

About 20 years ago I was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer.  The surgeon who examined me and told me of my situation was the chief of urology at a major New York Hospital and chaired the department of urology at a major medical school.

However, while he told me that he believed that he could save my life, he urged me to seek out at least one additional opinion so that I would be confident that I was making the proper decision.

I did seek out that second opinion and my medical insurance policy covered that second opinion, because this notion of seeking additional opinions is considered the standard way for people to make certain that they are making proper life and death decisions.

Needless to say, my surgeon saved my life- this a good thing because I have not aggravated my quota yet!

Where science and the Radical Left are concerned, however, not blindly following what their anointed experts proclaim, is an act of heresy.

This flies in the face of commonsense and threatens the First Amendment and all of our freedoms.

In doing a bit of research I found a similar situation that existed in a different country many years ago.

That country was Germany as the Third Reich began taking control of Germany and its population, Jews came under vicious attack.  No less a scientist that Albert Einstein was attacked for his work.  Scientific America on February 13, 2015 published an important article about the lunacy that transpired at that time, How 2 Pro-Nazi Nobelists Attacked Einstein’s “Jewish Science” [Excerpt].

The article discussed the mass book burnings carried out on college campuses, not unlike the way that Antifa operates today.  Books authored by Albert Einstein were incinerated.  Here is an important paragraph from this article:

It would be absurd, of course, to suppose that most of the book-burners had given these questions a moment’s thought. The simple fact was that Einstein was a prominent Jew, and his thoughts therefore fit for the bonfire. But Einstein’s theory was attacked on racial grounds. This assault came not by asinine ideologues in the party whose knowledge of science extended no further than a belief in fairy tales about “cosmic ice,” nor from individuals on the scientific fringe seeking official approval and support. It was orchestrated by two Nobel laureates in physics, who devised a full-blown thesis (it can’t be dignified by calling it a theory) on how stereotypical racial features are exhibited in scientific thinking. They were Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark, and they wanted to become the new Führers of German physics.

Einstein’s Theories of Relativity and his concept of Space-Time were mocked and ridiculed by two Nazi Nobel laureates.

Of course nearly all of Einstein’s brilliant theories have been validated in recent years by scientists and physicists who now have the technological tools to conduct appropriate experiments.

Understandably fearing for his life,  Einstein fled Nazi Germany and came to America where, ironically, he helped America defeat Fascism in Germany and Japan and, in so doing, safeguarded freedom for people across the globe.

Today the Radical Left demands obedience to theories about climate change that support their demands for the “New Green Deal” even as some scientists question the validity of the notion that human actions have climatological consequences that must be stopped at all costs.

They seek nothing short of a fundamental transformation in the way that we live and work and these demands can only be justified by claiming that catastrophic climate change can only be averted if we adopt draconian changes.

Science has always been about challenges beliefs and devising experiments to seek the truth.

To cite an interesting example of how highly respected scientists may come to diametrically opposed conclusions consider a pair of articles that ran on the same website (Space.com) on two consecutive days.

On October 19, 2020, that website posted, What’s Happening with Betelgeuse? Astronomers Propose a Specialized Telescope to Watch the Star Every Night.

The very next day, October 20, the website published, Wow, Betelgeuse Might Be 25% Closer than Previously Believed.

The physicists who wrote the first article postulated that because Betelgeuse is so huge and pulsating, it is likely to explode within our lifetimes.  They estimated that that star is 700 light-years from earth.  This is why they proposed the construction of a special telescope to keep an astronomical eye on that star.

However, if the physicists who published the second article are right, Betelgeuse is 548 light years away.  This would mean that the star is not nearly as large or bright as the other physicists believe.  This would mean that Betelgeuse is not likely to become a super nova any time soon- at least not for another 100,000 years by their estimates.

This may not seem important to us on our beleaguered planet, but the lessons to be learned is very important.

Experts can and do disagree.  The process of questioning is behind all of our achievements. Scientists who serve a political agenda are the scientists who must not be trusted.

Science is supposed to be the tireless search for universal truths and must be unencumbered by political agendas.

Scientists who yield to the political elite betray their professions and should be ignored as the science-fascists that they are.

Voltaire sagely observed that you could determine the intelligence of a person by considering the questions that they ask, the same questions that today will earn you scorn and ridicule by the Radical Left.

©Michael Cutler. All rights reserved.

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WATCH: First Lady Melania Trump on substance abuse prevention

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October is National Substance Abuse Prevention Month. President Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, and the entire Trump Administration are committed to a nationwide effort to break the hold of addiction.

“This month, we pause to remember the lives lost to addiction, and recommit to protecting all Americans—particularly our nation’s young people—from the devastating effects drugs can have on them and their loved ones,” the President wrote in his proclamation.

To fight opioid misuse, a growing epidemic when President Trump took office, the President declared a Public Health Emergency in 2017 and signed the SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act into law. His Administration also strengthened the Drug‑Free Communities program, which offers grants to prevent youth substance abuse.

Amid the global Coronavirus pandemic, it is especially important to be aware of how prolonged isolation can affect mental health and result in the misuse of both legal and illegal substances. Through community-based efforts, the Trump Administration is strengthening the support systems that keep our young people free from drugs—including helping more school districts safely return students to the classroom.

Read the Proclamation on National Substance Abuse Prevention Month

©All rights reserved.

MAGA Mask-Wearing Nuns Steal The Show At Trump Rally

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Religious nuns wearing “Make America Great Again” masks at President Donald Trump’s rally excited the attention of Twitter users Saturday evening.

At least three different nuns can be seen standing behind the president as he spoke Saturday night in Circleville, Ohio. The nuns, dressed in white, black and purple habits and wearing crosses around their necks, also wore black masks with the letters “MAGA” on them, were in the front row of the Trump rally.

One nun held a bible in her hands, pictures show, while others held rosaries.

The nuns can be seen applauding throughout the president’s speech, as Twitter users noted.

COLUMN BY

MARY MARGARET OLOHAN

Social issues reporter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Suicides Up Nearly 100% Among Young People in Wisconsin’s Second Largest County, as Medical Experts Cite Perils of Social Isolation

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New mental health data from Dane County, Wisconsin offer a dark glimpse at the costs of stay-at-home orders.

This summer, a relative reached out to me regarding the sad story of Kodie Dutcher, a 10-year-old from Baraboo, Wisconsin who was reported missing in July.

Law enforcement officials put out an Amber Alert, and a volunteer search party was organized. Kodie’s body was found the following morning—July 7, a Tuesday—near her home. Her death was ruled a suicide by the Baraboo Police Department.

Kodie’s death shook me. I grew up in a small town not far from Baraboo and know people who live there today. It occurred to me that my own little girl, whom I still think of as a baby, is roughly the same age Kodie was when she took her life.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a challenge for everyone, but evidence suggests that few demographics are suffering more than young people. Data show they’re suffering more economically, and emerging evidence shows that many are less equipped to deal with the “collateral damage” of forced lockdowns mentally.

A new report from the Wisconsin State Journal examining mental health trends in Dane County, the second most populous county in Wisconsin, shows that many are struggling to cope with the mental toll of social isolation precipitated by the economic lockdowns.

Hannah Flanagan, the Director of Emergency Services at Journey Mental Health Center, said calls to the center’s crisis hotline are up more than 15 percent since the beginning of the pandemic, with many people suffering not from severe mental illness but situational stress. Preliminary data collected by the center show that Dane County passed its 2019 suicide count in early October.

Flanagan said Dane County had experienced 57 suicides as of early October, more than the total of 54 it had experienced the entire calendar year in 2019. She indicated that the excess deaths largely stem from stay-at-home orders.

“When people are lonely, it’s really hard to cope,” Flanagan said. “The specificity about COVID social distancing and isolation that we’ve come across as contributing factors to the suicides are really new to us this year.”

It’s alarming to see a large county eclipse its previous suicide total with nearly three months remaining in the calendar year, but the numbers become even more troubling when you drill into them a little further. The center’s figures show that 15 of these suicides were committed by people under the age of 25. That’s nearly double the total in 2019 (eight)—and we still have nearly three months until the year is over.

One could dismiss these figures as anecdotal evidence or a strange outlier. The problem is it fits with other mental health trends around the country. The CDC recently reported that one out of four young people have contemplated suicide during the pandemic, about two and a half times the overall rate.

Though national data on youth suicide during the pandemic is not yet available, trends reported from suicide hotline centers across the country show that many young people are crying out for help.

Flanagan’s explanation that the spike in suicide in Dane County is tied to COVID-19 lockdowns dovetails with years of science that shows social isolation isn’t just psychologically harmful to humans, but deadly.

An abundance of scientific evidence shows social isolation “is one of the main risk factors associated with suicidal outcomes.” The dangers are particularly acute in women, research suggests.

This is why from the beginning of the pandemic there has been a small but consistent chorus of researchers warning that forced isolation could prove to be “a perfect storm” for suicide.

“Secondary consequences of social distancing may increase the risk of suicide,” researchers wrote in an April 10 paper published by the American Medical Association. “It is important to consider changes in a variety of economic, psycho-social, and health-associated risk factors.”

It should be noted that suicide is just one of the deadly effects of social isolation. Dr. Dhruv Khullar, a physician and assistant professor of healthcare policy at Weill Cornell Medical College, detailed numerous other deadly effects of social isolation in a popular 2016 article in the New York Times:

“A wave of new research suggests social separation is bad for us. Individuals with less social connection have disrupted sleep patterns, altered immune systems, more inflammation and higher levels of stress hormones. One recent study found that isolation increases the risk of heart disease by 29 percent and stroke by 32 percent.

Another analysis that pooled data from 70 studies and 3.4 million people found that socially isolated individuals had a 30 percent higher risk of dying in the next seven years, and that this effect was largest in middle age.

Loneliness can accelerate cognitive decline in older adults, and isolated individuals are twice as likely to die prematurely as those with more robust social interactions. These effects start early: Socially isolated children have significantly poorer health 20 years later, even after controlling for other factors. All told, loneliness is as important a risk factor for early death as obesity and smoking.”

Unfortunately, nations around the world and many US states have failed to assess these risks. Policymakers, perhaps incentivized by a 24-hour media that tracked and reported COVID-19 deaths like a sporting event, have adopted empty slogans such as “if it saves just one life.”

It rarely occurs to lawmakers to also look at the lives lost as a result of their policies.

“There are no solutions, there are only trade-offs,” the famous economist Thomas Sowell once observed, “and you try to get the best trade-off you can get, that’s all you can hope for.”

Tradeoffs are a simple economic reality, but one humans often overlook. The idea was perhaps best described by economist Russ Roberts, who noted that every choice also means giving something up.

In many ways, the pandemic is a perfect example of ignoring the reality of tradeoffs. Lawmakers saw that by enforcing social distancing, they were (in theory) limiting the spread of the virus. What they didn’t see was the tradeoffs: lost social interaction that is crucial for humans, cancer screenings abandoned, jobs lost, AA meetings canceled, babies denied heart surgery, and so on.

As economist Antony Davies and political scientist James Harrigan noted early in the pandemic, across the country we saw the leaders of America’s institutions—county councils to mayors to school boards to police to clergy—simply ignore the realities of tradeoffs:

“Rational people understand this isn’t how the world works. Regardless of whether we acknowledge them, tradeoffs exist. And acknowledging tradeoffs is an important part of constructing sound policy. Unfortunately, even mentioning tradeoffs in a time of crisis brings the accusation that only heartless beasts would balance human lives against dollars. But each one of us balances human lives against dollars, and any number of other things, every day.”

Americans, particularly those with influence and those in leadership positions, should recognize that lockdowns—and indeed all sweeping government-mandates—come with a host of unintended consequences.

The failure to acknowledge or adequately consider them is why so many people today are in pain—and why more young Americans are seeking to throw away their most precious gift.

COLUMN BY

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

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

Four Newborns Die After Being Denied Heart Surgery because of COVID Travel Restrictions

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Tragically, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a virtual laboratory for lessons in “unseen” evils that have resulted from pursuing “a present good.”

Four babies died in Adelaide, Australia over the last four weeks after being denied transport to Melbourne because of government COVID-19 restrictions, health officials say.

Adelaide, the capital city of the state of South Australia, doesn’t offer paediatric cardiac surgery. According to local news reports, this means about 100 babies are sent interstate for treatment annually, typically to Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital.

Because of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, however, Melbourne no longer remains an option. Patients must be sent to Sydney instead.

The distance from Adelaide to Melbourne is about 725 kilometers, a flight of roughly 75 minutes, while the distance to Sydney is about 1,375 kilometers, a flight of nearly two hours. An extra 45 minutes might not sound like a lot of time, but when you’re talking about surgery on a vital organ in a sick infant, minutes matter.

The infants never left Adelaide, news reports indicate, presumably because doctors either determined they would not survive the lengthy trip or because Sydney’s Children’s Hospital at Westmead—the lone hospital available due to travel restrictions—lacked the capacity to treat them.

Whatever the case, because of the travel restrictions and the lack of a cardiac center in Adelaide, the infants failed to receive treatment that could have saved their lives.

Dr. John Svigos, an obstetrician and gynecologist, told Australian TV network 9 News that the four babies who died in Adelaide “almost certainly” would have benefited from on-site surgery. He noted that recent state restrictions on travel inhibited the hospital’s ability to get the infants treated at other facilities.

“Particularly in our current COVID situation where the usual process of referral to the Melbourne cardiac unit is no longer tenable and referral to Sydney is on a case-by-case basis,” said Svigos, who has operated a private practice at Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Adelaide since 1978. “I shall leave it to you to imagine the profound effect of these deaths on the parents, their families and the dedicated medical and nursing staff dealing with these tragedies.”

The story is tragic. It’s also frustrating, in part because we know there are countless scenarios like this happening every day around the world. It’s undeniable at this point: COVID-19 regulations designed to save people are costing lives.

The tragedy is compounded by the fact that it was so predictable. Any student of economics who has read the opening line of Bastiat’s great essay “That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen” could have predicted such outcomes.

“In the department of economy, an act, a habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects,” wrote Bastiat.

The economist explained that every action comes not with a single consequence, but many consequences. Humans tend to focus on the immediate effects of an action (the seen) while ignoring the numerous other effects that go unseen. Bastiat warned that the economist must beware pursuing “a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come.”

In other words, we must look beyond the immediate effects of an action and consider the far-reaching unintended consequences.

Tragically, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a virtual laboratory for lessons in “unseen” evils that have resulted from pursuing “a present good.” By imposing mass lockdowns and sweeping bans on travel and other basic freedoms, governments may have increased social distancing, but they did so at costs we may never fully understand (but are now just beginning to).

We see the immediate, desired effects—less travel, businesses closed or limited in capacity, more children working on laptops and not in school—but we tend to overlook the many unseen, second-order evils. These include the cancer screenings people are not getting, the 100,000 US businesses that will never reopen, the Alcoholics Anonymous meetings people cannot attend, the rise in depression as people lose jobs, the millions of people slipping into poverty and extreme poverty, the rise in suicide, and yes—infants and other people denied surgeries that could have saved them.

Each of these effects will in turn trigger countless other effects, many of which will never be seen or written about.

The effort to protect individuals from the coronavirus through government fiat instead of individual action was akin to performing heart surgery with a broadsword—clumsy, foolish, and deadly.

“How many more deaths of babies and young children will the community and staff be forced to endure?” asked Svigos.

It’s a question every person suffering under inhumane lockdowns and other draconian government restrictions should be asking.

COLUMN BY

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

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

VIDEO: Special Advisor to President Trump on Covid Policy Speaks Out

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Freddie Sayers caught up with Dr. Scott Atlas, a healthcare policy academic from the Hoover Institute at Stanford, who has become the latest lightning rod for the controversy around Covid-19 policy and his support for a more targeted response.

Speaking from inside the White House, where he is now Senior advisor to the President and a member of the Coronavirus task force, he does not hold back. He tells us that he is disgusted and dismayed at the media and public policy establishment, sad that it has come to this, cynical about their intentions, and angry that lockdown policies have been allowed to go on so long.

WATCH:

KEY QUOTES

Why him?

I’m a healthcare policy person — I have a background in medical science, but my role really is to translate medial science into public policy. That’s very different from being an epidemiologist or a virologist with a single, limited view on things.

Dr. Fauci

He’s just one person on the task force — there are several people on the task force. His background is virology, immunology and infectious disease. It’s a very different background, it’s a more limited approach, and I don’t speak for him.

Herd immunity policy?

No. It’s a repeated distortion, lie, or whatever you want to call it… What they mean by ‘herd immunity strategy’ is survival of the fittest, let the infection spread through the community and develop a population immunity. That’s never been the policy that I have advised. It’s never even been discussed inside the White House, not even for a single minute. And that’s never been the policy of the President of the United States or anybody else here. I’ve said that many many times… and yet it persists like so many other things, hence the term that the President is fond of using called fake news.

On herd immunity

Population immunity is a biological phenomenon that occurs. It’s sort of like if you’re building something in your basement: it’s down on the ground because gravity puts it there. It’s not a ‘strategy’ to say that herd immunity exists — it is obtained when a certain percentage of the population becomes resistant or immune to an infection, whether that is by getting infected or getting a vaccine or by a combination of both. In fact, if you don’t that believe herd immunity exists as a way to block the pathways to the vulnerable in an infection, then you would never advocate or believe in giving widespread vaccination — that’s the whole point of it… I’ve explained it to people who seemingly didn’t understand it; I’ve mentioned this radioactive word called herd immunity. But that’s not a strategy that anyone is pursuing.

What is his and President Trump’s policy?

My advice is exactly this. It’s a three-pronged strategy. Number one: aggressive protection of high risk individuals and the vulnerable (typically the elderly and those with co-morbidities). Number two: allocate resources so that we prevent hospital overcrowding, so that people can be treated for this virus and get the other serious medical care that is needed. Number three: open schools, society and businesses because keeping them closed is enormously harmful — in fact it kills people.

Effect of lockdowns

We must open up because we’re killing people. In the US, 46% of the six most common cancers were not diagnosed during the shutdown… These are people who will present to the hospital or their doctor with later stage disease — many of these people will die. 650,000 Americans are on chemotherapy ­— half of them didn’t come in for their chemo because they were afraid. Two-thirds of screenings for cancer were not done; half of childhood immunisations did not get done; 85% of living organ transplants did not get done. And then we see the other harms: 200,000 cases plus of child abuse in the US during the two months of spring school closures were not reported because schools are the number one agency where abuse is noticed; we have one out of four American young adults, college age, who thought of killing themselves in the month of June…

All of these harms are massive for the working class and the lower socioeconomic groups. The people who are upper class, who can work from home, the people who can sip their latte and complain that their children are underfoot or that they have to come up with extra money to hire a tutor privately — these are people who are not impacted by the lockdowns.

©UnHerd. All rights reserved.

On the Nature of Complicity

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Randall Smith: In the future, will America’s bishops renounce their failure to condemn politicians who support abortion as German bishops have recently done for their former support of Nazism?

In a column last year titled “Politicizing the Eucharist?” I pointed out that no one now claims that when Archbishop Rummel of New Orleans excommunicated three Catholics for publically encouraging people to defy his order to de-segregate the Catholic schools, he was “politicizing the Eucharist.”  Rather, Rummel is now praised highly for his singular courage, especially since his condemnation was so contrary to the more “accommodating” views of many of his fellow southern Catholics.

I also mentioned Cardinal Adolf Bertram, the ex-officio head of the German episcopate in the 1930s, who ordered Church bells rung in celebration of Nazi Germany’s victories over Poland and France and who sent greetings to Hitler on his 50th birthday in the name of all German Catholics, an act that angered his fellow bishops Konrad von Preysing and August von Galen.

The subject of whether the bishops should speak out publically against the treatment of the Jews arose at a 1942 meeting of the German bishops at Fulda. The consensus was “to give up heroic action in favor of small successes.”  In the 1933 Reichskonkordat between the Holy See and the German government, Church leaders pledged to refrain from speaking out on issues not directly related to the Church.  Repeated violations of the Konkordat on the part of the government, including closing churches and church schools, did not change their minds. And it also didn’t keep bishops like Bertram from endorsing government actions they favored, such as opposition to communism and the subjugation of Poland.

If you imagine I am being too tough on these German bishops, then perhaps you should read the twenty-three-page report made public last May by Germany’s Council of Catholic Bishops in which they admitted “complicity” by their predecessors who did not do enough to oppose the rise of Nazi regime and its mistreatment of Jews.

In eighty or ninety years, will future U.S. bishops be submitting a similar document of their own, confessing the “complicity” of their predecessors who did not do enough to oppose the abortion regime?  Will Catholics of that time be as baffled about our present bishops and prominent Catholic politicians as we are about the accommodationist Catholics of Nazi Germany?

How could Catholics of that time have failed to understand the evil staring them in the face? And why did they “accommodate” a regime that had labeled Christianity, and Catholics in particular, as “enemies of the state”?  Was it perhaps because so many leaders of the regime had been raised Catholic and some were still rosary-carrying church-goers?

Who, in retrospect, would not look back in shame at a German bishop who called questioning the Catholic commitments of Catholic Nazi leaders “offensive because they constitute an assault on the meaning of what it is to be Catholic.” Because “being Catholic means loving the Church; being Catholic means participating in the sacramental life of the church; being a Catholic means trying to transform the world by the light of the Gospel”?

And yet those are the words of our own Bishop McElroy of San Diego about those who question Joe Biden’s Catholicism.

And we transform the world in the light of the Gospel how?  Is it not by opposing the killing of innocent human beings?

In retrospect, we would suspect that a bishop who had said about the treatment of Jews, as Bishop McElroy has about abortion, that “To reduce that magnificent, multidimensional gift of God’s love to a single question of public policy is repugnant and should have no place in public discourse” had little or no serious concern for the lives being lost.  “Sure, abortion is bad, but what about global warming!”  “Sure the ill-treatment of Jews is unfortunate, but what about the future of Europe!” Wouldn’t we consider that to be repugnant?

What would anyone say now about a Catholic politician as prominent as Mario Cuomo if, during the 1930s in Germany, he had said:  “I accept the Church’s teaching about Jews, but must I insist others do so?  Our public morality. . .the moral standards we maintain for everyone, not just the ones we insist on in our private lives – depends on a consensus view of right and wrong.  The values derived from religious belief will not and should not be accepted as part of the public morality unless they are shared by the pluralistic community at large by consensus.” That statement would have worked equally well for Catholic segregationists in the American South.

If that Catholic politician in 1930s Germany had available to him the “seamless garment” argument used by Mr. Cuomo, he might have said, “I grant that the treatment of Jews may have a unique significance but not a preemptive significance.”  “The Jewish question is an important issue for Catholics, but so is the question of the injustice of the reparation payments we have been forced to make along with all the resulting hunger and homelessness and joblessness, all the forces diminishing human life and threatening to destroy it.”

All the forces diminishing human life and threatening to destroy it?  Like . . . oh, I don’t know . . . abortion?

Who, in retrospect now, wouldn’t find such a “Catholic” politician either an obvious liar or a delusional hack?

If you find my comparison between the Catholics who enabled the Nazis and modern Catholics who enable abortion troubling, perhaps you should read Anne Applebaum’s article in The Atlantic titled “History Will Judge the Complicit.” Take out all the tendentious stuff about the numbers at Trump’s inauguration and a phone call with the Ukrainian ambassador and replace it with Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden’s support for abortion and for policies that result in the closure of faithful Catholic institutions, and then change the title to “On the Nature of Complicity: Abortion’s Catholic Enablers and the Judgment of History.”

That judgment is unlikely to be any kinder to them than it has been to their German predecessors.

COLUMN BY

Randall Smith

Randall B. Smith is a tenured Full Professor of Theology. His book Reading the Sermons of Thomas Aquinas: A Guidebook for Beginners is available from Emmaus Press. And his book Aquinas, Bonaventure, and the Scholastic Culture at Paris: Preaching, Prologues, and Biblical Commentary is due out from Cambridge University Press in the fall.

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.

10 Counties With Most COVID-19 Deaths Account for 22% of Fatalities but 11% of Population

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As Heritage Foundation researchers have demonstrated throughout the pandemic, the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S. has been heavily concentrated in a small number of states—and among a small number of counties within those states.

Heritage’s interactive graphic allows individuals to see more detail on these concentrations of COVID-19 among the counties with the most deaths as well as those with the fewest.

For instance, the graphic allows users to select data from the five counties with the most coronavirus-related deaths all the way up to the 50 counties with the most such deaths. It also allows visitors to select data from counties with zero deaths to counties with 10 deaths or fewer.

As of Oct. 12, the 10 counties with the most COVID-19 deaths account for 22.3% of all related deaths in the U.S. but only 11.2% of the population. The 30 counties with the most coronavirus deaths account for 37.4% of the related deaths in the U.S. and only 19.6% of the U.S. population.

How are socialists deluding a whole generation? Learn more now >>

Three of the five counties of New York City, one of the hardest-hit areas in the early stages of the pandemic, still account for three of the five U.S. counties with the most coronavirus deaths. New York City still has a disproportionate effect on the perceived COVID-19 experience in the U.S.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, New York City has a coronavirus death rate of 284 per 100,000; the rest of the state has a rate of 81 per 100,000. The average COVID-19 death rate for the entirety of the U.S. is roughly 65 per 100,000. (For more on how New York City skews COVID-19 data in the U.S., see this Heritage Backgrounder.)

This evidence suggests that as new locations in the U.S. experienced surges in COVID-19 cases throughout this pandemic, death rates remained lower.

Ultimately, several items could be at play, including a different, younger population being infected in many locations, such as Florida, during a surge in the disease. Additionally, better treatment and lessons learned from coping with the pandemic could be part of the lower death rates, including lessons learned in limiting exposure in vulnerable populations, such as the elderly.

Although still tragic, the outlook has improved over the past month.

As of Sept. 4, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation’s model projected that the U.S. would have 400,000 deaths from COVID-19 by Jan. 1, 2021. But as of now, the model has lowered its worst-case scenario to 338,735 deaths by Jan. 1, with its current projection 7% lower at 316,935 deaths.

Even so, to reach that new number by Jan. 1, the average daily death rate from COVID-19 would have to be roughly 1,300. The seven- and 14-day average death rates for the U.S. have not been that high since May 20.

The worst day prior to May 20 saw an average of roughly 2,200 deaths, a figure that falls to 1,659 if New York City is excluded. The worst day since May 20 was a seven-day average of 1,215 on Aug. 1.

Now that COVID-19 testing has increased dramatically and many state and local governments have relaxed stay-at-home orders, it is even more critical to study the trends in deaths along with cases.

To make studying these trends easier, The Heritage Foundation now has two interactive COVID-19 trackers. One tracks trends in cases, the other tracks trends in deaths.

The trackers describe whether the trend of cases—or deaths—is increasing or decreasing over the prior 14 days. They also provide a visual depiction of new cases—or deaths—during this time period.

These tools help put the concentrated nature of the pandemic in perspective with county-level data. They show just how difficult it can be to use only one metric to gauge whether a county—or state—is doing well.

Readers are invited to explore the information in the tracker and check back frequently for updates, as well as to explore the other visual tools on Heritage’s COVID-19 resources page.

COMMENTARY BY

Drew Gonshorowski

Drew Gonshorowski focuses his research and writing on the nation’s new health care law, including the repercussions for Medicare and Medicaid, as a policy analyst in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation. He also studies economic mobility and the Austrian school of economics.

Norbert Michel

Norbert Michel studies and writes about housing finance, including the reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as The Heritage Foundation’s research fellow in financial regulations. Read his research. Twitter: .

RELATED ARTICLE: How the Michigan Supreme Court Whacked Whitmer for COVID-19 Overreach

A Note for our Readers:

Democratic Socialists say, “America should be more like socialist countries such as Sweden and Denmark.” And millions of young people believe them…

For years, “Democratic Socialists” have been growing a crop of followers that include students and young professionals. America’s future will be in their hands.

How are socialists deluding a whole generation? One of their most effective arguments is that “democratic socialism” is working in Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Norway. They claim these countries are “proof” that socialism will work for America. But they’re wrong. And it’s easy to explain why.

Our friends at The Heritage Foundation just published a new guide that provides three irrefutable facts that debunks these myths. For a limited time, they’re offering it to readers of The Daily Signal for free.

Get your free copy of “Why Democratic Socialists Can’t Legitimately Claim Sweden and Denmark as Success Stories” today and equip yourself with the facts you need to debunk these myths once and for all.

GET YOUR FREE COPY NOW »

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

Here We Go Again: Cuomo, de Blasio Blame Jews for Jump in COVID-19 Cases

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Each year during the Jewish religious festival of Sukkot, New York City shuts down Kingston Avenue in Crown Heights to allow thousands of local residents the opportunity to safely celebrate in dance and song.

But this past week—under the guise of fighting COVID-19—New York City attempted to shut down this religious gathering by using physical intimidation, screeching sirens, and loud megaphones.

The display of force was jarring. The crowd refused to surrender their First Amendment religious liberties, and the police ultimately backed down.

Confrontations will continue so long as Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio target Jewish religious gatherings. Cuomo has limited religious gatherings to 10—regardless of indoor synagogue capacity and regardless of whether services are held outside—and shut down all schools (including the yeshivas used by many Jewish families) in so-called red zones encompassing Orthodox Jewish communities.

How are socialists deluding a whole generation? Learn more now >>

Cuomo, like de Blasio a Democrat, explicitly warned Monday: “I have to say to the Orthodox community tomorrow, if you’re not willing to live with these rules, then I’m going to close the synagogues.”

The governor said he intended to coopt local police to bar entry to local houses of prayer. Days later, the mayor cracked down on First Amendment freedom even more severely, limiting outdoor gatherings to five people, effectively outlawing Jewish prayer services (known as minyans) that require at least 10.

The governor’s visual presentation at his press conference distinctly conveyed the notion that Orthodox Jews are to blame for recent increases in COVID-19 cases.

As Omri Ceren, national security adviser to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, says: “After a summer of embracing riots in which people traveled from all over the country into New York and then mass-marched, Cuomo has discovered the real disease vector: Jews getting together to pray.”

Cuomo and de Blasio repeatedly suggested that jumps in COVID-19 cases stem from Jews praying together, eating together, learning together, and living together.

The Jew-blaming is becoming common across New York. On Tuesday, the nearby town of Newburgh announced closure of a park frequented by Orthodox Jewish families, so it could undergo “deep cleaning.”

This park contains more than 5 miles of hiking trails and a pond. Yet, city officials chose to exclude families from enjoying the beauty of the outdoors by closing acres to families in the middle of a Jewish holiday week.

A park ranger was unable to provide information regarding any prior closures and the rationale behind placing the entire grounds off-limits. A picture of Orthodox mothers with their children at the park accompanied the announcement. The very presence of Jewish children on a playground requires extreme sanitation, apparently.

In centuries past, governments placed blame for outbreaks of plagues and disease on the Jewish people. These accusations prejudiced society against their Jewish neighbors while deflecting anger and criticism away from those in power.

Using public health as an excuse to shut synagogues, stifle community gatherings, close yeshivas (religious schools), and chase Jews from public spaces is nothing new.

Numerous members of the New York City Council and State Assembly representing these communities condemned the governor’s orders as “unilateral” and “irresponsible.” They assured the governor of their intent to “worship freely … without his interference.”

Agudath Israel—one of the nation’s most prominent Jewish advocacy organizations—filed a lawsuit to block the orders. But a federal judge refused Friday to grant a temporary restraining order against the state.

The prayer services, shared meals, and outdoor singing of Jews in the streets of New York over the past several weeks commemorate a series of religious holidays comprising the beginning of the Jewish new year. This unbroken tradition began 3,000 years ago.

The weeklong holiday of Sukkot, which ends Friday evening, commemorates the encampments of Jews during their 40 years wandering in the desert after their exodus from Egypt en route to the Promised Land.

Jews construct temporary shelters in their yards, on their balconies, and in parks to recall the experience of their ancestors thousands of years ago. Gathering with family and friends within the confines of these structures to eat and to drink over eight days is an essential religious observance.

During this week, the ancient and sacred Simchas Beis Hashoeiva celebration occurs—a night filled with dancing and song. So joyous an experience was this in Jerusalem in ancient times that the sages say one who has not seen the celebration “never saw celebration in his life.”

The festival of Simchas Torah immediately follows Sukkot. This commemorates the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people and involves jubilant singing and dancing with Torah scrolls.

Although the nature of today’s persecution at the hands of New York City does not threaten one’s life, it certainly infringes the ability to live freely and practice one’s faith. Blaming Jews for New York City’s current state of misery is but a modern permutation of the age-old practice of blaming societal problems on the Jews.

New York City lies in shambles. Thousands of restaurants, bars, theaters, and stores are permanently shuttered. More than 400,000 residents have fled. Crime is soaring and drug-addicted vagrants are displacing tourists.

Many elderly residents died from COVID-19, largely due to Cuomo’s forcing assisted living centers to accept COVID-positive patients from local hospitals early in the crisis.

Although some precautions with mass gatherings are warranted given the continuing hazards of the new coronavirus, draconian edicts shutting down these important community observances are an affront to human dignity.

If public health were at issue, the government would curtail even the politically favored Black Lives Matter block parties. But it’s not about health or safety.

Blaming the Jews for the crisis neatly transfers blame for the sad state of affairs to a minority population all too familiar with such libel.

In New York City, crowding into Washington Square Park this past summer for a dance party is fine so long as it celebrates a left-wing political cause. But dancing and singing outdoors in celebration of a religious tradition invites criminal sanction.

Americans must not tolerate criminalization and prohibition of religious observances. Many thousands will choose to attend their synagogues, eat meals together, and dance during this season of religious festivals. Lawyers from across the nation stand ready to defend the Jewish community of New York City against this affront to their freedom.

A Note for our Readers:

Democratic Socialists say, “America should be more like socialist countries such as Sweden and Denmark.” And millions of young people believe them…

For years, “Democratic Socialists” have been growing a crop of followers that include students and young professionals. America’s future will be in their hands.

How are socialists deluding a whole generation? One of their most effective arguments is that “democratic socialism” is working in Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Norway. They claim these countries are “proof” that socialism will work for America. But they’re wrong. And it’s easy to explain why.

Our friends at The Heritage Foundation just published a new guide that provides three irrefutable facts that debunks these myths. For a limited time, they’re offering it to readers of The Daily Signal for free.

Get your free copy of “Why Democratic Socialists Can’t Legitimately Claim Sweden and Denmark as Success Stories” today and equip yourself with the facts you need to debunk these myths once and for all.

GET YOUR FREE COPY NOW »

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

We Must Return to Normal as Soon as Possible

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All of us are trying to get used to the “new normal.” For some, it may be that be your company issued a work-from-home extension to 2021. Or it could be changing the majority of your medical appointments to use telemedicine or increasing the number of delivery services you use.

Many aspects of our lives have drastically changed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some changes are for the better, but many changes cannot be sustainable in the long term.

One area where a “new normal” has not been successful is the virtual education that many school districts are using. Keeping students behind a laptop and away from the socialization of a classroom is not working for students or parents.

What’s the best way for America to reopen and return to business? The National Coronavirus Recovery Commission, a project of The Heritage Foundation, assembled America’s top thinkers to figure that out. So far, it has made more than 260 recommendations. Learn more here.

How are socialists deluding a whole generation? Learn more now >>

As a father with a young kindergartener, I have experienced firsthand the difficulties so many parents are facing as we try to assist our kids with virtual learning.

This shift to virtual education is incredibly difficult on our young ones, who deserve access to in-person education, and on their parents or guardians who must act as a caretaker while juggling their own full-time jobs.

Relying on virtual learning is having a dramatic impact on the economy’s ability to rebound. During a recent hearing hosted by the Joint Economic Committee, on which I serve as the senior House Republican member, I asked economist Austan Goolsbee if schools and day care closures are a barrier to our economic growth. He replied, “100%.”

Across the country, unemployment remains well above the 50-year lows recorded earlier this year. Entire economic sectors are still unable to safely reopen or return to full capacity. Without schools opening, many parents, particularly those in low-income households, are unable to return to full-time jobs.

Right now, lower-income parents are expressing more concern about their children potentially falling behind those in higher-income groups. Parents who are fortunate enough to have the option to work from home are placed in an impossible situation: to simultaneously work while providing full-time child care.

It should be a top priority nationally to allow children to return to in-person learning, as many parents are not able to stay at home and help their children access online learning full-time.

Only 16.2% of Hispanic workers and 19.7% of black workers can telework, making it nearly impossible for many parents to stay at home daily. Too many parents, especially mothers, are being forced to choose between staying employed and supporting their child’s education.

We cannot expect parents to adapt to this new normal, where the choice comes down to providing for your family financially or assisting your children as they try to learn online in a home setting.

Another recent study shows that 14% of households with children had food insecurity in 2018, well before the pandemic erupted. Today, children who depended on school meals are unable to receive them in communities across the country.

There are some bright spots, however. Some schools have managed to reopen their doors for a safe return of in-person learning—not only for their students, but for faculty. Just one week after my daughter started hybrid learning, we noticed a stark difference in her happiness being with her peers at school.

We are encouraged to see that the administration is deploying 150 million Abbott BinaxNOW rapid COVID-19 tests to states. States across the country must prioritize making these tests readily available in our schools, to help protect students and educators.

If schools continue to stay closed, we will see long-term side effects. Although we don’t have an accurate prediction of the societal damage caused by COVID-19, our top priority needs to be making sure that we do not continue to damage our country following the mass shutdown of the economy.

Children need to be able to return to their pre-COVID-19 learning environments immediately to ensure that we can educate our youth and support our labor force, both financially and mentally.

Even amid our differences, all Americans are hoping to return to normal following the global pandemic. Many of us never have experienced times like this, and although we have overcome many of the challenges brought upon us in 2020, reopening schools for America’s children is the most important step we need to take.

COMMENTARY BY

David Schweikert

Rep. David Schweikert, a Republican who represents Arizona’s 6th Congressional District, is a member of the House Ways and Means Committee. He is the senior House Republican on the Joint Economic Committee. Twitter: .

RELATED ARTICLE: How a DC Court Sided With a Church That Wants to Meet, Not the Mayor

A Note for our Readers:

Democratic Socialists say, “America should be more like socialist countries such as Sweden and Denmark.” And millions of young people believe them…

For years, “Democratic Socialists” have been growing a crop of followers that include students and young professionals. America’s future will be in their hands.

How are socialists deluding a whole generation? One of their most effective arguments is that “democratic socialism” is working in Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Norway. They claim these countries are “proof” that socialism will work for America. But they’re wrong. And it’s easy to explain why.

Our friends at The Heritage Foundation just published a new guide that provides three irrefutable facts that debunks these myths. For a limited time, they’re offering it to readers of The Daily Signal for free.

Get your free copy of “Why Democratic Socialists Can’t Legitimately Claim Sweden and Denmark as Success Stories” today and equip yourself with the facts you need to debunk these myths once and for all.

GET YOUR FREE COPY NOW »

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

The Double Cover-up of the Contaminated Blood Supply

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What is the double conspiracy coverup? It’s the massive concealment of the agenda for world government’s deception regarding the contaminated blood supply and vaccines discovered by Dr. Judy Mikovits who was a high-level researcher who worked in the government program to combat AIDS.

In the course of her work to combat AIDS, she discovered that our blood supply from healthy donors was contaminated with disease causing retroviruses from mice and monkeys and that the source was in vaccines given to infants and young people.

When she reported this to her superiors, it caused great concern with the vaccine industry and also the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  The concern was not about the fact that the blood supply was contaminated. No! And heavens no, not at all, but that this fact had to be covered up to prevent the public from learning the truth.

As I reported in my article of July 25th, 2020, “The Coverup of the Contaminated Blood Supply and Vaccines,” we can immediately see why, at least from the perspective of the vaccine industry and the (CDC), that this discovery had to be silenced for it led to all the warnings over the past several years by many scientists, medical experts, pharmacists, including Robert Kennedy, Jr., of the dangers of vaccines.

The late Alan Stang discussed in one of his books that one man whose name could not be revealed, had been high up in the American medical establishment, and after retirement gave a very secretive interview to one that he could trust. He stated that if he had children that could not avoid being vaccinated, he would move to another country where vaccination was not compulsory. He also stated that there was no doubt in his mind that vaccines being given to infants as well as other young children were definitely the cause of autism.

He went on to reveal why he could not risk going public with what he knew because of the power and money behind these vaccines. If he went public with the information this power would come down on him in such a way that it would affect not only his retirement but very possibly his life.

And after the way Dr. Mikovits has been persecuted, and continues to be harassed and tormented as a result of her exposing the contamination of the blood supply, I have no problem believing that this man had a valid reason for fearing to go public with what he knew.

Yesterday I listened for over an hour to an interview by Thomas Paine and Dr. Mikovits.  It is well worth hearing. It is almost unbelievable that something like this could happen without the appropriate consequences and especially in America.

Dr. Mikovits reveals how the day after she told her superiors that she was going public with her discovery her house was surrounded by a Gestapo swat team much the same way as happened with Roger Stone when he was arrested. I can’t begin to describe how it all went down; you need to go to listen to the above interview.

It’s all in Mikovits’ book, “The Plague of Corruption,” with a forward by Robert Kennedy Jr.  On the Amazon website, her accomplishments are noted, that, “She uncovered decades old secrets that many would have preferred to stay buried.”

While listening to the interview, I understood her to say that she and Dr. Frank Ruscetti isolated something about the HIV-AIDS disease which changed the treatment and saved millions of lives. Their discovery would have saved many more had it not been for Dr. Anthony Fauci who delayed the publishing of the paper six months so that a his protégé Robert Gallo replicate, publish and claim credit.  She also discussed the fact that millions of people were walking around with retroviruses in their blood which could, at any time, result in the onset of some disease like cancer, diabetes or many others.

In addition, she disclosed that one company had contacted them with an offer to purify the contaminated blood supply, but no action was taken. So, this suggests to me the possibility that the vaccines which had been used and resulted in the blood supply becoming contaminated, could have been purposefully formulated to cause the contamination, something very similar to the cancer causing polio vaccine of the 1960s from the SV-40 monkey virus.

Remember that two of the people involved in all this are Dr. Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates, both of whom are very heavily connected with United Nation’s goal of population control and reduction. This is, no doubt, why Dr. Fauci serves as the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). See my article of June 20th, 2020, The Destructive Coronavirus Agenda.  Fauci has been closely connected to the World Health Organization (WHO) for many years and is a good friend of the Director, Dr. Tedros Adhanom whose main advisor is none other than Dr. Ezekiel Immanuel, the man that included “death panels” in Obamacare.  As well, Dr. Tedros Adhanom is a mouthpiece for his friend, Xi Jinping, the leader of China.

Then there’s Bill Gates who throughout his entire career has been obsessed with the idea that the human population needs to be drastically reduced and that any means to this end is acceptable, including the creation of vaccines to sterilize people that he offers to them as a defense against disease. Gates saw the potential for using vaccines for yet another hidden purpose. He wants to use them to inject microchips and data tattoos into the skin that, besides pushing pharmaceutical concoctions into the blood stream, also embed digital data that can be read by scanners to identify every person on the planet.

Thus, it becomes obviously apparent how all this plays into the agenda for the New World Order, i.e., world government, for it exposes the possibility that Coved-19 was purposely developed and turned loose to give another opportunity to the eugenicists of the world.

©J.W. Bryan. All rights reserved.