It’s still amazing that acting in the interests of national security would be remotely controversial. There are two choices: keep out some harmless people or let in some harmful people. For years, Democratic and Republican governments have opted for the latter and claimed that to make the other choice was racist, bigoted and “Islamophobic.” Trump has grasped the nettle and chosen it anyway, and is being duly smeared. Future free people, if there are any, will look at the battles he had to fight to protect the American people from jihad terror and marvel at the insanity of our age.
“Supreme Court tosses one of two travel ban challenges,” by Lawrence Hurley, Reuters, October 11, 2017:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out an appeals court ruling that struck down President Donald Trump’s previous temporary travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority nations countries that has now expired.
In a one-page order, the court acted in one of two cases pending before the nine justices over Trump’s travel ban, a case from Maryland brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued to stop the ban contained in a March executive order.
For now, the court did not act on a separate challenge brought by the state of Hawaii, which the court had also agreed to hear. That case also features a challenge to a separate 120-day refugee ban, which has not yet expired.
That case could yet be dismissed once the refugee ban expires on Oct. 24, meaning the court remains unlikely to issue a final ruling on whether the ban was lawful.
The justices were unanimous in deciding against ruling in the Maryland case, although one of the liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, noted that she would not have wiped out the appeals court ruling.
The justices had been scheduled to hear arguments in the case on Tuesday, but removed it from their calendar after Trump’s 90-day ban expired on Sept. 24 and was replaced with a reworked ban.
The expired ban had targeted people from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Sudan. The new open-ended ban, scheduled to take effect on Oct. 18, removed Sudan from the list while blocking people from Chad and North Korea and certain government officials from Venezuela from entering the United States….
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/trump-100-days-1.jpg391639Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2017-10-12 06:28:482017-10-12 06:28:48Supreme Court throws out appeals court ruling that struck down Trump’s previous temporary travel ban
Clemente Lisi: Diversity of thought would go a long way in improving newsrooms and the stories they produce, especially about religion.
In an era of fake “news,” readers are bombarded each day with stories – most of them legitimate, but sometimes totally made up – and fueled by social media. The newsgathering process, the method by which journalists report the news and editors determine the value of stories, has increasingly become a bone of contention.
Readers no longer blindly accept accounts in the morning papers or continuously streamed on Twitter feeds. Sloppy errors, perceived biases, and last year’s presidential election all helped feed into the narrative that the mainstream press is out of touch with everyday Americans. Indeed, the Internet has become both an opportunity for journalists, but increasingly also a challenge.
Newsrooms, from my experience, lack diversity. While diversity in the job market is the aim of all companies, no other industry needs it more than journalism. Newsroom diversity leads to big ideas, better debates, and improved news coverage. The problem? Diversity is often seen as having to do with either race or gender. Are there enough African Americans on staff? Should we hire another woman? These are all questions media companies grapple with behind closed doors every time there’s a job opening.
What employers never lose sleep over (or even talk about) is whether there are enough devout Catholics in their newsroom or if they need to hire a person of faith – any faith – to report on what’s going on in the world and in the community. Believing in God is taboo in the newsroom.
To say there is a religious blind spot in hiring is a gross understatement. But it make a big difference in the way important issues such as abortion and gay marriage are covered by media outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post. Media coverage can sway public opinion and help determine laws and policy. It impacts social mores and it’s being done largely without people of faith in key positions.
There is no more secular setting than in a newsroom. Liberal bias does exist in the media, but most journalists don’t see it. You can’t see bias when everyone around you thinks and feels the same way.
Clemente Lisi, a new contributor to The Catholic Thing, is an Assistant Professor of Journalism at The King’s College in New York City. He has nearly twenty years experience as both a reporter and editor at media institutions such as the New York Post, ABC News, and the New York Daily News.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/rosary-woman-e1507802993541.jpg403640The Catholic Thinghttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Catholic Thing2017-10-12 06:11:262017-10-12 06:11:26Why Rosaries Scare the Media
The Patriotic Democrat Party of President Truman, President Kennedy, and President Johnson was radicalized over the last 8 years, by the Obama administration, and Nazi Collaborator George Soros. The below listed article by Historian, Charles Sasser, outlines the policies and leadership of the new Democratic Party. America is under siege from within, the two new leaders’ of the Democratic Party plan to work with Socialists, Marxists, and Communists to subvert the U.S. Constitutional form of government, working from “inside the wire”, as described below and with the support of the traitors to the Republic listed in this oped.
The plan is being promoted by the Organization For Action (OFA), and is being funded by Nazi Collaborator Soros’ Tides Foundation, to fundamentally change the nation that was established by the Founding Fathers. The goal is to change the USA to a one party, Socialist State; Socialism throughout history has been Marxist inspired. Americans should not be surprised by Obama’s continuing effort to change America’s Republican form of government to Socialist State. The Democrat Party and the left of center liberal media establishment carefully hid Obama’s radical Marxist background from the American voters for 8 year.
In his youth, Obama was mentored “every day” after school in the home of the Anti-American Secretary of the Communist Party USA, Frank Marshal Davis. Obama developed close ties with Anti-Jewish former PLO Spokesman, Rashid Ismail Khalidi. Obama maintained close ties with the Anti-American domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, his wife, convicted terrorist, Bernadine Dorn, and began his political career at a fund raiser in their living room. Convicted felon, Tony Rezko, with close ties with the mafia, used mirrors to acquire Obama’s Chicago home. For 20 years, Obama sat thru the hateful Anti-American sermons by his spiritual mentor, Anti-American preacher Jeremiah Wright. Obama became a devout disciple and advocate of the Radical Anti-American Marxist, Saul Alinsky, and used his book, “Rules For Radicals”, as his text while indoctrinating radicals leftist thugs who demonstrated in Chicago.
Two new radical leaders of the Democratic National Committee, Keith Ellison and Tom Perez were hand-picked by Obama with the support of Nazi Collaborator George Soros. They took control of the Democratic Party from moderates and Blue Dog Democrats, and moved it radically left. George Soros, Bill Ayers, Andy Zee, Bernie Sanders, Al Sharpton, Valerie Jarrett, Bob Avakian, Obama, and Hillary Clinton supported the radical movement left.
The Democratic Party policies have shifted its support to Socialist, Marxist, Radical Black Nationalist Groups, the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR. Perez and Ellison have been supporting anarchist rallies, demonstration, and violent street riots that have been taking place nationally, since President Trump was inaugurated.
OFA, Soros, Ellison, and Perez are promoting the openly vicious “Trump Resistance Movement”, while employing the domestic terrorist organization, ANITFA as its violent foot soldiers, to execute Saul Alinsky’s Marxist policies in 400 planned street demonstrations in 2017.
The vicious “Trump Resistance Movement” is the beneficiary of an anti-Trump hostile left of center liberal media establishment. The “Trump Resistance Movement” goal is to disenfranchise 64 million Trump voters. For one year, with no proof, they have alleged that President Trump colluded with Russia to defeat Hillary, in order to destabilize and delegitimize the Trump administration. OFA has been focused on bringing down a duly elected President of the United States for the first time in 242 years.
Organizations funding the “Trump Resistance Movement” are Nazi Sympathizer George Soros’ pro-Communist MoveOn.org, Obama’s “Organization For Action” (OFA), Hillary Clinton’s “Onward Together” (OT), the ANTIFA Terrorists group (OT gave ANTIFA $800,000), Color of Change (the group planning to destroy 350+ Confederate statues in the US), Indivisible (the group working against Congressmen who support President Trump), By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), Bill Ayer’s Marxist Weatherman Underground Anarchist group, Ultra Violet (a women’s radical leftist group), Act Blue, The Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR, The Advocate Fund, The World Worker’s Party(a hard corps Marxist-Leninist Group that rioted with AN TIFA in Charlottesville), and The Communist Industrial Workers of The World (the Chicago based Marxist, Anarchist, and Socialist Organization).
The foundations funding the “Trump Resistance Movement” are The Ford Foundation ($2.35 million), WK Kellogg Foundation ($3 million), The Bauman Foundation, Nazi Sympathizer George Soros’ pro-Communist Open Society Foundation ($1.75 million to ANTIFA The Center for Community Change Action), Nazi Collaborator George Soros’ pro-Communist Tides Foundations, California Endowment ($524,000), New Media Venture, Philah Thropy Project, Propel Capital, The Public Welfare Foundation, The Compton Foundation, The Arkay Foundation, and the Emergent Fund (funded by the 3 leftist groups—the Threshold Foundation, the Solidarity Network, and The Women’s Donor Network).
Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, the newly elected Deputy Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is anti-Semitic, pro-Muslim Brotherhood, and pro-Nation of Islam. As a Muslim, Ellison believes in Shariah Law, and stated that he does not respect or believe in the US Constitution, “because its wordings were inspired by the Bible”. Ellison, is a member of the Nation of Islam, has worked very closely with Louis Farrakhan for many years; Farrakhan is the rabid anti-Semitic and anti-white leader of the Nation of Islam. Ellison has been intertwined with CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood for over 10 years, the Muslim Brotherhood paid for Ellison’ pilgrimage to Mecca in 2008.
Ellison declared himself a supporter, ally, and defender of Communist Terrorists. He organized a fundraisings event for Communist terrorist, Sara Jane Olson, a member of the Communist movement Symbiotic Liberation Army. Ellison defends Joanne Chesimard, also known as Assata Shakur, who is wanted by the FBI for murdering a police officer; and is currently opposing extradition from her safe haven in Communist Cuba. Ellison has been close to the Communist Party USA for many years – even holding a fundraiser in the home of Minnesota Communist Party Chairman, Erwin Marquit. Ellison has even written articles for the Communist Party Web site, and when President George W. Bush was in office, Ellison compared him to Adolf Hitler.
The Radical Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Tom Perez, was Obama’s extreme radical left Secretary of Labor. Tom Perez was a longtime leader of CASA de Maryland, a militant leftist “immigrant’s rights group”. When Perez was the leader of CASA, Hugo Chavez, the Communist President of Venezuela, was sending him one million dollars a year, from Venezuela’s oil revenue; Chavez directed Perez to use the funds to keep the Southern border of the US wide open.
Perez has a long history of anti-white views, including making the declaration that “white people should not be entitled to protection under the Voting Rights Act.”
Perez previously served as the Assistant Attorney General under Attorney General, Eric Holder, and supported Holder’s repeated verbal and policy degradations of the US Constitution. He supported Holder’s execution of the “Fast and Furious Operation” scandal, and supported Holder’s prevention of the investigation of rampant voter fraud during the two national election during which Obama was elected. Those actions by Holder, led Congress to vote Holder “In Contempt of Congress”. Holder was the first Attorney General in 240 years to be voted “In Contempt of Congress”.
Ambassador Valladares, the former US Ambassador to the United Nations on Human Rights, stated Perez is a racist who hates the Bible, and that he is anti-Semitic as well. He said Perez’s goals have been to destroy the free market economy of the United States, to destroy the Christian society of the United States, and to turn the United States into a Marxist nation. Ambassador Valladares further stated, about Perez and Ellison, that: “The two new leaders of the Democratic National Committee are both racist, anti-Semitic, who ignore the Constitution, and the history of America.
Ambassador Valladares sad both of them have been and are allies of terrorist movements; they have shared the hatred for the United States, and its laws. They complement each other in their hatred of the Bible, they wish to sweep away this American society, with ideological mobs, terrorists, Communists, Radical Muslims, and the scum of the country whose goal it is to destroy it (the Republic). They joined the ranks of the Democratic Party, and with the complicit silence of the (former) leaders of the it (the Democratic Party), they took possession of it (the Democratic Party).”(April 25, 2017 by Frank de Varona – Bear Witness Central).
The corrupt left of center liberal media establishment continues to cover up the backgrounds of Keith Ellison and Tom Perez, the two new Radical Pro-Muslim Brotherhood, Marxist leaders of the Democrat National Committee. Millions of Americans have no idea just how radical, anti-Semitic, pro-Muslim Brotherhood, and pro-Marxist, Keith Ellison and Tom Perez are. Perez and Ellison are following the radical Marxist philosophy of Saul Alinsky.
Obama and Hillary are long time disciples of Saul Alinsky. Hillary wrote her senior thesis in support of Alinsky’s radical Marxist philosophy as outlined in his book, “Rules For Radicals”; it is a book of pure evil, and Alinsky dedicated the book to Lucifer. Hillary worked very closely with Alinsky during and after college. Obama taught Community Organizing in Chicago using “Rules For Radicals” as his playbook, while training radical leftists and Marxists in his classes to demonstrate in the streets of Chicago in front of commercial banks; they were very successful in extorting money from the banks. “Rules For Radical” was the play book for the Obama administration for 8 years, and is now it’s the playbook for OFA.
OFA operates out of 250 offices across the nation, with 32,525 members, say they have 5 million volunteers, and have 14 field organizers. OFA is operating with a growing war chest of $40+ million, and is receiving additional massive funding from Nazi Collaborator Soros’ pro-Communist “Open Society Foundation”, Soros’ “MoveOn.org”, and Soros’ “Tides Foundation”.
OFA has developed an on-line Anti-Trump Training Program, and runs a 6 week Anti-Trump Fellowship Program(there are over 1000 graduates of the Anti-Trump Training Program, with hundreds of new enrollees being trained). OFA is leading the mobilization and coordination of the “Trump Resistance Movement”. From January 20, 2017 to December 31, 2017, OFA scheduled 400 street demonstrations, in 42 states.
OFA has been organizing and coordinating 400 demonstrations in 42 states with the below listed leftist groups, while employing ANTIFA Terrorist as their violent foot soldiers. The leftist groups include the Communist Party USA (who endorsed both Obama and Hillary for President), the Marxist Leninist Communist Workers Party Front “ANSWER”, the Revolutionary Communist Party, The Communist Party’s “Progressive Unity Fund”, the Communist World Workers Party, the Communist Industrial Workers of the World, Bill Ayer’s Marxist Weather Underground anarchists, Black Lives Matter, the New Black Panther Party, Al Sharpton’s “National Action Network”, Socialists, Progressives (the new age name Communists have labeled themselves as, to mislead Americans as to their true identity), The World Worker’s Party, Color of Change, CAIR, The Muslim Brotherhood (MB ), Ultra-Violent, La Raza, and SIEU.
The new extreme radically left, Socialist/Marxist Democratic Party “no longer supports” the US Constitution, “Freedom of Speech” at rallies or in classrooms, they object to voter registration only for American citizens, oppose requiring picture IDs in order for citizens to vote, and opposes closure of the wide open southern border to prevent terrorist, drug dealers, and Illegal Aliens from entering the US. The corrupt left of center liberal media establishment has done an excellent job of concealing just how radically left the Democratic Party has become over the last 8 years.
Approximately70 elected Democratic members of Congress identify themselves as Progressives and are supporters of either Black Lives Matter, La Raza, the New Black Panther Party, The Nation of Islam, Al Sharpton’s “National Action Network”, CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood, and with sympathizers of Communist Cuba. There are plenty of photos of those 70 Congress members on the Internet refusing to rise to participate in the Pledge Allegiance to the Flag, when the American Flag is honored by the 435 members of Congress.
The Democratic City Council and the Democratic Mayor of Charlottesville, VA communicated with Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA representatives weeks before the violent riots erupted in Charlottesville on August 12, 2017. Young Democrats worked hand-in-hand with Black Lives Matter organized protest in the streets in St Louis for that continued for many weeks from mid-September on. The Charlottesville riots and the riots in St. Louis and Berkeley were funded by Nazi Sympathizer George Soros’ pro-Communist Open Society Foundation and Tides Foundations. The rallies turned into bloody riots, destroying property, supporting brutal beatings, promoting the setting fires to buildings & cars, assaulting police officers, stabbing targeted victims, attacking peaceful demonstrators, and focused on closing down free speech.
The “REAL SCANDAL” facing the nation today, is not the “False Russian Scandal” being promoted every day by the New Radical Democratic Party, Obama’s Organization For Action, Nazi Collaborator George Soros, Hillary Clinton’s Onward Together, Marxists, the Communist Party USA, Socialists, and outright lies by the left of center liberal media establishment, in their support for Obama’s Master Plan to disenfranchise 64 million American Citizens voters, in the drive to remove a duly elected President of the United States for the first time in the Republic’s 242 year US History.
The “REAL SCANDAL” is that the Republican leaders in Congress, Cong Paul Ryan and Sen Mitch McConnell, continue to ignore the “Real Russian Scandal”, that then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s transferred 20% of the United States’ uranium production to Putin in Russia with the approval and support of the then occupant of the Oval Office. As reported by the New York Times, nine investors in the “Russian Uranium Scandal” funneled $145 million to the Clinton Foundation as a payoff. Instead of Ryan and McConnell calling for the appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate the “Russian Uranium Scandal”, they have failed to support President Trump in his attempts to deal with the issues he was elected to fix, by 64 million Americans.
The New Radical Democratic Party has been able to frustrate many of President Trump’s campaign pledges, because Cong Ryan and Sen McConnell have been reluctant to support President Trump by:
Funding the secure southern border wall to will keep out drug smugglers, Radical Islamic Terrorists, white slavers, and Illegal Aliens;
Reducing the high personal federal income tax oppressing hard working Americans and in reducing the highest corporate taxes in the world;
Replacing Obamacare with an affordable healthcare system that will give Americans the freedom to select their own health insurance;
Passing legislation to cut off federal grants to sanctuary cities that refuse to abide by U.S. Federal Immigration Laws;
Canceling sequestration that is weakening & destroying the “Combat Effectiveness” of the U.S. Armed Forces;
Reining in reckless spending by an irresponsible Congress, that’s driven the National Debt up to over $20 trillion in the last 8 years;
Supporting enforcement of all US Federal Immigration Laws;
Supporting the appointment of 553 key Executive Branch vacancies;
Passing a bill to repair the crumbling infrastructure, and so much more;
Halting the discriminatory practice of excluding Christians Refugees from the Middle East, while only allowing hundreds of thousands Middle East/African Muslim Refugees to resettle in 187 cities at a cost of billions of tax payer dollars.
“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America,” declared Barack Obama during a campaign stop on Oct. 30, 2008, five days before the election that would make him the most powerful man in the world.
The concept of “fundamental transformation” has been discussed vigorously since then, especially in light of the many sweeping changes Obama brought to the country over his eight years in office.
Historian Charles Sasser sees Obama’s “fundamental transformation” in the context of an older and more sinister plan articulated by a pair of Marxist activists nearly 50 years ago.
“What we’re seeing now is this fundamental transformation, and it goes all the way back to [Herbert] Marcuse,” Sasser said during a recent appearance on the “Prophecy Hour” radio program. “In the 1960s when he [Marcuse] was talking about the ‘long march through the institutions,’ this is what Obama was talking about – the fundamental transformation of America.”
The “long march through the institutions” was coined by student activist Rudi Dutschke in the late 1960s to describe his strategy for bringing about the conditions for a Marxist revolution in the United States.
The plan was for Marxists to infiltrate all of America’s major institutions – politics, the news media, the education system, the churches, the entertainment industry – and slowly subvert those institutions from within, thereby subverting America.
Marcuse, a prominent Marxist intellectual associated with the Frankfurt School, agreed with Dutschke’s strategy and brought it to wider attention in his 1972 book “Counterrevolution and Revolt.”
Sasser, author of the brand new book “Crushing the Collective: The Last Chance to Keep America Free and Self-Governing,” pointed out Hillary Clinton has expressed shades of this idea as well. During a 2015 speech, the soon-to-be Democratic presidential nominee declared, “Deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.”
The imposition of political correctness is an integral part of this long march through the institutions, according to Sasser. Viewed from this perspective, the march is making excellent progress in certain areas.
“Let’s look at our education,” Sasser said. “We’ve got safe spaces; we’ve got all these people who refuse to listen to anyone who has an opinion different from their own. They will riot, break windows, everything else to keep people from free speech.”
The Marxists are also slowly but surely undermining Christianity, according to Sasser.
“In 2012, when Obama was nominated for a second term, the Democratic National Committee took God out of their platform, and when someone proposed that they put God back in the platform, the entire stadium [at the Democratic National Convention] booed the idea of putting God in the platform,” he recalled.
“Now, look a few months later: There was a prayer at an abortion rally, and they prayed to God for God to help on abortions.”
The radical leftists are subverting the political arena as well. In “Crushing the Collective” Sasser reveals a long list of organizations through which “socialist and authoritarian radicals” are working to undermine America.
This includes Socialist International, whose leadership includes or has included Democratic Party figures such as Howard Dean, Madeleine Albright and Tom Daschle.
It includes the Congressional Progressive Caucus, founded by admitted socialist Bernie Sanders. The CPC included 83 Democratic House members in 2010.
Sasser also singles out the Institute for Policy Studies, an old and influential far-left think tank whose membership has included many current and former congressmen, including Leon Panetta, Obama’s defense secretary and CIA director.
“Socialist International, the Progressive Party – look at the Progressive Party a little closer,” Sasser urged the “Prophecy Hour” audience. “Progressive Democrats of America, the Congressional Progressive Caucus – look at how many of those people in there are socialists and Marxists. Nobody wants to do that because it’s politically incorrect to say anything about it.”
So, what can Americans do to beat back the long Marxist march? Sasser is not optimistic; he does not believe conservatives can ever take back the cultural institutions now that those institutions have succumbed to the left.
Nor does he believe a single American president can stop the long march. Not even Ronald Reagan could stop it.
“Reagan was successful in what he did, but then as soon as he was gone, the march through the institutions continued, and I think we’re going to see the same thing now,” Sasser commented.
He noted the radical left is stronger than ever, and they seem to sense that.
“Obama said, ‘Now is our time.’” Sasser said. “Yes, now is their time. They think that they have the upper hand, that they can make America socialist, and I think they’re going to do that because we don’t fight back. We’re afraid to say anything because of political correctness.”
Sasser, who has spent much of his life studying history, knows societies that fall as far into the clutches of collectivism as the U.S. has do not bounce back well. They may survive, but in a diminished form. Italy is still around, for example, but it is nothing like the Roman Empire. Iran is a regional power, but it is not as prestigious as the great Persian empires of the past.
“I want to believe that Trump may be another Reagan, that we may have a chance,” he said. “But then I look at the institutions. Like Newt Gingrich said, once they own the cultural institutions, they’re impossible to regain, and if they own all of the institutions, including many of our churches right now, if they do that we can’t retake them if we can’t crush this idea of the collective.”
EDITORS NOTE: Copyright by Capt Joseph R. John. All Rights Reserved. The material can only posted on another Website or distributed on the Internet by giving full credit to the author. It may not be published, broadcast, or rewritten without the permission from the author.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/marxicratpartyflag-e1507800638589.png384640Joseph R. Johnhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJoseph R. John2017-10-12 05:30:592017-10-12 05:51:01Historian Ties Democrats to Marxist Plan to Collapse U.S. from Inside
Shortly after Donald Trump got elected president, a California mayor arranged a meeting with the Consul General of Mexico to assure the diplomat that his “sanctuary city” will continue providing safe spaces for illegal immigrants, according to records obtained by Judicial Watch. The documents show that Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin’s top aide, Stefan Elgstrand, sent an electronic mail to the Mexican Consul General in San Francisco, Gemi Jose Gonzalez Lopez, stating the following: “The recent events around Trump’s executive order reminded me to reach out to you. We are a sanctuary city and will continue to be. I imagine you are very busy dealing with the concerns and fears of many residents in the Bay Area, and we want to assist in providing safe spaces for them.”
Judicial Watch obtained the files as part of a California Public Records Act request for information surrounding riots by the radical leftist Antifa movement against President Trump and conservative personalities scheduled to speak at the University of California Berkeley. Media reported that fires were set, fences and windows broken, firebombs launched and commercial-grade fireworks thrown at police. A renowned, San Francisco-based pop culture magazine wrote that the uprising raised some big questions about the future of the free speech movement. Judicial Watch requested the files to shed light into how city, police and university officials handled the lawlessness, which received global news coverage. The request asked for records of communications between officials in the Berkeley mayor’s office and the Berkeley Police Department as well as records of communications between the mayor’s office and officials at UC Berkeley, one of the nation’s top public research universities.
The documents show a coordinated effort between Democratic city officials nationwide to “build the movement to resist Trump.” The operation is being financed by leftwing billionaire philanthropist George Soros through one of his groups called Center of Popular Democracy. Earlier this year Judicial Watch uncovered a scandal in which the U.S. government quietly gave millions of taxpayer dollars to destabilize the democratically elected, center-right government in Macedonia by colluding with Soros’ Open Society Foundation. The U.S. Ambassador to Macedonia, Jess L. Baily, worked behind the scenes with Open Society Foundation to funnel large sums of American dollars for the cause, constituting an interference of the U.S. Ambassador in domestic political affairs in violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. The cash flowed through the State Department and the famously corrupt U.S. Agency of International Development (USAID) and Judicial Watch sued both agencies for records related to funding and political activities of the Open Society Foundation in Macedonia.
The Soros-backed, northern California movement includes a taxpayer-salaried physics professor at UC Berkeley who advises Mayor Arreguin on how to handle conservative protestors at a spring rally. The professor, James McFadden, tells the mayor in an electronic mail obtained by Judicial Watch to “create a corral” and ask the Trump supporters to “get in the corral.” He describes Trump supporters as “delusional and paranoid about the world around them” and says they’re “willing to use violence to impose that order on us, especially when they have the blessing of a narcissistic authoritarian president.” A professor at another California public university tells the Berkeley mayor that the arrest of Antifa leader/middle school teacher Yvette Felarca for assaulting a political opponent (captured on video) at a Sacramento rally, in which seven people were stabbed, was a “McCarthyist political persecution” and he condemned Felarca’s arrest and teaching suspension “in the strongest possible terms.”
Ironically, Berkeley’s official government website brags about being a bastion of the free speech movement. “In Alameda County alone, Berkeley is ranked fourth in population behind Oakland, Fremont, and Hayward,” the website states. “And yet, we are famous around the globe as a center for academic achievement, scientific exploration, free speech and the arts.” Indeed, Berkeley is renowned as the birthplace of the free speech movement in in the 1960s. An opinion piece in a California newspaper points out that the city’s free speech movement has gone full circle, however. “Nowadays, Berkeley is rapidly becoming famed as one of the least tolerant cities in the country — where any challenge to left-wing orthodoxy is met with terrorist threats and mob violence.”
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Berkeley-Mayor-Jesse-Arreguin.jpg360640Judicial Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJudicial Watch2017-10-11 20:04:342017-10-11 20:04:34U.S. Mayor Assures Mexican Consul His ‘Sanctuary City’ Will Provide Safe Spaces for Illegal Aliens
This week, the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area released its fifth annual report titled The Legalization of Marijuana in Colorado: The Impact, Volume 5. We devote today’s issue of The Marijuana Report newsletter to highlighting a few of many significant findings the report contains.
National Families in Action has remade some of the graphs and charts in the report to emphasize key findings. This one shows how many of Colorado’s students were expelled, referred to law enforcement, or suspended in the 2015-2016 school year. This is the first year the Colorado Department of Education differentiated marijuana violations from all drug violations, and this year’s report will serve as a baseline to determine whether marijuana violations increase, decrease, or stay fundamentally the same.
Read The Legalization of Marijuana in Colorado: The Impact, Volume 5 here. This information appears on page 41 (PDF page 49).
The new report explains that although Colorado created its own Healthy Kids Survey, the combination of a poor response rate and the fact that several major counties with large populations had low or no participation rendered the 2015 survey’s results invalid. For a discussion of this see page 33 (PDF page 41). Volume 5 relies on the National Survey on Drug Use and Health to compare Colorado marijuana use with the national average for ages 12-17, 18-25, and 26 & older over a ten year period (2005-2006 to 2014-2015).
See data for these graphs on the following pages:
Ages 12-17, page 36 (PDF page 44)
Ages 18-25, page 56 (PDF page 64)
Ages 26 & Older, page 60 (PDF page 68)
Read The Legalization of Marijuana in Colorado: The Impact, Volume 5 here.
The report notes that data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 2006-2011 Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), and 2012-2016 Colorado Department of Transportation show that drivers testing positive for marijuana who were killed in traffic crashes rose from 6 percent of all traffic deaths in 2006 to 20 percent eleven years later. Marijuana-related traffic deaths jumped from 9 percent to 14 percent once the state commercialized marijuana for medical use and from 11 percent to 20 percent after legalizing the drug for recreational use.
Read more about marijuana-related driving in Colorado here starting on page 13 (PDF page 21).
In 2016, more than one-third of Colorado drivers who tested positive for marijuana had marijuana only in their systems. Another 36 percent had marijuana and alcohol. Slightly over one-fifth tested positive for marijuana and other drugs but no alcohol, while 7 percent had marijuana, alcohol, and other drugs on board.
See page 18 (PDF page 26) in The Legalization of Marijuana in Colorado: The Impact, Volume 5 here.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/the-marijuana-report-logo.jpg360640National Families in Actionhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngNational Families in Action2017-10-11 19:46:352017-10-11 19:46:35New Report on Impact of Legal Pot in Colorado Schools
Why do some people recklessly repeat statements ad nauseam which are, in the end, simply not true? Because for many, the means justify the ends. Some people will believe anything if it is repeated enough, allowing proponents of claims such as those made about Mississippi’s HB 1523 to see them increasingly accepted as true. Unfortunately, this does not help our increasingly fractured society get along, but only cements intolerance toward many well-meaning Christians — who themselves would never act in such bad faith toward those who disagree with biblical truth.Since HB 1523’s challengers lost before the 5thCircuit after they were not able to show how the law injured them, they have now appealed to the Supreme Court — and have recklessly mischaracterized the circumstances surrounding this law in doing so.
Their petition opens by absurdly arguing that the religious exemptions in HB 1523 “demean” and “stigmatize” same-sex couples and deny them equal treatment under the law (ostensibly, because such exemptions allow some to withhold their approval of such conduct). In the petitioners’ view, “[t]hat is precisely the harm that Obergefell sought to rectify.”
This line of reasoning misleadingly implies that HB 1523 somehow was designed to undercut Obergefell. It wasn’t. The law simply provides exemptions for those whose consciences are implicated by Obergefell — which can be followed consistent with HB 1523; same-sex marriages are still fully treated the same by the state of Mississippi as other marriages. Just as objections to military service and abortion have long been protected in law despite fitting the petitioners’ notion of a “particular” religion (notably, the petition never really addresses these areas), the law can provide conscience exemptions in other areas too.
Nevertheless, the petitioners continue to try to condition the reader to the “goodness” of Obergefell and the nefarious nature of any religious objections to it (notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s own recognition to the contrary) — the warm sounding yet nebulous “promise” of Obergefell is discussed, HB 1523 is alleged to “repudiate central aspects of petitioners’ lives, families, and identities,” and the law is an “attempt[] to use religious exemptions to undermine rights to equality and dignity of LGBT people.” Even the Masterpiece case is subtly equated with “state attempts to limit Obergefell by creating unprecedented religious exemptions.”
Christians are trying to live with Obergefell, and just protect their own conscience by not being forced under penalty of law to celebrate something that is clearly contrary to scripture. Yet instead of trying to find a reasonable middle ground, opponents of HB 1523 are forging ahead and asking the Supreme Court to take this case with the help of none other than former Obama Solicitor General Donald Verilli — who famously admitted at oral argument in Obergefell that religious institutions that disagree with same-sex marriage could lose their tax-exempt status.
Those supporting HB 1523 and similar legislation might disagree with Obergefell, but they are not trying to change the ruling — they are just trying to protect themselves in the face of it. If only those who support Obergefell and disagree with HB 1523 would do the same.
Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/101117_transscotus_770x400-e1507764055572.jpg362640Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2017-10-11 19:22:002017-10-11 19:22:56The Supreme Falsehoods of HB 1523 Opponents
I am a graduate of the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) at Washington University, in St. Louis, Missouri. I graduated in July 1967 and because I received one of the first full two year ROTC scholarships I was given a Regular Army commission and had a four year service obligation, the same as graduates of the United State Military Academy at West Point.
I served in peace time and in combat with many officers, subordinates, colleagues and superiors, who graduated from West Point. They, to a man, were always fine officers and gentlemen. I retired from the U.S. Army in 1990 as a Lieutenant Colonel (LTC).
[I]t was unclear whether West Point was aware of his activity as a student until the Daily Caller on Wednesday published a sworn statement from a then-West Point history professor, which mentioned Rapone’s anti-U.S. and pro-communist views.
Retired Army Lieutenant Col. Robert M. Heffington gave the statement after a tense encounter with Rapone, whom he said had a “serious problem with military authority figures.”
Heffington said he shared his misgivings about Rapone with three close friends and colleagues, and one of them showed him Rapone’s Facebook page, which contained a number of anti-military, anti-government, pro-communist, and pro-Muslim posts stemming back to 2014. Read more.
West Point has produced former presidents, numerous corporate executives and officers of the highest caliber who have held the highest positions in our military and Department of Defense. I have only the highest respect for graduates of West Point. However, West Point is under intense scrutiny for admitting, graduating and commissioning someone like Spencer Rapone.
QUESTION: Is Spenser Rapone an anomaly or endemic of something bigger?
That is the question raised and answered by LTC Heffington in his letter.
Before you read any further, please understand that the following paragraphs come from a place of intense devotion and loyalty to West Point. My experience as a cadet had a profound impact upon who I am and upon the course of my life, and I remain forever grateful that I have the opportunity to be a part of the Long Gray Line. I firmly believe West Point is a national treasure and that it can and should remain a vitally important source of well trained, disciplined, highly educated Army officers and civilian leaders.
LTC Heffington then writes, “However, during my time on the West Point faculty (2006-2009 and again from 2013-2017), I personally witnessed a series of fundamental changes at West Point that have eroded it to the point where I question whether the institution should even remain open.”
Here are the reasons that, sadly, LTC Heffington questions whether West Point should remain open:
First and foremost, standards at West Point are nonexistent. They exist on paper, but nowhere else. The senior administration at West Point inexplicably refuses to enforce West Point’s publicly touted high standards on cadets, and, having picked up on this, cadets refuse to enforce standards on each other. The Superintendent refuses to enforce admissions standards or the cadet Honor Code, the Dean refuses to enforce academic standards, and the Commandant refuses to enforce standards of conduct and discipline. The end result is a sort of malaise that pervades the entire institution. Nothing matters anymore. Cadets know this, and it has given rise to a level of cadet arrogance and entitlement the likes of which West Point has never seen in its history.
The cadet honor code has become a laughingstock. Cadets know they will not be separated for violating it, and thus they do so on a daily basis. Moreover, since they refuse to enforce standards on each other and police their own ranks, cadets will rarely find a cadet at an honor hearing despite overwhelming evidence that a violation has occurred. This in turn has caused the staff and faculty to give up even reporting honor incidents.
Academic standards are also nonexistent. I believe this trend started approximately ten years ago, and it has continued to get worse. West Point has stated standards for academic expectations and performance, but they are ignored. Cadets routinely fail multiple classes and they are not separated at the end-of-semester Academic Boards. Their professors recommend “Definitely Separate,” but those recommendations are totally disregarded.
Even the curriculum itself has suffered. The plebe American History course has been revamped to focus completely on race and on the narrative that America is founded solely on a history of racial oppression. Cadets derisively call it the “I Hate America Course.”
Conduct and disciplinary standards are in perhaps the worst shape of all. Cadets are jaded, cynical, arrogant, and entitled. They routinely talk back to and snap at their instructors (military and civilian alike), challenge authority, and openly refuse to follow regulations. They are allowed to wear civilian clothes in almost any arena outside the classroom, and they flaunt that privilege.
LTC Heffington ended his letter writing:
It breaks my heart to write this. It breaks my heart to know first-hand what West Point was versus what it has become. This is not a “Corps has” story; it is meant to highlight a deliberate and radical series of changes being undertaken at the highest levels of USMA’s leadership that are detrimental to the institution. Criticizing these changes is not popular. I have already been labeled a “traitor” by some at the Academy due to my sworn statement’s appearance in the media circus surrounding Spenser Rapone. However, whenever I hear this, I am reminded of the Cadet Prayer:
“…suffer not our hatred of hypocrisy and pretense ever to diminish.
Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong,
and never to be content with a half-truth when the whole can be won.
…that scorns to compromise with vice and injustice, and knows no
fear when truth and right are in jeopardy.”
West Point was once special, and it can be again. Spenser Rapone never should have been admitted, much less graduate, but he was—and that mistake is directly attributable to the culture of permissiveness and apathy that now exists there.
It hurts me to publish this as a retired Army officer as much as it saddened LTC Heffington who wrote this letter. LTC Heffington is truly an officer and a gentleman. He is doing what his training, oath and rank require – to tell the truth.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/west-point-coat-of-arms.jpg360640Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2017-10-11 15:39:072017-10-11 19:00:17Should the United States Military Academy at West Point Remain Open?
A decorated retired Air Force officer who witnessed one of the most deadly attacks on Navy SEALs in U.S. history is breaking her silence, saying the government covered up evidence detailing that the 2011 downing of a Chinook helicopter gunship [call sign Extortion 17] that killed 38 fighters in Afghanistan could have been prevented had it not been for restrictions to the military’s rules of engagement that were changed under the Obama administration.
The mission
August 6, 2011: Retired Air Force Capt. Joni Marquez and her crew were working the dark morning hours aboard an AC-130 gunship after being summoned to a mission she describes “as almost like a 9-1-1 type of a situation.”
The gunship was ordered to fly close-in air support above Afghanistan’s dangerous Tangi Valley, in Wardak Province, assisting troops with the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment who were being fired on by eight heavily armed Taliban insurgents.
Retired Air Force Captain Joni Marquez was on the AC-130 gunship the night Extortion 17 was shot down. (Photo, Joni Marquez)
The Rangers had called in for assault helicopters to engage the enemy hiding among the rocky valley. The air weapons team fired on the Taliban fighters, but not all of the insurgents were killed as originally believed.
“I had the sensor operators immediately shift to the eight insurgents the helicopters had taken out,” Marquez told Circa, in her first interview about the incident. “Two were still alive.”
Marquez was the fire control officer aboard the AC-130 gunship, making sure that the sensors and weapons were aligned and allowing the crew hone in on targets.
Permission denied
That night it didn’t matter, because the gunship was not given permission to fire. “We had seen two of them (insurgents) moving, crawling away from the area, as to not really make a whole lot of scene,” she recalled.
Monitoring the scene from above, she relayed the scene to the ground force commander. “You have two enemy forces that are still alive,” she said. “Permission to engage.”
The United West, on the fourth anniversary of the shoot down of Navy SEAL helicopter call sign – Extortion 17, release a critically important press conference that took place on May 9, 2013 in Washington, D.C. The May 2013 press conference confirmed what U.S. Air Force Captain Joni Marques says.
Please watch SEAL TEAM SIX – Extortion 17 EXPOSED:
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/extortion-17-revised.jpg320640Defend The Borderhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDefend The Border2017-10-11 12:23:302017-10-11 12:26:57Decorated Air Force Officer: Pentagon Covered Up Real Cause of the Shoot Down of Extortion 17
There’s a disclaimer many of us have been conditioned to utter, quite reflexively, and it’s something that has got to stop. When preparing a defense of the United States (against, lamentably, other “Americans”), we may preface it with, “Well, I know our country isn’t perfect” or, as pundit Tucker Carlson said while debating a bigoted lawyer last month, “I don’t deny…that this country is flawed….” Actually, our perspective is flawed.
To gain some perspective, imagine you were giving a speech about your mother and opened with, “Now, we know my mother has flaws, but….” Sound good?
Consider the message sent. Since we’re all imperfect, it’s a given your mother has flaws, and, therefore, it isn’t something you’d normally even think to mention. Thus, the very act of mentioning it involves the implication that your mother isn’t just saddled with the usual imperfections — but that she’s uniquely flawed. It’s not something you do unless she’s a somewhat horrible person.
Or you’re a horrible child — or one horribly brainwashed into thinking he must please a certain hateful audience by disparaging what should be held dear.
Of course, if America were uniquely flawed, it would follow that there are a host of nations better. If we know of one, we may want to consider moving there. If we don’t, we should stop parroting that stupid disclaimer. Russians don’t do it. Chinese don’t do it. Japanese don’t do it. Not even Sudanese, Iranians or North Koreans do it.
In fact, while there’s no nation without sin, can you think of one beyond the waning West whose citizens feel compelled to issue self-flagellating we’re-so-flawed utterances? So why do many Americans, despite occupying history’s greatest nation, feel such a compulsion? What are they comparing America to? Heaven?
Speaking of the spirit world, many cultures would engage in ancestor worship. We engage in ancestor condemnation. Just recently, while defending Columbus Day against Indigenous Peoples Day dunderheads, a quite well-meaning commentator wrote that there “are 364 other days in the year on which we could acknowledge the sins of our ancestors….”
Sorry, but I don’t do ancestors. First, I’ll consider condemning our forebears when other groups and nations begin condemning theirs. Second, I’m no more responsible for their trespasses than I am for their triumphs. (Speaking of which, when I start getting royalty checks for all the inventions and innovations birthed by history’s great white men, I’ll consider offering reparations.) Lastly, I have no interest in continually “acknowledging” my ancestors’ sins — I have enough problems with my own.
This brings us to another aspect of this matter, one well illustrated by another comment Tucker Carlson made: that our country “is deeply flawed on questions of race.”
Actually, no, it’s not. As in the 1990s Rwandan genocide, racial/ethnic/tribal/religious conflicts elsewhere often have resulted in massive bloodshed. In contrast, it’s hard to think of a nation in which so many disparate peoples get along as well as in the U.S. (though the Left is trying feverishly to change that). The point is that in all this talk about “our flaws,” we’re not even talking about “our” flaws.
We’re talking about the flaws of people long dead (that is, when the flaws aren’t wholly imaginary).
In other words, we’re fighting yesterday’s battles — harping on our ancestors’ sins in an infinite loop — and ignoring today’s.
As to this, if a man seeing a therapist fixated constantly on his late father’s faults, wouldn’t the therapist point out that, not only is he living in the past, but that incessantly focusing on another’s flaws can be a way of avoiding having to confront your own?
Leftists haven’t the foggiest idea what our “flaws” are for the simple reason that, being moral relativists/nihilists (not believing in Truth, absolute by definition), they have no standard of perfection to use as a yardstick. And if you have no objective standard of right, you can’t know what’s wrong — not any more than you could identify unhealthful foods without believing in and knowing the rules of human nutrition.
We do have real flaws, today, now, things such as confusion over marriage, sex and the sexes (“transgender” agenda); the mainstreaming of perversion; decadent entertainment; rampant vulgarity; racial demagoguery; profligate spending; leftist propaganda everywhere; and, what lies at the heart of it all, moral relativism. But it’s easier to talk about those dastardly dead white males — they’re not around to defend themselves.
One of the great victories of the Left is that it has woven so many of its suppositions so seamlessly into the culture that even good people accept them, unknowingly, unthinkingly. Thus will we utter, cowed and callow, “Look, I know our country has flaws….”
The irony is that if we could purge so-called leftism from the hearts and minds of Americans, most of our flaws would disappear overnight.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/america-the-beautiful-e1507724831969.jpg388638Selwyn Dukehttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngSelwyn Duke2017-10-11 08:28:282017-10-11 08:28:28Now, We Know My Mother Has Flaws, but….
Last year, he spoke to the Values Voter Summit as a candidate — this year, it will be as the 45th President of the United States. Today we have confirmation from the White House that President Donald Trump will speak to the VVS crowd this Friday morning. If you’re on the fence about attending, jump on over to the VVS website to secure your spot now!
The October 13-15 event in Washington, D.C. is only a few days away, and President Trump won’t be the only newsmaker on the platform. You’ll hear from hero and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), Reps. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.), RSC Chairman Mark Walker (R-N.C.), Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Dr. Bill Bennett, Dana Loesch, “Duck Dynasty’s” Phil Robertson, Laura Ingraham, Todd Starnes, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Steve Bannon, Judge Roy Moore, Lt. Col. Oliver North, and more. Click here to seize the moment in Washington next week!
Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.
Robert Royal celebrates the 100th edition of the personalist journal Prospettiva Persona, an essential initiative in the struggle to save the West.
People sometimes write me to complain that much online commentary is too negative. That TCT and other sites do not pay enough attention to the many good things happening and to Christian joy.
You can’t be against “joy,” of course, assuming (a large assumption) that you know what authentic joy is. The way the phrase is often used, I admit, strikes me as a somewhat less than fully Christian effort to tell a hedonistic world: Look, we’re having fun too. In my judgment, that hasn’t worked out so well. It may be just me, but like Paul writing to the Thessalonians, I think it safer – and better – on the whole, these days, to keep faith and work quietly.
There are many groups and individuals who do so and never get any notice. I was with one such group last week and hope to help many people hear much more about them. Twenty-five years ago, in the immediate afterglow of the fall of Communism and of John Paul II’s encyclical Centesimus Annus – which reviewed the disasters of the previous century and tentatively sought a way forward – a remarkable married couple decided that the work necessary to the reconstruction of civilization had not ended with the Cold War. Indeed, it had just barely begun.
This month they published the 100th number of their quarterly magazine, Prospettiva Persona (“Perspective on the Human Person”), and also announced – not their retirement, but their new roles as contributors and counselors to the new editor Flavio Felice (a sometime contributor to The Catholic Thing and old friend to many of us). Flavio, a man of many talents, is the youngest person ever to receive tenure at the Lateran University in Rome, where he teaches Catholic Social Thought.
Giulia Paula di Nicola and Attilio Danese met and married as undergraduates, went to study philosophy – Hegel of all things – in Germany, but like other earnest seekers of wisdom in the twentieth century, decided that much modern philosophy was too stretto, i.e., narrow. They found their way – like Jacques Maritain, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Gabriel Marcel, Edith Stein, Emmauel Mounier, Karol Wojtyla (later JPII), and many others – into the “personalist” currents of modern philosophy. And founded Prospettiva Persona, significantly not in Rome, but on the opposite coast of Italy, in the city of Teramo.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/girl-praying-american-flag-e1507721331168.jpg404640The Catholic Thinghttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Catholic Thing2017-10-11 07:28:592017-10-11 07:28:59Prospective on the Person: An Essential Initiative in the Struggle to Save the West
As George Orwell said, “some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.”
Many stupid ideas originate with academics on college campuses. If they remained there and didn’t infect the rest of society, they might be a source of entertainment, much in the way a circus is.
Let’s look at a few stupid ideas peddled by intellectuals.
During the Cold War, academic leftists made a moral equivalency between communist totalitarianism and democracy.
Worse is the fact that they exempted communist leaders from the type of harsh criticism directed toward Adolf Hitler, even though communist crimes against humanity made Hitler’s slaughter of 11 million noncombatants appear almost amateurish.
According to Professor R.J. Rummel’s research in “Death by Government,” from 1917 until its collapse, the Soviet Union murdered or caused the death of 61 million people, mostly its own citizens.
From 1949 to 1976, Communist China’s Mao Zedong regime was responsible for the death of as many as 78 million of its own citizens.
On college campuses, the same sort of equivalency is made between capitalism and communism, but if one looks at the real world, there’s a stark difference.
Just ask yourself: In which societies is the average citizen richer—societies toward the capitalist end of the economic spectrum or those toward the communist end?
In which societies do ordinary citizens have their human rights protected the most—those toward the capitalist end or those toward the communist end?
Finally, which societies do people around the world flee from—capitalist or communist? And where do they flee to—capitalist or communist societies?
More recent nonsense taught on college campuses, under the name of multiculturalism, is that one culture is as good as another. Identity worship, diversity, and multiculturalism are currency and cause for celebration at just about any college.
If one is black, brown, yellow, or white, the prevailing thought is that he should take pride and celebrate that fact even though he had nothing to do with it.
The multiculturalist and diversity crowd seems to suggest that race or sex is an achievement. That’s just plain nonsense.
In my book, race or sex might be an achievement, worthy of considerable celebration, if a person were born a white male and through his effort and diligence became a black female.
Then there’s white privilege. Colleges have courses and seminars on “whiteness.” One college even has a course titled “Abolition of Whiteness.”
According to academic intellectuals, whites enjoy advantages that nonwhites do not. They earn higher income and reside in better housing, and their children go to better schools and achieve more. Based upon those socio-economic statistics, Japanese-Americans have more white privilege than white people.
And, on a personal note, my daughter has experienced more white privilege than probably 95 percent of white Americans. She’s attended private schools, had ballet and music lessons, traveled the world, and lived in upper-income communities.
Leftists should get rid of the concept of white privilege and just call it achievement.
Then there’s the issue of campus rape and sexual assault.
Before addressing that, let me ask you a question. Do I have a right to place my wallet on the roof of my car, go into my house, have lunch, take a nap, and return to my car and find my wallet just where I placed it?
I think I have every right to do so, but the real question is whether it would be a wise decision.
Some college women get stoned, use foul language, and dance suggestively. I think they have a right to behave that way and not be raped or sexually assaulted. But just as in the example of my placing my wallet on the roof of my car, I’d ask whether it is wise behavior.
Many of our problems, both at our institutions of higher learning and in the nation at large, stem from the fact that we’ve lost our moral compasses and there’s not a lot of interest in reclaiming them.
As a matter of fact, most people don’t see our major problems as having anything to do with morality.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.
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Trust in the mainstream media is at a historic low—and rightfully so given the behavior of many journalists in Washington, D.C.
Ever since Donald Trump was elected president, it is painfully clear that the mainstream media covers liberals glowingly and conservatives critically.
Now journalists spread false, negative rumors about President Trump before any evidence is even produced.
Americans need an alternative to the mainstream media. That’s why The Daily Signal exists.
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A CIA whistleblower, Kevin Shipp, has emerged from the wolves den to expose the deep state and the shadow government which he calls two entirely separate entities.
Shipp had a series of slides explaining how the deep state and shadow government functions as well as the horrific crimes they are committing against U.S. citizens.
Some of the revelations the former CIA anti-terrorism counter intelligence officer revealed included that “Google Earth was set up through the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and InQtel.” Indeed he is correct, the CIA and NGA owned the company Google acquired, Keyhole Inc., paying an undisclosed sum for the company to turn its tech into what we now know as Google Earth. Another curious investor in Keyhole Inc. was none other than the venture capital firm In-Q-Tel run by the CIA according to a press release at the time.
Shipp also disclosed that the agency known as the Joint Special Ops Command (JSOC) is the “president’s secret army” which he can use for secret assassinations, overturning governments and things the American people don’t know about.
FBI warrantless searches violate the Fourth Amendment with national security letters, which Shipp noted enables them to walk into your employer’s office and demand all your financial records and if he or she says anything about them being there they can put your supervisor in jail or drop a case against themselves using the “State’s Secret Privilege law.”
“The top of the shadow government is the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency,” Shipp said.
Shipp expressed that the CIA was created through the Council on Foreign relations with no congressional approval, and historically the CFR is also tied into the mainstream media (MSM.) He elaborated that the CIA was the “central node” of the shadow government and controlled all of other 16 intelligence agencies despite the existence of the DNI. The agency also controls defense and intelligence contractors, can manipulate the president and political decisions, has the power to start wars, torture, initiate coups, and commit false flag attacks he said.
As Shipp stated, the CIA was created through executive order by then President Harry Truman by the signing of the National Security Act of 1947.
According to Shipp, the deep state is comprised of the military industrial complex, intelligence contractors, defense contractors, MIC lobbyist, Wall St (offshore accounts), Federal Reserve, IMF/World Bank, Treasury, Foreign lobbyists, and Central Banks.
The Trump administration is dismantling President Barack Obama’s climate legacy piece by piece, and this week it’s taking an axe to arguably the biggest piece.
In an expected move, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt officially began the process of rolling back the incorrectly named Clean Power Plan.
If the Trump administration is intent on achieving 3 percent economic growth and rescinding costly regulations that carry negligible climate benefits—and if it is concerned about preserving our energy grid—the Clean Power Plan is a must-go.
Under section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act, the Obama EPA formalized regulations to reduce carbon dioxide from existing power plants.
Using a name that surely message-tested well, the Clean Power Plan had nothing to do with eradicating hazardous pollutants from power generation. The U.S. already has laws on the books to protect Americans’ health from emissions that have adverse environmental impacts.
Instead, the Clean Power Plan regulated carbon dioxide, a colorless, odorless, nontoxic gas, because of its alleged contribution to climate change.
From Day One, Obama’s Clean Power Plan was fraught with problems—economically, environmentally, and legally.
For starters, families and businesses would have been hit with more expensive energy bills.
How so? The plan set specific limits on greenhouse gas emissions for each state based on the states’ electricity mix and offered “flexible” options for how states could meet the targets.
But no matter how states would have developed their plans, the economic damages would have been felt through higher energy costs, fewer job opportunities, and fewer energy choices for consumers.
The EPA’s idea of flexibility would not have softened the economic blow. It merely meant that Americans would have incurred higher costs through different mechanisms.
Even if we implement the Clean Power Plan to perfection, the amount of climate change averted over the course of this century amounts to about 0.02 C. This is so small as to be scientifically undetectable and environmentally insignificant.
Legally, the Clean Power Plan was on shaky ground, to say the least. The regulation grossly exceeded the statutory authority of the EPA, violated the principles of cooperative federalism, and double-regulated existing power plants, which the Clean Air Act prohibits.
Take it from Laurence Tribe, Harvard University professor of constitutional law and a “liberal legal icon” who served in Obama’s Justice Department.
Tribe stated in testimony before Congress that the “EPA is attempting an unconstitutional trifecta: usurping the prerogatives of the states, Congress, and the federal courts—all at once. Burning the Constitution should not become part of our national energy policy.”
It’s no surprise that more than half the states in the country petitioned the Supreme Court to pause implementation of the regulation, and judges obliged, issuing a stay in 2016.
Pruitt, who led the charge against a rogue EPA as attorney general in Oklahoma, will respect the limits of the EPA as head of the agency. The EPA will now go through the formal rule-making and public comment period in order to repeal the Clean Power Plan.
What comes after that remains to be seen. State attorneys general in New York and Massachusetts, as well as environmental activist groups, are lining up to sue. The EPA could offer a far less stringent replacement regulation, which some industry groups are pushing for to buttress against lawsuits.
If members of Congress are fed up that policy continues to be made through the executive branch with a phone and a pen, they should step to the plate and legislate.
In this case, the solution is clear. The Clean Air Act was never intended to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions.
Congress should pass legislation prohibiting the EPA and other agencies from implementing harmful regulations that stunt economic growth and produce futile climate benefits.
Nicolas Loris, an economist, focuses on energy, environmental and regulatory issues as the Herbert and Joyce Morgan fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Read his research. Twitter: @NiconomistLoris
A Note for our Readers:
Trust in the mainstream media is at a historic low—and rightfully so given the behavior of many journalists in Washington, D.C.
Ever since Donald Trump was elected president, it is painfully clear that the mainstream media covers liberals glowingly and conservatives critically.
Now journalists spread false, negative rumors about President Trump before any evidence is even produced.
Americans need an alternative to the mainstream media. That’s why The Daily Signal exists.
The Daily Signal’s mission is to give Americans the real, unvarnished truth about what is happening in Washington and what must be done to save our country.
Our dedicated team of more than 100 journalists and policy experts rely on the financial support of patriots like you.
Your donation helps us fight for access to our nation’s leaders and report the facts.
You deserve the truth about what’s going on in Washington.
EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of former President Barack Obama is by Kevin Dietsch/UPI/Newscom.
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Hundreds of thousands of Polish Catholics gathered in Poland in a massive rosary prayer against the rise of secularization and the spread of Islamization across Europe.
The event, “Rosary on the Borders,” was held on the anniversary of the October 7, 1571 naval Battle of Lepanto, in which the outnumbered Christian naval fleet dealt a massive blow to the Muslim Ottoman Empire, saving Christendom from Islamic domination.
Watch a short video clip of the event:
Catholics from more than 70 different locations in the world joined spiritually with the Polish Catholics including Catholics from the United States, England, France, Sweden, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, the Philippines and New Zealand.
Clearly, it was a resounding success, as thousands of Poles were bused in from more than 300 churches to points all along the 2,000-mile border. According to the New York Times, participants in Poland gathered for prayer at 320 churches as well as in 4,000 designated prayer zones.
Citizens of all ages, including many elderly, braved the brisk cold weather to take a stand against Islamization and to pray for the salvation of Poland, as well as all of Europe to remain Christian. Approximately 90% of Poland residents identify as Catholic.
To read the New York Times articles and for additional photos of the massive rosary prayer, click here.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/poland-prayer-vigal-e1507676769660.jpeg374640Thomas More Law Centerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThomas More Law Center2017-10-10 19:06:222017-10-10 19:17:55Catholics Across the Globe Rally with Poland as a United Front Against Islamization
Newsrooms, from my experience, lack diversity. While diversity in the job market is the aim of all companies, no other industry needs it more than journalism. Newsroom diversity leads to big ideas, better debates, and improved news coverage. The problem? Diversity is often seen as having to do with either race or gender. Are there enough African Americans on staff? Should we hire another woman? These are all questions media companies grapple with behind closed doors every time there’s a job opening.
There are many groups and individuals who do so and never get any notice. I was with one such group last week and hope to help many people hear much more about them. Twenty-five years ago, in the immediate afterglow of the fall of Communism and of John Paul II’s encyclical Centesimus Annus – which reviewed the disasters of the previous century and tentatively sought a way forward – a remarkable married couple decided that the work necessary to the reconstruction of civilization had not ended with the Cold War. Indeed, it had just barely begun.
Catholics from more than 70 different locations in the world joined spiritually with the Polish Catholics including Catholics from the United States, England, France, Sweden, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, the Philippines and New Zealand.