After Nationalists’ Surprise Showing in Germany, is Austria Next?

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With days to go before the balloting in the parliamentary elections, the issue of immigration dominates political debate. In 2015, as Germany’s Merkel was admitting refugees from Syria, whose ranks would reach one million, Austria received 90,000 asylum requests. In 2016, that number was 42,000. Inarguably, this flood of immigrants played into the hands of the Freedom Party. Its longtime charges that a tide of non-European Muslims will drain the welfare system, cost Austrian jobs, and drown the culture clearly resonate more than ever.

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By John Gizzi

Freedom Party (FPO) leader Heinz-Christian Strache (left) and Sebastian Kurz of the People’s Party, OVP

The defeats of nationalist leaders Marine LePen of France and Geert Wilders of the Netherlands earlier this year afforded evidence that nationalism—also known as right-wing populism—was running out of steam in Europe.

But this attitude began to change on the evening of September 24. That’s when German voters, as widely predicted, re-elected Chancellor Angela Merkel and her CDU-CSU (conservative) Party. But in a surprise move, voters gave an unexpectedly high 13.4 % of the vote to the Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party—which emphasizes a hardline on illegal immigration, an exit from the European Union, a revisionist (and more positive) narrative of Germany’s Nazi past, and a closer relationship with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Making the AfD showing all the more impressive is that the party is barely four years old—the “baby” of the nationalist parties that now bewilder political prognosticators and alter the political playing field of Europe.

All eyes are now increasingly focusing on neighboring Austria and its national elections October 15.

As it was in Germany, an escalating migration and refugee crisis, relations with Eastern European neighbors such as Hungary, and a national government that seems distant and aloof from the people are major factors setting the stage for the political drama now unfolding in neighboring Austria.

And the beneficiary is the Freedom Party (FPO), the voice of Austrian nationalism for more than a generation. According to a just-completed Unique Research/Haute and Austrian TV poll, the Freedom Party is drawing a strong 25 percent of the vote—not far behind the two major parties, the center-right OVP (People’s Party) being at 34 percent and the center-left SPO (Social Democratic Party) 27 percent.

Haider’s Legacy Today

If the five-year-old AfD is the “baby” of European nationalist parties, then the Austrian Freedom Party is surely their “father.”

Founded first in 1949 as VdU (Verband der Unabhangigen) and renamed in 1955 as FPO (Freedom Party) by onetime Minister of Agriculture and former SS officer Anton Reinthaller, the Freedom Party was initially a vehicle for former Nazis to reintegrate into the postwar political system. Seemingly doomed to single-digits in national elections, the FPO evolved into a party with two strands: near-libertarian, small-government party akin to Germany’s small Free Democratic Party, and a second strand of hard-core extreme members with much nostalgia for the German “Third Reich” of the Nazis.

If the Freedom Party had a defining moment, it was in 1986 when the charismatic (and controversial) Jorg Haider took over as its leader. Haider moved the FPO to its present status as a hard-liner on illegal immigration, a booster of a positive redefinition of Austria’s Nazi past, a proponent of more direct democracy such as U.S.-style initiatives, and an advocate of breaking up the state-run TV monopoly.

In 1989, the FPO scored big in state elections in Carinthia and made Haider governor. Haider became a more turbulent public figure with each passing year. In 1999, the FPO reached its high point in a national election (27.7 percent of the vote) and actually placed second in number of parliamentary seats.

The third place OVP agreed to a coalition with the FPO but Haider—who under normal circumstances would have become chancellor—abjured a role in government amid widespread international censure. Haider also stepped aside following the threat of sanctions by the European Union against the Austrian government over the participation of an extreme-right party in a Western EU member-state.

Among Haider’s incendiary actions and statements were to greet former Waffen-SS as “decent comrades” and to praise the Hitler government for a “decent employment policy” in a television interview.

(During an interview with this reporter in December 1994, Haider insisted his remarks about employment were in jest and were subsequently twisted by “the state-owned TV network.” He likened his tough stand on illegal immigration to that of California’s then-Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, who had just won a landslide re-election after embracing an initiative to deny state services to non-citizens).

Haider would finally break with the FPO in 2004 and launch an insurgent party (BZO) of its own. In 2008, he died from injuries in an automobile crash.

Nearly a decade later, much of the agenda sculpted by Haider lives on in the present FPO leader, Heinz-Christian Strache. Under Strache, the old Haider insurgents of the BZO have come back to the FPO and, in an effort to shed its identification with Nazi sympathizers the party has had a major outreach to the extreme right in Israel (although Strache and his party have never been welcomed by the Netanyahu government).

Strache has also studied and praised the American “Tea Party” movement and considers as “good friends” France’s LePen, the Netherlands’ Wilders, and German AfD leader Frauke Petry.

Strache also brought his party closer to Putin. In December, he went to Moscow to sign a cooperation agreement with Putin’s United Russia Party and vow its opposition to Western sanctions against Russia over its actions in Ukraine.

A “shoulder-to-shoulder” relationship between Vienna and Moscow, said Strache, would help bring peace to Syria.

Can Sebastian Kurz Stop the Freedom Party?

There is a sidebar in modern Austrian history that works to the advantage of “outsider” candidates and parties: the incestuous nature of the two major parties.

For 44 of the past 72 years, Austria has been governed by a “grand coalition” of the Social Democrats and the People’s Party. For much of that time, the party chieftains divided patronage at the federal, state and local level through a system called “Proporz.”

“It was a recipe for corruption and nepotism,” observed columnist Tony Barber of the Financial Times, “[T]his political establishment looked tired and out of ideas.”

That’s what the voters appeared to be saying. In the parliamentary elections of 2013, the major parties got an aggregate total of 50 percent of all votes cast—down from 79 percent cast for the “Big Two” parties in 2002.

Earlier this year, nominees for the ceremonial office of president of Austria failed to even make the run-off. The top vote-getter in the first round of the race (35.1 percent) was Freedom Party nominee Norbert Hofer, with Alexander van der Bellen of the Green Party placing second with 21.3 percent. (In a subsequent run-off that had to be re-run because of irregularities in the casting of some ballots, van der Bellen narrowly staved off Hofer.)

With days to go before the balloting in the parliamentary elections, the issue of immigration dominates political debate. In 2015, as Germany’s Merkel was admitting refugees from Syria, whose ranks would reach one million, Austria received 90,000 asylum requests. In 2016, that number was 42,000.

Inarguably, this flood of immigrants played into the hands of the Freedom Party. Its longtime charges that a tide of non-European Muslims will drain the welfare system, cost Austrian jobs, and drown the culture clearly resonate more than ever.

Aware of this, the People’s Party turned to a different kind of leader in this election: Sebastian Kurz, foreign minister and former immigration minister, and 30 years old.

Kurz endorses most of Strache’s anti-immigration agenda and is regarded by many commentators as the “soft-spoken Strache” who has moved the OVP considerably to the right of the political spectrum.

Kurz eschews the labels of “left” or “right” and makes statements designed to appeal to different political factions in a populist manner. As immigration minister, he targeted “people smugglers” and tried to reduce economic incentive for refugees to “flood” Austria. He favors U.S.-style tax cuts as well as increased public spending to jump-start Austria’s moribund economy.

But Kurz also eschews the tough, beer-hall rhetoric on immigrants that is a staple of Strache’s rallies. Moreover, he is a strong booster of the European Union, in sharp contrast to the Eurosceptic Freedom Party.

Given the People’s Party’s first-place showing in the polls at this time, the nomination of the “Austrian Macron” appears to have been a shrewd move. But a “Chancellor Kurz” may be forced to form a coalition with the Freedom Party rather than his party’s traditional ally, the Social Democrats headed by outgoing Chancellor Christian Kern.

“In this way, an extreme right-wing party which endorses xenophobic, nativist and anti-EU rhetoric would become part of the Austrian government again – a government which would probably move Austria closer to the ever more authoritarian policies of [Prime Minister] Victor Orban of Hungary,” says social scientist Ruth Wodak, professor at Lancaster University, UK, and author of “The Politics of Fear. What Right Wing Populist Discourses Mean.”

The Freedom Party sharing power after eleven years will be a much-reported story from Austria—and a defining moment in the saga of whether nationalism is here to stay in Europe or is just a passing fad.

John Gizzi

John Gizzi is the White House correspondent and chief political columnist for Newsmax. He is also a contributor to SFPPR News & Analysis of the conservative-online-journalism center at the Washington-based Selous Foundation for Public Policy Research..

Department of Health and Human Services: ‘Life Begins at Conception’

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In a stunning turn of events President Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has declared that life begins at conception.

The 2018-2022 DHHS draft strategic plan reads:

Mission Statement

The mission of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is to enhance the health and well-being of Americans, by providing for effective health and human services and by fostering sound, sustained advances in the sciences underlying medicine, public health, and social services.

Organizational Structure

HHS accomplishes its mission through programs and initiatives that cover a wide spectrum of activities, serving and protecting Americans at every stage of life, beginning at conception.

Readers may share their thoughts on each part of the draft strategic plan.

Download the HHS DRAFT Strategic Plan FY 2018 – 2022 – PDF

The Federalist’s Harvest Prude reports:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) just released their 2018-2022 plan, which unequivocally states that life begins at conception and deserves protection. In the introduction it says,

“HHS accomplishes its mission through programs and initiatives that cover a wide spectrum of activities, serving and protecting Americans at every stage of life, beginning at conception.”

The draft mentions conception five times total. The overwhelmingly pro-life stance in the draft is welcome news to many.

The debate over the personhood of unborn children has been a central issue of the abortion debate. Ever since Roe v. Wade in 1973, pro-life advocates have been trying to establish constitutionally protected rights for the unborn. In the ruling’s majority opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun wrote that Roe v. Wade would collapse if “the fetus is a person.”

In support of the HHS’s draft, author and bioethics expert Wesley J. Smith wrote, “life ‘beginning at conception’ … is a fact of basic biological science.”

Read more.

Should the United States Military Academy at West Point Remain Open?

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I am a graduate of the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) at Washington University, in St. Louis, Missouri. I graduated in July 1967 and because I received one of the first full two year ROTC scholarships I was given a Regular Army commission and had a four year service obligation, the same as graduates of the United State Military Academy at West Point.

I served in peace time and in combat with many officers, subordinates, colleagues and superiors, who graduated from West Point. They, to a man, were always fine officers and gentlemen. I retired from the U.S. Army in 1990 as a Lieutenant Colonel (LTC).

It saddened me to receive a copy of a letter from LTC Robert M. Heffington, U.S. Army (Retired). A sworn statement by Colonel Heffington has been referenced in multiple publications dealing with former West Point Cadet, and now U.S. Army Lieutenant Spenser Rapone. In a Breitbart column titled “West Point Launches Investigation over Its Handling of Communist Soldier” Kristina Wong reports:

 [I]t was unclear whether West Point was aware of his activity as a student until the Daily Caller on Wednesday published a sworn statement from a then-West Point history professor, which mentioned Rapone’s anti-U.S. and pro-communist views.

Retired Army Lieutenant Col. Robert M. Heffington gave the statement after a tense encounter with Rapone, whom he said had a “serious problem with military authority figures.”

Heffington said he shared his misgivings about Rapone with three close friends and colleagues, and one of them showed him Rapone’s Facebook page, which contained a number of anti-military, anti-government, pro-communist, and pro-Muslim posts stemming back to 2014. Read more.

West Point has produced former presidents, numerous corporate executives and officers of the highest caliber who have held the highest positions in our military and Department of Defense. I have only the highest respect for graduates of West Point. However, West Point is under intense scrutiny for admitting, graduating and commissioning someone like Spencer Rapone.

QUESTION: Is Spenser Rapone an anomaly or endemic of something bigger?

That is the question raised and answered by LTC Heffington in his letter.

LTC Heffington’s letter begins with,

Before you read any further, please understand that the following paragraphs come from a place of intense devotion and loyalty to West Point. My experience as a cadet had a profound impact upon who I am and upon the course of  my life, and I remain forever grateful that I have the opportunity to be a part of the Long Gray Line. I firmly believe West Point is a national treasure and that it can and should remain a vitally important source of well trained,  disciplined, highly educated Army officers and civilian leaders.

LTC Heffington then writes, “However, during my time on the West Point faculty (2006-2009 and again from 2013-2017), I personally witnessed a series of fundamental changes at West Point that have eroded it to the point where I question whether the institution should even remain open.”

Here are the reasons that, sadly, LTC Heffington questions whether West Point should remain open:

  • First and foremost, standards at West Point are nonexistent. They exist on paper, but nowhere else. The senior administration at West Point inexplicably refuses to enforce West Point’s publicly touted high standards on cadets, and, having picked up on this, cadets refuse to enforce standards on each other. The Superintendent refuses to enforce admissions standards or the cadet Honor Code, the Dean refuses to enforce academic standards, and the Commandant refuses to enforce standards of conduct and discipline. The end result is a sort of malaise that pervades the entire institution. Nothing matters anymore. Cadets know this, and it has given rise to a level of cadet arrogance and entitlement the likes of which West Point has never seen in its history.
  • The cadet honor code has become a laughingstock. Cadets know they will not be separated for violating it, and thus they do so on a daily basis. Moreover, since they refuse to enforce standards on each other and police their own ranks, cadets will rarely find a cadet at an honor hearing despite overwhelming evidence that a violation has occurred. This in turn has caused the staff and faculty to give up even reporting honor incidents.
  • Academic standards are also nonexistent. I believe this trend started approximately ten years ago, and it has continued to get worse. West Point has stated standards for academic expectations and performance, but they are ignored. Cadets routinely fail multiple classes and they are not separated at the end-of-semester Academic Boards. Their professors recommend “Definitely Separate,” but those recommendations are totally disregarded.
  • Even the curriculum itself has suffered. The plebe American History course has been revamped to focus completely on race and on the narrative that America is founded solely on a history of racial oppression. Cadets derisively call it the “I Hate America Course.”
  • Conduct and disciplinary standards are in perhaps the worst shape of all. Cadets are jaded, cynical, arrogant, and entitled. They routinely talk back to and snap at their instructors (military and civilian alike), challenge authority, and openly refuse to follow regulations. They are allowed to wear civilian clothes in almost any arena outside the classroom, and they flaunt that privilege.

LTC Heffington ended his letter writing:

It breaks my heart to write this. It breaks my heart to know first-hand what West Point was versus what it has become. This is not a “Corps has” story; it is meant to highlight a deliberate and radical series of changes being undertaken at the highest levels of USMA’s leadership that are detrimental to the institution. Criticizing these changes is not popular. I have already been labeled a “traitor” by some at the Academy due to my sworn statement’s appearance in the media circus surrounding Spenser Rapone. However, whenever I hear this, I am reminded of the Cadet Prayer:

“…suffer not our hatred of hypocrisy and pretense ever to diminish.

Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong,

and never to be content with a half-truth when the whole can be won.

…that scorns to compromise with vice and injustice, and knows no

fear when truth and right are in jeopardy.”

West Point was once special, and it can be again. Spenser Rapone never should have been admitted, much less graduate, but he was—and that mistake is directly attributable to the culture of permissiveness and apathy that now exists there.

It hurts me to publish this as a retired Army officer as much as it saddened LTC Heffington who wrote this letter. LTC Heffington is truly an officer and a gentleman. He is doing what his training, oath and rank require – to tell the truth.

Duty, honor, country!

RELATED DOCUMENTS:

Letter from LTC Robert M. Heffington, U.S. Army (Retired)

Letter from Commandant of the USMA at West Point.

What Trump Told Congress He Wants to See on Immigration

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Before granting legal status to illegal immigrants who entered the country as minors, President Donald Trump wants to push enhanced border security, interior enforcement, and move toward a merit-based legal immigration system.

At this point, Democrats would be blamed if an amnesty isn’t enacted, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a pro-border security think tank.

“It’s the opening bid, the president is going to aim high, but I’m skeptical of whether Democrats will negotiate and come up with a counteroffer,” Krikorian told The Daily Signal. “They just expected Trump to sign an amnesty bill. The ball is now in the Democrats’ court.”

Trump is working with Congress on a legislative fix to the Obama-era executive action granting temporary legal status to illegal immigrants who came to the country as children, the policy known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.

Trump’s letter outlines 70 principles for any immigration legislation. This includes the completion of a border wall, which was the cornerstone of his 2016 presidential campaign. However, he indicated that it would not be part of the deal with Congress on codifying the Obama-era DACA policy.

Trump asked the administration to conduct a review and provide recommendations.

“Rather than asking what policies are supported by special interests, we asked America’s law enforcement professionals to identify reforms that are vital to protect the national interest,” Trump said in the letter. “In response, they identified dangerous loopholes, outdated laws, and easily exploited vulnerabilities in our immigration system—current policies that are harming our country and our communities.”

Trump’s principles on immigration—presented in a letter to Congress Sunday—are solid enough, but this still poses the problem of trading amnesty up front for the promise of stronger enforcement maybe later down the road, said David Inserra, a homeland security policy analyst with The Heritage Foundation.

“Amnesty is one and done, but enforcement measures still require annual appropriation, annual policy, and adjustments to the policy,” Inserra told The Daily Signal. “We should enforce our laws first and foremost.”

Trump’s letter to Congress calls for closing loopholes on illegal immigrants to make deportations easier, and to fund another 370 immigration judges to expedite court cases.

Trump also asserted the need to cut off federal funding to sanctuary states and cities, which are jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. California recently became a sanctuary state. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., denounced Trump’s plans.

Trump also calls for cracking down on visa overstays, which the letter says account for 40 percent of all illegal immigration.

“The administration therefore proposes strengthening the removal processes for those who overstay or otherwise violate the terms of their visas, and implementing measures to prevent future visa overstays which may account for a growing percentage of illegal immigration,” the letter says.

The proposal would also debar any company that doesn’t use E-Verify from qualifying for federal contracts. E-Verify is an electronic system for employers to determine the legal status of employees.

UnidosUS, a Hispanic rights group formerly known as the National Council of La Raza, blasted Trump’s principles.

“President Trump has gone back on a promise to support a clean bill and instead is now seeking to sabotage legislation aimed at giving these young people a chance for a stable and prosperous future by loading the bill with unpopular and controversial measures,” said Janet Murguía, president of UnidosUS, in a statement. “Sending these so-called ‘conditions’ to Congress is simply a way to stop the bipartisan effort behind a clean DREAM bill.”

Portrait of Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal. Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

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SEIU Community Organizer behind the anti-woman “Women’s March to the Polls” in Chicago

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There will be a Woman’s March to the Polls in Chicago, Illinois on October 11th, 2017. Is the march about protecting mothers and their children from the gang violence in Chicago? Is the march focused on eliminating the growing number of murders on Chicago’s streets? Is the march’s mission to restore the family and help create jobs for women?

Jaquie Algee

As of October 10th, 2017 Chicago had a total 530 murders, 8 murders since October 1st, according to DNAInfo.com. Is not the murder rate in Chicago a woman’s issue? Does the Woman’s March to the Polls care about Chicago’s murder rate and its impact on women, families and neighborhoods?

QUESTION: What does The Women’s March to the Polls have to do with helping women?

The organizer of the march is Jaquie Algee the Vice President/Director of External Relations for The Service Employees International Union Healthcare Illinois/Indiana/Missouri/Kansas (SEIU HCIIMK).

The Woman’s March to the Polls (WMC) website describes its mission as follows:

WMC is an organization advocating for women’s rights, promoting intersectional feminism, and challenging the political system regarding issues affecting women. WMC brings together women and allies in support of reproductive justice, LGBTQ+ rights, immigrant rights, affordable childcare, racial justice, access for persons with disabilities, environmental protection, voting rights, and active citizenship, and other critical issues.

Let’s look at three of the missions of the Women’s March to the Polls.

The first is promoting “intersectional feminism.”

What is intersectional feminism and is it good for women? USA Today’s Alia E. Dastagir defines intersectional feminism thusly:

A white woman is penalized by her gender but has the advantage of race. A black woman is disadvantaged by her gender and her race. A Latina lesbian experiences discrimination because of her ethnicity, her gender and her sexual orientation.

Intersectionality has received increased attention in part due to how the Women’s March on Washington came together.

So does it help a white woman to hate herself because she is white? Does it help a black woman to hate anyone who is not black? Does being a lesbian help women and promote traditional families? Do LGBTQ+ rights help women, fathers, mothers and children?

Here are ten truths about the LGBTQ+ agenda. Here’s a pediatricians take on LGBTQ+.

Of course affordable childcare helps women and is a priority of the Trump administration as is equal justice under the law.

The second is advancing “reproductive justice.”

Reproductive justice are code words for abortion on demand. Is the act of a woman aborting her unborn child good for her health?

According to the Illinois Department of Health in 2015 there were a total of 39,856 abortions of which 25,809 were by unmarried women. Girls under the age of 14-years old accounted for 82 abortions, with girls between the ages of 14-17 years old aborting 1,144 babies. Chicago is in Cook County, which accounted for 22,892 or 64.7% of all abortions in Illinois. Abortion is the inextricable outcome of “reproductive justice.”

Why do underage girls and women abort their babies?

The Federalist’s Greg Scandlen has an answer in an article titled “How Many Women Are Pressured Into Abortions?” Scandlen reported:

One study from the pro-life side reported, “In a national study of women, 64% of those who aborted felt pressured to do so by others. This pressure can become violent. 65% suffered symptoms of trauma. In the year following an abortion, suicide rates are 6-7 times higher.“ See also this report from “Clinic Quotes.”

But even the pro-choice side is beginning to wake up to the issue. An article in The Daily Beast is headlined, “Coerced Abortions: A New Study Shows They’re Common.” The article is based largely on information from the Guttmacher Institute (a pro-abortion research center) but raises the topic of “reproductive coercion.” This is an interesting twist on the concept. Rather than looking at women who are coerced into having an abortion, it looks at women who are coerced or tricked first into getting pregnant, then also coerced into aborting the baby, identified as “reproductive control.”

Reproductive justice is a form of “reproductive control” and “reproductive coercion.”

Thirdly is futhering “environmental protection.”

How does environmental protection help women? Alex Epstein in “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels” writes:

What does it mean to be moral?

This is an involved philosophical question, but for our purposes I will say: an activity is moral if it is fundamentally beneficial to human life.

By that standard, is the fossil fuel industry moral? The answer to that question is a resounding yes. By producing the most abundant, affordable, reliable energy in the world, the fossil fuel industry makes every other industry more productive—and it makes every individual more productive and thus more prosperous, giving him a level of opportunity to pursue happiness that previous generations couldn’t even dream of. Energy, the fuel of technology, is opportunity—the opportunity to use technology to improve every aspect of life. Including our environment.

Any animal’s environment can be broken down into two categories: threats and resources. (For human beings, “resources” includes a broad spectrum of things, including natural beauty.)

Epstein notes, “To assess the fossil fuel industry’s impact on our environment, we simply need to ask: What is its impact on threats? What is its impact on resources? The moral case against fossil fuels argues that the industry makes our environment more threatening and our resources more scarce.”

With scarce natural resources comes higher prices for food, home heating, gasoline and all other products used by women to sustain human life.

Perhaps the Women’s March to the Polls is all about politics and little to do with the life, liberty and happiness of women?  Or is this march just another a get out the vote to reelect Democrats to continue to lead Chicago on the same path that it is headed? You be the judge.

RELATED ARTICLES:

California Can Now Jail People for Misusing Gender Pronouns

When It Comes to Cost of Living, Red States Win

EDITORS NOTE: The feature image is of Colette Gregory, right, with her mentee Sara Phillips, 27 from the January 20th, 2017 Women’s March on Chicago. Photo by WTTW PBS channel in Chicago.

Football Will Perish from the Earth

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By 2050, the National Football League (NFL) will be like the Barnum and Bailey Circus of today. Bankrupt, closed, irrelevant, morally passe.

In the early 20th century, the circus was all the rage. After a century of the product’s consumption by a culture increasingly sensitive to the abuse of the weak and helpless—in this case, circus animals—the “Greatest Show on Earth” has been relegated to an empty sideshow. It is simply too brutish for sophisticated moderns who wince at the crack of a whip on an elephant’s rump.

Football as Bloodsport

The parallels of football and Roman gladiatorial games have been noted before.

Football will soon follow. Its massive billion dollar stadiums and marketing machines seem immortal for now. But these titanic playpens will soon crumble under the same cultural force that killed the circus: our culture’s growing concern for victims.

I am not judging football’s coming demise as a good or bad thing. I see it as simply a symptom of larger social forces that we should understand.

The parallels of football and Roman gladiatorial games have been noted before. In the Colosseum, the Roman emperor would have a grand procession into the arena to the standing ovation of the assembled masses. Today, our U.S. Defense Department-sponsored games begin with the procession of the American flag and anthem. It is often accompanied by dramatic aerial flyovers by jet fighters and fireworks, symbolizing the transcendent might and grandeur of America’s military conquerings. So too, the Roman games often reenacted the empire’s greatest battles.

Today’s latest controversy involves whether football players should stand united in honor of the flag. The sacredness of the flag rests in its long-standing ability to unify even enemies as the opposing teams simulate. Like any symbol, the flag serves as a vessel for people to place powerful emotions: memories of grandpa’s military service, apple pie, cookouts, neighborly support for one another are all wrapped in its colors.

Above all, the one thing the flag represents the most is the unifying power of sacrifice. We are united as one collective family in our reverence for the flag and anthem. The flag is sacred because it represents, as its loudest defenders proclaim, the blood shed by soldiers fighting for our freedoms.

Interestingly, gladiatorial games were first started as sacrificial offerings accompanying funerals. It was thought that the blood spilled by slaves and captives honored the death of state leaders with the transcendent unity of the crowd. With every pitiful animal howl and human cry, citizens felt swept up as one body in collective satisfaction and relief from mundane rivalries and resentments.

Football as Distraction

Today, governments like to take the suffering and courage of our sons and daughters who enlist and turn it into a marketing ploy for why we all need government coercion controlling our lives—who we hire, what we pay them, permission to cut hair, how big our sodas can be, how much we cook our milk, which drugs we can use to alter our minds, and so on. Governments also like to transmute our goosebumps we feel when the anthem plays into maintaining a trillion dollar annual foreign policy paid by debt created out of thin air and backed by the OPEC oil cartel’s energy markets.

At sporting events, our government captures the nostalgia we feel for neighborhood friendship and family pastimes, associates it with the anthem and flag, and then converts it into passive, numb surrender to perpetual warfare. Even while the nation divides over whether players should kneel or stand for the flag, our government continues to expand its military footprint overseas and drop more bombs, all in our name.

But the state, in collusion with powerful corporate allies, uses spectacles like football to distract and pacify the people. Instead of the violent slaughtering of Roman games, our Christianized culture sends players into simulated, padded warfare. We pick teams to unite our personal lives under and forget about the state’s socio- and economic abuses just outside our doorsteps. Studies even suggest that violent crime drops during major televised sporting events.

But now, Trump and his liberal mirror rivals have pierced the veil by injecting the NFL with the profanity of politics: the realm where real factions use real violence of the state to punish their rivals through regulations, mandates, and taxes. When Trump said “fire them” about the protesting players, invoking the specter of both the penal and paternal side of government, forcing people to take sides and not over the gridiron but at either side of the water cooler and dinner table, it did the game no favors.

Eventually, it took a church monk named Telemachus challenging the violent sacrifice of the Roman gladiatorial games to end their carnage. He climbed into the arena and protested until he was summarily slaughtered. His self-sacrifice for the defense of victims led to the public’s loss of appetite for the violence.The last known Roman gladiatorial event was in 404 AD, less than two decades after Telemachus’s death.

Today, myriad scandals serve as a persistent Telemachus threatening to bring the NFL down. Mothers and fathers all around the country are pulling their sons out of football due to the increased revelations of concussions and resulting brain damage caused by the sport. Whereas Roman citizens demanded their fighters stripped of armor to maximize carnage, increased paddings will end up making players look like Michelin men with bobble head-sized helmets.

In Rome, no one cared how gladiators treated their lovers. Today, growing public disgust with widespread reports of spousal abuse is souring the NFL’s mystique.

In college, the NCAA’s state-protected profiteering off of unpaid players’ physical sacrifice is increasingly criticized as well.

Meanwhile, diehard fans once thrilled by simulated violence are losing interest with ever constrained penalty rules and concussion concerns. The suspension of disbelief required to enjoy the game is waning: talks of brain damage, flags no longer able to unify people around soldiers’ sacrificial deaths, spousal abuse, and racial undertones are all exposing football as just a silly game to appease desires for tribalism and aggression—and make fat cat owners fatter. Not worth all the drama.

We should be proud that we do not send hungry lions into arenas with naked prisoners anymore. We have made progress because of Christianity’s leavening of the collective’s history-long abuse against the misfit person. Yet absent such gladiatorial games, our culture must confront our sacrifices of the innocent and nonviolent to appease our love for aggression as the means of keeping peace.

Reprinted from American Conservative

David Gornoski

David Gornoski

David Gornoski is your neighbor – as well as an entrepreneur, speaker and writer. He recently launched a project called A Neighbor’s Choice, which seeks to introduce Jesus’ culture of nonviolence to both Christians and the broader public. A Neighbor’s Choice is also the name of his weekly radio show on state violence and alternative solutions to it. Email him here.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of the Pontiac Silverdome, Michigan is by Brandon Davis.

VIDEO: America Under Siege — Antifa

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Antifa protest.

Dangerous Documentaries has produced a video on the communist movement known as Antifa (short for Anti-Fascist Action) has sparked violence across the nation. In the wake of their battling despicable white supremacist in Charlottesville, Antifa has begun to gain mainstream popularity.

But unbeknownst to much of the public, the vast majority of Antifa violence isn’t targeted at genuine fascists, but mainstream conservatives and civilians.

With help from those who have encountered Antifa, including Milo Yiannopoulos, Gavin McInnes, Lauren Southern, Jack Posobiec, and Steve Deace, conservative author Trevor Loudon guides us through the history and ideas behind the Antifa movement, starting with Leon Trotsky and going all the way through the events in Berkeley, CA and Charlottesville, VA. “Antifa” is the third episode in the “America Under Siege” documentary web-series from Dangerous Documentaries (a project of the Capital Research Center) and Cohesion Films.

Each episode profiles the influence of radical Marxists on various segments of American society.

Polish President: ‘Forcing migrants on nations will mean the end of the EU’

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Brussels’ insistence on ordering European Union (EU) nations to accept third world migrants could lead to the bloc’s break-up, Poland’s president Andrzej Duda has warned.

The EU establishment is indeed breaking up the European Union, which is a win for the Islamic supremacist agenda, as reckless immigration continues to erode democratic values.

The same deep divisions caused in Europe by the implementation of anti-democratic policies are also coming to other Western nations.

The suicidal immigration policy which allows in any immigrant, regardless of his or her values, is contrary to the human rights of the people of Europe. Unvetted Muslim migrants have become the face, and Islamic supremacist interests the priority, of all immigration matters, which have all been subsumed under the category of “race.”.

Now the situation in the EU has become so severe that talk about the end of the EU is on the table. It is a clash of civilizations, a tug-of-war between those who wish to defend freedom versus those who have betrayed democracy, freedom, and human rights.

“’Forcing Migrants on Nations Will Mean the End of the EU’: Polish President”, by Virginia Hale, Breitbart, October 6, 2017:

Brussels’ insistence on ordering European Union (EU) nations to accept third world migrants could lead to the bloc’s break-up, Poland’s president Andrzej Duda has warned.

The EU principle of unity, Duda told a press conference Thursday, “must come down to the fact that we work together … we do not try to force other states to act against their own interests and against the interests of their people.”

“Therefore, we don’t agree to being dictated to, with regards to the quota system and forcing migrants to move to Poland, against our people’s will,” he stressed, speaking after talks with Bulgarian president Rumen Radev.

Duda added that Poland and Bulgaria share the “same and unequivocal” position on how Europe should deal with the migrant crisis, stating both countries believe the bloc should protect its borders, and provide aid to refugees close to their homelands.

Unity, equality, and solidarity are “the basic principles of the EU”, said Duda, who hails from Poland’s conservative Law and Justice (PiS) Party.

“If these principles are broken, then, in my opinion, it will mean the end of the bloc as we know it — or certainly its decline, which will lead to the disintegration of the Union.”

Solidarity with regards to the migrant crisis means giving mutual support in dealing with the problems, according to Poland’s president, who pointed out that the nation sent guards to Bulgaria to help protect the Union’s external border.

“Both for Bulgaria and ourselves, preventing illegal immigration by maintaining an efficient, tightly guarded EU border, that cannot be easily crossed is one of the most important tasks to be undertaken,” he said.

In 2015, against Central European nations’ wishes, EU interior ministers approved a plan to force member states to welcome a share of third world migrants who arrived on the continent since German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the borders.

Threatened with sanctions over their refusal to take the share of “refugees” dictated by Brussels, Polish interior minister Mariusz Błaszczak insisted that financial penalties would do less damage to the nation than being made to take in migrants.

Radio Poland has reported that, with a €50 million contribution announced last month, Warsaw is the largest donor so far to the European Investment Bank’s Economic Resilience Initiative, which aids refugees living in nations including Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia, Syria, Albania, and Serbia…..

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Trump Administration Reverses Obama-Era Policies on Religious Freedom

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The Trump administration came out strongly in defense of religious freedom Friday, with new legal guidance and a move to reverse one of the most controversial Obamacare mandates.

“Every American has a right to believe, worship, and exercise their faith,” Jeff Sessions says.

The Justice Department guidelines direct attorneys and agencies that freedom of religious extends to both organizations and individuals, and includes living out one’s religious beliefs. Under the Justice Department guidelines, this could expand to allowing employers to hire in accordance with their religious beliefs and prohibit denying federal contracts to entities based on religious beliefs.

The Department of Health and Human Services is rolling back the Obamacare mandate that employers cover contraception and abortion-inducing drugs, creating both a religious and moral exemption. This will expand the number of covered nonprofits and nonpublicly traded for-profit businesses.

In both cases, the departments are following up on President Donald Trump’s directive that was part of a May 4 executive order on religious freedom.

“Our freedom as citizens has always been inextricably linked with our religious freedom as a people. It has protected both the freedom to worship and the freedom not to believe,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. “Every American has a right to believe, worship, and exercise their faith. The protections for this right, enshrined in our Constitution and laws, serve to declare and protect this important part of our heritage.”

Trump’s executive order directed the attorney general to “issue guidance interpreting religious liberty protections in federal law” in order “to guide all agencies in complying with relevant federal law.” In response, Sessions issued 20 “high-level principles” that federal agencies will follow. The guidelines don’t represent a new policy, but are based on more than 200 existing statutes and 158 existing regulations. These include the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Among the principles are that “Americans do not give up their freedom of religion by participating in society or the economy, or interacting with government;” “Religious employers are entitled to employ only persons whose beliefs and conduct are consistent with the employers’ religious precepts;” and “Generally, the federal government may not condition federal grants or contracts on the religious organization altering its religious character, beliefs, or activities. Implementation of the Guidance at the Department of Justice.”

“The constitutional protection of religious beliefs and the right to exercise those beliefs have served this country well, have made us one of the most tolerant countries in the world, and have also helped make us the freest and most generous,” Sessions said.

The Obama administration carried out a “relentless assault on the First Amendment” and promoted “anti-faith policies,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a social conservative think tank.

“President Trump and the Department of Justice are putting federal government agencies on notice: you will not only respect the freedom of every American to believe but live according to those beliefs,” Perkins said in a statement Friday. “This is a freedom that has been a fundamental part of our society since the beginning of our nation.”

Under the Obama administration, HHS required employers pay for their employees’ contraception and abortion-inducing drugs, even if this violates the conscience of employers. The Obama administration exempted houses of worship, but religious-affiliated groups that objected still had to allow a third-party administrator handle the contraception coverage.

The new policy under Trump offers a separate religious and a moral exemption. The religious exemption would cover a religious-affiliated nonprofit employer, such as a church, school or charity. The moral exemption would be available to employers that have moral opposition to providing contraception or abortion-inducing medication for employees, including a nonpublicly traded company, or a nonprofit even if it doesn’t have a religious affiliation.

Already there are 200 entities suing the federal government in 50 difference lawsuits opposing the mandate, according to HHS.

However, the liberal group Americans United for Separation of Church and State announced plans to sue the Trump administration over the new HHS rules.

“The Trump administration is carrying out the agenda of religious fundamentalists, the biggest part of the president’s remaining devoted supporters,” said Maggie Garrett, Americans United’s legislative director, in a statement Friday. “The rights of LGBTQ people, women, religious minorities, nontheists and others hang in the balance as the Trump administration continues to toe the line for its fundamentalist base.”

The Obama rule was “onerous” and the Trump action has made some progress in changing course, said Melanie Israel, a research associate for The Heritage Foundation, in a statement.

Americans will remain free to make their own decisions about, and purchase or find coverage for, the drugs and devices at issue in the mandate, and entities with objections will not be forced to be complicit in choices that would violate their religious or moral convictions.

Now that the administration has provided regulatory relief from the mandate, pending cases in courts across the country—including the case brought forward by the Little Sisters of the Poor—should come to a resolution as well.

The Becket Fund, which represented Little Sisters of the Poor in its lawsuit against the Obamacare mandate, supported the change.

“HHS has issued a balanced rule that respects all sides—it keeps the contraceptive mandate in place for most employers and now provides a religious exemption,” Mark Rienzi, senior counsel at the Becket Fund and lead attorney for the Little Sisters of the Poor, said in a statement. “The Little Sisters still need to get final relief in court, which should be easy now that the government admits it broke the law.”

Portrait of Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal. Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH

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Trust in the mainstream media is at a historic low—and rightfully so given the behavior of many journalists in Washington, D.C.

Ever since Donald Trump was elected president, it is painfully clear that the mainstream media covers liberals glowingly and conservatives critically.

Now journalists spread false, negative rumors about President Trump before any evidence is even produced.

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Catalonia Shows the Danger of Disarming Civilians

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October 1 showed the US why we need civilian guns.

Laura Williams

by  Laura Williams

Since the tragic murder of 59 peaceful concertgoers in Las Vegas Sunday, I’ve heard well-intentioned Americans from all political corners echoing heartbroken and tempting refrains:

Can’t we just ban guns?

Surely we can all get together on the rocket launchers.

Things like this would happen less often.

We have enough military.

While victims were still in surgery, some took to television and social media to criticize the “outdated” and “dangerous” Second Amendment to the Constitution. They have lived so long in a safe, stable society that they falsely believe armed citizens are a threat to life and liberty for everyone.

Those who claim to see no necessity or benefits of individual gun ownership need only look to the rolling hills of Catalonia, where a live social experiment is currently unfolding.

Unarmed Patriots

Just hours before an alleged lone gunman opened fire from the Mandalay Bay casino, the citizens of a small region surrounding Barcelona, Spain, cast a vote for their regional independence. Catalonia’s citizens have a unique language, culture, and history, and consider Spain a neighboring power, not their rightful rulers. So as America’s Continental Congress heroically did (and as Texans and Californians occasionally threaten to do) Catalonia wished to declare independence and secede.

Spain has enacted, it would seem, the kind of “common sense restrictions” American gun-control advocates crave.

Polling stations in Catalonia were attacked by heavily armed agents of the state with riot gear and pointed rifles. Spanish National Police fired rubber bullets and unleashed tear gas canisters on voters, broke down polling center doors, disrupted the vote, and destroyed enough ballots to throw results into serious doubt.Exceedingly few of those would-be patriots were armed.

In Spain, firearm ownership is not a protected individual right. Civilian firearms licenses are restricted to “cases of extreme necessity” if the government finds “genuine reason.” Background checks, medical exams, and license restrictions further restrict access. Licenses are granted individually by caliber and model, with automatic weapons strictly forbidden to civilians. Police can demand a citizen produce a firearm at any time for inspection or confiscation. Spain has enacted, it would seem, the kind of “common sense restrictions” American gun-control advocates crave.

But of course, that doesn’t mean that Spanish citizens don’t buy guns. In fact, Spanish taxpayers maintain an enormous arsenal of weapons, which are all in the hands [of] “professional armed police forces within the administration of the state, who are the persons in charge of providing security to the population.”

Those agents of the state weren’t “providing security to the population” of Catalonia on Sunday — they were pointing guns at would-be founding patriots who had challenged the rule of their oppressors.

“If somebody tries to declare the independence of part of the territory — something that cannot be done — we will have to do everything possible to apply the law,” Spain’s justice minister said in a public address.  While many polling places were closed or barricaded, 2.3 million voters (90% in favor of independence) were permitted to vote, he claimed, “because the security forces decided that it wasn’t worth using force because of the consequences that it could have.”

The consequences of a government using force to control those it is sworn to protect must be high. When citizens are armed, the consequences for tyranny rise and its likelihood falls.

Armed Tyrants

Americans have grown too trustful of the State, too ready to assume bureaucrats have only our best interests at heart. Even with a maniacal man-child in the Oval Office, many are seemingly eager to turn over individual liberty to those who promise to manage our lives for us. The United States was designed to be the smallest government in the history of the world, with no standing army, and little right to intrude in the private activities of its citizens. Instead, we have the most powerful and intrusive government in human history, with 800 permanent military bases in 70 countries, unfathomable firepower, and staggering surveillance capabilities. Unchecked abuses of power are routine and tolerated.

67 federal agencies, including the IRS and the FDA, have military weapons, according to the OpenTheBooks Oversight Report The Militarization of America. Among the most intrusive programs, including the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Safety Authority, do not disclose their weaponry budget.

Don’t say “Americans shouldn’t be allowed to buy guns” when what you mean is “citizens should only be allowed to buy guns for their rulers.”

The number of armed government officials with arrest and firearm authority has doubled since 1996. The US now has more armed “civilian” federal officers (200,000+) than US Marines (182,000). The IRS spends millions of taxpayer dollars annually on pump-action shotguns, AR-15 rifles, riot gear, and Special Forces contractors to train thousands of “special agents” in targeting American citizens. Local police, sheriffs, and state troopers have also been armed to wage war against American citizens. Battlefield weapons are being given to state and local police, allegedly to combat drug trafficking and fight terrorist threats at local pumpkin festivals. Military SWAT-style raids are used to serve search warrants for low-level drug possession, not hostage situations. Relatives and neighbors of alleged criminals have had government guns held to their children’s heads. Violations of civil rights, including illegal searches and the seizure of money and property without evidence of any crime, are commonplace.

Law enforcement requests military equipment directly from the Pentagon’s war-fighting machine: tanks, machine guns, rocket launchers, tear gas, camouflage, shields, and gas masks.  Military equipment is often purchased with civil asset forfeiture slush funds to bypass legislative appropriations challenges.

The high percentage of civilian law enforcement who are military veterans (one in five, by some estimates) compounds the cultural risks of treating average Americans like enemy combatants.

Showdowns between civilians and heavily armed agents of the state in Ferguson, Baltimore, the Oregon Wildlife Refuge, and at various other political protests across the country should remind us that gun control advocates won’t be reducing the number of guns so much as shifting them all into either federal or criminal hands.

The senseless murder in Las Vegas is a frighteningly familiar tragedy. But don’t say “Americans shouldn’t be allowed to buy guns” when what you mean is “citizens should only be allowed to buy guns for their rulers.”

Laura Williams

Laura Williams

Dr. Laura Williams teaches communication strategy to undergraduates and executives. She is a passionate advocate for critical thinking, individual liberties, and the Oxford Comma.

RELATED ARTICLE: Steve Scalise: Being a Victim of a Shooting Fortified My Support For The Second Amendment

ISIS labels those killed and wounded in Las Vegas ‘Crusaders’ — Why?

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The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) issued the following statement about the massacre in Las Vegas:

The ISIS statement on the massacre in Las Vegas refers to those wounded and injured as “crusaders.” ISIS goes on to call those attending the outdoor concert as members of “the crusader alliance” and the event as a “Crusader gathering.”

QUESTION: Why? ANSWER: It’s a big lie!

Thomas F. Madden, professor of Medieval History and Renaissance Studies as Saint Louis University, is a recognized expert on the Crusades. Professor Madden in his book “The Crusades Controversy: Setting the Record Straight” notes, “Prior to September 11, 2001, the world was a different place. Then, the Crusades were a faraway concept, an odd series of events in a distant and murky medieval past. Wars of religion seemed largely irrelevant to citizens of a modern secular civilization. That has changed.”

Professor Madden’s expertise in the Crusades brought him into the lime light and lead him to write how we got to this point in time. Professor Madden wrote that Osama Bin Laden, “never failed to describe the American war against terrorism as a new Crusade against Islam, and the Americans themselves as crusaders…The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), for example, routinely refers to the United States, Israel, and European nations as ‘crusader states.’ Ironically this perspective is not an uncommon view in the Middle East.”

On October 1, 2017, in Las Vegas, Nevada, nearly 600 innocent people paid the price in these ongoing “wars of religion” against the “crusader nations.”

Professor Madden notes that the Crusades were defensive acts to stop the spread of Islam. He writes, “Pope Urban II called the knights of Christendom to push back the conquests of Islam at the Council of Clermont in 1095. The response was tremendous. Many thousands of warriors took the vow of the cross and prepared for war.” Why did they do it? For two reasons:

  1. The first was to redeem [free from oppression] the Christians of the East.
  2. The second goal was the liberation of Jerusalem and the other places made holy by the life of Christ.

Professor Madden writes:

The word crusade is modern. Medieval crusaders saw themselves as pilgrims to the Holy Sepulcher.

[ … ]

The re-conquest of Jerusalem, therefore, was understood by Christians as an act of restoration and an open declaration of one’s love of God.

[ … ]

In Medieval Europe, Crusades to the East were universally seen as acts of tremendous good. And how could they not? A crusader was one who, at great expense and personal peril, sought to rescue the downtrodden, defend the defenseless, and restore to Christendom what had been violently taken away. A Crusade indulgence, then, was a formal recognition of the penitential component of these actions. Crusaders were sinners. They undertook the Crusade not only to defend their world, but to atone for their sins. By the nature of their profession, warriors put their souls at risk. The Crusade was a means for them to save their souls. And that was no small thing. I the medieval world, where death was always near at hand, the salvation of one’s soul meant everything. It was a matter of constant concern. [Emphasis added]

Of the eight Crusade expeditions that occurred between 1096 and 1291, only the First Crusade was a success.

“The last Christian outpost in the Holy Land fell in 1291. In subsequent centuries the dramatic growth of Muslim power, particularly under the Ottoman Empire, spelled only further defeats for the West. By the fourteenth century the Crusades were no longer wars to turn back Muslim conquests in faraway lands, but desperate and largely unsuccessful attempts to defend Europe itself against Muslim invasion. By the sixteenth century the Ottoman Turks had conquered all of the Middle East, North Africa, and southeastern Europe, including areas today that are Greece, Bulgaria, Albania, Hungary, and others. Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent came within a hair’s breadth of conquering Vienna, which would have left all of Germany at his mercy. Vienna was saved by freak rain storms, not the Crusades,” notes Professor Madden.

For the Arab world the Crusades were of no consequence and long forgotten.

In Chapter Four Professor Madden writes, “The first Arabic history of the Crusades was not written until 1899…Traditionally, Muslims took very little interest in people or events outside the dar al-Islam [house of Islam]…The Crusades were, in any case, unsuccessful and thus irrelevant…In the grand sweep of Islamic history the Crusades simply did not matter.”

The big lie resurrected by former President Bill Clinton after 9/11.

Professor Madden reports:

[I]n a speech delivered at Georgetown University a few weeks after 9/11, former President Bill Clinton stated:

“Those of us who come from various European lineages are not blameless. Indeed, in the First Crusade, when the Christian soldiers took Jerusalem, they first burned a synagogue with three hundred Jews in it, and proceeded to kill every woman and child who was Muslim on the Temple Mount. The contemporaneous descriptions of the event describe soldiers walking on the Temple Mount, a holy place to Christians, with blood running up to their knees. I can tell you that that story is still being told today in the Middle East, and we are still paying for it.”

Clinton is correct that the story is still told, but it is neither accurate nor is it a long-held memory of a traumatic event. Indeed, the simple and startling fact is that the Crusades were virtually unknown in the Muslim world even a century ago. The term for the Crusades, harb al-salib, was only introduced into the Arab language in the mid-nineteenth century.

Ironically, “The ‘long memory’ of the Crusades in the Muslim world is, in fact, a constructed memory-one in which the memory is much younger than the event itself…[W]hen European colonial powers took control of the Middle East in the wake of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, they brought with them a concept of the Crusades and an understanding of their own actions within that medieval context. In books and colonial schools Europeans taught the Muslim world about the Crusades. They were vividly described as heroic enterprises whose aim, like that of the Europeans, was to bring civilization to the Middle East.”

So it was the colonial European West who taught Muslims about the Crusades. And they are still paying for it today.

RELATED ARTICLE: PBS Broadcasts Crusade Myths & Falsehoods

Tell Your Kids: Bring Your Bible To School Tomorrow – October 5th

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There’s a movement across America that is growing larger and larger since its inception just 3 short years ago. It doesn’t require money or a large venue or a famous celebrity spokesperson to get it trending. Last year, 356,000 students participated in hundreds of schools across the nation in a simple concept with a big message: Bring your Bible to school for the day.

Focus on the Family, a Christian ministry, began the Bring Your Bible to School Day initiative as way to empower students in public schools and universities to share their faith and bring God back into the public square. As parents and youth ministers, you can take the first step and sign your students up today at BringYourBible.org. This is a tremendous opportunity to bring the message of Jesus Christ to others who would normally never hear about it. It’s also a way to help your child feel like they are truly making a difference by sharing a positive message in a world where negativity and despair make the headlines.

According to BringYourBible.org: Students can simply bring their Bibles to school and share verses with friends. Or, they can include more free-speech activities, such as wearing T-shirts or stickers, putting up posters and hosting discussion forums before or after class. Last year, the event went viral with students posting pictures of themselves online with #BringYourBible.

After they sign up on the website listed here, students are given some simple tools to use to help guide them through the day. There is a newsletter, flyers they can print out and share, and most importantly, knowing their legal rights as students.

The First Amendment protects the rights of students to bring their Bibles to school, engage in private prayer during the school day, and even share their faith with classmates.  The United States Supreme Court has recognized the private religious rights of public school students, stating that  “nothing in the Constitution as interpreted by this Court prohibits any public school student from voluntarily praying at any time before, during, or after the schoolday.”  Santa Fe Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290, 313 (2000) (emphasis added).  This is consistent with the Supreme Court’s recognition that neither students nor teachers “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” Tinker v. Des Moines School District, 393 U.S. 503, 506 (1969).  Students should be encouraged to “be bold” in exercising these God-given rights that are protected by the Constitution.

Today, the religious freedom of Christians is under attack by the ACLU and the rise of secularism. According to Jim Daly, President of Focus on the Family: “The big idea behind Bring Your Bible to School Day is to help kids feel empowered to share what’s most important to them, and what makes them who they are – their faith.”

We are in a spiritual battle. As your children take their Bible with them to school, the words of St. Paul in his letter to the Romans could be a scripture verse they reflect upon as they head out the door, ready to become ambassadors for Christ:

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes.”- Romans 1:16

Pentagon severs all ties with Southern Poverty Law Center — Stops using SPLC Hitlist

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This is most welcome and long overdue. The SPLC’s training materials on “extremism” wouldn’t point the Defense Department toward jihad terrorists and Sharia supremacists, but toward foes of jihad terror and others that the SPLC classifies as “extremists” along with the likes of the KKK and neo-Nazis. This hard-Left moneymaking and incitement machine’s latest dossier on “Islamophobes” says: “Before you book a spokesperson from an anti-Muslim extremist group or quote them in a story, research their background — detailed in this in-depth guide to 15 of the most visible anti-Muslim activists — and consider the consequences of giving them a platform.”

The SPLC wishes to silence those who speak honestly about the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat, blaming us for a supposed rise in “Islamophobia.” If they really want to stamp out suspicion of Islam, of course, they will move against not us, but the likes of Omar Mateen, Syed Rizwan Farook, Tashfeen Malik, Nidal Malik Hasan, Mohammed Abdulazeez, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and the myriad other Muslims who commit violence in the name of Islam and justify it by reference to Islamic teachings.

The SPLC doesn’t do that because its objective is not really to stop “Islamophobia” at all, but to create the illusion of a powerful and moneyed network of “Islamophobes” whom can only be stopped if you write a check to the SPLC. That’s what this is really all about. It’s scandalous that the Pentagon ever took this seriously, and good that it has stopped.

“EXCLUSIVE: DOD Drops SPLC From Extremism Training Materials,” by Jonah Bennett, Daily Caller, October 2, 2017:

Richard Cohen, SPLC

The Pentagon has officially severed all ties to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) after previously relying on the group’s training materials on extremism.

Brian J. Field, assistant U.S. attorney from the Civil Division, stated that the Department of Defense (DOD) Office of Diversity Management and Equal Opportunity removed any and all references to the SPLC in training materials used by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI), in an email obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation from the Department of Justice.

The DEOMI is a DOD school founded to fight segregation and inequality that teaches courses in racial, gender and religious equality, among other subject areas like equal opportunity and pluralism. The courses are available to DOD civilians and service members.

As part of a response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the Immigration Reform Law Institute, Field wrote in the email sent in late September:

Additionally, the DEOMI office informed me that, based on a previous FOIA request, DEOMI records concerning, regarding, or related to the preparation and presentation of training materials on hate groups or hate crimes were forwarded … That 133-page document did reference the SPLC; however, based upon guidance from the Office of Diversity Management and Equal Opportunity, all references to the SPLC have been removed from any current training.

Interestingly, DEOMI still makes use of materials on “Hate Symbols” from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a group similar to the SPLC. Students at DEOMI use the Hate Symbols reference on the ADL site to “learn more about gang colors or clothing; hate group tattoos and body markings associated with such gangs.”

As a matter of policy, the DOD does not have an official list of hate groups….

In February, The Daily Caller News Foundation published an exclusive piece indicating that the FBI, which formerly used the SPLC as a “hate crimes resource,” has also been distancing itself from the group….

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Footage of Las Vegas Shooter Stephen Paddock at an Anti-Trump Protest?

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There are two YouTube videos of a man wearing a pink shirt with NASA on it who some believe is Stephen Paddock, the man who slaughtered 59 people and wounded hundreds more in Las Vegas, Nevada. We present these videos for our readers to view and make up their own minds about is this is or is not Stephen Paddock.

If anyone can identify the individual at this anti-Trump protest please contact the Las Vegas Police Department or the FBI.

The below video titled “Stephen Paddock was an anti Trump supporter”:

Steven Haffley published the below YouTube video and commentary on Oct 2, 2017:

In the deleted video are the below screen shots of what is believed to be Stephen Paddock wearing a pink hat, like the ones worn during the Washington, D.C. woman’s march, and a t-shirt with NASA on it. Next to him, right, is a woman believed to be Marilou Danley.

Haffley notes:

This is the evidence composed by IWI for review by the FBI on this subject concerning video footage of the Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock. In addition to the above footage, we present the following additional evidence:

A. This picture is of the man seen in the above video standing by what appears to be Marilou Danley, a person previously identified as a person of interest in the shooting but later cleared.. Notice the distinctive sunglasses:

B. The same woman rolls her pantlegs up the same exact way in other pictures, so we have distinctive glasses, same appearance, same dress style:

C. A protester calls the man in the pink shirt “Steve”:

D. The pink shirt in the video says Nasa, Lockheed Martin confirmed the shooter worked for them between 85-88. Lockheed martin does a lot with Nasa: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/p…

E. An associate of Marilou Danley’s daughter told Marilou’s daughter to have her mother delete her Facebook page at the first notice of the mass shooting:

E.2 When confronted about why she was trying to cover up the facebook profile, which as a picture of Marilou vacationing in the Middle East, the tweet was deleted and I was blocked from following her:

With all we presented, no matter what side of the issue you are on, there is significant reason to have an Agency with more investigative tools at their disposal to look into this. Hence the purpose of this video is to ensure this happens. It is believed the man seen in this video is the las vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock, attending an anti-trump protest in Reno Nevada in August 23rd 2017 (Approximately). You may upload this video to anywhere you want, use it in any media, etc, you do not need my permission I’m not doing this for personal recognition, I’m doing this to figure out why 500 people were shot for no reason.

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Opelousas Massacre: When over 150 Black Republicans were hanged by White Democrats

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On September 28, 1868, Democrat Judge James Dickinson led a mob that killed over 150 black residents in Opelousas, Louisiana. The event is known as the Opelousas Massacre.

It started when local blacks expressed outrage when a white newspaper publisher, Emerson Bentley, was severely beaten. Bentley was beaten because he published an article that criticized white democrats for beating and removing black Democrats from the local party.

Dickinson, and a small army of heavily armed white supremacist members, converged on the city to wipe out its black population. The above photo is of the remaining blacks being hung for speaking out against the Democrats for beating Emerson Bentley.

According to BlackPast.org:

The Opelousas Massacre occurred on September 28, 1868 in Opelousas, St. Landry Parish, Louisiana. The event is also referred to as The Opelousas Riot by some historians. There is debate as to how many people were killed.  Conservative estimates made by contemporary observers indicated about 30 people died from the political violence.  Later historians have placed the total as closer to 150 or more.

While most Reconstruction-era violence was sparked by conflicts between black Republicans and white Democrats, the initial catalyst for the Massacre was the attempt by some Opelousas blacks to join a Democratic political group in the neighboring town of Washington.  White Democrats in Opelousas, mainly members of the Seymour Knights, the local unit of the white supremacist organization Knights of the White Camellia, visited Washington to drive them out of the Party.   In response Emerson Bentley, an Ohio-born white school teacher and editor of The Progress, a Republican newspaper in Opelousas, wrote what many local whites thought was a racially inflammatory article which described the violence that the Seymour Knights had used against the African American Democrats in Washington.  Bentley argued that such violence should persuade the blacks to remain loyal to the GOP.

Shortly after the article appeared, Bentley was assaulted by a group of whites while he taught his class.  He was severely beaten and whipped although he survived the assault.  In response he fled the town, literally running for his life for nearly three weeks before escaping back to the North.

Meanwhile numerous reports circulated that Bentley had been killed in retaliation for his news article. His mysterious absence was enough to support rumors of his death.  Now black Republicans urged retaliatory violence on the Knights, who in turn viewed this as the beginning of the long anticipated, and inevitable, “Black Revolt” and race war.  The Knights of the White Camellia mobilized thousand of members. Both sides were armed and prepared for conflict as they gathered in Opelousas.

It is unclear as to who initiated the battle that began on September 28.  What is clear is that the white Democrats had the overwhelming advantage in numbers and weapons.  By the afternoon of September 28 the battle had become a massacre.  A number of blacks were shot and killed or captured and later executed.  Those who were not captured were chased into the swamps and killed on sight.  Twelve leaders of the black Republicans who surrendered were executed the next day on the edge of town.  Those executions seemed to encourage a wave of anti-black violence that spread throughout the parish.  No one will ever know how many people were killed but the best estimate is that the number was at least 150 and may have exceeded that total.

Sources:

Ted Tunnell , Crucible of Reconstruction (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984); John Ficklen, History of Reconstruction in Louisiana (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1910).