Anarchy Breaks Out in Portland, With the Mayor’s Blessing

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Massive dereliction of duty in a major city In America.

The failure of the Portland’s Democrat left wing mayor and his police department’s decision to withhold protection for innocent citizens from lawless violent offenders for political reasons is reminiscent of Hitler’s Brown Shirts attacks on Jews in Germany in the 1930’s while police watched.

Dereliction of duty by law enforcement is serious but intentional dereliction of duty by a mayor and police department is far more serious.

The Mayor of Portland and its police chief should be removed from office for endangering the lives of citizens they are sworn to protect and violating their oath of office. Failure to do so sends a message to other officials that it is OK to violate their oath of office and the Constitution of the United States. The citizens of Portland and all Americans should be alarmed.

It is based on an anti-Trump pathology to protect the lawless.

Anarchy Breaks Out in Portland, With the Mayor’s Blessing

A vicious mob targeted the ICE office and even a food cart. The police followed orders to do nothing.

By Andy Ngo
Aug. 3, 2018 5:24 p.m. ET

Along the trolley tracks behind the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office, a biohazard cleanup crew works under police protection. It finds used needles and buckets of human waste simmering in nearly 100-degree heat. The smell of urine and feces fills the block. For more than five weeks, as many as 200 people had occupied the site to demand ICE’s immediate abolition. They’re gone now, but a community is left reeling. Thirty-eight days of government-sanctioned anarchy will do that.

A mob surrounded ICE’s office in Southwest Portland June 19. They barricaded the exits and blocked the driveway. They sent “guards” to patrol the doors, trapping workers inside. At night they laid on the street, stopping traffic at a critical junction near a hospital. Police stayed away. “At this time I am denying your request for additional resources,” the Portland Police Bureau’s deputy chief, Robert Day, wrote to federal officers pleading for help. Hours later, the remaining ICE workers were finally evacuated by a small federal police team. The facility shut down for more than a week.

Signs called ICE employees “Nazis” and “white supremacists.” Others accused them of running a “concentration camp,” and demanded open borders and prosecution of ICE agents. Along a wall, vandals wrote the names of ICE staff, encouraging others to publish their private information online.

Federal workers were defenseless. An ICE officer, who asked that his name not be published, told me one of his colleagues was trailed in a car and confronted when he went to pick up his daughter from summer camp. Later people showed up at his house. Another had his name and photo plastered on flyers outside his home accusing him of being part of the “Gestapo.”

Read more.

RELATED ARTICLE: Get to Know an Anarchist – We Spoke with One of the Dozens of People Arrested on May Day

Democrats Using Fake Russian Collusion to Destroy the U.S. Election System & Constitution

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In case you aren’t aware, the leftist Democrats (that would be all Democrats) are using the fake charges that Russian Collusion changed the outcome of the 2016 elections to now question the legitimacy of our Constitution and our election system including the Presidential Electoral College especially where any Democrat or Socialist loses an election. Even if Democrats win they will say they could have won bigger without Russian interference and an outdated Constitution. This will be a continuing theme from now on.

Even our very own Florida Senator Bill Nelson is already using this charge of Russian interference to excuse the fact that he is behind in the Polls when compared to Governor Rick Scott.

Nelson and his leftist ilk view our Constitution as archaic and needing to be changed or eliminated because it establishes a Constitutional, Representative Republic rather than a Democracy. They refer to Hillary and Gore’s losses to show that they would have won in a Democracy since they won the popular votes and their followers resisted both Bush and now Trump as illegitimate Presidents.

They are charging that our Founders were old white men obsessed with power and didn’t know what they were doing including insuring all states big or small had equal representation in the Senate offset by House members based on state populations and that there was a 3 level system of Balance of Power in our govt. Dems try to deny that the big Democrat controlled cities that make up the bulk of our population would always determine the outcome of our Presidential elections totally ignoring those living in the rest of the country.

They also ignore the fact that the largely leftist Judiciary system especially among the District Courts of Appeal are legislating from the bench. Without the Electoral College the rest of us would no longer have any influence over the Presidential elections and the Judiciary will become even more out of control..

Obviously they don’t understand history where no country with a pure Democratic system of government has ever lasted because of the “tyranny of the majority” just as no socialist country has ever lasted. One analogy of Democracy is 2 wolves and 1 sheep discussing what to have for lunch. Leftists express outrage over the election system but hypocritically won’t consider all the illegal aliens who are fraudulently voting in our elections especially in California, New York and Illinois nor will they acknowledge the too powerful Judiciary overstepping their bounds in challenging Presidential Authority and/or Congressional laws not based on the Constitution but their own liberal agenda.

All this despite the fact that Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein who appointed Mueller, reported that not one vote nor the outcome of the 2016 elections could be contributed to Russian Collusion nor has the Mueller investigation shown any evidence that Trump colluded with the Russians to tamper with the election. In fact the Mueller investigation has been so drug out to influence the outcome of future elections or at least give the Democrats excuses for losing and ammo to continue calling for an end of our Constitution and current voting practice.

Please, Mr. President please de-certify all of the documents related to the FISA warrants and Mueller investigation so that we will all know the Truth.

Meanwhile, leftist Hollywood types, others in sports entertainment industry and even some Democrat politicians are calling for fraudulent voting as a way of influencing the Mid-Term outcome, e.g. the old Communist theme, that the “ends justifies the means”.

All of this madness is influenced by the rush to Socialism as the ideology favored by Democrats. They will deny this but their voting records bely their denials. In fact, their is no difference now between Socialists and Democrats. One friend has defined Socialists as “Honest Democrats” meaning those that are honest know their ideology is socialism and will say so but using honest together with Democrats is an oxymoron so I would prefer calling them “Candid Democrats.”

In fact there is no difference between the ideologies & world views of elitist, power hungry, never-Trump Republicans and Democrats who are for big govt control and spending including universal health care, housing, internet, cell phones, globalism and open borders resulting in freebies, asylum or amnesty for illegals, etc. The results of their policies as shown under Barack Hussein Obama was an ever growing gap between the rich and poor; worst ever race relations; growing poverty levels; shrinking middle class; class warfare caused by identity politics; growing national debt; increased taxes & regulations; declining economy; much weaker military, etc. America was falsely denigrated as too wealthy, too powerful and the purveyor of evil around the world and Obama apologized on our behalf.

A Socialist is in fact a fascist because they both believe in govt. control of private industry through massive regulation & taxes. A fascist is the furthest thing away from a conservative. Hence they believe capitalism works but should be restricted and that private industry should support big govt thru big taxes (and kick backs). Socialists also want to control people (not govern them) making them dependent on big govt. for all their bennies/freebies including healthcare, housing, college,internet, cell phones, food stamps etc. Such dependence and division by class keeps people from incentives to work. from prospering and divided from those who do work and prosper.

Then throw in the assaults on the 1st (especially free speech and religious rights) and 2nd Amendments to try to reduce the voices of and the ability of conservatives to defend against crime & tyranny. On top of all that, protect the ever growing demands of Islamists to spread Sharia & fight against western civilization, our culture, values and traditions.

Meanwhile, these socialist & RINO leaders & celebrities get rich, often in corrupt ways, becoming elitists at the top of the pyramid. Somehow our education system has touted the virtues of socialism at the expense of common sense, reality and history and way too many young people & millennials have fallen for their lies. When they run out of other people’s money, maybe they will wake up.

We must continue to fight against the evils of socialism and Islam both of which have common agendas. We must get out and vote, push a red wave for the mid-terms; re-elect President Donald Trump and then elect and re-elect Mike Pence and all the other conservatives running for office in 2018 and beyond.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by Javier Zarracina/Vox.

Guns of The American People

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One of the greatest symbols of freedom is the armed American citizen…..that is also what keeps the left from forcing a totalitarian system on us all.

I say keep fighting the good fight!

Colleges: A Force for Evil

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Many of the nation’s colleges have become a force for evil and a focal point for the destruction of traditional American values. The threat to our future lies in the fact that today’s college students are tomorrow’s teachers, professors, judges, attorneys, legislators, and policymakers.

A recent Brookings Institution poll suggests that nearly half of college students believe hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment. Of course, it is.

Fifty-one percent of students think that it’s acceptable to shout down a speaker with whom they disagree. About 20 percent of students hold that it’s acceptable to use violence to prevent a speaker from speaking. Over 50 percent say colleges should prohibit speech and viewpoints that might offend certain people.

Contempt for the First Amendment and other constitutional guarantees is probably shared by the students’ high school teachers, as well as many college professors.

Brainwashing and indoctrination of young people has produced some predictable results, as shown by a recent Gallup poll. For the past 18 years, Gallup has asked adults how proud they are to be Americans. This year, only 47 percent say they are “extremely proud,” well below the peak of 70 percent in 2003. The least proud to be Americans are nonwhites, young adults, and college graduates.

The proudest Americans are those older than 50 and those who did not graduate from college. The latter might be explained by their limited exposure to America’s academic elite.

Johnetta Benton, a teacher at Hampton Middle School near Atlanta, was recorded telling her sixth-grade students, “America has never been great for minorities.” In a tirade, she told her class: “Because Europeans came from Europe … you are an immigrant. You are an illegal immigrant because you came and just took it. … You are an immigrant. This is not your country.”

To exploit young, immature people this way represents an act of supreme cowardice. The teacher should be fired, but I’m guessing that her colleagues share her sympathies. At the same school, students were given a homework assignment that required them to write a letter asking lawmakers for stricter gun control laws.

One might be tempted to argue that the growing contempt for liberty and the lack of civility stem from the election of Donald Trump. That’s entirely wrong. The lack of civility and indoctrination of our young people have been going on for decades.

UCLA history professor Mary Corey told her class: “Capitalism isn’t a lie on purpose. It’s just a lie.” She added that capitalists “are swine. … They’re bastard people.”

An English professor at Montclair State University, in New Jersey, told his students, “Conservatism champions racism, exploitation and imperialist war.”

An ethnic studies professor at California State University, Northridge and Pasadena City College teaches that “the role of students and teachers in ethnic studies is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

The University of California, Santa Barbara’s school of education emailed its faculty members to ask them to consider classroom options concerning the Iraq War, suggesting they excuse students from class to attend anti-war events and give them extra credit for writing about it.

Rodney Swanson, a UCLA economics professor, told his class, “The United States of America, backed by facts, is the greediest and most selfish country in the world.”

There is little question that colleges stand at the forefront of an attack on America and Western values.

Leftists often say that the U.S. is the world’s worst country. But here are some empirical facts they might explain. According to a recent Gallup poll, about 13 percent of the world’s adults—630 million people—would like to move to another country. Roughly 138 million would like to live in the U.S.—making us the No. 1 destination, followed by the U.K., Canada, and France.

There’s something exceptionally appealing about America and the Western world that leftists choose to ignore or lie about.

COLUMN BY

Portrait of Walter E. Williams

Walter E. Williams

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

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

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by Javier Larrea/agefotostock /Newscom. COPYRIGHT 2018 CREATORS.COM

Environmental Activists Ignore The Strong Case For Offshore Oil Drilling

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By David Mica

While environmental activists continue to push the same weak claims for opposing offshore energy exploration and production despite successful operations elsewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, there are 56,000 reasons why Florida should open its waters to exploration.

That’s the number of high-paying Florida jobs Florida could see by 2035 if it embraces its offshore opportunities. And the benefits don’t stop there. In addition to jobs, additional offshore oil and gas production could positively impact:

National security: Why depend on foreign, often hostile, sources of energy when we have the potential to secure our own resources here at home?

Exports: With abundant domestic energy resources, the U.S. can be the world’s energy leader, creating jobs at home and enhancing security for our allies abroad. Win-win.

Increased Safety: Offshore operations today are safer than ever before. Since 2010, more than 100 standards have been created or strengthened, including for improved safety and environmental management, well design, blowout prevention, and spill response.

Price at the pump: Every barrel of oil we produce domestically adds stability to the global oil supply, putting downward pressure on prices. As the third largest consumer of motor fuels in the U.S., Florida benefits from greater domestic energy production and has the potential to significantly contribute to it as well.

Environmental Protection: Florida has received more than $908 million in federal funding over the past five decades to conserve our precious natural and historic treasures. That funding comes from oil and natural gas revenues. We can safely produce energy and use the revenues for important environmental conservation throughout the state. Another win-win.

Hurricane disruptions: Everyone in Florida knows the potential damage hurricanes can have on daily life and livelihoods. Further diversification of the nationwide energy infrastructure network would help prevent disruptions to gasoline supply after storms.

Energy conservation: Greater use of natural gas for electricity generation has helped drive U.S. carbon emissions to 25-year lows. Florida is on the front lines of this exciting trend, generating more than 60 percent of its electricity from clean, affordable natural gas and demonstrating that energy production and environmental progress are not mutually exclusive.

Florida’s Tourism Economy: Decades of experience in the Gulf of Mexico confirm that energy development can safely coexist with fishing and tourism, as state officials with firsthand experience enthusiastically attest.

The facts support taking advantage of Florida’s offshore energy resources. Florida families and businesses already benefit from offshore energy exploration — from the sidelines. By getting in the game, we can grow our economy and be part of making the nation more energy secure.

ABOUT DAVID MICA

David Mica is the Executive Director of the Florida American Petroleum Institute.

RELATED ARTICLES:

The Incredible Economic Opportunities of Offshore Energy Exploration

The Benefits of U.S. Offshore Oil and Natural Gas Development in the Eastern Gulf

How Do You Tell If The Earth’s Climate System “Is Warming”?

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The Revolutionary Act. The Revolutionary Act has no financial or other affiliation with API. The featured image by kristinakasp on Pixabay.

Social Media Censorship of Infowars Exposes Larger Problem of Silicon Valley Bias [+Video]

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This week, the conspiracy website Infowars, which is run by Alex Jones, was either “banned” or had content stripped from most social media platforms.

YouTube cited “hate speech and harassment” as reasons to remove Infowars from the platform, Apple explained that “hate speech” wouldn’t be tolerated, and Facebook announced: “Upon review, we have taken it down for glorifying violence … and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies.”

Private companies can, of course, censor whomever they like, but the pattern of behavior from Silicon Valley toward speech in general—and continual inability to treat conservative views fairly on their extremely powerful platforms—is rightly concerning to conservatives who use those platforms.

Infowars is hardly a conservative website, but some fear that the social media “deplatforming” of its content will bleed over to other more mainstream outlets—especially right-leaning ones that don’t conform with the overwhelmingly left-wing values of the tech industry.

Given the vague and increasingly expanding use of the term “hate speech,” it’s not unreasonable to think that purging Infowars is the tip of the iceberg.

This belief was exacerbated by Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who took to Twitter to suggest just that.

Unfortunately, there has been a troubling pattern of behavior from social media companies.

For instance, YouTube, an internet video company, has relied on the Southern Poverty Law Center, a far-left activist organization, to police its website under the “Trusted Flaggers” program.

While SPLC is often used by media companies to designate “hate groups,” it has been loose with the definition, lumping in traditional conservative and religious organizations, like the Family Research Council, in with the Ku Klux Klan and other similar groups.

And there have been other troubling signs of looming censorship of conservative views in particular.

When Google launched a fact-checking tool in January, it almost exclusively targeted conservative publications and made some dubious claims about incorrect information on those websites.

Google backed away from this fact-checking tool after it was hammered by conservative—and even some liberal—media outlets for displaying embarrassingly rank bias—whether the product of faulty algorithms or perhaps other reasons.

Facebook threatened to demonetize the satirical website The Babylon Bee after Snopes.com, a fact-checking website, labeled some of its content “fake news.”

The article focused on a joke about CNN using a literal washing machine to “spin news,” and was quite clearly a joke.

Facebook later apologized for the situation and relinquished its threat.

The Infowars ban also comes in the wake of widespread rumors that Twitter has been “shadow banning” some prominent conservative accounts, meaning that it somehow filters out some content without outright banning accounts.

Twitter denied any kind of shadow ban, but seemed to admit in its denial that it had made it harder to find content from some conservative users.

“We do not shadow ban,” Twitter said in a statement. “You are always able to see the tweets from accounts you follow (although you may have to do more work to find them, like go directly to their profile).”

That response was hardly comforting.

“Uh, call me crazy, but that parenthetical sounds a lot like an admission that Twitter effectively shadow bans users,” wrote Alex Griswold of The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website.

Many of these actions could be innocuous, or they could be the way an overwhelmingly liberal industry, as fired Google employee James Damore has warned, suppresses information it doesn’t agree with.

It’s fair to say that social media platforms, like Twitter, have seemed far from even-handed in how they define things like “hate speech” for liberals and conservatives, which is their prerogative. And it is our prerogative as conservatives to use other platforms.

In May, a coalition of conservatives published a missive directed at tech companies, laying out four ways in which they can gain conservatives’ trust: “Provide Transparency,” “Provide Clarity on ‘Hate Speech’,” “Provide Equal Footing for Conservatives,” and “Mirror the First Amendment.”

You can read the proposal here.

However this issue is dealt with, it must be acknowledged that there is an increasing problem with media and social media bias that can’t simply be ignored.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman is an editor and commentary writer for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast.Send an email to Jarrett. Twitter: .

RELATED ARTICLES:

Amazon seems to have quietly stopped recommending Alex Jones products

Instagram reactivates Tommy Robinson’s account after removing it ‘in error’

The Crackdown Continues: Twitter Suspends Libertarian Accounts, Including Ron Paul Institute Director

Senate Democrats Are Circulating Plans for Government Takeover of the Internet: Reason Roundup

RELATED VIDEO: Facebook Purge of Dissenting Voices Could Lead To Its Demise?

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

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by Alexander Pohl/NurPhoto/Sipa USA/Newscom.

How important is the 2018 mid-term election?

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The 2018 mid-term elections will be a pivotal point in America.

If the Democratic party wins, the Nation will return to the pathway of socialism, a intermediate step to the ultimate goal of making America a communist state where the elite class will decide what you can do and believe, both morally and spiritually.

Is that important for you and your grandchildren?

Will you be satisfied when the laws require you to let your children decide which sex they want to be, to sanction same sex marriage, to force you to worship who/what they desire, establish what is right or wrong, and determine when you or your children are no long useful to society?  Do you want to loose the freedom you now have  or do you believe that would never happen?  If you  believe  the latter, look around.  The Christian God has been forced out of the schools, government, and gradually out of the Church itself as clergy are being more acceptable to those moral standards favored by the government  than those set forth in the Bible which they were sworn to uphold.

CONFERENCE INFORMATION

Telephone: 941-377-5626

Website: https://americastruths.com/2018-conference

Loation:

Carlisle Inn  Sarasota                                               

Telephone: 844-369-2272

3727 Bahia Vista St.

Sarasota, FL   34232-2409                                                    

Date and Time:

September 29, 2018     Saturday

Time:     7:30 AM   to   1:30 PM  

Question about conference:

Telephone:     941-377-5626
https://americastruths.com/2018-conference

Conference Schedule for Speakers

Schedule: Saturday 29, 2018       

7:30 AM – Registration              

8:00 AM – How Nations Die: The Fall of Rome & America Today with Dr. Kirk Elliott                                                

9:00 AM – Leftists: Liberators or Oppressors  with Tom Trento                                                        

10:00 AM Break (Drinks & Snacks)                                          

10:45 AM – America Under Siege: Why Eternal Vigilance Matters  with Trevor Loudon                                                                 

11:45 AM – Engaging the Culture in a Time of Conflict:  Strategies for Winning the Culture Battle with Dr. Kirk Elliott  

12:45 PM  Break (Drink & Snacks)    

1:00 PM Panel Questions & Answers                                                                                                                                                                                                     

1:30  – Adjourn

Question about conference:

Telephone:     941-377-5626
https://americastruths.com/2018-conference
 

Dr. Kirk Elliott

 PhD, ThD

Is our nation going to fall like Roman?

Our new speaker is Kirk Elliott, an economist, financial advisor, entrepreneur, CEO and wealth manager of Sovereign Advisors, and author.  He has a doctorate degree in Theology and a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration.  He will be speaking  about the conditions leading up to the fall of the Roman Empire and  how similar they are  to the conditions now in America. Will America be able to change its course?  Or will the people let those in power make the decision for them? He will also be discussing the current cultural crisis and what can be done.
LEARN MORE
 Tom Trento

Exec. Dir. United West

Don’t be entertained! Know what is happening & what to do.

This year’s conference will have Tom Trento as a repeat speaker (see his presentations from 2017 under videos). He is a leading academic activist in the United States, skilled debater and dynamic public speaker.  He has degrees in Law Enforcement, Philosophy, and Theology.   He is the co-author of Shariah: The Threat to America and has appeared on major media outlets.  He will be speaking on what will happen if the Democratic party wins this coming mid-term election. Remember this Democratic party  is not the Democratic party of the past.  Many of its current leaders belong to or are connected to the Democratic Socialists of America which wants to make America like Europe.

 
LEARN MORE

  Trevor Loudon

 Author . Activist

What will happen without God?

The third speaker for the 2018 conference is Trevor Loudon.  A New Zealander, internationally known blogger, writer, and researcher exposing communists within our own government.  His writings have been cited by Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Paul Kengor, Aaron Klein, and Jerome Corsi.  He is the Author of Barack Obama  and Enemies Within.  He has also produced the documentaries ” America Under Siege: Soviet Islam”, “The Enemies Within”, and “America Under Siege: Antifa”.
LEARN MORE

Florida’s GOP Senators Who Voted for Gun Control Face Major Backlash

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This tar and feather symbolism in article below, is just another flashy “shiny object” action that does little to nothing to solve the problem. If anything, it will just help to elect Democrats to their seats especially if they have no Republicans running against them in Primaries – prime example State Sen Kelli Stargel who voted for this terrible law, has no Republican opponent but does have a rabid leftist in former Judge Doyel running against her.

What I have heard is that NRA dropped their lawsuit which didn’t contain anything about the gun seizure parts anyway.

To my knowledge neither the NRA or any of the other Florida gun advocacy groups have written or said anything about dangers of the ex parte, Risk Protection Order gun seizure parts of the law nor the use of a special social media site to send anonymous tips about possible threats nor the new threat monitoring bureaucracies created at both state & school district levels – why ?

We do know that 450 people in Broward and Pinellas counties have already had their firearms seized and that Pinellas county has even organized a gun seizing Task Force.

This more government gun control is the much bigger threat to all gun owners than just 21 year olds not being able to buy long guns and banning bump stocks. Yet what we have on it are chirping crickets?

Is anyone with any power to influence changes actually chasing this issue other than what we have heard from Jeff Mann running for Dist 56 FL House that he is writing proposed legislation to change the Marjory Stoneman School Safety (gun control) law?

I have also heard that the Senate Judiciary Committee will kill any attempts to change this Bad Law, e.g. not let proposals get to the Senate floor for discussion. Putting RINOs on this crucial committee like S. Florida RINO Flores is why we don’t have campus or airport (non-secure areas) carry.

Marian Hammer saying NRA doesn’t reveal their strategy is no help in terms of reducing the concern of gun owners – she could have least have said something like – We understand the concerns about gun seizures and we are working on fixes to reduce those concerns or some such.

The only good part about this terrible Law is Sherriff Judd’s Guardian Program and even it has been watered down by an option where School Supers & Sheriff’s must agree on either armed security guards for those schools without SROs or using trained, armed school employees to augment SROs or to protect those schools without SROS.

In case of Polk County for example, our liberal School Super Byrd didn’t want armed school employees recommended by Sherriff Judd and went with the minimum option of training security guards for elementary schools (since our middle & HSs all have 1 SRO). This is better than no armed good guys on campuses but more trained, good guys with guns on campuses would be better able to get to any bad guy/active shooter(s) and shoot them “graveyard dead”. More is better….should be the decision criteria here.

Less is better should be the decision criteria on bureaucratic govt. gun control & gun seizures in violation of our 2d, 4th, 5th and 14th Amendment rights.

Florida GOP senators face backlash after gun control vote …

www.bradenton.com

Shortly after Florida senators narrowly passed a bill that raised the age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 and imposed a minimum three-day waiting period on gun purchases, several Republican members received a gift hand delivered to their offices: a jar of tar and feathers.

Dinesh D’Souza’s ‘Death of a Nation’ opens

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Over the weekend, I went to see Dinesh D’Souza’s new movie, “Death of a Nation” (click for TRAILER). D’Souza is well known as a conservative filmmaker and author. His more recent works include:

Like these other movies, “Death of a Nation,” is professionally produced and very polished. And like the others, it is an OpEd piece in the form of a documentary. A lot of historical film footage was used in its making along with some rather slick re-creations to explain parts of his story.

This time around, D’Souza argues the public is being mislead by Progressive Democrats in terms of history and social values. In particular, he focuses on how liberals use the terms “fascist” and “racist” to vilify Republicans, most notably President Trump. He then goes to great lengths to explain both concepts, beginning with the fascist movement in Italy and the rise of Benito Mussolini. Interestingly, he claims members of FDR’s administration found fascism interesting and traveled to Italy to study it closely.

Whereas Italian fascism was nationalistic in intent, to bolster the Italians during the Great Depression, it called for control of business by the government. President Trump, on the other hand, has spawned nationalism in America, but abhors the concept of government control and embraces capitalism. He has gone to great lengths to eliminate governmental red tape.

As to racism, D’Souza contends the Nazis in Germany took their queue from America’s Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in order to control a race of people. The KKK originated from Dixie Democrats and grew to prominence during President Wilson’s administration. The movement was encouraged by the popular film, “Birth of a Nation” (1915), which Mr. Wilson showed to his cabinet in the White House.

Fast forward to 2017 and the incident at Charlottesville, VA where liberal protestors clashed with white supremisists (aka, the “Alt-Right”). D’Souza claims the label “Alt-Right” is a misnomer invented by the media to discredit conservatives. In the movie, D’Souza interviews the head of Virginia’s Alt-Right movement and found him to be more socialist than capitalist, and against many portions of the Constitution. From this perspective, they are more left than right.

As for Mr. Trump, he could find no evidence of racism, particularly in his immigration policies. As someone who believes in the rule of law, Mr. Trump welcomes all races who are interested in immigrating legally.

As an aside, I heard D’Souza speak in Orlando last month at a GOP Summit where he previewed his movie to attendees. He claimed racism was encouraged and supported by the Democrats (both north and south) and the Repulicans fought against it. He contends no Republican ever owned a slave. When it was pointed out to him that President Grant had owned slaves, D’Souza discovered this occured at a time when Mr. Grant was a Democrat, and later converted to the Republican Party (without slaves).

As with most of D’Souza’s movies, he takes you on a fascinating history trip. In this film, he discusses the Civil War, rise of the KKK, Italy under Mussolini, the rise of Nazism and Adolph Hitler, and connections to the Democrats. He makes a lot of bold statements regarding history, but offers evidence to support his argument, thereby challenging the viewer to think. As such, this was great mental gymnastics; something our youth should experience.

As an aside, I was accompanied to the movie by a never-Trumper, someone I have known for a long time. I was curious as to what his reaction would be. Frankly, I was surprised afterwards when he said it was a powerful movie offering details in history he hadn’t thought about.

So, Yes, I endorse the movie and recommend it to young and old, particularly high-schoolers who do not get an adequate education in history.

For locations and show times, see: https://tickets.deathofanationmovie.com/

Keep the Faith!

EDITORS NOTE: All trademarks both marked and unmarked belong to their respective companies. Copyright © 2018 by Tim Bryce. All rights reserved.

VIDEO: The Media Thinks You’re Stupid

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“Leading the pack of unhinged self-obsessed camera hogs is CNN’s Jim Acosta, who let’s not forget made clear in an interview that the big problem with ‘Trump vs. the press’ is that the American people are too stupid to know the press is right.” —Dana Loesch

The Good Intentions Fallacy Is Driving Support for Democratic Socialism

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“Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.” – Milton Friedman

hile Venezuela continues to collapse into a living hell for all but Nicolás Maduro and ruling elites, support in America for democratic socialism continues to rise.

Photo: New York Times.

Graphic reports such as the recent New York Times photo essay about starvation in Venezuela abound:

Kenyerber Aquino Merchán was 17 months old when he starved to death.

His father left before dawn to bring him home from the hospital morgue. He carried Kenyerber’s skeletal frame into the kitchen and handed it to a mortuary worker who makes house calls for Venezuelan families with no money for funerals.

Kenyerber’s spine and rib cage protruded as the embalming chemicals were injected… relatives cut out a pair of cardboard wings from one of the empty white ration boxes that families increasingly depend on amid the food shortages and soaring food prices throttling the nation. They gently placed the tiny wings on top of Kenyerber’s coffin to help his soul reach heaven—a tradition when a baby dies in Venezuela…

[H]is father, Carlos Aquino, a 37-year-old construction worker, began to weep uncontrollably. “How can this be?” he cried, hugging the coffin and speaking softly, as if to comfort his son in death. “Your papá will never see you again.”

If you are inclined to believe this is an isolated incident, reporters Meridith Kohut and Isayen Herrera disabuse you of your ignorance: “Hunger has stalked Venezuela for years. Now, it is killing the nation’s children at an alarming rate, doctors in the country’s public hospitals say.”

With reports like these, one wonders how support for socialism in America can be growing?

If some Americans are economically illiterate and ahistorical that would explain their support. If they have mistakenly identified Scandinavian countries as socialist, that would also offer an explanation.

Perhaps people are seeking more meaning in their lives and being part of a mass movement fills a void.

Some students have admitted to me they value being able to exercise power over others. Perhaps they see socialism as a means to acquire power?

These may be some of the explanations for increasing support for democratic socialism; and yet, there is another factor at work. Americans are increasingly allowing their thinking to be influenced by logical fallacies.

Charlie Munger is vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the legendary conglomerate he controls with Warren Buffett. In a speech at Harvard University about human misjudgment, Munger tells of a surgeon who removed “bushel baskets full of normal gallbladders” and continued maiming patients for five years past the point he should have been removed.

Munger was curious. Was the doctor motivated by greed? Munger was surprised to learn that the maiming doctor “loved” his patients and was motivated by good intentions. Munger sought insight from a doctor who had been involved in the surgeon’s removal:

I said, “Tell me, did he think, here’s a way for me to exercise my talents,” this guy was very skilled technically, “And make a high living by doing a few maimings and murders every year, along with some frauds?” And he said, “Hell no, Charlie. He thought that the gallbladder was the source of all medical evil, and if you really love your patients, you couldn’t get that organ out rapidly enough.”

For the surgeon’s patients, his good intentions were of little comfort.

When doctors of the ailing George Washington bled him, they were motivated by good intentions; and their unscientific medical practice arguably hastened Washington’s death.

Politicians who trust their seat-of-the-pants good intentions inevitably become authoritarians. They are relying on the limits of their error-prone minds and not on proven principles that promote human flourishing.

Those who rely on their good intentions to guide their actions are arrogant rather than humble. They have little respect or understanding for, as Hayek put it in his essay “Individualism: True or False,” the “spontaneous collaboration of free men [that] often creates things which are greater than their individual minds can ever fully comprehend.”

When Hugo Chavez, the father of Venezuela’s nightmare, passed in 2013, President Carter praised Chavez’s bold leadership saying, “We came to know a man who expressed a vision to bring profound changes to his country to benefit especially those people who had felt neglected and marginalized.”

Carter never doubted Chavez’s good intentions. Indeed, Carter offered those intentions as exculpatory evidence excusing Chavez’s brutality:

Although we have not agreed with all of the methods followed by his government, we have never doubted Hugo Chavez’s commitment to improving the lives of millions of his fellow countrymen.

Professor Owen Williamson of the University of Texas at El Paso might say President Carter had fallen victim to the logical fallacy, The Argument from Motives: “Falsely justifying or excusing evil or vicious actions because of the perpetrator’s apparent purity of motives or lack of malice.”

In his book Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman argued that there were two threats to freedom, external and internal. In 1962, Friedman pointed to the Soviet Union as an external threat. Seeing an internal danger, Friedman argued, is more difficult because it is “far more subtle”:

It is the internal threat coming from men of good intentions and good will who wish to reform us. Impatient with the slowness of persuasion and example to achieve the great social changes they envision, they are anxious to use the power of the state to achieve their ends and confident of their own ability to do so. Yet if they gained the power, they would fail to achieve their immediate aims and, in addition, would produce a collective state from which they would recoil in horror and of which they would be among the first victims.

That “concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it” has become among Friedman’s most famous ideas. His warning is ignored today by those believing the “good intentions” of politicians, such as Bernie Sanders or congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, will render their destructive policies harmless.

Friedman challenged his readers to consider, “Which if any of the great ‘reforms’ of past decades has achieved its objectives? Have the good intentions of the proponents of these reforms been realized?”

Related to the Good Intentions Fallacy is the Positive Thinking Fallacy. As Professor Williamson puts it, positive thinking is “an immensely popular but deluded modern fallacy of logos, that because we are ‘thinking positively’ that in itself somehow biases external, objective reality in our favor even before we lift a finger to act.”

Let us grant “good intentions” to today’s cadres of democratic socialists. Let us assume they are “thinking positively.” No matter. No good intentions or positive thoughts will overcome how reality works. The destructive outcomes of socialism will follow as history repeats itself.

COLUMN BY

Barry Brownstein

Barry Brownstein

RELATED ARTICLE: UCLA makes students pay classmates to promote ‘social justice’

Barry Brownstein is professor emeritus of economics and leadership at the University of Baltimore. He is the author of The Inner-Work of Leadership. To receive Barry’s essays subscribe at Mindset Shifts.

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

In Targeting NRA, Andrew Cuomo Focuses on Political Nemesis, Not Public Safety

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New York’s governor has made it clear that he’s on a witch hunt to put a private organization out of business.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, has been in a protracted battle with the National Rifle Association. Now he’s using a state agency to hound the pro-Second Amendment organization with costly regulatory threats, as well as to convince financial institutions not to do business with the NRA.

The NRA filed a lawsuit against Cuomo and the New York State Department of Financial Services, saying, according to NPR, that the state officials are trying to “deprive the NRA and its constituents of their First Amendment rights to speak freely about gun-related issues and defend the Second Amendment.”

The financial services agency specifically targeted an NRA insurance program. Called Carry Guard, it was created to help gun owners and concealed-carry permit holders pay legal bills if they use their firearms in self-defense.

In a letter Monday, Cuomo wrote:

We discovered that the NRA was marketing insurance products for gun owners that violated numerous state laws. Insurers such as Chubb Ltd. and a broker Lockton Affinity LLC were providing illegal insurance coverage to gun owners for intentional criminal conduct resulting in bodily harm through the NRA’s Carry Guard program.

“From the outset, it was clear that the investigation was meant to advance Cuomo’s political agenda by stifling the NRA’s speech and retaliating against the NRA based on its viewpoint on gun control issues,” the NRA said in a complaint, according to The New York Times.

“If I could have put the NRA out of business, I would have done it 20 years ago,” Cuomo responded in a statement Friday.

Cuomo urged other states to follow New York’s example.

The fact is that some of the attacks on the gun rights organization have been downright hysterical.

The NRA frequently has been called a terrorist organization by many on the left, and has come under attack from celebrities and other politicians.

However, no known NRA members have been accused of committing mass shootings, and most gun owners in general are law-abiding citizens.

A 2016 study by the Crime Prevention Research Center, a nonprofit devoted to conducting research on gun ownership, showed that concealed-carry permit holders are among the Americans least likely to commit a crime.

In fact, according to the study, they are less likely to commit crimes than police officers are.

It is also worth noting that the insurance program in New York state’s crosshairs is for gun owners who use firearms for self-defense, yet the left claims the program is for those who “murder.”

This does in some ways get to the heart of the gun debate.

While Second Amendment advocates see firearm ownership as a critical element of the right of self-defense, the left would rather see every American simply disarmed—whether criminal mass murderers or law-abiding gun owners—in their belief that this somehow would prevent all violence.

The logical end of “commonsense” gun control being mass disarmament, where only the government controls weapons.

It’s better to leave some people defenseless in the hope that bad people won’t be able to commit murders, this line of reasoning goes.

But as we’ve seen time and again, gun laws have failed to stop criminals or mass violence, leading many to believe that in a fallen world the defense against evil is citizens empowered to protect themselves and their neighbors.

As The Heritage Foundation’s Amy Swearer showed by analyzing a single month of statistics on gun use, firearms have been a particularly effective tool for citizens to prevent themselves from becoming victims.

This is why so many Americans support organizations such as the NRA, despite the incessant attacks by Cuomo and others on the left.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman is an editor and commentary writer for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Send an email to Jarrett. Twitter: .

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

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo welcomeing state and local officials to the National Comedy Center during an opening ceremony Aug. 1 at the $50 million center in Jamestown, New York. (Photo: Dan Cappellazzo/Polaris /Newscom)

K-12 Schools Bringing in Drag Queens to Teach Gender Ideology [+Video]

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K-12 schools are bringing drag queens into the classroom to teach gender ideology, a Thursday video revealed.

Teachers are praising “Drag Queen Story Hour,” according to a clip released by videographer Sean Fitzgerald and the David Horowitz Freedom Center. The program “captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models.”

dcnf-logo

Maurice Sendak Community School, a public school located in Brooklyn, New York, hosted a drag queen and first grade teacher Alexis Hernandez marveled at the event in a testimonial published on Drag Queen Story Hour’s website.

“Drag Queen Story Hour gave my first-graders a fun and interactive platform to talk and think about social and emotional issues like acceptance, being yourself, and loving who you are,” Hernandez said. “During our debrief … [students] were preaching the incredible lessons they had learned, like ‘It’s OK to be different,’ and ‘There’s no such thing as “boy” and “girl” things.’”

The first grade teacher said she would be hosting the event again the following year. Katrina Green, a teacher from Chickpeas Preschool in Brooklyn, also lauded the program.

The event “allows preschool children to deepen and complicate their ideas about gender at the exact age when they are often developing rigid ideas about this concept,” Green said.

Drag Queen Story Hour markets itself to children between 3 and 8 years old. The program’s reading list includes books like “Jacob’s New Dress” by Sarah and Ian Hoffman and “Red: A Crayon’s Story” by Michael Hall. While the former book’s plot revolves around a boy convincing his parents to let him wear a dress to school, the latter chronicles the journey of a crayon “mistakenly labeled” red to identify successfully as blue.

Fitzgerald cited articles noting a spike in children identifying as transgender within the past few years.

“Think about how absurd this is,” the videographer said. “The taxpayer is funding adult-themed performers to come and read to our smallish children in order to indoctrinate them into a political ideology about gender while, at the same time, school districts across the country are removing any and all references to biological sex from science textbooks.”

Fitzgerald directed viewers to stopk12indoctrination.org, where they can report indoctrination in K-12 schools.

COLUMN BY

Rob Shimshock

Rob Shimshock is a reporter for The Daily Caller News Foundation. Twitter: @ShimshockAndAwe

RELATED ARTICLES:

Drag Queen Story Hour Held At University of North Florida Library

How Drag Queen Events Prepare Children for Satanism

New York Public Elementary Schools Invite Drag Queens to Teach First-Graders ‘Gender Ideology’

Parents ‘horrified’ after man performs surprise drag show at Manhattan school talent event – New York Daily News

RELATED VIDEOS: 

Footage of Full Drag Queen Show at Elementary School.

Drag for Kids.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is a 2008 photo showing Drag Queen Phyllis Denmark, whose real name is Randy Patterson, and who called out the bingo numbers every Gay Bingo night. (Photo: St Petersburg Times/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom). 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.

How Religious Freedom Erodes, One Step at a Time

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Last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the formation of a new Task Force on Religious Liberty at the Department of Justice. The action came on the heels of a ministerial summit on religious freedom, which explored how religious freedom is under attack around the globe.

At the summit, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Sam Brownback, U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, highlighted the problems that arise when governments try to enforce conformity to a single view of what is sacred. Governments do far better, they argued, to honor every individual’s freedom to determine that for themselves. That is the path to pluralism—and peace.

Increasingly, however, that is the path less traveled. Too many nations are following paths leading to the decline of religious freedom.

That awful journey often begins with the social ostracization of religious minorities. In Saudi Arabia, for example, official textbooks teach students to compare Christians and Jews to dogs and pigs.

The next step economically disenfranchises religious minorities, denying them employment and education. In Egypt, for instance, Coptic Christians face extreme prejudice when looking for work—be it with the police force or the military, or even a professional soccer team.

Next comes the criminalization of minority religious beliefs. In Pakistan, for example, a Catholic woman named Asia Bibi currently sits on death row for allegedly blaspheming Muhammad.

Ultimately, the path away from religious freedom ends in violence, which may come from either the state or civil society groups. Last year in India, Hindu vigilantes killed a 12-year-old Muslim boy for allegedly slaughtering a cow that they consider sacred.

These ugly doings can occur anywhere that activists promote the punishment of nonconformists, the government does not intervene to protect minorities, and the majority of citizens stay silent. And recent developments in America suggest it can happen here.

In Colorado, Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, gladly served gay customers for two decades. But when his religious beliefs led him to decline creating a custom cake to celebrate a same-sex wedding, the state’s civil rights commissioners compared him to a Nazi and slaveholder.

Tim Gill, the multimillionaire Rolling Stone calls the “megadonor behind the LGBTQ rights movement,” announced he would bankroll a push to add sexual orientation to nondiscrimination laws in states across the country. His professed goal: to “punish the wicked,” that is, those who don’t conform to the new cultural orthodoxy.

Indeed, America is moving rapidly from the “social marginalization of nonconformists” stage to the next stage: excluding them from economic opportunities. When hearing the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor seemed to endorse economic disenfranchisement when she told Phillips: “Then don’t participate in weddings.”

In a growing number of cases, firefighters, military pilots, farmers, entertainers, and tech CEOs have lost jobs, promotions, and access to markets because they refused to bow to the new orthodoxy. And at least three states and two cities have terminated the contracts of religious adoption agencies because the agencies believe every child deserves both a mom and a dad.

Those who believe in the value of religious freedom must teach new generations how to defend it. These efforts should be bipartisan and ecumenical, including people from both sides of the same-sex marriage issue.

To be effective, we must defend the right of those with whom we disagree to express their beliefs. At the same time, both government and civil society must oppose demonizing religious minorities, speaking out against the rising volume of anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim acts of violence reported by the Justice Department.

The courts should continue to protect dissent from orthodoxies, be they religious or secular. This includes respecting each individual’s freedom to decide what is sacred to them.

One of the greatest American legal and political traditions is that those on both sides of controversial issues may live out their views. And, while government may have a position on each of these issues, our courts have never forced anyone to affirm those positions in violation of their conscience.

Congress can also help uphold religious freedom—for instance, by passing legislation that protects adoption agencies who believe every child deserves both a mom and a dad and to shield those who hold traditional views on marriage from federal sanctions.

America’s Founders resisted the temptation to determine what is sacred for us and to force conformity to a single orthodoxy. They enshrined religious freedom in our Constitution.

Yet today, that freedom is under assault. All Americans must respond by standing up for one another’s freedoms to think, to speak, and to act according to what each of us finds sacred. This is how to ensure our country stays on the path of religious freedom that leads to peaceful pluralism.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Emilie Kao

Emilie Kao

Emilie Kao is director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Religion & Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation. Twitter: .

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by kharps/Getty Images.

MOVIE CLIP: Conclusive Proof that Nazism is on the Political Left

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Dinesh D’Souza sent out the video clip below from his latest film “Death of a Nation: Can we save America a second time?”

D’Souza notes, “Here’s the actual Nazi 25-point platform…The Left accuses Republicans, and President Trump in particular, of being Nazis in an attempt to discredit us. But this is all part of the Democratic Party’s “big lie.”

D’Souza in the email states:

The very term “Nazi” is a compression of two words meaning “national socialist.”

And the official Nazi platform? Take a look:

  • State control of healthcare
  • Profit sharing for workers in large corporations
  • Moneylenders and profiteers punished by death
  • State control of education
  • State control of media and the press
  • State control of banks and industries
    Seizure of land without compensation
  • State control of religious expression

This reads like something written by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders!

Opening last weekend much to the Left’s outrage, Death of a Nation has already been seen by hundreds of thousands of patriots all over America and the results are in: audiences love D’Souza’s latest exposé.

EDITORS NOTE: Click here to get tickets and see Death of a Nation this week. Have you already seen Death of a Nation? Share the movie with your friends and family on social media, then rate it on Rotten Tomatoes. Visit the official movie website.