VIDEO: On the Left, a New Clash Between Feminists and Transgender Activists

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In January, the august New York Public Library withdrew as host of a forum organized by a self-described radical feminist group called the Women’s Liberation Front, or WoLF.

The irony was palpable: The planned meeting was titled “An Evening With Canceled Women,” since the five speakers from WoLF all claim to have been “deplatformed”—i.e., shouted down by hecklers or kicked off speakers lists—because they questioned claims made by transgender advocates regarding sexuality and identity.

In other words, as some conservative news outlets gleefully reported, the New York Public Library canceled the “canceled women”! Why?

The library had no comment, but it likely feared that it too would become a target of activists who have demonstrated and even threatened violence during other programs sponsored by the group.

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“It’s very common for people to say we deserve to die,” Kara Dansky, a board member of WoLF, said in a phone interview.

Actual death threats seem rare, but there are plenty of signs of an angry front opening up in the culture wars. Although religious figures and people on the right have challenged the transgender movement, the conflict with WoLF involves feminist stalwarts of the social justice left who support their fundamental rights but reject the idea that a man can truly become a woman, or vice versa.

Specifically, the ire of trans activists and their supporters has been aroused by some basic positions taken by WoLF and others, namely: 1) that a person’s sex is biologically determined and can’t be changed, even by surgery; and 2) that the pieces of legislation passed or pending in several countries and American states to extend civil rights protections to transgender people, usually called Equality Acts, are wrongheaded and harmful to women and children.

The number of liberals making those arguments publicly is still small. But it is growing. And it has already given rise to a strange reshuffling of the political deck, as some feminists of otherwise impeccable leftist credentials have formed alliances with conservative and evangelical groups that would fervently disagree with them over just about everything else—abortion and gay marriage most conspicuously.

Last January, the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., hosted a panel called “The Inequality of the Equality Act: Concerns From the Left,” during which several speakers from WoLF explained their point of view to a supportive Heritage audience.

Instead of provoking a full debate, these disagreements have prompted efforts to silence speech. Last year, for example, protesters accused the Toronto Public Library of endorsing “hate speech” because it agreed to provide space in one of its branches for an event featuring Meghan Murphy, the Canadian editor of an online journal, Feminist Current, and a prominent figure in the anti-transgender-rights movement.

“There is a difference between denying free speech—and what is known as de-platforming, which is when you refuse to allow hate speech to be disseminated in your facility,” read a Change.org petition assailing the library’s decision, signed by more than 9,000 people.

In Seattle, hundreds of trans supporters—some shouting “No hate, no fear, every gender is welcome here”—protested on Feb. 1 outside a public library where Murphy was on a program sponsored by WoLF.

In Toronto last year, according to the National Post, a resident of a shelter for female victims of sexual abuse, Kristi Hanna, 37, was accused of bias by the Ontario Human Rights Support Center after she complained that being forced to share a small room with a bearded male-to-female transsexual person made her feel unsafe. She left the shelter.

Lisa Littman, a professor in the School of Public Health at Brown University, lost an outside consulting position after local clinicians joined critics who objected to her peer-reviewed study that found many adolescents who claim to be trans and are being given body-altering medical treatment may be responding more to “social contagion and peer influences” than to a genuine, permanent condition.

In Britain, 54 transgenderism researchers signed a letter to The Guardian newspaper describing the intimidation they’ve experienced because they’ve raised questions about some provisions of a Gender Recognition Act being considered by Parliament.

“Members of our group have experienced campus protests, calls for dismissal in the press, harassment, foiled plots to bring about dismissal, no-platforming, and attempts to censor academic research and publications.”

Similarly, “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling was sharply criticized in December after she tweeted support for a British researcher who lost her job at a think tank for expressing “offensive and exclusionary” language, after she said “men cannot change into women.”

Even the feminist icon Germaine Greer has been reviled because she argues that even a man who takes hormones and undergoes sexual reassignment surgery is still a man.

“I’ve had things thrown at me,” she said in a now famous BBC interview. “I’ve been accused of inciting violence against transgender people. That’s absolute nonsense.”

Welcome, in other words, to the censorious world of the identity-politics left, where transgender rights have been recast as the new frontier of the broader civil rights movement.

New terms have emerged, including “transphobic,” which takes its place with racist, homophobic, and misogynist as the voguish terms of opprobrium for people who in many cases are by no means racist, homophobic, or misogynist, but simply depart from one or another plank of the identity-politics orthodoxy.

Women like the members of WoLF have been accorded a new pejorative acronym: TERF, for trans exclusionary radical feminist.

What’s “driving their influence” is “the false claiming of a feminist mantle to anti-transgender positions,” Ria Tabacco Mar, director of the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, told The Washington Post, speaking of groups like WoLF. “This is not a crossing of party lines. This is a principle of exclusion.”

No doubt these terms emerge from a deeply felt sympathy for trans people, who certainly do experience discrimination and even violence.  Still, the speed with which this once marginal effort has gained acceptance has created ideological whiplash as new modes of thought clash with older ones.

Some feminists and other more liberal skeptics of transgender rights note there has been little conversation about a movement that makes broader demands than other pushes for civil rights.

Until now marginalized groups have demanded equal status and protection from discrimination, but they haven’t called into question some of the basic ways in which people identify themselves.

Gays and lesbians never fought to be considered straight; black people don’t fight to be considered white. But the core tenets of the ideology embraced by many transgender advocates requires society to redefine basic signifiers of identity in profound and somewhat contradictory ways, most significantly demanding that biological men be considered women, thereby recasting traditional definitions of male and female.

At the same time, it also demands that society replace such binary notions of sex with a fluid, vague, not-very-scientific notion of gender as the key defining element of a person’s identity.

The groups challenging these notions assert that sex is entirely biological and can’t be changed. But trans women have received more attention from some feminists (and others) because they believe that trans men do not present the sort of danger or discomfort to biological men that trans women do to biological women—such as sexual aggression or participation on sports teams.

Specifically, some feminists are defending protections and opportunities won expressly for women. WoLF and other critics reject the idea that a man should legally be a woman with the right to occupy protected women’s spaces simply because he says he’s one, feels like one, wears dresses, takes hormones, or even has a sex-change operation.

Beyond that, they argue that far from promoting hateful “transphobic” notions that ought to be shouted down, their goal is to protect women and children from wrongheaded ideas that would harm them.

“Disagreements over sex and gender have cleaved the feminist community,” Libby Emmons, a member of WoLF, wrote in the online magazine Quillette. This is, she continued, “an unusually vicious front in the culture war.”

There’s an irony in this. The feminist revolution of the past quarter-century was at least partly responsible for shaking up traditional notions of gender and sex; it advanced the idea that gender (like race) is largely a social construct, that most differences between the sexes are the result of culture, expectations, and upbringing, rather than biology.

As the pioneering feminist Simone de Beauvoir put it, “One is not born but becomes a woman.” This view gave rise to the emphasis on gender, or how a person feels about himself or herself, as the major element in identity, rather than sex, and from there it was only a short step to the idea that “gender identity” should have the same protected status as racial or sexual equality.

Members of WoLF and others like them dispute this, maintaining that the sexual barrier is unbridgeable.

“The third-wave feminist movement that came out of the 1990s made a mistake in saying there were no differences between men and women related to evolution and biology,” Murphy told me in a phone interview from Vancouver, where she lives. “But the big problem is the ideology of transgenderism itself, which conflates sex and gender and says it’s possible to ‘identify’ your way out of biological sex.”

“Sex is real, and it is immutable,” Murphy said at the “Canceled Women” conference in January, after it was moved to another venue in New York. “One is born either male or female and remains so for life, regardless of preference, surgery, or hormone treatments.”

“To be clear, I’m not saying that trans people don’t suffer, whether from body dysphoria or other forms of mental illness, or that people in general don’t suffer when they step outside the gendered roles laid out for us,” she continued.

“What I’m saying is that there’s no clear definition of what a ‘trans’ person is. … Trans is nothing more than a personal feeling or an announcement, which does not qualify you as part of a definable class of people who are inherently marginalized or subjected to discrimination.”

Emmons put it this way: The idea that by dressing in stereotypical women’s fashion and acting “like a woman,” a man can legally become a woman erases women as a separate category.

Moreover, she argues, the very idea that a man can be considered a woman by, say, putting on a dress and high heels derives from a stereotype about femininity that, she says, is itself “misogynist.”

“The word ‘woman’ is on the verge of having no meaning at all,” Emmons told me.

In practical terms, members of WoLF and others appear to be fighting an uphill battle, as trans rights, gender fluidity, and the nonbinary nature of some people have become widely accepted and promoted by many elite institutions, including universities, the media, Hollywood, the Democratic Party, and even the NCAA, the governing body of intercollegiate sports.

Last year the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed the Equality Act, now before the Senate, banning discrimination based on “sexual orientation and gender identity.” About 18 state legislatures as well as the Canadian and British parliaments have adopted similar bills or are considering them.

Although less than 1% of adult Americans identify as transgender, it is becoming de rigueur at colleges and universities for everyone to announce their pronouns. “He” and “she” are no longer the only singular options; “they” and “them,” for example, are now used to refer to one trans person as opposed to a group.

The Associated Press, The New York Times, and other news organizations now mandate the use of those pronouns. A libertarian columnist, Joe Caldera, says he was let go by the Denver Post in January because of a column that questioned the AP’s style guidelines.

The political climate on the left is such that at a town hall meeting in Iowa in January, Sen. Elizabeth Warren vowed to give a young transgender person veto power over her potential nominee for secretary of education.

Gestures like Warren’s were seen by some social media critics as pandering to a politically correct orthodoxy, but it was clearly an applause line at that town meeting.

So, why shouldn’t people who feel they were born in the wrong body be able to transition from one sex to another, and to be treated legally and socially in accordance with their adopted gender, not the sex they were born with?

“We don’t frame this as a question of trans rights,” Dansky told me, answering that question. “We want to protect the privacy and safety of women and girls.”

For WoLF’s members and those who agree with them, the implications of trans rights are stark. Because they consider trans women to be men, they are concerned about efforts to let males enter female spaces.

They argue, for example, that the “equality acts” being passed across the English-speaking world would allow biological men into spaces that have always been reserved for women, like bathrooms, changing rooms, sports teams, and prisons.

Much discussion has focused on public bathrooms. But Jennifer Finney Boylan, who identifies as a transgender woman, noted in a New York Times op-ed there is no evidence that “big hairy men” are invading ladies rooms.

Boylan further argued that there’s also no evidence on the sports teams question or any other concern that transgender people are changing things in a substantial or worrisome way.  And, indeed, overall, evidence about the actual effects of equality laws and other efforts to recognize transgender rights seems largely anecdotal.

Still, some of that evidence indicates that there are plenty of instances where biological males claiming to be women have gained access to what used to be women’s-only spaces.

“I’ve spoken to two women in Texas forced to share a cell with two physically intact male prisoners,” Dansky told me. In fact, local newspapers have reported on complaints by women prisoners at Federal Medical Center in Carswell, Texas, that they are being forced to share showers and bathrooms with transgender biological male inmates being treated there.

In Massachusetts and other states, trans women are being accepted into shelters for battered women, a practice that gave rise to the case of Hanna, the victim of sexual abuse who left a shelter when she was forced to share her room with a person she deemed to be a man.

As of last year, at least 17 states allowed transgender athletes to compete without restriction, according to Transathlete.com, a website that tracks the issue.

More serious perhaps than the impact of trans rights on women’s sports or women’s prisons is the issue of medical interventions for sexually dysphobic young people, teenagers, and sometimes even younger children.

For the past 10 to 15 years, specialists in sexual dysphoria have been treating children and adolescents with medications and surgery that enable them to align their bodies with their sexual identities. The practice has passionate defenders.

Norman Spack, a pediatric endocrinologist at Boston Children’s Hospital, described in a TED talk a few years ago how his experience with sexually dysphobic children—who, he emphasizes, are few in number—led him to believe strongly in the benefits of medical interventions.

For several years, he directed a program at the hospital that administers drugs to delay the onset of puberty for younger children and hormones for adolescents that make effectively irreversible changes in their bodies, like breasts for transgender girls who were born male.

“Not doing anything for them not only puts them at risk of losing their lives through suicide,” Spack says in his TED talk, “but also says something about whether we are truly an inclusive society.”

Spack maintained that children treated in his program are rigorously evaluated and, if under 18, have to undergo months of counseling and have parental consent before they can be given drugs or undergo surgery.  But there are many critics of sex-change procedures who contend that their advocates do them too quickly, dispensing with psychological examination.

Littman has found that some adolescents are responding more to social pressure than to deep psychological need, suggesting that treatment with hormones like estrogen and testosterone could be a grave mistake. She cites, for example, the case of four girls, all of whom “came out” as transgender after their coach did.

Then there is the matter of surgery, especially mastectomies on girls who want to transition to being boys.

One study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2018 concluded that women and girls wishing to become men who had double mastectomies were generally happier than those who had not undergone surgery. But what disturbed some critics was the disclosure that among the people studied, 33 of them had had mastectomies before they were 18, and 16 of them had had their breasts removed when they were 15 or younger.

Not all professionals in the field believe this to be a good thing. In 2018, the American College of Pediatricians concluded that the sex reassignment protocol for children and teenagers being followed in some clinics “is founded upon an unscientific gender ideology, lacks an evidence base, and violates the long-standing ethical principle, ‘First do on harm.’”

Emmons, the member of WoLF, says there are plenty of women in their 20s who underwent hormone treatments and mastectomies who now regret them, and, indeed, a Google search for “detransitioners network” or “Pique Resilience Project” will turn up plenty of examples of exactly that.

She adds bluntly: “Children are not allowed to get a tattoo, to drink, or to vote. The only thing they’re allowed to do is destroy their reproductive systems.”

Originally published by RealClearInvestigations

COLUMN BY

Richard Bernstein

Richard Bernstein, formerly of The New York Times, is a journalist and writer who currently contributes to RealClearInvestigations. A Brooklyn resident, he is the author of nine books.

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VIDEOS: She Survived China’s Forced Labor Camp. Now She’s Urging Americans to Reject Socialism.

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Jennifer Zeng grew up admiring the Communist Party of China and adhering to its stringent rules. But her life changed forever when she embraced religion and was swept up in a government crackdown on Falun Gong. Arrested four times as a young adult and held in as a prisoner in a labor camp, she quickly woke up to the horrors of living in a socialist state. After being subject to brutal torture, Zeng managed to escape China and now tells about the evils of socialism and communism.

At a time when more Americans are embracing Karl Marx’s teachings, Chris Wright has helped Zeng share her story as part of a network called the Anticommunism Action Team. They recently spoke to The Daily Signal along with Darian Diachok, who escaped from Soviet-era Ukraine as an infant and has helped former Soviet satellite states democratize and overcome their failed communist systems.

The full audio is below, along with a lightly edited transcript. Some of the content is graphic and not suitable for small children.

Rob Bluey: We are joined by Chris Wright, Darian Diachok, and Jennifer Zeng. Darian and Jennifer both have experience with communism and have graciously agreed to share their stories. Chris Wright is doing phenomenal work in getting the message out about the horrors of communism through the Anticommunism Action Team. Welcome to all three of you, and thank you for being with us.

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

Chris Wright: Thanks for having us, Rob.

Bluey: Chris, I’d like to begin with you. Can you tell us about the Anticommunism Action Team and the work that you do?

Wright: In 2013, my Alexandria Tea Party had a big program and Dr. Lee Edwards from The Heritage Foundation was one of our speakers, and it was all about survivors of communism.

I went on to form a separate entity, the Anticommunism Action Team, in 2014 to formalize the activity. We added the speakers bureau in 2016. We have survivors of communism from Cuba, Bulgaria, Vietnam, China, Ukraine, as well as subject matter experts who now appear on the radio in several states.

We’ve been in front of classrooms and groups, and my speakers have a very powerful message. We’ve been down the socialist road, and we know what’s at the end of it, so Americans better wake up.

Bluey: Chris, we are living in a time when socialism is getting a lot of attention, or democratic socialism is, as some people prefer to call it. You have described to me Marxist theory and how socialism fits in the realm of that theory, and how it is the step before communism. Can you explain?

Wright: Marx saw stages of history, inevitable stages of history, feudalism, capitalism, socialism, and communism. Socialism is the stage before the final stage. Socialism is characterized by the common ownership of the means of production.

Communism is when the state withers away because there’s no more dominant class, no more private property. You don’t need a state because there’s no more economic exploitation, and so that’s a great fantasy, but it’s never happened anywhere.

One of our speakers from Ukraine has a joke about all this. He says, “What comes after socialism? Communism. What comes after communism? Alcoholism.”

Bluey: We have with us two people who have told incredibly personal stories. They are, in many cases, heart-wrenching and tragic. I really thank you both for being willing to share and talk about your experiences.

Jennifer, I’d like to begin with you. You’re somebody who was born in China. You were arrested four times. You were held as a prisoner in a labor camp. You were able to escape that camp and leave China.

Can you tell our listeners what it was like, that experience, how you ended up in that camp? Then we’ll get to your ability to escape and now share your story with millions of people across the world.

Jennifer Zeng: I was arrested, like you said, four times and sent to the Beijing Female Labor Camp for practicing a spiritual practice called Falun Gong. It is a spiritual practice based on truth, compassion, forbearance, and plus five sets of gentle exercises, including meditation.

Because it’s very obvious health benefit, within seven years, there were more Falun Gong practitioners in China than Communist Party members.

At that stage, in 1999, the party decided to crack down on it. So, I ended up in the Beijing Female Labor Camp.

The first day was feeling like going directly into the hell.

For the first moment, we were forced to squat under the baking sun for 15 hours, and whenever someone couldn’t endure it and fainted away, they were shocked by electric batons so that they could wake up.

Every day, in the camp, it was a battle between life and death.

On June 17, I was in London at the Independent China Tribunal. They handed out their final judgment about this organ harvest and transplant, and they gave the verdict that the Communist Party is guilty of anti-humanity crime.

I only realized that I had a very narrow escape from being a victim of this organ harvesting because I had Hepatitis C.

While I was in the camp, apart from torture every day, apart from hard, forced labor, we were also given repeated physical checkups so that if anyone need an organ we could be killed on demand if we were a match.

Fortunately, I told the doctor I had Hepatitis C before I practiced Falun Gong. I was able to be exempted from becoming a victim of organ harvesting.

Bluey: In the camp you experienced both brainwashing and mental torture and physical torture. Many of the people in the camp were sexually assaulted and raped. Can you share what some of those things that you observed and endured were like?

Zeng: Yes. Actually, on the second day of me in the camp, two police officers dragged me from the cell to the cold, threw me on the ground, and applied two electric batons all over my body until I lost consciousness.

The torture I experienced and I saw was beyond description.

I saw a female Falun Gong practitioner tied to a chair, and she was shocked by four or five male police guards on her head and on her private part until she lost control of her bowel movement. As a result, she couldn’t walk for several months.

They also would tie four toothbrushes together and with the sharp end outside and push this inside the vagina of female Falun Gong practitioners and twist it, twist it until they saw blood came out.

The police would also throw females into the male prisoners’ cells to have them repeatedly gang-raped. So, this kind of thing happened in the camp.

I think the worst part for me in the camp is the brainwashing part. Because the police made it very clear, the only purpose for you to be sent there is to get you reformed, which means to change our minds toward Falun Gong.

So, we were forced not only to give up our beliefs in truth, compassion, and tolerance, but also to help the police to torture our fellow Falun Gong practitioners in order to prove that we were transformed.

After I think I spent six months in the camp, I suddenly developed such a strong desire to write a book to expose this all because when I was there, I couldn’t believe this was happening in the 21st century.

I thought this could only happen in a Nazi concentration camp. This should have already become part of the history. It couldn’t be present, but it is still happening.

To write a book, I have to get released. But, if I don’t prove to the police I had been transformed, I couldn’t be released.

So, every day, the struggle was in my mind of whether to transform or not to transform nearly killed me for another 1,000 times.

Little by little, I was forced to do all these things the police asked me to do in order to prove that I have reformed.

Little by little, I feel like becoming empty in a human shell. Actually, it was my very essence of a human being being taken away like your thoughts, your soul, your free will, and your human dignity. I feel like a non-human being and doing whatever they force us to do.

That was a very, very disgraceful process. Worst deal, after I was released, they still expected me to go to the brainwashing centers to be used as example of reform and to continue to help them to do their reform job. So, I had to escape from my own family only five days after I was released.

Bluey: It’s just terrible. You were able to get asylum, though. How were you able to flee China and escape this terror?

Zeng: I think in this regard I was luckier than many of my fellow practitioners. I had a very good education. I graduated from Peking University with a master of science degree. I spoke good English.

I met an Australian couple who went to China to teach English. I told them how terrible my situation was and how terribly I needed to leave China. They were able to help me to get out of China, so I sought asylum in Australia and was granted refugee status.

Bluey: We are so blessed that you’re with us today. We’re going to get back to your book and the movie and the work that you’re doing.

I do want to ask Darian to share his story. Darian, you were able to escape from Ukraine as an infant. You’re somebody who’s also witnessed communist governments through your work with USAID. Tell us about your own experience and what it is that helped you to understand about communism.

Darian Diachok: Actually, I have two sources of experience with communism.

The first one was through my extended family. We escaped from the Red Army as the Red Army was closing in toward the end of World War II.

We were extremely lucky to have made it to the United States because I think the statistics are that only one out of about 12 people who were escaping from eastern Europe actually made it to the West. They were picked up everywhere.

The [People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, abbreviated NKVD] had forward units waiting for people. Matter of fact, my parents ran into a forward NKVD unit but were able to give them the slip. So, we were extremely fortunate to have made it to the states.

Once we got here, people started telling stories, I guess, every Christmas, every Easter, escapees would get together and just talk to anyone about their experiences, how lucky they were, how something happened like they got on the last train or a pistol didn’t fire or something, how they were all able to escape.

My brother and I listened to these stories over the years, and my wife, who’s not Ukrainian, as I told her one of the stories, she said, “You should write a book about this.” So, I decided to do that.

Bluey: Your book is called “Escapes,” for those listeners who might be interested.

Diachok: Right, and the book is interesting in that my extended family … were represented pretty much in every aspect of World War II.

My father was a Polish officer fighting against the Germans. I had two uncles who were in the Red Army. I had another uncle who was picked up by the Reds and tortured and all of that. So, we have direct experiences with the communist takeover.

There was one particular day in which everybody was invited or actually ordered into the town square for a major announcement. No one knew what it was for. I hadn’t been born yet. My parents didn’t know what it was for.

They brought out all of the town leaders, the postmaster, the mayor, the vice mayor, everybody who was in the town council, and they shot them in front of everybody.

They announced the new era where all of your bourgeois tormentors have been taken care of, and now we will live in a new communist system. So, they had experienced things like that.

That’s one aspect. The other aspect is returning to the former Soviet Union later as part of the reform effort from USAID and other international agencies, and to discover what the devastation was and what the Soviet system left behind after it collapsed.

Not only in the infrastructure that didn’t work, not only in the environment that was ravaged, but also in people’s thinking, and also in the lack of institutions, the daily institutions, which we take for granted, all of which were broken and destroyed under communism, just the total human devastation in a way.

We saw the effects of what it was, of what the communist system actually did. We were faced with what do we do next, what do we do first.

Bluey: The picture that sometimes we see on the outside that’s painted by the state-run media or that those communist countries like to project is quite different from what you have experienced up close and personal. Can you share with us an experience that may come to mind that would help us better understand why it’s not so rosy, the picture that sometimes is painted?

Diachok: At USAID, we had counterparts. We had local counterparts. I was in energy, so I had an energy counterpart.

One day, he was called off. He got a phone call that his daughter was bitten in school. … We were very concerned that she was hurt.

He left, and we later learned that he had to apologize and to pay a huge fine because obviously, in a communist society, dogs represent power. They represent the authority, and if the dog bit the girl, she must have been misbehaving.

That was such a shock. We couldn’t imagine this.

On a more professional level, what we were discovering was that there was an overall pervasive sense of corruption. It came from the system, which didn’t work, and so people had to be corrupt in order to satisfy their daily needs.

In a centrally planned economy, everybody’s needs are supposed to be taken care of, and the central authorities cannot make any mistakes. They are infallible. So, you have to make do with what they have planned for you.

The centrally planned economy always has difficulty in finding out exactly what people’s needs are, how many people need what, what people’s shoe sizes are, everything else. In a centrally planned economy, all those kinds of things simply cannot be done efficiently.

Consequently, people do not get what they need, and they have to learn to barter for things. They have to do things under the table.

You’re not allowed to barter for anything because that’s going against the state. If you barter for anything, that means that you are a private entrepreneur who is working against the state.

So you’re not allowed to barter, but you have to provide for your family. Your family needs milk. They need food, and it’s not available, so you have to wheel and deal.

The whole system became completely corrupt. People learned to be corrupt. That’s on a daily consumer level. People learn to be corrupt.

On a more professional or a more, let’s call it, a more industrial level … every company, every firm had quotas that they had to reach. If they didn’t reach those quotas, the consequences were horrendous. They could be sent to Siberia. They could be shot, so meeting your quotas was … life and death.

The central planning system never gave you exactly what you needed to make the quotas, for the same reasons I had discussed earlier.

The central planning system couldn’t foresee the needs of every single, let’s say, radio manufacturer. They didn’t get it right, but yet you had the quota.

So, people learned to wheel and deal, to barter under the table in order to make the quotas.

The whole system also became corrupt in the sense that they were working against the communist system to satisfy the communist system. It got to the point where people just found shortcuts in order to satisfy the system.

If you were supposed to produce things in tonnage, like you had to produce a certain number of tons of irons or radios or any kind of household equipment, they would add huge amounts of metal to it just simply to increase the weights so that they would meet the quotas.

Everybody knew that they were producing junk, but yet the quotes were made. No one really took their job that terribly seriously. The object was to make the quota and not to produce anything of value.

There were really weird examples, too, in the Soviet Union where people would have quotas to produce certain kinds of trucks, and the next factory over needed broken-up trucks, needed wrecks.

So, they would take these trucks straight off of the assembly line, drive them a mile, and then destroy them, and deliver them to the next factory, which needed junked trucks.

People did not question that. If you question that, you were questioning the wisdom of the party, and that was punishable by all sorts of things.

The whole system became crazy, and this is what people learned. This is the environment in which people learned to operate so that when we got there, the ex-Soviets that we were working with were very, very attuned to what the party wanted because missing that was life and death.

So when we were talking to them, they were very attuned to what they thought we wanted to hear. They pretended to be on board with us, but then, at the first opportunity, they would go around us and try to exploit the system for everything it was worth.

Bluey: Darian, thank you so much for sharing those real-life experiences. That is just incredible to hear, and it’s disheartening on some level that the generational effects are still there.

I want to ask both of you about the books that you’ve written. And, Jennifer, in your case, also the documentary. Can you tell us about those books, and not only what is contained in them, but how we can go about learning more about them?

Zeng: Yes. I finished writing my autobiography detailing what’s happening on a day-to-day basis in the labor camps. The book is called “Witnessing History: One Woman’s Fight for Freedom and Falun Gong.”

The U.S. version is available on Amazon, so people can search for that. I also have a Chinese version. … It’s also available on Amazon.

The Australian version is available on my publisher’s website, Allen & Unwin.

There is also a documentary about my story called “Free China.” It’s at freechinamovie.com. You are able to watch the documentary on the front page of that website.

I think, up to now, my book is the only available one in English to detail what happened to Falun Gong practitioners inside the labor camp.

Actually, this year marked the 20th anniversary of what’s happening in China, and the scale of the persecution is so huge, 100 million Falun Gong practitioners, plus their families.

Now, we are hearing about millions of Uighurs also be detained in Xinjiang camps.

Because, I think, the world failed to stop the persecution of Falun Gong, now the party has the ability to expand that to other minority groups and to the entire nation. The entire nation is under very strict monitoring of the party.

I think my book has a very significant importance to be the firsthand account of what’s really happening inside the camp. It is current, and it is helping the world to know what’s really happened.

For example, several days ago, I saw a program by BBC. They and several other major media were allowed after many years of calling to go inside one of the reeducation camps in Xinjiang to film. They ended up making a film of about eight minutes.

After watching that movie, as someone who had been in one of very similar places, I knew how fake that program was and how you should look at them.

I did a YouTube program about myself to discuss three small stories, especially about how the police managed to fake everything inside the camp.

When I was there, no foreign reporters were allowed inside the camp, but they even deceive their fellow police officers from other camps.

So, if they are even deceiving their fellow police officers and their supervisors from the neighbor camp system, would you expect them to show you the real thing of the neighbor camp to a foreign journalist?

I think my book and my story is still very, very relevant because this is still happening on a very large scale in China.

I hope more people can learn my story, and understand how serious this situation they are. It’s really millions of people’s lives at stake. I hope the world can stop this.

Bluey: Thank you for having the courage to share it and to tell that story. It is incredibly powerful.

Darian, I want to ask about your book. It’s called “Escapes.” Tell us about why you chose to write it.

Diachok: Yes, thank you.

We were passing a building that reminded me very much of the train station from which my parents escaped, and I began reminiscing to my wife on the way to a New Year’s Eve party about how my parents had to stand four days and four nights [for] the last train that was available before the Red Army closed in, and how the train was attacked by a Red fighter.

Some of the wagons were actually caught on fire. I was telling her this story, and she said, “My goodness. Don’t let that go to waste. That has to be put down. That has to be recorded for history.” That’s how it started.

Bluey: Let me ask you, at a time when it seems that there is an increasing interest in socialism, particularly among young people here in the United States of America, what is your message to them based on your own experience?

And what would you like them to know and think about and reflect upon as you’ve experienced these horrors of communist governments that embrace the principles of socialism?

Diachok: My father once said that communism is like a bouquet of flowers with a hidden dagger.

Zeng: I think for me I really would like to recommend a series of articles, editorials from The Epoch Times, called “How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World.”

I think it discussed many phenomena of how the specter of communism is using both violent ways and nonviolent ways to try to rule this world. In the West, they are trying to change their names into different names, but the essence is the same.

As someone who was a victim of the communism, I really want people to know if you really adopted communism what life could be. That is what I had experienced.

I think in the early days when the Communist Party was just founded in China, they also talked about freedom, talked about equality, talked about everybody living in heaven-like communities and society.

Many young people also got deceived. They went to … the sacred place of communism.

If you look at the history, many of them ended up being killed by the party, and all their families, all their children, they all suffered for generations, after generations they suffer.

Under the Communist Party in China, 80 million people died of unnatural death. That’s all the result of communism.

Like Chris said, socialism is only the primary stage of communism. Actually, officially, or theoretically, China now is not a communist country yet. It’s still socialism with Chinese characteristics. Officially, China is now a socialist society.

If you look at what the people have suffered there … This year is the 70th anniversary of the CCP came to power in China, so the 70 years were full of killing, full of tyranny.

If you want communism or socialism, I think you should read more about China. You should read my story first to know what the socialism really is.

I think many young people, they are very easy to be attracted by those rosy, empty words, or the rosy description of how beautiful those things are, but the reality is just the opposite.

If they know what those damage or how people have suffered, more than, I think, one-half of the population of Chinese people have suffered one kind of persecution or another, they would stop having those rosy dreams about communism or socialism.

I think it is exactly because what they already have in this society, actually ensured not by the socialism, but by the fundamental principles of a free society, they forgot how cherishable, how valuable this is, and they start dreaming of those very unfortunate, I think, elusive things.

I hope people can learn the reality of communism and socialism.

Bluey: In some respects, it seems like it’s on display in Hong Kong, that resistance to China’s aggression and what it is trying to do. What are your observations about what’s taking place there now?

Zeng: I think the West, I hope all the young people can choose to really pay more attention to what’s happening in Hong Kong.

The young people in Hong Kong, they really experienced what life was really about when the Communist Party tried to erode their own freedom.

Some of them got so desperate up to now in these several days that there were three suicide cases of young people jumping out of the building to protest against this so-called extradition bill, and, I think, essentially, against the Communist Party’s erosion of Hong Kong’s freedom. They knew what life was like.

So, the Hong Kong people are really waking up to the illusion of this so-called one country, two system society, and they knew how valuable their initial freedom and the rule of law was.

They are really fighting with their life against the Communist Party’s erosion of Hong Kong. I think they deserve more help from the West, especially from the United States and the United Kingdom. We owe them support.

Bluey: Chris, I want to finish this with a comment from you. There may be some who say, “Why are we having this conversation? Why is it relevant to all of the things that are going on today?” Can you share with us why it is important that we focus on these stories?

Wright: Why is communism still relevant today? It’s just all in the dustbin of history.

We’ve reached the end of history and communism lost, so why are we still talking about this? Well, there are still five captive nations in the world, starting with China, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea. That’s 1.5 billion people. It’s still relevant to them. That’s a lot of people.

Also, there’s an elected communist government in Nepal. Things are not going well there. The intelligence agencies are being weaponized. The press is being shot down. Communists are doing what they do everywhere. So, it’s relevant to the people in Nepal.

There have already been 300 people who have attempted to escape from Cuba on rafts so far this year. It’s relevant to them. It’s also relevant because, in the 2018 elections, there were 50 openly socialist candidates running for political office in the United States.

Also, there’s an openly declared socialist candidate running for president this year. The Denver City Council, there was just a woman elected there who promised that she would bring in common ownership. There it is, the quintessential definition of socialism, common ownership by any means necessary.

So, we’re entering into a period in the United States where socialism is on the rise again.

Bluey: Chris, how can our listeners find more about the work that the Anticommunism Action Team does? If a college student wants to bring some of these speakers to their campus, how do they get in touch with you?

Wright: Sure. We have a website. It’s called www.spider-and-the-fly.com. You can reach us at mail@spider-and-the-fly.com.

We have a weekly roundup of anticommunism news that people can sign up for through the email address or through the website. Our Speakers Bureau speakers, wonderful speakers like Jennifer and Darian.

We have both subject matter experts and people who have survived communism who are available all over the country through video conferencing.

We’ve been on four college campuses so far this year, and we’re happy to do this anywhere in the country to a group that you think could benefit from this message.

Bluey: Chris, thank you for the work that you’re doing. Jennifer and Darian, we appreciate you sharing your stories with us.

COLUMN BY

Rob Bluey

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

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A Note for our Readers:

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

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

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

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

How America’s Gun Culture Cultivates Civic Virtue

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From the colonists winning independence from Great Britain to African-Americans vindicating their civil rights, the role of the gun is inseparable from American identity.

“It is through the enjoyment of a dangerous freedom that Americans learn the art of reducing freedom’s perils.” —Alexis de Tocqueville

Many people are often surprised to learn that I am a gun owner and firm defender of the Second Amendment. After all, I, a first-generation Chinese-American immigrant, do not fit the stereotype of the typical American gun owner. Of all of America’s cherished freedoms, the natural and unalienable right of self-defense, recognized and protected (not granted) by the Second Amendment, took me the longest to fully embrace.

But as an open-minded rationalist, the lessons of history and statistical research proved overwhelming (not to mention the sheer fun of learning the basic operations and mechanics of firearms) and eventually helped me understand why tens of millions of my fellow Americans treasure their right to keep and bear arms.

From the colonists winning independence from Great Britain to African-Americans vindicating their civil rights, the role of the gun is inseparable from American identity. The gun is the ultimate multipurpose tool that empowers its user with the means to put food on the table, as well as preserve one’s life, whether against common street criminals or government tyranny. The philosophical underpinnings and lived experiences that shaped American gun culture all matter (and reinforce each other), but I want to focus on one aspect in particular: the cultivation of civic virtue.

Owning and shooting a gun promotes self-reliance, personal responsibility, and community. Whenever I go to a gun range, I see parents teaching their young children how to shoot, men instructing their significant others, and people of all colors and ethnicities enjoying themselves. Nervous skeptics usually end up leaving with a big smile on their faces.

Further, I am surprised by the large number of foreign tourists eager to learn how to handle and shoot a gun for the first time, an activity that is often out of reach—if not outright illegal—for the average person in their homeland.

I served as an unofficial ambassador and taught European exchange students how to shoot my AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.In my experience, a typical day at the range is an ideal snapshot of American diversity tied to common principles. In the United States, gun culture fosters civic virtue and a healthy civil society as admired by Alexis de Tocqueville, one of America’s best foreign observers. In his classic Democracy in America, he was impressed by the young republic’s numerous voluntary associations, which provided the lifeblood and training grounds for self-rule among its people.

The activities and interactions at gun clubs, ranges, trade shows, and conventions have every effect in cultivating a virtuous citizenry as churches, sports teams, debate societies, and other civic groups do. From lectures on current firearms law to practical lessons on self-defense, experts and ordinary Americans alike freely share their knowledge. America’s gun culture is further reinforced by a vibrant online community that covers gun reviews, custom AR-15 builds, military history, current politics, and virtually every topic one can think of pertaining to firearms.

After sharing a poignant story of true threats directed at him and his family, National Review writer and Iraq veteran David French describes how carrying a weapon leads to individual empowerment and, as one learns, discovers a welcoming network of support, solidarity, and community:

As your worldview changes, you expand your knowledge. You learn that people defend themselves with guns all the time, usually without pulling the trigger. You share the stories and your own experience with your friends, and soon they walk into gun stores. They start their own journey into America’s “gun culture.”

At the end of this process, your life has changed for the better. Your community has expanded to include people you truly like, who’ve perhaps helped you through a tough time in your life, and you treasure these relationships. You feel a sense of burning conviction that you, your family, and your community are safer and freer because you own and carry a gun….

Confidence is contagious. People want to be empowered. That’s how gun culture is built. Not by the NRA and not by Congress, but by gun owners, one free citizen at a time.

Although I’m fortunate not to have faced a true threat that convinced me of the need for self-protection like French and his family did, I fully understand that evil exists in this world and that under the right circumstances, people can do unspeakable things to each other. On a happier note, I can also confirm that my own journey into American gun culture introduced me to some of the most knowledgeable, kind, and supportive people who are now personal friends.

I especially want to emphasize the gun community’s overwhelming support for newcomers and marginalized groups. In the aftermath of the 2016 Orlando night club shooting, many gun ranges offered free training, and traditional pro-gun groups such as Open Carry Texas offered armed security for LGBT people. Many gun shops reported a rise in LGBT customers, and new self-defense groups, like the LGBT-centered Pink Pistols, experienced a surge in membership. Free citizens with diverse backgrounds united over shared principles and interests. If he were to witness how individual empowerment through the gun strengthened the fabric of civil society, Tocqueville would be proud.

As admirers of their Greco-Roman predecessors, the Founding Fathers of the United States understood that only virtuous citizens are capable of self-rule and preserving a free society. In the early American republic, statesmen and ordinary people alike saw no conflict between the individual right to bear arms and participating in a militia for collective self-defense, unlike many of today’s misguided debates. In his famed Commentaries on the Constitution, Justice Joseph Story articulated the orthodox view of the Second Amendment:

The importance of this article will scarcely be doubted by any persons, who have duly reflected upon the subject. The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and the facile means, which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers, to subvert the government, or trample upon the rights of the people.

The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.

And yet, though this truth would seem so clear, and the importance of a well regulated militia would seem so undeniable, it cannot be disguised, that among the American people there is a growing indifference to any system of militia discipline, and a strong disposition, from a sense of its burthens, to be rid of all regulations. How it is practicable to keep the people duly armed without some organization, it is difficult to see. There is certainly no small danger, that indifference may lead to disgust, and disgust to contempt; and thus gradually undermine all the protection intended by this clause of our national bill of rights.

As Justice Story and early Americans understood, an armed people upheld free institutions. Far from being lone wolves, individual gun owners throughout American history organized and participated in militia units as a counterbalance against a standing army and the prospects of centralized government tyranny. Even though the militia today no longer plays the important historical role it once did (as Justice Story and others would lament), that certainly does not mean the Second Amendment is obsolete, nor does it even slightly diminish the importance of gun ownership.

The Second Amendment is not a vestigial remnant from a bygone era. It grew out of the experiences of a people who understood the dangers of standing armies and martial law, successfully overthrew a tyrannical government, and recognized the reality of human nature, especially the tendency of men to seek power and dominate others.

Today, as in the Founding generation, our precious right to keep and bear arms remains indispensable for securing the blessings of liberty for ourselves and loved ones in our persons, homes, and livelihoods.Most modern gun owners know they are the heirs of a constitutional legacy that stretches across the pages of history. A free society endures only when its people internalize its principles. As a naturalized American citizen, I can’t help but feel proud every time I shoot a gun, knowing I am one of millions who keep our heritage of freedom alive.

COLUMN BY

Aaron Tao

Aaron Tao is an entrepreneur and young professional working in Austin, TX. He holds an M.S. from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin and a B.A. from Case Western Reserve University. His other writings have been published by Areo Magazine, Quillette, and the Independent Institute. Follow him on Twitter.

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

MUST-WATCH VIDEO: President Trump in India!

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https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1232005756054069248

President Trump addressed a loud, cheering crowd of more than 100,000 earlier today at India’s Sardar Patel Gujarat Stadium. He praised India’s growing prosperity and its “ironclad resolve” in joining the global fight against radical Islamic terrorism.

“The First Lady and I have just traveled 8,000 miles around the globe to deliver a message to every citizen across this nation: America loves India, America respects India, and America will always be faithful and loyal friends to the Indian people,” he said.

Five months ago, President Trump welcomed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Houston, Texas, where they were greeted by a lively crowd at the “Howdy Modi” rally.

The sequel took place this morning in Ahmedabad, India, at a rally fittingly called “Namaste Trump.” Speaking in the largest cricket stadium on Earth, President Trump thanked the Indian people “for the contributions your culture and traditions have made to my beloved country.”

A powerful friendship grew between America and India after President Trump’s election, particularly as trading partners. Since Inauguration Day 2017, commerce between the two countries has shot up more than 40 percent. That’s made India into a major market for U.S. exports, and it cemented America as India’s largest export market.

President Trump: America is booming, and that’s good news for India!

The U.S.–India bond under President Trump and Prime Minister Modi is also making American safer and more secure. The two are cooperating closely to defeat global terrorism and combat drug trafficking. Together, they are also calling on other countries in the region—including Pakistan and Iran—to fight terrorism in their own backyards.

Shared values make this alliance possible. “In America and in India, we know that we are all born for a higher purpose: to reach toward our fullest potential, to work toward excellence and perfection, and to give all glory to God,” President Trump said.

President Trump: India will be getting the best military equipment on the planet!

Behind the scenes: See photos from President Trump’s visit to India!

© All rights reserved.

Book Release: American Ingrate by Ben Weingarten

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There couldn’t be a more appropriately titled or timely book than this one about Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar.

American Ingrate: Ilhan Omar and the Progressive-Islamist Takeover of the Democratic Party.

I couldn’t decide which of my blogs is the more appropriate place to post this exciting news, but settled on ‘Frauds and Crooks’ although Omar is one of the more than 100,000 Somalis admitted to the US by past administrations including not just Democrat Obama, but by the Republican George W. Bush administration which admitted them by the tens of thousand as well.

Here is what author Ben Weingarten said about his book in an announcement yesterday (I’ve order my copy!):

…. I would be remiss if I didn’t thank everyone who has helped make this book a reality, including my loving family, friends, the team at Bombardier/Post Hill Press, Andy McCarthy who kindly wrote the Foreword, Victor Davis Hanson, Dennis Prager, Newt Gingrich, Scott Johnson, Lee Smith, and Caroline Glick who kindly wrote blurbs for it, and many of you who played roles large and small in helping bring it to fruition.

American Ingrate is as serious and substantive as it is provocative and politically potent.

It has been made ever more relevant in the run-up to release as its thesis is being borne out in real time in Bernie Sanders’ rise to the top of the Democratic presidential field–with Sanders having recently named Rep. Omar his campaign co-chair in the pivotal 2020 state of Minnesota–and mounting evidence of Omar’s alleged marriage fraud and associated raft of crimes.

Among other things, this heavily researched work:

~Makes the definitive case that as President Trump has argued, Rep. Omar is the face of the Democratic Party, while delving deeply into her unexplored background, unchallenged beliefs, and under-appreciated effort in leading her party to advance a fundamentally subversive, intersectional- and identity politics-based agenda geared towards destroying our core institutions under the guise of “social justice;”

~Sets forth the argument that she not only personifies but leads the unholy progressive-Islamist alliance–held together by the glue of Jew-hatred as a proxy for hatred of Judeo-Christian Western civilization–that truly has triumphed over the Democratic establishment; and

~Builds the as yet ignored case for her collusion with corrupt and anti-American actors and regimes foreign and domestic–on top of credible allegations of criminality and corruption, including previously unreported details pointing to her fraudulence.

Can’t wait for my copy to arrive!  Order at Amazon.

See my Rep. Ilhan Omar archives here at ‘Frauds and Crooks’ and at Refugee Resettlement Watch don’t miss this post from 2016.

RELATED ARTICLE: Ohio Somalis Charged in $10 Million Food Stamp Fraud Bust

EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

With China Reeling, A Strategic Opportunity With North Korea

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So much has been happening recently in the world that North Korea has all but disappeared from the front pages. The elimination of Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad, the impeachment inquiry farce, the Iowa circus, the COVID-19 threat of a pandemic, have monopolized public attention for weeks.

However, North Korea is not going away and President Trump has certainly not forgotten the issue, especially since China, of late, has never been weaker. Hong Kong’s yearlong demonstrations, triggered by an ill-conceived extradition bill, hit China’s “one country, two systems” principle at its heart and the result was immediately reflected by the elections in Taiwan where the incumbent pro-independence candidate Tsai Ing-Wen won in a landslide. The news of the coronavirus epidemic, long denied and badly suppressed, could yet become a dangerous “Chernobyl” moment for the regime who is now struggling not only to contain the virus, but also to save its international reputation and perhaps fighting for its very survival.

Some people have criticized recent U.S. North Korea policy, others have praised it. Both parties assume that America’s policy is to get Kim Jong Un to abandon its nuclear program. Both are wrong.

One of the many fallouts of having waged war in Libya to depose Muammar Qaddafi to score cheap political points was that it sent a warning to all wannabe dictators: “Renounce your nuclear program and it will be the end of you.” And so it was for Qaddafi: a few years after abandoning terrorism and giving up its nuclear weapons, he was hunted down and killed like a dog (destabilizing Europe and creating an immigration crisis, among other things).

Kim Jong Un is smart, ruthless, and knows very well his own weaknesses and strengths. He will never renounce his nuclear program which is his only deterrent against the West and of course, China.

All Trump can do after decades of U.S. presidents kicking the can down the road, is try to bring North Korea into the fold of U.S. litigious but loyal allies in the Pacific, such as South Korea and Japan (wouldn’t the video of a North Korea booming with tourism and resorts and investments which Trump showed Kim during their first meeting then make perfect sense?).

North Korea, and Kim Jong Un in particular, seems squeezed between China and its own Army. What better moment then this for the West and in particular for the Pacific nations to apply pressure on the regime while China is struggling with problems of its own, its economy declining, Xi Jinping is under siege by his own party and an angry population that is finally losing its fear of the regime? Surely it will be less inclined to interfere directly into its neighbor’s affairs.

Despite Kim’s protestations of self-reliance to appease critics of the regime’s past and present mistakes, he must realize that no country can survive and prosper without external help and support. Furthermore, its isolation is inevitably crumbling and getting more and more difficult to enforce in an increasingly technological world. America and its Pacific allies should therefore increase communications with North Korea’s population by any means available so that more and more people (including low and medium level Army officers) are informed and aware of the alternative world out there. Aid should be delivered directly to people as much as possible to deprive the regime of claiming phony successes, while at the same time letting it be known that prosperity, thanks to an industrious and disciplined population, would be easily achievable. Obviously, most of the above would weigh on South Korea’s shoulders who the U.S. should support in full.

Is this the path to a One Korea? Too early to say, although there have been various tentative approaches to the unification process between North and South, often disrupted by incidents, provocations or unacceptable pre-conditions. However, recent developments and more proactive attitudes from all stakeholders as indicated above might in the medium-term lead to overcoming the bottlenecks hindering a reconciliation.

While North Korea could bring to the table its nuclear armament as deterrent in a dangerous neighborhood, South Korea would contribute with its technology and an economy fifty times that of the North. Both would benefit greatly.

Denuclearize North Korea? Too late for that. But there is an opportunity right now.

COLUMN BY

THOMAS HUDSON

Thomas Hudson has worked as Manager and Head of Corporate Support Services for private and international organizations, including the UN, in many countries. (Thomas Hudson is a pseudonym.)

EDITORS NOTE: This Revolutionary Act column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Saving Babies’ Lives More Important Than Winning Sports Titles, Tim Tebow Says

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Former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow says he prefers to be remembered for saving babies from abortion than for winning college football’s Bowl Championship Series.

Tebow is known for both his athletic achievements—winning the 2007 Heisman Trophy and leading the University of Florida Gators to two national championships in 2007 and 2009—and for being a Christian and crusading pro-lifer.

“It really does mean a lot more than winning the Super Bowl,” he said at a recent football-themed banquet for Kansans for Life, according to National Right to Life News. “One day, when you look back, and people are talking about you, and they say, ‘Oh, my gosh, what are you going to be known for?’ Are you going to say ‘Super Bowl,’ or ‘We saved a lot of babies’?”

The theme of the annual banquet was “LIV-ing in Victory,” a reference to Super Bowl LIV, won Feb. 2 by the Kansas City Chiefs. About 1,200 people attended the event, including a group affiliated with the Super Bowl champion Chiefs. Chiefs’ owner Lamar Hunt Jr. served as the master of ceremonies.

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

Tebow, 32, now plays baseball in the New York Mets minor league farm system. Despite his success in sports, he told Martha MacCallum in a February 2019 interview on Fox News Channel’s “The Untold Story” that his work outside of athletics is more important to him.

“Although I’m extremely competitive and driven in sports, you’ve also got to remember that it’s just a game,” he said. “And that life is more important, and people are more important, and the way you can impact them is more important.”

During his Feb. 11 speech at the Kansans for Life Valentine’s banquet, Tebow turned toward the group associated with the Chiefs and acknowledged their achievement.

“What an accomplishment,” he said. “But you know the best part of that accomplishment is that it gets you an even bigger platform.”

Tebow, who married former Miss Universe Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters on Jan. 20,  has used his platform as a former college football champ and ex-NFL player to share his story and pro-life message.

In his speech, Tebow recounted his own experience, describing the pressure that was put on his mother to abort him. Doctors in the Philippines, where his parents were serving as missionaries, urged his mother, then 32, to have an abortion amid medical complications.

He was carried to term, however, and his mother survived and now calls Tebow her “miracle child.” The American-trained doctor in Manila told Tebow’s mother that in his 37 years of being a physician that it was the biggest miracle he’d ever seen.

“I’m so grateful that my mom trusted God with my life and her life,” Tebow said in his speech.

In the interview with MacCallum, Tebow said his parents’ kindness is what has inspired him to lead a life of service.

“To be able to have a mom and a dad that didn’t tell us about loving people—they showed us what loving people really looked like,” he said, adding, “And to have a dad that has given so much of his life to serving people that could truly never do a thing for him.”

Tebow concluded his remarks by affirming—and at the same time, challenging—those attending the banquet.

“What you’re doing here matters. You’re fighting for life. You’re fighting for people that can’t fight for themselves,” he said, adding:

And my question to you is: Are you willing to stand up in the face of persecution, in the face of adversity, in the face of criticism, when other people are going to say it’s not worth it, when other people won’t stand beside you?

COLUMN BY

Allison Schuster

Allison Schuster is part of the Young Leader’s Program at the Heritage Foundation and interns at The Daily Signal.

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Remember Those Aborted Baby Parts Parts for Sale? Our Government Bought Them With Your Money!

A Note for our Readers:

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

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

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

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

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

PODCAST: Booker T. Washington — A Legacy of Enterprise and Education

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Author and educator Booker T. Washington played a critical role in the promotion of education and free market enterprise among black Americans at the turn of the century.

Alabama businessman and political consultant Richard Finley joins The Daily Signal Podcast to discuss what the legacy of Washington, who died in 1915, means to him and others in the African American community.

Listen to today’s podcast episode or read the lightly edited transcript below.

Rob Bluey: We are joined on The Daily Signal Podcast today by Richard Finley, who’s head of the Finley Group, a business and political consulting firm in Birmingham, Alabama. Richard, thanks so much for joining us.

Richard Finley: Thank you for having me.

Bluey: You are somebody who’s served on the Republican Party State Executive Committee there in Alabama, and very much have lived through the civil rights movement and history, and you’ve seen it before your own eyes.

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

And throughout the month of February, Black History Month, we’re featuring some of the stories of American heroes. Maybe some of those who are listeners can learn a little bit more about, so we appreciate you taking the time to share with us about Booker T. Washington specifically and some of your own experiences.

Finley: I appreciate the opportunity.

I just feel that Washington was probably the most significant black figure in American history. And I know that’s arguable, but the things that he was able to do at Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University, and the economic strategy he had for lifting up a people out of slavery was extremely significant and extremely valuable. And I dislike the fact that it is being downplayed in modern public schools’ telling of black history.

When I initially decided to become politically active in Birmingham, I went to the established black leadership and I told them, I said, “Well, I am going to become politically active, and I’m going to become politically active as a Republican.”

I explained to them that when I was in high school and college here as a young man, being an activist, our fight was with the yellow dog Democrats of Alabama in the South. And I didn’t quite understand returning to Birmingham and finding all of the black leadership now in bed with the yellow dog Democrats who were the oppressors.

Democrats controlled Alabama from Reconstruction up through the 1970s. So they had a long run and all of the segregation efforts, the laws that were put in place to segregate and oppress the black citizens were put in place by the yellow dog Democrats of Alabama.

I didn’t quite understand why our leadership had chosen to get in bed with these people. But I said that if you’re going to be politically active, then you have to have options. If you don’t have an option, then you really don’t matter in the overall equation. They can write you in, and then go pursue those folk who might be exercising their options.

And I felt that black people needed to hear both sides of the story. They needed to be able to get the information, and then make a conscious decision as to which way they wanted to go. Rather than being locked into the party of the same people who had been oppressing us for the [300] or 400 years leading up to the Civil War.

Bluey: Thank you for sharing that. We appreciate your leadership and speaking out.

I think it’s so critically important that people do have an open mind and understand history. Because I think, too often, as you’ve indicated to me, sometimes we only look at the recent history and not necessarily look back at the figures who had a transformative impact on our country. And Booker T. Washington is, certainly, one of them.

He was born in 1856, died in 1915. He was, obviously, an educator. You mentioned his role at Tuskegee University. He was a leading Republican, at the time. He was somebody who was among that last generation of black Americans who were born into slavery, and then became a leading voice.

So tell us more about him and why you consider him to be such a profound figure in American history, and an influence on your own life.

Finley: I was conscious of him all through elementary school when we were taught black history as part of the Jefferson County, Alabama, colored school system.

In the colored school we had all black teachers who had a sensitivity, or a consciousness to making sure that young black kids understood the contributions that we, as a people, have made to America.

My two heroes were Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington. And I tell folk that I believed, as Frederick Douglass did, in free people and, as Booker T. Washington did, in free enterprise. So, free people and free enterprise was sort of my driving motto.

But Washington had a unique plan and strategy for lifting newly freed Africans who had been purposely blocked from learning to read, or being taught the way the system worked in this country.

Ignorance was being brutally enforced upon Africans who were in slavery. And once they were free, Washington had sort of a manifesto of here are the things that you need to first do in order to lift yourself up out of the poverty that you were left in.

In 1866, they set you free, but there was no budget with that. And so, newly freed Africans had a major challenge.

But having lived in such close quarters, just through observation, they understood how the system worked. And Booker T. Washington and his team at Tuskegee Institute, working with some Northern philanthropists, started to establish schools so that the newly freed Africans could immediately began to learn to read.

I think if you check the history in that period between 1866 and, say, 1930, illiteracy was reduced within the black community pretty close to 60%, 65%. So it was a major achievement in establishing a school network.

And there was an eagerness, or a hunger, from the newly freed Africans to learn to read and write the language—from being in proximity with the plantation owners—and how they operated the business they had picked up, pretty much, how the system was working.

If you look during that period, there was substantial economic gain made within the African or black community. They rapidly acquired what, ultimately, wound up being at the height about 15 million acres of land, went into various business pursuits. And Tuskegee was sort of the training ground, or the breeding ground, for this entrepreneurial effort.

Tuskegee Institute, if you read the stories, they talk about how they took straw and made bricks, and built the buildings on the campus at Tuskegee Institute. Well, not only were they making bricks and masonry products, they were doing lumber. And they became one of the largest, if not the largest, supplier of building materials in the South.

And with that business acumen, Dr. Washington then set about on a plan that was to be called the Tuskegee Industrial Complex. He established organizations all over the country under the title of the National Negro Business League. He had in his employ, at Tuskegee Institute, Dr. George Washington Carver, and several other botanists, and chemists, and scientists who were putting together a lot of the products that we use today.

It was his plan to turn Tuskegee into an industrial complex to create these various common need products, the deodorants, the soaps, the hair creams, all of these things were things that were being made from plants in Dr. Carver’s laboratory.

So Washington’s plan was to begin to manufacture all of these products there at Tuskegee, and distribute them across the country through the National Negro Business League.

He also, as I said earlier, had the capability for the building materials and so forth. He was building out of this industrial complex concept what would today be a multibillion-dollar American corporation.

A lot of this stuff that Proctor & Gamble was doing, a lot of that stuff that Kellogg was doing, and Rockefeller, and Firestone. All of these industrial giants were constant visitors at Tuskegee and with Dr. Carver.

To this day, some of their institutions still contribute to Tuskegee’s well-being, but they also became very wealthy corporations off of the formulas that Dr. Carver had put together.

Dr. Carver was the first to create synthetic nylon that was crucial to the American war effort. When they started developing automobile tires, Firestone was the beneficiary of what they were doing at Tuskegee in terms of creating rubber and synthetic nylon from the products that Carver was growing there on the Tuskegee properties.

Bluey: It’s really fascinating to hear you share those examples. Clearly, Booker T. Washington had a passion not only to educate, but also an entrepreneurial spirit as well, as you indicated there. …

We were at an event together in Washington, D.C., in February, it was put on by Black Americans for a Better Future, and you shared with me Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Exposition speech. And it’s really fascinating in the impact that it had.

I wanted you to share a bit about that particular address and how it really set the course in motion, some of the things that he was able to accomplish.

Finley: It was a plan, a roadmap, if you will, that was put before the American white community, the business community.

The left wing, or the socialist elements of the time, headed up by W.E.B. Du Bois, labeled it a compromise speech. And I just assumed that they didn’t understand what Washington was putting forward. He was putting forward a plan for economic growth and development here in the South.

And his position with the Southern white businessmen were OK, if we are allowed uninterrupted to acquire land, to farm that land to build our churches, our schools, and our homes. And, in fact, own that property uninterrupted by whatever government the South was putting in place at the time then we, as newly freed Africans, we as newly freed participants in the American economy would want to establish, basically, a parallel relationship, or a parallel economy where we would bring our excess produce to the market, and we would live as neighbors. All being Americans.

Washington was a nationalist. He believed in America, he believed in the American concept, and he wanted the newly freed Africans to be able to establish a parallel system, as well as a parallel economy.

He said to the assembled people, anything social, that’s your preference. We can be as separate as the fingers on the hand, but should we be attacked by an outset aggressor, then be assured that we as citizens of the country will come together with you to defend America against any enemy, foreign or domestic.

He made that statement to the established audience there. But he then went on to talk about our sojourn up to that point here in America and the challenges that we were facing now as free American citizens.

If you remember, during that time frame, the great American railroad experiment was beginning, and the Chinese were the immigrants of the day, and they were taking jobs that the newly freed Africans were applying for, or wanting to do. And Washington addressed that position in his speech as well, the immigration problem.

Again, he went on to assure them that, hey, we’ve been here living in close proximity for [300] or 400 years, we’ve never, to any real extent, had a major uprising. We’ve been in situations where you’ve got [200] or 300 slaves on a plantation with maybe 10, 12 white people on the plantation. So, if there was any ill intent, it would’ve shown itself a long time ago.

So, he was saying that you could be comfortable with the black citizens. All we wanted was an opportunity to be productive and to generate and own property of our own, to be able to educate our children, to be able to establish and conduct our church and religious life as free citizens here in America. And, again, as a parallel to what was existing within the white communities at that time.

Bluey: Certainly.

Finley: So it was the first presentation of separate and equal. And it was, I think, well, you can read the other stuff that was in there, but it was the first actual deal or arrangement put on the table for blacks and whites to coexist in America.

Bluey: And we will make sure that we link to it for our listeners or our readers on The Daily Signal so they can see.

Richard, one final question for you. You spoke about the importance of educating today’s Americans and young people about our history. What are some steps that you’re taking, or what advice do you have for our audience who want to do a better job of making sure that young people understand those American heroes who came before us?

Finley: The thing that’s most personal to me now is, at my age, to have time to sit down and talk with young people. I think we need to encourage the storytelling. And, especially, within the black community, we are losing generations to poor public education. And now, with the advent of social media and the electronic communications, they’re getting stories that are coming at them so fast that they don’t have time to put them in perspective, and to understand what it is that they’re getting in all this information that’s flowing.

… I’m 70 years old, so I’m at the point where, as I told my children, I said, “I was there when the colored sign came down and I’m not sure it was the best thing to do for us.”

I said, we had, at that time, operating in Alabama, five nationally-established black insurance companies that were employing thousands of black people across the country. We had three banks here in Birmingham. We had a community that consisted of doctors and dentists and all of the various medical capabilities. We had a black-established and -run hospital within our community and we had the pharmacist in our community. All these businesses were going.

When Martin Luther King [Jr.] arrived in Birmingham, he had to have a serious conversation with A.G. Gaston who, at that time, was one of the leading black businessmen in the country. But he was stationed here in Birmingham and owned major buildings and property in, what is now, downtown Birmingham proper.

He cautioned King and his followers that they need to give serious thought to what would happen after the colored sign came down, and how would we be positioned financially or economically to compete in the broader market with the much more financially established white entities in a downtown area.

So we had a lot of questions that were going on that don’t get told in the stories of history today. It was a significant debate about the economic cost of integration to the black community. And people need to understand that there was not a whole lot of problem with the concept of separate and equal. The problem was we never could get the equal worked out.

Bluey: That’s right.

Finley: And the public tax revenue didn’t come into our community, but we had successful black businesses going on. We had successful black churches, black contractors were building houses. We had what by most standards would be a pretty comfortable working-class or middle-class existence in Birmingham. And that was lost once the colored sign came down. And we have not been able to reestablish.

I hear black businesses crying, “Well, we don’t have capital to do this, that, and the other.” I’m saying, I’m old enough to remember when we had all of these things, and whatever capital was needed we were able to put it together to do what needed to be done.

So understanding that history, and what we built, and how we built it, the drop in the link of communications has interrupted our ability to build on those successes.

The Johnson Publishing companies, the 300 black-owned radio stations, the 15 million acres of land, all of that is lost. And I feel that … the misdirection of the public education system and the breakdown in the family communications within our community have cost us tremendously. And that history, that story needs to be told.

When I talked to you about T.M. Alexander, the Rosa Parks story is a great human interest story, but this was the Montgomery bus boycott, [which] was an organized quasi business entity that was going on here. And the people didn’t stop going to work, they just stopped riding the bus.

In creating a car pool to be able to deliver these people to their jobs, they needed to have a blanket insurance. So we had a millionaire black insurance executive insurance company owner out of Atlanta who stepped up and provided a $2 million blanket policy to cover the bus boycott.

Now, Rosa’s courage is not to be diminished, but there was a business end to this, and the black conservative businessmen who, for the most part, were all Republicans, provided the financial strength necessary.

They did this up until the point that the movement itself became integrated, and groups with other objectives got involved. And then, I think, the black community sort of got lost in the shuffle.

Bluey: Richard, I want to thank you for the work that you’re doing and coming on The Daily Signal to share these stories with us. It’s incredibly important to all of us that here at The Heritage Foundation and The Daily Signal we keep this history alive and continue to tell these stories.

It’s so powerful to hear about them, and to have somebody like yourself who cares so passionately do it is a real treat for us. So I want to thank you, again, for joining us on The Daily Signal Podcast and [I] hope to have a future conversation with you and continue talking about this.

Finley: Well, I want to thank you. I appreciate what you’re doing and I hope you do continue to do this service for our community.

Bluey: Thank you.

Finley: Thank you.

PODCAST BY

Rob Bluey

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

A Note for our Readers:

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

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

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

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

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

Cuban Americans Tell What Life Under Castro Was Really Like

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When Sebastian Arcos and family members tried to travel from Cuba to the United States, authorities stopped them in what turned out to be a sting operation to arrest one of his uncles, who had advocated and fought for Fidel Castro’s revolution more than 20 years earlier.

That was Dec. 31, 1981, and for trying to leave the island nation, Arcos was jailed for a year.

His uncle spent seven years in jail. His father, also a political supporter of the communist revolution and like many other citizens soured on the broken promises of democracy, was imprisoned for six years.

“For the sake of argument, let’s say both the [Cuban] health care system and education system are perfect, which they are not. There have been thousands of political executions, tens of thousands of political prisoners, and 3 million Cuban exiles,” said Arcos, 58, today associate director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University.

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

“So, the question to ask when we are told to consider the good things is: What is the price for the good?” Arcos told The Daily Signal.

Arcos said that he is “surprised when talking heads in the United States will give Fidel Castro the benefit of the doubt.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a professed democratic socialist, has defended comments he made in the 1980s, when he said of Castro: “He educated their kids, gave them health care, totally transformed the society.”

In defending those remarks during an interview that aired Sunday on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Sanders said:

We’re very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba, but you know, it’s unfair to simply say everything is bad. You know? When Fidel Castro came into office [in 1959], you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?”

Castro handed control of the government to his brother, Raúl Castro, before his death at age 90 in November 2016.

Miguel Díaz-Canel was named president when the younger Castro stepped down at age 87 in February 2018, but is largely considered a figurehead. Raúl Castro, head of Cuba’s Communist Party, is said to make major government decisions.

Sanders noted that President Donald Trump has had kind things to say about authoritarian rulers such as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Arcos joined the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1987, providing reports to the United Nations Human Rights Commission before coming to the United States in 1992.

He said people should know better than to concede gross human rights abuses in Cuba, and then point to health care and literacy.

“That’s been the regime’s argument for decades,” Arcos said. “Whoever makes that argument is just repeating their lines.”

Cuba’s military dictatorship controls 80% of the economy. Political prisoners are common, and courts face political interference.

The Heritage Foundation’s 2019 Index of Economic Freedom ranks Cuba at 178th among the world’s nations based on how free its economy is.

Cuba did adopt some free market policies about a decade ago, but the government hasn’t been a strong effort to implement the reforms. Private property is allowed, but is strictly regulated by the government.

According to Heritage’s index, low state-dictated wages increase poverty in Cuba. The state runs the means of production, property seizures without due process are common, and the top income tax rate is 50%.

Repression in Cuba is on the rise, said Janisset Rivero, 50, a human rights activist who lived in Cuba until age 14. Her family was wrongly accused of engaging in seditious speech against the Cuban government because they received a letter from family abroad.

“Health care and education are not as good as the propaganda claims,” Rivero said. “It’s indoctrination more than education. The Cuban system doesn’t tolerate critical thinking.”

The two former Cuban citizens interviewed for this story gave similar accounts of health care in Cuba

They said the health care system has two tiers: One is for tourists, elites, and the military, which is top rate and what people see. The other is for the general population. When Cubans go to those hospitals, they have to bring their own food, water, bed sheets, and pillows.

Of support inside the United States for Cuba’s communist system, Rivero said, “It’s ignorance. Some people are ignorant.”

However, she suspects that in some cases, it’s worse.

“Some people simply support socialism and communism with a big state that can take control of people’s lives,” Rivero said. “Some supporters know exactly what is going on in Cuba and believe it would be OK here because they believe they know best.”

Frank Calzon, who retired last year as executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, was born in 1944. His parents sent him to the United States after the Castro-led revolution. He became active in human rights causes and led the center for 22 years.

“A lot of claims the Cuban government makes should be suspect,” Calzon said. “Cuban students are not really more educated now. In 1951, the country had 75-80% of students [who] knew how to read and write.”

A strong spirit exists in Cuba for freedom, he said, pointing to the group Ladies in White as one example.

“The Ladies in White is a group of mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters of political prisoners,” Calzon said. “They try to march to Mass on Sundays, but Cuban police intercept them and take them to prisons. They release them that evening, but they take them several miles out of their city.”

COLUMN BY

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Lucas is also the author of “Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections.” Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

RELATED ARTICLES:

My Visit to Cuba — An American in Havana

No, Fidel Castro Didn’t Improve Health Care or Education in Cuba

The Left’s Appalling Whitewashing of Castro’s Legacy

A Note for our Readers:

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

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

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

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

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

Why I Believe That My Friend Phillip B. Haney Was Assassinated

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My thoughts and prayers are with the family of my great and good friend Phillip B. Haney. 

In Remembrance of My Friend

I write this column knowing that my friend Phillip is with God in Heaven. This column is a tribute to a man who stood against evil. This column is in remembrance of a man who never ever gave up. This column is dedicated to a true American patriot. This column pays homage to a fellow warrior in the fight against those who would destroy America from within.

Let me begin by explaining how Phillip and I first met. My contacts with Phillip were all via phone. We spoke frequently, sometimes 2-3 times a week, over a period of 8 years during the most difficult times in his life. While I never had the honor of meeting him in person, we spoke frequently about life, his career, his family, his work and his passion for telling the truth no matter what the consequences.

Phillip became a contributor of ours writing fourteen columns. Phillip’s last column was dated December 3rd, 2019 titled Four Years Ago Today: A Tribute to the Victims of the San Bernardino Jihad Attack. Phillip concluded his last column writing:

As a sworn Federal Law Enforcement Officer who has also been deeply affected by this case, it is my intention, in the weeks, months and years ahead, to help make sure that their stories are not forgotten, and that on one fine day, we will all know more about what really happened on that December day in San Bernardino.

Phillip felt personally responsible for the deaths in San Bernadino because he knew that the Obama administration had shut down his investigation into several Islamist groups, two of which we now know were tied to the San Bernardino attack. Watch:

Upon his retirement after 13 years as a Customs & Border Protection Officer in the Department of Homeland Security, he relished his new role as a whistleblower explaining how political correctness was making us all less safe.

Phillip B. Haney was Assassinated

I believe my friend did not commit suicide. I believe Phillip was not murdered. I believe Phillip was assassinated.

I waited to write this column as the first shock of his death hit me. I kept asking myself why?

I was so distraught that I just couldn’t write about Phillip until I knew more about the circumstances of his death. I read column after column seeking answers to the who, what, where, when and how. As of the writing of this column the investigation into his death is on going. What we do know is that, according to the Washington Examiner:

[Phillip] was found dead with a bullet wound on Friday morning [February 21st]  about 40 miles east of Sacramento, California, in a park-and-ride open area immediately adjacent to state Highway 16 and near state Highway 124, according to law enforcement authorities.

“Highway 16 is a busy state highway and used as a main travel route to and from Sacramento. The location is less than three miles from where [Haney] was living,” the sheriff’s office statement explained.

Here are the reasons why I firmly believe that Phillip was assassinated:

  1. He was a man on a mission to tell his story to anyone who would listen.
  2. He was a man of character.
  3. He was a seasoned federal officer who dedicated his life to serving the nation.
  4. He was a target of various Islamic terrorist groups and individuals because of the work he did at the Department of Homeland Security.
  5. He never gave up even when he was under investigation by his own department’s IG, the U.S. Department of State and then Attorney General Eric Holder.
  6. He was never depressed during hundreds of the conversations we had while he was in DHS, after he retired from DHS and while he was a contributor to our publication.
  7. He was a strong Christian who knew that it was God who put him on this path to tell the truth.

Nick Givas from Fox News reported:

Haney was recently in contact with DHS officials about a possible return to the agency, the Washington Examiner reported, adding that he was also engaged to be married.

Phillip and I often spoke about his desire to return the the Department of Homeland Security. Phillip wanted to first write his book and then return as an agent to continue his work to root out terrorists and their enablers domestically and globally.

Phillip never gave up on this dream.

Conclusion

QUESTION: Why was Phillip B. Haney assassinated?

ANSWER: He was causing Fitna in the Muslim world.

In a February 18, 2015 article titled Fitna Is Worse Than Slaughter Phillip wrote:

I have come to believe that Fitnah is the most essential motivational component of Islamic theology, i.e., it is the cornerstone of an adversarial, confrontational worldview that inevitably leads to a state of perpetual conflict with the non-Islamic world.

Philip concluded:

The word ‘Phobia’ has two meanings – either to hate something intensely, or to fear something intensely. Using these two meanings, it could be said that Muslims and non-Muslims both have ‘Fitnaphobia’ – Muslims because they hate Fitnah, and non-Muslims because they fear it.

However, in the case of the non-Muslim world, it appears that we are much more concerned about causing Fitnah (by Opposing the Strategy & Tactics of the Global Islamic Movement), than we are about protecting our western civilization from the increasingly aggressive promoters of Shariah Law.

Phillip was assassinated because he was causing Fitna. You see the slaughter of Phillip was justified in order to stop the Fitna, his pushing back against Islamic terrorism.

Phillip did not hate Muslims nor did he fear the terrorists. He was fearless!

© All rights reserved.

RELATED VIDEOS:

Louie Gohmert on the life and death of Phillip Haney

Philip Haney on his book See Something Say Nothing.

‘Here We Go Again’: 4 Things to Know About New Russia-Trump Election Meddling Narrative

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Democrats are raising a ruckus about a news report that Russia plans to meddle in the 2020 presidential campaign to help reelect President Donald Trump.

But further Russian election interference was expected, as special counsel Robert Mueller told Congress last year after his report about Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 campaign.

Here’s what to know about the newest reports about what Russia is up to.

1. What’s Different About Russia’s Plans to Interfere?

Several intelligence agencies reported in 2017 that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an effort to meddle with the U.S. presidential campaign, with a clear preference for Trump over the 2016 Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton.

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

The Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee and paid more than $100,000 for Facebook ads.

After an investigation lasting nearly two years, Mueller concluded in a 448-page report that “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

The Times report said the Russians are “undeterred by American efforts to thwart them,” and have made “more creative use of Facebook and other social media.”

The Times story, online Thursday and in the newspaper Friday, does not allege any collusion or conspiracy between Trump or his 2020 campaign and the Russians.

“Russian operatives are working to get Americans to repeat disinformation, the officials said,” the Times story says, referring to unnamed sources. “That strategy gets around social media companies’ rules that prohibit ‘inauthentic speech.’”

The Times also reported that Russian hackers “infiltrated Iran’s cyberwarfare unit” to target the U.S. and make it appear the action came from Iran.

2. What Did Trump Have to Say About It?

Trump tackled the issue head-on at a rally Friday afternoon in Las Vegas. The president said that he has dealt with “three years of witch hunts and partisan Democrat crusades.”

“By the way, I think they are starting another one,” he said. “Did you see that? I see these phonies, the do-nothing Democrats. They said today that Putin wants to be sure that Trump gets reelected. Here we go again. Here we go again. Did you see it?”

The crowd booed over the reference to the news report.

Trump noted that Clinton, his vanquished 2016 rival, recently described both Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, and the Green Party’s 2016 presidential candidate, Jill Stein, as Russian agents.

Of the new Russia allegation, Trump said, “That’s Pencil Neck again,” his nickname for House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who led Democrats’ effort to impeach Trump in the House.

The Senate voted against removing Trump from office after a trial.

“I was told a week ago, you know, they’re trying to start a rumor,” Trump said at the rally. “It’s disinformation. That’s the only thing they’re good at. They get nothing done. … These people are crazy. They don’t think about the country. They don’t think about jobs. They don’t think about lowering your drug costs. Infrastructure. These people are crazy.”

3. What Does New Information Say About Intelligence Community’s Politics?

The New York Times’ story is based on a Feb. 13 briefing conducted by intelligence officials for the House Intelligence Committee, which Schiff chairs.

The Times reported that Trump was angry at his outgoing acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, for allowing the briefing to take place.

Trump has replaced Maguire with Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany.

Schiff tweeted that this move backs up his point about Trump being untrustworthy because he welcomes foreign interference in U.S. elections.

“We count on the intelligence community to inform Congress of any threat of foreign interference in our elections,” Schiff tweeted. “If reports are true and the President is interfering with that, he is again jeopardizing our efforts to stop foreign meddling. Exactly as we warned he would do.”

Trump long has publicly suspected that powerful members of the intelligence community have a political bias.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper, not known for fairly covering Trump,  reported Friday that his sources challenged much of the narrative pushed by the Times story about Russia trying to reelect Trump.

“A national security official I know and trust pushes back on the way the briefing/ODNI story is being told, and others with firsthand knowledge agree with his assessment,” Tapper says in a series of eight tweets, referring to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “What’s been articulated in the news is that the intelligence community has concluded that the Russians are trying to help Trump again. But the intelligence doesn’t say that, the official says … ”

The factual questions indicate a real problem, said Peter Flaherty, president of the National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group.

“This shows that the president is still faced with people in the bureaucracy that want to impede and destroy his presidency. It also shows how intelligence is being politicized,” Flaherty said. “Intelligence should bear some resemblance to reality. It would seem the Kremlin would want Democrats to win.”

“Someone in the bureaucracy seems to be coordinating with Schiff,” Flaherty said. “But they are not offering specifics. If they have specifics, make them public.”

4. How Long Has Russia Meddled in U.S. Campaigns?

The fact that Russia plans to interfere in the 2020 presidential election shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone, said J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department lawyer who is now president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, an organization that advocates election integrity.

“This is what Russia always does. It’s not surprising, and it’s not going to stop,” Adams told The Daily Signal. “The Times and the left ignored interference in campaigns from Moscow from 1932 to 2017. The Democratic Party completely ignored it in the 1980s, and suddenly they are interested.”

What Russia did in 2016—particularly with social media—is largely a more high-tech means of doing what it previously has done, Adams said.

“Social media trolling is just propaganda that Russia has used since 1932,” Adams said. “Hacking is a cybercrime. When Russians hacked the DNC [Democratic National Committee] and John Podesta’s emails, it was a way to [mine] political intelligence, but it didn’t affect the election process.”

Podesta, former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton and counselor to President Barack Obama, was chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

Past instances of Russian interference in American elections include 1948, when the Soviet Union backed the Progressive Party, whose candidate for president was Henry Wallace. Wallace, who served as vice president under Franklin D. Roosevelt, split with the Democratic Party over President Harry Truman’s hawkish stance during the Cold War. Truman fired Wallace as secretary of commerce.

The Wallace campaign included several Soviet operatives.

“If it had not been for the Communists,” journalist I.F. Stone wrote at the time, “there would be no Progressive party.”

But Wallace got just 2% of the popular vote and no electoral votes, coming in fourth place behind incumbent Truman, Republican Thomas Dewey, and States Rights “Dixiecrat” Party candidate Strom Thurmond.

In another instance, Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., covertly reached out to Soviet leaders during two election cycles, while he was a presidential candidate in 1980 and ahead of the 1984 election, when President Ronald Reagan won his second term.

In 1980, Kennedy challenged President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination. According to Soviet archives, Kennedy sent former Sen. John Tunney, the California Democrat defeated for reelection in 1976, as a liaison to Soviet officials in March 1980.

As documented in Paul Kengor’s book, “Dupes,” Tunney informed the Soviets that Kennedy supported the policies of then-Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and was concerned about an “atmosphere of tensions” in the Cold War “fueled by Carter.”

The KGB archives describe Kennedy’s words as “acceptable to us.”

Carter beat Kennedy for the nomination, but lost in a landslide to Reagan in November. Kennedy again made overtures to the Soviets in 1983, seeking to prevent Reagan’s reelection.

Related correspondence first was reported Feb. 2, 1992, in the Times of London under the headline “Teddy, the KGB and the Top Secret File.” Kengor revealed the entire file in his 2006 book “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism.”

In a letter addressed to then-Soviet leader Yuri Andropov dated May 14, 1983, KGB head Viktor Chebrikov explained that Kennedy was eager to “counter the militaristic policies” of Reagan and undermine the president’s reelection chances.

Kennedy reportedly suggested doing so by helping the Soviet leader set up interviews with American TV news anchors Walter Cronkite and Barbara Walters, among others. Andropov died later that year, and didn’t get a chance to act on Kennedy’s advice with regard to the 1984 election.

Kennedy’s outreach and Tunney’s trips are documented in the Mitrokhin papers filed with the Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. The papers are named for Vasili Mitrokhin, a former KGB agent who defected to Britain from the Soviet Union in 1992.

COLUMN BY

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Lucas is also the author of “Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections.” Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

RELATED ARTICLE: Russia Wants Trump Over Sanders? No. Putin Wants Something Else!

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

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

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

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

‘Sex Change’ Isn’t Surgically Possible, My Surgeon Testified in Court

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Many people wonder why I’m so outspoken about the madness of prescribing cross-sex hormones and genital mutilation surgery for patients who suffer from the desire to be the opposite sex, known clinically as gender dysphoria.

I speak out because I consulted the “gender experts” when I had gender confusion, and they told me sex change was the only way to get relief.

But they were wrong. I didn’t need sex change—I needed effective psychotherapy to resolve childhood issues.

“Sex change” is pure balderdash. No one can change his or her sex. I have the document saying so.

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

Here’s how it came about.

After eight years of living as a woman, I finally admitted that truth to myself and sought to reclaim my male identity. In an effort to restore my birth certificate to “male,” I formally asked two acclaimed experts in 1990 to testify to my being male in California Superior Court.

They were Dr. Stanley Biber, the world-renowned sex-change surgeon who performed my operation and over 4,000 others in his career, and psychologist/sexologist Paul Walker, my gender therapist and the esteemed author of the original Standards of Care for transgender health.

These two men, both dead now, were the leading experts in the nascent field of “gender” medicine. In the document they co-authored, signed, and submitted to California Superior Court, they admitted that sex changes do not occur medically.

No Change of Sex Occurs

The court document from July 25, 1990, states that I meet the medical criteria for the male sex, even after a full-blown sex change. Men do not become women through surgery or hormones.

Paragraph 5 of the document reads:

This Patient, by the criteria established by John Money, Ph.D. at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, is indeed now considered a male. We plead that the court will reestablish this man’s legal identity as male. The patient’s medical sex is evaluated as follows:

Genetic Sex ………………………………………………………..Male

Hormonal Sex……………………………………………………..Neuter

Internal Morphology…………………………………………..Male

External Morphology………………………………………….Mixed

Gonadal Sex……………………………………………………….Neuter

Social Sex (gender role)……………………………………..Male

“Genetic Sex [is] Male.” According to the testimony of both doctors, sex-change surgery fails to change a person’s genetic sex.

“Internal Morphology [is] Male.” That is, the internal form and structure of the body remains male even after years of hormone use and sex-changing surgical procedures.

In retrospect, it’s a game-changing bombshell. The renowned gender experts testified that even when a person undergoes sex-change surgery and takes cross-gender hormones for many years, genetic sex and internal morphology do not change.

Transgender identity doesn’t exist except in one’s imagination.

So What Does Change?

What does change, then, according to the sex-change surgeon and the gender expert?

  • “Gonadal Sex [is] Neuter.” The male reproductive organs are refashioned surgically into a pseudo-vagina and the ability to provide sperm is destroyed.
  • “Hormonal Sex [is] Neuter.” The ability to produce testosterone is destroyed.
  • “External Morphology [is] Mixed.” Outward appearance of the male body is a mix of male and female. Cosmetic procedures and hormones have a feminizing effect on appearance, but many male traits remain, such as hand size, foot size, and physical strength.

The court document attests that only social sex (gender role) and external morphology (outward appearance) can change.

Therefore, people can skip the hormones and ditch the radical genital surgery because they are not medically necessary. By providing them, the medical professionals commit medical malpractice.

Sex change at its heart is only a social sex change, staged by gender-confused people themselves through a change of clothes and name.

Transgender Women in Sports

Men who claim to be women and then intrude in women’s sports competitions because men’s sports are too difficult for them are only socially pretending to be women.

Their muscle mass, physical strength, and internal bone structure remain even if their testosterone levels later drop—all determined at puberty by the flood of testosterone.

It’s folly to place men on the cover of magazines and celebrate their courage to “come out” as a transgender female when, according to this court document, they are still genetic men.

I think that transgender women (men who are impersonating women) have pulled off one of the biggest misogynistic scams against women in history. Transgender women are saying, in effect, that the beautiful, distinct female sex—womanhood itself—is nothing more than wardrobe choices and some cosmetic surgery.

Pure balderdash.

This Explains the Unhappiness

This court document also helps explain the explosion of reported unhappiness, regret, and detransition stories emerging from the U.K., Canada, and the U.S.

Some of the regretters after changing gender tell me they feel like they are in “gender hell” or that “it was the biggest mistake of my life.”

“I realized I could never become a real woman,” one said. “Now I want my life back; can you help me?”

I detransitioned 30 years ago, in 1990, and have written many articles and books to shine a light on the harm this grand experiment has caused for so many people: suicides and attempted suicides, fractured marriages, deserted children.

Two renowned gender experts, sexologist Paul Walker and surgeon Stanley Biber, exposed the reckless and false ideology in the 1990 court document. Inadvertently, I’m sure, considering they continued to guide hurting people along the same destructive path.

This document filed by experts with the Superior Court of California plainly says that sex-changing surgery does not change men into women, or vice versa. So let’s stop pretending it does.

COMMENTARY BY

Walt Heyer

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

RELATED ARTICLE: End California’s Illegal Discrimination Against Pro-Lifers

A Note for our Readers:

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

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

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

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

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

Ivanka Trump’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative Empowers Women

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Implementing free-market policies that advance economic freedom is the key to empowering women.

Elaborating on that critical linkage, the president’s Council of Economic Advisers recently published a report, “The W-GDP Index: Empowering Women’s Economic Activity Through Addressing Legal Barriers.”

The W-GDP Index quantifies prior legal reforms in the five crucial areas that affect women’s “full and free” economic participation in developing countries and can be used to track progress of the Trump administration’s Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative in removing barriers to equal economic opportunity for women.

Advancing women’s economic activity by dismantling regulatory barriers hindering them and providing them with the same legal protections as men can result in large increases in economic output and promote overall economic development.

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

According to the Council of Economic Advisers’ report, “fully removing the legal barriers to women’s economic activity could increase annual global gross domestic product by $7.7 trillion, or 8.3 percent.” Ensuring women’s full and free participation in the economy, the report says, is “smart economic policy.”

The administration’s Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative, which was spearheaded by first daughter and presidential adviser Ivanka Trump and launched in February 2019, involves the National Security Council, the State Department, and eight other relevant agencies.

Equally notable is that Congress has been paying keen attention to the initiative, too. Two lawmakers—Sens. Lindsey Graham, R.-S.C., and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H.—are leading a bipartisan legislative effort to have the initiative written into law.

This, Ivanka Trump said, “would permanently authorize W-GDP and establish women’s economic empowerment as a core facet of the United States foreign policy, in line with the president’s own national security strategy.”

The initiative aims to advance women’s empowerment and reach 50 million women in developing countries by 2025 by helping them start small businesses, attend vocational schools, and access loans, particularly through amending “laws in dozens of countries that restrict the ability of women to own property or work in the same jobs as men do,” The Washington Post reported.

As specified in the presidential memorandum on promoting women’s global development and prosperity:

It is the policy of the United States to enhance the opportunity for women to meaningfully participate in, contribute to, and benefit from economic opportunities as individuals, workers, consumers, innovators, entrepreneurs, and investors, so that they enjoy the same access, rights, and opportunities as men to participate in, contribute to, control, and benefit from economic activity.

Indeed, the administration has hit on one pragmatic tool; namely, empowering key segments of the society to lead transformation through free-market initiatives and structural reforms that respect human liberties. Advancing economic freedom is essentially about ensuring human empowerment.

Strengthening and expanding economic freedom guarantees an individual’s natural right to achieve her or his goals and then own the value of what they create.

Amartya Sen, a Nobel laureate economist who has made considerable contributions to development economics, once noted: “Development consists of the removal of various types of unfreedoms that leave people with little choice and little opportunity for exercising their reasoned legacy.”

According to The Heritage Foundation’s annual Index of Economic Freedom, liberalized economies not only have higher levels of entrepreneurial dynamism, higher standards of living, lower rates of poverty, and safer environmental standards, but also greater democratic governance, more social progress, and more gender equality.

Not surprisingly, as shown in the following chart, improving economic freedom and empowering women (measured by the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Index) go hand in hand.

Reaching a greater global audience since its inception, the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative has become a unique tool for using U.S. aid more effectively to encourage entrepreneurship, push private enterprise, and increase innovation while focusing on comparative advantage.

Promoting economic freedom in developing or repressed countries is a crucial pillar of America’s strategic foreign policy engagement that not only will advance U.S. interests, but also cement foundations of free-market principles and defend democratic values.

By using U.S. economic diplomacy in this unique way, America has practical opportunities to help women become agents of real and measurable changes in their home countries.

COMMENTARY BY

Anthony B. Kim

Anthony B. Kim researches international economic issues at The Heritage Foundation, with a strong focus on economic freedom. Kim is the research manager of the Index of Economic Freedom, the flagship product of the Heritage Foundation in partnership with The Wall Street Journal. Read his research. Twitter: .

A Note for our Readers:

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

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

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

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

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

Marriage Is the Ticket Out of Poverty

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Why are some millennials more financially secure than others? The answer has to do with individual life choices.

Americans who graduate high school, start working, get married, and have children—in that order—are significantly less likely to fall into poverty than others. These four core life choices, when sequenced together, provide the best path to a prosperous future.

This formula, known as “the success sequence,” is the key to both financial and general life success. Studies show that 97% of young adults who follow this sequence are more likely to work their way into the middle- or upper-income tiers by the time they reach their late 20s or 30s.

In particular, tying the knot before having children offers the most benefits. In their study on the “success sequence,” W. Bradford Wilcox, a professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, and his colleague Wendy Wang, director of research for the Charlottesville, Virginia-based Institute for Family Studies, found that 95% of millennials who married before having children had higher family incomes than millennials who had children before marriage.

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

That remains true even for millennials from low-income families and different racial backgrounds.

Children from two-parent families are also more likely to enjoy financial security than children from single-parent families. Recent research conducted by the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution suggests that the increase in child poverty between the 1970s and the 1990s was a direct result of “the decline of stable marriage” and that child poverty would be significantly lower in the United States if more Americans had strong marriages.

The Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector summed it up perfectly when he said “marriage remains America’s strongest anti-poverty weapon.”

With all the clear benefits of marriage, one would think Americans would eagerly jump to tie the knot. But that’s not the case: Marriage rates in America continue to plummet.

Americans are also getting married later. In recent years, the average age at first marriage for women is 27.8 years old and 29.8 for men. That’s a dramatic increase from 1960, when the average age was 20 for women and 23 for men. In addition, reports from the Urban Institute and Pew Research Center predict that a large number of millennials will remain unmarried through age 40 and that 25%, once they reach their mid-40s to 50s, are likely to have never been married.

To that end, we should all be worried about the social and economic costs that declining marriage rates have on society. Research shows that divorce and having children out of wedlock cost taxpayers $110 billion each year.

Regrettably, children are the ones who pay the price. Those born into single-parent homes are more likely to experience a whole host of destructive life events, such as dropping out of school or abusing drugs and alcohol.  The bottom line is that we need to incentivize more marriage in America, not less.

When it comes to policy, one way Congress can help is by eliminating the “marriage penalty” that exists in the tax code, which taxes two people more as a married couple than they would be taxed if they filed individually.

That’s why I’m proud to have joined a colleague, Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., to introduce a bill to eliminate this “millennial marriage penalty.” The bill would allow both spouses in a marriage to claim the $2,500 student-loan interest deduction instead of just one.

Fundamentally, the tax code should not financially stand in the way of two people getting married. Strong families are the building blocks of strong nations and Congress should do more to remove existing barriers so that marriage is easier for more Americans.

To learn more about The Heritage Foundation’s preferred tax policies and federal education policies, check out “Four Priorities for Tax Reform 2.0.“

COMMENTARY BY

Rep. Ted Budd

Ted Budd is the U.S. representative for North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District. He is a member of the House Financial Services Committee. Twitter: .

A Note for our Readers:

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

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

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

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

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

Twitter piles on Richard Dawkins over Eugenics tweet

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The eminent expert in communicating science botches his explanation.

Twitter may not be the best medium for explaining the science of eugenics to a wary public, as the sometime Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, Richard Dawkins, discovered this week.

Professor Dawkins, now aged 78, renowned as an evolutionary biologist and as the author of best-sellers about genetics and atheism, most recently Outgrowing God, chose to tweet about eugenics. This may have been prompted by a Twitter storm about back room boys at 10 Downing Street (of which more below). His words were not calibrated to endear him to the public:

Reactions? They ranged from “You absolute pin-headed simpleton” to “How’d the application of this play out in 1940s Europe?” to “The thing about people who believe in eugenics is that they always believe themselves to be the superior kind of human. No-one ever thinks that it could make people like them obsolete”.

Dawkins had to back-pedal very quickly to explain himself:

Dawkins was clearly not playing in the First Division this week. Professors in the Simonyi chair are supposed to make the public sympathetic to science, as its website explains:

The task of communicating science to the layman is not a simple one. In particular it is imperative for the post holder to avoid oversimplifying ideas, and presenting exaggerated claims. The limits of current scientific knowledge should always be made clear to the public.

Even scientists were exasperated. Dave Curtis, the editor of Annals of Human Genetics (a journal which was once titled Annals of Eugenics), posted a long Twitter thread explaining why humans cannot be bred like cattle and roses, contra Professor Dawkins. First, “humans have long generational times and small numbers of offspring. This would make any selective breeding process extremely slow”. Second, humans live in very different environments and most of the variation in their traits is due to the environment. It would be very difficult to identify individuals with ideal traits.

“We should bear in mind,” he adds, “that harsh selection pressures have been acting on humans up to the present and that there may be very little scope for overall improvement. In any event, we can confidently say that selective breeding to improve desirable traits is not practicable.”

The long and the short of the matter, in Dr Curtis’s opinion, is this: “People who support eugenics initiatives are evil racists. Also, modern genetic research shows that eugenics would not work.”

It’s surprising that Professor Dawkins thought that his puff for human eugenics would be applauded. James Watson, who won Nobel Prize in 1962 for discovering DNA, has become a non-person after expressing eugenicist opinions which were interpreted as racist.

Just a whiff of eugenics was enough to force the resignation of one of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s advisors recently. Opposition research on Andrew Sabisky, a political “contractor” at 10 Downing Street, uncovered six-year-old opinions which were quickly denounced as eugenic and racist.

For example, in a comment on a 2014 blog post made by a user called “Andrew Sabisky”, it was suggested that compulsory contraception could eliminate a “permanent underclass”. It read: “One way to get around the problems of unplanned pregnancies creating a permanent underclass would be to legally enforce universal uptake of long-term contraception at the onset of puberty.”

Having used internet history to make Sabisksy history, the media moved on to savaging Dominic Cummings, a key advisor to the PM who had hired Sabisky . A blog post from 2014 contained ideas which were described as eugenic. He suggested that the UK’s National Health Service IVF service should offer human eggs sorted by IQ to make a level playing field for rich and poor parents who want babies with a high IQ.

Prof Richard Ashcroft, a medical ethicist at City University, told The Guardian that this was nonsense: “This idea that we can use biological selection to improve individuals and society, and that the state through the NHS, should facilitate this, really is pure eugenics.”

The fracas demonstrates the schizophrenic attitude of the public towards eugenics. On the one hand, the word “eugenics” evokes racism and Nazism. It is this sense which has been weaponized to undermine the new PM. On the other hand, parents who want perfect children are encouraged to eliminate “defective” embryos. The media happily provides a platform for bioethics to promote such ideas. Another Oxford professor, Julian Savulescu has often explained why he supports eugenics:

“We practise eugenics when we screen for Down’s syndrome, and other chromosomal or genetic abnormalities. The reason we don’t define that sort of thing as ‘eugenics’, as the Nazis did, is because it’s based on choice. It’s about enhancing people’s freedom rather than reducing it.”

COLUMN BY

MICHAEL COOK

Michael Cook is editor of BioEdge.

FOR MORE ARTICLE ON EUGENICS CLICK HERE.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Is it time to kiss the nuclear family goodbye?

The response of Wuhan Christians to the coronavirus outbreak puts the government to shame

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

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