EDITORS NOTE: These videos and images are republished with permission.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/electioneering-in-new-jersey.png343600O'Keefe Media Grouphttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngO'Keefe Media Group2018-11-07 06:02:102018-11-07 07:56:23BREAKING NEW VIDEO: Electioneering in New Jersey & Ohio Exposed
NBC and Fox News said on Monday morning that they would no longer air an immigration ad from President Donald Trump that has been widely derided as racially divisive.
“After further review, we recognize the insensitive nature of the ad and have decided to cease airing it across our properties as soon as possible,” said Joe Benarroch, a spokesperson for NBC’s advertising sales department.
The article included this statement:
Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, tweeted that NBC, CNN and Facebook “have chosen to stand” with undocumented immigrants.
By standing with illegal aliens, these “news” organizations that refuse to make a clear distinction between lawful immigrants and illegal aliens have turned their backs on lawful immigrants and have harmed their reputation in the eyes of the American public.
We may be a “nation of immigrants” but we most certainly are not a nation of trespassers.
I urge you to watch the video. It simply references an illegal alien who killed two police officers in the United States and, in court, laughingly laments that he did not kill more cops! The commercial then shows the caravan heading to the United States and ends with President Trump promising to stop this invasion.
It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.
The local CBS radio station in New York City covered the report about the Trump ad by claiming that it reinforced negative stereotypes about immigrants.
On November 3, 2018 that local radio station (News Radio 880) posted an article, “Migrants In Caravan Respond To Trump: ‘We Are Not Killers,’” which reported on how many in the caravan were fleeing poverty in their home countries and gang violence.
One of the members of the caravan, identified as Marta Cuellos, a 40-year-old from Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, was quoted in the article:
Cuellos said she owned a cantina back home in Honduras but left because she could no longer make rent and was being harassed by police. She persuaded her 35-year-old sister to join her on the trip, and said the only thing they want is work and a better life in the United States. It’s her second attempt. She first crossed into the U.S. seven years ago but was deported last year.
The article blithely ignored that under the provisions of federal immigration statute 8 U.S. Code § 1326 an alien who is deported from the United States and then returns without authorization is committing a felony that carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison. However, if that alien has committed serious crimes, the penalty for unauthorized re-entry carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years. Cuellos never explained the grounds for her previous deportation, but in any event, what the media neglected to report was that she was heading to the United States to commit a crime, the crime of illegal re-entry.
Cuellos is certainly not the only alien in the caravan who was previously deported. In fact, on November 2, 2018 I was a guest on Dana Loesch’s, NRA-TV program Relentless to discuss the supposed “caravan of migrants” heading north from Central America to the United States.
My segment on Dana’s show began with an alien in the caravan being interviewed, during which he confessed to having been previously deported from the United States because he had been convicted of attempted murder in the third degree. He claimed that his purpose for joining the caravan was to come back to the United States to seek a pardon!
Nearly a year ago I wrote an article, “New York City: Hub For The Deadly Drug Trade”, wherein I discussed the fact that the only reason that the Mexican drug cartels had decided to make the City of New York their central hub for their drug trafficking operations on the east coast was due, in large measure, to the sanctuary policies of New York City.
My article focused heavily on the drug smuggling activities of the Mexican Drug Cartels, particularly El Chapo’s Sinaloa Cartel, and how NYC’s “Sanctuary” policies emboldened the cartels to turn NYC into a major hub for drug trafficking notwithstanding the fact that the NYPD is the largest, best-equipped and -trained police departing in the United States.
Ironically, even as NBC and other mainstream news outlets derided President Trump’s ad and his public statements about the threats that illegal immigration pose to the United States, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the alleged leader of the highly violent Mexican Sinaloa Drug Cartel, was brought from his jail cell in lower Manhattan to the federal courthouse in downtown Brooklyn to begin the process of jury selection for his trial for a laundry list of felonies pertaining to drug trafficking and violent crimes he is alleged to have committed in the United States in furtherance of his criminal enterprises here.
The November 4, 2018 NBC report, Notorious ‘El Chapo’ Trial Begins in NYC Monday, begins with this excerpt:
He is accused of having a hand in dozens of murders, of using his drug cartel to smuggle more than 200 tons of cocaine into the United States, even pulling off running the massive operation from behind bars. That’s when he wasn’t busy escaping from jail — twice.
The almost-mythical criminal pedigree of Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who was extradited in 2017 to face U.S. drug conspiracy charges, has sparked security concerns at his upcoming New York City trial that at times have drawn as much attention as the case’s sensational allegations.
The article also reported:
FORTIFYING THE COURTHOUSE
At pretrial hearings leading to the trial, heavily armed federal officers and bomb-sniffing dogs patrolled outside. Anyone trying to attend the hearings was put through airport-style metal detectors at the courthouse entrance and at the door of the courtroom itself.
The judge also agreed with prosecutors that the jury for the case should be kept anonymous, a measure typical in terrorism or mob cases where jury intimidation is a concern.
No one’s hiding the ominous nature of the case from potential jurors. Questions for them on an initial screening form ask if they’ve ever heard of “El Chapo” along with, “Have you, or has anyone close to you, ever felt fearful of or threatened by people who you thought were associated with drug crimes?”
Jurors also will be escorted to and from the courthouse by federal officers and sequestered from the public while inside. As a reason, the judge cited prosecutors’ contention that Guzman’s cartel “employs ‘sicarios,’ or hit men, who carried out hundreds of acts of violence, including murders, assaults and kidnappings.”
There are clear and well-founded concerns that cartel hitmen or “sicarios” have been able to infiltrate the United States to do El Chapo’s bidding. It is almost a certainty that any such criminals would have entered the United States by running the U.S./Mexican border and entering the United States without inspection.
All of the cocaine and other drugs “imported” into the United States by the Sinaloa Cartel were smuggled here by various means. However, the most likely means would be to smuggle them across the U.S./Mexican border.
Yet when President Trump insists that our borders, particularly the dangerous U.S./Mexican border, need to be secured to prevent the entry of members of the drug cartels, transactional gangs and international terrorist organizations, he is accused by the media as well as by his political adversaries of creating bad stereotypes about “immigrants.”
The media and politicians who refuse to make a clear distinction between lawful immigrants and illegal aliens are actually responsible for discrediting lawful immigrants who patiently wait their turn on line and submit themselves to scrutiny in the lawful immigration process that, each and every year, generously admits approximately one million new lawful immigrants and immediately places them on the pathway to U.S. citizenship.
As I have noted on many, many occasions for the sake of clarity, the difference between an immigrant and an illegal alien is comparable to the difference between a houseguest and a burglar.
RELATED VIDEO: Illegal Immigration: It’s About Power – Prager University.
EDITORS NOTE: This column with images originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine. It is republished with permission. The featured image by S_Salow on Pixabay.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/burglar-3718381_640.jpg439640Michael Cutlerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMichael Cutler2018-11-07 05:34:082019-03-07 08:29:12ESTABLISHMENT MEDIA NIXES TRUMP AD ABOUT DANGEROUS CARAVAN: Is there really no difference between a house-guest and a burglar?
Colion Noir, host of NRATV’s NOIR, joins the program to discuss and help expose 60 Minutes piece on the AR-15 as they vilified the popular sporting rifle. Colion also shares a preview of his latest episode of NOIR where he takes a look at the public safety issues that are affecting citizens in Albany, New York.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/colion-noir.jpg338600NRA Institute for Legislative Actionhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngNRA Institute for Legislative Action2018-11-06 17:11:522018-11-06 17:20:12VIDEO Colion Noir: Exposing ’60 Minutes’ Sensationalistic Reporting
On October 30, 2018, President Trump voiced his intent to end birthright citizenship through an executive order. To those on the left, his comment sounded outlandish and devoid of any attachment to reality. To others, the comment was an expression of wishful thinking, or worse yet, a hollow political stunt.
Indeed, the President’s only defense of his claim when pressed was, “Now, they’re saying that I can.”
Well, who is they? And to whom are they saying it?
Immediately, reporters and politicians alike responded with claims of the plan’s unconstitutionality. On the same day that President Trump spoke of the idea, Adam Liptak of the New York Timeswrote that President Trump’s claim was at odds with the legal consensus. Liptak reached back to the testimony of then Head Counsel for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, Walter Dellinger, before Congress in 1995 who said, “Because the rule of citizenship acquired by birth within the United States is the law of the Constitution, it cannot be changed through legislation, but only by amending the Constitution.” Similarly, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said in an interview with “Larry Glover Live” on WVLK, “You cannot end birthright citizenship with an executive order.”
But like so many other things in law, innovative approaches and ideas that are in fact allowable become so only because the idea is viewed under the scrutiny of a different prism. This case, I believe, is no exception.
Presidential Powers.
The powers of the President of the United States, and indeed the entirety of the executive branch, are defined in Article II of the Constitution of the United States. The Framers made it perfectly clear in Article II, Section 3, that the President of the United States “. . . shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed. . .”
The mandate goes straight to the most elemental check upon the President, and indeed, the whole executive branch. The President cannot create any new laws. All the President has the power to do is make sure that statute passed by Congress, or authorities given to him by the Constitution, are carried out in a manner consistent with the statutes enacted by Congress and with the language contained within the Constitution.
As a matter of fact, the question of whether the President has the authority to write new laws has already been reviewed by the Supreme Court and struck down. In Clinton v. City of New York, U.S. (1998), the Court reviewed the constitutionality of the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 giving the President the power to veto certain items in the budget if he so desired. So strict was the interpretation of the prohibition upon the President to in any way alter a law presented to him or her by Congress, that even the mere alteration through a line-item veto was interpreted as giving the President the authority to amend the statute he was altering. The power of amendment, the Court said, rested only with Congress, a signature feature of the Separation of Powers doctrine that colored the Constitution. Any intrusion through amendment or line item veto by the executive was expressly prohibited.
So clearly, the President, and all departments of the executive branch are bound to the charter of faithfully executing the laws of the United States and may not alter them.
But interpreting the laws of the United States is an altogether different matter. Both the executive branch and the President are continuously tasked with interpreting the laws passed by Congress. Essentially, the President lacks any authority to do anything that either the Congress or the Constitution does not allow him to do. But if Congress grants the executive the authority to carry out a particular task, then it is fundamental to the successful execution of that task that the President and the departments answerable to him interpret Congress’s mandate.
In certain areas, Congress has made perfectly clear what it is that they wish for the President or agencies to do. Elsewhere, Congress has not been specific, either because it purposely wished to give the authority of interpretation or policy design to the executive, or because it lacked the political will to pass the law inclusive of specific definitions or directions.
The Fourteenth Amendment’s Language Regarding Birthright Citizenship.
In 1866, the country was reeling from the devastating effects of the Civil War. The South lay in ruins. The Democrat establishment inculcated in the southern states, although militarily defeated, was doing everything it could to maintain its old class and economic system. Although slavery had been outlawed and former slaves emancipated, southern Democrats were busy building roadblocks to the success of former slaves and African Americans in general.
Yes, slavery was no longer an option, but southern Democrats still had the Dred Scott decision at their disposal. In the most offensive Supreme Court ruling in American history, the Court in Dred Scott held that black Americans were not citizens of the United States, and that even if a state had afforded the person citizenship, such an act did not concurrently grant American, or federal citizenship. In other words, merely because an individual of African descent was a citizen of a certain state, he or she still would not be considered an American citizen. The post-war Southern States, under Democrat hands, aimed to capitalize on that still governing opinion.
The Reconstructionist Congress immediately took to rectify that situation and repeal the Dred Scott opinion. It would do this through a Constitutional Amendment. Congress had already outlawed slavery by passing and ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Now, it was hard at work at correcting this latest affront to former slaves by fashioning an amendment that would accomplish five things:
clarify that citizenship of the United States supersedes state citizenship;
define who is a citizen of the United States;
guarantee equal protection under the law to all citizens;
guarantee due process rights to all citizens;
and guarantee the same privileges and immunities to all citizens.
The result of their efforts was the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, a rather voluminous addition addressing all the aforementioned issues. Regarding who is recognized as a citizen of the United States, the Fourteenth Amendment states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”
Notice that the Fourteenth Amendment does not state that all persons born in the United States are citizens, but rather, those who are born in the United States and who are “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
So, what does “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” mean?
For that, we have information from debates and Supreme Court cases. In the debates leading to the passage of the language of the Fourteenth Amendment, some senators agreed that the phrase essentially meant “subject to full and complete jurisdiction of the United States.” Consequently, the phrase was included to make sure that certain persons born in the United States would not be considered citizens. These included American Indians, foreign invaders, and foreign dignitaries, such that, for example, if a foreign dignitary were to find herself pregnant in the United States and gave birth to a baby on American soil, that child was not considered to be a citizen of the United States.
The question of the citizenship of a baby who was born on American soil to someone who found herself in the United States illegally was never contemplated. Clearly, upon interpreting the language and the intent of the addition of the clause, it is clear that such an individual would not be subject to the full and complete jurisdiction of the United States and would likely not have been intended to be a citizen of the United States according to the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment.
For the contrary interpretation we would have to go to the few cases decided by the Supreme Court where the Court dealt with the language of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, but whose circumstances were not identical to the questions posited by President Trump.
United States v. Wong Kim Ark, U.S. (1898) was a case dealing with the citizenship of a child born in San Francisco to Chinese, non-citizen immigrants. In that case, the Court ruled that the child was indeed a citizen of the United States. The stickler here is that the baby’s parents, although non-citizens, had come to the United States and were residing within the United States, legally.
Contrarily, the Court held in Elk v. Wilkins, U.S. (1884) that the children of American Indians were not automatically considered citizens of the United States because, even though they were born on U.S. soil, the parents, by virtue of belonging to an American Indian tribe had not subjected themselves to the complete jurisdiction of the United States.
There are cases dealing with government benefits where courts, even the Supreme Court, have decided that the children of illegal immigrants born on American soil are eligible for benefits because they are citizens of the United States, but in such cases the courts began their analyses under the assumption that these children were citizens. More to the point, the Court has never decided whether birthright citizenship is absolute and immutable under the Constitution, or whether it is subject to regulatory oversight. In other words, the question of whether Congress or the executive can interpret the Fourteenth Amendment in such a manner that clarifies the meaning of the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” and thereby limit certain classes of individuals from being citizens has never been entertained by the Court.
Congress Opens The Door To The President’s Executive Order.
Whether the President has the authority to make a policy interpretation directly from the language in the Constitution of the United States is an interesting discussion, but our analysis does not have to reach that question because in point of fact, Congress passed a statute codifying the citizenship clause within the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Immigration and Nationality Act passed by Congress in 1952 actually codifies the citizenship and naturalization provision of the Fourteenth Amendment in 8 U.S.C. §1401(a). It reads, “The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth: (a) a person born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof; . . . ” However, in it Congress did not define the meaning of the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
Consequently, so long as Congress fails to define the meaning of the clause, it falls upon the executive or the President to do so. Therein lies the invitation by Congress for the President to interpret eligibility for birthright citizenship born to a person illegally in the United States. Admittedly, the judiciary may also interpret that phrase, but it can only do so in a case or controversy with standing where the actual question of the meaning of the phrase is at play. Additionally, even if the judiciary interprets the meaning of the statutory language, a definition put forth by the executive or Congress will supersede the judiciary’s definition.
However, if the judiciary were to interpret the meaning of the phrase as it is used in the Constitution then only a constitutional amendment could overturn the decision, which represents yet another example of why our nation is well served by the passage of a legislative override provision to a Supreme Court decision.
The Merits Of Ending Birthright Citizenship.
Having established that the President has the authority to end birthright citizenship by simply defining the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” should he?
I begin with the question of whether it should be done at all. There are a number of arguments in favor of ending birthright citizenship. Perhaps the most compelling of these is that birthright citizenship serves as an incentive for illegal immigration. Unquestionably, many women would risk life or limb to have their children born in the United States just so that the baby would be a citizen of the United States. The practice has many deleterious effects, not the least of which is increasing the number of American citizens with dual citizenship. Additionally, once the child is a citizen, it becomes much more difficult for authorities to deport the parents. And finally, of course, the child born under these circumstances becomes the first link in the chain of migration that will naturally include his or her parents.
There are also real costs to illegal immigration. Jon Feere, a policy analyst for the Center for Immigration Studies pointed out during his congressional hearing in 2015 that about 375,000 children are born to illegal immigrants in the United States each year, or one in 10 births. Additionally, 71% of illegal alien households with children make use of welfare benefits. The aggregate costs of these programs run into the billions of dollars each year. And bear in mind that in the developed world, only the United States and Canada honor birthright citizenships.
Who has the authority under the Constitution to end birthright citizenship? Clearly, from our analysis, both Congress and the President have the authority to end birthright citizenship without amending the Constitution.
So who should do it?
Congress, of course! Congress is where such a robust discussion should rightfully take place. But if Congress does not or cannot, then the responsibility falls upon the President.
If President Trump were to end birthright citizenship through an executive order, there is a strong likelihood that the Supreme Court will overrule him regardless of how the executive order is fashioned. But if it does so based on a claim that the President lacks the authority to define a vague and previously undefined statutory clause, the Court will be glaringly guilty of two things. First, it would be guilty of randomly and capriciously denying the President the authority to do something that is fundamental to his duties of faithfully executing the laws of the United States. And second, the Supreme Court will be making a decision not on the inherent authorities granted to each branch of government as it should, but merely on its disdain towards the policy enacted, clearly a policy consideration outside of its own purview.
The President is correct in asserting his authority to interpret a nebulous congressional statute, even if the result is the end of birthright citizenship. At the very least, doing so will force Congress to have the debate it should have had decades ago.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/anthony-garand-500755-unsplash-1-e1541536275421.jpg393640Dr. Julio Gonzalezhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Julio Gonzalez2018-11-06 15:31:222018-11-06 15:31:22Trump Really Does Have The Authority To End Birthright Citizenship Through Executive Order!
Historically, Democrats supported strong borders because they knew American workers could never compete with illegal immigrants. Now, they regularly support “open borders.” So why the drastic change? Tucker Carlson, host of Tucker Carlson Tonight, explains.
EDITORS NOTE: This column with video and images is republished with permission.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/illegal-immigration-tucker-carlson-e1541520066340.png360640Prager Universityhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngPrager University2018-11-06 11:01:522018-11-06 11:01:52VIDEO: Illegal Immigration: It’s About Power
The Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review its decision to rescind the Obama-era DACA program Tuesday night.
The request is unusual, because legal challenges to DACA’s termination are still underway in the lower courts.
The Justice Department said the Court must act now to resolve the dispute this term, but left-leaning civil rights groups called the petition a political student ahead of Tuesday’s election.
The Trump administration returned to the U.S. Supreme Court Monday night seeking to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, an Obama-era amnesty initiative that extends protected status to illegal aliens brought to the U.S. as children.
The move is aggressive and unusual, as decisions on Trump’s efforts to rescind DACA are still pending in several federal appeals courts, and the justices seldom take up cases before those judgments issue. But the U.S. Department of Justice told the Supreme Court Monday that action is needed in the near term.
The Trump administration previously sought the Supreme Court’s review of its efforts to phase out DACA. After two federal judges issued injunctions requiring the government to continue administering the program, the Justice Department bypassed normal appellate procedure and went directly to the Supreme Court on Jan. 18 to vindicate its right to terminate the program.
The justices rejected that request on Feb. 26, but asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to quickly process the case so it could return to the high court in a reasonable timeframe. Other challenges to DACA repeal efforts are currently before appeals courts in New York and Washington, D.C.
“It is assumed that the Court of Appeals will proceed expeditiously to decide this case,” the Supreme Court’s February order read. No decision has since come from the circuit courts.
In a letter attending the government’s petition, Solicitor General Noel Francisco explained that the high court should take the cases now — even though the appeals courts have yet to render decisions on the matter — to ensure the justices can resolve the dispute during the current term.
“As this Court’s previous order recognized, prompt consideration of these cases is essential,” the letter reads. “By virtue of the district courts’ orders, DHS is being required to maintain a discretionary policy of non-enforcement sanctioning an ongoing violation of federal law by more than half a million individuals.”
“Yet, absent prompt intervention from this Court, there is little chance this dispute will be resolved for at least another year,” the letter adds.
Paulina Ruiz chants with supporters of the DACA program on Olivera Street in Los Angeles, California. REUTERS/Kyle Grillot
On the merits of the dispute, the Trump administration contends that its decision to terminate DACA cannot be reviewed in court, since the program exists entirely at the executive branch’s discretion. Even if its termination decision is reviewable, they continue, it is still reasonable and lawful.
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights denounced the move as an “election eve stunt.”
“The day before an election that will have huge implications for this administration, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his Department have shamelessly asked the Supreme Court to bypass the appellate courts in their quest to end DACA,” said Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference. “This administration is in a rush to pull the rug out from under Dreamers and subject them to deportation. This extraordinary move is blatantly cruel to immigrant youth who call this country their home and contribute to their communities.”
“The Supreme Court must reject this politically motivated and unnecessary request,” she added.
But Sessions said that the 9th Circuit left the administration with little choice.
“The Department of Justice should not have been forced to make this filing today — the 9th Circuit should have acted expeditiously, just as the Supreme Court expected them to do,” the AG said Monday night. “But we will not hesitate to defend the constitutional system of checks and balances vigorously and resolutely.”
DACA extends temporary legal status to approximately 700,000 migrants, and allows them to obtain work permits.
EDITORS NOTE: This column 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.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/daca-sign-e1541509061367.jpg358640The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2018-11-06 07:57:502018-11-06 08:03:34Trump Administration Returns to Supreme Court, Seeking End To DACA
The Supreme Court recently announced that it will hear an appeal for a case involving a memorial cross. This large cross stands in an open field in Bladensburg, Maryland, and commemorates the sacrifice of 49 local servicemen who gave their lives in World War I. We talk with Jeremy Dys of First Liberty, the organization that is defending the memorial against the American Humanist Association. Listen below, or read the transcript, slightly further down.
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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the United States will hold accountable the men who murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, while still maintaining the strategic U.S.-Saudi relationship.
The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity. Jeremy Dys is the deputy general counsel for First Liberty, a law firm that defends religious freedom for all Americans, and is representing the American Legion in this veterans’ cross case.
Daniel Davis: Last year my colleague Jarrett and I went out to Bladensburg, Maryland, to see the memorial cross that your organization is now defending in court. And when we got there we saw a list of names on the monument, men who had given their lives in World War I, and it was sobering because we knew that if the court rules a certain way, it could soon be gone.
Can you give us some background here? Why is this memorial cross under threat?
Jeremy Dys: Well, a couple years ago the American Humanist Association decided that, for the first time in the 90-plus-year history of this memorial, it is violating the Constitution because it appears on public property. And the reason they say that it is violating the Constitution is that it is in the shape of a Celtic cross.
In fact, the Gold Star mothers who designed this memorial back in 1919, a hundred years ago now, they chose the shape that mimicked the markers that sat over the top of the graves of many of their sons over in Europe. Most of the men who died in World War I were buried under a Celtic cross. Teddy Roosevelt’s son, for instance, famously was buried under a Celtic cross in the European battlefields.
And so they knew that Americans would forget the sacrifice of their sons if they didn’t have something to visually remind them of that. So they decided to design this monument in the design of a Celtic cross. And then they built it.
The American Legion jumped in to help out, and by 1925 that monument was erected right there, right at the terminus of the National Defense Highway, which is itself a World War I memorial. It runs between D.C. and Annapolis, Maryland.
And it’s been standing there, perfectly innocently keeping watch over the memory of these 49 men from Prince George’s County, Maryland, just as their mothers had wanted nearly a hundred years now until the Humanist Association decided that they’d had enough, and that that could no longer be tolerated. And so they managed to get the 4th Circuit to agree and now we’re at the Supreme Court of the United States.
Katrina Trinko: Yeah, I have to say, I have a family member who lives near that cross, and every time I pass it … you don’t really think a lot about World War I, and it is a very poignant reminder.
Jeremy, what are some of the possible implications of this case? Obviously we have religious-themed art throughout the United States and government buildings. We’ve talked some about Arlington National Cemetery. Could this case have wide-ranging implications?
Dys: Very much so. And to answer that, I have to remember Martha Redmond, whose son William is on the side of that memorial. When she was organizing support for the memorial back in 1919, she wrote to her senator and said, “The reason I’m so excited about this memorial is that I very much view this as my son’s gravestone.”
She couldn’t go to her son’s grave. It was over in France. You couldn’t just jump on a plane and go visit it at the time, so this was, in her mind, her son’s gravestone. And I think it’s appropriate that we think of it as that, as a gravestone for 49 men from Prince George’s County, Maryland.
So if that goes down, then it unleashes a bulldozer across the country. It’ll start there in Bladensburg, Maryland, and then it’ll go across the river to Arlington National Cemetery, where you’re going to knock the Argonne cross, the Canadian cross of sacrifice.
You may have to sandblast the side of the Tomb of Unknown Soldier that has religious language on it. Teddy and Bobby Kennedy’s gravestones are going to have to come down. They’re both buried under a cross in the grounds of Arlington. And you can keep on going across the country.
But this is why this case is so vitally important.
Not only do we want to avoid this—the erasure of the memory of the service and sacrifice of these 49 fallen servicemen from Prince George’s County, Maryland—we want to ensure that there’s a restoration of common sense here. Just because something is in the shape of what some people view as religious, doesn’t mean that it is somehow in violation of the Constitution if it shows up on public property.
That’s what I think Justice Clarence Thomas has in mind when he talks about how the Establishment Clause jurisprudence of our country is in “disarray.” And so I think this presents a great opportunity for the Supreme Court to provide clarification to that. Protecting this memorial in the first place, but providing guidance to the country as to what the Establishment Clause is meant to actually mean.
Davis: Yeah. I was actually just about to ask about that, because that’s such a key point. The other side is arguing with the Establishment Clause, basically having any religious symbolism or language on public property is basically equivalent to establishing a religion. And so you have to get rid of all of that. How do you respond to that assessment?
Dys: I think I’m as confused everybody is, right? Even those who did go to law school like me are confused. Which test are we supposed to apply now? You’ve got three, four different tests that might apply on Establishment Clause cases. The reasonable observer that is talked about is almost always offended at anything that is smacking of the religious.
And so it’s almost impossible for the Establishment Clause not to be violated by anything that bears on the religious and comes on public property. …
The bottom line is this. The Supreme Court has the opportunity to provide guidance on these issues. And more particularly, the Supreme Court is really the last hope for preserving the 90-year-old Bladensburg World War I veterans monument, and the memory of the 49 men from Prince George’s County that it represents.
Trinko: So of course the American Legion is involved in this. Have you, throughout First Liberty’s work on this case, encountered veterans or their families, and is this a case that you expect they’ll be following closely?
Dys: We are very privileged to represent the American Legion in this lawsuit. I should point out that, if you haven’t seen the memorial, what you need to know is that this concrete memorial right in the dead center of the cross has the emblem of the American Legion right there.
Don’t forget the American Legion was formed out of World War I, and so these guys coming back to the United States wanting to remember the men who had died, men like Howard Morrow who received the Distinguished Service Cross for his bravery overseas as a grenadier.
These were remarkable men, some of whom were not able to be … Well, I mean, you weren’t able to find enough of them to bury. These were heroes beyond what words are able to describe. And families felt the real loss of these things. But they would have been members of the Legion had they survived.
So I think the Legion feels a particular duty to remember the men that they served with or that served with their forebears, and preserve the freedom that you and I possess today. And so their duty is turn to them and say, “We’re going to watch over this memorial,” this gravestone, as Martha Redmond called it. And make sure that their memory is never forgotten come hell or high water, or the Supreme Court of the United States.
Davis: So Jeremy, what’s next in this case? And when are you all going to be in Washington, D.C., arguing the case?
Dys: I would guess probably in the early spring the Supreme Court will have arguments. They set aside an hour for the argument on this case. So maybe March or so we might be seeing arguments before the Supreme Court, and that would be followed, of course, by June when we would have an order coming from the court finally articulating whether or not this monument is going to have to be turned into an obelisk, or razed to the ground, or somehow removed. Now we’re not going to remove it. We’re not going to take that monument down.
It’s a very key decision that the Supreme Court has to make here. I think they should just simply honor the way that Gold Star mothers chose to remember the service and sacrifice of their sons who died defending our freedom. That’s the easiest solution here.
Trinko: You mentioned that there’s been several times that the courts have weighed in on this issue. Justice Kavanaugh, of course, will not have a history on the Supreme Court on this, but have any of the other justices been involved in rulings that maybe hint at how they would approach this?
Dys: Well, it’s a great question and one I’d have to go back and do my own research on … Justices Thomas and Ginsburg have had the opportunity to see a few of these cases.
But this is a pretty unique one. I mean, you’re looking at a 100-year-old monument. Don’t forget that most of these men died a hundred years ago last month, in October of 1918. So most of the men, in fact, the grand majority of the people who died in World War I from America, died in that offensive at the end of World War I in 1918.
And so this certainly is historic, and it presents a great opportunity for the court to remind everybody that we forget what we don’t see. And so we ought to honor the sacrifice that these men made.
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EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission. The featured photo is of the World War I veterans’ memorial is in Bladensburg, Maryland. (Photo: The Daily Signal)
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/181105_bladensburg-1250x650-e1541505701796.jpg364640The Daily Signalhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Signal2018-11-06 07:02:082018-11-06 07:02:08Podcast: Supreme Court Will Hear Case on Veterans’ Cross Memorial Atheists Oppose
Rob Bluey: What are the most serious threats that America faces today?
Sebastian Gorka: In “Why We Fight,” I go through the whole catalog of the threats that face us today—whether it’s North Korea, Russia, Iran, or China, or global jihadism, which was a subject of my first book “Defeating Jihad.”
After my time in the White House, it’s very clear to me that we’re going to deal with all of these threats. The ISIS caliphate is already gone. The Iran deal is dead. Russia is being put back in its box. But there is only one remaining strategic threat to America and that’s China.
China has a plan. It’s not secret. Anybody can read it. It’s called One Belt, One Road. It is predicated on China, communist China, replacing America as the most powerful nation in the world by the 100th anniversary of their communist revolution.
They are going at it on all cylinders, whether it’s buying up interests in Africa, whether it’s corrupting politicians in Australia, whether it’s building fake islands in the South China Sea to intimidate our friends and our partners.
The good news is Donald Trump understands the threat and, as you’ve seen by recent decisions, he’s taking it very, very seriously.
Bluey: The threats that we’re facing today are quite different from those of the past. What does that mean for how we go about addressing them?
Gorka: The book doesn’t just address threats. It’s about the evolution of warfare—what every taxpayer, what every patriot needs to know about how war has changed over the ages. I’ll just illustrate it with one simple example.
If you say to the average American “war,” what kind of images come to mind? For most people, if you haven’t served in special forces in the Middle East, you think of what? “Saving Private Ryan.” You think of mass tanks fighting each other. You think of dog fights. We think about the conventional wars of the 20th century.
As I demonstrate in “Why We Fight,” that’s the exception to the rule. More than 80 percent of all wars since Napoleon—for the last 200 years—are what is technically called irregular warfare or unconventional, meaning a military in a uniform is fighting a non-state actor. Not another country’s military, but a group, a guerrilla force.
Or, if you look at one of our first ever engagements as a republic, the Barbary pirates. We didn’t just start fighting jihadis after 9/11. We started almost as soon as the republic was born, fighting the Barbary pirates off the shores of Tripoli, a phrase that might be familiar from the Marine Corps anthem. Those were jihadis, and that was almost 200 years ago.
Ginny Montalbano: You mentioned China and North Korea. There are certainly a lot of challenges we’re facing. How can President Trump most effectively communicate all of these challenges to the American people?
Gorka: I can’t keep track of it because it grows so fast, but I think having 55 million Twitter followers certainly helps. He is the arch communicator, whether it’s how he labeled his opponents during the election campaign, whether it’s the MAGA hat. I mean, look at Kanye West, what happens when a billionaire puts on a red hat. That’s a political statement.
So how does he communicate? He has to take his branding tools from politics into the national security arena, and I think he’s doing it.
I was in the White House when he prepared his first address to Congress. It wasn’t the State of the Union, if you recall. He gave a special address to the joint session of Congress, and in it, what did he do?
Everybody, all the Never Trumpers, “He’s going to go soft on us. He’s going to go soft. He’s not going to talk about radical Islamic terrorism.”
What did he do? It’s the most powerful moment in his speech if you watch the video. He stops. He pauses. He looks right into the camera and he says, “And we will defeat radical Islamic terrorism.” This is a man who, I don’t think he went to PR school, but he understands communication and PR branding like no other man I’ve met.
Bluey: Let’s go back to China just for a moment. The president is now talking about some sort of a trade deal with China. Obviously, he’s had engagement with high-level officials there. What do you make of some of the next steps that you expect to see from this administration when it comes to China?
Gorka: There’s two things. There’s two broad baskets. No. 1 is what they’re doing illicitly. This is declassified now. Your listeners can look it up thanks to the Department of Justice, which brought the case and then declassified it a few years ago.
A Chinese agent was intercepted in the Midwest in a cornfield. Not in the bowels of the Pentagon or the National Security Agency. He was apprehended in a cornfield. Why? Because he was stealing samples of American genetically-modified, blight-resistant corn to take home to China so the communist government could reverse engineer that intellectual property that had been developed at the costs of who knows how many millions of dollars here in America.
No. 1, we have to counter the subversion, the theft of our intellectual property, the work of the Confucius Institutes in America, which are funneling anti-Western messages.
Then on top of that, the second basket is what the president does in the overt domain, in the public diplomacy domain. We have to send a very clear message to American companies.
Let’s just internalize one thing. The most powerful information processing company in the world, Google, is happy, in the name of profit, to assist the Chinese communist government in censoring information from its own populous. There’s a very, very serious word for that that begins with a T, that in a prior age we would have used against any company that supports dictatorships that wish to undermine us.
We have to build, with The Heritage Foundation and everybody else, an information campaign that educates Americans that communism. On Nov. 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall may have come down, but communism is not dead.
Montalbano: It certainly isn’t. President Trump has had so many foreign policy successes. Which of those do you think have made America safer?
Gorka: Trump has embraced 64 percent of the 360-some conservative policy recommendations in Heritage’s “Mandate for Leadership.”
Let me tell you what’s most important for me. Because actually there’s some photographs in the book from my time in the White House and one of them really, for me, is very personal. It’s the one I’m proudest of, beyond being the president’s strategist.
I snuck into the back of the Rose Garden to watch the president make his announcement on our exiting the Paris climate accords. For me, that was a seminal moment. It’s not about nuclear weapons. It’s not about building a wall, but the spiritual and the philosophical weight of that moment cannot be overestimated.
When the president said in that speech, “I was elected by the citizens of Pittsburgh to be their president, not the citizens of Paris,” that is why Donald Trump won the election.
So people miss it. Even conservative commentators miss it. There is an underpinning to everything the president did in his campaign and everything he does as the commander in chief.
The philosophical bedrock is national sovereignty. It’s the concept that national sovereignty is good—whether it’s building the border, crushing ISIS, revitalizing our trade relations, rebuilding NATO.
National sovereignty is not only good, it is healthy for a nation, and Donald Trump is doing it. Wherever you look, he’s rebuilding national sovereignty.
Bluey: Heritage’s founder, Ed Feulner, was there and so many others have recounted other stories similar to yours.
Gorka: And let me just say, I joined the transition team before we won the election. It’s a peculiar system. I don’t know if the listeners are familiar, but the last two candidates before an election get given federal offices a few blocks from the White House to build their transition team.
So Hillary Clinton was on one floor and we were on the other floor, and it was very nice, very reassuring the first day we walked into the transition offices—I think it was in October—to see a certain Dr. Feulner sitting in one of the cubicles. That made us feel much, much better.
Bluey: It goes to the heart of my question. I wanted you to take our listeners back to your first encounter with Donald Trump and where that journey kind of took you.
Gorka: I actually wrote the bulk of this book before I joined the administration, but I wanted to tag on at the end a chapter on “How a kid from West London ended up in the West Wing.” It’s an American story.
I found myself, the day after the—I don’t drink so I didn’t have a hangover. So Saturday, Jan. 21, at 8 a.m., I was walking around the White House. A guy with a funny accent walking around the White House by himself, only in America. But how did I get there?
Summer of 2015, I’m a professor. I have the chair of military theory at the Marine Corps University in Quantico. Love my Marines. I get a phone call from a guy called Corey Lewandowski. Never heard of him. Didn’t know who he was.
And he said “I work for Donald Trump, candidate”—then candidate Trump—”and he’s preparing for the GOP debate this fall on national security, and he’s looking for somebody to advise him on national security issues. Would you come to New York?”
I’d never done anything like that before in my life. Spent most of my career working with the military and the FBI in counterterrorism issues, and I said, “Sure.”
So I flew to New York a few days later, went to Trump Tower, went to the future president’s private office, sitting as close to him as I am to you, just me and Donald Trump, and in the corner, Corey. We’d never met before, and we had this incredible, wide-ranging, blue-sky discussion for about 40 minutes on you name it.
It was national security, but we went from the Civil War to nuclear weapons to ISIS, what have you. Then halfway through, classic Trump, he stops the conversation dead, turns to Corey, and says, “I like this guy. Let’s hire him.” Just quintessential Donald Trump. He sees something, he makes a decision.
I signed my non-disclosure agreement, which I actually obey—unlike certain people—and then I started writing him some policy papers for the debates, got to know Gen. Michael Flynn a little bit as the campaign progressed, and then was invited onto the transition team for the National Security Council.
In the last week, literally, I think it was four days before the inauguration, a guy who knew me named Steve Bannon reached out and pulled me out of the NSC transition team and said, “You’re coming to work for me. I’m the chief strategist to the president, and you’ll be the strategist to the president.” So it’s an American tale.
Montalbano: And what a journey it’s been. I love all the photos in the book.
Gorka: Thank you.
Montalbano: Support for socialism seems to be growing in America. What is your message to those who embrace it, especially young people?
Gorka: As the child of people who suffered under fascism and then communism, it’s really galling to me. It’s hard to internalize when the Victims of Communism Foundation does a poll and the result is they find 42 percent of millennials would like to live in a socialist or communist America. It’s hard. I mean, my father was tortured by communists.
So what’s my message? My message is Justice Brett Kavanaugh. There’s a moment in his testimony before the House after he was accused of heinous crimes, which clearly he was innocent of, where he says, clearly a righteous man, a godly man, and he looks at those senators who are trying to destroy him—like Whittaker Chambers many, many years before him, who I write about in the book—and he says, “I don’t care which way you vote. I don’t care what happens, but I’m not going to allow you to get away with this.”
That’s my message, whether it’s the local chapter of Turning Point USA, whether it’s a Heritage subscriber, whether it’s somebody at Hillsdale who’s going on to a grad school in some kind of hive of liberal insanity. Never give up and never let their lies undermine your confidence in the nation.
I’ll talk about my personal experience. So I’m in the White House, I’m a deputy of the president, and I understand I’m going to get attacked. It’s politics. I’m a proxy for Donald Trump and a proxy for Bannon, so I’ll get attacked.
But when it’s 42 attack pieces by one journalist in three months, when they start attacking my children, when they start attacking my wife, the reputation of my dead mother, you realize that things get heavy. Let’s say things get heavy. You have a little crisis of “Is it worth it for that massive paycheck?” Right? That massive government paycheck.
I came to a very simple realization. I’m not hanging by my wrists from the ceiling of a torture chamber in a basement in Budapest like my father was. It’s just words. So bring it, Huff Po. Bring it, Daily Beast. You’re not going to win. Never give up.
I have four stories in the book of American heroes, and the lesson from each of them is you never give up because the stakes are too important. This nation was the only nation, still is the only nation, founded on the principles of individual liberty and freedom, and we have to fight for them every day.
Bluey: Thank you for sharing that. The other thing that I want our listeners to know is you have been speaking about this topic and others to Heritage Foundation audiences all across the country, and we appreciate you sharing those personal stories with them. The feedback we’ve received has been overwhelmingly positive.
Gorka: That’s very kind of you. I’ve loved working with Ed Feulner before he stepped down. I am incredibly, incredibly excited by Kay James’ understanding that socialism isn’t a chapter in history. Socialism is a threat to America today. So wherever I can talk about it, the president’s club day or anywhere else, and get the word out, it’s an honor for me. Thank you, Kay. Thank you, Ed. Thank you, you guys.
Bluey: You mentioned Justice Kavanaugh in your answer to that last one. You’ve said this has created a version 2.0 of the Republican Party. What do you mean by that?
Gorka: I never thought—did any of us think that Sen. Lindsey Graham would teach the GOP how to be men? I never thought I’d say those words. I’ll tell you the proof of what I mean by GOP 2.0.
The Kavanaugh hearing was incredible. Even more important was, I think, the Saturday after when he was confirmed, when the president, in front of the world’s cameras, in front of billions of people, next to Kavanaugh, next to his family, from the White House declared that this man is innocent. That was the right thing to do. That was the just thing to do.
But the pivot from the political perspective, the pivotal moment is the GOP press conference on the Friday before that when the senior members of the judicial committee kind of wrapped up the events.
Watch that video again. Watch Sen. Chuck Grassley. Watch everybody else. I have never ever seen that level of anger amongst the most senior Republican politicians in America. I think something changed. I think politics is usual in thinking, “Hey, it doesn’t matter if they’ve got a D behind their name or an R behind their name. It’s all a nice elite club.” I think that was broken.
The behavior of the Democrats in those hearings, when you have people like Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who had a Chinese intelligence agent on her payroll for 20 years. You have individuals like Sen. Cory Booker, who actually admitted [to groping] somebody in high school. You’ve got Sen. Kamala Harris who built her political career on questionable relationships—let’s just leave it at that.
Those people are sitting in judgment over a man who—this isn’t an insult—is literally a grown-up Boy Scout, is a church volunteer, volunteer coach, is the most quoted federal judge in Supreme Court history in the modern age, and they’re going to judge him?
I think the GOP, I think the scales fell from their eyes. I think we’re going to see a new GOP evolve from that Rip Van Winkle coming out of the cave.
Montalbano: Ive had the opportunity to travel to several Trump rallies the past couple of weeks. I can tell you firsthand that people are fired up. They are upset about what happened to now Justice Kavanaugh.
You immigrated here legally. What do you make over the current battle about the caravan, birthright citizenship, and immigration in general?
Gorka: I think there’s two massive topics that we don’t touch, the third rails in D.C. One of them is the deficit and the budget. Nobody wants to seem to solve that.
The other one is 30, 40 years of a flawed immigration system, an utterly flawed immigration system. The whole concept of chain migration.
Right now, don’t take my word for it. Go online. Look it up. There are baby factories in Florida. There are companies that simply give opportunities for people from the Middle East, from Russia, or elsewhere to come here pregnant, have their baby, and then use that baby’s anchor citizenship to legalize the rest of their family’s immigration to America.
I don’t care who you vote for, does anybody really think that’s what the Founding Fathers meant by any amendment to the Constitution? What we’re talking about today is an amendment that was designed to do what? To stop, let’s get accurate, to stop Democrats denying free slaves and their children citizenship. That’s the real history.
Let’s not try and give into the propaganda. It has nothing to do with people who are looking for asylum from other countries, and as an immigrant, a legal immigrant to America of people, parents who were refugees, this is personal to me.
Forget that for a second. Look at the law. In international law, if you really are persecuted and you want asylum, if you get out of the country you’re persecuted in, what are you supposed to do? You’re supposed to apply for asylum in the first country you land in.
So what are they doing? They’re walking what? Two thousand miles, 3,000 miles to get to America. Well, what about Mexico? What about all the other countries they cross? You get out of Honduras, you get out of El Salvador, if you really are, if you’re not an economic migrant, if you’re a politically persecuted one, you’re supposed to stop where you are and apply for asylum status. None of them are. What does that tell you?
Bluey: Sebastian, this was a great interview. We appreciate you being on The Daily Signal podcast.
Gorka: It’s my pleasure. Thank you, guys. Follow me @SebGorka. God bless.
Bluey: Again, the book is called “Why We Fight.” Thank you.
COLUMN BY
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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column with podcast and images is republished with permission. The featured image is by Christoph on Pixabay.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/bald-eagles-341898_640.jpg424640The Daily Signalhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Signal2018-11-06 06:50:492019-03-07 08:34:26PODCAST: Sebastian Gorka on the Biggest Threat Facing America and What Trump Is Doing About It
Keep your eye on the prize and run to win! That was Paul’s charge to the Corinthians in pursuing the call of God upon their lives. Knowing their love of sports, he told them they should run with the same determination, discipline, and focus that they would use to win the prize in the Isthmian games held in Corinth. Paul’s appeal to these qualities in the pursuit of what should be our ultimate goal, living life by God’s design, only serves to underscore the importance of these characteristics to success in any undertaking that is worth pursuing.
In America today, determination, discipline, and focus are also what is required to continue on our current path of restoring the core values that built a great and prosperous country. In particular, we have seen the end to eight years of a withering assault on religious freedom, an issue that motivated voters in the 2016 election.
A clarion call to respect people of faith and our First Freedom — religious liberty — could not come at a better time as we mourn as a nation the loss of life in Pittsburgh where a man allegedly motivated by hatred against Jewish people committed an act of violence.
That barbarism illustrates why respect for people of faith and protection of religious liberty is so important, especially after years of marginalization by the last administration.
The anti-faith attacks could be seen most clearly in our own government prosecuting nuns, who were aiding the least of these, for refusing to violate their religious beliefs and fund contraceptives, including abortifacients, in their health care plans.
There were also the cases of Soldiers, Airmen, Coastguardsmen and Marines punished for seeking to live out their religious faith in the most basic ways, like having a Bible on their desk or chaplains like Wes Modder being removed from his command for counseling according to the principles of his biblical faith.
We witnessed small business owners like Don Vander Boon, whose family owns a meat packing facility in Michigan, told by agents of the federal government that he had to remove Bible-based articles from his breakroom where employees gathered, or the government would shut their business down.
But stopping this prejudice is only the first step to righting our course. It will take a concerted and consistent effort to rebuild respect for America’s First Freedom throughout the ranks of a government, which the previous administration had mobilized to attack.
Less than two years in office, the Trump administration is restoring religious liberty. In May of 2017, President Trump issued an executive order directing the Department of Justice to ensure all federal agencies were protecting and promoting religious freedom. Despite tremendous opposition from leftist groups that are suing the DOJ and other agencies to hinder or stop the effort, the restoration of our First Freedom continues.
For the first time in a long time, religious freedom has also become a priority in U.S. foreign policy, most notably demonstrated in Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Just three months into his post, he hosted the first-ever Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, attended by leaders from over 80 different nations.
It is essential to each individual American, especially to Christians who are called to follow the teaching of Scripture no matter what they do: “whether eating or drinking, do all to the glory of God.” This understanding that religious freedom is the ability to live every aspect of our lives according to our faith is deeply rooted in what historians describe as America’s Protestant work ethic, which has led to unparalleled productivity and prosperity, as work is an act of worship done in service to God.
French historian Alexis De Tocqueville, in his historical analysis of America’s growing prosperity in the 1800’s, made clear that the foundation and anchor for democracy and prosperity in America was the Christian faith pioneered by the Puritans. In other words, America didn’t create religious freedom; religious freedom created America.
Many will be quick to try and dismiss the connection between religious freedom, economic prosperity and social stability, but a growing body of academic research shows the correlation. Indeed, a study by the Religious Freedom and Business Foundation reports that “religion contributes $1.2 trillion to the U.S. economy annually, more than the combined revenues of the top 10 technology U.S. companies including Apple, Amazon and Google.”
Is it a coincidence that as religious freedom is being promoted and protected again in America, our economy is growing and unemployment is shrinking to historic lows? Maybe, but economic growth and prosperity cannot be long sustained without religious freedom. And for religious freedom to impact the economy, it has to be an individual freedom that permeates all aspects of society. The mere freedom of worship, which seeks to quarantine the practice of one’s faith within the walls of a church, is not authentic religious freedom.
The Trump administration has done more to restore religious freedom than any other administration since the steady assault began over a half century ago. This election is about whether or not we continue on a path that restores America’s First Freedom, which is foundational to genuinely making America great again. We must be disciplined in systematically pursuing those policies that will restore religious freedom and stay focused on the prize — one nation under God with liberty and justice for all.
EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/religious-freedom-button-e1541503954118.jpg355640Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2018-11-06 06:33:342018-11-06 06:33:34Keeping Our Eye on the Prize
Once again, we find ourselves at a midterm election, and once again, the nation is at an impasse. Essentially we are confronted with a referendum on two alternative and incompatible visions for the future of our nation.
On the one hand, we have the followers of Donald Trump. Take away what you feel about Donald Trump himself, his tweets, his comments. . . his quips. The fact is that certain people placed him in power, and those people believe in certain things. If you support Donald Trump or the candidates in his camp, you are supporting the aspirations and dreams of this group of Americans.
These are people who believe that the United States is the greatest country in the world. They believe this status carries with it certain responsibilities. Those include an affirmative leadership role globally.
They also believe the United States is truly exceptional, not because of a shared ethnicity since the country certainly does not have that, but because of a certain set of circumstances that made this country an exception to all others. They believe it is the human spirit that drives greatness, freedom, and success. They believe that the more government gets the hell out of the people’s lives, the better off the people are, and the better off the government and the nation is.
The great flag bearers of this philosophy are people like, Mark Levin, John Bolton, Rush Limbaugh, and Ben Shapiro.
On the other, we have the followers of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Once again, remove from the analysis whatever feelings you may have towards Sanders or Clinton. Instead, think of the things the people who put them in positions of authority believe. These folks are not the Democrats of old. They are not the people who, like John F. Kennedy, asked not what their country could do for them, but what they could do for their country. These people are totally different.
They don’t believe that there are problems plaguing the nation. Rather, they believe the country is the problem. They believe the United States is the great promoter of injustice. This is because they America is a flawed state; from its inception!
They believe that the United States is the greatest fomenter of evil in the world today. They believe that so many of the world’s injustices; poverty, famine, disease, and even the future decline in the health of the planet itself is to a great extent the result of the presence and actions of the United States. They believe that because the United States has achieved a certain amount of stability and wealth, it must now give most of it up to the rest of the world.
The people in this camp believe it is appropriate to suspend due process because of the many injustices the United States has itself perpetrated in the past.
They believe in socialism, wealth distribution, and in the inherent evil of their opponents. They believe that each and every one of you is responsible for the health of all those around you, and you should pay for it.
They believe that every majority group is inherently hateful, or at least unjust, towards every minority. For this reason, they claim others as being racist, sexist, misogynistic, homophobes at will.
This group’s flag bearers are Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Joaquin Castro, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Mazie Hirono, and George Soros.
And there you have it; the two directions being offered to the American public.
Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a stark dichotomy between the two groups hoping to lead our country, and today, each group is asking you to help it take the nation in the direction it believes is better for the nation and the world. Each is trying to convince you that theirs is the better way.
The question you need to answer is which vision do you believe is better? Your response is fundamentally important to our nation’s future.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/emily-morter-188019-unsplash-1-e1541502761949.jpg358640Dr. Julio Gonzalezhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Julio Gonzalez2018-11-06 06:12:512018-11-06 06:12:51The Question Before Us Today.
Tom Trento, Laura Loomer, Damon Rosen, and J Mark Campbell were “LIVE” today, Monday, Nov 5th, to discuss the 2018 election, the Socialist Democrat candidates, and the BANNING that is happening to ANYONE Conservative!
Within about 20 minutes… picture was scrambled and the LIVE video feed was shutdown by Facebook! Censorship SUPREME!
Where is the Conservative Voice able to SPEAK THE TRUTH? America needs a new Conservative platform for honest discussion!
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/glen-carrie-773789-unsplash-1-e1541462756242.jpg396640The United West/ Defend The Borderhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe United West/ Defend The Border2018-11-05 19:06:052018-11-05 19:06:05THE PURGE: Banned on Facebook! No HONEST Discussion Allowed!
Florida State University police arrested and charged a student who allegedly assaulted at least one College Republican at a tabling event.
The student, Shelby Anne Shoup, threw her drink on at least one College Republican member and kicked over a sign.
Police at a Florida university have arrested a student who allegedly assaulted at least one College Republican, according to a Friday announcement.
Florida State University police arrested FSU student Shelby Anne Shoup after the release of a viral video in which Shoup threw her drink at a College Republican and kicked over a Ron DeSantis campaign sign.
“I hope you all realize that you are normalizing and enabling Nazis,” she said. “And you can film me, I don’t give a shit.” Tweet This
The College Republicans tabled Tuesday to educate students about the importance of voting in the midterm elections when Shoup confronted them.
“You are supporting Nazis,” the student said. “Do you know that?”
“You’re supporting communism?” a bystander asked Shoup, pointing to a pin worn by the student, which appears to depict a sickle and hammer.
“Yeah, I fucking am,” Shoup responded. “Fuck you, man.”
“Don’t pour your coffee on me,” the bystander said.
“Fuck you, I will,” Shoup said, tossing the contents of her drink, which she subsequently claimed was chocolate milk, onto the bystander. “Fuck all of you.”
“I hope you all realize that you are normalizing and enabling Nazis. And you can film me, I don’t give a shit. Listen here: eleven of my people are fucking dead this weekend,” she continued, referencing the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre.
“Two black people are dead in Kentucky because of fucking nationalist murderers that this normalizes,” she added, referencing the Louisville Kroger store shooting.
Shoup kicked a sign promoting Fla. Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis while leaving the scene.
FSU College Republicans Vice Membership Chair Daisy Judge commented on the incident to Campus Reform.
“While handing out Trump stickers to two students, I was brashly approached by two students insinuating that we were racists for supporting President Trump,” Judge told Campus Reform. “This escalated into the students implying that we were responsible for the shooting that occurred in Pittsburgh. The female student threw her chocolate milk on me after stating that the Republican Party and myself were Nazis for who[m] we aligned ourselves with.”
“As she continued to voice her opinion, she once again threw her drink on me while I continued to remain civil and explain our stance,” the vice membership chair said. “As others approached to de-escalate the situation, she threw the remainder of her drink on someone else [at the beginning of the video] due to them pointing out that she supported the Communist party. The girl then went on to hit a passing by student and to kick down our DeSantis sign.”
“FSU is a diverse community that values and respects each person,” the school posted on Twitter Friday. “FSU expects each member of the community to embrace the values of civility and ethical conduct and obey the law. Regarding Tuesday’s incident, the individual was identified, arrested and charged with battery.”
Genesis Sanchez is a Florida Campus Correspondent, and reports liberal bias and abuse on campus for Campus Reform. She studies at Tallahassee Community College and serves as a Contributing Editor at The Lone Conservative. Twitter: @GenSanchezz.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot_212-e1541461736659.jpg382640Campus Reform Campus Wirehttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngCampus Reform Campus Wire2018-11-05 18:49:132018-11-05 18:49:13Student arrested, charged with battery after confrontation with College Republicans
With the U.S. Senate in the balance, Florida’s largest newspaper chain published a last-minute hit piece on Gov. Rick Scott, an apparent attempt to undermine his campaign to unseat 46-year Washington politician Sen. Bill Nelson — the man Forbes magazine once famously depicted on their cover with, literally, an empty suit.
The pre-planned package of stories was published by GateHouse Media, which owns 21 newspapers in the state, including dailies in Jacksonville, Palm Beach, Sarasota, Daytona Beach, Panama City, Gainesville, St. Augustine and many more.
The newspapers ran an astonishingly bad piece of journalism out of the Palm Beach newsroom entitled “Florida felon voting rights: Who got theirs back under Scott” with the subhead reading “The governor restored rights to the lowest percentage of blacks, highest percentage of Republicans in 50 years.”
This came just days before Tuesday’s huge election, early enough to influence voting underway and election day, but not enough time to mount much of a pushback by the Scott campaign. It also tied in with Amendment 4, which would amend the Florida Constitution to automatically restore the voting rights of felons once they completed all of the conditions of their convictions.
It’s pretty clear from the “reporting” where the media stands on Gov. Scott and Amendment 4. The days of even pretending to hide partisanship are fading into a distant memory.
The long piece, essentially an agenda-driven package, is truly painful to read through if you are not an ardent Democrat. The reporting team draws conclusions of motivational fact on the part of Scott from nothing more than a correlation or one set of numbers significantly lacking context and the rest of the data.
For instance, one conclusion the piece draws is: “Scott’s system of restoring voting rights has for years discriminated against black felons, boosting his own political prospects and those of other Republicans throughout the state, a Palm Beach Post analysis has found.” [emphasis added]
Don’t be fooled by the word “analysis,” as though it means some green eye-shade look at the numbers. It’s not an analysis in any honest sense.
Reporters playing with statistics frequently mistake correlation with causation, sometimes out of ignorance, but often because even minor correlation can be enough for them to build their predetermined storyline.
In this case, the logic is as follows: A higher percentage of blacks than whites are arrested, so cops are racist. A higher percentage of blacks than whites are incarcerated, so the courts are racist. A higher percentage of blacks than whites are denied the restoration of voting rights, so specifically Gov. Scott is racist.
But the numbers do not show “discrimination,” which would be causal, they just show resulting numbers. Never truly asked or delved into in any of those numbers-conclusions scenarios is the bottom line question: Are a higher percentage of blacks committing crimes? That is the golden data point to be mined that the media has very little stomach for even looking at. Further in the data underlying this sentence, how many blacks requested restoration of voting rights?
The story is just riddled with truisms from Will Rogers’ observation, “There are three types of lies; lies, damned lies and statistics.” This story is chockaful of just such “statistics.”
Let’s bullet point some of their bullet points:
➞ Story:“During his nearly eight years as governor, Scott restored the voting rights of twice as many whites as blacks and three times as many white men as black men.”
Leaving aside what the felond did in the years after release — jobs, marriage, family, church, community involvement, that would suggest lifestyle stability — this bullet point sounds terrible until you read way down into the story and comb through one of the charts. Because the context for this is just during his term, and just between blacks and whites. But it turns out Scott had a higher ratio of blacks to whites than the last Democratic governor of Florida, Lawton Chiles, in the 1990s.
But that does not fit the agenda, so there was no real truthfulness of conclusions.
➞ Story: “Scott restored rights to a higher percentage of Republicans and a lower percentage of Democrats than any of his predecessors since 1971.”
By a little. And, by the way, he still restored a much higher percentage of Democrats than Republicans. Again, you have to find the data box to discover this. It’s not in the narrative “analysis.”
➞ Story: “Blacks accounted for 27 percent of those who had their voting rights restored despite the fact that 43 percent of those released from state prisons over the past two decades were black.”
This tells us nothing of causation. Again, as in the first bullet point above, what is causal is not the percentages but what each felon did in the years after their prison release — jobs, marriage, family, church, community, etc., that would suggest the sort of stability that a clemency board would be looking for in order to return full rights.
There is simply a lot of bad journalism in this story.
Of course, it was probably never intended to be groundbreaking investigative journalism digging into the truth. The consistently slanted “statistics” suggest the real intent was to sway votes in the midterm elections toward Sen. Bill Nelson. Between Gillum’s nomination and this story blasted across the state, it seems like that succeeded.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Rick-Scott-Florida-Governor-jpg1.jpg360640Rod Thomsonhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngRod Thomson2018-11-05 18:34:292018-11-05 18:34:29One Last Election Surprise: Pre-Planned Media Hit Piece On Rick Scott
I am a capitalist. I believe in capitalism because it is foundational to upward mobility, the middle class, ordered liberty, and the individual freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution. So, what is the problem with capitalism?
Capitalism is driven factually by supply and demand but artificially by the marketing and advertising industries that hawk its products. So, if a particular business or industry is suffering from lack of sales – it can hire a marketing firm to create an artificial demand for its products. Those products may or may not be beneficial to the public. For decades tobacco was marketed and advertised as elegant, sophisticated, and desirable even though it was a known cancer-causing killer. Buyer beware is the operating principle in a market economy.
Billions of dollars are spent annually marketing, lobbying, and advertising products because marketing, lobbying, and advertising are extremely effective.
Products are ordinarily considered to be goods and services, but what if the product is ideology?
The publishing of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago (1973) destroyed any Western fantasies about collectivist ideology and life under communism/socialism when individual liberties are surrendered to the state. Socialism needed a new image if it was going to sell. How was the Left going to market collectivism?
“How to carry on the fight against capitalism when its major ideological alternative was no longer viable? The Left found its answer in an identity politics that grew out of anti-colonialism. Marx’s class struggle was reformulated into an ethno-racial struggle – a ceaseless competition between colonizer and colonized, victimizer and victim, oppressor and oppressed. Instead of presenting collectivism and central planning as the gateway to the realization of genuine freedom, the new multiculturalist Left turned to unmasking the supposed power relations that subordinated minorities and exploited third world nations.”
The Left had a new marketing, lobbying, and advertising strategy that targeted American universities and then K-12. American education was chosen as the vulnerable soft target for revolution – no bullets required. The long-term strategy was that two generations of leftist educational indoctrination would transform America from a capitalist constitutional republic into the socialist state required for internationalized one world government. It was a two-fisted approach that softened the targets (future voters) in school to accept the seismic political shifts that would come. This is how it works.
The radical leftists on campus in the 60s did not go quietly into the night after Woodstock – they graduated and became the teachers, professors, text book writers, psychologists, sociologists, politicians, and decision makers in charge of public education including curriculum content that reflected their anti-American bias and globalist views. Gradually the individualism and critical think skills that had created the vibrant, independent, upwardly mobile middle class and supported the American dream were deliberately dumbed down to encourage dependence, collectivism, group think, and a victim mentality.
In a sweeping effort that eventually transformed public education, collectivism was repackaged, marketed, lobbied, advertised, and sold to an unsuspecting American public. The former pro-American curricula that proudly promoted individualism, the meritocracy, capitalism, and the middle class was replaced. The revised curricula teaches American students to be anti-American, self-loathing, dependent, fragile collectivists, and unapologetically preaches global citizenship in a new world order.
Many people take public education for granted and do not realize that public education made the American dream possible. Public education supports American freedom and distinguished America from societies across the globe where centralized governments including monarchies, caste systems, despotic regimes of communism, socialism, defined their citizens’ futures.
The American dream reflected the possibilities and potentials for upward mobility in America. Legal immigrants who came to America seeking a better life understood that public education was the gateway to success in America. Those immigrants worked, assimilated, and sent their children to school to learn English and have a chance to realize the American dream.
It is essential to remember that the transformation of public education was in service to the political ideology of the Left that embraced collectivism and rejected capitalism. In order to destroy capitalism the Left took aim at the economy of the existing middle class. This effort reached a crescendo during Obama’s eight year promise to fundamentally transform America. His crushing economic policies:
sent jobs and manufacturing overseas
created massive unemployment
bloated the welfare rolls
created more and more dependence upon the government
moved the country further toward collectivism
The current midterm illegal migrant invasion threatening our southern border is the apotheosis of Leftist political maneuvering designed to completely overwhelm the American welfare system and destroy its capitalist infrastructure. Socialists Cloward and Piven provided the paradigm for economic collapse by deliberately overloading the American welfare system. The menacing midterm illegal migrant invasion marching toward our southern border is a catastrophic economic overload to our welfare system if allowed to breach our borders. It is Cloward and Piven’s destructive economic paradigm on steroids deliberately staged to produce the most damaging optics in hopes of swinging the midterm elections toward the leftist Democrats.
The caravan goal is not relief for refugees – the goal is to overwhelm the welfare system and finally collapse the US economy. If the midterm caravan successfully breaches the US borders another caravan will immediately follow – and then another – and then another.
The Leftist movement has been repackaged, marketed, and advertised as a multicultural religion. There is zero chance of separating a religious zealot from his religious beliefs which is why the identity politics of the left are so effective. The inconvenient facts of Leftist hypocrisy do not get in their way. Jews march with anti-Semites. Women march with misogynists. Homosexuals march with homophobes. The Left unapologetically marches with Linda Sarsour despite her anti-American sharia law tenets including wife beating, child marriage, rape, murder of infidels, and “honor” killing. The stunning hypocrisy of the Left is completely ignored because the overarching and unifying principle is their shared hatred for President Trump.
The educational system has successfully dumbed down and indoctrinated half the American population into believing that socialism will bring social justice and income equality. The Leftist mainstream media, Internet behemoths, and Hollywood glitterati are facilitating the messaging and participating in the unifying attack against America-first President Donald Trump because he is the existential enemy of socialism.
America has reached the political tipping point and tomorrow’s midterm election will determine our future.
I believe in facts, critical thinking, and informed consent. I believe Solzhenitsyn. I believe the words of those who have suffered under communist/socialist regimes not the marketing promises of Leftist Democrat political leaders falsely advertising the benefits of collectivism. The Gulag Archipelago described the collectivist nightmare and serves as a stark warning to America.
We must reject Leftist Democrat collectivism and remember it is just Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag renamed and marketed as identity politics.
We must support President Trump’s vision of a sovereign, safe, secure, free America.
BUYER BEWARE! Choose freedom! Vote Republican and Make America Great Again!!
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/chris-li-182361-unsplash-e1541460202401.jpg369640Linda Goudsmithttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngLinda Goudsmit2018-11-05 18:23:492018-11-05 18:25:22The Problem With Capitalism
