California’s Typhus Surge Is Linked to Fleas, Feces, and Bad Economic Policies

There might not be a government-backed solution to Los Angeles’ typhus outbreak, but if the city’s and state’s politicians really want to end homelessness, then repealing zoning and minimum wage laws would be a great start.


Typhus is on the rise in Los Angeles, with its epicenter in downtown, where the city’s sanitation officials are struggling to respond to the nearly two thousand “cleanup requests” they get from locals every month.

Like San Francisco, LA is struggling to clean up city streets of human waste—specifically feces—due to a lack of public restrooms and a growing homeless population.

There was an average of 700 requests in the area in the spring of 2016, but officials now claim they receive about 1,900 cleanup calls per month thanks to the number of growing homeless camps. But the growing homelessness and sanitation nightmares have led to yet another crisis: a rise in flea-borne typhus.

Between July and September, county officials identified at least nine typhus cases that originated in downtown. At least six of the infected were homeless, but central LA isn’t the only place at risk.

Officials in the city of Pasadena, also located in Los Angeles County, claim 20 residents had typhus fever this year. Typhus cases have also been registered in Long Beach and Willowbrook.

As the number of cases continues to rise, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors feels pressured to act. They recently voted on a pilot program to fight the illness in homeless encampments by adding more cleanup efforts, introducing more mobile showers, offering the homeless housing, and distributing hand sanitizer and flea repellent for people and pets.

The crisis, which has already made 64 victims this year alone, has deeper roots. At least, that’s what 5th District Supervisor Kathryn Barger appears to claim.

“When I drive through parts of my district and I see the living conditions on the street, it reminds me of a third-world country,” Barger said.

Perhaps the fact that California falls behind every single state in the country when it comes to fiscal, regulatory, tax, and economic policies—much like many “third-world” countries—has something to do with the current conditions residents are now forced to grapple with.

As the Cato Institute’s Freedom Index reveals, California’s suffocating regulatory environment has a series of very real and heartbreaking consequences.

When it comes to land-use freedom, for instance, cities like Los Angeles have restrictive rules regarding housing supply and rent control, keeping builders from developing affordable housing and helping to artificially increase the cost of housing across the board.

But bad housing policies are not the only cause of growing homelessness in Los Angeles. The state’s labor laws add insult to injury by making it difficult for employers to help those in need. With high minimum wage laws, no right-to-work policies in place, mandated short-term disability insurance, and prohibiting consensual noncompete agreements, job creation in California is dramatically held back, and the poor and low-skilled are unable to break into the labor market.

In addition, occupational licensing also keeps entrepreneurs from entering the market due to the extensive cost associated with obtaining the mandated training and certification to perform simple services.

With state lawmakers being so eager to get involved in every single affair, from banning straws to keeping residents on a budget from using scooters, it’s hard to see how these rules could be repealed—or at least reformed—anytime soon.

As the founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation Jacob G. Hornberger explained, the root causes of homelessness in most major urban centers across the US are both minimum wage laws and zoning, two policies that are not only in effect in California but that have been revamped and strengthened again and again over the years.

With California residents once again helping progressives stay in power in the region, we know these policies are not going anywhere. If anything, they will continue to receive widespread support from the newly-elected governor.

For the time being, there might not be a government-backed solution to Los Angeles’ typhus outbreak, but if the city’s and state’s politicians really want to end homelessness, then repealing zoning and minimum wage laws would be a great start.

COLUMN BY

Chloe Anagnos

Chloe Anagnos

Chloe Anagnos is a professional writer, digital strategist, and marketer. Although a millennial, she’s never accepted a participation trophy.

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

Judge’s Ruling Adds Thousands More Votes In Florida Recount

In a victory for the campaign hopes of U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a federal judge has ordered all of Florida’s elections officials to give nearly 4,000 voters — or more maybe 7,000, no one is sure — whose ballots were rejected over mismatched signatures until Saturday to fix the problem and for their votes to count.

Judge Mark Walker ruled early today that apparently all of the state’s elections offices have wrongly, or unconstitutionally, applied the state law governing how voters can fix rejected signatures on absentee and provisional ballots. There were a known 3,700 ballots rejected in the Midterm election after canvassing boards determined that the signature on a mail-in or provisional ballot did not match the signature the state had on file for that voter.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson’s campaign sued last week to invalidate the signature rejection process, amid a series of lawsuits attempting to change Florida voting laws through the courts and push more votes into the final tallies.

Judge Walker issued a 34-page order granting a temporary injunction at the request of the Nelson campaign, and directed the state’s supervisors of elections to gives these voters until 5 p.m. Saturday to “cure” the problem.

The law had given voters had until the day before the election to fix the signature issue. So this ruling does change state law for this election, as it allows votes to be counted after the law said they cannot be.

If these are all Democrat votes, and most of them likely will be, they alone would not be enough to flip the two major elections. But they would get it closer.

In the Senate race, Republican Gov. Rick Scott is leading Nelson by 12,562 votes, or 0.15 percent. In the Governor’s race, Republican Ron DeSantis is up 0.41 percent, or 33,684 votes, on Democrat Andrew Gillum.

However, and this is a really big caveat, it isn’t really known the total number of ballots that were rejected or mismatched signatures. Only 45 of Florida’s 67 counties had provided totals to the court on mismatched signatures during Walker’s hearing on the lawsuit last week. So it will likely be higher, but how much higher, no one knows. Some have predicted it could be 7,000.

Scott’s campaign is appealing Walker’s order. But that does not seem likely to change anything at this point.

Further, Judge Walker is scheduled to hear more lawsuits, including a challenge by Nelson to the state’s procedures for counting overvotes and undervotes. The Nelson campaign is confident they will close the gap through the overvote and undervote process, and more so if they can change the process.

The Nelson campaign is also suing to extend today’s deadline for Florida’s elections supervisors to get their recount totals to Tallahassee.

RELATED ARTICLES:

In Palm Beach County, Democrats Argue To Count Votes Cast By Non-Citizens

Republican Rick Scott Gains Votes in Florida Recount, Calls on Democrat Nelson To Concede

Rubio Exposes The Blatant Voter Fraud Democrats Committed In Florida

Florida Counties Abandon Recount As Numbers Favor Republicans

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

VIDEO: Washington State, ACLU Aren’t Letting Up in Crusade Against Florist’s Religious Liberty

How would you like to attend a political rally featuring President Donald Trump? How about one featuring former President Barack Obama?

Even better—why don’t you attend both? You get to help decorate the stage. You can even create a banner setting forth that party’s platform.

Given our polarized political climate, it’s a safe bet that most Americans would elect to participate in one rally or the other, but not both. It’s pretty easy to understand why: The whole point of those rallies is to support political positions that, for many of us, are rooted in deeply held beliefs.

This basic, logical principle seems to have eluded Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson and the American Civil Liberties Union. This duo sued Barronelle Stutzman, a 74-year-old floral artist from Richland, Washington, and her business, Arlene’s Flowers, because she declined to participate in and design custom floral arrangements for a same-sex wedding ceremony.

Ferguson and the ACLU say that if Stutzman creates custom arrangements for any wedding, she must create them for same-sex weddings.

But there’s more. Stutzman not only designs custom floral arrangements for weddings, but also attends and personally participates in those sacred events. She decorates the venue with her artistic creations, attends the ceremony, and participates in wedding rituals. But doing that for a same-sex marriage squarely conflicts with her faith.

This is why, even though Stutzman loved her longtime customer and friend Rob Ingersoll, she respectfully declined his invitation to help celebrate his same-sex ceremony. Instead, she referred Ingersoll to other florists in the area who, in her words, she “knew would do an excellent job for this celebration.”

The story could have, and should have, ended there for reasons completely unrelated to whether one agrees with Stutzman’s decision. It should have ended there because it is Stutzman’s decision. Because in a tolerant society, there is room for disagreement. There is room for Democratic Party rallies and Republican Party rallies. There’s even room for Green Party rallies, just don’t expect them to feature helium balloons (or, for that matter, many people).

But the story didn’t end there, because Ferguson was unwilling to allow certain beliefs to go unpunished—namely, a religious belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. Despite the fact that he received no complaint from Ingersoll about Stutzman or her business, Ferguson sued this 74-year-old grandmother in her professional and personal capacity. The latter means that all of Stutzman’s personal assets, including her life savings, are at risk.

Stutzman went on to lose her case. After several years of legal proceedings, the Washington Supreme Court later ruled in State of Washington v. Arlene’s Flowers that Stutzman must pay penalties and attorneys’ fees for choosing to live consistently with her conscience.

But the story doesn’t end there, either. Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing Stutzman appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which vacated the state high court’s ruling and ordered it to reconsider in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop. In that case, the Supreme Court condemned the hostility that Colorado demonstrated toward the faith of cake artist Jack Phillips.

This past Tuesday, Stutzman filed her arguments with the Washington Supreme Court, asking that it reverse the government’s punishment of her, just like the high court did in Phillips’ case.

As the Washington Supreme Court considers Stutzman’s plight once again, it would do well to remember there are people of good will on both sides of the marriage debate. The government should never be hostile to sincere religious beliefs of people of faith, and it should never seek to force anyone to violate their core convictions, especially by participating in a sacred event like a wedding ceremony.

Ours is a diverse society united by a commitment to freedom of belief, not a compulsion to uniformity of thought. A win for Stutzman will reaffirm that foundational American principle.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of James Gottry

James Gottry is a lawyer and writer with Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal group founded to preserve and defend religious liberty. Twitter: .

RELATED ARTICLES:

Spontaneous Worship Breaks Out at White House as Top Christian Artists Gather

Campus senator labeled ‘homophobic’ for speaking her faith


The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now


EDITORS NOTE: This column with images and video is republished with permission. Photo: Alliance Defending Freedom.

VIDEO: Rubio Promotes ‘Dignified Work,’ Decries Universal Basic Income

“America’s not an economy, it’s a nation of peoples and families and communities, and our economy works for the people, not the people for the economy,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said as keynote speaker of the Antipoverty Forum hosted by The Heritage Foundation on Thursday.

The foundation’s annual forum invites policy experts and practitioners to collaborate on how to best advance conservative antipoverty solutions in welfare, health care, education, and civil society.

“The best antipoverty program is a job,” Rubio said, beginning his speech with a quote from former President Ronald Reagan. “Good jobs are jobs that connect the work [Americans] do, not just to a paycheck, but to the dignity that comes with a productive life.”

Instead of focusing on economics when discussing poverty, we should focus on those instances where “dignified work no longer allows working families the ability to provide that kind of stability in their homes or their communities,” Rubio said.

Rubio spoke of his own family’s rise from poverty to prosperity when they left communist Cuba, “trapped by the circumstances of their birth,” for capitalist America, where “through hard work and perseverance anyone … could get ahead.”

Rubio said this version of the American dream wasn’t about his family’s work ethic or the economy, but a defining feature of American life, “dignified work,” which he called a source of stability in a society.

Rubio suggested a number of possible policy proposals to reinvigorate the dignity of the millions of “missing men”—described by The Atlantic as prime-age men who are able-bodied but unemployed and not currently seeking employment—back into the labor force.

He suggested reforming the earned income tax credit to more clearly reward each hour of work, and antipoverty programs like the federal disability insurance entitlement and food stamps to mandate, rather than just encourage, work.

Rubio also said we need to also expand opportunities for working-class students, which means accrediting vocational degree programs rather than reforming student loans to support traditional four-year degree programs.

The Florida Republican pushed back against two proposals the left promotes as solutions to solve poverty, but undermine the dignity of work: a universal basic income and a federal jobs guarantee.

If the federal government were to institute a universal basic income, Rubio explained, all American citizens would receive a check regardless if they worked or not. A federal jobs guarantee would mean that the federal government would ensure all American citizens seeking employment get a government job for which they would be compensated with a $15 minimum wage, with full benefits.

These approaches, in the senator’s view, only double down on the flaw of paying low-income workers to be “unproductive.”

>>> Watch the full Antipoverty Forum event:

COLUMN BY

Troy Worden

Troy Worden is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.


The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now


EDITORS NOTE: This column with video and images is republished with permission. Photo: Erin Granzow for The Heritage Foundation.

Diverse and Divided

The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Board of Directors issued a comprehensive statement in 2006, whose combined language included helping students to connect their education to societal issues, change inequities, and to promote cultural empathy, pluralism, and diversity in a liberal education.  The key words for determining the value of today’s education, which are severely undermining western civilization, however, are Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Diversity used to define the variety of learning experiences, opinions, and opportunities for a well-rounded education, but the term now applies to the students themselves – their gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, race, and disability – and how they are to be divided and classified for acceptance into the institute of higher indoctrination.   Meritocracy, then, has been set aside for a quota system based on superficialities, which is passionately supported by the University of Michigan (U-M), among others.  Its spending for the promotion of diversity and inclusivity, reported on October 10, 2016, was $40 million per year with an additional $85 million proposed over the next five years.  Another strategic plan for an “inclusive and equitable campus community” required $17 million, and $31 million would be taken from the university’s general fund – increased tuition (by 3.9 percent), student fees, and appropriations granted by state lawmakers – more than double the rate of inflation.  Liberal programs of propaganda are indeed expensive propositions. As we shall see, the key words are a whitewash of deception, while an assault is being waged against the very education that these students hope to obtain.

Lest we assume that U-M is alone in its objectives, Colorado State University has a “Bias Hotline,” where one may report any conduct, speech or prejudice that could be seen as intimidating, demeaning, degrading, marginalizing, victimizing, or threatening to individuals or groups based on that individual group’s actual or perceived speech or behavior.  This is, of course, a violation of the First Amendment, the freedom of speech, but also a means of robbing students of coping skills they’ll need in the adult world.  In keeping with the times, the U-M also implemented a hotline for citing microaggressions, discrimination, and incivility by students and instructors alike, where one might even report an offense at not being addressed by a preferred pronoun.

Further, university President Mark Schlissel nominated the school’s first chief diversity officer to distinguish and root out discrimination, for a hefty annual salary of $385,000 (within the diversity office payroll of $11 million).  This preoccupation with denouncing someone for mis-speaking strongly resembles the Nazi HJ-Streifendienst (Patrol Force).  The divisiveness causes  suspicion and greater rifts between student groups, as well as a purposeful disconnect from school camaraderie and national unity.

In order to gain Inclusivity, however, the minority students must declare their Exclusivity, their distinction to the group with which they align. This is a regression to tribalism with an increased hostility toward others, to gain power in their common victimhood, to seek more privileges and prestige from the more numerous white, straight, Christian (conservative) males, whom they now view as oppressors and label “white supremacists.”  It is also a total disregard for E Pluribus Unum, out of many, one.  They are not accepting that America was founded by Whites, that the end of slavery was achieved by Whites, and that our nation’s growth and prosperity was realized by Whites.  England’s Shakespeare and other masters in their fields, also Whites, have been removed from many curricula, an intentional depletion of scholarship for the sake of activism and the new equity.

Additional agitators have singled out Jews as oppressors, providing the setting for racist, fascist, Klan, Nazi, and pro-Palestinian groups to isolate, boycott, and protest the existence of Israel and Jews – even with violence.  Jewish instructors have been isolated, harassed and sometimes forced to leave because of threats to their families.  Jewish students are the prey of biased teachers and antisemitic groups.  Disturbingly, the new school culture strongly suggests an alignment with the strategy of the left and ideology of Islam.

In the past, Equity meant equal opportunities for all students to rise as far as their own abilities, hard work, and talent would take them.  Today it means accepting an equal number of students defined by social issues to produce like-minded mediocrity.   The new “cultural training programs” do not address the American culture, and the “language police” are engaged to monitor and restrict the use of words deemed offensive to the diverse groups.  Their apparent purpose is to change the student’s focus – from correct to politically correct, from justice to social justice, from the groundwork for their future occupations to their groundless preoccupations.  Visiting speakers with new ideas are usually unwelcome, and aggression, comparable to the left or Islamic incitement, is promoted to shut down those who dare to impart their opposing views.

Needless to say, because the student pool is no longer the “best and brightest,” it has become necessary to change teaching methods and criteria – reduced requirements to meet reduced abilities, and to qualify for federal grant money.  Education finally accommodates Hillary Clinton’s deceptive trope, “no child left behind.”

Inclusion is now an identity-based, rather than an industry- and achievement-based, system of quotas, and students who once qualified for a university education may now be disqualified if his/her marginalized group has not gained acceptance.  For example, Harvard, among others, has sought to limit the number of Asian-American applicants when it exceeds the quota, despite that group’s exceptional achievements in scholastics, extracurricular activities and interests.  Accordingly, academia is willing to deny superior students’ entry to prestigious schools in order to offer the opportunity to less capable students who, further down the road, may be overwhelmed and obliged to quit.   As for the Jewish students, on far too many campuses, they are targets of harassment, vandalism, exclusion from campus activities, and calls for expulsion, while leftist schools protect the vandals by declaring their attacks to be “free speech.”

Once again, this “education” appears to be geared to the destruction of democracy.  The mechanism leads us through Neotribalism (breakdown of social structure, friendship and community), opposing white students and isolating Jewish students, eroding the male identity, curbing thoughts and speech, and the weakened education, as the left prepares the students for a parallel Islamic legal system.

Another example is the university’s Institute for Research on Women & Gender’s sponsoring an event in February, 2018, titled, “Pederastic Kinship: Deidealizing Queer Studies,” which focused on pederasty, that is to say, sexual relationships between an adult and underage boys.  By its mere presentation, the criminal deviancy was validated, again dishonoring masculinity, and encouraging a behavior that is tolerated in many Muslim societies.

The Jewish victimization is being addressed.  The U of M’s President Mark Schlissel and administrators  have received notification from The Lawfare Project for reports that John Cheney-Lippold, American culture professor, and Lucy Peterson, graduate teaching assistant, denied Jewish students’ their earned letters of recommendation to study abroad in, specifically, Israel.  Another student divulged that her instructor said her degree was contingent upon her watching a slide presentation that contained historic anti-Semitic conspiracy theories: one equating Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu with Adolf Hitler, and another depicting Jews as money-hungry pigs.  In fact, Lawfare is monitoring several universities across the country that have created hostile antisemitic environments, and is now demanding from the U-M immediate and concrete steps to unambiguously condemn anti-Semitism in order to provide a “safe academic environment for Jewish and Israeli students,” in keeping with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism.  The First Amendment was not established as a shield for bigotry.

To paraphrase a quote by Shannon L. Adler:  Before a student or educator calls himself any of the identities recognized by the schools’ programs, one must first learn to be human.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is by Devin Edwards on Unsplash.

VIDEO: Californians Embrace the Second Amendment

John Von Colln: California Gun Store Flooded With New Customers. Even Californians Want to Be Safe.

Owner of Thousand Oaks VC Defense John Von Colln joins Dana Loesch to tell her why.

FLORIDA: School Punishes Teacher Who Refused To Watch Girl Change In Boys’ Locker Room

Another Florida school district is cutting parents out of the loop on transgender school kids and gagging teachers, but this time going after a male P.E. teacher who refused to observe a middle school girl who was claiming to feel like a boy and using the boys’ locker room.

Pasco County schools, a suburban county just north of Tampa, allowed a self-determined transgender female student daily access to the boys’ locker room, without providing any advanced warning to the boys’ parents or to the boys themselves.

This resulted in an embarrassing shock the first time the obvious girl entered the locker room and there were naked boys.

When the male P.E. teacher refused to watch the minor girl change clothes, a school administrator threatened the teacher with placing him on administrative leave. According to Liberty Counsel attorney Richard Mast, whose organization is involved in the situation, the threatening email said that refusing to supervise the girl would “not be tolerated.”

The Liberty Counsel is a pro-bono national law firm that protects individuals’ rights from a traditional, constitutional viewpoint.

Interestingly, a female P.E. teacher also objected to the situation, but was ignored by school administrators. She has not yet been threatened, and given the publicity now surrounding the school, probably will not be. Those are usually done quietly.

The first time the girl entered the boys’ locker room, she caught “boys (literally) with their pants down, causing them embarrassment and concern by the fact that they had been observed changing by an obvious girl,” according to the complaint letter sent to the Pasco County School District from the Liberty Counsel. Remember, these are 13- and 14-year-old boys just discovering their awkward transition into manhood.

Teachers at Chasco Middle School are banned from discussing the change in policy — not the specifics of the case, which would make sense, but the policy itself. There is no other reasonable term for that than “gag order.”

So the Liberty Counsel letter goes on to explain that the teacher refused to “knowingly place himself in a position to observe a minor female in the nude or otherwise in a state of undress.” That actually is a both moral and legally sensible move on the part of the teacher. However, school administrators shifted from the threat of administrative leave to a threat to having him “transferred to another school as discipline for ‘not doing your job in the locker room.’”

The situation arose in September, yet the Pasco County parents of 70,000 students in the district have still not been informed of the new policy by the school district, even though the female student still has full access to the male changing facilities. The Pasco School Board also is aware of it and has done nothing.

The reason is not hard to see. LGBTQI activists are organized, well-financed, powerful and intimidating. Very few politicians or even regular people want to be even perceived as going counter to their agenda.

The Pasco controversy mirrors similar transgender secrecy and heavy-handed intimidation on the part of school district officials in Sarasota County, just south of Tampa. (Both Sarasota and Pasco counties are politically red counties. Their School Boards do not seem to be reflecting that.)

At the recommendation of the Sarasota County School District’s LGBTQI Task Force, the superintendent issued “guidelines” to govern how the district’s 50 public schools handle transgender and gender questioning students — starting as young as kindergarten.

The Sarasota County school policy guidelines implement a full-blown transgender protocol allowing students to use whichever bathroom and locker room corresponds with the gender with which they “identify;” and forces everyone else to use the pronoun of the students’ choice. This sounds identical to Pasco’s policy — or perhaps guidelines is the technical terms as the Board did not take action on it.

But maybe the biggest affront is that the Sarasota guidelines also say that parents can not be informed of their child’s decision to identify as a different gender, because some trans activists claim the schools are a “safer” environment than the home. This again seems to be in line with what is going on in Pasco, which suggests that the administrative guidelines are being heavily influenced or even written by trans activists.

In Sarasota, the secrecy along with the general egregiousness of the policy, attracted a lot of controversy. A 31-year-old Sarasota father of a young child not yet in the school system, sent the superintendent a brief email criticizing the guidelines and keeping transgenderism secret from parents.

That parent found officers from the school district’s brand new police force at his door the next day. Nothing came of the officers’ visit, because they realized the letter was harmless. Nonetheless more showed up at the father’s parent’s home and neighbors’ home.

This is a shocking level of intimidation for a local school district, and certainly at least some parents must have got the message: Shut up, sit down and let us handle your children. Or else we may come knocking.

In Pasco, the message sent is similar, but directly to teachers. Shut up and do what you’re told. Or else.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Revolutionary Act.

Americans Should Be Grateful for a Poland That Prospers and Protects

We celebrated a significant milestone this Veterans Day: 100 years since the end of World War I.

But another noteworthy anniversary fell on that day. Nov. 11, 2018, also marked the centennial of a free Poland, one of America’s most important allies in Europe.

It’s been a rough journey, though. The road since that historic day in 1918 has been pockmarked with strife.

Being situated between Germany and Russia is the global equivalent of drawing the short straw. World War II officially began on Sept. 1, 1939, when Hitler’s army invaded Poland from the west. Only 17 days later, the Soviets rolled in from the east.

Thanks to the postwar Warsaw Pact, Poland wound up in the Soviet bloc of states, its people ruled by communists who did Moscow’s bidding.

But this state of affairs was not destined to last forever. The determined and courageous efforts of certain key leaders—from President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to Pope John Paul II (the first Polish pontiff) and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa—effected a remarkable transformation in the 1980s.

Together, they and the freedom-loving people of Poland rewrote history. Their country today is a NATO member and a loyal friend of the United States.

I was back in Poland just (some weeks) before its recent round of elections in October and met with Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. Once again, I was struck with what a vibrant democracy it is.

It also features an open and growing economy—the European Union’s sixth-largest, in fact, thanks in part to a strong manufacturing sector. Poland ranks 45th out of 180 countries in the latest Index of Economic Freedom. Sure, it has a couple of weak spots, but considering how long the country suffered under communist rule, that’s really a remarkable accomplishment.

Poland’s strong institutions, the index editors note, enabled it to become the only European country to record economic growth during the 2009 credit crisis.

More importantly for the United States, Poland is key to a safe Europe. It is a vital bulwark against Moscow’s geopolitical designs. As historian Lee Edwards has pointed out:

As the next-door neighbor of Ukraine and with uncertainty about Russia’s next aggressive move, Poland matters. Adjoining as it does the three Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—all prime targets of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s imperialist design—Poland matters. As the largest, most prosperous, and most entrepreneurial member of the old Warsaw Pact, Poland matters.

Poland certainly does matter, which is why Americans should be grateful that relations between our nations remains strong. Georgette Mosbacher, the U.S. ambassador to Poland, and Piotr Wilczek, Poland’s ambassador to the U.S., just penned a joint op-ed to praise what they called “a high point in bilateral relations.”

This was reinforced in September when President Donald Trump and President Andrzej Duda signed a “Declaration on Polish-American Strategic Partnership.” According to the two ambassadors, it “emphasizes the strong ties and common interests between our countries in the areas of security and defense, energy, trade, and investment, research and innovation.”

As Walesa once said, “I am happy that Poland is returning to the road of pluralism and democracy.”

Working together with our Polish allies, let’s make sure that, over the next 100 years, its star continues to rise.

Originally published in The Washington Times

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Ed Feulner

Edwin J. Feulner’s 36 years of leadership as president of The Heritage Foundation transformed the think tank from a small policy shop into America’s powerhouse of conservative ideas. Read his research. Twitter: .

RELATED VIDEO: Thousands of nationalists march in Warsaw for Independence Day.


The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column with images is republished with permission. Photo: Kamila StepienLe Pictorium/ZUMA Press/Newscom.

Social Conservative Review: An Insider’s Guide to Pro-Family News

In this age marked by cultural brokenness and political division, it can be easy for Christians to shake our heads in resignation to this seemingly discouraging predicament and say, “God’s Kingdom is obviously not here right now.”

Or is it? In the Gospel of Luke, the Pharisees ask Jesus when the Kingdom of God will come. He said in reply, “The coming of the Kingdom of God cannot be observed, and no one will announce, ‘Look, here it is,’ or, ‘There it is.’ For behold, the Kingdom of God is among you” (Luke 17:20-21).

What does this mean? When Christ said these words in first century Judea, they would have caused great confusion amongst the Jews since it was clear from the Roman occupation of their ancestral land that there was certainly no “Kingdom” currently present. But Christ wasn’t speaking of the potential reign of an earthly king. He was asking those who were listening to realize that God’s Kingdom was right in front of them–in Christ’s own witness of love, mercy, and healing. He was asking them, and therefore all of us, to look into our hearts and see that whenever we act with love, compassion, and sacrifice, God’s Kingdom is literally “among” us.

It should give us great encouragement to know that whenever we show Christ’s love to others, we are an ambassador for Christ’s Kingdom on earth. Keep in mind that showing love can take the form of seemingly small acts, such as simply giving encouragement to someone we encounter in our daily lives who seems like they are in need of a boost. Whenever we do any act of love, whether great of small, we bring God’s Kingdom in our midst.

Thank you for your prayers and for your continued support of FRC and the family.

Sincerely,

Dan Hart
Managing Editor for Publications
Family Research Council


Share with Friends


FRC Articles

Evangelicals Power Republicans to Senate Victories — David Closson

Voters Say ‘Full Steam Ahead’ On Judges — Travis Weber and Alexandra McPhee

America Deserves Better Than the Broward County Disaster — Ken Blackwell

School Board Says Boys and Girls Have Different Brains — Except in the Bathroom — Cathy Ruse

Post-Midterm optimism for religious freedom — Alexandra McPhee

Is the Republican Senate Ready to Advance Pro-Life Policy? — Patrina Mosley

The Supreme Court can fix Establishment Clause jurisprudence with the Peace Cross case — Alexandra McPhee

Speaker Series: The Reality of Faith-Based Adoption Services

Truth Obscured by Hollywood Take on Sexual Orientation Therapy — Peter Sprigg

Must the State Recognize All Identities? — Dan Hart

The Times En-“genders” Controversy with Ignorance of “Sex” — Peter Sprigg

Notre Dame Students Take a Stand Against Porn — Patrina Mosley

Religious Liberty

Religious Liberty in the Public Square

Supreme Court’s latest church-state conundrum: Must a ‘peace cross’ memorial to World War I vets come down? — Richard Wolf, USA Today

Muslims, the Bladensburg Cross, and the Preservation of Order — Ismail Royer, Public Discourse

Professor Sues after University Requires He Use Student’s Preferred Pronoun — Jack Crowe, National Review

Trump Administration Updates Conscience Exemptions for Contraceptive Mandate — National Catholic Register

The State of Hate — David Montgomery, The Washington Post

Christian student senator at UC Berkeley harassed for abstaining from pro-LGBTQ vote — Caleb Parke, Fox News

Fordham University Political Science Department Mandates Use of Students’ ‘Preferred Pronouns’ — Alana Mastrangelo, Breitbart

International Religious Freedom

What you should know about the persecution of Kachin Christians — Joe Carter, Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission

78 Kidnapped Cameroonian Students from Christian School Freed — Aliya Kuykendall, The Stream

Christians Dragged Out of Cars and Beaten, Haunted With Fear as Asia Bibi Case Tears Pakistan Apart — Stoyan Zaimov, The Christian Post

Christians, pray for your brothers and sisters in North Korea — Christopher Summers, Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission

Asia Bibi Leaves Pakistani Prison–Open Doors Calls for Urgent Prayer — Lindy Lowry, Open Doors USA

Life

Abortion

The Point of Gosnell — Charlotte Allen, First Things

6 claims of Planned Parenthood’s new president debunked — Kristi Burton Brown, Live Action

New Planned Parenthood CEO: “I Plan to Expand” Abortions. We Have a “Moral Imperative” to Kill Babies — Micaiah Bilger, LifeNews

Pro-life ballot measures win passage in two of three states — Valerie Richardson, The Washington Times

Adoption

Philadelphia foster families continue fight for Catholic Social Services — Perry West, CAN

3 ways your church can participate in orphan care and prevention — Brittany Salmon, Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission

Bioethics

Canadian Doctors Get Ready for Child Euthanasia — Wesley J. Smith, National Review

Family

Marriage

How Expectations Affect One’s Happiness in Marriage — Dianne Grande, Psychology Today

When the Military Takes a Toll on Your Marriage: Reflections on ‘Indivisible’ — Gary Chapman, Military.com

Men and Women: Should We Just Call the Whole Thing Off? — Rachel Lu, The American Conservative

One Couple’s Fight to Honor God With Their Bakery — Benjamin Hawkins, Focus on the Family

37.8 Percent in Generation That Starts Turning 21 Next Year Was Born to Unwed Moms — Terence P. Jeffrey, CNS News

Parenting

How to Respond When Your Kids Are Bullied — Jonathan McKee, Focus on the Family

Mothers Against Macron — Joy Pullmann, First Things

I’m Raising an Old Soul And It’s Such a Gift — Heidi Hamm, HerViewFromHome

Making of a Mom: How Motherhood Helped my Anxiety Disorder — Casey McCorry, Verily

New Findings Add Twist to Screen Time Limit Debate — Jean Twenge, Family Studies

Podcast: Your Teenager Needs Discipleship — Jen Wilkin and Melissa Kruger, The Gospel Coalition

Video: How is spiritual warfare involved in parenting? — Phillip Bethancourt, Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission

How to Be a Kindness Role Model for Your Kids — Dale V. Atkins and Amanda R. Salzhauer, Greater Good Magazine

Postpartum Depression and the Christian — Kathryn Butler, The Gospel Coalition

Economics/Education

9 Years Into Common Core, Test Scores Are Down, Indoctrination Up — Joy Pullmann, The Federalist

The Wealth of Nations Begins at Home — W. Bradford Wilcox, Family Studies

Your Family, Your Choice — Oren Cass, Family Studies

Faith/Character/Culture

10 ways your unsatisfied life is a blessing — Amy Simpson, Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission

Honoring the ‘Invisible Work Force’ of Family Caregivers — Amy Ziettlow, Family Studies

How to Love People You Don’t Like — Greg Morse, Desiring God

Cultural winsomeness will not be enough for Christians — Andrew T. Walker, Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission

In An America This Ignorant, It’s No Wonder We Struggle To Stay Free — Stella Morabito, The Federalist

I Cremated My Unborn Son — Tish Harrison Warren, Christianity Today

8 Signs Your Christianity Is Too Comfortable — Brett McCracken, The Gospel Coalition

A Fresh Perspective on Joy — Liberty McArtor, The Stream

‘Remarkable’ decline in fertility rates — James Gallagher, BBC News

Human Sexuality

Where to Find Hope and Help amid the Sexual Revolution — Sam Allberry, The Gospel Coalition

Kissing Purity Culture Goodbye — Abigail Rine Favale, First Things

What ‘The New York Times’ Gets Wrong on the ‘Transgender Memo’ — Andrew T. Walker, The Gospel Coalition

Jesus Befriended Prostitutes. So This Victorian-Era Woman Did Too. — Kimi Harris, Christianity Today

‘Boy Erased’ Suggests Sexual Desire Can’t Change, So Religion Must — Brett McCracken, The Gospel Coalition

Where Angels Fear to Tread: The Fraud of Transgenderism — Babette Francis and John Ballantyne, Public Discourse

Pornography

The Problems of Pornography: Sexual Dysfunction and Beyond — Freda Bush, Focus on the Family

New Report Confirms Our Military’s Strength Has Eroded

Americans often assume their military is the strongest in the world, capable of handling any threats that come its way. But a new report by the National Defense Strategy Commission challenges that idea. It points out how significantly the U.S. military has deteriorated, placing the U.S. in an increasingly precarious position compared to its potential adversaries.

Congress created the bipartisan commission in July 2017 with national security experts appointed by members from both sides of the aisle. Eric Edelman, former ambassador and undersecretary of defense, and Gary Roughead, retired chief of naval operations, co-chaired it, leading a strong team of experts in defense and national security.

The commission did an admirable job assessing the national defense strategy and the underlying issues that could jeopardize its execution. It assessed areas from the ability of the military to recruit new volunteers to cyber warfare, to the nuclear deterrent.

Unfortunately, in all these areas, the commission found looming problems that need urgent attention.

As The Heritage Foundation has also found in its annual Index of U.S. Military Strength, the nation’s military superiority has “eroded to a dangerous degree.”

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Spoehr, who also directs The Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense, stated that the commission has done “exactly what they were asked to do,” and that the “commission’s candor in providing these assessments is to be commended.” The findings were not watered down to their lowest common denominator the way many bipartisan reports in Washington often are.

Spoehr went on to say, “Hopefully the bipartisan nature of the report will help in the coming months and years persuade a divided Congress of the need to fully resource the nation’s military.”

The national defense strategy is significantly underfunded. Without increased funding, the “damage to American security and influence could be devastating.”

Even before President Donald Trump proposed a 4-5 percent cut to fiscal year 2020 defense funding, the amount of funding proposed for the Department of Defense was insufficient to conduct the necessary rebuilding of the nation’s military.

Collectively, the nation’s military—Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps—is the smallest it has been since the start of World War II.

The Navy is woefully short of its goal to have 355 ships. To execute the national defense strategy with even moderate risk requires 400 ships. It currently has only 286, and even its most optimistic plans do not get it to its goal of 355 until the 2040s.

The secretary of the Air Force, Heather Wilson, recently announced that her service is significantly short of squadrons to execute the missions it has been given. She has stated that the Air Force needs 386 squadrons—74 more than it has now.

The secretary of the Army, Mark Esper, has stated the Army needs to be above 500,000 active-duty soldiers—roughly 30,000 more than it has today. All these facts corroborate the commission’s conclusion that our military is in deep trouble, to the point that the situation could be considered an “emergency.”

Hopefully, the commission’s diligent work will result in a renewed spirit and willingness to address the challenges faced by our military, and make sure it gets the resources needed to keep us all safe.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of James Di Pane

James Di Pane is a research assistant in the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation.

RELATED: Podcast: Our Military Would Face Real Risks in Conflict With China, Russia


The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column with images is republished with permission. Photo: Jacob M. Milham/Zuma Press/Newscom.

Election Results Point to a Political Change Occurring Among Black Young Adults

Buried in the mounds of data fleshing out what happened in the midterm elections is an interesting take on blacks.

Nationwide data on black voting in this election cycle do not point to much change. Various polls over recent months seemed to indicate that blacks were starting to warm up to Republicans and President Donald Trump.

But blacks went 90 percent for Democrats and 8 percent for Republicans. Pretty much business as usual.

However, digging down, we find something interesting.

Blacks ages 18 to 29 voted 82 percent for Democrats and 14 percent for Republicans. That seems to point to change taking place among young blacks.

Lending support to this conclusion is the fact that in the 2014 midterms, 18- to 29-year-old blacks voted in concert with the overall average: 88 percent for Democrats and 11 percent for Republicans.

Either we have a fluke in this year’s midterms or some kind of change in political thinking is taking hold among young African-Americans.

I think there is good reason to believe the latter. Of course, where it goes depends on how Republicans choose to think about and handle the situation.

Adding to this curiosity is something else of interest. The inclination to vote Republican as a function of age is the complete reverse for blacks as it is for whites.

Younger blacks vote Republican at higher percentages than older blacks. Younger whites vote Republican at lower percentages than older whites.

Compared with the 14 percent of 18- to 29-year-old blacks who voted Republican in the midterms, 6.5 percent of blacks who are 45 or older voted Republican.

Compared with the 43 percent of 18- to 29-year-old whites who voted Republican, 58.5 percent of whites who are 45 or older voted Republican.

How might we understand this?

According to the Federal Reserve, as of 2016, median black household income was $35,400, and median black household net worth was $17,600. Contrast that with $61,200 median income and $171,000 median net worth for whites.

After all these years of government programs to help low-income Americans, African-Americans, on average, are not catching up.

Perhaps the message is sinking in to young blacks that what they need is more freedom and the kind of growing economy that goes with it.

They are seeing firsthand the results in the economic recovery that has taken place over the past two years. There were over 650,000 more blacks working last month than there were in October 2017. Compared with the average monthly numbers of 2016, there were over 1.3 million more blacks working.

According to reports that have been rolling out during this recovery, the boom has created a tight job market, which has created new opportunities for previously unemployable lower-end workers. This has meant new opportunities for young blacks.

Young white voters—who, on average, come from higher-income homes and have a higher chance of getting help in starting out from their parents—seem to be likelier to buy into the big-government and social justice mindset than their parents and grandparents.

Republicans should highlight for young blacks the critical importance of capitalism and a free economy for upward mobility. However, they also need to inform them that the same Federal Reserve report showing large gaps in income and wealth between blacks and whites also shows 61 percent of white households as having a married couple or romantic partners, compared with 37 percent of black households.

The message is that wealth is created through freedom and family.

Trump won in 2016 by flipping states that were blue to red by very thin margins.

Florida, for example, with 29 electoral votes, which Trump won by a margin of about 1 percentage point, will be critical in 2020. We see now the elections there for senator and governor at razor-thin margins.

Republicans should target African-Americans in Florida and other swing states with the message of upward mobility. It could make all the difference in 2020.

COPYRIGHT 2018 STAR PARKER

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Star Parker

Star Parker is a columnist for The Daily Signal and president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education. Twitter: .


The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now


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

FLORIDA: 2018 Election Postmortem

Coming from the business world, I understand the importance of conducting a Project Review (aka, “Project Audit”) whereby we make note of what went right and what went wrong. The intent is to pass these lessons on to others for the future. This is equally applicable to politics which is why I want to review the lessons I learned from the recent 2018 mid-term elections. This may seem a little dry, but it includes some important lessons for both parties to observe.

I have been keeping track of the voting numbers for two cycles now (2016 and 2018), representing Mr. Trump’s rise to the presidency, and the ensuing mid-terms.

The first thing I learned is the national and local political polls are useless and do not reflect reality. Frankly, they are a joke. I do not know their selection criteria for conducting surveys, but whatever they are doing, it is horribly wrong. This was proven in 2016 and 2018. To this day, they would have us believe Gillum and Nelson are still up by six points (and Mrs. Clinton by double-digits). The people who run these polls should find another line of work.

I found the early voting data provided by the state (in my case, Florida) to be much more reliable. In studying the data from both elections, I found the following:

* Republicans win the Mail-In votes (aka, Absentee).

* Democrats win the in-person Early Voting votes. Republicans do not find this convenient as it interrupts their business day.

* Republicans win the Election Day votes.

Turnout is ultimately based on the drumbeats of the parties. Whichever party can inspire their constituents to vote, wins. To illustrate, even though Florida Democrats had approximately 250K more registered voters than the Republicans, the GOP was able to get their members to the voting booth:

66.28% of all registered Republicans voted.
59.77% of all registered Democrats voted.

This resulted in 150K more Republicans voting than Democrats.

In the Tampa Bay area, I found:

  • Hillsborough County (representing downtown Tampa) is solid Democrat.
  • Manatee County is solid Republican.
  • Pasco County is solid Republican.
  • Pinellas County – Republicans lost the lead in early voting to the Democrats on the last day, but overtook the Democrats on election day.
  • Polk County is solid Republican.
  • Sarasota County is solid Republican.

This happened both in 2016 and 2018. Likewise, state-wide early voting resulted in a slim lead for the Democrats, but the Republicans outvoted them on Election Day by 171K votes.

Whereas large metropolitan areas voted Democrat, e.g., Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa, and Miami, all the rural areas voted strongly for the Republicans. For example, Republicans in tiny Citrus County, on the upper west coast of Florida, had 20K more votes than Democrats, thereby easily negating Jacksonville with +6K votes for Democrats. It was the rural and West Coast counties that carried the day for Republicans.

Other observations:

  • Surprisingly, eleven of the twelve amendments to the Florida Constitution passed (#1 was the one defeated). Frankly, I was surprised by this. The only explanation I can think of is, due to the volume of legislation, people grew tired and simply checked off the “Yes” box in order to expedite their time in the voting booth.
  • The campaign races were incredibly costly. I am told the Governor’s race alone was the most expensive in our history. The Senate race was also expensive. Even the races for the State Senate and House were expensive. There was one State Senator who spent over $500,000 on his campaign. As you probably know, I consider this enormously frivolous. We should be spending the money on more worthwhile endeavors than the media.
  • I was not made aware of any voter fraud down here, except for one instance where a non-citizen tried to vote and the Democrats wanted it accepted. Of course, it was disallowed. There was also concern about northern students attending Florida colleges voting twice (once here and once back home in the north), but I have heard nothing tangible about this. The same could be said for northern retirees who have a house in the South for winter.
  • Following close races for the Senate and Governorship, there was a clamor to recall the votes. In the process, Broward and Palm Beach Counties came under scrutiny for possible election fraud and incompetence. Both counties are strongholds for the Democrats, thus heightening suspicions by Republicans. Full investigations are underway. I cannot remember the last time, if ever, an election was overturned here in Florida, including the famous Bush/Gore debacle back in 2000. Unfortunately, this proves our voting procedures are far from bullet-proof. Personally, I had no problem with the punch-card approach. Regardless, here is another reason why reforms should be enacted in our electoral process.
  • There were a lot of close races, be it for the Governorship, U.S. Senate, County and Municipal races. Whoever won, be it Red or Blue, should be sensitive to this and realize the people will be watching their performance. Translation: They better get off their duffs and do something.
  • The polarity of the country becomes more pronounced with each election. This is caused by differences in morality between the parties in terms of our perspectives as to what is right, and what is wrong.

Mid-term elections used to be as interesting as watching grass grow. Attendance was low. No more. The votes cast in Florida in 2018 were approximately 80% of those cast in 2016, an incredible figure. Thanks to the polarity of the country, the days of sleepy-eyed mid-term elections are long gone and we will continue to have massive political struggles from now on.

Thus closes the 2018 elections.

Keep the Faith!

EDITORS NOTE: All trademarks both marked and unmarked belong to their respective companies. The featured photo is by Thomas Stephan on Unsplash.

House Dems out to Get Religion

One of the most important religious freedom laws in America turns 25 this Friday. But will it make it to 26? House Democrats are doing everything it can to ensure it doesn’t.

A quarter of a century ago, nothing about religious liberty was controversial. In fact, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) was so popular that all but three members of Congress voted yes. When Bill Clinton signed RFRA into law, no one dreamed that two decades later, his same party would be trying to sanctimoniously kill the law.

For most Americans, the Democrats’ shift hasn’t exactly been subtle. A party platform that mentioned God seven times in 2004 kicked him out in 2012. A senator who said, “We worship an awesome God” in 2004 declared war on faith as president a few years later. Now, a party that almost unanimously agreed that the government shouldn’t undermine religion in 1993 has 172 cosponsors to scrap RFRA and take a sledgehammer to our First Freedom. And they’ll have control of the House to advance their attack.

In an important column for the Washington Examiner, Ernest Istook points out that one of the people behind this push is about to become the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.). Of course, he and the rest of his party want you to believe that Democrats wouldn’t destroy RFRA, they’d just carve out areas where it wouldn’t apply — like marriage, sexual orientation, gender identity, abortion, health care, and any other area where long standing religious beliefs clashed with the vogue values of the Left’s agenda.

“In short,” Istook explains, “an explicit constitutional right would be declared less important than other claims never mentioned in the Constitution and often not even legislated by elected officials.” The repeal of RFRA, he warns, would be a nightmare for men and women of faith – especially Christians, who just want the freedom to live out their beliefs in peace. That’ll be incredibly hard to do, Istook warns, since the Democrats’ bill would wipe out the Supreme Court victories in the Hobby Lobby and Masterpiece Cakeshop cases. The world that Chai Feldblum envisioned will have finally arrived. Asked what should happen when religious liberty clashed with the LGBT agenda, Obama’s EEOC chief said she’d have “a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win.” The modern Democratic Party agrees.

The good news, for now, is that the GOP-controlled Senate would never go along with something as extreme as gutting the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The bad news — at least for the Democratic party — is that neither will their heartland base. Not everyone is on board with the Left’s hard turn on religion. As Yale’s Stephen Carter wrote, “When you mock Christians, you’re not mocking who you think you are.” And if Democrats aren’t careful, they’ll fall right down the God gap they’ve created.

“Spend much time in secular progressive circles,” David French writes, “and you’ll quickly encounter the kind of sneering, anti-Christian elitism evident in pieces such as the recent New Yorker creed against Chick-fil-A. But this culture is fundamentally at odds with the lived experience of the Democratic party’s black and Latino base.” In their beliefs, Pew Research Center warned earlier this year, “nonwhite Democrats more closely resemble Republicans than white Democrats.” That’s significant — not just because it creates tension in the Democratic Party, but, as French points out, “to the extent that faith informs politics, it could crack open the progressive coalition.”

Just last week, exit polling showed how misguided the Democrats’ war on religious expression is. Of all the competing social values — life, marriage, privacy, gender identity — religious liberty was far and away the most popular consensus issue. When McLaughlin & Associates asked 1,000 Americans if the government “should leave people free to follow their beliefs,” a whopping 70 percent of the respondents said yes. Only 18 percent agreed with this radical crusade to end religious liberty as we know it.

In a lot of ways, it’s the Democrats’ liberal agenda that’s boxed them into a godless corner. They’ve had to become hostile to public faith because it acknowledges a moral standard. And when you embrace policies that are antithetical to the stated values of any orthodox religion — like same-sex marriage or abortion — there’s only one way to reconcile it. You get rid of faith — or, at the very least marginalize it.

Make no mistake: The threat to RFRA from Democrats is real. But so is the threat to Democrats if they keep alienating faith and the voters who embrace it.


Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.


RELATED ARTICLES:

If Gender Is Subjective, Makes Sense Age Should Be, Too

Permission Impossible? Racy Video Takes Parents by Surprise

Promoting Marriage Makes Cents

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

A Glimpse Into a World Without Men

Ah, to have an all-female workplace, full of sugar and spice and everything nice and absent #MeToo turpitude and transgressions. Are you in, ladies? Well, before signing on that dotted line, you may want to consider the experiences of the sugar-and-spice girls at Sweden’s new Gender Equality Authority.

Yes, that sounds like what’s birthed when Orwell’s 1984 meets The Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death (Bill Maher’s most memorable movie), but it wasn’t mainly men being consumed in this bureaucracy. As Sweden’s FriaTider reports (auto-translated and corrected for grammar):

The New Gender Equality Authority has a leadership consisting of 100 percent women. Ten months after its inception, an internal report now reveals a work environment so bad that 70 percent of its employees are distressed enough to be at risk of ill health, reports Ekot.

The internal survey, Ekot also noted, shows in addition that a majority of the employees of the Gender Equality Authority suffer from sleep problems and “risk fatigue”.

Among other things, the women-dominated workplace is characterized by bullying and harassment, according to the survey.

If this surprises you, perhaps you derived your conception of the sexes from a women’s-studies class (maybe the one known as modern American culture). Whether it was Aristotle’s observation that women are more likely “to scold and to strike,” Rudyard Kipling’s verse about how “the female of the species is more deadly than the male” or statistics on bullying, it has long been known that the sugar-and-spice bit reflects marketing and male flattery, not reality.

As Forbes wrote in 2012 on inter-employee harassment, “Women make much nastier office bullies than men, says psychologist Dr. Gary Namie, co-founder of the [Workplace Bullying] Institute.” This behavior is “particularly vicious among working women,” informs Forbes, and ranges “from playing favourites to badmouthing colleagues” to undermining other women’s careers (and men’s, too).

Unsurprisingly, Forbes attributed this to conditioning (read: it’s our Patriarchal™ society’s fault), writing that girls “are taught to be critical about each other from adolescence.” How this is taught or where it’s taught I have no idea, but that’s their story and they’re stickin’ to it. It’s just good the Female Criticism 101 classes don’t also instruct on how to criticize men, otherwise there could actually be nagging wives in the world. (Unless they’d just skip right to the physical, as some studies show that women are more likely to initiate both domestic and teen-dating violence.)

Those adolescent girls must be quick learners, though, because experts and studies (two troubling phenomena, no doubt, but, hey, even a blind squirrel and a broken clock, ya’ know?) inform that bullying among girls is notably worse than among boys. Just consider the left-wing Guardian, which outlines the problems and practices of these teen Gorgons and then closes with the question: Do these realities “make the ‘normal’ bullying of, generally, low-level violence as used by boys seem strangely comforting?”

Part of the explanation for this is that as poet William Congreve noted in 1697 (pre-“gender”-sensitivity training), Hell hath no “fury like a woman scorned.” His context was affairs of the heart, of course, but it extends further. While men have their characteristic sins (lust, for example), a female one is vindictiveness. I suspect this is partially, though not completely, because women are very emotion-oriented, are easily hurt and, most significantly, are emotion-retentive. Thus, a real or imagined slight cuts deeply and doesn’t just remain in a woman’s mind, but in her heart. It’s harder to forgive when negative feelings linger — demanding retribution.

The bottom line is that, as often portrayed art-imitating-life-style in film, two men can engage in fisticuffs and be buddies an hour later. Women? Not so much.

The psychological experts will tell us this is taught, too, but it’s even (and especially) apparent in children. When a little boy gets upset, he may have a tantrum and explode like a volcano yet 15 minutes later behave as if nothing happened. A girl is less likely to do this but more apt to simmer for long periods, not boiling over noticeably but not cooling to a calm, either. Consequently, rifts with friends are too often permanent.

Then there’s that, speaking generally, men are creatures of principle, women of preference. As I put it, treating this recently, “Years ago a female writer (whose name…escapes me) discussed the different ways boys and girls settle problems. She wrote that boys are natural-born deal makers; they’ll try to ensure fairness for everyone and then shake hands, saying ‘Deal? Deal.’ In contrast, girls will try to ensure an outcome everyone feels good about.”

“Witnessed here, even from young ages,” I continued, “is that boys instinctively reference principles, the objective; fairness is a principle. The girls, of course, are referencing feelings, the subjective.”

The point? “Fair fighting” or conflict resolution in the workplace or anywhere else requires adherence to principles; emotion won’t secure it (which is why catfights are, well, catfights). Philosopher C.S. Lewis touched on this in his book Mere Christianity when he asked: With whom would you rather deal if your dog bit the child next door, the man or woman of the house?

Lewis explained that when the man handles what could be called the family’s “foreign policy,” outsiders are more likely to get a fair shake; the woman’s extreme “family patriotism” often precludes this.

The latter is, of course, what can cause a woman to be wholly devoted to her children, even to the point of backing them when they do evil (serial killers’ mothers come to mind). For only principle instructs, “Your family is wrong, and you must say so”; emotion exclaims “My family right or wrong!”

Kipling touched on this as well, writing of man, “Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands [t]o some God of Abstract Justice—which no woman understands.”

The strong, unyielding feminine emotion can provide the no-holds-barred love and devotion a child needs. But when this intense passion is turned to competition in the workplace or elsewhere, it’s just no-holds-barred. So I don’t know about spice, but maybe, as so many today claim, sugar really is a killer.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is by Angel Santos on Unsplash.

EXCLUSIVE: Mich State Dept investigates college for potential campaign finance violations

  • The Michigan State Department launched an investigation into Schoolcraft College over possible campaign finance violations.
  • The investigation was prompted by an ethics complaint, filed by Michigan attorney Karen Woodside.

The Michigan State Department is investigating Schoolcraft College for potential campaign finance violations after school employees allegedly used public resources for political activism.

The Michigan Department of State confirmed to Campus Reform on Tuesday that its Bureau of Elections unit launched an investigation into  Schoolcraft College for potentially illegal activity. Fred Woodhams of the Michigan State Department told Campus Reform that the investigation will take a couple of months to complete.

The Michigan Department of State confirmed to Campus Reform on Tuesday that its Bureau of Elections unit launched an investigation into Schoolcraft College for potentially illegal activity.    

Michigan attorney Karen Woodside filed an ethics complaint against Schoolcraft College, as previously reported by Campus Reform. Woodside’s complaint alleged that some employees used school computers during office hours to campaign for a property tax hike on the Nov. 6 election ballot. The ballot initiative did pass and is set to give the school increased funding through 2029.

Employees urged residents to vote in support of the initiative, referring to the ballot question passing as “winning,” according to emails obtained by Campus Reform.

According to Michigan campaign finance law, “a public body or a person acting for a public body shall not use or authorize the use of funds, personnel, office space, computer hardware or software, property, stationery, postage, vehicles, equipment, supplies, or other public resources to make a contribution or expenditure” for local ballot questions.

An incident in which communications show “express advocacy” can be addressed by Michigan’s Secretary of State Elections Bureau, according to Watchdog.org.

Campus Reform reached out to Schoolcraft College, but did not receive a response in time for publication.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Mich college accused of using public resources to promote tax hike

Email to students gives voting ‘recommendations’

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