School Board Fights to Preserve Bathroom Policy After Judge OKs Trans Student’s Lawsuit

A Virginia public school district will pursue an appeal after a federal judge ruled that a transgender student can challenge the district’s bathroom access policies under federal civil rights law and the Constitution.

Gloucester County Public Schools asked U.S. District Court Judge Arenda Wright Allen to allow its appeal on Friday. Allen’s late May decision allowing the student to bring a case against the district was not a final judgement, meaning the district must secure Allen’s approval before filing an appeal.

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Though appellate review before final judgement is limited to a narrow range of issues, lawyers for the district argue it is appropriate here, because the appeals court’s decision will essentially determine the outcome of the case.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents the plaintiff, consented to the motion. If Allen agrees, the case will proceed to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“We think the vast majority of courts have already ruled that these sorts of discriminatory polices violate [federal and constitutional protections],” ACLU lawyer Joshua Block told The Associated Press. “And we’re confident the 4th Circuit would agree.”

Allen denied the district’s motion to dismiss on May 22, finding the student can sue the system for violating the Constitution’s equal protection guarantees and Title IX, which forbids sex discrimination in education.

The case was occasioned when a transgender student named Gavin Grimm began using the men’s restroom at his public high school. Grimm is a trans man. District policy provides that trans students must use the bathroom corresponding to their birth gender or an alternative all-sex bathroom.

Grimm’s case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016, but the justices punted on the dispute after the Trump administration withdrew Obama-era guidance that advised public schools that Title IX requires administrators to allow students access to the bathrooms of their choice.

RELATED ARTICLE: “BDSM” the next LGBT push on society. Depraved, dangerous behaviors are now taking place at major hotels across America. 

EDITORS NOTE: Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities for this original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. The featured image of Gavin Grimm attending the Time 100 Gala in New York City on April 25, 2017 is by by Steven Ferdman. [Photo via Newscom]

Black to Basics on School Shootings

There isn’t a good person alive who wouldn’t do everything in their power to stop the horror story that keeps playing out in our nation’s schools. It shouldn’t matter what political party you subscribe to, how much money you make, or where you’re from, everyone wants the shootings that have snuffed out hundreds of innocent lives to end. But, the reality is, until we have an honest conversation about our culture and what’s driving our young people to do this, it won’t. An honest conversation was exactly what Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) was trying to have during a meeting with local pastors last week. Unfortunately for Diane, who’s running for governor in Tennessee, her opponents just couldn’t resist the opportunity to take her quotes out of context and turn an opportunity for sincere dialogue into a cheap political headline.

Like a lot of conservatives, Diane knows that there’s no magic solution to the violence that’s sweeping through society. Our children aren’t picking up guns and killing their classmates because there’s a Second Amendment. There’s been a Second Amendment for almost 230 years — and commonplace shootings have only been around the last 20. As Dr. Ben Carson once said, the heart of the matter is the heart. Gun control only deals with one aspect of that. Until we’re willing to address the motivation for the violence, Americans won’t change anything. There has to be a moral component – an agreement that, somewhere along the way, our society lost its way.

“We have devalued life in this country,” Lt. Governor Dan Patrick said after the Parkland shooting. “We threw God out of school… We have families that are broken apart, no fathers at home. We have incredible heinous violence as a game, two hours a day in front of their eyes. And we stand here and we wonder why this happens to certain students.” Rep. Black couldn’t agree more. She, like so many Americans, thinks a big part of the problem starts at home. “As a nurse, I look at the root cause…I think it’s a deterioration of family. They don’t have that good support system. And where are they looking? They’re looking for something… maybe on the internet, maybe something in a small group of friends. And they’re going in the wrong direction.” She made the connection with violent movies, and the steady desensitizing that’s taking place with America’s young people. And it isn’t just violence, Diane went on, but pervasiveness of all kinds.

“Pornography. It’s available — it’s available on the shelf when you walk in the grocery store. Yeah, you have to reach up to get it, but there’s pornography there. All of this is available without parental guidance. And I think that is a big part of the root cause that we see so many young people that have mental illness get caught in these places.”

“Every one of those school shootings go back to looking at that child, and their friends can actually pinpoint a time where they saw a change in their behavior.”

“So I believe mental illness is something we’ve got to address. We’ve got to address the family.”

Almost immediately, some liberals ran to their keyboards and started tapping out columns, suggesting that Diane Black was blaming school shootings on pornography. Obviously, that’s a distortion of what she said. Pornography is just another example of the damaging influences that have somehow become morally acceptable in this culture. With the advent of technology, violence, sex, profanity, contempt, ridicule, bullying – it’s all at our fingertips. And worse, at our children’s.

Thirty years ago, every teenager wasn’t walking around with a smartphone that let them download every vile and grotesque thing on command. If you think pornography isn’t one of the contributors to violence, then you haven’t read the data. The link between crimes like sexual assault and porn is there, whether the media wants to admit it or not. Our friends at Fight the New Drug make a pretty compelling case that, like so many other addictions, pornography is mentally numbing.

“‘… [T]he FBI’s own statistics show that pornography is found at 80 percent of the scenes of violent sex crimes, or in the homes of the perpetrators.’ Now we think that’s kind of tough to ignore, while those who promote porn think this is easy to overlook… We’re not saying consuming porn will automatically make someone a serial rapist. Even so, looking at the raw data, porn is connected with sexual violence.”

Still unconvinced? Read this astonishing piece in the New York Times about what teenagers are learning from online porn, including how to rough up your sex partner. “‘It gets in your head,” Q. said about the harsh treatment of the actresses in these videos. ‘If this girl wants it, then maybe the majority of girls want it.'” “As one suburban high school senior boy told me recently, ‘I’ve never seen a girl in porn who doesn’t look like she’s having a good time.'” Maggie Jones, who did every parent in America a public service by publishing this feature, points out that Indiana University did a national survey of teenagers, and around one-sixth of boys admitted to sex acts like choking a partner. And yet we think that violence won’t translate into other aggressive behavior? Or worse, we don’t understand that devaluing or disrespecting other people gradually chips away at human decency — or dignity?

Pornography didn’t kill those 17 bright, promising futures in Parkland. No one, including Diane Black, is suggesting that. What we are suggesting is that these are the slow burns of the cultural crisis that’s destroying us.

Josh McDowell delivered a powerful talk on the impact of pornography at our Watchmen on the Wall conference last month. If you haven’t watched it, please do so.


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


RELATED ARTICLE: At SCOTUS, a Make or Bake Moment

At SCOTUS, a Make or Bake Moment

It doesn’t seem that long ago when I sat down with CBS’s “Face the Nation” and told a very surprised Bob Schieffer about the battle for religious freedom that was raging. Like many people, he seemed astonished to hear that any American — let alone the wedding industry — would be punished for their mainstream views on marriage. “I must say this is under my radar. I haven’t — I haven’t heard this.” Today, almost three full years into Obergefell, nearly everyone has heard their stories. And this morning, in the same court that created the mess of same-sex marriage, at least one of them has a happy ending.

For Jack Phillips, the national nightmare of June 26, 2015 came long after his own personal one. It would be two years until five justices on the Supreme Court empowered themselves to redefine an institution as old as civilization itself. Even then, the war for the freedom of dozens of bakers, florists, and wedding photographers had already begun. His own chapter in the broader drama started like so many others already had. Two men walked into his bakery and tried to order a custom cake for their same-sex wedding reception. As he had done before, Jack politely explained that as a Christian, he didn’t make cakes for activities that violate his conscience. Halloween, for instance. Divorce parties, for another. And yes, same-sex marriages.

“Everyone is welcome in my shop,” he tried to explain in an op-ed for the Washington Post, “be it homeless folks (many of whom I’ve befriended over coffee, cookies and conversation), the two men who are suing me, or anyone else who finds their way in. The God that I serve, whose arms are open to all, expects that of me, and it is my joy to obey Him. But creating a cake that celebrates a view of marriage in conflict with my faith is not something that I can do.”

The men sued — and in a case that took five years to resolve, the justices finally gave Jack his freedom back. In a 7-2 ruling, the Supreme Court agreed: Colorado’s treatment of Masterpiece Cakes was “inconsistent with the state’s obligation of religious neutrality.” “The government, consistent with the Constitution’s guarantee of free exercise, cannot impose regulations that are hostile to the religious beliefs of affected citizens and cannot act in a manner that passes judgment upon or presupposes the illegitimacy of religious beliefs and practices,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote on behalf of the court.” The Colorado Civil Rights Commission, in its obvious contempt for Jack’s beliefs, “was neither tolerant nor respectful of his religious beliefs.” The judgment, they concluded, “is reversed.”

For the Phillipses, who suffered through a half-decade of harassment, business losses, death threats, and everything else from the extreme Left’s playbook, the outcome was worth the wait. “It’s hard to believe that the government punished me for operating my business consistent with my beliefs about marriage. That isn’t freedom or tolerance,” he said. “I’m so thankful to the U.S. Supreme Court for this ruling.” Although the ruling was limited to Jack’s case, it’s an incredible victory — not just for the Phillipses, but for America’s long-cherished freedom to believe.

No one — and certainly no American — should be forced to compromise their views just because they’re unpopular with the government entity in charge. The newest member of the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, touched on this in his own concurrence. “… No bureaucratic judgment condemning a sincerely held religious belief as ‘irrational’ or ‘offensive’ will ever survive strict scrutiny under the First Amendment.” In this country, he writes, “the place of secular officials isn’t to sit in judgment of religious beliefs, but only to protect their free exercise… Popular religious views are easy enough to defend. It is in protecting unpopular religious beliefs that we prove this country’s commitment to serving as a refuge for religious freedom.”

Like us, Justice Clarence Thomas knew this crisis was coming. “In Obergefell, I warned that the Court’s decision would ‘inevitabl[y]… come into conflict’ with religious liberty, ‘as individuals . . . are confronted with demands to partic­ipate in and endorse civil marriages between same-sex couples.’ This case proves that the conflict has already emerged. Because the Court’s decision vindicates Phillips’ right to free exercise, it seems that religious liberty has lived to fight another day. But, in future cases, the free­dom of speech could be essential to preventing Obergefell from being used to ‘stamp out every vestige of dissent’ and ‘vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy.’ If that freedom is to maintain its vitality, reasoning like the Colorado Court of Appeals’ must be rejected.”

The time is coming — and soon — when the court will have to wade into the bigger clash between religious liberty and same-sex marriage. When it does, let’s hope it agrees with the majority of Americans, who understand that — regardless of what you think about marriage — no one should be forced to violate revealed and established biblical truth. “Now that the decision has arrived, I can see the sun once again,” Jack wrote in an emotional response today. How much longer until dozens of other Christians can see theirs?

For more analysis on the Masterpiece ruling, check out this post from FRC’s Travis Weber.


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


RELATED ARTICLE: Black to Basics on School Shootings

The Racism of Government Family Planning

New proposed changes in regulations from the Department of Health and Human Services will close the door on using funds from its Title X family planning program for abortion.

HHS’ Office of Population Affairs, which administers this program, is a poster child for ill-conceived government policy. How is it, in our nation that cherishes the ideals of human freedom and dignity, that we’re funding government bureaucrats to advise low-income citizens—almost a quarter of these “clients” are black—about how many children they should bring into this world and when?

Despite explicit language in the legislation that created the Title X family program in 1970 prohibiting funding “programs in which abortion is a method of family planning,” this directive has been effectively ignored.

HHS reports that 4 million individuals are getting services through this program. However, 1.6 million of them, 40 percent, according to the Guttmacher Institute, are receiving these services at Planned Parenthood clinics.

Given the millions that Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, spends on lobbying and political contributions, its success in keeping the faucet of federal funding of its activities open comes as no surprise.

But now the Trump administration is stepping up to enforce the law, with the positive additional benefit of protecting human life. You might say that our president understands that building a culture of life is a vital part of making America “great again.”

The new HHS order requires complete financial and physical separation of Title X funds from abortion activity. No Title X funds can be used for abortion. And abortions cannot be performed in any facility in which programs being funded by Title X are taking place.

Although Title X counselors will be prohibited from discussing abortion as a family planning measure, they can discuss it when a woman has already decided it’s what she wants. Then they can provide a list of abortion providers.

But as we think about this, let’s consider the bigger question. What is the federal government doing in the family planning business anyway?

The Office of Population Affairs describes, among the activities of its “Family Planning Mission,” offering guidance “to assist individuals in determining the number and spacing of their children.”

Given that this family planning guidance is targeted to low-income Americans, who happen to be disproportionately black, let’s consider what has happened to the black family since the Office of Population Affairs first began.

The budget of the Title X family planning program in 1971 was $6 million. Today, it is $286 million dollars, an increase of fiftyfold. What have we gotten?

In 1970, 38 percent of black babies were born to unwed mothers. Today it is more than 70 percent.

In 1960, 10 years before the program started, 2 percent of black children lived with an unmarried parent. By 2008, 41 percent did.

In 1960, 61 percent of blacks over the age of 18 were married. By 2008, 32 percent were.

I would suggest that government “family planning” is really an insidious, pernicious kind of racism. It’s not about improving the quality of life, but rather it is about discouraging black women, and other poor women, from having children and encouraging them to abort their pregnancies.

The collateral damage has been the collapse of the black family.

This important new HHS proposed rule will take care of the abortion issue.

But we need a broader initiative to get rid of the damaging and wasteful government “family planning” business.

The nation would be better served, particularly at a time of trillion-dollar deficits, to return the $286 million spent on Title X programs to taxpayers.

Black women should be getting their “family planning” guidance from their pastor, not from government bureaucrats.

Star Parker is an author and president of CURE, Center for Urban Renewal and Education. Contact her at www.urbancure.org. To find out more about Star Parker and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Star Parker

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

Dear Readers:

With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.

However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.

If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.

This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.

We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.

ACTIVATE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by  Resolution Productions Blend Images/Newscom.

1 Year After Trump’s Approval, Where Keystone XL, Dakota Pipelines Stand

It’s been a little more than a year since President Donald Trump approved the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines amid concerns the projects would destroy the environment.

Trump signed an executive order in January 2017, approving both pipelines as activists claimed they would desecrate the land. Keystone XL is getting bogged down in regulatory morass, but the so-called DAPL is humming along, producing hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil per day.

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Former President Barack Obama rejected DAPL before leaving office in 2016 and blocked Keystone XL in early 2015, claiming the Canadian line was unnecessary and hurt the U.S.’ credibility as a climate crusader. Trump overturned both orders, giving DAPL immediate approval and XL permission once local entities okay construction on the Keystone extension.

DAPL, which crosses underneath the Missouri River in North Dakota, began pumping oil in May 2017 and has caused oil production in North Dakota to skyrocket—reaching nearly 1.2 million barrels of crude oil produced per day in October.

The state also reported 60 active drilling rigs in April—more than double the number that were operational in May 2016. North Dakota launched 14,450 producing wells, the highest on record.

Officials also anticipate as much as $250 million in additional revenues during the 2018 budget term, surpassing the state treasury’s expectations. Increased energy production provided significant tax revenues for the state, with North Dakota’s Legacy Fund surpassing $5 billion in May. Oil production from DAPL was the catalyst for the improved fortunes, officials believe.

The project would not have seen completion were it not for Trump’s intervention. American Indian groups and environmentalists initially helped prod Obama into nixing the $3.8 billion pipeline. Members of Standing Rock Sioux, for example, believed the multibillion-dollar pipeline risked poisoning the tribe’s water supply and treading on sacred land, despite assessments concluding the DAPL was safe and largely avoided sensitive areas.

Activists ramped-up their anti-DAPL crusade shortly after Trump was elected. Two environmentalists with a long history of engaging in eco-terrorism were arrested in July 2017 for allegedly using blowtorches to burn heavy equipment on the pipeline route in North Iowa.

Keystone XL has seen similar reactions but has not yet received the go-ahead to begin construction.

TransCanada has dealt with years of delays and stonewalling. The Calgary-based company was relatively unknown until it proposed extending Canada’s oil pipeline system TransCanada projects. Keystone’s extension, which is expected to cost around $8 billion, will transport up to 830,000 barrels of crude a day from Alberta through Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska.

Keystone XL has also been bogged down in significant legal quagmires. Friends of the Earth, Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Sierra Club, among others, initiated a lawsuit in March 2017, claiming Trump’s approval was unlawful. Their case is being held in the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana.

But things could be looking up for TransCanada. The company already received enough commitments from oil companies to extend the pipeline, it announced in January. TransCanada believes work on the controversial project could begin in 2019.

TransCanada still needs easements from landowners in Nebraska and must secure water-crossing permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and land rights and construction approvals from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

EDITORS NOTE: Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities for this original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PODCAST: The Legal Grounds on Which Jack Phillips Won Supreme Court Case

The Heritage Foundation’s Emilie Kao joins us to discuss the Supreme Court ruling Monday on the case of Jack Phillips, a Christian baker who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding. Plus: Bill Clinton gets defensive about Monica Lewinsky and the #MeToo movement.

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BREAKING: Jack Phillips Wins His Case

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor today of Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado, who declined to bake a custom cake to celebrate a same-sex wedding because of his religious beliefs.

Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission is a historic case involving religious liberty, LGBT rights, and the First Amendment.

In the 7-2 ruling, the high court said the Colorado Commission of Civil Rights, which had ruled against Phillips, demonstrated “clear and impermissible hostility” toward the baker and cake artist’s Christian belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.

“The Civil Rights Commission’s treatment of his case has some elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs that motivated [Phillips’] objection,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy in the majority opinion.

As The Daily Signal previously reported, in 2014 Colorado Civil Rights Commissioner Diann Rice compared Phillips’ not making a cake to slavery and the Holocaust. Rice apparently didn’t know that Phillips’ father fought in World War II and was part of a group that helped liberate Buchenwald concentration camp.

“For her to compare not making a cake to the Holocaust, knowing what my dad went through, is ludicrous, and personally offensive,” Phillips, 62, told The Daily Signal.

“This is a big win for the religious liberty of all Americans,” says Ryan Anderson, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation. “The Court held that the state of Colorado was ‘neither tolerant nor respectful’ of Jack Phillips’s beliefs about marriage. But as the Court also noted ‘religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression.’”

“Americans should be free to live their lives, including at work, in accordance with their belief that marriage unites husband and wife. Congress and the states should make this crystal clear by passing legislation, such as the First Amendment Defense Act, which explicitly prevents the type of government intolerance that took place in Colorado,” Anderson added.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

COLUMN BY

Portrait of Kelsey Harkness

Kelsey Harkness

Kelsey Harkness is a senior news producer at The Daily Signal and co-host of “Problematic Women,” a podcast and Facebook Live show. Send an email to Kelsey. Twitter: @kelseyjharkness.

RELATED ARTICLES: 

In Baker Decision, Justice Kennedy Stresses the Importance of Religious Freedom

After Declining to Make a Wedding Cake, He’s Going to the Supreme Court. Here’s How That Journey Challenged His Faith.

4 Highlights From Christian Baker’s Wedding Cake Case at Supreme Court

Meet the Lawyer Who Argued at Supreme Court for Christian Baker’s Right to Free Speech

Underreported: Christian Baker Reacts to Government Official Comparing Him to a Nazi

Christian Baker Fears Loss of ‘Everything’ Unless Supreme Court Upholds Right Not to Make Cakes for Gay Marriages

Dear Readers:

With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.

However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.

If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.

This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.

We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.

ACTIVATE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODA

TSA Ignores Feckless Congress, Bullies States In Power Grab

By KrisAnne Hall

The Transportation Security Administration is now standing virtually alone, above the law, above Congress and above the Constitution.

It is ignoring the law which created it and bullying any airports that attempt to deploy a private security force — which they are allowed to do under the law — with the threat of creating an effective “no-fly zone” at that airport. It is bullying states such as Texas that try to ban pat-downs.

In reality, there is absolutely no oversight or accountability of the TSA, now a rights-threatening monster created by a Congress intent on looking the other way.

wrote recently about the secret list that the TSA has created to identify any passengers who have offended TSA agents. Congress is not privy to this secret list, or apparently that it even existed. Congress is not establishing the policies that get someone on the list, nor have they established that people are noticed and a procedure created to petition to be removed. This is a purely arbitrary power resting in the hands of individual, unaccountable agents.

But this not a new dynamic. For the TSA and Congress, it is actually a designed one.

Most Americans do not know that the very congressional act that created the TSA, also established that airports could replace federal TSA agents with private security two years after the law was enacted. However, in January 2011, when more than 16 airports had tried to opt out, TSA refused to leave these airports and the director of the TSA put a “freeze” on the airports’ ability to opt out, violating the very Act that created the TSA.

When the TSA violated this Act with their policies and actions, Congress didn’t step up and remind them of the existing law. Instead, Congress passed a new law, HR 658, reasserting the “right” of the airports to opt out of TSA screeners and required the TSA to notify all airports of this “right.” Yet, in a questionable move, Congress also then gave the Secretary of Homeland Security, the directing agency over the TSA, the authority to approve or deny an airport’s “request” to transfer to private security screening.

In summary, Congress told the airports they had a “right” to opt out of federal screening and then put the TSA in charge of approving or denying this “right.” If the TSA has the authority to approve or deny their own employment, then the airports do not possess a right to transfer to private screening, they merely possess a privilege granted by those they wish to remove.

Would that not mean that by all form and function, our airports are now occupied through force by the federal government? That, by definition, is despotism.

Unfortunately, this point is proven by the fact that in 2011, Texas lawmakers attempted to pass a law outlawing TSA pat downs. The FAA responded immediately by threatening to turn Texas into a de facto “No Fly Zone” if the law was signed. Of course, Texas backed down. If the federal government can deny a State’s right to internally govern itself, this is a violation of the delegation of Constitutional powers expressly enumerated and a violation of the reserved powers of the States expressly identified in the 10thAmendment.

There is no constitutional authority for the TSA to exist, much less wield unchecked power within the states. This unconstitutional agency was created by Congress through the pretense of “national security” and it is failing miserably.

According to James Bovard in the Los Angeles Times,

“the Department of Homeland Security concluded last year that TSA officers and equipment had failed to detect mock threats roughly 80% of the time. In Minneapolis, an undercover team succeeded in smuggling weapons and mock bombs past airport screeners 95% of the time. An earlier DHS investigation found the TSA utterly unable to detect weapons, fake explosives and other contraband, regardless of how extensive it’s pat-downs were.”

Americans have been deceived into trading their essential liberties for a completely non-existent security. We have a private or state option that would likely be more effective and one that could more closely be overseen through the states.

Congress has created this monster. They have made TSA above check and balance, above the law and Congress, and above the Constitution itself: not only the 4th Amendment, but also the 1st Amendment, 6th Amendment, 7th Amendment, 8th Amendment, and 10th Amendment. It is time for the American people to stand up to Congress, the DHS, and the TSA and assert our Right to keep ourselves “secure.”

It is time Americans replace this ineffective, intrusive and secretive unchecked system with one that follows the law and the Constitution, and where the States protect the internal security of the people while the feds are limited to the specifically enumerated powers.

ABOUT KRISANNE HALL

KrisAnne Hall is a former biochemist, Russian linguist for the U.S. Army, and former prosecutor for the State of Florida. KrisAnne also practiced First Amendment Law for a prominent Florida non-profit Law firm. KrisAnne now travels the country teaching the foundational principles of Liberty and our Constitutional Republic. She is the author of 6 books on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and has an internationally popular radio and television show. Her books and classes have been featured on C-SPAN TV. KrisAnne can be found at www.KrisAnneHall.com. Get the book “Sovereign Duty” to learn what the designers of our Constitution wanted Americans to do when their federal government became bloated and out of control. Find this book on Amazon, Barns & Noble, Wal-Mart, and many other merchants.

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

Congressman Ron DeSantis Endorses School Board Term Limits in Florida

In an exclusive op-ed for U.S. Term Limits, Congressman and gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis has endorsed eight-year term limits for all school board members in Florida. DeSantis is widely known as a champion of “drain the swamp” policies in Washington, including term limits.

In the Op-Ed, DeSantis writes:

“In our oft-divided political climate, it’s vital to pursue reforms that bring people together and restore power to citizens— even when those ideas won’t win friends among the permanent political class.

I’ve found that no issue unifies like term limits. The people of Florida, regardless of party affiliation, have reached the same verdict Benjamin Franklin did centuries ago: rotation-in-office is the lifeblood of our republic. No elected office, whether federal or local, is ever better off when run by career politicians.

That’s why I support eight-year term limits for all school board members. I am confident this proposal would bring new energy and ideas to school boards, which too often suffer from the same untamed incumbency that paralyzes Congress.”

The full op-ed is available HERE.

Since his election to Congress in 2012, DeSantis has led the fight on congressional term limits. He is the lead sponsor of House Joint Resolution 6, which proposes a constitutional amendment limiting House members to three terms and Senators to two. DeSantis has also helped secure support from President Trump for this amendment.

In Congress there is no stronger advocate for term limits than Ron DeSantis. We are encouraged by Ron’s support for draining the Florida swamp as well as the one in Washington.

School board term limits will appear as Amendment Eight on the fall ballot.

ABOUT CONGRESSMAN RON DESANTIS

Congressman Ron DeSantis represents Florida’s 6th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy Reserves and a candidate for Governor of Florida in 2018.

THE B-1 ‘FRANKEN-VISA’ NIGHTMARE: The little-known visa program that is sabotaging American workers.

It is important to give credit where credit is due.  I have not been alone in voicing frustration over how the mainstream media rarely, if ever, provides accurate coverage about immigration-related issues.  Today we will focus on an example of solid journalism.

On July 31, 2017, CBS News posted an important and hard-hitting investigative news report titled, “Made in America: How the U.S. Auto Industry Was Built with Foreign Labor.” A YouTube video of the report was aired by CBS News under the title, “Foreign workers being used to build auto plants in the U.S.”  It is a video that I urge you to watch.

The CBS News report caught the attention of Paul Mitchell, a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, who, on May 16, 2018, issued a press release to announce a roundtable discussion into visa fraud that was predicated on the CBS News report.

Immigration fraud was identified, by the 9/11 Commission as the key entry and embedding tactic for terrorists who sought to carry out deadly terror attacks in the United States.  This concern served as the prediction for my recently published booklet, “Immigration Fraud: Lies That Kill.”

Immigration fraud not only costs lives but American livelihoods.

This is the brief press release:

“It’s important that we identify, examine, and fight the fraudulent use of visas by employers. Specific visas are designed for specific purposes, and when companies abuse or deceive the visa system, they hurt American workers and the American economy, as well as the foreign workers they hire under fraudulent pretenses. This morning’s roundtable was a good start to shining a light on visa fraud so the relevant government agencies can take effective steps to enforce our laws.”

Background

  • In July 2017, CBS News released an investigative report providing compelling evidence that certain foreign automobile manufacturers are hiring subcontractors who intentionally employ workers admitted under “B-1 in lieu of H-1B” visas to bypass foreign labor laws and increase company revenue. The report further alleges these workers were paid substantially less than American workers would have been paid performing the same jobs.
  • Today, Rep. Mitchell hosted the Departments of State, Labor and Homeland Security to learn more about what options are appropriate for hiring foreign workers, as well as what efforts are underway to identify, investigate and mitigate the fraudulent use of visas by foreign employers and employees. While the issue of securing the U.S./Mexican border against illegal (un-inspected) entry into the United States figures prominently in the news, nearly half of all illegal aliens did not run our borders thereby entering the U.S. without inspection, but were admitted into the United States and then, in one way or another, went on to violate the terms of their respective admissions as stipulated by the various visas they used to enter the United States.

The State Department provides a Directory of Visa Categories.

Nonimmigrant visa holders are admitted for a limited period of time, depending on the category of visa they used to enter the United States.  Many of these visas prohibit these aliens from being gainfully employed in the U.S.

Most politicians and pundits say that such illegal aliens, who violate their terms of admission, simply “overstayed” their authorized period of admission.

However, while nonimmigrant aliens who fail to depart from the United States before their temporary authorized period of admission expires are indeed illegally present and subject to removal, this violation by itself has little real-world consequence for America and Americans.

What is seldom discussed is that most such “status violators” violate other provisions of their lawful admission and this does profoundly impact our nation and our fellow Americans.  In point of fact, many of these illegal aliens also work illegally.  This not only displaces American and lawful immigrant workers and may result in wage suppression or even wage reduction, but also hammers the U.S. economy as these aliens wire tens of billions of dollars out of the U.S. economy to their home countries.

Often these illegal aliens sought visas and entry into the United States fully intent on violating our immigration laws from the outset, but concealed their ultimate goals from the Department of State consular officials who granted them their visas and the CBP (Customs and Border Protection) who interviewed them when they applied for admission.  False statements and the concealment of material facts, and/or the creation of false and misleading evidence in support of their lies to obtain visas and gain entry into the United States constitutes fraud, a serious crime.

Such was the case where these hundreds of European construction workers are concerned.

A partnership exists between the Department of State and the elements of the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) that enforce and administer the immigration laws.  The State Department is responsible for issuing visas to aliens and CBP inspectors have the authority to admit aliens into the United States and are guided by the provisions of Title 8, United States Code, Section 1182 which enumerates the categories of aliens who are to be excluded.

The CBS News report focused on the B-1/B-2 visa and a supposed hybrid visa known as the B-1 in lieu of H-1B visa.  I have come to refer to this hybrid visa as a Franken-visa because it is a monstrosity that has no legal underpinning and in my judgment, undermines the integrity of the visa process and suborns fraud and malfeasance, hurting American workers.

A B-2 visa generally permits the bearer to remain in the U.S. for up to six months.  The B-1 visa is a business visa that permits the alien to conduct business in the United States and attend training sessions and conferences, review corporate procedures in the United States and carry out other such functions.  However, they are not authorized to be gainfully employed in the United States.  Typically an alien entering the U.S. for business purposes is issued a B-1/B-2 visas so that after they complete the business that brought them to the U.S. they may spend some time as tourists.

The USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) website provides an explanation of the B-1 Visa.

The State Department’s consular officers who issue visas, are supposed to be a part of the process to keep aliens, who are likely to violate the terms of their visas, from receiving those visas in the first place.  These consular officers are supposed to be on the “same page” as the CBP inspectors who make the decision at America’s ports of entry as to whether or not to admit those aliens.

Now it would appear that not only are consular officials not on the same page as CBP inspectors, but are apparently not even reading from the same play book. And once again, America and Americans are paying the price.

The number of controversial H-1B visas that are issued each year are limited by a CAP.  The B-1 in lieu of H-1B visas are not capped and these visas, unlike virtually all other visas are not based on an underlying law.  Visas categories are established by law, not a hunch or a desire to play favorites for those with political clout.

Representative Mitchell’s press release noted that the predication for that Congressional roundtable discussion was a CBS News investigative report that had been broadcast in July 2017 that disclosed how European automakers got huge tax breaks to build brand new factories to manufacture their cars in the U.S., but used European labor to construct those factories.

The European automakers hired agencies such as the German contractor Eisenmann which then outsourced the hiring process to other subcontractors who then gamed the visa process, thereby committing apparent visa fraud that brought thousands of Eastern European construction workers to the United States with B-1/B-2 visas.

These workers were paid approximately ten dollars per hour while it was estimated that American tradesman would command wages of between $45 and $50 per hour.

CBS News explained how these workers were hired:

When a carmaker like Mercedes wants to expand its plant, they hire a contractor, like the German corporation, Eisenmann, to build parts of it. Eisenmann then subcontracts smaller companies to build parts of the plant and some of those companies hire labor from Eastern Europe.

It is a common practice for a company to hire contractors and subcontractors to hire workers.

Here, however, it was shown how many of these foreign workers were coached by those contractors to lie to the consular officers who interviewed them when they applied for their visas and how to lie to the CBP inspectors at ports of entry.

At least one of the companies justified its hiring practices by noting how the B-1 in lieu of H-1B visas made what they did legal.  Of course this is not true, but nevertheless an in-depth investigation must be conducted to determine how and why this visa category was created in the first place.

Clearly ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) needs many more agents to ramp up investigations of worksite immigration violations.  This would be consistent with President Trump’s plan to put Americans first.

Immigration law violations are not “victimless crimes.”

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine.

The most disturbing thing on TV. Your children are the target audience.

Despite pleas from pro-family groups to cancel the second season of the original Netflix series 13 Reasons Why, it was released May 18. All 13 hours of it. At one time. For the whole world to devour … or be devoured by.

Season 2 is a continuation of the first season of the series that was based on a young adult novel by Jay Asher. Season 1 focused on the graphic suicide of teenager Hannah Baker who slits her wrists in a bathtub full of water. Her decision to end her life is explained through a collection of cassette tapes that she leaves behind blaming the people responsible for her death.

Season 2 picks up months after Hannah’s suicide, and characters are seen dealing with the aftermath of her death; a lawsuit and court case make up the overarching storyline. This time the focus is sexual assault, and suicide takes a back seat. But sadly the filth and gratuitous content from season 1 is only exacerbated in season 2.

Both seasons have received mixed reviews – some praising the writers and creators for their efforts to address taboo topics and bring awareness to sensitive and relevant issues such as mental illness, teen suicide, substance abuse, and sexual assault while others are calling for the series to be removed from Netflix because of the detrimental effect it is having on young people and their families.

Take, for example, the Bright family from Alabaster, Alabama. Fourteen-year-old Anna Bright committed suicide after binge-watching the first season of 13 Reasons Why. She patterned her suicide after Hannah Baker’s. Bella Herndon and Priscilla Chiu, both 15-year-olds from California, also took their own lives after watching the first season, as did a 23-year-old Peruvian man who also left behind recordings similar to those Hannah left behind.

Anna Bright Story from American Family Studios on Vimeo.

More recently, a Florida mother spoke out blaming the series for her teen daughter’s suicide attempt on Mother’s Day. According to Fox News, “The teenager sent a video of her cutting herself … and reportedly complained that ‘it’s taking too long … It’s not like on 13 Reasons.'”

But if the reports of those deaths are not enough to convince you of the darkness and evil that enshroud this series, AFA’s Rebecca Grace has written a compelling blog which exposes the dark, disturbing and demonic content found in season 2 of 13 Reasons Why.

Do all you can to help stop it. Join us in our efforts. Use your voice to be part of the solution, not your silence that ignores the problem.

  1. If you haven’t already, sign a petition to Netflix demanding the streaming giant pull both seasons 1 and 2 of 13 Reasons Why.
  1. Learn more about the dangers of 13 Reasons Why. Read Rebecca Grace’s cautionary blog on AFA’s blog site, The Stand.
  1. Share this alert with your family, friends and church members, especially those who have children at home.

If our mission resonates with you, please consider supporting our work financially with a tax-deductible donation. The easiest way to do that is through online giving. It is easy to use, and most of all, it is secure.

Canada: Conflicts growing between Indigenous people and refugees

Diversity is strength alert!

This isn’t supposed to be happening in welcoming Canada!

Aren’t we led to believe that poor and oppressed minority people feel for each other, that there couldn’t possibly be racism when neither side is white European?

“It’s further colonization,” Wirch said of refugee resettlement. “We [Indigenous people] are further being displaced from our lands, from our food, from our waters. And it’s wrong.”

Here is a bit of the story at Refugees Deeply where the author is working really hard to get the message out that the two minority groups (Indigenous people and refugees) are working on their tensions.

CANADA HAS A reputation as a welcoming haven for refugees. But for some Indigenous Canadians, public support and funding for displaced people stands in stark contrast to their own communities, which remain impoverished and overlooked.

Notice how the author immediately has to get a whack in at Donald Trump!

Last year the nation welcomed 300,000 newcomers, including about 43,500 refugees and asylum seekers. Faced with President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration policies, thousands of migrants have left the United States to seek asylum in Canada.

Many arrived in Manitoba, whose capital Winnipeg has the largest Indigenous population of any Canadian city. The city also faces problems with violence, drugs and homelessness. [So of course it is the perfect place to insert Middle Eastern refugees!—-ed]

Refugees compete with the local low income people for government services. Where have I heard this before?

Screenshot (480)

Indigenous peoples’ leader Jenna Wirch

Refugees in Winnipeg often settle in low-income and predominantly Indigenous neighborhoods. Many of the residents fear they will be forced to compete with their new neighbors for resources that are already scarce.

Last year, a group of Indigenous children pepper-sprayed a group of young refugees outside an Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization of Manitoba (IRCOM) housing facility in the mainly Indigenous Centennial neighborhood of Winnipeg.

[….]

Jenna Wirch, 26, an Indigenous woman from Winnipeg and a community development worker at IRCOM, works with both communities. She is also the youth engagement coordinator for Aboriginal Youth Opportunities, an organization working in Winnipeg’s North End.

“It’s further colonization,” Wirch said of refugee resettlement. “We [Indigenous people] are further being displaced from our lands, from our food, from our waters. And it’s wrong.”

Keep reading, there is much more about how this grand experiment in creating a multicultural dream land is not going so well.

Unmasking The Error Of The Never-Trump Evangelicals

When did we who are Christians decide that we could not support a politician who was not holy enough? When did we arrive at the point where we would not support an apparent unrepentant sinner — perhaps, say, a non-Christian — even if his policies are overtly and measurably returning us at least in small part to our Judeo-Christian heritage and improving the state of the nation?

The answer? Apparently at the election of Donald Trump. This is not a hard case to make.

There are two bookends to the case.

First, evangelicals who voted for Trump in November and support Trump now are charged with being idolaters, heretics and unfaithful by prominent never-Trump evangelicals. Because we support him and his policies as president, that means we are OK with the morals in his life, including sex outside marriage with a prostitute, or his incautious language at times, including on Twitter.

But this is a fallacious position, as shown when it is flipped. If they did not vote for Trump, then by their conflation they are OK with tacitly supporting abortion and funding Planned Parenthood. If evangelical Trump voters are not allowed to separate the man from his policies, then why should they be allowed to separate not voting for Trump with the concomitant immoral policies that follow.

Second, is the standard which they hold evangelicals to with Trump the same as they hold themselves to with all of the rest of elected officials? Is this requirement of Biblical purity being applied at every level of office? Are the people they support at the city, county, state and Congressional level meeting this standard? If they are not, do these people similarly disdain and attack supporters of those people?

The answer is self-evident. Too many of my evangelical Christian brethren, who are conservatives as I am, have moved the goal posts — or flat out changed the rules of the game — to accommodate their personal dislike of and opposition to Trump, and to ground their attacks on those of us who do support him because of his solidly conservative policies and appointments.

Those two applications of their philosophy bookend the middle problem, which is the use of straw men in their attacks. So let’s take a match to the most absurd straw man that is constantly used and undergird both bookends: By supporting Trump’s policies, Christians are turning a blind eye to his moral failures, or worse, accepting them as not a big deal.

This is false to the point of being injurious libel. Yet this is the ground that has been staked out by some prominent and angry-sounding evangelicals.

New York Times columnist and anti-Trumper Ross Douthat sums up two of these straw men approaches:

“…on the influential Gospel Coalition site, Jared Wilson described younger evangelicals as ‘basically a bunch of theological orphans,’ betrayed by older pastors who insisted on the importance of moral character and then abandoned these preachments for the sake of partisanship — revealing their own commitments as essentially idolatrous, and leaving the next generation no choice but to invent evangelicalism anew.

Wilson like the rest seems to conflate any support of Trump due to Trump policies and appointments as “abandoning” our beliefs. But would he apply the same straw man logic to himself?

If Wilson did not vote for Trump, then that means he has abandoned his morals with regard to abortion and maybe 72 genders. Because if Wilson, Douthat and the others philosophically do not allow me to separate Trump policies from Trump, then I why should I let them separate not supporting Trump from non-Trump policies — that is, Hillary Clinton?

I’ll tell you why: Because I don’t believe that of them. I don’t think they have abandoned their social morals because they did not vote for Trump. They weighed and chose one way and I have always granted conservatives that space. But they will not grant me that space, because apparently, they know I have abandoned my faith and principles — which of course, they cannot know.

Further, what they propose in their pronounced judgement of fellow Christians is a terrible and divisive philosophy that digs the foundations of purity tests as requirements for candidate support — and Wilson and Team Anti-Trump will clearly be the arbiters of what those requirements are and when they are met.

Here’s another example from Douthat’s column:

“In a somewhat different vein, the Baylor professor Alan Jacobs responded to a question (from me) about where younger evangelical intellectual life is going by saying that “as far as I can tell, where young evangelicals are headed is simply out of evangelicalism.” Meaning that they will either go along with the drift of their elders and become church-of-American-greatness heretics, or else they will return to “older liturgical traditions,” Catholic and Orthodox and Anglican, and cease to identify with evangelicalism entirely.”

Wilson knew I had abandoned my principles because I disagree with him politically on this president. But Jacobs knows even more; that I am now a heretic. But see above why he would have to be also, if judged by the same test.

David French, one of the most prominent and loudest evangelical never-Trumpers, recently castigated in the harshest terms evangelical support for Trump:

“It’s sin, and it’s sin that is collapsing the Evangelical moral witness…all too many fellow believers have torched their credibility and exposed immense hypocrisy through fear, faithlessness, and ambition. Soon enough, the “need” to defend Trump will pass. He’ll be gone from the American scene. Then, you’ll stand in the wreckage of your own reputation and ask yourself, “Was it worth it?” The answer will be as clear then as it should be clear now. It’s not, and it never was.”

Or maybe a major threat to evangelical Christianity will be seeing prominents such as French, Douthat, Wilson, Jacobs and others viciously attack the very being of the faith of evangelicals who disagree with them politically. That is a uniquely ugly presentation of Christian unity and charity.

I will not attack these people on the logic of their horrible straw men depictions of Christian Trump supporters. Nor will I attack them on the grounds of knowing their hearts — as they clearly do with me. Dozens of Bible verses compel me otherwise. Let’s take one:

“Every man’s way is right in his own eyes, But the LORD weighs the hearts.” Proverbs 21:2

The Lord weighs our hearts. Not anti-Trumpers. Not pro-Trumpers. They take that upon themselves at great peril.

It is soundly unChristian to denounce the hearts of other believers over political choices. Did they do that over the Christians who supported Obama and Clinton, despite the deeply anti-Christian policies of those two? I sure don’t remember it. I did not and will not. Vigorous disagreement on the substance of issues is warranted. Condemnation is well outside the Christian pale.

These are passionate times and we all make mistakes. We are all fallen. We all sin. Pundits to presidents.

And here’s something I think they err on greatly. The emphasis on morals is right. It’s right for us before God and to teach our children. But it’s not the first thing because it is a distinctly Christian doctrine that we cannot be saved by our own works, but only through the grace offered by God. So before being moral is the need for salvation through Christ for the evangelical Christian, particularly. While my fellow Christians surely believe this, they do not sound it. They want to judge Trump — and Trump policy supporters — on morals in a way they would not allow to be turned back on them.

But what if Trump is not a Christian? Then all of their protestations are out of order, and their libel against brothers and sisters is more than unwarranted, its unloving.

I understand the dislike. But the opposition is wrong in my opinion, although I accept we can disagree without me condemning their hearts. Their attacks on evangelicals such as myself are unbecoming — and create this internecine battle among people who agree on virtually all the major political issues, and presumably on the core of the most important issue: the centrality of Christ.

I will always have an olive branch out for my brothers and sisters in Christ who are so determined to tell me I am a disgraceful idolator ruining the witness of Christ. I am also open to debating and discussing this in any civil environment. It seems as though civility should not be a prerequisite, but the anger and bitterness in some of these words suggest it needs to be.

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

Who Was the Biggest Mass Murderer in History?

At least 45 million were starved, shot, tortured, and worked to death.

Ilya Somin

by Ilya Somin

Who was the biggest mass murderer in the history of the world? Most people probably assume that the answer is Adolf Hitler, architect of the Holocaust. Others might guess Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who may indeed have managed to kill even more innocent people than Hitler did, many of them as part of a terror famine that likely took more lives than the Holocaust.

But both Hitler and Stalin were outdone by Mao Zedong. From 1958 to 1962, his Great Leap Forward policy led to the deaths of up to 45 million people—easily making it the biggest episode of mass murder ever recorded.

The Vast, Cruel, Deliberate Extinction of Millions

Historian Frank Dikötter, author of the important book Mao’s Great Famine, recently published an article in History Today, summarizing what happened:

Mao thought that he could catapult his country past its competitors by herding villagers across the country into giant people’s communes. In pursuit of a utopian paradise, everything was collectivised. People had their work, homes, land, belongings and livelihoods taken from them.

In collective canteens, food, distributed by the spoonful according to merit, became a weapon used to force people to follow the party’s every dictate. As incentives to work were removed, coercion and violence were used instead to compel famished farmers to perform labour on poorly planned irrigation projects while fields were neglected.

A catastrophe of gargantuan proportions ensued. Extrapolating from published population statistics, historians have speculated that tens of millions of people died of starvation. But the true dimensions of what happened are only now coming to light thanks to the meticulous reports the party itself compiled during the famine…

What comes out of this massive and detailed dossier is a tale of horror in which Mao emerges as one of the greatest mass murderers in history, responsible for the deaths of at least 45 million people between 1958 and 1962.

It is not merely the extent of the catastrophe that dwarfs earlier estimates, but also the manner in which many people died: between two and three million victims were tortured to death or summarily killed, often for the slightest infraction.

When a boy stole a handful of grain in a Hunan village, local boss Xiong Dechang forced his father to bury him alive. The father died of grief a few days later.

The case of Wang Ziyou was reported to the central leadership: one of his ears was chopped off, his legs were tied with iron wire, a ten kilogram stone was dropped on his back and then he was branded with a sizzling tool – punishment for digging up a potato.

The basic facts of the Great Leap Forward have long been known to scholars. Dikötter’s work is noteworthy for demonstrating that the number of victims may have been even greater than previously thought, and that the mass murder was more clearly intentional on Mao’s part, and included large numbers of victims who were executed or tortured, as opposed to “merely” starved to death. Even the previously standard estimates of 30 million or more would still make this the greatest mass murder in history.

While the horrors of the Great Leap Forward are well known to experts on communism and Chinese history, they are rarely remembered by ordinary people outside China, and have had only a modest cultural impact. When Westerners think of the great evils of world history, they rarely think of this one.

In contrast to the numerous books, movies, museums, and and remembrance days dedicated to the Holocaust, we make little effort to recall the Great Leap Forward, or to make sure that society has learned its lessons. When we vow “never again,” we don’t often recall that it should apply to this type of atrocity, as well as those motivated by racism or anti-semitism.The fact that Mao’s atrocities resulted in many more deaths than those of Hitler does not necessarily mean he was the more evil of the two. The greater death toll is partly the result of the fact that Mao ruled over a much larger population for a much longer time. I lost several relatives in the Holocaust myself, and have no wish to diminish its significance. But the vast scale of Chinese communist atrocities puts them in the same general ballpark. At the very least, they deserve far more recognition than they currently receive.

Why We so Rarely Look Back on the Great Leap Forward

What accounts for this neglect? One possible answer is that the most of the victims were Chinese peasants—people who are culturally and socially distant from the Western intellectuals and media figures who have the greatest influence over our historical consciousness and popular culture. As a general rule, it is easier to empathize with victims who seem similar to ourselves.

But an even bigger factor in our relative neglect of the Great Leap Forward is that it is part of the general tendency to downplay crimes committed by communist regimes, as opposed to right-wing authoritarians. Unlike in the days of Mao, today very few western intellectuals actually sympathize with communism. But many are reluctant to fully accept what a great evil it was, fearful—perhaps—that other left-wing causes might be tainted by association.In China, the regime has in recent years admitted that Mao made “mistakes” and allowed some degree of open discussion about this history. But the government is unwilling to admit that the mass murder was intentional and continues to occasionally suppress and persecute dissidents who point out the truth. This reluctance is an obvious result of the fact that the Communist Party still rules China. Although they have repudiated many of Mao’s specific policies, the regime still derives much of its legitimacy from his legacy.

I experienced China’s official ambivalence on this subject first-hand when I gave a talk about the issue while teaching a course as a visiting professor at a Chinese university in 2014.

Why It Matters

For both Chinese and westerners, failure to acknowledge the true nature of the Great Leap Forward carries serious costs. Some survivors of the Great Leap Forward are still alive today. They deserve far greater recognition of the horrible injustice they suffered. They also deserve compensation for their losses, and the infliction of appropriate punishment on the remaining perpetrators.

In addition, our continuing historical blind spot about the crimes of Mao and other communist rulers leads us to underestimate the horrors of such policies, and makes it more likely that they might be revived in the future. The horrendous history of China, the USSR, and their imitators, should have permanently discredited socialism as completely as fascism was discredited by the Nazis. But it has not – so far – fully done so.

Just recently, the socialist government of Venezuela imposed forced labor on much of its population. Yet most of the media coverage of this injustice fails to note the connection to socialism, or that the policy has parallels in the history of the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and other similar regimes. One analysis even claims that the real problem is not so much “socialism qua socialism,” but rather Venezuela’s “particular brand of socialism, which fuses bad economic ideas with a distinctive brand of strongman bullying,” and is prone to authoritarianism and “mismanagement.”

The author simply ignores the fact that “strongman bullying” and “mismanagement” are typical of socialist states around the world. The Scandinavian nations—sometimes cited as examples of successful socialism- are not actually socialist at all, because they do not feature government ownership of the means of production, and in many ways have freer markets than most other western nations.

Venezuela’s tragic situation would not surprise anyone familiar with the history of the Great Leap Forward. We would do well to finally give history’s largest episode of mass murder the attention it deserves.

This article first appeared at the Volokh Conspiracy.

Why Capitalism Is Morally Superior to Socialism

Several recent polls, plus the popularity of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., demonstrate that young people prefer socialism to free market capitalism.

That, I believe, is a result of their ignorance and indoctrination during their school years, from kindergarten through college. For the most part, neither they nor many of their teachers and professors know what free market capitalism is.

Free market capitalism, wherein there is peaceful voluntary exchange, is morally superior to any other economic system. Why? Let’s start with my initial premise.

All of us own ourselves. I am my private property, and you are yours. Murder, rape, theft, and the initiation of violence are immoral because they violate self-ownership. Similarly, the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another person, for any reason, is immoral because it violates self-ownership.

Tragically, two-thirds to three-quarters of the federal budget can be described as Congress taking the rightful earnings of one American to give to another American—using one American to serve another. Such acts include farm subsidies, business bailouts, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, and many other programs.

Free market capitalism is disfavored by many Americans—and threatened—not because of its failure but, ironically, because of its success. Free market capitalism in America has been so successful in eliminating the traditional problems of mankind—such as disease, pestilence, hunger, and gross poverty—that all other human problems appear both unbearable and inexcusable.

The desire by many Americans to eliminate these so-called unbearable and inexcusable problems has led to the call for socialism. That call includes equality of income, sex, and race balance; affordable housing and medical care; orderly markets; and many other socialistic ideas.

Let’s compare capitalism with socialism by answering the following questions: In which areas of our lives do we find the greatest satisfaction, and in which do we find the greatest dissatisfaction?

It turns out that we seldom find people upset with and in conflict with computer and clothing stores, supermarkets, and hardware stores. We do see people highly dissatisfied with and often in conflict with boards of education, motor vehicles departments, police, and city sanitation services.

What are the differences? For one, the motivation for the provision of services of computer and clothing stores, supermarkets, and hardware stores is profit. Also, if you’re dissatisfied with their services, you can instantaneously fire them by taking your business elsewhere.

It’s a different matter with public education, motor vehicles departments, police, and city sanitation services. They are not motivated by profit at all. Plus, if you’re dissatisfied with their service, it is costly and in many cases, even impossible to fire them.

A much larger and totally ignored question has to do with the brutality of socialism. In the 20th century, the one-party socialist states of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Germany under the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, and the People’s Republic of China were responsible for the murder of 118 million citizens, mostly their own.

The tallies were: USSR, 62 million; Nazi Germany, 21 million; and People’s Republic of China, 35 million. No such record of brutality can be found in countries that tend toward free market capitalism.

Here’s an experiment for you. List countries according to whether they are closer to the free market capitalist or to the socialist/communist end of the economic spectrum. Then rank the countries according to per capita gross domestic product. Finally, rank the countries according to Freedom House’s “Freedom in the World” report.

You will find that people who live in countries closer to the free market capitalist end of the economic spectrum not only have far greater wealth than people who live in countries toward the socialistic/communist end but also enjoy far greater human rights protections.

As Thomas Sowell says, “Socialism sounds great. It has always sounded great. And it will probably always continue to sound great. It is only when you go beyond rhetoric, and start looking at hard facts, that socialism turns out to be a big disappointment, if not a disaster.”

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Walter E. Williams

Walter E. Williams is a columnist for The Daily Signal and a professor of economics at George Mason University. Twitter: .

RELATED ARTICLE: Who Was the Biggest Mass Murderer in History?

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If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.

This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.

We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.

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