VIDEO: Over a Century of Corrupting American Education

“The plain, unvarnished truth is that public education is a shoddy, fraudulent piece of goods sold to the public at an astronomical price. It’s time the American consumer knew the extent of the fraud which is victimizing millions of children each year.” –  Samuel Blumenfeld

“Orwell was dealing with communism and his disillusionment with communism in Russia and what he saw the communists do in Spain.  His novel, 1984, was a response to those political situations.  Whereas I was interested in more things than the political atmosphere.  I was considering the whole social atmosphere: the impact of TV and radio and the lack of education.  I could see the coming event of schoolteachers not teaching reading anymore.  The less they taught, the more you wouldn’t need books.” –  Ray Bradbury

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” – Socrates

“Give me just one generation of youth, and I’ll transform the whole world.” – Vladimir Lenin


My maternal grandparents graduated from 8th grade in 1911.  Their framed diplomas hang on our library wall. Each diploma states, “Having passed a credible examination in Orthography (the spelling system of a language), Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, Geography, English Grammar, Physiology, United States History, and Music, and having sustained a correct deportment is granted this certificate of proficiency.”  Oh, to have these subjects in today’s grammar schools.

I highly doubt any of today’s college graduates could pass the tests my grandparents passed to graduate from 8th grade.  Most cannot read at a proficient level.  Why?  Because phonics has been eliminated, and yet it’s so easy to teach. If America’s children can’t read, they cannot gain knowledge, they cannot read their Bibles, and they cannot read America’s Declaration of Independence or Constitution.

The best approach for the majority of children is systematic phonics, the simple concept of teaching the 26 letters of the alphabet, the 44 sounds they make, and the 70 most common ways to spell those sounds. For most children, learning this basic code unlocks 85 percent of the words in the English language by the end of the first grade. Children of all levels of intelligence can learn to read most words simply by learning the correspondence between sounds and letters.

Parents say their toddlers are so bright, but once they are put into the government education system, which totally lacks phonics and academic training, they become bored little socialists who have been thoroughly brainwashed with leftist ideology.  They are victims as education expert Samuel Blumenfeld has so rightly stated, and it was the Unitarians at Harvard University who promoted public education, removing it from the family, churches/synagogues and private institutions so long ago.

Countless books have been written regarding the damaging effects of what American education has become along with the Outcome Based Education Skinnerian International Curriculum and how it destroys our children.  For a full overview of the continued damage to America’s children, I would suggest purchasing Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children, by Samuel Blumenfeld and Alex Newman.  Pdf Link

Blumenfeld puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of the educational leaders who decided early in the last century to change the purpose of education from its traditional academic function to a radical social one. High literacy was an obstacle to their progressive agenda, so the teaching of reading had to be changed to produce a more socially desirable result. The results for the nation have been disastrous.

Making Americans Illiterate

In 2012, I was privileged to meet Samuel Blumenfeld at a conference in Maine. Sam’s topic was, “Making Americans Illiterate.”

He told of the destruction of our great country and our education system and commented that in the 1920s, he received an excellent education in reading, writing and arithmetic in New York City.  The progressive education push had started, but because of the depression, it had not yet been implemented for lack of funds.  Now it flourishes and our children are the subjects of this deliberate corruption of academic education.

Twenty-seven years ago, in 1993, Americans were stunned to learn that nearly 90 million Americans have such poor literacy skills that they can scarcely cope with the demands of our high-tech economy. Imagine the lack of literacy today after nearly 11 years of Common Core State Standards implemented in 48 states in 2009.

Sixty-four percent of all eighth-grade students are unable to read proficiently, according to the National Assessment of Education Progress’ (NAEP) latest report. Eighty-two percent of black students and 77 percent of Hispanic students are not reading proficiently.  More than 44 million Americans cannot read or write above a third-grade level.  Fifty percent of adults cannot read a book at an 8th grade level, and I believe these statistics are low.  Link  And fifty percent of college grads have low literacy according to Blumenfeld.

Please understand that NAEP is funded by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) of Princeton, New Jersey which was funded with an initial endowment of $750,000 from the Carnegie Corporation in 1946.  There are far reaching negative implications of the relationship between ETS and the Carnegie Corporation.

Since 1999, NAEP has been funded by the federal government and is widely used across the country.  Individual states pass legislation to use NAEP as a state test.  Parents and legislators mistakenly believe these tests or assessments will give them information about the performance of their children in academic subjects, but this is false.  NAEP tracks conformity to government generated goals…i.e., government propaganda and brainwashing of our children.

Phonics

In 1958, a gentleman from the Reading Reform Foundation contacted Samuel Blumenfeld and asked him to help them get phonics back in the schools.  Sam was shocked.  When he read Rudolf Flesch’s 1955 book, Why Johnny Can’t Read, he understood the dilemma because Flesch explained what was happening in the schools, and that only with phonics can children learn how to read.

Once phonics was eliminated, other methods took its place.  Sam found the origin of the “look-say” reading method and it was taken from Rev. Thomas H. Gallaudet who in the 1830s had a school for the deaf and dumb.  He devised this technique to teach his students to read because they could not hear sounds.  Gallaudet persuaded the Boston schools to use his primer and it ended up a disaster for Boston education, so they returned to phonics until America’s Lenin, John Dewey, showed up around the turn of the last century and started using it again to dumb down America’s children.

John Dewey (1859-1952) began a movement that transformed the American educational landscape. Dewey shared the theory behind this movement in an essay he wrote in 1898 entitled, “The Primary Education Fetish.” He stated, “The plea for the predominance of learning to read in early school life because of the great importance attaching to literature seems to me a perversion.” The foundation of his thinking was the theory of evolution, and he exalted this argument to a new loftier level by applying evolution to education.

John Dewey

Dewey’s movement had a new vision for schools. He wanted to use schools as instruments for the reconstruction of society. Dewey didn’t want to educate children to think for themselves:

“Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent.”

His vision veered dramatically from the traditional Christ-centered approach to education. Link

Samuel Blumenfeld and Alex Newman discuss this quote in their book Crimes of the Educators: “In other words, deception would have to be used in order for this long-range, complex plan to be successfully implemented.”  Yes, they lie and lie, and lie.

Blumenfeld and Newman also share, “Dewey stated that the only way to undermine the capitalist system was to get rid of the emphasis primary schools placed on the development of high literacy and independent intelligence.” According to Dewey, “It is one of the great mistakes of education to make reading and writing constitute the bulk of the school work the first two years.”

Dewey’s direction was based on using government schools; minimizing the role of parents (because they might teach things like religion); changing the role of teachers to facilitators; de-emphasizing Latin, the classics, the three Rs (reading, writing, and arithmetic), western history, and history in general (including the study of the Constitution and capitalism); and providing a secular environment. The end product was designed to prepare students to be good citizens in a socialist society (students who don’t read very well or think very well for themselves).

Dumbing Down Americans, Rockefeller’s Included

Yes, making Americans illiterate is a key factor in the dumbing down of the American population.  Dewey’s attack on the primary school’s emphasis on teaching children to read had the desired result.  Sam Blumenfeld said that back in those days they readily admitted they were socialists, and people ignored them; today many in Congress openly admit their socialism.

The destruction of education began in earnest around 1880.  Dewey and his socialist friends found out pretty early, at the expense of four of the richest boys in America, that their new teaching methods would create reading disabilities and dyslexia.

John D. Rockefeller, Sr. had a bunch of girls and one son, John Jr., who was raised by mom and grandma.  That one son was dressed in female clothing until age of 8, which wasn’t all that uncommon back then.  When Jr. grew up, he had six children; Abby in 1903, John III in 1906, Nelson in 1908, Laurence in 1910, Winthrop in 1912, and David in 1915.  Jr. fell in love with the Dewey progressive education system.

One of the great ironies of the Progressive Education Movement is that its leaders were able to convince John D. Rockefeller, Jr. that he ought to give his sons a good progressive education.  They convinced him to donate $3 million to the Lincoln School, the new experiment in social education in accordance with Dewey’s radical socialist ideas.

So, Jr. put Nelson, Laurence, Winthrop, and David in the school, which turned them all into dyslexics, proving that progressive reading programs can cause dyslexia.  They were all functional illiterates.  There wasn’t a one of them who could properly read.

Under Gerald Ford, Nelson Rockefeller became the Vice President, a functional illiterate only a heartbeat away from the presidency.  Every time Nelson was to give a speech, he’d take papers to the podium and then set them aside and make some excuse about speaking from his heart.  He couldn’t read the speech anyway.  Guess who read to him throughout his Vice Presidency?  None other than Henry Kissinger!

David Rockefeller, head of the Bilderbergers, wrote in his memoirs that his father was an ardent and generous supporter of Dewey’s educational methods and school reform efforts.  Teachers College of Columbia University operated Dewey’s Lincoln school with considerable financial assistance in the early years from the General Education Board as an experimental school designed by the board to put Dewey’s philosophy into practice.  Despite the freedom for children to learn and play an active role in their own education, there were drawbacks.  He went on to say he had trouble with reading and spelling and found he was dyslexic.  His reading ability and proficiency in spelling only improved slightly as he aged.  He told that all his siblings except Babs and John had dyslexia to a degree.

It was the progressive look-say reading program that caused the dyslexia.  Sam tells in the video that this is the same story with the Bush family.  Barbara Bush and several of her sons became dyslexic. She always claimed they were born with this disability; it never occurred to her that the boys were made dyslexic by the progressive socialist Dewey teaching method.

Conclusion

Today’s college snowflakes cannot bear to be offended; they are totally unlike the young men who rushed the beaches of Normandy where many fell to their deaths.  Learning disabilities have grown exponentially because of Dewey’s progressive education.  Socialism and communitarianism have grown to be acceptable to a majority of young people, especially those who attend colleges or universities.

Dewey surely wouldn’t want students reading the Declaration of Independence as it mentions the Almighty four times, nor would he want the Constitution taught which guarantees our God given freedoms.  Both are anathema to Dewey’s socialist society.

In 1979, the high school my daughter attended wanted to remove Latin from the curriculum.  We succeeded in keeping two years of Latin, but it wasn’t many years later that it was dropped.  Latin is the root of all romantic languages, which makes learning those languages so much easier.

Entrusting your children to government schools guarantees they will not be able to read, do math, write properly, spell, or get an academic education.  Sacrificing them sacrifices our future.

Post Script:  Samuel Blumenfeld passed on to Glory in 2015.  His brilliance is still missed by millions.

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RELATED ARTICLE: More Evidence Emerges That Federal Government Is Funding Worthless College Degrees

Conservative Media Killing Operation Mockingbird

While visiting a relative, CBS evening news was on TV in the background. It felt like water torture hearing arrogant reporters authoritatively lie about president Trump and every political issue. Their deceptive message was Republicans are mean and Democrats are good. Incredibly, 95% of the broadcast was fake news.

Could I escape being bombarded with fake news in my car? No. Every news-break on the radio was crafted to imply that Trump is guilty of everything and Republicans are mean.

Clearly, there is a coordinated fake news media campaign to instill hatred for Trump, America, Christians, Conservatives, Republicans, Trump supporters and straight white men. It is as if a daily memo is sent to Democrat media operatives. “Okay everyone, the phrase of the day is “Trump is an existential threat.” Every news broadcast finds a way to fit it in.

“Here’s Amy with the weather report.” “Thanks Jim. It will be stormy today. And speaking of stormy, Trump is an existential threat.” No one knows what “existential threat” means. But it sounds smart and is intended to sell the lie that Trump is extremely dangerous.

Democrats are currently blitzing the media with their lie, “Trump is a cult leader”. What they are really promoting is Trump supporters are a small minority of mind-controlled hateful crazies.

I remember seeing “The FBI Story” 1959 movie starring Jimmy Stewart. As a child, I thought FBI agents were awesome men. We’ve learned that there are bad actors in the FBI and CIA. Allegedly, Operation Mockingbird is a program launched by the CIA in the 1950s to manipulate media to spread propaganda. Writer Deborah Davis said Operation Mockingbird recruited prominent American journalists and oversaw front groups.

Evidence suggest Operation Mockingbird is alive and well today. Shockingly, we have learned that the FBI and CIA played major roles in spreading the lie that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election from Hillary.

Hillary paid for a lie-filled dossier written about Trump. Hillary’s gross dossier even claimed Trump paid prostitutes to urinate on a bed slept in by Obama. Her operatives in the FBI used the gross dossier to illegally acquire warrants to investigate whether or not Trump stole the election. The absurd investigation lasted 3 years, costing taxpayers $32 million.

CNN and MSNBC victimized their tiny leftist audiences 24/7 for the 3 year bogus investigation. They promised Trump’s guilt would be confirmed and he would be humiliatingly booted out of office. The Trump resistance movement was devastated when the investigation concluded that Trump won the election fair and square.

Moving on to their next treasonous scheme to remove Trump, Democrats launched a news narrative claiming Trump committed impeachable crimes during a phone call with the president of Ukraine. Democrat Adam Schiff read Trump’s extreme bullying outrageous demands on national TV. I watched it on TV in the doctor’s office waiting room. I thought, “Oh my gosh. Trump said that?” Schiff assumed he could get away with lying about the content of the phone call because presidents do not released the content of conversations with foreign leaders. Trump blew Schiff’s scheme by releasing the transcript of the phone call. But here is where it gets really crazy and unbelievably arrogant.

Democrats and fake news media simply ignored the transcript. Based on Schiff’s lying version of the phone call, Schiff held impeachment hearings on national TV for two weeks. In essence, Schiff and fake news media told the American people, you are too stupid and unsophisticated to detect Trump’s obvious crimes during the phone call.

After each day of Schiff’s hearings, fake news media excitedly reported that “bombshell” testimony confirmed Trump’s guilt. In truth, none of Schiff’s witnesses could name a crime committed by Trump.

Displaying their off-the-chain arrogance, everything fake news media reported about the impeachment hearings were lies.

If we did not have conservative media countering fake news media lies, millions would be clamoring for Trump’s head to be placed into the impeachment guillotine. Remarkably, Trump’s approval rating rose after the impeachment hearings.

I wish to express my utmost respect and thanks to conservative media and congressional republicans for daily fighting and explaining Democrats’ and fake news media’s coup to remove our president via Schiff’s kangaroo court impeachment hearings.”

Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, conservative talk radio, Fox News and the internet.

Fake news media is not all powerful. Despite a fake news media blackout, 1.7 million of us showed up in 2010 for a Washington DC Tea Party rally to protest Obamacare.

In 2016, fake news media gifted Hillary’s presidential campaign a billion dollars worth of lie-filled news stories designed to destroy candidate Trump and Trump the man. They failed. Hillary and her minions were devastated when Trump defeated her in an electoral landslide. We are well on our way to killing Operation Mockingbird.

We remember where we were during important events. It was 1988. During my lunch break, I returned a VHS movie to the video store – got back into my car and turned on the radio to listen to conservative talk show host Tom Marr on WCBM, 680AM in Baltimore. To my shock and disappointment, Tom’s show was replaced with some new guy, Rush Limbaugh.

This song cracks me up. I love it. The Rush Hawkins Singers’, “Thank the Lord Rush Limbaugh’s On.”

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VIDEO: No Safe Spaces opening this week!

The First Amendment and the very idea of free speech are under attack in America today. A growing number of Americans don’t believe you have the right to speak your mind if what you have to say might offend someone, somewhere. They advocate for “safe spaces” in which people won’t be offended by ideas they may find troubling. But is that what America is about?
These and more questions are answered in the film,

NO SAFE SPACES

In No Safe Spaces, comedian and podcast king Adam Carolla and radio talk show host Dennis Prager travel the country, talking to experts on the right and left, tour college campuses, and examine their own upbringings to try to understand what is happening in America today and what free speech in America should look like.

Many young Americans don’t believe in the very idea of free speech. If we don’t help them understand the role of free speech in American society, someday soon we may lose it. This movie may be the last best hope of saving free speech in America.

No Safe Spaces also features Tim Allen, Jordan Peterson, Van Jones, Alan Dershowitz, Ben Shapiro, Dave Rubin, and Cornel West.

You’ll also meet young Dennis Prager while he works undercover in the Soviet Union and meet young Adam Carolla as he learns important life lessons.

Do you believe our freedom of speech is under threat and worth protecting? You can make a statement that freedom of speech is worth protecting by watching the film in a theater near you, beginning this weekend, December 6th.

The movie is now spreading to theaters across the country.  If it’s not in your area yet, keep checking in the weeks to come!  The more people who see it now, the more theaters it will expand to later on.


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Four Years Ago Today: A Tribute to the Victims of the San Bernardino Jihad Attack

Four years ago today, at 10:58 PST on December 2, 2015, Syed Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik began shooting his own friends and colleagues at the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health.

By 11:04, the first police arrived at the scene, but Farook and Malik had already escaped. Four hours later (at 3:08), they were sighted on North Tippecanoe Avenue in San Bernardino by a law enforcement officer, and by 3:14:53, both had been killed in a dramatic shootout with police, just 1.7 miles away from the Department of Public Health.

Here are the pictures of the 14 people who lost their lives in this Islamic Jihad attack. More can be learned about them herehere and here.

What we don’t see here are the pictures of the 17 other people who were injured during the shootings, nor do we know very much about what they’ve gone through because of their injuries, or how they’ve have been doing in the last four years since the attack.

We don’t know very much about their families, either, and the great price they have paid since that day, four years ago.

I have had the honor of getting to know some of them.

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.

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These 2 Cases Show Why Trans ‘Rights’ Could Upend the Rights of All

The battle over the rights of “transgender” and “cisgender” people continues to escalate in one of the most influential arenas: our nation’s schools.

The Chicago Tribune reported this month that after a four-year battle, a school board in Palatine, Illinois, has granted transgender students “unrestricted access to locker rooms based on gender identity.”

Just a few days later, CBS News Minnesota reported a mother had sued her local school district, claiming that it discriminated against her child for being transgender.

These are just two of the most recent stories showing just how prevalent the transgender debate in schools has become.


Congress is moving to impeach the president. But will their plan to remove him from office succeed? Find out more now >>


What Happened in Illinois

The school board of Township High School District 211 passed its new policy by a 5-2 vote. The policy requires students, teachers, and administrators to treat students “consistent with their gender identity,” meaning students will have full access to restrooms and locker rooms of the gender they identify with.

This goes further than the old policy, which also granted transgender students access to the locker rooms but required that the student retreat to a private area within the room to change.

The school board made the announcement in front of about 250 parents and students. News reports say half the crowd cheered at the decision while the other half booed.

In a speech at the meeting, Superintendent Dan Cates explained the board’s logic by appealing to “other school districts” that have implemented the same policies “without disruption and in a manner that protects the interests of all students.”

Some in the crowd reportedly yelled “false” while the superintendent was speaking. Another student voiced her concern with the new policy, saying, through tears:

I feel uncomfortable that my privacy is being invaded. As I am a swimmer, I do change multiple times naked in front of the other students in the locker room. I understand that the board has an obligation to all students, but I was hoping they would go about this in a way that would also accommodate students such as myself.

The debate in Palatine began four years ago when a transgender student filed an initial lawsuit against the school district. It was the first time a school district was accused of violating Title IX based on gender identity—a category that does not exist in federal law.

At the time, the district acquiesced and allowed the student to use the girls’ locker room as long as he stayed in a private area of the room. But when parents countered with their own lawsuit, the policy was dropped.

Then in 2017, a student named Nova Maday, born a male who identifies as a female, filed a lawsuit claiming the district had violated his rights by restricting him to an “unspecified private changing area within the locker room.” From there, the district began to shift in the student’s direction.

The Minnesota Case

In the other recent case, a transgender student in Minnesota alleged even greater wrongdoing than the Illinois student.

Helen Woods, the mother of a middle school student in Wright County, filed a lawsuit alleging that Buffalo Community Middle School “repeatedly isolated her son from his classmates, limited his access to a suitable restroom, and removed him from physical education classes.”

Her child, Matt Woods, was born a female but began identifying as male in 2015 at the age of 11.

Like Nova Maday, Woods wanted to use the boys’ bathrooms and locker rooms, but the school required Woods to use a single-occupancy restroom. The student claims that bathroom was hard to get to in between classes.

School officials deny any wrongdoing, and the case is ongoing.

Key Factors Driving Both Cases

Though the lawsuits differ slightly in specifics, they share several common denominators that are key to understanding the transgender debate, particularly when it comes to students and schools.

First, these lawsuits are based on President Barack Obama’s 2016 “Dear Colleague” letter that mandated schools must include and accommodate transgender students and recognize gender identity, or else the school could face discrimination charges.

This was an order by executive fiat, not a law passed by Congress, and not a ruling from the Supreme Court.

In 2017, the Trump administration rolled back those provisions, while the Education Department acknowledged that “each school has a responsibility to protect every student in America and ensure that they have the freedom to learn and thrive in a safe environment.”

Second, both lawsuits share an important, particular curiosity: Both schools addressed the transgender student’s wishes to be included and to have “equal access” to facilities, yet in both cases, the students complained that equal access wasn’t equal enough. They claimed the accommodations were somehow still discriminatory, even though it appears the schools took extra efforts to ensure the transgender students were treated equally while also preserving the rights of other students.

In other words, both school districts went out of their way to protect all students’ rights, but transgender students made that an impossible task. They pushed for entitlement rather than equality.

These students keep shifting the goalposts with their self-focused demands. Their demands ultimately pose a greater risk to other students’ privacy rights, which raises questions about discrimination in the opposite direction.

Ignoring Reality and the Law Itself

The most egregious fact is that these lawsuits are even happening at all.

By caving to a few students’ demands for policies based on transgender ideology, school administrators are championing the feelings of a few over the privacy and safety of the many, even though gender identity does not have protected status in federal civil rights laws like sex, religion, and ethnicity.

This was the crux of the issue in the Harris Funeral Homes case recently heard by the Supreme Court: What is gender identity, who defines it, and what protections does it have, if any?

When school officials bow to the wishes of transgender students and their families, they submit themselves to the LGBT-backed groupthink that defies both biological reality and the law as it exists.

The asinine logic of this movement will act as a wrecking ball on public schools with no stopping point. It will eventually destroy social norms within school systems and pave the way for a system in which the interests of a select few are championed at the expense of the many, lest a lawsuit and bad publicity engulf the school board.

COMMENTARY BY

Nicole Russell is a contributor to The Daily Signal. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, National Review, Politico, The Washington Times, The American Spectator, and Parents Magazine. Twitter: .

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A Note for our Readers:

Impeachment Crusade Is Bound to Backfire on the Left

As the impeachment season drones on, and Democrats continue down the path of self-destruction, one wonders if there is an exit ramp for them.

Before Donald Trump was even the Republican nominee for president, people in positions of power started their malevolent acts against him and his campaign, mostly in private. Democrats and the left entered this path and have been locked onto that course for more than three years now.

Democrats have publicly sprinted down this path since the day after Trump was elected. It is well documented, for instance, that Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, expressed his desire to impeach the president within mere months of his assuming office.

Hillary Clinton then stoked the “Russian collusion” hoax to explain what was inexplicable to her: the American voters had rejected her in favor of political outsider Donald J. Trump.


Congress is moving to impeach the president. But will their plan to remove him from office succeed? Find out more now >>


The left’s first major goals out of the box were (1) to remove the president from office and, if that didn’t work, (2) declare Trump’s presidency to be illegitimate due to foreign influence in the 2016 election.

Friendly left-wing media outlets constantly reinforced the collusion narrative. Meanwhile, leftist groups exploited the Antifa and Resistance movements to cause political unrest. Some educators even encouraged their students to express outrage that Clinton lost and Trump won.

The earliest ideas often receive the most traction, even if they are not the best ideas. Suboptimal trajectories build up over time, not necessarily because they are the right course, but because they were first and get locked in even as better options come along.

So here we are. It’s 2019 and Democrats have committed themselves to expelling Trump from office, or if that fails, simply dragging his name through the mud.

It is folly to try to remove a president from office when the people will be able to make their own decision in less than a year. And despite Democrats’ best efforts to throw allegations at him, Trump receives consistently favorable numbers in regular polling.

Recent polling further suggests that voters are souring on the idea of impeachment.

This week, the House Judiciary Committee is bringing in several law professors to harangue the committee and to provide justification for impeachment. Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., has suggested that he might need to bring in additional witnesses.

Every time he has brought in witnesses promising blockbuster revelations, he has only produced duds. Democrats have yet to see these hearings produce any overwhelming evidence in their favor.

An alarm bell should be going off among Democrats when their chosen path to remove a sitting president is not bicameral or bipartisan, and opposition to impeachment is both. The facts scream that they are marching on a suboptimal path that might lead them over a cliff.

Why do Democrats persist?

It is likely that they believe the short-term cost of political embarrassment and demoralizing their base is too high. But stubbornly adhering to their chosen course is reckless if they want to appeal to a broader America. This won’t end well for them.

COMMENTARY BY

Rep. Andy Biggs a Republican, represents Arizona’s 5th Congressional District in the U.S. House. He is chairman of the House Freedom Caucus and serves on the Judiciary and Science, Space and Technology committees. Twitter: .

Ted Budd is the U.S. representative for North Carolina’s 13th district. Twitter: .

RELATED ARTICLE: House GOP Report Contends Impeachment Drive Advances Rule by Bureaucrats


A Note for our Readers:

As we speak, Congress is moving to impeach the president.

We do not have all the facts yet, but based on what we know now, there does not seem to be an impeachable offense.

The questions stand: In drafting the Constitution, how did America’s founders intend for impeachment to be used? How does the impeachment process work, and what can history tell us about whether or not President Trump faces the real threat of being removed from office?

The Heritage Foundation is 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.

VIDEO: Yazidi Girl Faints Confronting Her ISIS Rapist on Iraqi TV

A Yazidi girl who was kidnapped by ISIS and repeatedly raped fainted confronting her attacker on Iraqi TV.

The ISIS terrorist was captured and is now in a prison in Iraq. On the show, he admitted to raping and beating her.

The confrontation, which aired on the Iraqi TV channel al-Iraqiya, enabled Ashwaq Haji Hamid to face down her rapist, who she said raped her three times a day and beat her three or four times a day.

Hamid, crying, eventually collapsed under the emotion of the situation and fainted in the TV studio.

Here is a translation of her words:

“Lift up your head! Why did you do this to me? Why?

“Because I am a Yazidi? I was just 14-years old when you raped me. Lift up your head!

“Do you have a sister? Do you have feelings? Do you have honor? I was 14-years old, the age of your daughter or son, the age of your sister.

“You ruined my life! You took everything from me, all my dreams.

“I was once under ISIS in your hands. But now, you will know what the punishment is, the torture, the loneliness. If you had even a small amount of feelings, you wouldn’t have raped me at the age of 14.

“I was same age as your son, your daughter!”

Watch the confrontation:

In 2014, the terror group ISIS invaded large swaths of the Anbar and Nineveh provinces, especially targeting the Yazidi population. The men and older boys were murdered, the young boys were brainwashed to be “Cubs of the Caliphate” and the women and girls were used as sex slaves.

Many of the girls were auctioned off in slave markets, passed from one jihadi to another or given as prizes in Quran contests. Most Yazidis saw their entire family devastated. Some of the girls committed suicide, some managed to run away and some were rescued for ransom money.

Some who bore children were ostracized by their own communities along with their children.

RELATED STORIES:

EXCLUSIVE: Yazidi ISIS Survivors in Israel Speak to Clarion

ISIS Beheads 50 Yazidi Sex Slaves as Parting Gift 

Memorize the Quran, Get a Free Slave Girl in ISIS Competition

Dutch speaking Islamic State members in Syrian prisons

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

People ‘Not to Learn Islam From’ — Really?

On October 7, 2019, Muslim American and veteran Mansoor Shams tweeted out a list of people titled, “Who NOT to learn Islam from.” On November 26, 2019, he tweeted the same list. The tweet received mixed reactions, including my own.

The first time I supported the tweet on the premise that unless Muslims themselves brave speaking critically of our theology, others will do it for us. Seeing the tweet again, it’s time to unpack the question of who not to learn Islam from.

Both times, the list is simple, and there is no follow up thread. It doesn’t offer any more conversation that distinguishes one person on the list from another. It’s an incomplete conversation, and it was my mistake to support the initial tweet without taking the time to unpack it in my own thread. So, I will do that here.

To tweet that same list twice now (two unique tweets instead of simply a retweet of the original tweet) without further context, makes the list less of a confessional Muslims can align with and more of an attack. Let’s talk about the people on the list.

How the List Misses the Mark

The people who drive these conversations are just as important as the conversations themselves. We’re not just looking at what Islam is or was, we also need to look at who we are.

And if you’re not interested in people (like the ones on the list), in understanding and humanizing them, then I’m afraid you’re missing what’s really important here. What’s really important here isn’t religion; it’s people. Are we looking at how people are changing over time, or have we boxed them in the same way we complain they’ve boxed us or their interpretation of our faith in?

I would argue that it is more valuable that we understand and humanize each other, that we start learning how to get along and work together, than it is to shield Islam within some forcefield. Something that isn’t challenged, cannot evolve and thrive.

I would argue that Islam is an organic idea. It (and we) do better when challenged than when kept in some bubble, like some insipid organism that cannot survive a contagion called the 21st century.

Some people on that list have shown depth, inquiry, and journey — and it’s deeply unfair to paint them, carte blanche, in a the broad stroke of a collective.

As Muslims, we don’t like it when it’s done to us; why do it to another?

Let’s look at some of the people on that list who were treated unfairly.

Sam Harris –– While I don’t agree with everything Sam Harris says, I do respect his own story of inquiry that led him to become who he is today. The type of questions Sam raises, the type of guests he brings on, tells us that’s someone who isn’t resting on the laurels of celebrity. He’s still very much asking questions. He’s still very much searching.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali – Ali is another name on that list of someone that deserves being looked into.  While I don’t agree with some of her views, and I don’t think that poor personal experience is the totality of a faith, she has shifted her views over time. She has softened her stances. She went from someone who didn’t believe in reform to someone who did. I am more aligned with who she is today than who she was even just five years ago. 

Robert Spencer — Spencer doesn’t seem to have changed from the first time I learned of him over 17 years ago. Yet, when I first started asking about Islam, there was nothing out there that I could dig into that let me look at Islam with a critical eye. Social media hadn’t yet become a portal for learning and connectivity. But there was Robert Spencer’s work, which throws you into the deep end of Islam. There wasn’t anywhere I could go to at that time in the so called “Muslim world” that would be honest with me about the shortcomings of our faith. Robert Spencer also presents Muslims with a foil, a character so immersed in a rigid narrative that that narrative can be leaned on to build the counter-narrative. 

Steven Emerson — Emerson might not be the person to learn Islam from, but he’s the person to understand the complex structures of the dark underbelly Islam has given rise to: the terror networks. His website, The Investigative Project on Terrorism, is one of the best sources for in-depth analysis on issues that impact Islam. You will never learn about that through any traditional Islamic study or through anyone who can otherwise teach on the theology in principle.

(Here’s a vignette of Emerson and my mother at a wedding. My mom has zero interest in my work and no understanding of our world, but she’s a Pakistani woman who loves cooking. Emerson was trying to navigate the Pakistani cuisine at the buffet. Here’s a 6-foot something, white-haired man next to a four-foot nothing Pakistani woman who delighted and took pride in being able to lead the conversation. And he stood there, engaged her and listened respectfully. I watched. It was beautiful and human. We forget that every single one of us is human; we’re not superheroes and supervillains. We are human first.)

Laura Loomer — Loomer is another person who has to be looked at through multiple lenses. I don’t agree with her on a lot of the basic principles of Islam, but I do respect her as a voice with incredible courage who tries to draw attention to Islamist figures. Loomer and I have gotten to be friends over the last year, and in every single act of engagement, we have been very supportive of the other. If in a call, for example, she shares some inconsequential details that I don’t necessarily agree with, I don’t need to fight her on it. I listen. On the same note, if I say something she might not agree with, she listens. There is no need to be combative and defensive, but there is a need to start listening to each other. 

These Issues Deserve to be Led With Humanity

As a Muslim Reformer, my role is to stand on the horizon of human experience and look at things as objectively as possible. As Muslims with some legitimate frustrations in how Islam and Muslims are talked about, it doesn’t help if we start marginalizing and labeling other people without looking to have a conversation with them, understand them and find their value. 

And above all, we have to take off our armor. We have to start being willing to feel. Just like our skin responds to the warmth of the sun or the piercing sensation of cold, in the same way we have to be able to feel each other, to give pause and observe our own reactions, our thoughts, the process of how our mind resists or envelopes a new thought. We can’t do that if we’re only working from within our own silos.

In a follow up tweet from the public asking who we can learn Islam from, Mansoor directs the tweeter to his website where he shares resources. Unfortunately those resources lean toward Ahmadi Muslim publications mixed with propaganda reports attacking the conservative right. I’m deeply disappointed: The response to feeling like you’re not being heard or seen isn’t to not hear or see another.

We don’t shift the needle by mirroring the same behavior that frustrates us.

We have a duty to do better, which I feel Mansoor does understand, considering he routinely leads with integrity on discussing the American Muslim experience, especially as a veteran and a member of an oppressed minority in the faith. 

Islamic teachings tell us to condemn behavior, not people. However, shooting out an attack list without any further context is a form of condemning a list of people without (I’m guessing) ever having had a real conversation with anyone on that list. 

COLUMN BY

Shireen Qudosi

Shireen Qudosi is Clarion Project’s National Correspondent.

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

Anti-Capitalism: Trendy but Wrong

We should remember; the data simply doesn’t support the anti-capitalists.


You can’t escape it; capitalism has a bad rap.

Last night, thousands of anti-capitalist protestors took to the streets in capital cities across the world. Wearing V for Vendetta-inspired Guy Fawkes masks (most of which are made in China), these self-styled “anti-establishment” demonstrators, who took part in annual Million Mask March, sought to express their dissatisfaction with the capitalist system and the unfair outcomes it allegedly creates.

Large anti-capitalist protests like those we saw last night are, of course, nothing unusual. In August, French police resorted to using water cannons and tear gas to disperse thousands of anti-capitalist demonstrators who were protesting in the French coastal town of Bayonne, during the G7 summit which was taking place in a nearby resort.

But it is not just during protests that we see disdain for capitalism. All over our newspapers there are headlines such as, “Capitalism is in crisis,” “Capitalism is failing,” or most recently “Capitalism is dead,”—the latter being a recent quote from billionaire Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff, who amassed his fortune thanks to the capitalist system.

The consistent bombardment of capitalism in our media and on our streets has culminated in a recent YouGov poll showing that nearly half of all Millennials and Gen-Z’ers hold an unfavorable view of capitalism. The same poll also found that more than 70 percent of Millennials would likely vote for a socialist candidate.

It is fundamentally trendy to be socialist, and to decry the alleged ills of capitalism. But does this persistent condemnation of capitalism hold up to scrutiny?

Every year, the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank publishes its Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) report in order to find out which countries have the freest (i.e. most capitalist) economies. The EFW ranks the level of freedom of 162 economies, using 43 indices, across major policy areas: size of government, legal systems and property rights, sound money, freedom to trade internationally, and regulation.

The idea behind the EFW report is that if you can find out which countries have the most capitalist economies, you can then use this information to see if more capitalist countries have better outcomes for their citizens when compared to their more socialist (or at least: less capitalist) counterparts. To analyze the correlation between economic freedom and human wellbeing, the EFW splits the 162 economies into quartiles, based on their level of economic freedom. And the results are staggering.

The average income in the most capitalist quartile of countries is an astonishing six times higher, in real terms, than the average income in the least capitalist economies ($36,770 and $6,140 respectively). For the poorest in society, this gap widens even more. The bottom 10 percent of income earners in the most capitalist countries make, on average, seven times more than the poorest ten percent in the least free economies.Similarly, more than 27 percent of people in the most socialist economies live in extreme poverty (as defined by the World Bank as an income of less than $1.90 a day), whereas just 1.8 percent of people in freest economies live in extreme poverty—a figure that is still too high (the optimal number is zero), but vastly better than the level that persists in the least free countries.

Economic measures aside, people living in the most capitalist countries also live on average 14 years longer, have an infant mortality rate six times lower, enjoy greater political and civil liberties, gender equality, and to the extent you can measure such things, greater happiness too—when compared to the least capitalist economies.

Take Hong Kong, for example, which is the world’s freest economy according the EFW report. In 1941, journalist and travel writer Martha Gellhorn visited the city-state with her husband, Ernest Hemmingway and noted “the real Hong Kong…was the most cruel poverty, worse than any I had seen before. Worse still because of an air of eternity; life had always been like this, always would be.” But just a few years after Gellhorn’s visit, the surrender of the Japanese in 1945 meant that British rule returned to the island and with it came a largely laissez-faire approach to the city’s economy.

In 1950, the average citizen in Hong Kong earned just 36 percent of what the average citizen in the United Kingdom earned. But as Hong Kong embraced economic freedom (according the EFW, Hong Kong has had the most capitalist economy every year bar one since 1970), it became substantially richer. Today, Hong Kong’s GDP per capita is a whooping than 68 percent higher than the UK’s. As Marian Tupy, editor of HumanProgress.org, notes, “the poverty that Gellhorn bemoaned is gone – thanks to economic freedom.”We can see far bigger gaps whenever we pair a broadly capitalist country with an otherwise similar socialist country: Chile vs. VenezuelaWest Germany vs. East GermanySouth Korea vs. North Korea, Taiwan vs. Maoist China, Costa Rica vs Cuba, and so on. (Yes, I know: none of that was “real” socialism. But then, it always is real socialism, until it isn’t.)

Decrying the ills of capitalism on a placard or in a newspaper headline is a trend with little sign of going away any time soon, but when we see such unsubstantiated claims, we should remember; the data simply doesn’t support the anti-capitalists.

This article is republished from the Institute of Economic Affairs.

COLUMN BY

Alexander Hammond

Alexander C. R. Hammond is a researcher at a Washington D.C. think tank and Senior Fellow for African Liberty. He is also a Young Voices contributor and frequently writes about economic freedom, African development, and globalization.

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

VIDEO: Death of Globalism

The news that really never makes the news, certainly not the trending news of the day, is how President Trump is leading the world away from globalism and a tyrannical global police state. All indications are that Boris Johnson will lead the way against globalist policies in the UK and of course we, and the world, have President Donald J Trump. As I stated, way back when, Global Support Coming Soon for Trump.

In previous related articles that I have written which are archived here on my website under the financial category, I have been talking about Trump restoring sound money and resetting the global economic, trade and monetary system, the GFR or “Global Financial Reset”. You cannot make America Great Again unless you control the economy and control your own currency. To remain fully informed, for what will prove down the road to be one of the biggest news stories of the century, I encourage you to subscribe for free to my YouTube channel and visit with me and Economist Dr. Kirk Elliott, (nominated for two Trump committee positions), as we take on step by step, the behind the news news of the Global Financial Reset. Here is a link to that YouTube playlist. We began broadcasting each Wednesday at 6:00 PM on July 17, 2019. Subscribe to my channel today.

Global Financial Reset

Death of Globalism

In this video clip of a speech I gave at the Sarasota Truth Conference in September 2019, you will come to understand what Globalism is and the origins of Globalism. I connect the dots on just how it is that President Trump is also draining the economic swamp and that we are well on our way now only after three short years, to delivering a death to globalism. By the mid to late term of President Trumps second term we may see full victory. This video clip and the GFR (Global Financial Reset) playlist is a good way to be informed and to stay informed and connected.

MUST SEE SPEECH ON DEATH OF GLOBALISM

Summary

In short, Trump is quietly setting the stage. Manufacturers are returning home. Apple is launching its new massive facility in Texas. Jobs follow manufacturing so this is a good thing. For all of the President’s progress in this area click on this link. NAFTA’s rude awakening under President Trump along with tariffs and trade deal negotiations around the world are yet additional steps towards the ultimate reset.

What is the ultimate reset? Seizing control from a debt based Central Bank, Petrodollar, IMF, Federal Reserve banking and monetary system by restoring sound money and creating a booming economy here at home while providing opportunity to other nations who don’t fall off the cliff with the old guard and come aboard in this new world that is being created before our very eyes, (well if you know where to look  for information). This is why Pelosi will not sign the USMCA document that the President so wisely and brilliantly put forth. Why? Because it will deliver yet another blow to the ruling elites march towards globalism. It’s okay we will get it done and Pelosi’s days are numbered anyway while Trump has another five years to set the world right. In short this is what is happening but again please subscribe to the YouTube Channel and become familiar with the playlist titled GFR for weekly discussions with me and the  Economist.

  • Strong arming and exposing the Federal Reserve
  • De-funding the UN and setting NAFTA straight
  • Manufacturing returning home
  • Best Economy by most measures in the history of our country and best economy by far in the world today
  • HR 24 & HR 25

China. Yes China. Trump has this covered. Don’t buy the fake news headlines. Finally China has met it’s match. The plan to empower China as part of the globalists plan has been thwarted by Trump. China is hemorrhaging and in a rapid decline having the plug pulled out by Trump. President Trump is repositioning step by step the global playing field while working their own rigged system against them by keeping the markets propped and expanding. Big historical change begins sometime after the 2020 election. The global shift of power is now well underway.

Video Commentary

Clarion Call

This battle will rage on for the rest of our lives. Pray for our President and his family. No Trump-no hope. What we do right here, right now is for posterity. So when your children and grandchildren ask you “What were you doing when the global governance was being thrust down the throat of America and the world, what will your answer be? Freedom, it’s up to U.S.

Merkel: German government “will and must oppose extreme speech. Otherwise our society will no longer be free.”

Does this mean that the German government will forcibly silence opposition to jihad mass murder, Sharia oppression of women, and mass Muslim migration into Europe? You can bet on it.

“STUNNING! Globalist Angela Merkel to German Parliament: We Have to Take Away your Freedom of Speech or We Won’t Be Free,” by Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit, November 28, 2019:

Chancellor Angela Merkel delivered an emotional speech to the German Budestag this week on the need for limiting freedom of speech.

Merkel is the current globalist leader on the international stage.

Merkel argued that the government must take away freedom of speech to save freedom of speech, or something.

Angela Merkel: For those who claim they can no longer express their opinion, I say this to them: If you express and pronounced opinion, you must live with the fact that you will be contradicted. Expressing an opinion does not come at zero cost. But freedom of expression has its limits. Those limits begin where hatred is spread. They begin where the dignity of other people is violated. This house will and must oppose extreme speech. Otherwise our society will no longer be the free society that it was.

Via Ezra Levant:

https://twitter.com/ezralevant/status/1200191002629345281?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1200191002629345281&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%2F2019%2F11%2Fstunning-globalist-angela-merkel-to-german-parliament-we-have-to-take-away-your-freedom-of-speech-or-we-wont-be-free%2F

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

The Vatican’s China Syndrome

Robert Royal: It’s not good to let utopian visions of peace mesmerize us when worldwide persecution of fellow believers proceeds apace.


How long can the Vatican remain silent about the Chinese repression in Hong Kong and about reports of persecution and re-education camps for religious believers in the rest of China? Clearly, the figures in the Roman Curia (primarily Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin) who crafted the still unpublished accord with the Communist government have put themselves in a moral bind. If they speak out, they may jeopardize the agreement (which would not exactly be a tragedy, since it has only led to even more violent, more open acts against Christians in China). If they don’t speak out, they run the still greater risk of being accomplices, conspicuous accomplices, in the repression and potential liquidation of a heroic Catholic people of confessors and martyrs.

It didn’t have to be this way. Just as the Vatican PR machine is able to gin up campaigns to promote Pope Francis’ preoccupations about the environment, immigrants, the death penalty – and now nuclear weapons – it could also have made crimes against Christians, particularly Catholics, far more visible, and an urgent priority for anyone, anywhere in the world who pays attention to the moral leadership of the Church. And not only in China, because persecution of Christians exists in various hotspots around the globe and there are increasingly anti-Christian attacks even in Western nations like France and the United Kingdom, to say nothing of our own country.

Many Catholics were rightly upset when Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Council of the Social Sciences, returning from a trip to China, said, “Right now, those who are best implementing the social doctrine of the Church are the Chinese.” That was so absurd – considering the religious repression, the environmental damage, the forced abortions, the Orwellian surveillance of their own people – that it doesn’t bear a moment’s thought.

The misjudgments, however, are not limited to China. The Vatican currently pursues a steady line of anti-Western criticism, against the alleged xenophobia, rapacious economies, and environmental “sins” of both Europe and North America. There are debates worth having on those and other public questions. But the simplistic progressivism Rome has adopted about these quite complex subjects renders its positions largely useless – and eminently ignorable by the nations of the world.

Meanwhile, in the past few months alone, we’ve seen attacks on Catholic churches – organized attacks, not just sporadic violence – in China, but also ArgentinaChileNicaraguaVenezuelaEgyptIraqIndiaSri LankaNigeria (where several priests have been kidnapped), and the list goes on. But are these direct threats to the Church given the attention they warrant by Rome? To call out the perpetrators and the governments that often enable them would require some tough talk that doesn’t just say, sentimentally, that we all seek the same common good and need to practice dialogue.

We don’t know what we have in common even in the Western nations any longer. The idea that we can appeal to some common humanitarian principles at the international level – though something devoutly to be wished – is being challenged before our very eyes. Other visions of the good (or evil) are quite prominent in the world. And deserve to be called out in blunt terms when they result in violence against the innocent, whether in China, the Middle East, or the developed nations. We will not convert those who hold those views to a more human or Christian vision with our currently weak appeals to dialogue and fraternity. To some, dialogue and false fraternity – absent the moral and military means to protect the innocent from attack – are just other names for weakness and decadence.

Catholicism used to be the one Christian body that had a strong and coherent view of the need for both co-operation with all men of goodwill, as well as a willingness to confront those who are not well-intentioned. Do we still?

The pope made the news last week during his flight back from Asia when he declared: “The use of nuclear weapons is immoral, which is why it must be added to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Not only their use, but also possessing them: because an accident or the madness of some government leader, one person’s madness can destroy humanity.”

However good his intentions may be (as in changes to the Catechism about capital punishment and his opposition to life sentences), we know that nuclear weapons will never be abolished. And troubling as that fact is, it’s in some ways a good thing. No country is likely to disarm when other countries, countries with far different values than Pope Francis, possess weapons of mass destruction as well. It’s a sad fact about our human nature, but at this moment in human history only mutual deterrence prevents nuclear blackmail or outright use of nuclear arms. What would China or North Korea do with their nukes if the United States did not have them?

As Winston Churchill immediately perceived decades ago, when he heard of the U.S. nuclear attacks on Japan, “henceforth, security will be the sturdy child of terror.” A realistic morality, for our moment of history, has to find some room in its deliberations for the necessity of nuclear weapons in the hands of more reasonable global powers, as a means of deterrence, precisely to prevent their ever being used.

It’s a good thing for any pope to remind the world that the use of indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction is a grave moral evil. And that even possessing them is morally problematic.

It’s not a good thing, however, when we allow unrealistic and utopian visions to mesmerize us, even as serious threats and the actual persecution of our fellow believers and many other innocents around the world proceed apace.

We cannot allow our desire for better relations – with China, the Muslim world, or the secular forces in our midst – to stop us from speaking some hard truths and acting on them. Anything less will spell further suffering and death to the very people we have the responsibility to protect.

COLUMN BY

Robert Royal

Dr. Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing, and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent book is A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century, published by Ignatius Press. The God That Did Not Fail: How Religion Built and Sustains the West, is now available in paperback from Encounter Books.

EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2019 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.

Islamic State claims responsibility for London Bridge jihad massacre

There is no reason why this couldn’t be so; the Islamic State has many times called upon Muslims to murder random civilians in Western countries. If they didn’t do this one, they’ll keep trying.

“Islamic State claims responsibility for London Bridge attack,” Reuters, November 30, 2019:

Islamic State said the London Bridge attack on Friday was carried out by one of its fighters, the group’s Amaq news agency reported on Saturday. The group did not provide any evidence.

It added that the attack was made in response to Islamic State calls to target countries that have been part of a coalition fighting the jihadist group.

British police on Friday shot dead a man wearing a fake suicide vest who stabbed two people to death in London and wounded three more before being wrestled to the ground by bystanders, in what the authorities called a terrorist attack.

The attacker went on the rampage just before 2 p.m., attacking people at a premises near London Bridge in the heart of the city’s financial district – the scene of a deadly attack by Islamist militants two years ago.
Half a dozen bystanders tackled the suspect to the ground and grabbed his knife. A video posted on Twitter showed police dragging one man off the suspect before an officer took careful aim. Two shots rang out. The man stopped moving….

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

VIDEO: China Shuts Down American Teen on Tik Tok

Sandwiched between a makeup tutorial, 17-year-old Feroza Aziz used her Tik Tok account to turn her beauty vlog into an awareness campaign about China’s severe abuse of the Uighur (Muslim) population. She quickly felt the brunt of the long arm of China’s ever-increasing censorship.

To learn more about the horrific abuse of the Uighers by China, see below

Aziz made a series of viral videos on her Tik Tok account @getmefamouspartthree exposing the abuse, Aziz found that her account had been suspended. The videos begin as makeup tutorials but quickly switch to exposing how the Chinese are putting the Uighurs into “concentration” camps, separating family members from each other, raping and murdering them.

Business Insider explains:

“[Aziz’s videos] are designed in such a way in an attempt to fool TikTok’s moderators from cracking down and removing her content. TikTok — an app not available in China but owned by the Chinese company ByteDance — has faced increasing scrutiny over fears it censors content considered “culturally problematic” and offensive to the Chinese government.”

Here is one of Aziz’s videos that Tik Tok shut down:

For its part, TikTok said her account was suspended because it was connected to another accounts of hers (@getmefamousplzsir), which the platform said it banned for “violating rules.”

But after the teen took to Twitter to publicize her suspension, Tik Tok reinstated her account and issued a public “apology.”

While it was not much of an apology (the company stood behind its initial decision to suspend Aziz’s account), they did admit that their review process “will not be perfect.”

Americans felt the brunt of Chinese censorship last month when the general manager of the Houston Rockets, Daryl Morey, tweeted an image with the caption, “Fight for Freedom. Stand for Hong Kong.”

Chinese companies immediately suspended their ties with the Rockets, and the Chinese Basketball Association ended their cooperation with the team.

In response, Morey and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver groveled, issuing apologetic statements distancing themselves from the protesters in Hong Kong who are demanding democracy and freedom from China.

Again, Business Insider explains:

“With a population of roughly 1.4 billion people, China is the NBA’s most important international market.”

Although TikTok insists it is independent from China, many have noted that there have been no videos documenting the unrest in Hong Kong, but many have appeared telling a whitewashed story of the region.

Who Are the Uighurs and Why is China Putting Them in “Reeducation” Camps?

Ethnically, the Uighurs are Turkish Muslims. Eleven million Uighurs live in Xinjiang, a territory in northwest China. As Clarion Project has documented since 2013, the Uighurs are under systematic persecution from China in what can authentically be labelled Islamophobia.

Where as a privileged Muslim population in the West will cry Islamophobia if they didn’t get their Diet Pepsi on a airline flight, one million Uighurs are experience actual psychological and physical torture.

The world has been watching stunned as horror story after horror story comes out about exactly what goes on in the Chinese government-run detention centers about one million Uighurs are forced into.

The abuse of the Uighurs is also happening to their children:

Leaked videos have shown children as young as four- or five-years old that are separated from their parents and placed 20-30 at a time in a single room with a fraction of that number of beds and nothing else — languishing, their childhoods wasted, their potential crushed.

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

First Lady Dissed by Wimpy Snowflakes

First Lady Melania Trump was booed by students when she spoke at an opioid awareness summit in Baltimore. Snowflake adults said the students were justified because Melania’s husband hurt their feelings by saying bad things about their city.

Folks, this infuriated me. I am so sick of snowflake adults who create dumb-down, brain-dead and wimpy snowflake youths. Taught to believe they are entitled, snowflakes are unable to submit to authority or deal with the normal pressures of life; living in their parent’s basement playing video games at age 30.

Liberal Democrats have controlled Baltimore for the past 50 years, transforming it into a hellhole of poverty, fatherless households, failing schools, economic decline and record breaking black on black homicides.

As a child, I lived in the Baltimore projects. I don’t remember any neighborhood so horribly out-of-control that no one dared to venture after dark. And yet, that is the ridiculous situation in Baltimore today.

Visiting Baltimore for my dad’s funeral, it was shocking to see endless blocks of empty rundown row-houses, rats and trash. What the heck happened to my beloved hometown once renowned as “Charm City”?

In the 1980s, Baltimore’s first black mayor, Kurt Schmoke ordered that my song “Hello Baltimore” be placed into the city’s time capsule. To illustrate Charm City’s shocking transformation, I made a music video of my song using footage of recent Baltimore riots.

Back in the day, the neighborhood around Pimlico Race Track where the Preakness Race is held was safe and upscale. Today, the Pimlico neighborhood has dramatically declined, infested with drugs and crime.

In the 1990s, I saw the beginning of the end for Baltimore because of stupid liberal Democrat policies. Park Avenue was the place to enjoy dinner at an upscale restaurant. Smelly, dirty vagrants began sleeping on the sidewalks and aggressively pestering patrons outside of the beautiful restaurants. Due to the city’s commitment to political correctness, restaurant owners could do nothing to save their businesses. Finally, every restaurant closed or moved away.

Living in the projects as a child, I loved exploring Park Avenue downtown“The lights are much brighter there. You can forget all your troubles, forgot all your cares. Downtown, things’ll be great when you’re downtown. Everything’s waiting for you.”  Park Avenue has become another depressed section of the city unsafe after dark.

Incredibly, liberal Democrats who run Baltimore still have not learned to be friendly to businesses. During the recent Baltimore riots the mayor ordered the police to stand down and allow thugs to destroy businesses to express their frustrations regarding racial injustice. Unbelievable.

Late Democrat congressman Elijah Cummings received billions in federal grants to clean up his rat and crime infested district. The money was wasted or stolen. By the way, idiot black relatives of mine who live in Baltimore still praise Cummings for his wonderful service to the black community. Sorry, I had to get that off my chest.

Cummings’ wife also emits a putrid odor of corruption; using the suffering of her fellow blacks to get rich.

White liberals in fake news media claim to be advocates for black empowerment. The liberal Congressional Black Caucus and NAACP also lie about their commitment to black empowerment. These black and white liberals viciously attack anyone who dares to address problems which plague blacks in cities controlled by Democrats.

Thank God president Trump cares enough to address the problems of blacks who are suffering in Democrat urban plantations. Therefore, I don’t give a rat’s derriere about the hurt feelings of spoiled-brat snowflake youths, upset because Trump told the truth about their cesspool city run by corrupt Democrats. Adults who defended the students for booing our first lady are a part of our nation’s morally bankrupt and wimpy culture. They should be ashamed of themselves.

This hypersensitivity to “hurt feelings” turns my stomach. For crying out loud, adults need to start instructing wimpy youths to grow a spine.

World War II Americans are turning over in their graves in disgust of this new generation of snowflake Americans. My black dad passed away at age 90. When my brother was a teen, he quit his summer job because his boss hurt his feelings by yelling at him.

Dad could hardly believe his ears. Annoyed at my brother, Dad said, “He hurt your feelings? Boy, you had better go back and get your job!” Dad was teaching my brother to be a man!

As a black civil rights pioneer in the Merchant Marines and Baltimore City Fire Department, Dad endured all kinds of humiliation and hurt feelings. But Dad knew a man has to do what a man has to do. He had a wife and five kids to feed. His hurt feelings were irrelevant.

To restore our youths, we need to have zero tolerance for all this hypersensitivity, wimpy-ness and entitlement that liberals have instilled in our youths.

A snowflake reading this article will probably say, “Lloyd you sound angry. I feel triggered. Your toxic masculinity makes me feel unsafe. You should be silenced and jailed.”

Can you imagine what a nightmare it would be if a snowflake ever became president?

Thank God president Trump is a real man.