There Is No Secular Culture

James Matthew Wilson: To encounter Christ and to abide with him is not just the Good News, it is the only news that stays news, forever.


Simon During has made a dismaying but perceptive argument about the relationship between religion and culture in, of all places, The Chronicle of Higher Education, the flagship of today’s academic world. The secularization of the modern West involved not the abandonment of religion, but its reduction to an optional dimension of human life (an idea borrowed from Charles Taylor’s important book, A Secular Age). The demotion of religion led to a promotion of culture. Culture in the modern age became a new god-term to give coherence to civilization and society – a kind of immanent substitute for the transcendence of Christian faith. As Matthew Arnold contended, culture would save us from anarchy.

This substitution is now being undone, During argues, by a second secularization.  Just as the authority of the Church was eroded by various events that converged on a secular political order, so now, a series of events, from neoliberalism to feminism to identity politics, has led to a rejection of the canons of culture.

You don’t need any longer to have a certain appreciation for Bach’s St. Matthew Passion or Virgil’s Aeneid in order to be thought a decently civilized human being; such knowledge might actually be counted against you.  Better to spend your time studying risk analysis or cybersecurity, say the neoliberal technocrats. Or postcolonial criticism of Virgil or, better still, leave that dead man behind for the lyrical stylings of some feminine vicar of a non-Western people, or an advocate of the “pedagogy of the oppressed.”

The history During offers may not proceed according to iron laws, but it does have its own momentum that would be hard to counteract, even if you don’t much like it. I’d like merely to consider the linkage he sees between religious and cultural secularizations, to raise some doubt about the very idea of culture serving as a “substitute” for religion, and to suggest that great works of culture are powerful expressions of the truth of Christianity.

Early twentieth-century Christian writers, from Henri Massis and Charles Péguy to T.S. Eliot and Christopher Dawson, often seemed to slide between defenses of Christianity and of culture, under that nebulous term, the West – for good reason.  They perceived rightly that Christianity transcends every historical reality, including the culture of the West, and yet they also saw that it would be hard, if not impossible, to have one without the other.

They saw this because, in a very particular way, it is true.  We owe to the best pagan philosophers the most compelling and finely articulated description of what it means to be human.  Human beings are creatures whose souls by nature desire to know the truth for its own sake; creatures who not only desire the truth but need to contemplate it. We are thus fulfilled, made happy, and find our lives transformed, from the vain pursuit of worldly glory to a resting in the eternal glory of all that is, of Being Itself.

This was, in a manner of speaking, a hard-won cultural insight, but it was more fundamentally a religious one.  God’s revelation to Israel and his sending of his Son into the world to proclaim the Gospel brought the world to its predestined fullness of understanding.  We are fulfilled by contemplation of truth, because the Truth is a person who made us to know him and to love him.  To encounter him and to abide with him is not just good news, it is the only news that stays news, forever.

The modern age that During and Taylor describe as secular never fully abandoned these insights, though it truncated them and deprived them of their purpose.  It recognized something distinctive and mysterious about human persons: We are made for transcendence.  The modern age simply stopped stating what kind of transcendence and, in the process, clouded its own vision.

Yes, we have souls, moderns affirm: we do rise above our material existences, at least from time to time, in an act of self-consciousness.  The works of high culture are just what they sound like –from the philosophy of Kant and the painting of Friedrich, to the opera of Wagner or the poetry of Rilke. They remind the forgetful soul that it may rise above, however briefly, nature’s mechanical laws.

Alas, modern culture could affirm this elevation, this ecstasy, but only with a kind of pathos. We have moments of illumination and then sink once more into the flesh. “To toll me back from thee [eternal spirit] to my sole self,” as Keats wrote. People kind of caught on to the gimmick after a while. Why bother with a pointless species of transcendence? It seems much too ethereal in comparison with that more functional transcendence of money, by which we secure for ourselves a miniature immortality. Conversely, cultural elevation seems narcissistic indulgence compared with the transcendence of pursuing political goods that may survive us.

One secularization necessarily follows from the other. The foundation of culture, as Joseph Pieper frequently argued, is the cultus – the cult. Without a clear sense of our ordination to the contemplation of God, all the works of man that seem true, good, and beautiful come to appear, first, as mere distraction, and finally, as deception.

In The Person and the Common Good, Jacques Maritain argues that to be a human person is to be a creature ordered to immediate communion with God, but that personhood also displays a tendency to communion with other beings as well.  The treasury of culture, as he calls it, is simply the irradiation of truth and beauty produced by our natural tendency to join ourselves to God and to others as persons.

If the Truth were not a person whom we encounter, there would be no primordial experience of which culture is a kind of wayward fruit: No human ordination to the sacred, no self-expression in the “secular” order. Conversely, all our encounters with works of culture are hints, reflections, echoes, regarding the nature and destiny of man.  Listen to them.

COLUMN BY

James Matthew Wilson

James Matthew Wilson has published eight books, including, most recently, The Hanging God (Angelico) and The Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the Western Tradition (CUA). An associate professor of religion and literature in the Department of Humanities and Augustinian Traditions, at Villanova University, he also serves as poetry editor for Modern Age magazine and as series editor for Colosseum Books, from the Franciscan University at Steubenville Press. His Amazon page is here.

EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

New Hampshire Is Fighting Back to Defend the Electoral College

New Hampshire legislators have introduced an election bill that would be completely unacceptable under normal circumstances. But these are not normal times.

Constitutional institutions, especially the Electoral College, are under attack.

Extraordinary action may be needed. Thus, some New Hampshire legislators have proposed to withhold popular vote totals at the conclusion of a presidential election. The numbers would eventually be released, but not until after the meetings of the Electoral College.

The idea sounds crazy and anti-democratic. In reality, however, such proposals could save our republic: They will complicate efforts to implement the National Popular Vote legislation that has been working its way through state legislatures.


In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>


National Popular Vote’s plan has been gaining steam in recent years. The California-based group asks states to sign an interstate compact—basically, a simple contract among states. Signatory states agree to award their electors to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of the outcome within their own state borders.

The compact goes into effect when states holding 270 electors—enough to win an election—have agreed to participate. So far, 15 states plus Washington, D.C., have signed. They have 196 electoral votes among them. Seventy-four more electors are needed.

National Popular Vote is pushing hard to get those last few votes. Its legislation has already been introduced in states such as Virginia (13 electors) and Missouri (10 electors). Meanwhile, lobbyists have been paving a path for success in other states such as Florida (29 electors).

In other words, National Popular Vote is on track to effectively eliminate the Electoral College, even though it’s supported by only a minority of states.

Fortunately, other states don’t have to calmly submit. They can protect themselves, and that’s where New Hampshire’s proposal comes in. It could confuse National Popular Vote’s ability to generate a national popular vote total. Without that tally, National Popular Vote’s compact fails.

Remember, the federal government doesn’t generate an official national tally because U.S. presidential elections are conducted state by state. Thus, National Popular Vote’s compact requires its member states to generate their own assessments of the national popular vote. They are to look to state reports and “treat as conclusive an official statement” from any state regarding the popular vote in that state.

That requirement creates many opportunities for those states that have not agreed to the National Popular Vote compact.

What if a state such as New Hampshire simply refused to release its popular vote totals, as has been proposed? Or what if states were to release totals for winning candidates, but didn’t report any total for the losing candidates?

National Popular Vote proponents will claim that such proposals violate federal reporting requirements, but they don’t. Those federal laws cannot require a state to turn in popular vote totals.

After all, the state wasn’t constitutionally required to hold a popular vote in the first place. The state legislature could have appointed electors directly instead, as sometimes occurred in our country’s early years.

Moreover, the federal law is vague, calling for states to report “the canvass or other ascertainment.” The deadline for such information is “as soon as practicable.”

“As soon as practicable” doesn’t occur until after the meetings of the Electoral College when constitutional institutions are under attack.

Other ideas would work just as well as the proposal in New Hampshire.

What if a state were to change its election system altogether? In Texas, for example, voters currently cast one ballot for an entire slate of 38 presidential electors.

What if each potential elector were listed on the ballot instead?

Every Texan would be given 38 votes and asked to vote for 38 individual electors. Texans could vote for Republican electors, Democratic electors, independent electors—or even some of each. The 38 individuals with the highest vote totals would represent Texas in the Electoral College.

That system was used in Alabama in 1960. Alabama voters were fairly represented by electors of their own choosing, but political scientists to this day still can’t agree on how to compute the “Nixon versus Kennedy” tally.

Interestingly, each elector received a different number of votes, indicating that many Alabamians did not vote a straight ticket.

How would National Popular Vote states pinpoint a national tally with so much information missing?

They couldn’t. Any “national popular vote total” generated would be an invention of the imagination. Such a situation surely would give the Supreme Court even more cause to strike down National Popular Vote’s efforts to effectively eliminate the Electoral College without the constitutionally required approval from a supermajority of states.

James Madison once wrote that state governments should respond to “ambitious encroachments of the federal government” with “plans of resistance.”

National Popular Vote is not an “ambitious encroachment of the federal government,” of course. It is a group of states colluding to bypass constitutional requirements.

But Madison would surely find “plans of resistance” appropriate in this context, too.

COMMENTARY BY

Tara Ross is a retired lawyer and author of several books, including “The Indispensable Electoral College: How the Founders’ Plan Saves Our Country from Mob Rule,” and “We Elect a President: The Story of Our Electoral College.” Twitter: .

RELATED ARTICLES:

Electoral College Opponents Attempt to Have It Both Ways

Ditch the Electoral College, and Small States Will Suffer

Liberals Claim Electoral College Is Biased. Here Are the Facts.

Correcting Media Distortions About the Electoral College

The Intellectual Dishonesty of the Campaign Against the Electoral College


A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>


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

Another Women’s Sport Is Letting Biological Males Compete

I’m no professional athlete, but years after my sex reassignment surgery and the near-elimination of testosterone from my system, my beginner’s tennis serve easily overpowered and dismayed the female participants when I took a junior college introductory women’s tennis course in my 40s.

The stark truth on display on that tennis court was that my upper and lower body strength and my grip were still that of a man. No amount of feminizing procedures could take away the strength-building effects of puberty on my male body.

Heck, my big hands often gave me away, even though in every other respect I appeared female.

That was a simple junior college class where the women’s grades didn’t hinge on beating me, a transgender woman. But the stakes increase astronomically when competition, standings, and livelihood enter the mix, as they do in women’s sports.


In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>


A New Sport Letting in Trans ‘Women’

The latest women’s professional sport to pay homage to transgender ideology is World Long Drive golf, a sport that involves driving golf balls long distances off of tees.

A female golfer who participates recently contacted me with concerns about the upcoming season because it will include a transgender woman competing in the women’s division.

Australian Jamie O’Neill, born male and now identifying as female, holds a bodily advantage over all the women in World Long Drive. The stats from O’Neill’s website predict the trajectory of O’Neill’s promising career in long drive golf.

In August 2019, O’Neill’s total yardage was 280 yards. By December 2019, it was 301 yards. O’Neill’s goal is 350 yards by April 2020, which would pass the highest championship score recorded in the Women’s Division since its inception of 347 yards.

Without a doubt, O’Neill will crush the female competitors in long drive golf sports. The reason is simple biology. Although now wrapped in a female persona, O’Neill’s 43-year-old male body still provides a dominating upper body strength and hand grip advantage.

Science Says Men Are Stronger Than Women, Even After Sex Reassignment Surgery

Men have more skeletal muscle mass, more upper-body strength, more lower-body strength, and stronger grips than women. That’s why sports establish separate divisions for men and women in the first place.

Tia Ghose writes in Live Science about the superior strength of men:

Men are physically stronger than women, on average. A study in the Journal of Applied Physiology found that men had an average of 26 lbs. (12 kilograms) more skeletal muscle mass than women. Women also exhibited about 40% less upper-body strength and 33% less lower-body strength, on average, the study found. …

And a 2006 study in the same journal revealed that men had much stronger grips than women—the difference was so big that 90% of the women scored lower than 95% of the men. The team also looked at highly trained female athletes who excelled at sports requiring a strong grip, such as judo or handball. Though these women did have a stronger grip compared with other women, they still performed worse than 75% of the men on this task.

Low Testosterone Doesn’t Equal Low Strength

The activists argue that transgender women don’t have a strength advantage over women after sex reassignment surgery because their testosterone levels drop so low. But recent scientific findings don’t support that argument. In fact, a recent study blows it out of the water.

The 2019 study published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism explored the effects of gender-affirming treatment on muscle function, size, and composition during 12 months of therapy and found that transgender women generally maintain their male muscle strength, size, and composition.

The researchers called the changes in strength “modest” and concluded the “findings add new knowledge … which could be relevant when evaluating the transgender eligibility rules for athletic competitions.”

Indeed, to protect the integrity of all women’s sports, it is exceedingly important to consider this finding and limit biological males’ unbridled participation in women’s sports.

Further evidence shows that a low testosterone level doesn’t necessarily signal less strength and exercise performance, especially in those who exercise, such as athletes. Research on men whose bodies can’t produce testosterone (such as transgender women post-surgery) shows that even brief exposure to exercise significantly improved muscle mass, strength, physical function, and balance.

A 2019 study observed male endurance athletes in intensive training and the effect on testosterone level and performance. Many of the men saw their testosterone levels decrease, even reaching the clinical criteria for androgen deficiency, like transgender women do.

But interestingly, all showed an increase in performance. The researchers reported, “[N]one of the participants displayed any running performance decrement, in fact, the opposite occurred.”

Taken together, the evidence shows that male bodies, even with low testosterone levels, maintain male strength and their inherent, significant advantage over female bodies.

Correct This Injustice

When World Long Drive joined other professional sports to open the women’s division to transgender women, every biologically correct woman was diminished, demoted in effect, and became irrelevant. World Long Drive did not stand up for women.

From weightlifting and running to boxing, cycling, and now World Long Drive golf, men who identify as women continue to infiltrate and destroy women’s sports. Meanwhile, the theories about transgender women’s strength being equivalent to women’s are being debunked.

The governing authorities over women’s sports need to acknowledge that transgender women maintain their male strength long after transition, and correct this injustice.

COMMENTARY BY

Walt Heyer is a public speaker an author of the book, “Trans Life Survivors.” Through his website, SexChangeRegret.com, and his blog, WaltHeyer.com, Heyer raises public awareness about those who regret gender change and the tragic consequences suffered as a result.

RELATED ARTICLES:

The Flaws of a New Transgender Kids Study

Parents Challenge ‘Radical’ LGBT Curriculum in New Jersey Schools

Weak data, small samples, and politicized conclusions on LGBT discrimination

8th Place: A High School Girl’s Life After Transgender Students Join Her Sport

Transgender Athletes Playing Competitive Sports Was a Rising Policy Issue in 2019


A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>


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

Trump Administration Takes 3 Steps to Boost Religious Freedom

“There’s a lot of hostility to religious beliefs,” says Joe Grogan, director of the Domestic Policy Council at the White House.

“These views are protected by the First Amendment and people who are offended by public expressions of faith need to get over it,” he adds.

In this exclusive interview at the White House, Grogan outlines what the Trump administration is doing to ensure Americans remain free to live in accordance with their beliefs. Read the lightly edited transcript, pasted below, or listen to the interview:

Rob Bluey: The Daily Signal is on location at the White House today, just moments after President [Donald] Trump’s Religious Freedom Day announcements. We’re joined by Joe Grogan, director of the Domestic Policy Council at the White House.


In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>


Joe, thanks for talking to The Daily Signal.

Joe Grogan: Thanks for having me.

Bluey: We had some big developments happening in Washington this week. President Trump signed Phase 1 of the trade deal with China, and the U.S. Congress just passed today the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which is headed to the president’s desk now for his signature.

But let’s begin with the Religious Freedom Day announcements. … There are three of them, and let’s take them one at a time. We can start with prayer in school.

Grogan: Sure. I actually just left a meeting in the Oval Office. He had a bunch of students and teachers and a coach in there, all of whom had been discriminated against in public schools for expressing their faith.

The coach had been fired. … There were a group of students that were told they couldn’t pray in the cafeteria for a brother of one of the students who had been in a tractor accident, and … they’d been told, “You have to take this behind a curtain or go outside, out of sight. We can’t have anybody expressing their faith in public.”

What we’re doing is we’re updating a guidance that was supposed to be updated every two years by law and hadn’t been updated since 2003, and making it explicit that students have First Amendment rights, including religious freedoms.

They have the right to express their religious beliefs openly, publicly, and if they are discriminated against or they perceive they are, the education officials in every state need to set up a procedure for them to be able to complain.

And those complaints need to be adjudicated in some way. The education official needs to inform the Department of Education how they adjudicate these claims and what they’re doing to make sure that religious beliefs are protected.

There’s a lot of hostility to religious beliefs. There’s a perception that people who express their religious beliefs somehow may be offending others who don’t have those beliefs, but it’s clearly discriminatory. These views are protected by the First Amendment and people who are offended by public expressions of faith need to get over it.

These students and teachers need to be able to, on their own time, say that they believe in God, whether they be Jewish, or Christian, or Muslim, or whatever faith that they ascribe to.

Bluey: Those personal stories have such an impact. We tend to cover a lot of them at The Daily Signal, and they are often some of our most popular stories, I think, because they don’t get the attention that they deserve in other media outlets.

The second on the list is nine proposed rules that the Trump administration is rolling out to protect religious organizations from unfair and unequal treatment by the federal government. Can you tell us what these rules entail?

Grogan: Yeah. This overturns an Obama-era regulation, which really discriminated against faith-based organizations and treated them as second-class grantees when receiving federal funds.

Basically what it said is anytime somebody goes to a faith-based organization for a service, they need to be presumed to be potentially offended by the religious nature of that organization. The religious organization needs to inform them that if they are offended by the religious nature of the organization, they can, they will find a secular organization for them to get the same service.

There’s no presumption on the part of a secular organization that somebody going there for services may be offended by the secular nature or whatever reason that institution was set up.

It’s patronizing, clearly to citizens, first and foremost, that people should be presumed to be offended by people of faith.

We all interact with people of different faiths on a daily basis and we’re not offended by it as responsible human beings, so why would the government presume this is outrageous. And why would we have this additional burden on religious organizations or people who are called to particular work to help people, out of spiritual belief, is beyond me.

But many of the things are gains of inches. This took a lot of work actually to get nine agencies to work in a collaborative way to get this done. We’re proud to have gotten it done though.

Bluey: It certainly is. The third announcement that was made involved the Supreme Court’s Trinity Lutheran case, a 2017 decision, and the Office of Management and Budget has issued some new guidance regarding grant-making. Tell us about this change.

Grogan: Yes. The Office of Management and Budget is sending out a memo to all federal agencies who give money to states to remind them that it’s up to these agencies to make sure that the states, when they distribute the money, don’t discriminate against religious organizations.

This directly comes out of the Trinity Lutheran Supreme Court decision, where Trinity Lutheran applied for a grant to improve the playground.

There was a program to make playgrounds safer and they were denied the funds. This wasn’t for religious purposes, it was to make kids safer, and yet there the state decided “no,” because they were a religious organization they couldn’t get it.

The Supreme Court said, “Look, that’s not right. This is a secular purpose and they should be able to get access to the fund, same as any other organization.”

So we’re making that explicit, from the Office of Management and Budget, and putting the agencies on notice that they need to police the states.

There are 37 states actually that have Blaine Amendments on their books, in one form or another, which came out of anti-Catholic bias, which is clear from the historical and the legal record. We need to make it clear that those amendments or other regulations or statutes that may be on the book can’t be enforced against religious organizations.

Bluey: We’re talking about these because it is Religious Freedom Day, but this is a president who’s made religious freedom of priority throughout his time in office and throughout his administration. What has it been like working with him on these issues?

Grogan: It’s fantastic. I mean, you don’t have to go in there and argue about the merits of pursuing religious freedom initiatives. You don’t have to say it’s important that we allow religious institutions back into the public square, or people of faith to pray openly.

He does ask questions. He wants to make sure we’re doing it in the right way. He wants to make sure we’ve thought things through. But this isn’t a president who needs a lot of convincing on these issues.

He’s fired up to do it and thinks that religious institutions have a central role to play in America’s civic life and the private lives of Americans, too. So he’s totally aligned.

There’s a whole group of people here across the White House, and in the agencies, many people who are veterans of various fights for religious freedom, who have been drawn to this administration to work on these issues. And to be frank, they’re having a blast in this administration to work on issues like this.

Bluey: Thanks for sharing that.

Now, shifting gears, let’s talk about trade. This week the president signed the Phase One trade deal with China. Obviously, a long initiative that this president has talked about even prior to his election campaign in 2016. I know China is an issue he’s focused on a great deal. Tell our listeners what they need to know about Phase One and where we go from here.

Grogan: Yeah, I think what you’re seeing in the last few weeks is really … everything’s firing on all cylinders for this president. And the entire arc of his first term is being set from going back to the first major legislative achievement, which would be tax reform, and now going where we have the omnibus spending deal right before the end of the year.

We had a number of significant policy wins, removing three Obamacare taxes, in addition to when he had removed the individual mandate. And now we’ve got the China trade deal and the USMCA passing this morning.

Making trade more fair for the United States, having a president who fights for American industries and American workers has been central to his belief system, his messaging, since long before he ran for president.

I remember growing up in upstate New York hearing him talk about this, and attacking the way NAFTA [the North American Free Trade Agreement] was constructed, attacking the way that we had let China come into the World Trade Organization, and he really has achieved a tremendous win with the China trade deal.

And matter of fact, it’s very interesting to watch a number of the president’s critics over the last few weeks belittle when this trade deal was announced to be signed. But when you see the details of it, I think that … the tone has changed.

I know some people just can’t get off their horse, but you see intellectual property protections, you see opening up of financial sectors, huge commitments to buy agricultural products, manufactured goods. It is a huge achievement.

And frankly, the work of the staff that went into it has been extraordinary. The number of meetings that the president has on this issue, he has been so focused on it. He’s inexhaustible. If it was the only issue that he had worked on for the first three years, it would still be an extraordinary achievement, if it was the only trade deal, but of course we’ve got USMCA done.

I think at the heart of it you see a president who is saying, “Look, this is not a fait accompli, that we’re going to lose American jobs, that we’re going to lose American industry, and that American workers are going to be resigned from, to do work that they would rather not do.”

And some of the contempt of the intellectual class over the last couple of decades were people who were involved in manufacturing just need to learn how to code or get used to the service economy. It’s nice to see the president saying, “No, we can still manufacture in the United States.” If we have a president and people around him willing to fight for American workers, we can win. And you see us winning.

Bluey: You mentioned the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Final question for you here. The president has talked about how that’s going to really impact, in a positive way, American businesses and families, particularly in the heartland of this country. What does it mean for them, for those people who might not know the intricate details of the agreement, but want to know how it might change their lives?

Grogan: I think first and foremost, there has been a lot of scaremongering around the fact that the president wanted to pull out of NAFTA. But if you look at the numbers about the impact upon our agricultural sector, but also manufacturing post-NAFTA passing, according to many metrics, it’s not really a pretty picture.

What the president sought to do is to protect American industries, protect American workers, and put them at the forefront of … our trade agreement. And he has achieved that with the USMCA. It’s a total reset of our trade rules, and there’ll be more to come on that front.

The other thing to remember, too, is he signed a trade deal with Japan recently, which people forget, and that is a huge deal as well, with big commitments for purchases from American companies, produced in the United States.

So across the board we’re alleviating uncertainty here, heading into the final year of his first term, and the economy is roaring.

We’ve got record unemployment, record number of Americans at work now. We’ve never had so many Americans working right now. Record unemployment among African Americans, Hispanic Americans, women employment, Asian American unemployment’s at a record low. So everything is setting up beautifully.

The president has gotten attacked for so many of these policies that he was pursuing. Remember when he was running for president, they said if he was going to win, so many of the critics on the left and these brilliant economists said the economy’s in the tank, and today the Dow Jones Industrial Average is over 29,000. I think 29,200, the last I checked. So it’s a tremendous day for the president and it’s great fun to be here right now.

Bluey: Joe Grogan, director of the Domestic Policy Council at the White House. Thanks so much for talking to The Daily Signal.

Grogan: Thank you.

COLUMN BY

Rob Bluey

Rob Bluey is executive editor of The Daily Signal, the multimedia news organization of The Heritage Foundation. Send an email to Rob. Twitter: @RobertBluey.

RELATED ARTICLE: US-China Trade Deal Is a Welcome First Step


A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>


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

​SILENCERS LAWS: The Cold Hard Truth about Silencers and Suppressors

Where two or more gun owners gather, there exists a high probability that a gun debate will quickly ensue. Guns are a passion for many supporters of the 2nd amendment and that passion is often on display during these debates. Unfortunately, this often leaves the novice gun owner slightly intimidated and feeling out of place during the conversation. Rather than say something that is not technically accurate, they choose to say nothing at all and miss out on one of the best parts about gun ownership. Namely, arguing about them. Silencers and suppressors are a common topic among gun enthusiasts and yet, many know very little about them. So let’s help both the novice and veteran out a little bit by breaking down the cold hard truth about silencers and suppressors.

Silencer vs Suppressor

What’s the Difference?

I hate to break it to you, but silencers and suppressors are the exact same thing. That might be blasphemy to every so-called “gun expert” on the internet forums, but for all practical purposes a silencer and a suppressor are absolutely the same thing. They both seek to reduce the sound and flash that comes from the barrel when fired. So why the big argument? 

Argumentative gun brethren will often point out that nothing completely silences the sound of gunfire. Consequently, it is inaccurate to call a suppressor a silencer. The only problem with that line of thought is that the guy who invented the thing called it a silencer. With creation, comes the ability to call it whatever you want.


Trust us when we say that if you use the term silencer around some gun enthusiast, you are going to have an argument on your hands. However, armed with the facts below you’ll be able to hold your own ground because they are the exact same thing.

History of Suppressors

Hiram Percy Maxim was the son of the inventor of the Maxim machine gun. Simultaneously creating muffling devices for cars in 1902, he had an epiphany that the basic technology could be used interchangeably. In 1909 he received his patent and the Mixim Silencer was born. He created the Maxim Silent Firearms Company and marketed them mostly to sportsman.

During World War 2, the predecessor to the CIA fell in love with them. The Office of Strategic Services utilized the HDM .22 LR pistol and the Maxim Silencer was very effective at reducing the sound of gunfire. The wartime use helped shape the opinion by the public at large that silencers were meant for secret assassinations.

Consequently, decades of backlash and misperception limited their popularity. In 2011, the National Rifle Association began a push to popularize the use for hunting and sports shooting. This is in part where the term “suppressor” began to gain in popularity.

It was thought that by calling them a suppressor it would remove much of the misconceptions about the term silencer. However, as we discussed above, the term silencer and suppressor can be used interchangeably.

How Does a Silencer Work

Firearms generation sound in three different ways. First, there is the muzzle blast which is a shockwave created by high-pressure gases escaping and expanding. Next, you’ve got the sonic boom. This is the cracking sound that comes from the bullet flying at supersonic speeds through the air. Finally, you’ve got the mechanical noise caused by the moving parts of the firearm.

The silencer focuses on the muzzle blast. It reduces the speed of the gas ejection from the muzzle and thus, you’ve got a quieter weapon. It is important to note that a silencer does not completely silence the weapon.

You still have the sonic boom and mechanical noise to deal with. Subsonic ammunition in combination with a silencer can make for very quiet day of shooting. Yet, there is still plenty of noise to be had which fuels some of the movement to call them suppressors instead of silencers.

Benefits of Suppressors

Combat Effectiveness

In 2017, the Marines of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion 2nd Marines became the first entire infantry unit to deploy with a suppressor on every single service rifle. They were not turning an entire Company of Marines into elite assassins, but they were applying hard earned lessons learned from over 15 years of modern warfare.

“Move, shoot, communicate” has been the guiding mantra of the Marine Corps throughout the Global Wars on Terror. The Marines are physically fit to move and they are well trained marksman when it comes to shooting. However, it’s really hard to communicate with the sound of gunfire in your ears and communicate is an essential component of the mantra.

The thought behind the experiment is that the suppressors will allow Marines to more effectively communicate which, in turn, will help them gift violence to the enemy with greater speed and clarity. One could apply the same thought to home and personal self-defense.

In a fight for one’s life, the ability to focus increases one’s ability to survive. Moreover, it allows a defender to communicate directions more effectively to their family. The bottom line is that if the United States Marine Corps has found utility in suppressors then there is something to it.

Hearing Protection

Beyond combat effectiveness, there exists the cold hard truth that gunfire is really loud. So much so that one’s hearing in life can be adversely affected by frequent exposure to gunfire. In most cases, hearing protection is an option and should be regularly applied when operating firearms.

Then again, there are times where it’s just not practical or perhaps there simply isn’t enough time in a fight for life. A suppressor muffles the noise and as such, can offer great protection for your hearing in the years to come.

Where are Silencers Legal?

​The 1934 Firearms Act defines the terms “firearm silencer” and “firearm muffler” to mean any device for silencing, muffling, or diminishing the report of a portable firearm, including any combination of parts, designed or redesigned, and intended for use in assembling or fabricating a firearm silencer or firearm muffler, and any part intended only for use in such assembly or fabrication.

According to Federal Law, they are perfectly legal when the appropriate paperwork and taxes are filed. However, a handful of states have capitalized on the myths about silencers and worked to effectively ban them. There are only 8 states where silencers are banned, but local gun laws throughout the nation have put regulations on them.

We always encourage people to check their local gun laws before purchasing a firearm or silencer. Gun laws are rapidly changing in America and as soon as an article is posted, it may very well be out of date. However, assuming they are legal in your part of the country we can walk you through the process of picking one up.

How to Purchase a Suppressor

If you want to purchase a suppressor, you’ll need to fill out a healthy dose of government paperwork and, of course, give Uncle Sam a little of your hard earned money. It all starts with identifying the suppressor that you want to purchase. Most dealers will help walk you through the following process. If not, just complete the following steps and you’re on your way to a quieter world of pew, pew, pew.

  1. Decide whether you want to purchase the silencer through a trust, in the name of a corporation or as an individual. Purchasing as a trust allows you to name various persons who can then use the silencer without added paperwork, such as a spouse. If you already have a corporation and don’t want to set up a trust, that is a viable option. Finally purchasing as an individual makes you the sole owner of the silencer. Setting up a trust is a very popular option and some companies allow you to set up a free trust online. Otherwise, you would need a lawyer.
  2. Given that suppressors can only be purchased by licensed dealers, they will give you the required BATF paperwork. They can’t sell it to you otherwise, so you don’t have to go and search out the paperwork yourself.
  3. Attach a passport photograph and a fingerprint card along with $200 of your hard earned money for the tax stamp.
  4. Notify your local chief law enforcement officer. Under older rules you were required to fill out more paperwork and get approval. Now, in most locations you are just required to give the notification.
  5. Wait for the BATF paperwork to be approved.
  6. Receive the approval and then return to your deal to pick up your suppressor.

You’ll not be able to take possession of your suppressor until your application is approved. This is by far one of the most frustrating parts of the process. This can take months on many occasions, but the wait is definitely worth it. Again, if there are any questions about the process your Class 3 FFL dealer should be able to walk you through the process. So don’t be intimidated to walk into a gun shop and just ask.

How to Check the Status of Your Suppressor

The wait for your new suppressor can be excruciating and many will want to know where they are in the process. To check the status of your suppressor, simply call the ATF at 304-616-4500. You’ll then need the serial number, make, model, name of transferring dealer and the transferee which would be yourself. With that information you’ll be informed where you are in the process and perhaps how long you will have to wait.

Silencers and the 2nd Amendment

Public perception is often at odds with reality in the gun control conversation, but that doesn’t make public perception any less effective in moving the gun control agenda forward. Even if you support some version of gun control, one can hope that it would at least be based on objective reality rather than opinion. This is one of the reasons many in the pew universe react harshly to the term silencer.

It brings about the perception that stealthy villains from a James Bond movie can conduct public assassinations in broad daylight with a silencer. After all, if the sound of gunfire is removed, then how would anyone know a shooting is taking place? This induces public fear and support for banning something that is anything but silent.

By pointing out that firearm muffling devices merely suppress the sound rather than eliminate it, gun owners are trying to dispel the silent myth. For many gun owners, the suppressor is the canary pigeon in the mine shaft of 2nd Amendment liberties. Where the suppressor is made illegal, more gun laws are sure to come down the road.

​What you Need to Know About Silencers

At the end of the day, what you really need to know about suppressors is that they are safe, effective, and a whole lot of fun. They won’t turn you into a secret assassin and nor are they guaranteed to save your hearing. It is still recommended that you use hearing protection when firing guns with a silencer.

You need to know that it is ok to call them a silencer or a suppressor, regardless of what the local “gun expert” says. However, if you want to help fight back on the negative perceptions associated with silencers, you might be doing the 2nd Amendment a solid by calling them suppressors.

That’s the cold hard truth about silencers and suppressors. Now that you are ready for your next big gun debate, check back in with us later for more meaty gun knowledge and live the 2nd Amendment lifestyle the way it was meant to be lived.

© All rights reserved.

This Is How Fake News Spreads

In my last column, “Newsweek Hits a New Low,” I wrote about Newsweek’s dishonest description of what I had said on one of my weekly PragerU “Fireside Chats.” A viewer had asked me to respond to a statement Anne Frank made in her epic Holocaust diary. Frank said, “Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.”

The Newsweek headline, “Conservative Radio Host Ridicules Anne Frank,” was simply a lie. In order for readers to appreciate the level of mendacity, I had my entire response transcribed and placed it in the column.

A few days later I received a message from Nancy Cooper, global editor-in-chief of Newsweek. She emailed me her personal cellphone number and asked me to call her. I did, and we had a good conversation. She agreed that what Newsweek published mischaracterized my remarks and corrected both the headline and the article, written by deputy editor Benjamin Fearnow.

She changed the headline to “Conservative Radio Host Counters Anne Frank’s View That People Are ‘Good at Heart.’”


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In addition, she deleted Fearnow’s sentence characterizing me as having mocked Anne Frank. And she deleted another Fearnow falsehood: “He also brings up Nazi comparisons frequently on his radio program, “The Dennis Prager Show,” to criticize modern Democrats and liberals.”

I told Cooper that in 37 years of radio, I have never compared Democrats or liberals to Nazis; Fearnow had made that up out of whole cloth.

In its place, she wrote the truth: “He also brings up Nazi comparisons on his radio program, ‘The Dennis Prager Show,’ saying the left ‘cheapens’ Nazi evil by using the term to dismiss political opponents or that liberals focus on Nazism while failing to acknowledge the horrors wrought by Communism.”

The following notice now appears at the end of the article: “Update 1/8, 4:45 p.m. ET: The original headline on this story misrepresented Prager’s comments; the headline and story have been edited to reflect that Prager did not ‘ridicule’ or ‘mock’ Anne Frank but took issue with her view.”

As I wrote to Cooper, “Your attention to this says a lot about you and your hopes for Newsweek. Thank you.”

But the story doesn’t end there.

First, has Newsweek disciplined Fearnow in any way? (I never heard from Fearnow.)

Second, and more important, the original lie about me has taken on a life of its own. It was conveyed on numerous left-wing sites.

Wonkette, under the sarcastic headline “Dennis Prager Will Not Be Bullied by Anne Frank,” wrote a deceit-filled article about my comments about Anne Frank. At this writing, the column is followed by 654 reader comments—virtually every one of them repeating the lie started by Newsweek and continued by Wonkette.

There has not been a word on Wonkette about Newsweek’s correction.

The Daily Dot—”conceived as the Internet’s ‘hometown newspaper,’ focuses on topics such as streaming entertainment, geek culture, memes, gadgets, and social issues, such as LGBT, gender, and race,” as Wikipedia describes—reprinted the original Newsweek charge.

There has not been a word on The Daily Dot about Newsweek’s correction.

Under the headline “Dennis Prager on Anne Frank: ‘I Don’t Get My Wisdom from Teenagers,’” the Patheos website’s Friendly Atheist page wrote, “Leave it to right-wing commentator Dennis Prager, founder of a fake online ‘university’ … to dismiss Frank’s comment … because she was a child and therefore too dumb to understand anything.”

There has not been a word on Patheos about Newsweek’s correction.

Inquisitr, which claims 40 million readers a month, headlined its disparaging article “Conservative Pundit Dennis Prager Ridicules Anne Frank.”

There has not been a word on Inquistr about Newsweek’s correction.

Democratic Undergound’s headline read, “Conservative Radio Host Dennis Prager Ridicules Anne Frank.” It features a tweet from @Kokomothegreat that has 499 retweets.

There has not been a word on Democratic Underground or from Koko about Newsweek’s correction.

I note all of this to make three points.

First, as I have said for decades: While truth is a conservative value and a liberal value, it has never been a left-wing value.

Second, the left’s primary response to those with whom it differs is to smear.

Third, smears cannot be undone.

This was brilliantly brought home to me in a famous Jewish story I first heard when I was a student in yeshiva.

The tale is told of a Jew in Eastern Europe who had slandered his rabbi but soon regretted it. So, he went to his rabbi, told him what he had done, sincerely apologized, and asked the rabbi’s forgiveness.

“Bring me two feather pillows,” the rabbi responded.

The man did.

“Am I now forgiven?” he asked.

“Now cut open the pillows,” the rabbi responded.

The man had no idea why the rabbi made these requests, but deeply wanting the rabbi’s forgiveness, he did as he was told.

“Am I now forgiven?” the man asked.

“Now let the feathers fly away,” the rabbi responded.

Once again, the man did as the rabbi requested.

“Am I now forgiven?” the exasperated man asked.

“Just do one more thing,” the rabbi responded. “Bring back the feathers.”

Benjamin Fearnow and the left-wing websites cannot bring back the feathers. Nor, apparently, do they want to.

COPYRIGHT 2020 CREATORS.COM

COMMENTARY BY

Dennis Prager is a columnist for The Daily Signal, nationally syndicated radio host, and creator of PragerU. Twitter: .

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A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

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Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s Tyrannical Tactics to Suppress Religious Belief in Traditional Marriage

ANN ARBOR, MI—Watching, listening, tracking, and compiling secret dossiers on dissidents until they are finally accused and prosecuted—these are the police-state tactics one might associate with an authoritarian regime in a World War II movie.

Yet, these are the very methods the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) has found are being used by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel acting in concert with the Michigan Department of Civil Rights and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

On February 19, 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a notorious and discredited radical left-wing anti-Christian organization, published its annual Hate Map report which listed 31“hate” groups operating in Michigan in 2018.  Listed in that group as “ANTI-LGBT” was Church Militant, a nonprofit Michigan-based religious media organization which advocates traditional Catholic belief that marriage as instituted by God is for one man and one woman.

Three days later, on February 22, 2019, a disturbing joint news release by Attorney General Nessel and the Director of the Michigan Department of Civil Rights was issued referencing and linking to SPLC’s Hate Map. The joint release contained Nessel’s promise to establish a hate-crimes unit to fight against hate crimes and hate groups which have been allowed to proliferate in Michigan.

Nessel’s spokeswoman, Kelly Rossman-McKinney, noted that SPLC is a good place to start when investigating hate and bias.

The Director of the Civil Rights Department told a Detroit News reporter that the Department is creating a database which would document hate and bias incidents that don’t rise to the level of a crime or civil infraction.

Additional damning evidence of AG Nessl’s hostility toward traditional marriage was provided by the findings of Chief Judge Robert Jonker of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan. In a published 2019 legal opinion, Buck v. Gordon, Judge Jonker found that Nessel attempted to stop St. Vincent Catholic Charities from performing adoption and foster placement services because it professed the Catholic belief on marriage. Judge Jonker said that past statements by Nessel “raise a strong inference of hostility toward a religious viewpoint.”

Jonker concluded that “St. Vincent was targeted based on its religious belief, and it was Defendant Nessel who targeted it.”

Concerned that AG Nessel is continuing to weaponize the Attorney General’s Office to suppress religious beliefs in traditional marriage by threats of investigation and prosecution, the Thomas More Law Center, a national nonprofit public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, filed a request for records under the Michigan Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Using sham excuses, Nessel refused to supply crucial records that would shed light on her use of her law enforcement powers to target organizations that opposed her personal ideology supporting same-sex marriage.

TMLC filed a lawsuit in the Michigan Court of Claims on January 9, 2020, against Nessel for her refusal to comply with Michigan’s FOIA.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of TMLC, which represents Church Militant and its Founder and President Michael Voris, commented: “This lawsuit is about the right of the people to know what their public officials are doing. We believe that Attorney General Nessel targeted Church Militant because of its stance on traditional marriage as she had done in the case involving St. Vincent.”

Continued Thompson: “The combination of actions by the Attorney General Nessel, the Department of Civil Rights and the Southern Poverty Law Center have a chilling effect on the freedom of speech and religion not only of Church Militant, but every religious group in Michigan that stands for traditional marriage.”

Astonishingly, Nessel’s office admitted in its response to Thomas More Law Center’s FOIA request that:

  • It had no policies in place to safeguard the constitutional rights of individuals who committed no crime but are being investigated for espousing traditional marriage.
  • It has no clear definitions of “bias incidents” or “hate crimes” against LGBT persons that are backed up by Michigan statutes or court decisions.
  •  The AG’s Office failed in its FOIA response to provide any clear policies or parameters governing the prosecution of hate crimes. Nor does it have a clear definition of what constitutes a “hate group.”

Without policies to adequately guide the actions of the Hate Crime Unit, it is free to roam about launching secret investigations against any organization based solely on the fact that it supports traditional marriage.

Consequently, it was easy for the Attorney General’s Office to claim that Church Militant was under investigation to avoid turning over records and to escape public scrutiny.

“Nessel has single-handedly turned the Attorney General’s Office into an instrument of thought control by intimidation, using its law enforcement powers to police the speech of Michigan residents.

“One of her primary goals is to suppress the religious definition of marriage that does not conform to her opinions on same-sex marriage,” Thompson said.

Church Militant, headquartered in Ferndale, Michigan, reports on current events around the world from a Catholic perspective. Defending the institution of marriage as between one man and one woman has always been a major theme of its video broadcasts and written reports, which are viewed by millions of people throughout the world via its website and YouTube channel.

Click here to read TMLC’s full complaint.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Thomas More Law Center column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

The Rape of Men — Sinaga, Jezebel and Feminists.

(These are my views as a woman living in England, on how the culture and spirit of my country has changed over 50 years.   Why the country does not feel protected or strong any more, how it has lost, and is losing it values and decency, and how we are daily losing our free speech.)

One can barely want to even imagine what it must be like for a man to wake up from a drug induced stupor and discover the sheer horror of finding themselves being raped by another man.

Adult male rape is something we just don’t think happens; we just don’t want to; and amidst many reports of physical abuse between men and women, reports of male rape committed by men are of course rarely reported.   There is a certain silence and a stigma and an understandable embarrassment which surrounds male on male rape and it silences men from reporting the crime.   It is very unlikely you would see a Me-Too campaign specifically for men who have been raped.

However, last week, a news report briefly appeared in the UK highlighting this abuse.  It appeared amidst the major headlines of the taking out of Qasem Soleimani, and also the apparent ‘crisis’ surrounding the Royal Family in relation to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex (Harry and Meghan) who wish to step down from royal duties?

Reynhard Sinaga, aged 36, from Manchester, UK, but originally from Indonesia, was sentenced to life imprisonment for raping up to 195 men.  He has been labelled as the UK’s most prolific rapist.

Most of his victims were targeted in the early hours outside Manchester nightclubs by Sinaga, who, it is reported, posed as a ‘good Samaritan’ assisting men who had been separated from their friends.    But after luring them to an apartment nearby, he would then drug and rape them.

Despite our perceptions that adult male rape is committed against homosexual men, in this case the majority of the rapes committed by Sinaga were intentionally targeted against heterosexual men.  Why would that be, other than despite Sinaga being homosexual himself, he had a particular hatred towards the heterosexual man and believed he could change them?

Sinaga had also filmed up to 195 rapes that he had committed.   He derived pleasure from watching himself.  It is reported that the victims who were approached and then interviewed by the police in relation to the films that they discovered on Sinaga’s iphone, had not reported the incident, but that they had all been severely traumatised and that one is known to have attempted suicide unable to tell his family and friends about his terrible ordeal.

In researching the story I also discovered that in some of the articles written about Sinaga he is identified as being ‘Christian’ or ‘Catholic’.   This was quite a change from the usual and more recent reporting of rape gangs who have targeted children in the UK, where assailants have been described as descending from certain continents or countries rather than being identified as having a certain religion.  The use of the word Samaritan was also unashamedly used in some of the reports.

It was like a multiple rape implying ‘Christianity’ is somehow linked to this one man’s evil nature, whereas, Christianity most certainly admonishes all un-natural vices and never encourages sodomy.

The Rise of Narcissism and the Jezebel Spirit

Is there any connection between narcissism and some of our current headlines?

The number of people now researching narcissism on the internet and the effects that this is possibly having on their relationships is reportedly growing.

Has an ‘all about me’ epidemic taken place which stems from social media encouraged self aggrandizement?

Has feminism, with its attack on all things which it considers patriarchal played a part in ushering in a narcisstic spirit which in religious terms is also called the Jezebel spirit?

Whilst the term narcissism should not be thrown around unthinkingly or mistaken for a genuine need for some sort of attention due to insecurity or rejection, narcissism is indeed a spirit which takes and displaces the identity of another to feed its very own sense of self worth regardless of the consequences on the other person.   A true narcissist is never completely satisfied, and has no remorse that it has robbed or hurt another.

The narcissist views others as servants.   It wants the essence and the life force of its victim to feed its own ego.

Covertly, it has many ways of disguising itself, sometimes even hiding behind religion or humanitarian efforts in order to be viewed as a noble person.

Surely, we are familiar with a very liberal agenda which despite the pitfalls of obvious wrongs, elevates its own sense of self worth in taking a moral high-ground to get its own way or state a case.  Some Hollywood acceptance speeches may be an example of the points I make.

Strange to hear such actors/actresses label President Trump as an unstable narcissist and in the same breath apologize to Iran for the death of Qasem Soleimani, who was a known terrorist?

The attack on the family, on gender, the elderly and the un-born, may possibly stem from Jezebel, whose spirit can live in both female and male.

Destruction was and is her ultimate goal.

Chad’s and Stacey’s Dilemma

In a recent article printed in 2018, for The Verge, an author writes candidly about the intentional killing of women.    The article entitled “The internet is enabling a community of men who want to kill women. They need to be stopped’ referred to the Toronto massacre by Alek Minassian, who indiscriminately drove into people killing 10 and injuring 15, and also cited 22 year old Elliot Rodger, of the Isla Vista massacre who in 2014 killed 6 people and injured 14 others before killing himself.   You can read the article here.

It is reported that both men were part of an online ‘incel’ community where men openly express their hatred of women based on their rejection by them.

The incel community (men who are involuntarily celibate) however hates all people, both men and women, and in incel speak, the Chad’s are considered to be men who are successful with women, and Stacey’s are women who reject incel’s.  Interestingly it is reported that Elliot Rodger referred to himself as an alpha male in    a transcript known as Elliot Rodgers Retribution.

In both of the above massacre’s both men and women were killed.  From the transcript, Elliot’s mental health stemmed from loneliness, rejection and hatred towards mankind. He blamed this upon women for his hatred, and also viewed himself as a superior god above the rest of mankind.

Defending the Realm

In a recent article by The Spectator, entitled “Why People who hate Brexit love Megxit” by Brendan O’Neill, referring to Harry and Meghan’s exit, writes:

“My mum, like many others, is shocked at how they have treated Harry’s gran. Reports that the Queen is alarmed and pained by the couple’s decision to bugger off to Canada has irritated huge numbers of people.

I have to say I smiled at this, and how the reference to the abandonment of your gran causes alarm.  It is certainly a female trait that a mother or grandmother may view the actions of their sons or grandchildren as abandonment, although in this instance, in my opinion, it may be that there could be concern about the demise of Harry’s very own personality, which we are slowly watching change?

This Evil Poison – Hatred

The feminization and the hatred of men is witnessed most prominently against the figure of Jesus Christ, and whether you are a believer in him or not, the attack on his character indicates an assault which should be very evident to both men and women alike.  Why is that?

His image has been desecrated to such an extent that we now have a Christ who is totally dependent on his mother, a Christ who was married, a Christ who is gay, and a Christ who wears high heels, indicating he was transgender!  His name is thrown around as a curse word by some who may never know him and the reverence and respect that they would give to other, more dominant gods of other religions, does not diminish the Christian faith but exposes a certain hypocrisy and a very evident weakness

The recent Netflix showing of ‘The First Temptation of Christ’ by comedy group Porta dos Fundos which depicts a gay Jesus bringing his boyfriend home to meet his family, is just one of the many weak attacks made against mankind and the Christian faith.

Whilst Porta dos Fundos were receiving their accolades around the world, persecuted Christians in Middle Eastern countries are being raped and killed daily for following Christianity.  Maybe, gone with be the laughter when such persecution reaches home.

Understanding the part we play in destroying men should be a humbling and revealing experience.   Forgiveness and understanding towards our fallen natures whilst acknowledging that evil is real and needs exposing, and at times ‘destroyed’ for our own protection takes strength.

The emphasis on the rape of men in all it’s many forms, without the mention of the rape of women, will reveal an annoyance in many people’s minds, but it shouldn’t.  Equality needs revising.   It should be a catalyst to show that hatred is really at the root cause of all of our problems.  Everyone suffers.

© All rights reserved.

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Florida: Iranian Muslim found on bridge with knives and $22,000 in cash

Probably just a circus performer. Relax, you greasy Islamophobe.

“Police release name of Iranian national found with knives on Flagler Memorial Bridge,” WPTV, January 10, 2020 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

PALM BEACH, Fla. — Palm Beach police are investigating after they say a man believed to be an Iranian national was found with several knives on the Flagler Memorial Bridge on Friday.

According to Palm Beach police, a citizen called about a suspicious person in Bradley Park.

Police said the man, later identified as Masoud Yareilzoleh, had no known address and was detained by officers. The police department said he was released from custody later in the day on Friday.

Yareilzoleh’s car was found at Palm Beach International Airport. Authorities said the vehicle was searched and cleared. It’s unknown why his car was at the airport.

In addition to the knives, police said Yareilzoleh had $22,000 in cash on him when he was detained….

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Why America Must Recommit to Religious Freedom

We celebrate Thursday, Jan. 16, as Religious Freedom Day, the anniversary of the passage in 1786 of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. Unfortunately, the percentage of Americans who have heard of the law, or the day that commemorates it, is shockingly small.

Yet Thomas Jefferson, who authored the statute in the Virginia Legislature, listed it on his tombstone as one of his three greatest achievements.

We need to reacquaint ourselves with this fundamental freedom.

President George H.W. Bush first declared Jan. 16 to be Religious Freedom Day in 1993, and each president since has issued a proclamation on religious liberty. In his first one, Bush noted that religious freedom is the “first of all freedoms enumerated in our Bill of Rights.”


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Bush and his successors as president all said that religious freedom is of the highest importance: “integral to the preservation and development of the United States” (Bush, 1993); a “fundamental human right … without which a democracy cannot survive” (Bill Clinton, 1999); “one of this land’s greatest blessings” (George W. Bush, 2009); a “universal and inalienable right” (Barack Obama, 2017); and “innate to the dignity of every human person” (Donald Trump, 2018).

All of those lofty phrases are true, as far as they go.

But what is the “religious freedom” that presidents of both parties have said is so important? Some have attempted to confine religious freedom narrowly to religious “worship.”

In his 2016 proclamation, for example, Obama referred to the “freedom to worship as we choose.” Yet for Americans, religious freedom always has been much broader than that.

From long before America itself was born, this liberty was referred to as the “exercise of religion.” That’s the phrase that America’s founders used in the First Amendment.

In 2018, Trump framed religious freedom better by describing the “right not just to believe as [Americans] see fit, but to freely exercise their religion.” He called it the “right of the individual conscience and religious exercise.”

In doing so, Trump echoed Clinton, who, in 2000, correctly noted that the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom pledged that no one would “suffer on account of his religious opinions or beliefs.”

Properly understanding religious freedom in America requires fully appreciating both of these dimensions—the importance and the definition of religious freedom. And that understanding has never been more necessary than today.

Clashes between the constitutional right to exercise religion and civil or statutory rights, such as freedom from discrimination based on controversial new categories, are multiplying all over the country. Politicians and political interests are trying to reduce religious freedom to nothing more than an ordinary value or preference and to confine it to personal religious belief or, at most, to religious worship.

In other words, they want to excise religious exercise from American life. Some take it even further, claiming that Americans who exercise their faith are actually a danger, a negative element that should be minimized or shut down entirely.

In 2018, for example, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., introduced legislation, the Do No Harm Act, to exempt large categories of laws from the nation’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, signed into law in 1993 by Clinton, sets a tough standard for government actions, including legislation, to interfere with the exercise of religion. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., introduced the measure, which the House passed unanimously and the Senate passed 97-3.

By contrast, Harris’ legislation, co-sponsored by 31 other Democrats, would exempt laws that relate directly to liberal constituencies, such as labor unions or abortion providers. Neither Congress nor executive branch agencies would have to consider at all the impact on religious freedom of laws or regulations favoring those political interests.

This is a long way from the deep importance and broad definition that America’s Founders placed on religious freedom. It’s in stark contrast even to the most recent presidents’ rhetoric in their annual Religious Freedom Day proclamations.

As a nation, we are at a crossroads and must decide whether this freedom is what our presidents have said it is and, if so, commit again to actions behind these words.

COMMENTARY BY

Thomas Jipping

Thomas Jipping is deputy director of the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Twitter: .

Stephanie Neville

Stephanie Neville is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Thanks to Supreme Court, Christian Bakers Have New Day in Court to Fight $135K Fine

What Teaching in China Taught Me About Religious Freedom


A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>


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

VIDEO: DHS Strategy on Human Trafficking Aims to Put Issue Front and Center

Americans need to be talking more about the problem of human trafficking in order to successfully combat it, the nation’s acting homeland security secretary says.

“We as Americans, again, are not talking enough about this issue,” Chad Wolf said during an event Wednesday at The Heritage Foundation, adding:

Let me make myself clear. In 2018, the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline reported nearly 11000 cases of human trafficking that same year. One of our essential partners in the nation’s clearinghouse, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, received more than 18.4 million reports of online child sexual exploitation and abuse. That’s over 50,000 reports per day.

Wolf assumed office in November as acting secretary of  the Department of Homeland Security.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

He told his Heritage audience that the department’s launching of a comprehensive plan—called the Strategy to Combat Human Trafficking, the Importation of Goods Produced with Forced Labor, and Child Sexual Exploitation—meant ultimately to end the scourge of such practices.

Wolf said the strategy is built around five pillars: prevention, protection, prosecution, partnership, and enabling DHS.

“The strategy establishes ‘victims first’ as a DHS-wide policy,” he said.

“As a department, we’re going to continue to balance our law enforcement responsibilities with victim assistance specialists from Immigration and Customs Enforcement immediately attending to the needs of victims. The strategy directs us to train law enforcement to be trauma-informed and survivor-informed and understanding the victims of these crimes have experienced horrors that are sometimes unspeakable.”

The strategy also calls for expanding ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations Victim Assistance Program.

A big part of the new strategy is working with tech companies to eradicate sexual abuse and human trafficking online, Wolf said.

“Our science and technology director will be developing new analytical software [and] digital forensic tools to address these crimes, such as those that begin to develop investigations of livestream abuse,” Wolf said.

The acting DHS secretary defined livestream abuse as when “children [are] forced to appear in front of a web-connected camera to be subjected to sexual abuse, which is then livestreamed over the internet.”

“As you can imagine,” Wolf said, “the nature of livestreaming of abuse makes it difficult for law enforcement to identify a victim.”

In order to respond to such crimes, he said, DHS is going to incorporate training on how to spot livestream abuse cases so they can be investigated and added to the agency’s advanced cybertraining.

It is important to collaborate with tech companies to make it easier to find and bring down human traffickers, Wolf said.

“Currently, when tech companies hand over information on child sexual exploitation for use by investigators, it’s often unreadable and unusable,”  he said. “This inhibits our law enforcement reaching children in danger quickly. Moving forward, we continue to partner with tech companies to find solutions to format that information as best as possible by law enforcement officers.”

Wolf also said that combatting human trafficking takes a toll on the officers who work on such cases day in and day out:

Imagine sitting behind a computer for eight or more hours a day, viewing child sexual abuse material, searching for clues to identify victims so that law enforcement can rescue children in serious danger.

Imagine being that officer [who] uncovers a group of workers living in slave-like conditions in a shed. Imagine the horrors that these individuals go through. This strategy is going to ensure that we place the health and well-being of our employees first.

COLUMN BY

Rachel del Guidice

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


A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>


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

PODCAST: What You Need to Know About New US-China Trade Deal

Will the new deal boost the American economy? Is it normal for a trade deal to demand one party spend a certain amount? Will it curb China’s theft of intellectual property from U.S. companies? Riley Walters, a policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation who focuses on Asia’s economy and technology, has answers. Read a lightly edited transcript of the interview, posted below, or listen on the podcast:

We also cover the following stories:

  • House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announces the seven impeachment managers.
  • Rep. Jerry Nadler, one of the impeachment managers, dismisses calling Hunter Biden as a witness.
  • As Russian President Vladimir Putin makes moves to secure his control after 2024, the prime minister and entire Cabinet resign.

The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, Apple PodcastsPippaGoogle Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at letters@dailysignal.com. Enjoy the show!

Kate Trinko: On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed a new trade deal with China. … Joining me to discuss this deal today is Riley Walters, a policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation who focuses on Asia’s economy and technology. Riley, thanks for joining us.


In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>


Riley Walters: Thank you for having me.

Trinko: Before we get into the new trade deal, I actually want to roll back the clock a little bit. We’ve seen a lot of tension between President [Donald] Trump and China over trade during his presidency. How intense have the negotiations and the fights been? And does that color how we should look at this new deal?

Walters: I think if you look at the last couple of years of negotiations between Washington and Beijing, you see a lot of back and forth. There was certainly some times when it seemed like negotiations were going well, both sides seemed to have been making progress. But there were clearly some times where things fell out of line. During those turbulent times you’d see exculpatory efforts on both sides by imposing new tariffs and such like that.

Last year, I think it was last year around May, we saw probably the biggest dispute between the two sides and it almost seemed like negotiations fell apart completely, almost as if they weren’t going to go anywhere from there.

So I think what we see today is a complete 180. I mean, we have a deal now, right? And so this, I think, marks the point where we sort of returned to some sort of level of normalcy between the United States and China on economic and trade issues. And so I think it’s good.

Obviously, this is just phase one of a two-phase deal and so over the next year we should hopefully see a lot more progress.

Trinko: OK. So, our listeners won’t know this, but when Riley came to the studio, he had a huge sheath of papers with all the details, so obviously this trade deal is very complicated. But could you break down for us, what are some of the highlights and key things that people should know about the trade deal?

Walters: So, it’s almost a 100-page document. It gets into some very technical trade and legalese issues. It touches on a variety of issues.

I mean, there are roughly eight chapters in this text … touching on everything from the protection of intellectual property and trade secrets [to] reducing technology transfers from American companies to Chinese entities. It touches on exchange rates and increase in trade efforts. It touches on a whole variety of things.

Throughout the document there are new metrics, dates by which certain government officials need to have certain reports. There are certain trade measures. For example, China needs to purchase over the next two years an additional $200 billion worth of a variety of American goods.

And, of course, there are communications that are set up, dialogues that are making sure that this agreement goes into force, that every part of the agreement is disputable to some extent, and, of course, this has been agreed to on both sides.

So what is in this document right now is the new policy. I would actually say this is probably the most comprehensive trade agreement we’ve had with China since their joining of the WTO [World Trade Organization] 20 years ago. So this is pretty significant.

Trinko: You mentioned that the deal requires China to buy $200 billion worth of additional goods over the next couple of years. I am not an expert on trade deals. Is it normal for a deal to include this kind of mandatory buy with it? And what do you think about this provision?

Walters: This is not normal. This is certainly something new generally. So I think this is actually probably one of the few things that’s covered regularly in the news, is this $200 billion in additional purchases by China over the next two years.

What they’re supposed to do is buy $200 billion in addition to what they bought in 2017, which was roughly $190 billion worth of goods and services from the United States.

So, for the rest of this year and all of next year, they need to buy roughly $390 billion worth of goods and services, and those break down by industries, manufactured goods, agricultural energy, etc.

But again, this is not normal. This is not something you usually find in trade agreements because trade agreements are usually about removing barriers. It’s about removing the tariffs or taxes on imports that countries maintain. It’s about removing regulatory barriers.

… For example, biochemical restrictions or chemical or scientific restrictions on agricultural products, removing those so that the goods that we trade are free from restriction.

This is different. This sets up a sort of a mandatory “you must buy,” and there are going to be a lot of questions about how China does this.

Who in China is actually going to start buying these goods, right? Is it through state-owned enterprises? Is it “private Chinese companies” at the behest of the Chinese government? And, of course, the question of whether the United States can actually provide these goods.

There’s going to be a lot of, I think. questions about just the way that this is actually implemented.

Trinko: OK. So the deal reduced some tariffs. It also eliminated some other potential tariffs that could have been coming down the pipeline. Overall, did you think what the deal did for tariffs made sense or didn’t, and if so, why?

Walters: As a part of this deal, there will be some tariffs that remain in place by this administration. They are going to keep a 25% additional tariff or import tax on roughly $250 billion worth of goods and a 7.5% tariff tax on roughly $120 billion worth of imports from China. So all those will roughly remain.

The president said he’s more than willing to get rid of those as part of a phase-two deal. We don’t know when the phase-two deal could happen. Some suggest 10 months, it could be longer, especially things could change if the election outcome changes. And so those will remain in place for at least the next year or so.

There’s been no reports about how China will be decreasing its import taxes. Obviously, they too have been implementing their own tariffs over the last couple of years in retaliation to the United States. But that’s going to be, I think, what to expect for at least the next year.

Trinko: Did this deal address intellectual property concerns at all? Obviously, there’s been a lot of concern that China is taking intellectual property from U.S. companies. Does this address that?

Walters: It does. The first two chapters are 21 pages long. They address intellectual property protection or trade secret protections and technology transfer.

Not to get too much into detail, but basically it says China will protect American intellectual property, our trade secrets, the things that actually make companies profitable and want to invest in and do business. And they won’t require American companies or entities to transfer their sensitive technology to Chinese entities for any reason.

Sometimes in China you hear stories of American companies who want to get into China, they are by law sometimes required to enter into a joint venture with a Chinese company. And then the Chinese company says, “Well, if you want to make the deal, we need to have access to your intellectual property.”

So that’s supposed to no longer happen. We will see, of course, over the next a year or so whether that’s true or not.

And there are some other interesting changes in how American companies can sort of fight their legal case in China when they feel that their intellectual property has been stolen. So some real interesting stuff there. Again, we’ll have to see whether it actually produces anything of substance. But I think on paper at least it’s a positive step.

Trinko: I know you don’t have a crystal ball to see America’s economic future, but how would you guess this deal would or wouldn’t affect the U.S. economy?

Walters: One of the couple of things that are a drag on the U.S. economy right now, not, of course, pushing us into recession, I mean, there’s a lot of positive economic activities that the Trump administration has helped with over the last couple of years, but a couple of the drags are the fact that tariffs will be remaining on over $300 billion worth of goods.

The silver lining is that U.S. trade with China only makes up roughly 3% of our GDP [gross domestic product] so it’s not that significant. I mean, it is hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods. The Trump administration has collected roughly $43 billion in new taxes from Americans who import from China. So that is a cost.

But I think one of the biggest gains from this, and it’s going to be harder to actually quantify, is the uncertainty it removes. I think the trade deal today brings back a lot of certainty. I think anyone who thought the Trump administration’s goal is to decouple from China, with this deal, I think that idea is dead.

This deal is building a new U.S.-China economic relationship, I think for good cause, too. And so this will bring a lot of certainty back to our economic relationship.

Trinko: And how do you think it might affect China’s economy?

Walters: Again, same way. I think perhaps marginally, a positive marginal.

They themselves have a lot of domestic issues that they need to take care of. Looking forward toward the way that debt is accumulated in China, the way that their demographics are shaping up, the fact that, as a part of phase two, we’re going to have to negotiate a lot of sensitive issues like state-owned enterprises and the support that they get from the government and how those not just affect the U.S. economy, but how they negatively affect the Chinese economy as well.

Trinko: OK. Riley Walters, thanks so much for joining us.

Walters: Thank you.

COLUMN BY

Katrina Trinko

Katrina Trinko is editor-in-chief of The Daily Signal and co-host of The Daily Signal PodcastSend an email to Katrina. Twitter: @KatrinaTrinko.

RELATED ARTICLE: Meet House Democrats’ 7 Impeachment Managers


A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>


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

The Growth of Government in America

American government has far outgrown the limits set by our founders in the Constitution.


This article is adapted from a study prepared by the Institute for Policy Innovation.

Let us begin with a simple but vitally important proposition: Government in America was never supposed to engage in the multitude of activities that it does today.

When the United States gained its independence more than 200 years ago, the founding fathers envisioned a national government with explicit and restricted responsibilities. These responsibilities pertained mainly to protecting the security of the nation and ensuring “domestic tranquility,” which meant preserving public safety. Especially in the realm of domestic affairs the founders foresaw very limited government interference in the daily lives of its citizens. The founders did not create a Department of Commerce, a Department of Education, or a Department of Housing and Urban Development. This was not an oversight: They simply never imagined that the national government would take an active role in such activities.

The minimal government involvement in the domestic economy would be funded and delivered at the state and local levels. Even that involvement was to be restricted by Congress’ authority over interstate cornmerce, an authority granted to Congress by the founders for the purpose of preventing the state governments from interfering with commerce.

Recognizing the propensity of governments to grow, the people added the Bill of Rights to the Constitution as an additional layer of protection for the rights of individuals against the state. The Bill of Rights was to ensure that government would never grow so large that it could trample on the individual and economic liberties of American citizens. These liberties are eroding. The United States has been gradually transformed from a nation with almost no government presence in the marketplace to one in which the government is now the predominant actor in the domestic economy. Consider the following:

  • There are now more Americans employed by government than by the entire manufacturing sector in America.
  • In the past 25 years the federal government has spent $2.5 trillion on welfare and aid to cities. This is enough money to purchase all of the assets of the Fortune 500 companies plus all of the farmland in the United States.
  • In 1987 U.S. farmers received more money in government subsidies than they did in selling their crops in the marketplace. In short, farmers now produce for the government, not for U.S. consumers.
  • In three states today—California, Maine, and New York—almost half of all middle-income family wages are captured by government through income, payroll, property, and sales taxes, and other levies.

Why is the American public not rising up in protest? The answer seems to be that the growth of government has been sufficiently gradual over the past 50 to 100 years that most Americans today probably believe that this is the way government in America ought to act and has always acted.

Both of these contentions are wrong. Government has not always, and ought not, act as it does now. The following sections demonstrate with the aid of graphs and figures how government has grown over our nation’s history. We examine federal, state, and local government growth in five areas: expenditures, taxes, debt, welfare and transfer payments, and employment.

We standardize the measurement of each of these government growth indices in three ways: in real 1990 dollars, in real per capita 1990 dollars, and as a share of total output or income. Unless otherwise indicated, all figures are presented in 1990 dollars. Except in a few specified instances, all of the data are from standard government sources.

Federal Outlays

Perhaps the best measure of the impact of government activity is how much it spends each year. Figure 1 shows the expansion of the federal budget from 1800 to 1992. As the steep ascent shows, federal spending has exploded more than ten thousandfold since 1800 with almost all of the increase in the past 40 years. Real federal outlays have climbed from $0.1 billion in 1800 to $0.6 billion in 1850, to $8.3 billion in 1900, to $235.1 billion in 1950, to $1,450.0 billion in 1992.


Figure 1

Real Federal Outlays, 1800-1992


Of course, the nation is much larger today than in earlier periods, so one would expect government also to be bigger. Figure 2 shows the per capita level of federal spending over time. Even when adjusting for the growth in population size (and inflation), federal expenditures have mushroomed:


Figure 2

Real Per Capita Federal Outlays, 1800-1990


  • The federal government spent $16 per person in 1800, $27 per person in 1850, $109 per person in 1900, $1,544 per person in 1950, and $4,760 per person in 1990.

Bear in mind, this does not include the cost of back door spending, such as mandates and regulations. If they were included here, the cost of the federal government per person today would easily exceed $10,000.

One of the most meaningful ways of measuring the burden of government is how much it spends relative to total economic output. One might argue that government spends more money today because the American economy has grown so much larger than in earlier periods. If government is consuming the same proportion of total output in two periods, then the economic burden of paying for its activities is roughly the same, even if expenditures are much larger in the later period. Unfortunately, federal spending is not keeping pace with economic growth—it is far outpacing economic growth:

  • In 1900 the federal government consumed less than 5 percent of total output.
  • In 1950 the federal government consumed roughly 15 percent of total output.
  • In 1992 the federal government consumed almost 25 percent of total output.

The Composition of Federal Outlays

The single most important activity of the federal government is to provide for the national defense. A free nation spends as much as necessary to protect its borders and its citizens. Is the modern-day growth of government on the federal level a result of the national defense build-up in the Cold War era? The answer is clearly no. National defense spending as a share of the total federal budget has been continually shrinking, with the exception of brief periods of war:

  • Defense spending constituted more than half of total federal outlays in 1800.
  • Defense spending constituted more than one-third of federal outlays in 1900.
  • Defense spending now constitutes little more than one-fifth of federal outlays.

The flip-side of this steady reduction of defense expenditures as a share of the budget is an expansion in spending on civilian programs, such as agriculture, health care, housing, and aid to state governments. Until the 1930s, the federal government spent almost nothing in each of these areas. This rise has been most prominent since 1950.

Figure 3 shows the tremendous growth in federal health care spending, from $100 million in 1900 to $156 billion in 1990.


Figure 3

Real Federal Health Care Expenditures, 1900-1990


These data on federal domestic spending powerfully refute the common complaint by special interest groups that favored domestic programs have been substantially cut back in recent years. Although there were modest spending reductions on selected domestic programs in the Reagan years, in 1992 the outlays for every major domestic area of the budget were at an all-time high—with the exception of agriculture.

State and Local Spending

Some budget analysts claim that federal spending has increased to compensate for budget reductions on the state and local levels. The data show otherwise:

  •  In 1900 states spent $32 per person.
  • In 1950 states spent $470 per person.
  • In 1990 states spent $1,934 per person.

On the local level, per capita expenditures have been rising rapidly as well, though not as rapidly as federal and state expenditures. For every dollar that local governments spent per person in 1900, they spent $2.50 in 1950 and $8.50 in 1990.

Although the 1980s are commonly reported to have been a decade of government neglect, this assertion is contrary to fact. State expenditures, for example, rose at twice the inflation rate in the 1980s. Local expenditures grew nearly as fast as state expenditures. Moreover, celebrated cutbacks in federal aid to localities were almost entirely replaced by increases in state aid to local governments. In sum, the past decade was one of the most expansive for state and city budgets in U.S. history.

Total Federal, State, and Local Expenditures

In 1900 government in America was still, by today’s standards, comparatively lean and efficient. At that time, total federal, state, and local expenditures were $26 billion. Americans now support a nearly $2.5 trillion government, almost a 100-fold increase in real outlays. (See Figure 4.)


Figure 4

Real Federal, State, and Local Government Expenditures, 1900-1990


Both as a share of total output and on a per-person basis, this is a substantial amount of government to have to pay for.

  • Government consumed almost 10 percent of GNP in 1900 and now consumes more than 35 percent.
  • Government spent $1,650 for every household in 1900 and today spends $23,140. (See Figure 5.)

Figure 5

Real Total Government Expenditures per Household, 1900-1990


In sum, whatever social and economic problems confront America today, they are clearly not a result of a neglectful or under-funded public sector.

Total Taxes

The American Revolution has been called the greatest tax revolt in world history. Yet as a result of the growth of government expenditures described above, taxes are now at levels that would have been inconceivable 200, 100, or even 50 years ago. Today, when combining federal, state, and local taxes, many middle-income Americans work a larger share of the day to pay the government’s bills than their own. Even the tax revolt of the late 1970s and early 1980s proved to be merely a temporary restraint on the demands of the government tax collector. Consider the percentage of income that is seized by government in taxes:

  • In 1930 workers paid one of every eight dollars of them income in taxes.
  • In 1950 workers paid one of every four dollars of their income in taxes.
  • In 1992 workers paid one of every three dollars of their income in taxes.

The tax burden is even more clearly expressed by examining taxes paid per household as shown in Figure 6.


Figure 6

Real Total Government Taxes per Household, 1900-1990


  • In 1900 the average family paid nearly $1,400 in taxes.
  • In 1950 the average family paid nearly $7,000 in taxes.
  • In 1992 the average family paid over $16,000 in taxes.

This rising tax burden has meant that workers have less take-home pay for consumption and savings. It also means that workers’ incentive to work and employers’ incentive to hire are impeded by excessive taxes. These figures do not even include the cost to American individuals and firms of complying with complicated and time-consuming tax laws. By one estimate, Americans spend 5.4 billion hours at an annual cost of $600 billion to the economy just completing the paperwork requirements of federal taxes.

The Federal Tax Burden

Reliable federal tax data are available back to 1800. For the first 100 years of the nation, taxes were very low. In colonial times opposition to high taxes was deeply ingrained in the American spirit, and this hostility lasted throughout the nineteenth century. Government revenues predominantly came from two sources: revenue tariffs and land sales. The limited sources of revenues for the federal government were a natural restraint on its expenditures. Three events changed that. The first was the imposition of the income tax in 1913. The second was the two World Wars, which made the American people accustomed to very high tax rates. And the third was the creation of the Social Security program with gradually rising payroll taxes.

Taxes were relatively stable until 1900. It was not until World War II that the federal tax burden rose about threefold.

  • In 1800 per capita federal taxes were $20.
  • In 1900 per capita federal taxes were $110.
  • In 1950 per capita federal taxes were $1,460.
  • In 1990 per capita federal taxes were $4,000.

Income Taxes

The most dreaded tax for the vast majority of Americans is the income tax. Until the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, there was no federal income tax—the Supreme Court had consistently ruled the income tax unconstitutional. No law has contributed to the growth of government and the surrender of personal liberties and privacy rights more fully than the creation of the federal income tax. Today, more so than any other federal agency, the Internal Revenue Service has broad and sweeping powers to investigate the personal activities and finances of Americans. Without a search warrant, the IRS has rights to search the property and financial documents of American citizens. Without a trial, the IRS has the right to seize property from Americans.

The income tax burden on the federal level has been continually climbing. During periods of war, income taxes have been substantially raised, and they never are reduced to their pre-war levels. Today, the average American household pays almost $6,000 in federal income taxes, double the 1950 burden.

States have also become much more reliant upon income taxes as a source of revenues in the past 50 years. Prior to World War II only a handful of states even imposed any income tax. Today, only nine states do not have an income tax, and four of those are considering introducing one. Today state and city governments raise about $110 billion per year through income taxes. Statistics show the rising share of income taxes as a share of total state and local taxes:

  • In 1900 state and local governments raised none of their revenues through income taxes.
  • In 1960 state and local governments raised 10 percent of their revenues through income taxes.
  • In 1992 state and local governments raised 26 percent of their revenues through income taxes.

The increased reliance of government at all levels on the income tax is a disturbing trend. Almost all studies show that income taxes have the most damaging effect on economic growth, entrepreneurship, and employment, because they are a direct tax on work and business success. They have a punitive effect on the most vital activities in a growing economy.

Tax Rates and Payroll Taxes

As with tax revenues, tax rates have climbed during the twentieth century. When the first individual income tax was passed in 1913 the rates ranged from 1 to 7 percent. At the time, opponents charged that it would not be long before the rates were raised to the unthinkable level of 10 percent! Supporters countered that this would never happen. History has proven them wrong:

  • By 1916 the top rate was more than doubled to 15 percent.
  • By 1917, the start of World War I, the top rate was raised to 67 percent.
  • In 1944, during World War II, the top rate was raised to 94 percent.
  • In the 1950s the top tax rate remained at 91 percent.
  • During the Reagan years the top marginal rate was chopped to 28 percent.
  • Today the top marginal rate is 32 percent with proposals in Congress to raise the rate to 40 percent or more.

Although the Kennedy and Reagan administrations cut the tax rates, at lower rates the government is collecting more revenue than ever before. For instance, from 1980 to 1992 federal income tax collections rose by roughly $150 billion. Moreover, the share of the income tax burden borne by the richest 10 percent of Americans rose from 48 to 56 percent from 1981 to 1989. Virtually every country in the world today recognizes the economic benefits of lower marginal tax rates in stimulating work and in attracting investment. Every industrialized nation in the world has lower marginal income tax rates today than in 1980.

Although income tax rates have been shaved in the past decade, for middle income American families with children the income tax burden is higher than ever before. One reason is that the value of the dependent child exemption has steadily eroded over the inflationary post-World War II period. Figure 7 shows:

• In 1950 the exemption was $600 per child. In 1990 dollars, for a family with four children it would have been worth $13,260.

• In 1989 the value of the personal exemption was $2,000 per child, or $8,000 for a family with four children.

• The failure of the dependent exemption to keep pace with inflation means that the average family with four children pays taxes on $5,000 more income than it otherwise would.


Figure 7

Value of Federal Income Tax Dependent Exemption

Family with Four Children, 1950-1989


Another reason that the middle class is feeling the crushing burden of taxes in recent years is that Social Security payroll taxes have continually risen since their inception in 1937. Figure 8 shows:

  • The first Social Security payroll tax rate, which was in place from 1937 to 1950, was 2 percent.
  • By 1970, after the introduction of Medicare and the hospital insurance tax, the payroll tax rate was 9.6 percent.
  • By 1980 the rate was 12.3 percent.
  • By 1990 the rate was 15.3 percent.

Figure 8

Social Security Tax Rate, 1940-90


Today, the average middle-income family pays a greater share of its income in payroll taxes (when including the employer’s share of that tax) than in income taxes. That is why reducing payroll taxes may be the most effective means of reducing the tax burden on middle-income and low-income working families.

Borrow and Spend

In the past several decades the government’s modus operandi, tax and spend, has been expanded to include a new government financing scheme: Borrow and spend. For the first 150 or so years of this nation, government borrowing was confined to times of war. There was a moral, though not a Constitutional, imperative that government not pass on the costs of its spending to future generations. This moral restraint lasted until the 1930s.

During the Great Depression the most prominent economist of the first half of the twentieth century, John Maynard Keynes, introduced his economic theory, which in effect legitimized deficit finance as an appropriate tool of government. The Keynesian theory was that government should borrow when times are tough and then pay back the debt during times of economic expansion. President Franklin Roosevelt was the first president to embrace this theory, which fit well with his New Deal domestic spending plans. By stripping away the prevailing moral restraint against government borrowing, Keynes opened the floodgate for massive deficit spending. By 1970, Richard Nixon declared, “We are all Keynesians now,” a prophetic statement. Government red ink would soon flood to once unthinkable heights as each subsequent Congress used more and more debt as a way of avoiding having to say no to the army of Washington special interests with insatiable demands for taxpayer money.

  • The federal government has only balanced the budget once in the past 25 years.
  • In 1992 the federal deficit reached an all-time high of $290 billion, a peacetime record and 6.5 percent of GDP. The 1993 deficit is expected to break that record.
  • The federal government now borrows $700,000 million every minute of every day, 365 days a year—more than $11,000 every second.

One consequence of this borrowing binge has been a mushrooming of the national debt. Figure 9 shows:

  • In 1900 each family of four carried a $2,600 share of the national debt.
  • In 1950, each family of four carried a $41,000 share of the national debt.
  • Today each family of four carries a $62,000 share of the national debt.

Figure 9

Real Federal Debt per Family of Four, 1900-1992


Interest on the Debt

Another consequence of this borrowing binge to finance a massive expansion of government programs has been that Americans are paying more and more taxes just to pay interest on the debt. Figure 10 shows that interest is one of the fastest growing areas of the federal budget:

  • In 1900 interest expenditures were $1 billion.
  • In 1960 interest expenditures were $31 billion.
  • In 1992 interest expenditures reached $200 billion.

Figure 10

Real Federal Interest Expenditures, 1870-1992


The American public understands full well that no institution can continue to spend beyond its means year after year without risking financial ruin. Perhaps the only way to end this fiscally reckless pattern of deficit spending is to amend the Constitution with a balanced budget/tax limitation requirement. Such a measure commands the support of three-fourths of the public—and has so for almost two decades. Yet, for obvious reasons, Congress has been reluctant to slay its cash cow. Even when the deficit set new records in 1992, the House of Representatives defeated the balanced budget amendment.

A Nation “Entitled”

A great challenge in modern-day America is to find some member of the public who does not receive a check from the government for one purpose or another. Every week the federal government sends out billions of dollars to farmers for growing (and in some cases, not growing) crops; to veterans for health care or retirement; to the unemployed for not working; to those with low incomes to pay for food and shelter; to college students to pay for school; to the elderly for being retired; to the elderly and poor to pay for health care; to unwed mothers to pay for the care of their children; and on and on. Fifty or 100 years ago most of these transfer programs did not exist. Today even the slightest whisper of budget cutbacks in these programs is met with howls of protest. In short, we have become a nation of citizens who regard themselves as entitled to the largesse of government.

What is the impact of such spending on economic growth? None of these programs is oriented toward the legitimate function of government in ensuring the public safety, nor are they even building bridges or roads or cleaning the environment. These programs are not designed to create wealth in our society; they are designed solely to redistribute it. Thereby, they interfere with and destroy the wealth creation process.

The alarming trend in federal, state, and local social welfare spending can be tracked from 1900, because prior to that time there were virtually no federal transfers, except for veterans’ benefits, and the only signifi cant state and local transfers were small public aid programs.

  • In 1900 the government spent $10 billion on social welfare.
  • In 1950 the government spent $130 billion on social welfare.
  • In 1988 the government spent $980 billion on social welfare.

It is noteworthy that in 1950 these transfer programs constituted roughly 12 percent of the federal budget. Today they consume almost 40 percent. In the 1989 to 1992 period alone, real federal expenditures on entitle ments grew by $140 billion.

Welfare

A huge portion of our social welfare spending today is for Social Security. Social Security is the largest and most popular program in the federal budget. Some have suggested that it is only Social Security that is growing rapidly, not other income transfer programs, such as welfare. This is not so. The anti-poverty programs are growing too. Total Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) spending at all levels of government has increased dramatically over the past 50 years:

  • In 1940 public assistance spending was $1.3 billion.
  • In 1970 public assistance spending was $16.6 billion.
  • In 1992 public assistance spending was $18 billion.

The primary reason that total welfare spending is growing is not that the benefit levels are substantially more generous, but rather that welfare caseloads continue to explode. The number of AFDC recipients continues to grow:

  • In 1936 in the middle of the Depression there were just over one-half million recipients.
  • In 1950 there were 2.2 million recipients.
  • In 1970 there were 9.7 million recipients.
  • In 1992 there were 13 million recipients.

Other public welfare programs show the same pattern of increase. For example, the food stamp program, started with a budget of less than $2 billion in 1970, now has a budget of $23 billion. Today there are roughly 25 million people collecting food stamps—or nearly one of every ten Americans. Millions of able-bodied Americans are now collecting government checks, making welfare one of the fastest growth industries in America today.

Despite the huge outlays on anti-poverty programs, this spending has done amazingly little to reduce poverty. One reason for this lack of success is that welfare spending is badly misallocated. Another is that welfare spending actually creates poverty.

  •  In 1990 government anti-poverty spending equaled $184 billion.
  • In 1990 it would have cost only $75 billion to bring every family with an income below the poverty level up above that benchmark. Hence, government was spending two-and-a-half times what would be needed to end poverty in America.
  • However, after that $184 billion was spent, some 30 million Americans remained below the poverty level.
  • More than half of all welfare recipients had pre-welfare incomes above the poverty level.
  • The welfare industry intercepts a huge portion of anti-poverty funds. In cities such as Milwaukee, there are now 62 separate welfare programs, each with its own bureaucratic costs.

All told, since the early 1960s, government at all levels has spent $3.5 trillion on programs for the poor. Yet there are more poor in 1993 than there were in 1963. Sadly, there is much truth to the adage that America has fought a war on poverty, and poverty won.

Civilian Employees

Government bureaucracy has grown at a steady pace at the federal, state, and local levels. In the past 20 years private sector union membership has shrunk, while public sector unions have record membership. Most of this growth in public employment has been at the state and local levels.

Today there are 18 million civilian government employees, up from 8.5 million ill 1960 and 4.5 million in 1940. For the first time ever, in 1992 there were more civilian public sector employees than manufacturing employees in the U.S., as shown in Figure 11.


Figure 11

Government Employment Outpacing Manufacturing Employment


With the growth in the number of government workers, America has witnessed a growth in government payrolls:

  • In 1940 government spent $5 billion on monthly payroll.
  • In 1960 government spent $14 billion on monthly payroll.
  • In 1990 government spent $36 billion on monthly payroll.

Although the 1980s are conventionally believed to have been a decade of hardship for public employees, the truth is that on the state and local levels government pay went up much faster than private sector pay. A 1992 report by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) shows:

Average state and local government employee compensation (including wages, salaries, and employee benefits) has been rising more quickly than average private employee compensation for 40 years . . . . Average state and local government employee compensation increased by an inflation- adjusted 14.6 percent, or $4,031, in 1989 compared to 1980. For every new dollar of average compensation increase for private sector employees, state and local government employees received more than $4.20.

Hence, today the compensation for public employees in many areas and many occupations is significantly above that of private sector workers. The government is a very generous employer, as illustrated by the following examples:

  • The average public sector bus driver earns 70 percent more than the average private sector bus driver.
  • Reliable studies show that postal workers make fully one-third higher salaries and benefits than comparably skilled private sector workers.
  • The voluntary quit rate from the federal government was lower in 1987 than the private sector quit rate during the peak of the Great Depression when unemployment rates exceeded 20 percent.
  • The average pay for a New York City school janitor is $57,000, with some earning as much as $80,000.
  • After 15 years on the job, the average New York City employee receives 51 days off, including holidays, vacation time, sick leave, and so on. That is, some New York city employees work the equivalent of 4 days a week.

As the ALEC study concludes, America’s government workers have become “a protected class.” Unfortunately, for the taxpayers who pay their inflated salaries, these workers are a rapidly growing protected class.

Military Employees

These numbers do not include the largest government employer of all: the military. Indeed, the U.S. Department of Defense is the largest employer in the United States—public or private. The number of Americans employed in the armed services has continually risen:

  • In 1800 there were 7,000 military personnel.
  • In 1850 there were 20,000 military personnel.
  • In 1900 there were 125,000 military personnel.
  • In 1950 there were 1,500,000 military personnel.
  • In 1990 there were 2,200,000 military personnel.

These numbers do not include any of the civilians who work for defense contractors producing weapons, providing equipment, and performing research and development. If these indirect government workers, part of the military-industrial complex, were included, the employment numbers could easily double.

Conclusion

American government has far outgrown the limits set by our founders in the Constitution. If the twenty-first century is to be the American century, government must be redirected to its proper and legitimate role. The growth of government is the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century.

For a copy of the complete report from which this essay is taken, please contact The Institute for Policy Innovation.

COLUMN BY

Stephen Moore

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

Bernie Staffer Caught Promising Gulags For Trump Voters

Project Veritas published an undercover video on Tuesday exposing a campaign organizer for Sen. Bernie Sanders arguing that “Nazified” Trump supporters and billionaires could be re-educated in Soviet-style gulags if Bernie takes the White House in 2020.

VIDEO: #Expose2020: Sanders Campaign Part 1; Field Organizer “F**king Cities Burn” if Trump Re-Elected

In the video, Sanders organizer Kyle Jurek says, “Germany had to spend billions of dollars re-educating their fucking people to not be Nazis. We’re probably going to have to do the same fucking thing here.” He went on to assert that Joseph Stalin’s gulags “were meant for re-education” and that “the greatest way to break a fucking billionaire of their privilege and their idea that they’re superior, go and break rocks for 12 hours a day.”

Jurek also warned that if Bernie doesn’t get the Dem nomination, “fucking Milwaukee [the convention host city] will burn… We’re going to make [1968] look like a fucking girl’s scout fucking cookout. The cops are going to be the ones fucking beaten in Milwaukee.”

Inside every leftist is a totalitarian screaming to get out.


Bernie Sanders

138 Known Connections

Deriding Capitalism & Exalting Socialism

In a 2019 interview, Sanders said:

“You have more and more growth producing products that we do not necessarily need. I mean you know, at the end of the day, you don’t necessarily need the choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or 18 different pairs of sneakers, when children are hungry in this country.”

On another occasion, Sanders stated candidly:

“My vision is not just making modest changes around the edge. It is transforming American society. So when I use the word ‘socialist,’ and I know some people are uncomfortable about it, I say that it is imperative that we create a political revolution, and I hope you will be part of that movement, because if you are, we can in fact transform this country.”

To learn more about Sanders, click on the profile link here.


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PODCAST: Unsettled — The Refugee Question

“I had a small hope that maybe ISIS would not come,” Thabet says, remembering, as he and the reporter drove the long road toward Mosul. But within hours, everyone he loved and knew had fled. Thirteen thousand Christians vanished, scattered miles from the Nineveh Plain, in hiding. They slept in courtyards, unfinished apartment buildings, churches, camps — while waves of terrorists burned their way through their towns.

In cities like his, the nights often went like this. Priests would climb the sanctuary steps to ring the bells, sounding the alarm that fighters were on their way. Moms and dads shook their kids awake, gathered what they could, and left. It was the last time most of them would ever see their homes again. Even now, after the region was recaptured and secured, the Christians brave enough to stay don’t have an easy life. There’s oppression, isolation, and violence. Families keep their daughters close, worried about rape and abuse.

But leaving, for some, is just as difficult. In the United States, asylum can be hard to come by. After eight years of watching “refugees” stream across our borders unchecked, President Trump is processing these applications with an abundance of caution. Under the previous White House, too many foreigners were gaming the system, slipping into lines where they knew they couldn’t be scrutinized. This administration has been trying to clean up that mess, putting procedures and screenings in place to guarantee that anyone who steps foot on our soil doesn’t pose a threat to the American people.

That new vigilance has paid off. There’s more balance in the faith groups entering the country, for one thing. Under Obama, 97 percent of the Syrian refugees coming to the U.S. were Muslim, while Christians would dribble through one or two at a time. President Trump is trying to give other believers, especially those targeted for persecution, the fair shake the last administration didn’t. Although there’s been a dramatic decrease in the number of refugees, Christians, as of last year, made up 82 percent of them.

But the system isn’t perfect. And that’s one thing evangelicals have struggled with, especially as the global horrors keep growing and pool of victims gets larger. When the White House announced in September that it was cutting its refugee ceiling from 30,000 to almost zero, there were some conservatives who, fed up with Obama’s dangerous policy, thought this was a positive step. Others, like myself, were instantly concerned. As we speak, there’s an unprecedented number of believers — from all faiths — being kicked out of their homelands and displaced. Whether they’re being killed or driven out or put in concentration camps, the survival of entire populations is at stake.

Now, there are some evangelicals who agree with liberals and think America should open its arms to everyone. Obviously, that’s created some friction inside the church and conservative circles — because on one hand, we want to be a place of last resort for the vulnerable. But on the other, we don’t want our country taken advantage of by those who are not interested in being a part of America, rather they want to pull America apart. Ideally, we insisted at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), the administration would never let the number of refugees drop below 30,000 — which is already a historic low.

“So long as refugee numbers are low,” Mark Krikorian pointed out on NRO, “and not drawing disproportionately from the Islamic world, even governors with pretty hawkish constituencies may well feel free to accommodate the… lobby for continued resettlement.”

Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) agrees and even took some flak for defending his governor, who, like a lot of Republicans, is giving the green light to refugees resettling in his state. On “Washington Watch,” Lankford explained that it all goes back to the core values that created America. “Dating back to the 1700s, our framers decided that our nation was going to be founded on a different kind of principle: that we’re going to honor people of faith to be able to not only have a faith of their choosing — but to be able to live that faith out or to be able to have no faith at all. And many of the refugees that are fleeing from around the world are fleeing religious persecution, in particular, and running from places around the world where they cannot survive based on their faith, whether that be Kurds… Christians, Yazidis, or other faiths. And so America, as a beacon of place where we honor religious liberty, we should continue to be able to practice that as well in receiving refugees, especially those fleeing religious persecution.”

As he and I talked about, these people are looking for a safe haven. And while the Obama administration didn’t do a very good job screening these people, President Trump changed that. These aren’t unvetted terrorist wannabes who want to destroy America. They’re hurting survivors with no place to go. Our faith leads us to be a place of refuge. That doesn’t mean we blindly embrace anyone who shows up at our borders. But it does mean we’ve got to keep the door open for the victims who truly need it.


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


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