Sexual Acts – Good and Bad – Are for Real

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Thomas Weinandy OFM Cap.: On film, actors may pretend to kill or steal. Such scenes aren’t per se sinful. But nude sex scenes are real and, therefore, sinful.

I recently celebrated Mass on the feast of St. Maria Goretti, and decided to use the readings for the feast instead of the normal weekday.  The first reading was from 1 Corinthians 6.  There Paul speaks of sexual immorality.  Although I understood most of it quite well, there was one point I did not fully comprehend.  By choosing this reading, and giving a homily on it, I wanted to force myself to ponder it more deeply and so gain greater clarity.

Paul says that the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body, and so “whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.”  Therefore, “avoid immorality.”  This I understood.  We are joined to Christ, and so any sexually immoral act is a sin against the relationship we have with him through the Spirit that dwells within us.  It is Paul’s next thought that has always caused me to pause.

“Every other sin a person commits is outside of the body, but the immoral person sins against his own body.”  Is not every sin a bodily action?  Even our evil thoughts are bodily actions.  We employ our brain, our imagination, our emotions.  What, then, does Paul mean when he states that all sins, except sexual sins, are outside the body?  Moreover, why are immoral sex acts, which are human bodily sins, any different from any other human bodily sinful acts?  I was befuddled.

How this next thought came to me, I do not know, but I thought of actors in movies.  They pretend to be all kinds of persons.  An actor pretends to be a murderer, but we know he did not really commit murder – it’s just a movie.  Another actor pretends to be a bank robber, but again, we know he really didn’t rob a bank.  All the sins that they “commit” are pretended sins.

Likewise, a man and woman in a movie can pretend to be husband and wife.  They may be portrayed as having children.  We know this is a fictional marriage and family.  If in the course of the movie, however, the pretended husband and wife begin to perform intimate sexual acts with one another, these are no longer pretended sexual acts (I am not referring specifically to pornography, but “ordinary” movies).  They are the real thing.

The actors are now enacting sexual acts that are reserved only for those who are properly married, and that are forbidden to those who are not married or even pretending to be married.  Unlike the pretended murderer and the pretended bank robber, who performed fictional sins, the pretended married couple are committing real sinful acts.  They are sinning against their own bodies for they are employing their own bodies to commit these human bodily sexual sins.

Similarly, one cannot pretend to be immodestly dressed.  One is either immodestly dressed or isn’t.  Nor can one pretend to be nude or pretend to perform seductive acts, since the nude portrayal is for the purpose of being seductive.  Such immodest dressing and seductive nudity are immoral sexual acts committed against one’s own body.  One is never pretending when one is behaving in a sexually immoral manner.

That one can pretend to commit other sins, but not pretend to commit a sexual sin illustrates, I think, the distinct singular difference of sexual sin.  Thus, it helps us grasp Paul’s teaching that every sin, except sexual sin, is committed outside the body.

The real murderer or bank robber is using his body not to sin against his own body, but to achieve another purpose outside his body.  Whereas in a sexual sin, one is using one’s body to enact a sin against one’s own body, against oneself; and in most cases, one is enacting a sin against another person’s body as well.

Our bodies are not “something” we inhabit and use.  We are not “spirits” dwelling in our bodies.  Rather, as human beings, our bodies constitute, along with our souls, who we are, our very mode of being.  This is why one can pretend to be a bank robber, but one can never in reality, or even in pretending, perform immoral sexual acts without sinning against oneself.  Thus, illicit sexual acts are, by their very nature, an inhumane exploitation, an abusive demeaning of ourselves as sexual human beings.

Although such is the case for every person who commits sexual immoral acts, it is especially grievous for those who are Christians.  Paul forcefully reminds his Corinthian readers: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?  You are not your own.”

For a Christian to sexually sin against his or her own body is to violate the Spirit-filled temple that he or she is.  Moreover, we are not our own, for we belong to God in Christ Jesus.  Thus, we can no longer think that we can use our bodies in any manner that we wish.  “For we have been purchased at a price,” and that price is Jesus’ salvific death whereby we are freed from immorality so as to live holy lives in the Spirit.  “Therefore, glorify God in your body.”

As sexual immoral acts are never pretended but always real, so glorifying God by our bodily actions are never pretended but are always real, virtuous bodily acts.  These holy acts are to our sanctification and to our own bodily glory, for these acts are done bodily.

What we find then in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians is not simply the singular evil of immoral sexual acts, but also an illustration of how those same acts achieve a singular beauty when enacted within the bond of a loving marriage.

In marriage, sexual acts are love-giving and life-giving, and so married couples, together, give glory to God.

COLUMN BY

Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM, Cap.

Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM, a prolific writer and one of the most prominent living theologians, serves as a member of the Vatican’s International Theological Commission. His newest book is Jesus Becoming Jesus: A Theological Interpretation of the Synoptic Gospels.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2020 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

Harvey Weinstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein: These People Are Sick

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Yes, I will get to Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein in a moment but first this. Pedophilia is the Achilles Heel of the Deep State. I encourage you to click on the link and read the article and the resources within. This may be a good place to start.

The President is well aware of the pedophilia and child sex trafficking and you should be too. And if you are, excellent, then pass this on to inform others. This brief article does not dive down deep. It’s purpose is to raise the awareness of one of the biggest scars of humanity. Perhaps it may inspire you to dig deeper. No worries, it’s all beginning to come out. Watch what happens over the next few years.

So what does President Trump know and what is he doing about this? You must watch the video link below dating back to 2016 and read about HR1865, Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017. President Trump’s bill HR1865 was passed into law which will grant powers to facilitate the tracking of these offenders as well as measures to prevent such acts. This law most famously shut down sections of both Craigslist and Back Page but in fact accomplishes much more than this.

WATCH: Trump on Clinton & Epstein Island

To gain a more in depth understanding on the subject of child sex trafficking you must become familiar with Jaco Booyens. I had an in depth, powerfully moving and informative discussion with Jaco and you can listen to this by clicking on the link below.

WATCH:

These People Are Sick

Those that follow the President as closely as I do,know that he has stated numerous times that these people are sick. Well they are. Below is an image of those excerpted from the Epstein flight log. Yes, these people are sick and they are now being exposed. This is the exposure stage on this and many other deep state related fronts. We are now at steps 6-11 on the Scale of Discovery and Action.

Yes this is hard to read. I covered this one of my recent live news broadcasts and you can see the image there on the screen. You can also find it here at QMap.Pub. Here are but a few names on the list. Alan Dershowitz, Alec Baldwin and Anderson Cooper. Barak Obama, Ben Affleck and Beyonce Knowles. Bill Clinton, Bill Murray and Charlie Sheen. Chelsie Handler, Chrissy Teigen and Courtney Love, (I will get to Teigen in a moment). Demi Morre, Gwen Stefani and Jim Carrey. Jimmy Kimmel, John Cusack and John Legend. Kathy Griffin, Katy Perry and Kevin Spacey. Larry Summers, Naomi Campbell and Oprah Winfrey. Quentin Tarantino, Pharrel Williams and Robert Downy Jr. Steven Spielberg, Steven Tyler and Steven Colbert. Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep and Wanda Sykes. Will Ferrell, Will Smith and no surprise here, Woody Allen. Oh and Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton, who have been to the island, have not come forward to assist in anyway shape or form. AG Barr has stated that in this ongoing investigation, that anyone complicit should not rest well at night. Well there are a lot of collective hours of sleepless nights.

Watch this clip – no joke

Chrissy Teiegen American model and TV personality made the flight log list. She is also the wife of singer, Trump hater, John Legend who also made the flight list. It’s been reported that Chrissy Teigen deleted 28,000 tweets and blocked 1 million accounts. She had far too many reference to eating human flesh and pedophilia related comments. Check out this clip of her below at time marker 8:30.

Must See

“Ask Prince Andrew About It”: Trump Warned Epstein’s Island Was “Absolute Cesspool” In 2015.

WATCH

What’s Next?

And with the apparent “suiciding” of Jeffery Epstein, this brings us to Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell’s alleged victims are coming out of the woodwork. Alleged victims of the longtime associate of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein testified at the defendant’s arraignment and bail hearing. Two of the alleged victims had not spoken to law enforcement until 2019. Their stories, according to the prosecutors, share remarkably similar details about Maxwell. “The powerful testimony of these victims, who had strikingly similar experiences with Maxwell, together with documentary evidence and witness testimony, will conclusively establish that the defendant groomed the victims for sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein,” the prosecutors’ memo states.

When you do the deeper dive research, you begin to understand that Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were part of a Mossad and CIA op. One of the reasons the Epstein Island existed besides satisfying their sick appetites, was to keep everyone in check as blackmail in order to control the powerful elite. Well now, the video footage, photos and surveillance tapes are in the hands of the justice department. This story has just begun and remember Pedophilia is the Achilles heel of the deep state. So what’s next? I’ll tell you what’s next. Stay tuned.

©All right reserved.

FLORIDA: Statue of Jesus Beheaded at Miami Catholic Church

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Leftists have been indulging in an orgy of destroying statues lately, but their favored method of destruction is pulling them down, not beheading them. Still, a Leftist may have done this, but could it have anything to do with the introduction into Miami of a large population of people who believe that Christianity is a false religion and that they are commanded to fight unbelievers so that Allah may punish them by the hands of the believers (cf. Qur’an 9:14-15)?

Could it have anything to do with the Qur’an’s suggestion that the destroyed remnants of ancient non-Muslim civilizations are a sign of Allah’s punishment of those who rejected his truth? “Many were the Ways of Life that have passed away before you: travel through the earth, and see what was the end of those who rejected Truth.” (Qur’an 3:137) The ruins of non-Muslim civilizations thus bear witness to the truth of Islam. What ensues from that idea? The creation of more ruins.

Or is this the work of Leftists who are unwittingly (or knowingly) advancing the same agenda as that of the Islamic State and the Taliban?

“‘This is an attack on the church.’ Jesus statue beheaded at SW Miami-Dade Catholic church,” by Carli Teproff, Miami Herald, July 16, 2020:

A statue of Jesus Christ as the Good Shepherd that has been in the courtyard of a Kendale Lakes Catholic church for decades has been beheaded and police are trying to figure out who is behind the act.

The statue, which sits behind the church at 14187 SW 72nd St., was desecrated sometime Tuesday night into Wednesday morning.

“This is an attack on the church,” said Mary Ross Agosta, a spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Miami. “This is not only private property, it is sacred property.”

Ross Agosta said church personnel found the statue with its head on the ground just before 8 a.m.

“This is not something you can trip over and say, ‘Oh, sorry,’ ” she said. “Someone did this intentionally.”

The incident comes on the heels of an attack on an Orlando-area church over the weekend. Steven Shields, 23, was charged with arson after deputies say he plowed a minivan through the front door of Queen of Peace Catholic Church in Ocala and set it on fire….

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

Disney and ESPN Sign Kaepernick to Educate Our Youth on Racial Injustice in America

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Turning down a contract with the National Football League (NFL) to become a full-time social justice warrior has proven to be a profitable decision for Colin Kaepernick. The controversial former 49ers quarterback was offered a lucrative deal with The Walt Disney Company (1.57) and ESPN (1.71) to produce “scripted and unscripted stories that deal with race, social injustice, and the quest for equity.”

Kaepernick became a household name after kneeling during NFL games’ playing of the National Anthem to oppose alleged racism in America. He has since worn socks that depict police officers as pigs, has expressed admiration for communist dictator Fidel Castro, and has supported organizations that are dedicated to aborting unborn black lives.

After entering the spotlight, Kaepernick told NFL media, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color…”

Despite Kaepernick’s radical positions, the senior vice president of ESPN’s “The Undefeated” platform has said teaming up with Kaepernick will “elevate important stories of lives too often unseen…We want to continue to call attention to the issues of racial injustice that America is wrestling with, and do that in new, compelling ways.”

Jemele Hill, a former ESPN host who was terminated for disparaging remarks about President Donald Trump, will be a producer for the project. Hill’s firing was related to Disney CEO Bob Iger’s decision to tone down the network’s political content. Disney has consistently been one of the worst companies tracked by 2ndVote that pushes leftist viewpoints, but Iger appeared to realize that people do not want politics mixed in with their entertainment.

Sadly, the epiphany does not appear to have stuck.

The long-term partnership between Kaepernick and Disney/ESPN will be part of the company’s “The Undefeated” platform, which “focuses on matters of race in sports.” Further collaboration with Kaepernick may extend to other Disney properties, such as Pixar and Hulu. Even though his only real accomplishment has been creating division, Kaepernick will assist with developing “culturally impactful” content to “inspire the youth.”

2ndVote Americans can remind ESPN and Disney that we don’t want corporations engaging in historical revisions and political controversy. We want them to help our families relax, not ratchet up racial tensions.

EDITORS NOTE: This 2ndVote column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Amazon’s New Show About ‘White Slaves’

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Below is the trailer for the show. WARNING: It is very difficult to watch, as it is filled with sensational and deranged images — images that will be streaming straight into millions of homes this fall. If you choose to watch it, let us know what you think:

The history of black slavery is a horrendous part of the American narrative, but does it help to heal the wounds by normalizing the concept of whites being enslaved by blacks? That’s what director Dale Resteghini envisions with his series Cracka.

Slated for a fall 2020 release, the series asks, “What if the roles were reversed?”

‘You took our breath away, what if we took yours? You raped our daughters, what if we raped yours? You stole our freedom, now we steal yours.’ — Title Card for the upcoming TV show Cracka

But it’s more than just reversing the roles. While the series “boasts” of reliving all the horrors of slavery, including the rapes, beatings and lynchings, it also takes a very disoriented approach toward history, as All Hip Hop describes,

The movie offers a present-day so-called white supremacist who is magically thrust back in time to an alternate past where Africans enslave whites and rule the land known as America. … the protagonist – tatted with racist Nazi symbols – begins to harass an African American motorist. It is at that point that the violence starts. After the lead character rains down blows on the motorist, the pseudo-Nazi returns to his home. He then finds himself staring at the barrel of a shotgun and enslaved.

In Cracka, it’s not “enough” that whites are the slaves in this alternative world, rather all whites must be depicted as Nazis (which, intentional or not, gives off a message that, unlike the blacks who were enslaved in the American South, the whites in this alternative universe are racists and deserve such punishment).

A show like Cracka might look like it’s aligned with pro-black, anti-racist narratives, i.e., by allowing whites to really feel what blacks went through. In actuality, it promotes a distorted vision of that reality, similar to what is being advanced by the woke movement of today, where perverse new strains of reverse racism are being embraced as social justice:

  1. By reversing slave roles and making whites look like beasts and savages, the show plays into exactly the same racist narratives that advocates of slavery used to justify the torture and bondage of African Americans.
  2. The show essentially functions as a free marketing campaign for the real (and violent) neo-Nazis of today — a kind of “call to action” in the war of extremes, giving them good visuals for the propaganda they use to increase their ranks.
  3. The show ensures race tensions will be emboldened by pushing into the public consciousness more crude imagery and rhetoric similar to that of snuff films. It is a scientific fact that the human subconscious (with child-like innocence) completely accepts as reality whatever it sees, even if it rationally disagrees with it or rejects it. To have this type of content normalized by a major distributor is genuinely worrisome for the mental and spiritual health of the human race.

Let’s be crystal clear on one thing: Cracka is not just “entertainment.” It is extremist propaganda, whether or not it is intended to be.

The reverse of racism is still racism. Mirrored racism doesn’t beget equity; it begets more racism.

It is very alarming that the mainstream media and creative industry is openly normalizing the extremism of racial supremacy and divisiveness under the guise of black voices. The timing couldn’t be worse. As a petition to cancel the release of Cracka notes, the show “will only serve to create a more toxic environment and incite and promote more violence.”

MORE ON THIS SUBJECT:

Former White Nationalist Arno Michaelis on Systemic Racism and Moral Agency

COVID-19: Neo-Nazis Capitalize on Crisis

How Communities Should Deal With Radicalization

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

Tweets of Washington Journalists Betray ‘Groupthink,’ Study Finds

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Washington journalists’ tweets and interactions on Twitter show that those delivering news on government and politics to most Americans live in “more insular microbubbles than previously thought,” according to a new study.

These journalists display a “vulnerability to groupthink and blind spots,” the study says.

The study, by journalism professors Nikki Usher and Yee Man Margaret Ng of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, doesn’t directly assert that the “groupthink” is liberal.

However, it refers to traditional perceptions of the news media going back to at least 1964 and establishes what it calls the “peer-to-peer dynamics” of journalists. Media bias and promoting narratives has been a particular issue in recent years.

Two regimes are fighting an ideological war in America today. But what side are you on? And how can you sharpen up on how to defend your position? Learn more now >>

The study, published June 30, measured these dynamics through Twitter and concludes:

The dangers of journalists having limited perspectives are real. While this study does not purport to show possible worsening over time, it does provide support that shows siloed communities of journalists and thus offers an important, empirically grounded caveat about their vulnerability to groupthink and blind spots.

The study identifies nine clusters of news organizations, called “communities of practice,” that routinely retweet and interact with fellow members of their group. These include:

—The “elite/legacy community” is made up of journalists from The Washington Post, NPR, The New York Times, NBC News, and Politico.

—The “congressional journalism community” includes journalists from Bloomberg, Politico, the Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, CQ Roll Call, and C-SPAN.

—The TV cluster includes journalists from ABC News, Fox News, and CBS News.

Separately, the study gives CNN its own cluster because so much of the Twitter interaction is between or among CNN employees:

In particular, it is concerning that CNN journalists are tweeting mostly to other CNN journalists about CNN. Even if this is an organizational mandate, it nonetheless serves as a powerful echo chamber that leaves CNN’s internal sense about what news matters unchecked and reconfirmed by those who work there.

The “critique of ‘Eastern Liberal Media’ generally dates to [Sen.] Barry Goldwater in the 1960s,” the report notes, referring to the Arizonan who was Republicans’ 1964 presidential nominee and adding that “‘elite media’ and ‘coastal elitism’ have reached a fever pitch in the Trump era.”

It says:

Journalists widely predicted that Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 election. The aftermath prompted renewed interest among journalists and scholars focused on the United States as to whether political journalists, particularly those in Washington, were in a ‘media bubble.’ …

U.S. journalists are more likely to be insulated in liberal political bubbles in big cities that are growing ‘bluer.’

The researchers do not try to say whether each journalist leans left or right based on Twitter. But, the study says the “clusters” suggest that journalists now tend to interact “within even smaller communities of like-minded journalists that have been previously considered.” 

“If journalists are talking to even smaller groups of journalists who share similar orientations,” the study says, “there is a real concern about the limitations of these epistemic communities in generating knowledge and information for the public.”

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.

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A Note for our Readers:

These are trying times in our nation’s history. Two regimes are fighting an ideological war in America today, with polar opposite viewpoints on public policy and the government’s role in our lives.

Our friends at The Heritage Foundation asked world-class speaker, educator, and researcher David Azerrad to walk you through his research and outline the differences between the “two regimes” in our society today—conservatism and progressivism—and their primary differences.

When you get access to this course today, you’ll learn key takeaways like what it means to be a conservative, what “modern progressivism” is, how a conservative worldview differs from a progressive one, and much, much more.

You will come away from this online course with a better understanding of the differing points of view, how they align with your principles, and how to defend your beliefs.

Don’t wait—start taking “The Case for Conservatism” course online now.

GET YOUR FREE ACCESS NOW »

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

Angela Davis: Biden is the ‘Candidate Who Can Be Most Effectively Pressured’

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In an appearance Monday on Russia Today’s Going Underground, radical Marxist and former Black Panther Angela Davis explained that she is supporting empty-suit Joe Biden for president because he is the “candidate who can be most effectively pressured.”

“I don’t see this election as being about choosing a candidate who will be — who will be able to lead us in the right direction,” Davis states in a video shared on social media. “It will be about choosing a candidate who can be most effectively pressured into allowing more space for the evolving anti-racist movement.

“Biden is very problematic in many ways, not only in terms of his past and the role that he played, and pushing toward mass incarceration…” Davis continued, “but – I say but – Biden is far more likely to take mass demands seriously – far more likely than the current occupant of the White House.”

Davis is correct — far from being a “moderate,” the cognitively-challenged Biden will be simply a puppet for a strong, more radical vice-president and advisers.

Angela Davis

100 Known Connections

Davis delivered the keynote address at an April 2009 event where the Chicago branch of the NAARPR presented its highest honor, the Human Rights Award, to Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Davis’s speech emphasized such themes as the evils of capitalism, the intransigent nature of American racism, and the injustices of the “prison-industrial complex.” Some noteworthy excerpts:

  • “The election of [Barack] Obama was a millennium transformation, and we’re in a new historical conjunction in 2009.”
  • “Many assume Obama is going to save capitalism, but a lot of us here have other ideas about changing the system.”
  • “[T]here is [a] reason why we still have the prison industrial complex, and its called racism.”
  • “The question of race is so essential to the history of this country. And working against the prison-industrial complex and the death penalty will help us to understand the markings and history of U.S. slavery.”
  • “Not another prison should be constructed in this country. Because the solution is not putting perpetrators behind bars. Sending people to jail does not help heal society’s problems.”

To learn more about Angela Davis, click here for the profile link.

©All rights reserved.

PODCAST: The press is FAILING to hold Liberal politicians accountable, mail-in ballots and COVID Virus

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GUESTS AND TOPICS:

TOM DEL BECCARO

Tom Del Beccaro, columnist for Fox News, Fox Business & the Epoch Times. Tom is the former Chairman of the California Republican Party and former U.S. Senate Candidate from California. Tom is author of The Divided Era AND The New Conservative Paradigm, and is publisher of — Political Vanguard . com and Tom Del . com. Tom is also radio and television commentator — heard and seen by millions — including Fox Business, Newsmax, One America News, and of course, here at the Conservative Commandos on the AUN-TV network!

TOPIC: Ballot integrity and mail-in ballots!

PHIL KERPEN

Phil Kerpen, Founder and President of American Commitment. He is also President of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity (founded by Steve Forbes, Steve Moore, Art Lauffer). Phil is a leading free-market policy analyst and advocate in Washington. Prior to joining American Commitment, Kerpen was the principal policy and legislative strategist at Americans for Prosperity. He previously worked at the Free Enterprise Fund, the Club for Growth, and the Cato Institute. Kerpen is also a nationally syndicated columnist, chairman of the Internet Freedom Coalition, and author of the book Democracy Denied. How Obama is Ignoring You and Bypassing Congress to Radically Transform America – and How to Stop Him.

TOPIC: Real numbers behind the Chinese COVID Virus!

DAN GAINOR

Dan Gainor, the Vice President for Business and Culture for the Media Research Center, is a veteran editor whose work has been published or cited in the following media: Congressional Quarterly.com, Investor’s Business Daily, Chicago Sun-Times, New York Post, Washington Times, Orange County Register, San Diego Union-Tribune, Dateline Washington, Janet Parshall’s America, Chuck Harder Show, Thom Hartmann Show, American Family Radio, CNBC’s “Power Lunch,” CNN’s “Paula Zahn Now” and Fox’s “Hannity & Colmes” and “Fox Business Live.”

TOPIC: The press is FAILING to hold Liberal politicians accountable!

©All rights reserved.

The Myth Of Systemic Police Racism Is Leading To Targeted Attacks Against Cops

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This is the second piece of a two-part series on how systemic police racism fuels the war on cops. Read part one here.

Recent looting, arson and targeted violence against police wasn’t about police reform, and the assassination of police officers wasn’t about mourning or respecting George Floyd—so what’s really going on?

A quick look at two radical movements behind George Floyd protests — Antifa and Black Lives Matter — provides some insight. It is difficult to pin down an official “party line” with these amorphous groups, but there are similarities: The Black Lives Matter organization has called for national defunding of police and dismantling the nuclear family. The Movement for Black Lives calls for a Marxist-inspired agenda, which includes defunding police, eliminating prisons, ending all immigration enforcement, and paying slavery reparations. Antifa is even less centralized, but its adherents’ penchant for destruction, violence, riots and vandalism inspired by the supposed “racialized capitalism” of the United States is well documented.

The common thread uniting these movements is the belief that the United States as a country is illegitimate, inherently racist, and irredeemable. They view the police as racist defenders of this evil order.

This destructive pathology is a theme being echoed by many media and left-wing elites. In doing so, they fan the dangerous flames of racial hatred and violence while they downplay theft, arson, mob violence, the killing of innocent citizens, and the assassinations of police officers. The damage and vandalism that rioters have inflicted reveal their true motives and hatred for America. In Boston, a monument was desecrated honoring the 54th Massachusetts, the first black volunteer regiment in the Union Army that fought in the Civil War, which, of course, ended slavery. In Washington, D.C., the Lincoln Memorial and the World War II Monument — dedicated to Americans who died fighting the real fascists of Germany, Italy, and Japan — were defaced.

During the recent anarchy, a disturbing trend became clear — much mainstream media supported the defund-the-police agenda while rationalizing mob violence. They appear to be in total collusion with the far-Left. As historian and columnist Victor Davis Hanson observed, “There’s a narrative where the Media has joined Antifa and Black Lives Matter in forging the agenda that the United States was at the beginning, in continuation, in its present, and in the future a racist country that can only be remedied by violence that draws attention to the need for radical redistribution and reparations.”

This is exactly what we are seeing. The media is pivoting from the fake charge that the police are systemically racist to the position that all white people are racist. Making an assertion designed to turn black and white Americans against each other, CNN anchor Don Lemon asked “if you grew up in America, you came out of American soil. Considering the history of this country, how can you not be racist? How can you not have racial blindspots, how can you not see that the factory reset in America is whiteness?” This is pure projection, because making a value judgment on people based upon their skin color is part of the very essence of racism. It is the antithesis of the example, beliefs and teachings of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., who dreamed of a future where Americans would judge one another “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

The myth that black people are being hunted by the police is doubly tragic because it deflects attention away from the real issue of deadly violence facing black citizens. For people who believe black lives really matter, two questions should be asked:

First, who is really killing most black people? Second, who are the people really saving black lives?

It is a fact that black Americans, particularly young black men, are being killed in American cities at an alarming rate—but not because of the police. In 2018, police shot and killed 990 people, 228 of whom were black. The same year, there were 14,123 homicides in the United States. The number of black victims was 7,407, of which 93% were killed by other black people.

This is the real epidemic confronting the black community, but there is no outrage from the mob or the media. For police-hating professional activists, “black lives matter” only when they are killed by the police. This hypocrisy was on full display during the recent murder of a black teenager in Seattle’s “Autonomous Zone” and the continued carnage in Chicago’s black community. There was no outrage or protest in response to the cold-blooded shooting of Lorenzo Anderson in Seattle and zero concern that a violent mob of CHOP comrades prevented police and medics from reaching and saving Lorenzo as he bled to death.

The mob and media silence was equally deafening after the Father’s Day weekend bloodbath in Chicago’s black community. More than 100 were shot with 15 dead, including four black children—one of them three-year-old Mekhi James. The deadly Chicago weekend was not an outlier. The slaughter has continued over the last two weeks, with more than 150 people shot and 40 dead, almost all in the black community. Among those killed since late June have been 10 children under the age of 18 including seven-year-old Natalia Wallace and one-year-old Sincere Gaston. The leftwing media hasn’t dwelt on their murders and Black Lives Matter hasn’t protested either.

Why are so many black people being killed in American cities? It is an unfortunate, but seldom acknowledged fact that black Americans as a group, particularly young black men, statistically commit violent crime at a rate much higher than their representation in the population. This is especially true in large urban areas. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, despite the black population of the United States being less than 13%, black offenders committed 52% of all homicides between 1980 and 2008. This higher crime rate also results in more contact with the police. In his book, Taboo: 10 Facts You Can’t Talk About, Kentucky State University professor Wilfred Reilly observes that “a Black crime rate which is 2.5 times the white crime rate and rises to 10 times the white crime rate in many major cities obviously explains most or all Black-white disparities in terms of unpleasant encounters with the police.”

So, the answer to the first question is that most black people killed in the United States are being killed by other black people — particularly by young black men. But as to our second question, who is saving the lives of Black people and preventing these outrageous numbers from being even higher? That answer is simple—it is the police.

Violent crime offender rates in Chicago are similar to most big cities, showing significant overrepresentation of both black victims and perpetrators of violent crime relative to total population. The Chicago Police Department’s Murder Analysis Report of 2011 showed that black Americans accounted for 75% of homicide victims and 71% of homicide offenders while comprising only 29% of the city’s population. Most of the city’s violent crime and homicides of black Chicagoans occur in predominately black neighborhoods.

However, during the period from 1991 to 2011, murders were reduced by 54% from a high of 943 in 1992 to 433 in 2011. Chicago Police Department manpower and resources were targeted at areas of gun violence; officers arrested shooters who were prosecuted, convicted and sent to prison; thousands of illegal firearms were taken off the streets each year; and police were strategic and proactive, maintaining high visibility to further deter violent crime. These tactics and results were applied and replicated in other big cities.

In New York City, the reduction in murder and other violent crime was even more dramatic. This unprecedented violent crime reduction in Chicago, New York, and other big cities across the country likely resulted in tens of thousands of black lives saved by the police.

My 24-year career in the Chicago Police Department spanned this period. I served as a patrolman, gang team officer, sergeant and tactical unit lieutenant in high-crime neighborhoods. How did ordinary, law-abiding black residents view the police? Two examples are instructive.

In the South Chicago District, I organized and led CPD’s first districtwide bike patrol unit. On our first day of operations, we wanted to make an impression, so I led our eight-member team to ride as a group through the most violent, gang-infested beat in the district. Honestly, we didn’t know what to expect. But as soon as we turned the corner at 80th and Marquette and pedaled down that street, an amazing thing happened. About six or seven black women — mothers and grandmothers — came out on their porches and front steps to cheer, applaud and bless us!

As a community policing sergeant and lieutenant, I chaired almost 100 community and problem-solving beat meetings in mostly all-black communities. I worked closely with residents—regular people who had to live every day with the intimidation, gang violence, disorder, and fear that neighborhood crime generates. Contrary to the elites and professional anti-police activists who advocate distrust and hatred of the police, the black residents who actually live in these neighborhoods — wanting nothing more than safety and a decent quality of life for their families — had only two complaints about the police: first, that there weren’t enough of us (they wanted more), and second, they wanted to know why couldn’t CPD just knock the thugs and hoodlums off the corners.

Tragically, violence, shootings and homicides are now back on the rise. The media’s anti-police propaganda war, combined with a lack of support from some department administrations and city governments, have resulted in what Heather MacDonald identified as the “Ferguson Effect.” Because of the hatred that has been deliberately engineered, police officers across the country are understandably backing away from the type of proactive policing that is required to effectively deter violent crime. The result is that violent crime is back up, and so are the numbers of black homicide victims.

If anyone in America was wondering what a country without the police would look like, they don’t need to imagine it anymore. Riots, looting, arson, mob violence and murder—this is what America looks like when the police are not allowed to enforce the law and maintain order. Without the police, the inevitable result is anarchy and the rule of thugs, gangs and the mob. We saw it happen before our eyes in Seattle, where another mayor and police chief not only surrendered one of their police precinct stations to the mob, but also ceded an entire portion of the city where the police were prohibited from patrolling.

In many cities, lawless mobs have defaced churches, have trashed Christian icons and have torn down historic statues and monuments with no fear of police action and arrest — just as the mob in Portland, Oregon, pulled down and set fire to a statue of George Washington with no police in sight.

This is just commonsense, policing 101. Crime and disorder doesn’t stop itself—the police have to step in and enforce the law, and this isn’t happening in our cities. One of the few enforcement actions taken to put a stop to this anarchist free-for-all was President Donald Trump’s executive order to protect our nation’s monuments.

The campaign to defund the police is gathering momentum and moving quickly in various forms, but all with the same end goal to sabotage, cripple or eliminate the police. Defunding is already underway in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and Portland, and the total dismantling of a police department is progressing in Minneapolis.

But while these are serious threats, nothing can kill an organization quicker than the destruction of its members’ morale. This is proceeding even more rapidly, with little or no push back from police or political leaders. In fact, just the opposite has been happening.

While every cop in America is being called a racist murderer, rioters who were arrested for attacking the police, looting and other crimes have been let off scott-free. In New York City, district attorneys refused to prosecute hundreds of lawbreakers; in St. Louis 36 rioters and looters were set free without facing charges; and in Fort Worth, the police chief dropped criminal charges against 50 rioters as a gesture of “reconciliation.” Criminal destruction without punishment, attacking police without consequences and advocating physical resistance to lawful arrest all claim moral justification through the lie that the police are systemically racist. This has already resulted in new violence and will lead to more.

This is a fight for survival, not only for the police, but for our country and civilization, as well. We are rapidly approaching a tipping point. Unless police leaders and decent Americans stand up, speak out and fight back against this all-out assault upon the values and foundations of American society, the far-Left won’t need to defund the police to accomplish its destruction, because policing as an institution will simply implode and slowly die. Good cops will quit or retire early; remaining officers will go through the motions, perform minimal job functions while completely backing off from any proactive police action; and men and women of good character who wanted to serve and make a difference in their communities will not even apply for the job.

America’s tradition and principles, the rule of law, legitimacy of the police and the foundations of our democracy are being attacked from all sides. We are in a cultural civil war. America can be saved, but it will take police leaders and all Americans who believe in our country to stand up together to speak out—now. This must start with exposing the big lie that that police in the United States are systemically racist.

COLUMN BY

MAURICE RICHARDS

Maurice Richards is the former Chief of the Martinsburg Police Department in West Virginia. He served as Chief from 2015 to 2020 after 24 years as an officer and lieutenant in the Chicago Police Department. Richards holds a doctorate in Adult Education from Northern Illinois University.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation. Content created by the DCNF is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Washington Post: Now That We’ve Finished Off the Redskins, the Texas Rangers Must Go

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My latest in PJ Media:

Baseball, like the other major sports, has become insufferably woke, and so the Texas Rangers — like the Cleveland Indians and football’s Washington Redskins — are likely not long for this world. Buoyed by the scalping of the Washington Redskins, the Washington Post’s Karen Attiah, who wants white women to consider themselves lucky that she isn’t calling for “revenge” for their voting for Trump, is now calling for the Texas Rangers baseball team to change its name, because, doncha know, the Rangers were supposedly “white supremacists.”

Now, I myself have cautioned against looking for consistency or rationality from the left, but Karen Attiah’s demand is irrational far beyond even the attacks on statues of Frederick Douglass and Ulysses S. Grant from people who claim they’re lashing out against racism.

Karen Attiah apparently doesn’t realize that she has now entangled herself in a giant contradiction. After all, we have been hearing for years now that the Redskins, Indians, and the like had to change their names because they insulted and belittled Native Americans. But if that is true, and the law enforcement Texas Rangers were really the genocidal racists Attiah claims them to be, shouldn’t the baseball Texas Rangers actually keep their name, so as to insult and belittle Texas Rangers?

Attiah can’t have her cake and eat it too, no matter how hard she tries. If sports nicknames are negative and insult the people the teams are named after, and what she says about the historical Rangers is true (it isn’t: an actual historian of the Rangers, Dr. Jody Edward Ginn, details in his book East Texas Troubles that the Rangers helped break up a white gang in East Texas, and convicted them on the basis of testimony from black victims), then it’s altogether fitting and proper for the baseball Rangers to bear that name. But she is assuming in this case that sports nicknames actually glorify the people the teams are named after, and so it won’t do, not at all, to have a team named after the Texas Rangers, as these “white supremacists” must in no way be glorified.

But if the Texas Rangers baseball team constitutes praise for the Rangers, wouldn’t Indians, Redskins, Braves, and the like be favorable portrayals of Native Americans, in which case there would be no need to change the teams’ names?

There is much more. Read the rest here.

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

PODCAST: New York City Eliminated Its Anti-Crime Unit. Violent Crime Has Surged.

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New York City has seen a 53.5% increase in shootings and a 27% increase in killings this year, according to GianCarlo Canaparo, a legal fellow with The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.

The New York City Police Department disbanded its plainclothes Anti-Crime Unit amid calls to defund the police in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. The increased violence might be a result in part of the city’s decision to disband the unit.

Canaparo joins the show to explain the factors contributing to New York City’s crime spike and what should be done to curb the violence.

We also cover these stories:

Two regimes are fighting an ideological war in America today. But what side are you on? And how can you sharpen up on how to defend your position? Learn more now >>

  • House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., announced a bill to protect statues and monuments from protesters.
  • There is evidence that Russia is trying to hack research about a COVID-19 vaccine from the U.S., U.K., and Canada.
  • Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has put his foot down on the mandating of face masks by cities in the state.

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

Virginia Allen: I am joined by GianCarlo Canaparo, Heritage Foundation legal fellow. GianCarlo, thanks so much for being here.

GianCarlo Canaparo: Thanks for having me, Virginia.

Allen: Well, I wish that we were here to talk about happier news today, but we are discussing, really, the frighteningly high spike in violent crime in New York City. Last weekend was a really tragic weekend in New York City. Could you begin by just telling us a little bit about what happened last weekend?

Canaparo: Sure. I’ll start by telling you the story of Davell Gardner. Davell was 1 year old. He was with family and friends at a neighborhood barbecue when unknown assailants drove up, hopped out of their car, and opened fire on the barbecue. They hit three men, wounding them. Thankfully, all of them seem to be fine, but Davell died of his wounds.

The same day, two other children, ages 12 and 15, were shot in Brooklyn and Harlem, and they were among a total of 64 people shot in New York, just this last weekend.

Allen: Wow. And sadly, GianCarlo, this is a trend that we’re seeing right now in New York City. So far this year, New York has seen a 53.5% increase in shootings and a 27% increase in murders. You just wrote a sobering, but really fantastic, piece for The Daily Signal about this crime surge. Could you just give us the big picture of what is going on in New York City right now, as it relates to this rise in violent crime?

Canaparo: Yeah, sure. So far, as of the last time that the NYPD put out stats, which was on the fifth of this month, we’ve seen 528 shootings in New York. Like you said, these numbers are up big time; 50% shooting, 63% shooting victims, almost 30% increase in murders just this year.

This comes following a lot of anti-police protests and riots, as well as New York City’s decision to disband the police force’s anti-crime unit. And New York is not alone in this. We are seeing this trend in a lot of big cities. Chicago is on track to have its most violent year since the mid-’90s. We’ve seen, in that city, 336 murders as of July 2, so this is a really distressing trend of violence throughout America’s big cities.

Allen: You mentioned that the NYPD, they dismantled their anti-crime unit. What did this unit actually do, and what is not happening in New York City right now because of it being disbanded?

Canaparo: Sure. The anti-crime unit was undercover, plainclothes cops assigned to each precinct and city housing. They went after illegal guns, local crime sprees, and focused on burglaries. Incidentally, we’ve seen that burglaries are up 45% in New York this year so far.

The reason that they were disbanded, I think, is because they were involved in more police shootings than other departments, by the nature of what they did, focusing on violent crimes and guns. But what you’ve seen, then, is that the New York Police Department is now deprived of, basically, its first responders to the most violent types of crimes.

Allen: Yeah, I mean, it makes sense that if these are the police officers, like you say, that are in plain clothes and living in the community, probably 99% of the time they’re the first ones that are able to be on those crime scenes and respond.

Canaparo: Right, exactly right. They’re the officers who are going to be there before people know that the police are there or coming, and so they’re going to be in a lot hotter situations than the average officer who comes in sirens blazing after an incident has commenced or finished.

Allen: OK, wow. Right now, there’s a lot of finger pointing going on in the Big Apple, with Mayor Bill de Blasio saying it’s the courts and the courts saying no, it’s de Blasio and the NYPD, and everyone is blaming someone else. Who should actually be held accountable and responsible for this massive crime spike?

Canaparo: Boy, there’s really no shortage of people to blame. We saw earlier this year that New York undertook some criminal justice reforms, including, I think, the consensus in now is that its bail reform was somewhat disastrous. It released a lot of felons for COVID-19 to get them out of prisons because those were vulnerable populations.

We see that there are elements to these Black Lives Matter protests, which are more than just a cry for justice. There is a movement, a Marxist, anti-police, anti-establishment movement behind this motto, which has been encouraging violence and a culture of lawlessness.

We’ve seen that the New York Police Department has, in some cases, not engaged, not put its foot down, which means that people slowly, or rather quickly, actually, learn that there are not consequences to criminal action. So you’ve got this culture of lawlessness and violence that is spinning out of control in New York.

To see this firsthand, you can go online, and, I mean, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of videos, really disturbing videos of just violent lawlessness going on. The sort of thing that a healthy society does not glorify.

Allen: To what extent do you think COVID-19 should be factored into this, to where you have a lot of people out of work, or maybe have less work, and they’re bored or they’re restless? Are they maybe now more prone to get involved in criminal activity?

Canaparo: Yeah, it’s hard for me to say to what extent COVID-19 is affecting this. But … it makes sense intuitively, to me at least, that with the release of criminals from jails for COVID-19 purposes and the fact that people are not otherwise engaged productively with jobs or what have you, it makes sense to me, these are factors that come together and seem to be causing this problem.

Allen: Yeah. Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose district includes parts of the Bronx and Queens, she made a very interesting comment that the spike in crime was due to poverty and people not being able to feed their families, so they’re stealing bread.

What does this comment reveal about just how out of touch Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and others, radical leaders on the left, are … with reality?

Canaparo: Sure. Well, first, let me walk through how this conversation started, because there’s a timeline here that affects how people are talking about this.

She gets on a video and she says, “Well, maybe the rising crime has to do with,” like you said, “people feeling the need to shoplift some bread or go hungry,” was her quote.

That statement taken at face value is belied by the evidence. Right? This is not shoplifting. We’ve seen a 53% rise in shootings. We’ve seen murders on the rise. Burglary is on the rise, and to be clear, an increase in people shoplifting for bread would not lead to a rise in burglary stats because New York charges shoplifting as larceny.

Now, larceny stats are actually down in New York. Petite larceny, meaning anything less than $1,000, is down 7.5%. Grand larceny for bigger thefts [is] down 20%. So shoplifting is not what’s leading to this rise in violent crimes.

When she was presented with these facts and got a lot of pushback, she did what she and a lot of politicians often do, which is to retreat from the specific claim into a generality.

She said, “Republicans are just all upset that I’m connecting the dots between crime and poverty,” is what she said. Well, that’s gaslighting, pure and simple. Right? Because, if this was just about poverty, we would expect to see that month over month, recently, these crime stats would be going down because as economies have slowly reopened, we’ve seen the unemployment levels drop quite dramatically, in fact.

By the end of July, unemployment dropped about 5%. It’s still very high. It’s still too high, hovering around 11%, but down significantly.

If her explanation [was correct], crime, poverty are related was the explanation here, we’d expect to see month over month a drop. But, in fact, what we’ve seen is month over month, 165% more shootings, 204% more shooting victims, and 21% more murders, month over month. That causality is backwards.

Even if she’s allowed to retreat away from her specific claim that this is shoplifting, her general claim that this is just the relationship between crime and poverty doesn’t explain what’s going on.

Allen: Wow. Well, New York has showed us that defunding parts of your police department, it doesn’t work. It only leads to more chaos, more crime. But it’s obvious, after the death of George Floyd at the hand of police officer Derek Chauvin that reforms do need to take place and … need to happen.

How should cities and communities across America respond to the death of George Floyd so that another man or woman is not wrongfully killed at the hands of a police officer?

Canaparo: What we need to see from reformists is a commitment to reform based on what we actually know, and not just what we think or feel we know about how police behave.

We need targeted reforms that prevent or punish or eliminate bad actors from within the police forces. But to paint with a broad brush and to simply disband, defund, or eliminate police forces will only encourage bad actors in the community to do what they’re going to do with impunity.

Allen: GianCarlo, to what extent is this a state and local level issue versus something that Congress should take action on?

Canaparo: Oh, it’s almost exclusively a state and local issue because the vast, vast majority of police-citizen interactions are at the state and local level. Federal police forces are not out there on the street dealing with people on a day-to-day basis.

Every community is going to have different needs. Communities that are quieter, communities that have a lot more police presence, they’re going to have different needs and considerations, and how each community interacts with its police force is a deeply local decision.

Allen: Yeah, interesting. New York had terrible crime in the 1970s and Mayor Rudy Giuliani is largely credited with cleaning up crime in the ’90s. Although, his methods have been attacked by some. What is New York City’s history of crime?

Canaparo: In a city like New York, it’s really easy for somebody to get lost in the crowd. That dynamic, that mentality can lend itself well to, in some people, the conception that, “Well, I can commit crime because I won’t get caught.”

What big cities like New York and Chicago need is a police presence that is there, that’s visible, that’s engaged and involved with the community. To cultivate not only a sense that police are there for our protection for the vast majority of people who are good and law-abiding citizens, but also to cultivate amongst people who are not that they are not going to get away with criminal behavior.

Allen: If you could sit down with some of New York City’s leaders today and say, “Hey guys, this is really what we need to implement first. Today, right now, this is what needs to change in order to strengthen that police force and bring this crime surge down,” what would you say to them?

Canaparo: A couple of things. No. 1, again, I would just reiterate that to tackle these issues, we need to be going at it from a data-driven approach—what do we actually know—and not listen to social activists who are espousing of a philosophy that is not necessarily tied to the facts. …

No. 2, there are going to be bad actors within the police forces, like there are bad actors everywhere. We need a system where they can be found out and punished.

Now, one of the problems that police forces face is, as with teachers and other unions, a union can create a lot of stickiness for bad actors in the police force, that they can’t be fired or they can’t be removed from the beat. Those sort of concerns need to be whittled down.

On the other side of the extreme, though, you can’t just get rid of your police forces in an overcorrection because there are always going to be bad actors in the community as well.

You’ve got to find that balance. You need the police engaged with the community, building trust with the community, present in the community. But you can’t divorce from that relationship the fact that police are necessary, most police are good, hardworking people who are just trying to do their jobs.

Allen: We encourage all of our listeners to follow GianCarlo’s work and follow him on Twitter, @gcanaparo. GianCarlo, thank you so much for your time today, just really appreciate your insight on this really important subject.

Canaparo: My pleasure. Thanks, Virginia.

COLUMN BY

Virginia Allen

Virginia Allen is a news producer for The Daily Signal. She is the co-host of The Daily Signal Podcast and Problematic Women. Send an email to Virginia. Twitter: @Virginia_Allen5.

A Note for our Readers:

These are trying times in our nation’s history. Two regimes are fighting an ideological war in America today, with polar opposite viewpoints on public policy and the government’s role in our lives.

Our friends at The Heritage Foundation asked world-class speaker, educator, and researcher David Azerrad to walk you through his research and outline the differences between the “two regimes” in our society today—conservatism and progressivism—and their primary differences.

When you get access to this course today, you’ll learn key takeaways like what it means to be a conservative, what “modern progressivism” is, how a conservative worldview differs from a progressive one, and much, much more.

You will come away from this online course with a better understanding of the differing points of view, how they align with your principles, and how to defend your beliefs.

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

PODCAST: Mortality statistics show that many people have died from lockdown-related causes, not from Covid-19!

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GUESTS AND TOPICS:

DR. JOEL ZINBERG

Joel Zinberg, M.D., J.D., is a Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., and an associate clinical professor of surgery at the Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine in New York. He served as general counsel and senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers from 2017 to 2019, where he specialized in health policy.

TOPIC: Death By Policy: Mortality statistics show that many people have died from lockdown-related causes, not from Covid-19

TRISTAN JUSTICE

Tristan Justice is a staff writer at The Federalist focusing on the 2020 presidential campaigns. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism.

TOPIC: Black Lives Matter Is Not A Peaceful Protest Group

SLOAN RACHMUTH

Sloan Rachmuth is the Executive Director of Pen & Shield, a nonprofit newsroom focused on covering government corruption, K-12 education, and religious bias in the U.S. She has been featured in the Federalist, the Daily Wire, Washington Examiner, JPost, and in other Conservative publications.

TOPIC: Black Lives Matter In Public Schools Is Turning Kids Into Little Marxists

©All rights reserved.

RELATED:

Editor Resigns, Leaves Scathing Indictment of New York Times

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Bari Weiss, a Jewish, centrist, young opinion writer and editor for The New York Times, left her position at the paper, leaving a resignation letter that is a damning indictment of how the Far Left and its bullying culture has taken over the paper.

The de-evolution of the Times is worth examining, not just because it is happening at one of the country’s papers of record, but because these same tactics are being mimicked at institutions across the country.

Weiss was hired by the Times in 2017 to bring centrist and conservative opinions

as well as new voices to the paper following the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, an election that the paper failed to anticipate. “It didn’t have a firm grasp of the country it covers,” according to Weiss as well as Dean Baquet, the paper’s executive editor.

“But the lessons that ought to have followed the election—lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned,” Weiss writes.

Instead, she says, a new “consensus” emerged in the press and especially at the Times:

“Truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else …” 

This perception of reality was something antithetical to Weiss’ beliefs.

“I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.” 

In her letter of resignation, Weiss describes the constant bullying she was subjected to at the Times, both professionally and personally.

For her “forays into Wrongthink,” she was called a Nazi and a racist by fellow staff members. Particularly distasteful were the comments she received when she wrote about something having to do with Jews.

Coworkers thought to be friendly to her were badgered. Weiss writes that she was openly demeaned on the Times’ Slack channels, a company-wide messaging app in which top management also participates.

In true Orwellian tradition, her coworkers demanded that she be “rooted out” if the Times was to be “a truly ‘inclusive’ “ company. Others simply posted emojis of axes next to her name. In addition, she notes,

“Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.” 

As to the editorial bullying going on at the Times, Weiss writes that stories are chosen with “extreme selectivity,” to the point where writers and editors self-censor to avoid the inevitable harassment of offering anything but the accepted opinion.

“If a person’s ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets.”

Every employee is well aware of the perils of going against the narrative, Weiss contends. Even if a higher-up says they will stand behind a writer’s or editor’s work that goes against groupthink, Weiss advises not to believe it.

“Eventually, the publisher will cave to the mob, the editor will get fired or reassigned, and you’ll be hung out to dry,” she says.

In his dystopian novel 1984, George Orwell coined the phrase “Newspeak,” a language which was designed, in Orwell’s words, “to diminish the range of thought.”

Not only was Newspeak used to obfuscate (calling expulsion an act of “inclusiveness” in Weiss’ case), its purpose was also to promote a narrowing of thought about and awareness of the world.

Newspeak fundamentally left citizens in a binary world of simple dichotomies – good and evil, war and peace. You are either with us or against us.

Our modern version of Newspeak removes nuance from our perceptions of the world — either through indoctrination by the press or through the intimidation and shaming tactics used by the cancel culture.

If there was ever a time to speak up for free speech, it is now. By all accounts, it does work.

The recent attempt by the cancel culture to take down Goya Foods, because its (Hispanic) CEO praised President Trump at a recent White House event, has been an epic fail. Instead a counter “buy-cott” movement has flipped the narrative and seen a full-on buying spree of the company’s products.

As for Bari Weiss, her letter also leaves us with hope. Addressing young and upcoming writers and editors, she notes:

“As places like The Times and other once-great journalistic institutions betray their standards and lose sight of their principles, Americans still hunger for news that is accurate, opinions that are vital, and debate that is sincere. I hear from these people every day.

 “’An independent press is not a liberal ideal or a progressive ideal or a democratic ideal. It’s an American ideal,’  you said a few years ago. I couldn’t agree more. America is a great country that deserves a great newspaper.”

COLUMN BY

Meira Svirsky

SEE MORE ABOUT THE NEW YORK TIMES

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New York Times Shills for Al Jazeera

The NY Times, Free Speech & the Death of Democracy

NY Times Scrubs Word ‘Terror’ From Coverage of Killing of Islamic Jihad Leader

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

VIDEO: Bill O’Reilly Lays Exactly Out How Black Lives Matter is Being Funded by George Soros

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Bill O’Reilly explains the George Soros’ connection to Black Lives Matter, as well as the organization’s shady fundraising practices.

WATCH:

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VIDEO: Cancel Culture Needs to Leave John ‘The Duke’ Wayne Alone!

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Please take a moment to watch, “The Hyphen” by John “The Duke” Wayne.

My wife Mary has a habit of disturbing my peace by reading me headlines and news stories from her phone which annoy me. Thus, I learned that Black Lives Matter domestic terrorists seek to cancel legendary American actor and icon, John Wayne. Outrageously, Orange County’s Democratic Party are pushing to remove Wayne’s name from the county’s airport.

This is ironic because John Wayne played a role in my becoming renowned, loved and hated for proclaiming myself an “Unhyphenated American.”

Decades years ago, I awoke to learn that I could no longer refer to myself as a black man. The decree demanded that I refer to myself as an African-American. If I did not obey, fake news media and Democrats would brand me a stupid “n*****” disloyal to my blackness. I instinctively knew their new “African-American” mandate was simply another Democratic Party weapon to divide us from fellow Americans, instilling and entitling us to victim status.

Around 2009, I performed my “American Tea Party Anthem” at a rally at beautiful Lake Eola amphitheater in Orlando, Florida. “Ladies and gentleman, Lloyd Marcus!” I walked to center stage, “Hello my fellow patriots! I am NOT an African-American! I am Lloyd Marcus, AMERICAN-N-N!!!” The audience of 6,000 went insane with cheers and applause!” Their enthusiastic response told me that Americans instinctively feel the divisiveness of hyphenating.

After the rally, I was flooded by audience members thanking me for rejecting hyphenating, some with tears in their eyes.

Then, I stumbled across a YouTube video by John Wayne titled, “The Hyphen” which solidified my commitment to be “The Unhyphenated American.”

I performed at over 500 Tea Party rallies at which audiences excitedly waited for me to begin my presentation with my unifying “Unhyphenated” proclamation. Audiences erupted in thunderous applause every time.

At the 2010 rally in Washington DC to stop Obamacare, before I sang, I made my now famous “Unhyphenated” proclamation. The rally was broadcast on C-Span. Folks, you would not believe the death threatens and hateful emails I received from white liberals. They called me a stupid “n*****” and a traitor to my race.

In my years of traveling with the Tea Party, I can testify that the American people are awesome!

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