Saying You’re Against Fascists Doesn’t Excuse Acting Like One

Despite claims that Antifa fights fascism, the group’s tactics actually mirror those of Benito Mussolini’s regime.


On March 23, 1919, Benito Mussolini, an Italian veteran of the Great War and a publisher of socialist newspapers, created the Fasci di Combattimento (commonly known as the Fascist Party) with the help of a few syndicalist friends.

Nearly one hundred years later, the word fascism remains at the forefront of our political discourse even though fascism is all but dead as a political force, and the word has lost much of its meaning (if not its power).

So why are we still talking about fascists?

On November 8, the late-night TV host Stephen Colbert took to Twitter to condemn a mob that had attacked the home of Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

“Fighting Tucker Carlson’s ideas is an American right,” Colbert wrote. “Targeting his home and terrorizing his family is an act of monstrous cowardice. Obviously, don’t do this, but also, take no pleasure in it happening. Feeding monsters just makes more monsters.”

The attackers consisted of a group who called themselves Antifa. Few Americans had heard the word “Antifa” prior to 2016. But that’s no longer the case.

In addition to the attack on Carlson’s home, numerous high-profile incidents involving Antifa—the “Battle of Berkeley,” the tragedy in Charlottesville, and a series of street battles in Portland—have thrust the loosely organized political group into the national spotlight. (It’s difficult to miss gangs of black-clad individuals who wear masks, tote weapons, and pick fights with political opponents.)

Antifa, if you have not already guessed, is short for anti-fascism. Conduct a Google search, and you’ll see Antifa oppose fascist ideologies, people, and groups.

This is part of the brilliance of Antifa. Unlike most fringe political groups, Antifa is not named for something. Their name expresses opposition to an ideology, one that is at once vile and nebulous.

More than seven decades ago, the British writer George Orwell observed that the term fascism had lost any coherent meaning.

“The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable,’” Orwell wrote in his essay “Politics and the English Language.”

Because of the ambiguous nature of the word, Antifa and other alt-left groups have been able to brand thinkers as diverse as Charles MurrayChristina Hoff SommersJordan B. Peterson, and Ben Shapiro as “fascist.”

Moreover, by branding themselves as “antifascist,” Antifa inoculate themselves from the criticism that usually is directed toward extremist groups.

Colbert’s condemnation of Antifa’s attack on Tucker Carlson’s home notwithstanding, there has been a cultural reluctance to condemn Antifa’s political violence and tactics.

In 2017, following the tragic events in Charlottesville, which involved a showdown between white supremacists and Antifa members, former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said it was wrong to equate fascists and anti-fascists.

“No, not the same,” Romney tweeted. “One side is racist, bigoted, Nazi. The other opposes racism and bigotry. Morally different universes.”

Romney expressed a common belief, but Antifa is hardly the polar opposite of fascism. An examination of Antifa and the fascists of the 1920s and 1930s reveals striking similarities.

Many historians and political writers describe fascism as a right-wing movement, and the claim has an element of truth to it. When Mussolini and his syndicalist friends created the Fasci di Combattimento, it’s true they embraced Italian nationalism. Yet the party also called for the seizure of church lands, the confiscation of finance capital, and the abolition of the Italian monarchy and Senate.

In fact, Mussolini was an ardent Marxist for years. The son of a socialist-anarchist craftsman, he was well-versed in the works of Karl Marx, whom he praised as “a magnificent philosopher of working-class violence.” The extent to which Mussolini’s fascists simply copied their socialist predecessors has often been overlooked.

In his magnum opus Modern Times, the historian Paul Johnson explains that Mussolini was highly influenced by Kurt Eisner, who was cited several times in Mussolini’s fascist programme. Eisner’s “Bavarian fighting squads,” which inspired Mussolini’s Fasci di Combattimento, were themselves inspired by Lenin’s “men in black leather jerkins,” Johnson points out. Mussolini’s use of the term “vanguard minorities” to describe the shock troops of his revolution was almost certainly inspired by Lenin’s “vanguard fighters” (a term Lenin first used in 1903).

Communists and fascists of the 1920s and 1930s were unified by one thing above all else: their willingness to use political violence to achieve political goals. Mussolini, like Lenin, had no qualms about using violence in his effort to “make history, not endure it” (a Marx quote Mussolini was fond of employing).

The use of violence to attain political goals is a stance Antifa similarly embraces.

Antifa openly advocates and employs violence and intimidation. Like Mussolini’s “vanguard minorities,” they dress in black garb (though Antifa members often also cover their faces) and use intimidation and violence to prevent political opponents from assembling. These tactics include launching feces at law enforcement and using bricks, bats, chains, and knives in their street wars.

The methods are ostensibly reserved for fascists, yet so many have shown a willingness to overlook the fact that Antifa is employing fascist tactics. Antifa is given a pass because labeling the other side as “fascist” automatically makes them “good,” for they are the ones fighting against fascism. It’s a brilliant rhetorical trick. As Chris Cuomo said in defense of Antifa on a carefully-worded CNN segment in August, “fighting against hate matters.”

In a moral universe where the ends justify the means, using fascist tactics to fight fascists (or people deemed fascists) is entirely proper. The dangers of embracing the philosophy of violence, however, are severe. For as Solzhenitsyn observed, the first casualty of violence is the truth.

“Violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood,” the Russian writer observed prior to his exile from the Soviet Union. “Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose falsehood as his principle.”

Solzhenitsyn’s point is one Antifa should seriously consider. If they do not, and they persist in their defense and employment of violence as a means to their political ends, Antifa will continue to be “interwoven with falsehood.” Their grandiose aims will prove as empty and sterile as those of the Jacobins and Bolsheviks who preceded them.

In our next piece on the rise of Antifa, we will explore the root of their philosophy and examine precisely why they think it’s justifiable to use fascist techniques in the name of fighting fascism.

COLUMN BY

Jon Miltimore

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. Serving previously as Director of Digital Media at Intellectual Takeout, Jon was responsible for daily editorial content, web strategy, and social media operations. Before that, he was the Senior Editor of The History Channel Magazine, Managing Editor at Scout.com, and general assignment reporter for the Panama City News Herald. Jon also served as an intern in the speechwriting department under George W. Bush.

Tyler Brandt

Tyler Brandt

Tyler Brandt is a Content Associate at FEE. He is a graduate of UW-Madison with a B.A. in Political Science. In college, Tyler was a FEE Campus Ambassador, President of his campus YAL chapter, and Research Intern at the John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy.

EDITORS NOTE: This column from FEE with images is republished with permission.

Restoring Civilization: We Can’t MAGA Unless We MAMA

They can sense it. They can feel it. Something is seriously wrong in our civilization, and many people know it. This is why despite the relatively good economic times, most Americans polled say our country is on the “wrong track.” Yet many are like a gravely ill man who knows he’s not well but can’t precisely identify his ailment. Most often, Americans have only a vague sense of cultural malaise, or they “self-diagnose” wrongly.

Years ago I had a brief “state of the nation” discussion with a very fine, older country gentleman. While no philosopher, he did offer the following diagnosis. Struggling for words and gesticulating a bit, he said, “There’s…there’s no morality.”

Most believe morality is important both personally and nationally. We generally agree that an immoral man treads a dangerous path; of course, it’s likewise for two immoral men, five, 53 or 1,053 — or a whole nation-full.

Echoing many Founders, George Washington noted that “morality is a necessary spring of popular government.” The famous apocryphal saying goes, “America is great because America is good, and if she ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.” For sure, we can’t MAGA unless we MAMA — Make America Moral Again.

Yet if immorality is the diagnosis and restoring morality the cure, we must know what this thing called “morality” is. Ah, that’s where agreement can end.

Talk to most people today — especially the people who study people, sociologists and anthropologists — and they’ll “identify morality with social code,” as Sociology Guide puts it. They’ll essentially say what sociologists Durkheim and Sumner do, “that things are good or bad if they are so considered by society or public opinion,” the site continues. “Durkheim stated that we do not disapprove of an action because it is a crime but it is a crime because we disapprove of it.” Yet true or not, would the majority really view an action as a crime, in the all-important moral sense, if they came to believe it was true?

Consider a man I knew who once proclaimed, “Murder isn’t wrong; it’s just that society says it is.” Clearly, “public opinion” isn’t swaying him much.

Yet how do you argue with him? Barring reference to something outside of man (i.e., God) dictating murder’s “immorality,” you’re left with a striking reality:

Society is all there is to say anything.

Then “Man is the measure of all things,” as Greek philosopher Protagoras put it.

Yet acceptance of the “society says” thesis presents a problem: Now you must convince others to equate “public opinion” with credible, binding “morality.” This is mostly fruitless because, frankly, it’s stupid.

Man’s opinion is just that — opinion. If the term “morality” is essentially synonymous, it’s a risible redundancy. If we’re acting as slick marketers, trying to elevate “opinion” via assignment of an impressive-sounding title, it’s false advertising. So if that is all we’re really talking about — “opinion” or “societal considerations” — let’s drop the pretense and just say what we mean:

We sentient organic robots (soulless entities comprising chemicals and water) have preferences for how others should behave (subject to change with or without notice). No, we can’t call these tastes “morality” — but, hey, we can punish the heck out of you for defying our collective will (see North Korea et al.).

To cement the point, consider my patent explanation. Who or what determines what this thing we call morality is?

Only two possibilities exist: Either man or something outside of him does. If the latter, something vastly superior and inerrant (i.e., God), then we really can say morality exists, apart from man. It’s real. Yet what are the man-as-measure implications?

Well, imagine the vast majority of the world loved chocolate but hated vanilla. Would this make vanilla “wrong” or “evil”? It’s just a matter of preference, of whatever flavor works for you.

Okay, but is it any more logical saying murder is “bad” or “wrong” if we only do so because the vast majority of the world prefers we not kill others in a manner the vast majority considers “unjust”? If it’s all just consensus “opinion,” it then occupies the same category as flavors: preference.

This is the matter’s stark reality, boiled down. It’s why serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s darkness-enabling attitude was, as his father related in a 1996 interview (video below; relevant portion at 40:26), “If it [life] all happens naturalistically, what’s the need for a God? Can’t I set my own rules?” It’s why occultist Aleister Crowley, branded “the wickedest man in the world,” succinctly stated, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” (Preference Über Alles 101).

[Please insert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgw0x0TxRO8]

This perspective engenders what’s often called “moral relativism,” the notion that “Truth” (absolute by definition) is illusion and what’s called “morality” changes with the time and people. But saying all is preference is actually moral nihilism, the belief that “morality” (properly understood) doesn’t actually exist — because, again, “opinion” isn’t morality.

Of course, few think matters through as thoroughly as a Dahmer or Crowley. (In fact, a possible reason sociopaths may possess above-average intelligence is that they’re smart enough to grasp the “morality” question’s two possibilities — either morality exists as something divinely-authored, something transcendent, or there is no morality — but draw the wrong conclusion.) Yet moral relativism/nihilism has swept Western civilization. And hell has followed with it.

How relativistic/nihilistic are we? A Barna Group study found that in 2002 already, most Americans did not believe in (absolute) Truth, in morality; in fact, only six percent of teens did. Thus are they most likely to base what once were called “moral decisions” on…wait for it…feelings. Surprise, surprise.

Such prevailing philosophical/moral rot collapses civilization. For anything can be justified. Rape, kill, steal, violate the Constitution as a judge, commit vote fraud? Why not? Who’s to say it’s wrong? Don’t impose values on me, dude.

To analogize it, imagine we fell victim to “dietary relativism/nihilism” and fancied the rules of nutrition nonexistent. With only taste left to govern dietary choices, most would indulge junk food; nutritional disorder would reign and health deteriorate. Moreover, considering one man’s poison another’s pleasure, we might sample those pretty red berries the birds gobble down. Hey, if it tastes good, eat it.

This reflects what’s befalling our “If it feels good, do it” Western civilization. Considering the rules of any system non-existent or irrelevant brings movement toward disorder — and a point where those who can impose their preferences restore order, a tyrannical one.

Having said this, discussing “Truth” and God evokes complaints, as the morally relativistic/nihilistic world view influences even many conservatives, and secularists find faith-oriented talk unsettling.

So let’s focus here on not faith but fact. As to this and the world’s Dahmers, Crowleys and the murder-skeptic man I knew, call them names, but don’t call them illogical. Within their universe of “data”— that “God doesn’t exist” and thus only organic robots can be the measure — they’re right: Murder’s status isn’t “wrong,” just “unpreferred.”

Note that moral principles cannot be proven scientifically any more than God’s existence; you can’t see a moral under a microscope or a principle in a Petri dish. Science only tells us what we can do, not what we should. Finding guidance on “should” necessitates transcending the physical and venturing into the metaphysical. It requires, pure logic informs, taking a leap of faith.

Something else not a matter of faith but fact is man’s psychology: People operate by certain principles. Like it or not, believing as Dahmer did (when young) about God leads to believing as he did about morality. “If man is all there is to make up rules, why can’t I just make up my own?”

As I put it in 2013, “Just as people wouldn’t abide by the ‘laws’ of physics if they didn’t believe they existed (the idea of jumping off a building and flying sounds like fun), and there weren’t obvious and immediate consequences for their violation (splat!), they won’t be likely to abide by morality if they believe its laws don’t exist.”

Of course, this rarely leads to serial killing. But it always — at population level — leads to serial immorality. This is an immutable rule of man.

So how should we combat our time’s moral relativism/nihilism? First, realize that from the Greek philosophers to the early/medieval Christians to the Founding Fathers, Western civilization was not forged by relativists/nihilists. It won’t be maintained by them, either. “If it feels good, do it” yields a healthy society even less than “If it tastes good, eat it” does a healthy body.

Thus, one needn’t have faith to understand that belief in Truth is utilitarian. As George Washington warned, “[R]eason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

Second, know that moral relativism/nihilism’s appeal is that it’s the ultimate get-out-of-sin free card. After all, my sins can’t be sins if there are no such things as sins, only “lifestyle choices.” Yet also know that we can have this seemingly eternal but illusory absolution — or we can have civilization. We can’t have both.

So act as if Truth exists; seek it, speak it, love it, for it will set you free. Realize also that relativism is juvenile pseudo-philosophy. For if everything were relative, what you believed would be relative, too, and thus meaningless. So let’s talk about what’s meaningful.

The alternative? Well, it was expressed nicely by an old New Yorker cartoon. It featured the Devil addressing a large group of arrivals in Hell and saying, reassuringly, “You’ll find there’s no right or wrong here. Just what works for you.”

It’s an alluring idea — and a powerful one. It creates Hell on Earth, too.

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

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EDITORS NOTE: This article is the second in a series on exposing modern (liberal) lies, explaining the disordered leftist mind and restoring civilization. The first is here. The “American’t” essay, which illustrates our problems, is here. The edited featured photo by Jonny Swales on Unsplash.

Getting Priorities Straight: House Democrats and the Public

Anti-gun organizations and their sycophants would have you believe that the 2018 midterm elections were a referendum on gun rights. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi “vows to fight” for “bipartisan, common sense” gun control and announced gun control “will be a priority” even before she had secured the Speaker’s gavel. The eagerness to curtail Constitutional rights isn’t limited to Nancy Pelosi; Representative Mike Thompson, head of the Democrats’ “gun violence prevention task force” and incoming Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Representative Jerry Nadler are both on record confirming they’ll push gun control early next year.

As soon as they’re in power.

They claim that it’s what the American people want. So, is it?

According to a Gallup poll conducted earlier this month, gun control and guns rank at the very bottom of the list of what adults say is the country’s top problem – coming in at three percent.

That’s tied with the economy in general, unemployment, and ethical/moral/religious decline. Only slightly behind crime and violence (4%), and about half as highly ranked as several categories of social issues including race relations, poverty and homelessness, and healthcare.

The top two problems facing the country, according to adults nationwide, are government (19%) and immigration (16%). Both issues fall under the purview of Congress and yet the next Speaker of the House couldn’t announce the new majority’s intentions quickly enough despite a complete lack of evidence that so-called “universal” background checks will have an effect on crime. In fact, readers may recall one study, lauded by anti-gun organizations and talking heads, actually found that background checks are associated with an increase in homicides.

Of course, the model in that study was misspecified but that hasn’t stopped anti-gunners from using it to push their agenda.

In looking at Gallup data for this year, guns and gun control was cited by only 1% of adults as the most important problem facing the country in October of this year. That number doubled all the way to 2% in November, and the midterm election was right in the middle of the November survey period. Gallup has asked the most important problem question monthly and shared the results from June 2018 onward, and gun control has never been higher than 4% (June 2018).

The top two specific problems every month since early summer have been the government and immigration.  Lest you believe that this is somehow unique to Gallup, let’s take a look at some other polling data.

A Marist Poll conducted from November 28th through December 4th of this year found that 8% of registered voters said guns should be the top priority for the next Congress.  Immigration was the top issue (18%), followed by the economy and jobs (17%) and health care (17%). Guns weren’t even the top issue for Democrats, coming in tied for third with climate change. Health care (24%) and the economy and jobs (16%) were ahead. Six percent of Independents think guns should be the top priority, well behind the economy and jobs (18%), health care (17%), immigration (15%), federal taxes and spending (14%), opioid addiction (12%), and climate change (9%).

Suburban adults put four issues before guns. This is getting repetitive, but maybe eventually Representative Pelosi will align her priorities with the American people.

Probably not, but maybe.

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EDITORS NOTE:  This column by the NRA with images is republished with permission.

Net Neutrality Repeal: The Internet Apocalypse That Never Came

Whether the naysayers are willing to admit it or not, less government regulation results in better outcomes for both companies and consumers.


This month marks one year since the FCC repealed the controversial net neutrality rules, officially killing the internet as we knew it forever—or so net neutrality proponents would have liked you to believe. But as we take a closer look at what has actually happened in the year since the rules have been abolished, we find that the (often hysterical) rhetoric doesn’t reflect reality at all. On the contrary, the internet has actually improved since regulations were relaxed.

The internet has been a household commodity available for public use since August 6, 1991. However, according to net neutrality’s most fervent supporters, the internet didn’t truly take off until February 2015, when the FCC passed and adopted the new rules.

In both the lead up to the vote on net neutrality and its subsequent repeal, mass hysteria ensued in which many people were honestly convinced that without government intervention, all the online services we enjoyed would cease to exist. In an article called “How the FCC’s Killing of Net Neutrality Will Ruin the Internet Forever,” the magazine GQ even went so far as to say:

Think of everything that you’ve ever loved about the Internet. That website that gave you all of the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City cheat codes. YouTube videos of animals being friends. The illegal music you downloaded on Napster or Kazaa. The legal music you’ve streamed on Spotify. …The movies and TV shows you’ve binged on Netflix and Amazon and Hulu. The dating site that helped you find the person you’re now married to. All of these things are thanks to net neutrality.

It’s rather shocking that this sentiment was so widely accepted as truth considering that every single one of the listed examples existed prior to net neutrality. In fact, the only reason the internet was able to become such an integral part of our lives was that it was left virtually untouched by regulatory forces. And since spontaneous order was allowed to occur, internet users were blessed with unbridled innovation that brought forth a robust variety of services, which GQ prefers to attribute to government action that wasn’t taken until nearly 24 years after internet use became the norm.

These small details were, of course, ignored by much of the public, and the panic continued. The ACLU joined the frenzy, telling readers that without net neutrality we “are at risk of falling victim to the profit-seeking whims of powerful telecommunications giants.”

We now realize that these dire warnings actually came to fruition, reminding us just how absurd the push for net neutrality rules was in the first place.

Net neutrality sought to define the internet as a public utility, putting it in the same category as water, electric, and telephone services. Doing so left it open to regulatory oversight, specifically when it came to connection speeds and the price providers were allowed to charge consumers for its use.

The new rules mandated that each internet service provider was henceforth forced to provide equal connection speeds to all websites, regardless of content. Prior to its passage, providers had the freedom to offer different connection speeds to users, including the option to pay more for faster speeds on certain websites.

If, for example, Comcast noticed that a majority of its users were streaming content on Netflix, it might offer packages that charge extra for the promise of being able to connect to the site at quicker speeds. In reality, this is just the market responding to consumer demand, but not everyone saw it this way. Others saw it as an abuse of power by “greedy” internet service providers.

Then-President Obama praised net neutrality, saying:

For almost a century, our law has recognized that companies who connect you to the world have special obligations not to exploit the monopoly they enjoy over access in and out of your home or business. It is common sense that the same philosophy should guide any service that is based on the transmission of information—whether a phone call, or a packet of data.

Unfortunately for those who think net neutrality rules are a good idea, the railroad industry serves as a perfect example of just how hazardous declaring consumer goods “public utilities” can truly be.

Like the internet, railroads changed the world by connecting us with people, ideas, and goods to which we did not previously have access. In 1887, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) was created specifically to regulate railroads in order to “protect” consumers from falling prey to the “profit-seeking whims” of the railroad industry. Much like today, the concern was that powerful railroad companies would arbitrarily increase rates or partner with other companies in a way that harmed consumers, just like the aforementioned Comcast/Netflix example. And as a result, the ICC made the railroads public utilities. But the ICC ended up doing more harm than good.

As Robert J. Samuelson of the Washington Post writes:

The railroads needed ICC approval for almost everything: rates, mergers, abandonments of little-used branch lines. Shippers opposed changes that might increase costs. Railroads struggled to meet new competition from trucks and barges. In 1970, the massive Penn Central railroad — serving the Northeast — went bankrupt and was ultimately taken over by the government. Others could have followed.

Without the freedom to innovate and provide the best possible service to consumers without having to first jump through a series of regulatory hoops, the railroad industry’s hands were tied, and progress was stagnant.

In 1980, the negative impacts became too much for even the government to ignore, and the ICC was abolished. Shortly thereafter, the industry recovered. Not only did freight rates and overall costs decrease, but railroads were also finally able to make a profit again—something that became a struggle in the wake of the ICC’s creation. In other words, the repeal of regulatory oversight resulted in a win-win situation for all parties involved. And it appears the same is true of the repeal of net neutrality.

If we were to believe the hype being spread last year, by now the sky should have fallen and the internet made obsolete or exorbitantly expensive, as Banksy implied, from the lack of oversight. But that has not been the case. Instead of costs skyrocketing or connection speeds slowing down, things have actually gotten much better.

According to Recodeinternet speeds actually have increased nearly 40 percent since net neutrality was abolished. Uninhibited by government regulations, service providers have been free to expand their fiber optic networks, allowing for greater speed:

Finally some good news: The internet is getting faster, especially fixed broadband internet. Broadband download speeds in the U.S. rose 35.8 percent and upload speeds are up 22 percent from last year, according to internet speed-test company Ookla in its latest U.S. broadband report.

You’d think this news would have inspired a slew of “oops, we were wrong” articles to be written by those who worked so diligently to spread fear in the lead-up to the repeal. But this has not been the case.

Wired, which published many articles in favor of net neutrality, did publish an article called “A Year without Net Neutrality: No Big Changes (Yet),” where it admits that none of the scary predictions actually came true. But it still clung to its paradoxical belief that an internet free from regulation is not truly free.

Whether the naysayers are willing to admit it or not, less government regulation results in better outcomes for both companies and consumers. So the next time we are told that a lack of regulation is going to be the end of life as we know it, we would do well to remember what really happened when the government finally freed the internet from its grasp.

COLUMN BY

Brittany Hunter

Brittany Hunter

Brittany is a senior writer for the Foundation for Economic Education. Additionally, she is a co-host of Beltway Banthas, a podcast that combines Star Wars and politics. Brittany believes that the most effective way to promote individual liberty and free-market economics is by telling timely stories that highlight timeless principles.

EDITORS NOTE: This column by FEE with images is published with permission.

Remembering Our WWII Parents at Christmas Time

The parents of us baby-boomers truly are a great generation. They grew up early, taking on adult responsibilities. Our parents did whatever needed to be done rather than whatever they wanted to do. They won World War II.

One of the great things my black American parents gave me was options which permitted me to select what I wanted to be when I grew up. My parents supported my desire to become a professional artist. Receiving numerous scholarships, I attended the Maryland Institute College of Art and landed a job as a graphic designer at WJZ-TV ABC affiliate television station in Baltimore.

In sharp contrast with mine, Mom’s childhood was horrific. When she was a little girl, her father was accidentally killed and her mother became an alcoholic. Many times Mom and her sister were left alone to raise and fend for themselves. Mom was bright and talented. She told me about the time she was beautifully dressed to apply for a job as a sales clerk at downtown Baltimore’s Hochschild Kohn’s and Hecht’s department stores. Mom said she was offered a job in the kitchen. Mom said it was because of her dark complexion. Though she did not say it. I could tell it hurt Mom deeply.

Never experiencing the racism Mom endured, I thought she had an irrational fear of white people. My sister excitedly wanted to show Mom the new home she purchased in an integrated development. When Mom realized the house was in a cul de sac, she panicked and demanded to be taken home. Mom feared if my sister’s white neighbors attacked, there was only one way out. Mom felt extremely uncomfortable going to integrated restaurants and theaters.

Dad was quite the opposite. Whenever a door opened for blacks, Dad ran through it. I was a little kid when the “Town” movie theater in Baltimore opened to blacks. Dad took me there to see the “Ten Commandments” with Charlton Heston.

Dad worked as a laborer until the door opened for blacks to take the civil service test to become Baltimore City firefighters. Despite outrageously racist working conditions, Dad thrived in the fire department winning “Firefighter of the Year” two times. At 29 years old, Dad was fathering his four kids and served as a surrogate father to my envious five boy cousins born out-of-wedlock. That’s a lot of responsibility for such a young man. I don’t think Dad was particularly unique. Americans seemed to mature earlier back then.

My wife Mary’s white parents were also hardworking, responsible and resourceful at young ages. Their family was two parents and four children. And yet, Mary remembers washing dishes for 11 people. Her parents took in family and friends who were in a financial jam. Mary’s amazing mom always made it work; extending the food and making everyone comfortable. Mary’s mom said everyone lived with them as many as 17 people. This was the character of the World War II generation.

Mary and I marvel over the fact that though our parents were not rich, neither of us ever felt deprived at Christmas. How on earth did they pull that off? We both have cherished Christmas memories.

Compared to our parents, we baby-boomers have had it pretty easy. We are the me, me, me – all about me generation. Not having to be concerned with survival issues like our parents, baby-boomers were free to be self-focused, rebelling against traditional morals, principles and values. This birthed the counterculture hippie movement.

Gifted with scholarships, in the late 1960s, I was among a handful of black students at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Most of my fellow students were white from well-to-do families. The rich white students ranted about the awfulness of America while expressing disdain for their traditional minded wealthy parents. These spoiled brats eventually took over public education and continue poisoning our youths against our country today.

Black Panther activists came to the Maryland Institute to rally us black students. Wearing black leather jackets and berets, the Panthers angrily demanded to meet with the college administrators to discuss our demands. The administrators complied.

I was clueless as to what I was suppose to be angry about. I was there on scholarships awarded to me by white men; a senator, a governor and Baltimore Mayor William Donald Schaefer. All my professors/instructors were excellent and supportive. Because Maryland Institute attracted talented art students from around the world, I was competing on a high level. Life was good. And yet, I joined my fellow black students in viewing the college’s administrators as enemies because I thought it was the black thing to do.

I see the same irrational and erroneous thinking in young blacks today; embracing the false rhetoric of the openly hate-group Black Lives Matter. Mega-millionaire American black actors and athletes who are living extraordinary lives are running around spewing hatred for America, claiming it is a hellhole of racism and social injustice against blacks. I scratch my head hearing millennial blacks in my family rant about America’s rabid racism. Folks, these young blacks have not experienced an ounce of real racism in their lives. Anti-America leftists have taught them that hating America is the black thing to do.

Old counterculture baby-boomers, black and white, have dominated public education for decades. Consequently, our kids see racism, social injustice and the awfulness of America everywhere.

The dirty little secret is even when liberals (old hippies) rant about America’s cruelty to the poor, illegals, women, blacks, gays and so on, it is still really all about them – making themselves feel good and superior. Whenever conservatives offer real commonsense solutions to the so-called wrongs liberals claim to want to fix, liberals always reject their ideas.

World War II generation blacks and whites marched, suffered and died for blacks to be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. Sadly, younger Americans believe hiring to achieve racial and gender balance is more important than character and qualifications.

My white baby-boomer friend Peggy told me a great Christmas story from her childhood. Every Christmas her father took their family to dinner at their favorite restaurant. On one occasion, a black couple was seated in the corner. After seating Peggy’s family and returning with drinks, the waitress began taking their food order. Peggy’s dad noticed that the black couple was there before them and had not been served. The waitress said she seated them but had no intention to serve them. She and management hoped the couple would leave. Peggy’s dad expressed his disapproval, removed his family and they never went back. Peggy said that incident impacted her greatly. It taught her to respect all people.

Peggy’s dad is gone. My wife Mary’s dad is gone. My mom and dad are gone. Our parents were members of the great World War II generation – a time when manliness was considered a good thing and women realized the power of their femininity.

My grown up Christmas wish is for more young Americans to realize the greatness of their World War II grandparents and great grandparents – embracing traditional principles and values which bring stability. I am seeing signs of my wish coming true. Traditional marriage is making a comeback among millennials

Have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Blessed New Year!

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is by Vitor Pinto on Unsplash.

Planned Parenthood Has an Ally at National Institutes of Health

Pro-life leaders are urging Trump administration officials at Health & Human Services (HHS) to correct National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins over the issue of using aborted babies for fetal research.

“Director Collin’s remarks are a stark reminder that the stain of Planned Parenthood’s commoditization of unborn children isn’t yet eradicated from the federal government,” said 2ndVote Executive Director Robert Kuykendall. “Director Collins’ pro-life superiors clearly need to remind him that he’s no longer with the Obama administration, which promoted, funded, and tried to force private actors’ participation in, abortion.”

As reported by Science, Collins said last week that using aborted babies for scientific research “will continue to be the mainstay” at NIH even as alternatives are prioritized. “There is strong evidence that scientific benefits can come from fetal tissue research, which can be done with an ethical framework,” Collins continued.

Collins’ comments come after the Trump administration cancelled a Food & Drug Administration contract which aimed to use tissues from aborted babies for drug testing. Other testing has been cancelled, according to Science. HHS has also launched a review of all federal research which uses so-called unborn baby body parts and tissue from so-called “elective” abortions.

“There is never a reason to abort an innocent child,” said Kuykendall. “Director Collins’ acknowledgement that ethical, pro-life research options are ‘scientifically, highly justified’ doesn’t outweigh his support for continuing to provide a taxpayer-provided source of revenue to the abortion industry.”

RELATED ARTICLE: Planned Parenthood Discriminates Against Employees That Don’t Get Abortions


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EDITORS NOTE: This column with images by 2ndVote is republished with permission. The featured photo is by Shutterstock.

Advertisers Cower as Libs Gin up Attacks on Tucker Carlson

“Approximately 20” companies have caved to pressure from liberal groups and pulled or suspended advertising from Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show after the host’s recent statements about immigration:

“We have a moral obligation to admit the world’s poor they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer, and dirtier, and more divided,” he said at the start of his program last week. “Immigration is an act of atonement. Previous leaders of our country committed sins. We must pay for those sins by welcoming an endless chain of migrant caravans.”

While many immigrants seek the American Dream, policies that encourage illegal immigration such as open borders and sanctuary cities undermine the rule of law. Furthermore, unchecked immigration is an invitation for chaos and a significant detriment to the social fabric of our nation — for example, the higher serious crime rates by illegal immigrants as compared to native-born Americans and legal immigrants.

Not surprisingly, the campaign to push companies away from Carlson’s show is led by leftist hack website Media Matters — an organization funded by liberal billionaire George Soros. According to Media Matters, advertisements on a network covering a different viewpoint on immigration policy amounts to “sponsoring fascism.” Of course, Pacific Life, who is “pausing” ads, continues to support pro-abortion organizations, while Media Matters convenient ignores the historical role of abortion in the eugenics philosophies promulgated by real, actual fascists. The abortion industry is also complicit in enabling human traffickers who prey on vulnerable immigrants.

Do companies like Pacific Life support the abortion industry’s attack on immigrants? The virtue signaling over Carlson’s comments is outrageously hypocritical when corporate bank accounts directly fund the destruction of life, particularly in immigrant communities. This means 2ndVoters must work harder to engage these companies through direct contact and by holding them accountable with your dollars.

Will you educate Pacific Life today on their hypocrisy? Reach out using the button below:

Send Pacific Life an Email!


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EDITORS NOTE: The column with images by 2ndVote is republished with permission. The featured photo is from Shutterstock.

C.S. Lewis Saw Government as a Poor Substitute for God

That means it contains all the flaws and foibles of mortals so a free people must confine it, restrain it, and keep a wary eye on it.


“Friendship,” wrote C. S. Lewis in a December 1935 letter, “is the greatest of worldly goods. Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life. If I had to give a piece of advice to a young man about a place to live, I think I should say, ‘sacrifice almost everything to live where you can be near your friends.’”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was just the sort of person I would give an arm to have as a friend across the street. I can only imagine the thrill of listening to him for hours on end. This distinguished scholar and thinker was, of course, a prolific author of works in Christian apologetics and of the seven-part children’s fantasy, The Chronicles of Narnia (which have sold more than 100 million copies and have been adapted into three major motion pictures).

While teaching literature first at Oxford and then at Cambridge, he cranked out more than a score of books, from the dense but highly regarded Mere Christianity to the entertaining The Screwtape Letters, plus hundreds of speeches, essays, letters, and radio addresses. Some regard him as the greatest lay theologian of the 20th Century. His influence, substantial while he was alive, may be even greater in the world today. Visit the C. S. Lewis website and you’ll see just how copious and wide-ranging this amazing Irishman’s interests were.

Stacked against his literary and theological offerings, Lewis’s commentary on political and economic matters is comparatively slim—mostly a few paragraphs scattered here and there, not in a single volume. Lewis scholars have examined those snippets to discern where he might be appropriately placed on the spectrum. Was he a socialist, a classical liberal, an anarchist, a minarchist, a theocrat, or something else?

Personally, I believe Lewis might be perfectly happy to be labeled a Christian libertarian. He embraced minimal government because he had no illusions about the essentially corrupt nature of man and the inevitable magnification of corruption when it’s mixed with political power. He knew that virtuous character was indispensable to a happy life, personal fulfillment, and progress for society at large—and that it must come not by the commands of political elites but from the growth and consciences of each individual, one at a time. He celebrated civil society and peaceful cooperation and detested the presumptuous arrogance of officialdom.

In these very pages, other writers have made the case that Lewis was a lover of liberty. In a 2012 article titled “C. S. Lewis: Free Market Advocate,” Harold B. Jones Jr. argued that it was Lewis’s belief in “the rules of logic” and “premises that are fixed realities” that produced his embrace of markets and free exchange. I think Lewis’s literal interpretation of Jesus’s words led him to the same perspective I explained in my essay, “Rendering Unto Caesar: Was Jesus a Socialist?

Calvin College’s David V. Urban answered the question “Was C. S. Lewis a Libertarian?” with a resounding Yes! And thirty-five years earlier, in “C. S. Lewis on Compelling People to Do Good,” Clarence Carson dissected Lewis’s statements and arrived at a similar conclusion. More recently, Marco den Ouden brilliantly drew out Lewis’s sobering insights into the tyrannical potential of pure democracy in “Why the Devil Loves Democracy.” All these essays are well worth your time even if your interest in Lewis is minimal.

It’s the primary source of Lewis’s own words, of course, that should clarify where his political and economic sympathies were. Allow me to present the following selections for you to consider.

Lewis’s 1958 essay, “Willing Slaves of the Welfare State” (published that year in The Observer and then later revised and included in his excellent 1970 anthology, God in the Dock) is a goldmine of insights about government and its proper relationship to the individual. You can read the whole essay here. One of my favorite passages is this:

To live his life in his own way, to call his house his castle, to enjoy the fruits of his own labor, to educate his children as his conscience directs, to save for their prosperity after his death—these are wishes deeply ingrained in civilized man. Their realization is almost as necessary to our virtues as to our happiness. From their total frustration disastrous results both moral and psychological might follow.

While advocates for the interventionist welfare state argue that government programs produce happiness and security, Lewis suggests they are seriously mistaken. There is a far better way to achieve those ends, namely, freedom:

I believe a man is happier, and happy in a richer way, if he has “the freeborn mind.” But I doubt whether he can have this without economic independence, which the new society is abolishing. For economic independence allows an education not controlled by Government; and in adult life it is the man who needs, and asks, nothing of Government who can criticize its acts and snap his fingers at its ideology. Read Montaigne; that’s the voice of a man with his legs under his own table, eating the mutton and turnips raised on his own land. Who will talk like that when the State is everyone’s schoolmaster and employer?

Elsewhere in the essay, Lewis is unequivocal in his disdain for the pretensions of government, as much for its overblown claims of “rule by experts” in the modern day as for its medieval insistence on rule by “divine right.” In every age, he says, “the men who want us under their thumb” will advance the particular myths and prejudices of the day so they can “cash in” on hopes and fears.

That, he says, opens the door wide to tyranny in one form or another. Such men are no more than self-exalting, self-aggrandizing mortals. While they may proclaim to be “of the people and for the people,” they inevitably establish self-serving oligarchies at the people’s expense. The following three paragraphs from “Willing Slaves of the Welfare State” (appearing at different points in the essay) express profound skepticism toward the “planners of society” among us:

“I believe in God, but I detest theocracy. For every Government consists of mere men and is, strictly viewed, a makeshift; if it adds to its commands ‘Thus saith the Lord’, it lies, and lies dangerously.”

“The question about progress has become the question whether we can discover any way of submitting to the worldwide paternalism of a technocracy without losing all personal privacy and independence. Is there any possibility of getting the super Welfare State’s honey and avoiding the sting?”

“The modern state exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good—anyway, to do something to us or to make us something. Hence the new name ‘leaders’ for those who were once ‘rulers.’ We are less their subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can say to them, ‘Mind your own business.’ Our whole lives are their business.”

The notion that the welfare state will take good care of us is, to Lewis, delusional. Doing so is to sell short one’s own capabilities and those of voluntary, social networks and organizations. It also ensnares one in a fool’s errand that cannot end well:

What assurance have we that our masters will or can keep the promise which induced us to sell ourselves? Let us not be deceived by phrases about “Man taking charge of his own destiny.” All that can really happen is that some men will take charge of the destiny of the others. They will be simply men; none perfect; some greedy, cruel and dishonest. The more completely we are planned the more powerful they will be. Have we discovered some new reason why, this time, power should not corrupt as it has done before?

Lewis believed that men and women should be equal before the rule of law. He disdained arbitrariness, caprice, racism, or classism in the law’s application. Consistent with those principles, he believed just as firmly that the law should not aim to make people equal in other ways, such as in material wealth. That could only be done through ugly force.

In a 1943 essay entitled “Equality,” he warned against applying economic equalness as a “medicine” for society’s ills. When we do that, he said, “we begin to breed that stunted and envious sort of mind which hates all superiority. That mind is the special disease of democracy, as cruelty and servility are the special diseases of privileged societies. It will kill us all if it grows unchecked.”

Though he found the egalitarian impulses of democracy offensive, he wasn’t averse to using the term “democrat” to describe his own feelings about government. It’s important to note that he used the term in its broadest sense, namely, to mean popular participation in decisions about who served in government and what they could justifiably do. At the end of the day, he readily acknowledged the danger of a pure democracy combining with rotten character to ultimately produce its precise opposite, dictatorship. In Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories (1966), he wrote:

Being a democrat, I am opposed to all very drastic and sudden changes of society (in whatever direction) because they never in fact take place except by a particular technique. That technique involves the seizure of power by a small, highly disciplined group of people; the terror and the secret police follow, it would seem, automatically. I do not think any group good enough to have such power. They are men of like passions with ourselves. The secrecy and discipline of their organization will have already inflamed in them that passion for the inner ring which I think at least as corrupting as avarice; and their high ideological pretensions will have lent all their passions the dangerous prestige of the Cause. Hence, in whatever direction the change is made, it is for me damned by its modus operandi. The worst of all public dangers is the committee of public safety.

The Screwtape Letters (1942) remains one of Lewis’s most popular satirical pieces. It was written as a series of missives from a senior demon, named Screwtape, to his nephew Wormwood, who carries the official title of Junior Tempter. Screwtape is training Wormwood in how to corrupt mankind, to turn society into a Hell on Earth. It’s very revealing of Lewis’s political thinking that the senior demon instructs his pupil to “equalize” and “democratize” to achieve their nefarious objectives:

What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement toward the discrediting, and finally elimination, of every kind of human excellence—moral, cultural, social, or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how Democracy is now doing for us the work that once was done by the ancient Dictatorships, and by the same methods? … Allow no pre-eminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser, or better, or more famous, or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them down to a level; all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. Thus Tyrants could practice, in a sense, “democracy.” But now “democracy” can do the same work without any other tyranny than her own.

If Lewis were a statist of any persuasion, I don’t see how he could write any of the above. And if he were a statist, he would likely glorify the ambitions of central planners, which he never did. He was just not impressed by the pomposity of politicians. In his 1960 essay titled “The World’s Last Night,” he wrote,

The higher the pretensions of our rulers are, the more meddlesome and impertinent their rule is likely to be and the more the thing in whose name they rule will be defiled. . . . Let our masters . . . leave us some region where the spontaneous, the unmarketable, the utterly private, can still exist.

If I had to choose a favorite among Lewis’s pithy put-downs of big government, it would be this clip from his 1949 essay “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,” which also appeared later in his anthology, God in the Dock:

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

Lewis’s worldview was internally consistent. He couldn’t bring himself to look upon government as God, a substitute for God, or a reasonable facsimile of God. Government was composed of imperfect mortals, period. That means it contains all the flaws and foibles of mortals so a free people must confine it, restrain it, and keep a wary eye on it.

He was humble enough to admit what so many other mortals won’t, namely, that not even his own good intentions could justify lording it over others. To him, good intentions plus political power equals tyranny all too often. He believed that bad consequences flow directly from bad ideas and bad behavior. In The Abolition of Man, he says:

In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

Finally, I love his scathing criticisms of the education establishment of his day—dominated as it was (and is even more so today) by the centralizers, the faddists, and the practitioners of pedagogical malpractice who are empowered by virtue of government’s involvement. If education is to be saved, I think he would see that salvation coming from private initiative, not from the costly, mind-numbing conformity of bureaucrats in the Department of Education:

Hitherto the plans of the educationalists have achieved very little of what they attempted, and indeed we may well thank the beneficent obstinacy of real mothers, real nurses, and (above all) real children for preserving the human race in such sanity as it still possesses.

If the world is no smarter today than it was when C. S. Lewis died in 1963, we certainly can’t blame him. He gifted us wisdom by the bushels—wisdom we ignore or dismiss at our peril.

COLUMN BY

Lawrence W. Reed

Lawrence W. Reed

Lawrence W. Reed is president of the Foundation for Economic Education and author of Real Heroes: Incredible True Stories of Courage, Character, and Conviction and Excuse Me, Professor: Challenging the Myths of ProgressivismFollow on Twitter and Like on Facebook.

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images by FEE is republished with permission. The featured photo is by Caleb Woods on Unsplash.

New Census Data Show Americans Are Migrating from Tax-Punishing States

The Census Bureau released new data that show Americans are continuing to move from high-tax to low-tax states.


The Census Bureau has released new data on state population growth between July 2017 and July 2018. Domestic migration between the states is one portion of annual population change. The Census data show that Americans are continuing to move from high-tax to low-tax states.

This Cato study examined interstate migration using IRS data for 2016. The new Census data confirms that people are moving from tax-punishing places such as California, Connecticut, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey to tax-friendly places such as Florida, Idaho, Nevada, Tennessee, and South Carolina.

In the chart, each blue dot is a state. The vertical axis shows the one-year Census net interstate migration figure as a percentage of 2017 state population. The horizontal axis shows state and local household taxes as a percentage of personal income in 2015. Household taxes include individual income, sales, and property taxes.

On the right, most of the high-tax states have net out-migration. The blue dot on the far right is New York with a tax burden of 13 percent and a net migration loss of nearly 1 percent (0.92) over the past year.

On the left, nearly all the net in-migration states have tax loads of less than 8.5 percent. The outlier on the bottom left is Alaska. If policymakers want their states to be people magnets, they should get their household tax burdens down to 8.5 percent of personal income or lower.

The red line is fitted from a simple regression that was highly statistically significant.

This Cato Institute article was republished with permission.

COLUMN BY

Chris Edwards

Chris Edwards

Chris Edwards is the director of tax policy studies at Cato and editor of DownsizingGovernment.org.

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images by FEE is republished with permission. The featured photo is by rawpixel on Unsplash.

Judge Sullivan Must Recuse Himself From Flynn Case

When I was in sixth grade, I was chosen to be the defense attorney for a classmate. Evelyn was accused of passing an answer to a test question to a fellow student during an exam. She was accused of cheating.

Evelyn was a great student, and she had never been accused of cheating before, but her accuser was none other than the principal of the school, Dr. Gil Beltrán.

As it were, Dr. Beltrán had seen Evelyn pass the note to her friend when, while performing his routine rounds, he glanced through one of the door windows behind the class and saw the allegedly illegal act take place. Upon seeing the exchange of information, Dr. Beltrán opened the back door of the class, signaled to the receiving student to hand over whatever paper Evelyn had just handed him, and opened it.

You could hear a pin drop as Dr. Beltrán stared down at Evelyn and signaled for her to go to his office. Evelyn cried for hours after that prompting the rest of us to protest about the unfairness of the treatment to which Evelyn was being subjected.

At some point, and I am foggy on the details, Dr. Beltrán offered us our class a compromise. We would have a trial, one with witnesses, lawyers, and a judge; the whole deal. I think Dr. Beltrán (may he rest in peace) concluded this would be a great opportunity for us kids to engage in experiential learning. Of course, Evelyn was the defendant, and I was chosen by the principal himself to be her attorney. And to serve as my co-counsel, the principal chose Dagoberto, my best friend in the world.

But the principal also picked himself to serve as the judge, and the trial would take place in his office; in a week.

Dago and I zealously worked to get Evelyn off. First, we learned that what Evelyn had handed to her friend, was not an answer to the test, but a question about what they were going to do after school. Unfortunately, the principal, Dr. Beltrán, had since thrown away the piece of paper.

And in a great development for the defense, we were also able to procure the teacher as a witness who was willing to testify that not only did she not see Evelyn pass any piece of paper that day, but that Evelyn was a young lady of impeccable character and would be the last student the teacher would have expected to engage in cheating.

Overall, Dago and I were feeling pretty good about our case. At best, we might be able to get Evelyn off altogether. At worst, she would be found guilty of a lesser offense such as disruptive class behavior.

Despite our success at building the case: the accuser was also the judge. I remember Dago and I worried that we would not be able to bring Dr. Beltrán to the stand because a) he was the principal; and b) he was the judge. How do you get the judge to serve as a witness? Dago and I asked ourselves. For the answer to this question, Dago and I would need a classmate friend’s parent who was also an attorney! But try as we did, we couldn’t find one.

Our school, La Lúz School, was a small private, Cuban immigrant school where the Cuban National Anthem was played immediately following the American National Anthem every morning while we stood in ranks with our hands on our hearts and where the Cuban flag proudly waived next to the Stars and Stripes.

At that time, most Cubans had not had the time in country to become members of the learned professions.

So, into trial at the principal’s office we went with the whole class as our audience.

I’ll never forget it! I thought our team performed marvelously. We laid out the facts of the case by calling our witnesses to the stand and having each tell his or her story. We were able to ascertain that the note was not an answer to a test question, that Evelyn had impeccable character, and that no one, except the accuser, ever saw her even pass the paper; a paper no one could produce!

Still, we lost.

Why? Because the judge, who was also the accuser and who was not called to the stand said he knew what he saw, and that Evelyn was guilty.

It wouldn’t be until years later, during a high school civics class, that I learned that the judge could not be a witness or a party to the case!! I needed to move that the judge recuse himself because he was the witness AND the accuser! 

The reason I’m sharing this story with you is because it was the first thing that came to mind when I heard of the shenanigans that took place yesterday at General Michael Flynn’s sentencing hearing.

Let me be clear. I believe that General Flynn lied to the FBI and in so doing broke the law. I also believe he was set up to lie by a manipulative, vindictive, and agenda-driven FBI bent on entrapping the General. What’s more, I believe the investigators in this case were the primary reason General Flynn was without an attorney at their meeting of Jan. 24, 2017, and to allow the FBI to get away with that level of disrespect to a defendant’s rights is repulsive.

But yesterday, a new offense arose. Yesterday, we learned for the first time, that Judge Emmet Sullivan, the judge assigned to the Flynn case, is horribly and irreparably biased against Flynn, and we know this from the judge’s very words.

During the hearing, Judge Sullivan is quoted as saying to Flynn, “I am not hiding my disgust, my disdain for your criminal offense.” At one point, the judge went on to state that Flynn, a 33-year Army veteran of war and peace, had betrayed his country and asked whether General Flynn could be accused of treason. Treason!

That is the only crime so egregious, so vile, and so disgusting to the Framers that it stands as the only one mentioned by name in the Constitution of the United States and punishable by hanging. The same crime for which Jane Fonda was not accused when she pranced around in her short shorts in front of the Viet Cong and sat on an anti-aircraft battery for a photo op.

This is what Judge Sullivan thinks of General Flynn! I notice that Judge Sullivan never served in our nation’s military. Never saw bullets flying nearby while wearing a helmet and shrapnel vest, and never spent months overseas away from his family not knowing if he would ever get back home because he might say hello to an enemy bullet first.

With all due respect to the judge, I will put one year of General Flynn’s service to this great country against the judge’s whole career any day and easily come out winning.

Admittedly, the judge corrected himself and apologized for his remarks, to which I will respond in kind. I apologize for those last two paragraphs and strike them from the record.

But regardless of how I feel about this case, we still have a very significant problem. We still have a judge who is disgusted by the defendant and holds disdain for him to the point where he would consider employing the word treason around this American hero.

It’s like having Dr. Belrtrán try a case all over again, except this time, although I am not Flynn’s attorney, I know better.

Judge Sullivan, recuse yourself from this case!

RELATED ARTICLE: The Evidence Coming Out Of The Flynn Case Makes Mueller Look Worse And Worse

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Revolutionary Act. The featured photo is by rawpixel on Unsplash.

2 Students Explain Why They Defended Teacher Fired Over Transgender Pronouns

Two high school students say they organized a walkout in support of a teacher fired for not using pronouns preferred by a transgender student because they thought they should speak out on a cause they believe in.

“When I wanted to speak out about this, I just found this a great opportunity,” Forrest Rohde, a junior at West Point High School, told The Daily Signal in an interview. “I knew that a lot of people in my school would follow with me.”

School officials, Rohde said, are pushing “a false ideology” on teachers and students.

Rohde’s friend Wyatt Pedersen, a senior at the school in West Point, Virginia, said he thought school administrators were “suppressing” French teacher Peter Vlaming’s First Amendment rights.

The West Point school board voted 5-0 on Dec. 6 to fire Vlaming, saying his refusal to follow orders to use male pronouns in referring to the transgender student “harassed and discriminated against the student” and meant the teacher was “insubordinate.”

Vlaming, 47, told the school board that he did not use male pronouns in referring to the student, who was born female, because of his own religious convictions. He said he also didn’t use female pronouns to refer to the student.

The teacher “read a 10-minute statement to the board and hearing attendees about his intentions, respect, and love for all of his students and their rights,” The Virginia Gazette reported.

Rohde, 17, told The Daily Signal that he “was already kind of into politics in general.” He said he helped organize the walkout of about 100 students Dec. 7 after his father encouraged him to do what he could to show he backed the teacher.

“He’s like, ‘Hey, you want to stay home? Or do you want to not go to school but protest in front of it?’” Rohde said of his father. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, sure. That sounds like a plan.’”

“So, I head out to the school like around 7:30 that morning, and I stayed out there for an hour and a half … holding these signs,” Rohde said.

Rohde said he had started texting friends and posting on social media about supporting Vlaming, and Pedersen came up with the idea of a walkout.

Pedersen, also 17, is what Rohde calls a “co-leader of the #JusticeforVlaming movement.”

Wyatt Pedersen, a senior at the school in West Point, Virginia, says school administrators were “suppressing” teacher Peter Vlaming’s First Amendment rights. (Photo courtesy of Wyatt Pedersen)

Pedersen told The Daily Signal that he supports Vlaming because the teacher “just is an amazing man” and a “devout Christian.” For Vlaming, using male pronouns in this situation would be a “violation of his conscience,” the student said.

“I also feel like the school is suppressing [his] First Amendment rights,” Pedersen said.

Rohde said school officials have the right to disagree with Vlaming, but went too far in firing him.

“The school board can disagree with Vlaming all they want,” Rohde said. “I just think they shouldn’t have fired him over it, or given him any consequences, because it’s a false ideology they’re trying to push onto him, and basically everybody else.”

Rohde said he circulated a petition for fellow students to sign in the school cafeteria, which was met with opposition from teachers. The petition eventually was confiscated, but later returned to him.

Rohde said he would tell peers facing similar situations in schools across the country to speak up politely, respectfully, and “in a peaceful manner” for what they believe in. “Nothing that incites hatred,” he said.

“If you want to spread a message about something, you shouldn’t be afraid of the consequences,” Rohde said. “You should be proud of getting in trouble because from getting in trouble yourself, you’re kind of changing the world, basically, and changing everything for the better.”

In a statement emailed to The Daily Signal, West Point Public Schools Superintendent Laura K. Abel said the high school is supportive of students who openly back Vlaming.

The walkout “gave students an opportunity to publicly show their support for their teacher,” Abel said. “We encourage student involvement in issues that affect the school division.”

Pedersen said he thinks the high school has been unjust in its treatment of Vlaming.

“The government has a purpose in protecting students, but not to the degree of harming other people,” Pedersen told The Daily SIgnal. “I think that it’s disgusting that one student’s beliefs and ideology is being put over the teacher’s beliefs and ideology.”


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COLUMN BY

Portrait of Rachel del Guidice

Rachel del Guidice

Rachel del Guidice is a reporter for The Daily Signal. She is a graduate of Franciscan University of Steubenville, Forge Leadership Network, and The Heritage Foundation’s Young Leaders Program. Send an email to Rachel. Twitter: @LRacheldG.

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images by The Daily Signal is republished with permission. Photo courtesy of Forrest Rohde.

TRUMP’S BATTLE FOR A BORDER WALL: National security, public safety, and Americans’ jobs are “on the line.”

The immigration debate has been raging for years.  Advocates for open borders can be found on both sides of the political aisle and in a wide variety of special interest groups who have come to see the immigration system that delivers an unlimited supply of cheap and exploitable labor, an unlimited supply of foreign tourists, and unlimited supply of foreign students and, for the lawyers, an unlimited supply of clients.

That was the premise for my article, “Sanctuary Country – Immigration failures by design.”

Now the debate about the construction of a border wall is coming to a head.

A line has been drawn, and not in the sand, but along the highly porous and dangerous U.S./Mexican border that permits huge numbers of illegal aliens to enter the United States without inspection and permits huge quantities of narcotics and other contraband to be smuggled into the United States as well.

President Trump is arguably the first U.S. President in many decades who truly understands that border security equals national security.   He also understands that flooding America with exploitable foreign workers from Third World countries is not compassionate for those foreign workers and certainly not for the American workers that they displace.

President Trump is determined to build that wall but incredibly, the Democrats are adamantly opposed to the construction of a border wall.

As I noted in my recent article “Nancy Pelosi, Speaker Of The House – The Sequel (Worse Than The Original),” Pelosi and her Democratic Party colleagues have incredibly declared that a border wall would be as Fox News reported Pelosi’s assertions, “immoral, ineffective and expensive.”

Pelosi and company have created the false illusion that the border wall would seal off the United States from Mexico when, in point of fact, nothing could be further from the truth.  The  border wall would not block access to U.S. ports of entry along that border but simply funnel all traffic to those ports of entry so that the aliens can be inspected and vetted and records of their entry into the United States can be created.  Similarly all cargo would be subject to inspection to keep drugs and other contraband out of the United States.

How could any rational person not want to act to combat the flow of those drugs into the United States?

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) employs approximately 60,000 employees that include the U.S. Border Patrol, the CBP Inspectors at ports of entry and support staff.  The annual budget for CBP is nearly $14 billion.  It makes absolutely not sense for the United States to not secure the U.S./Mexican border against the un-inspected entry of aliens into the United States and against the smuggling of tons of heroin, cocaine, meth, fentanyl and other dangerous drugs into the United States that cost tens of thousands of innocent people their lives in the United States from drug overdoses.  The drugs also provide a huge revenue stream for the drug cartels and, as I noted in previous articles for Hezbollah, the client terrorist organization of Iran.

Drug are also a major factor where transnational gangs operating in the United States are concerned, leading to more violence and more senseless deaths, most often of children living in ethnic immigrant communities across the United States.

Of course the wall that President Trump is determined to construct would not, by itself, end illegal immigration or stop all illegal drugs from flowing into the United States, but would represent a major element of what needs to be a coordinated system that plugs all of the holes in the “Immigration Colander.”

Finally, as I have written in previous articles, the wall would pay for itself.  Illegal aliens provide cheap and exploitable labor for greedy and immoral employers but, as the saying goes, “there is no such thing as a free lunch.”

The cost of educating illegal alien children who are cannot speak, read or write English has been estimated to be 20% to 40% more than for educating children who are English language proficient.

Illegal aliens often use emergency rooms as their primary healthcare provider, creating long lines of those patients who, although they cannot pay for their treatment cannot be turned away.

Illegal aliens send as much of their illegal earnings back to their families in their home countries.  For Mexico the remittances sent by their citizens working illegally in the United States amounts to more than $25 billion annually.  Furthermore, not all money is sent via quantifiable wire transfers.  Money is also smuggled out of the United States to the countries of origin of the millions of illegal aliens who have taken jobs that should be taken by U.S. citizens and lawful immigrants

That money is lost to the U.S. economy and “multiplier effect” exacerbates this loss of money that would otherwise circulate through the U.S. economy if that money was earned by Americans who would spend and invest that money in the United States.

Flooding the United States with Third World workers suppresses wages and working conditions of America’s working poor and, as a consequence, has contributed to increasing homelessness among America’s poor.

If only a fraction of all of these negative results of illegal immigration was prevented, the wall would pay for itself in short order and, as a consequence, enhance national security, public safety and, public health by preventing the entry of un-inspected aliens.

However, many well-intentioned Americans have fallen for the bogus mythology created by the immigration anarchists who advocate for open borders and ineffectual enforcement of the immigration laws from the interior of the United States by promoting the absurd notion that advocates for border security to prevent the illegal and un-inspected entry of aliens into the United States is a bigot and a xenophobe.

In reality the immigration laws of the United States make absolutely no distinction about the race, religion or ethnicity of aliens but rather objectively and dispassionately seek to prevent the entry and continued presence of aliens in the United States when those aliens pose a threat to public health, public safety, national security and the jobs of Americans.

Given the perilous era in which we live, it is unthinkable that anyone would be willing to board an airliner if some of the passengers on that airliner were observed sneaking past the TSA screeners, yet today we live in cities where we live with huge numbers of illegal aliens who have entered the United States surreptitiously by evading the inspections process conducted at ports of entry.

Worse yet, consider how many “sanctuary cities” and even “sanctuary states” have been created across the United States, while “leaders” of the Democratic Party openly call for dismantling ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) altogether.

The immigration anarchists have become proficient at conning huge numbers of Americans into accepting near-anarchy where immigration law enforcement is concerned.

Prior to the Second World War, the enforcement and administration of our nation’s immigration laws was primarily the responsibility of the Department of Labor.  The goal was to make certain that American workers would be shielded from unfair foreign competition for jobs.  Remember at that time the United States was struggling to emerge from the “Great Depression.”

Authority for the enforcement and administration of the immigration laws was shifted to the Department of Justice at the beginning of the Second World War when it became readily apparent that enemy spies and saboteurs were attempting to enter the United States, posing a serious threat to national security.

Ironically, after the terror attacks of 9/11 the responsibility for the enforcement and administration of those very same laws was shifted to the newly created Department of Homeland Security but in a way that undermined that very mission.  This was an issue I wrote about in my article,  Caravan Of ‘Migrants’ – A Crisis Decades In The Making.  When the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) was created, in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, the administration of President George W. Bush apparently failed to follow the Homeland Security Act (HSA), the enabling legislation that created DHS resulting in what Congressman John Hostettler, the Republican Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims referred to as “Immigration incoherence” during a hearing on the topic, New ”Dual Missions” Of The Immigration Enforcement Agencies.

Here are two excerpts from his statement at that hearing:

Failure to adhere to the statutory framework established by HSA has produced immigration enforcement incoherence that undermines the immigration enforcement mission central to DHS, and undermines the security of our Nation’s borders and citizens.

[ … ]

The 9/11 terrorists all came to the U.S. with-out weapons or contraband—Added customs enforcement would not have stopped 9/11 from happening. What might have foiled al Qaeda’s plan was additional immigration focus, vetting, and enforcement. And so what is needed is recognition that, one, immigration is a very important national security issue that cannot take a back seat to customs or agriculture. Two, immigration is a very complex issue, and immigration enforcement agencies need experts in immigration enforcement. And three, the leadership of our immigration agencies should be shielded from political pressures to act in a way which could compromise the Nation’s security.

It is time for our “leaders” to put America and Americans ahead of their greed-driven political agendas and take Chairman Hostettler’s lament and observations to heart.

RELATED ARTICLE: WATCH: Stephen Miller Absolutely Savages Wolf Blitzer Over Immigration

RELATED VIDEO: Brian Kolfage of We The People Will Fund The Wall Interview With Laura Ingraham

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine. It is republished with permission. Border wall photo © Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

Trump Is Right to Withdraw From Syria

The U.S. military presence in Syria has not been authorized by Congress, is illegal under international law, lacks a coherent strategy, and carries significant risks.


President Trump has ordered a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria. This is the right decision. The U.S. military presence in Syria has not been authorized by Congress, is illegal under international law, lacks a coherent strategy, and carries significant risks of entangling America in a broader quagmire in yet another Middle Eastern country.

As I wrote in Axios:

The Obama administration first deployed U.S. troops to Syria to complement its aerial bombing campaign against ISIS with special operations forces and coordinate with local anti-ISIS militias on the ground, gradually expanding from hundreds of troops to roughly 4,000.

The mission expanded, too, from merely defeating ISIS (substantially accomplished some time ago) to ushering Syrian President Bashar al-Assad out of power, expelling Iranian forces, and edging out Russia.

The bottom line: Absent achievable goals and a strong national security imperative backed up by congressional authorization, the U.S. presence in Syria is illegitimate and better off wound down.

One prominent criticism of Trump’s decision is that it lacks a clear public explanation and evades the carefully planned and coordinated inter-agency process that enables such a withdrawal to be executed safely and responsibly. This is a fair criticism. Indeed, Trump seems not to have consulted the Defense Department, State Department, or really any of the national security principals in his administration before making this announcement.

But the fault for evading process may lie more with the president’s hawkish advisors than with Trump himself. Trump has long expressed disapproval for the U.S. military presence in Syria, but his own officials—including National Security Advisor John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and the current Special Representative for Syria Engagement James Jeffrey—either resisted or ignored the Commander-in-Chief’s clearly stated preferences on an ongoing military mission. That may have made the president feel he had no choice but to circumvent process and issue the order to withdraw on his own, via Twitter.

That said, I do worry about an administration that is too deferential to Trump’s every whim. I was heartened, for example, that cabinet officials spent months pushing back on Trump’s call to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. Likewise with the president’s request for military options against North Korea, which the Pentagon reportedly slow-walked in the months before Trump shifted from maximum pressure to diplomatic negotiations with Kim Jong-un. And when Trump reportedly asked Mattis to assassinate Assad, it was probably a good thing that the Secretary of Defense chose not to take the suggestion seriously.

That withdrawal is the right decision does not mean Syria will flourish in peace and security. Several undesirable contingencies may occur in the aftermath of our exit. The Turks may engage in operations against the Kurds in Syria’s northeast. ISIS may make some gains here and there. But if these things materialize, they should not be cited as proof that withdrawal was unwise. That’s exactly the flawed argument hawks employed to criticize the 2011 withdrawal from Iraq. Sure, it left a vacuum in which ISIS emerged. But ISIS itself is a product of the US invasion of Iraq. And our presence in Syria could very well be creating comparable unintended consequences, instead of preventing them.

It can’t be America’s purpose to indefinitely forestall every plausible misfortune that may or may not bedevil this troubled region. In the near term, we can engage in diplomacy to try to curb Turkish plans to target the Kurds. And with regard to ISIS, it’s not at all clear that their permanent defeat depends on maintaining a U.S. ground presence in Syria. The extremist group is already decimated, and even without an indefinite U.S. presence, it is surrounded by enemies to whom we can pass the buck (should resurgence even occur, which is not a given).

Anyone who favors a U.S. military presence in Syria should be calling for Congress to formally authorize it. That process will require making a strong public case that deployment is required to preempt an immediate threat to U.S. security and that the mission has coherent, achievable goals that clearly define what victory looks like. Otherwise, our presence in Syria is illegitimate.

This article is reprinted from Cato At Liberty.

COLUMN BY

John Glaser

John Glaser is associate director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. His research interests include grand strategy, basing posture, U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, the rise of China, and the role of status and prestige motivations in international politics.

RELATED ARTICLES: 

Official: White House ‘Very Supportive’ of Israeli Strikes on Iran in Syria

US Troop Withdrawal from Syria Could Fuel Gulf Assertiveness

The US Withdrawal from Syria: A Blessing in Disguise?

Pros and Cons of the US pullout from Syria

Saudi Arabia says it’s open to sending troops to Syria as U.S. draws down

The United States Decision to Withdraw Forces from Syria: Significance for Israel

Netanyahu Attempts to Calm Fears Over US Pullout from Syria

EDITORS NOTE: This column by FEE with images is republished with permission.

What Life Inside Venezuela’s Crumbling Authoritarian Regime Looks Like

The citizens rely on the government for their livelihood, but they have little control over the government that supposedly represents them.


Sixty-five miles southwest of Venezuela’s capital Caracas lies Cagua. It’s a small city with just over 100,000 people—who live each day in survival mode. The 2018 Global Peace Index ranks Venezuela 143 out of 163 countries. Violent crime, homicide, and violent demonstrations are ranked at 5/5, making it one of the least peaceful and most dangerous countries on earth.

The monthly pay that most Venezuelan workers bring home is 4,500 bolivars, or around 11 U.S. dollars, making shopping for groceries in the socialist country nearly impossible. And since the idea of buying a house or a car is simply out of the question, young people don’t have the ability to become independent from their parents.

Oswaldo, a young man who lives in Cagua, graduated with a degree from a university in Venezuela in 2016. In an interview, Oswaldo described his life in Venezuela and the struggles he faces each day as a young man striving to succeed inside a failing country.

In addition to the problem of finding food and basic medicine, Oswaldo explained that citizens are often plagued with faults in electricity, water, and gasoline services. Many places in the country have to ration water consumption, but much of their drinking water in cities like Valencia is contaminated, anyway. The government has kept the gasoline prices so low that shortages are becoming the norm. This misallocation of resources is inevitable when gas prices are less than one penny for a gallon—sometimes dropping even lower than that.

While there is nothing explicitly prohibiting him from leaving, Oswaldo said the sketchy documentation system and price of flights deter him from even attempting to flee. The country, too, lacks the adequate resources to document who leaves and returns, posing potential problems for any Venezuelan citizen who wished to return. Nevertheless, more than 3 million Venezuelans have fled their homeland since 2015—numbers comparable to Syria and Afghanistan’s emigration tally.

Movement inside the country isn’t much different. Public transportation, once a system commonly used by Venezuelans, has become a rarity. Bus owners often cannot cover the cost of the spare parts to fix their vehicles, forcing citizens to find new ways to travel.

It’s not out of the ordinary to see cargo trucks transporting people across the country or pickup trucks packed with individuals, transporting as many people as possible. The police and military have been known to take things into their own hands, charging fines and collecting bribes from innocent travelers in order to make their own ends meet.

Oswaldo says that getting rich in Venezuela is possible, but the only way to do so is by contracting with the government. Venezuela’s former national treasurer from 2007 to 2011 even admitted recently that he received more than $1 billion in bribes while in office. According to Oswaldo, if a business has a good relationship with the crony government, they can make a small fortune. But businesses that rely strictly on customer demand for their products rarely do.

The citizens rely on the government for their livelihood, but they have little control over the government that supposedly represents them. After an election, for instance, it’s not uncommon for the opposition leader to be imprisoned. Votes are often illegitimate and the corrupt electoral body names the government-backed candidate the winner.

For these reasons, political participation has diminished considerably since early 2017, Oswaldo says. Opposition parties don’t want to call out their rulers and risk being singled out by those in power. The cycle of corruption and control of people’s lives is never-ending.

Organizations promoting freedom aren’t currently being persecuted because the government doesn’t feel threatened, Oswaldo says. But that could change at any moment. “All Venezuelans are at risk in our country,” he said. “Those most exposed are those who do political activism since their work puts the stability of the government at risk.”

Oswaldo is fighting for freedom in his home country—freedom that’s so often taken for granted in the United States. But Venezuelans are starting to get used to the lack of liberty and the never-ending struggle for their survival in Venezuela, which could very well lead to the regime remaining in power for some time. There are few people inside the country willing to fight against socialism, having seen the horrors of patriots fighting against a dangerous regime. But Oswaldo is holding out for the day that people have more control over their government and citizens can finally have the opportunity to find better lives.

It’s an uphill battle, Oswaldo says, but it’s a battle worth the fight.

COLUMN BY

Jake Grant

Jake Grant

Jake Grant is the Outreach Director for the Coalition to Reduce Spending and a contributor to Young Voices. The views expressed are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer. Follow him on Twitter @thejakegrant.

RELATED ARTICLES:

The Ongoing Implosion of Venezuelan Statism

Venezuelan Gangs Are Using Food to Recruit Kids

Socialism, Not Corruption, to Blame for Venezuela’s Oil Production Drop

Venezuela’s Socialist Nightmare: A Prediction on Where It Ends

EDITORS NOTE: This column by FEE with images is republished with permission. Image by Jamez42 [CC BY-SA 4.0], from Wikimedia Commons

Justice Ginsburg Told Audience Her Health Was ‘Fine’ Days Before Cancer Operation

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she was in good health during a public appearance in New York City Saturday, just days before she had surgery for lung cancer at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

NPR’s Nina Totenberg interviewed Ginsburg at the Museum of the City of New York on Dec. 15, where she asked the 85-year-old justice about her health.

“It’s fine, thank you,” Ginsburg replied. She went on to say that she had resumed her vaunted fitness regiment with her personal trainer after fracturing three ribs in a November fall at her chambers in the Supreme Court.

Less than a week later, doctors in New York removed two cancerous nodules from her left lung. The procedure is called a pulmonary lobectomy. Medical personnel at the George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C., made the diagnosis in November while her fractured ribs were treated.

It is not clear when the surgery was scheduled, and it is not unusual for the justices to defer announcements relating to surgeries or milder forms of medical treatment until after they have taken place.

There is no standardized process for Supreme Court justices to make disclosures as to their health, and the justices themselves are sometimes imprecise about their ailments or overall well-being. For example, former Chief Justice William Rehnquist underwent a tracheotomy in 2004 relating to his thyroid cancer. That procedure is not typical of thyroid cancer treatment, however, prompting speculation as to possible complications and his general prognosis.

WATCH Justice Ginsburg’s interview with Nina Totenberg:

The House Judiciary Committee adopted legislation that would require the justices to submit for regular medical exams on Sept. 13. Among other things, the bill requires the attending physician to inform the chief judge or justice of a particular court if they make a diagnosis that would inhibit a member of the court from fulfilling their duties. 

The high court says Friday’s surgery was successful. Pre-surgery scans “indicated no evidence of disease elsewhere in the body,” according to Ginsburg’s surgeon, Dr. Valerie Rusch.

“Currently, no further treatment is planned,” Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said in a statement Friday. “Justice Ginsburg is resting comfortably and is expected to remain in the hospital for a few days.”

The Supreme Court is currently adjourned for the holidays. The justices are not scheduled to meet again until Jan. 4, when they will discuss pending petitions. Oral arguments will resume on Jan. 7.

Ginsburg has never missed a day of official business. She even continued her work as a justice while receiving chemo and radiation therapy for colon cancer in 1999. However, she was absent for Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s ceremonial investiture on Nov. 8 due to her fractured ribs.

COLUMN BY

Kevin Daley

Send tips to kevin@dailycallernewsfoundation.org


EDITORS NOTE: This column by The Daily Caller with images is republished with permission. 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.