What a sad day for freedom when the splendor of Hong Kong with its open society and free market enterprise was forced into the CCP’s portfolio of oppression. To make it worse, it happened on 7/1 – the anniversary of when the UK turned her over to China who allowed it a good amount of autonomy and a day to protest any CCP encroachment.
I discuss this latest blow to the world and a warning about Taiwan’s future.
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It is predominantly the ignorant, greedy, and/or leftist part of the American market place that is helping Islamist Sharia doctrine to advance in the United States. Whether attempting to appear politically correct to their leftist customers or deliberately targeting Islamist customers, their embracement and glamorization of Islamist tenets advances Sharia law in America.
American Eagle Outfitters hijab.
American Eagle Outfitters used photographs of Halima Aden wearing a hijab in its latest product promotion. Halima Aden is the Muslim woman who wore a hijab on the cover of allure magazine.
American Eagle Outfitters’ product promotion is pushing the hijab which symbolizes and epitomizes Islamist oppression of women and is rejected by 57% of the Muslim women living in America.
Two Muslim women, Asra Q. Nomani and Hala Arafa, wrote a column titled “Wearing the Hijab in Solidarity Perpetuates Oppression” that was published on January 14, 2016 by The New York Times. The column states in part:
In the eight times the word hijab, or a derivative, appears in the Koran, it means a “barrier” or “curtain,” with spiritual, not sartorial, meaning. Today, well-intentioned women are wearing headscarves in interfaith “solidarity.” But, to us, they stand on the wrong side of a lethal war of ideas that sexually objectifies women as vessels for honor and temptation, absolving men of personal responsibility. This purity culture covers, segregates, subordinates, silences, jails and kills women and girls around the world.
Pew Research found that only forty three percent (43%) of American Muslim women wear hijabs according to an article published by NPR on April 21, 2011. The NPR article states in part,
“The split between women who’ve covered and women who’ve never done so has existed for decades. But now a generation of women is taking off the headscarf, or hijab.” Therefore, after six years of “a generation of women taking off the hijab” the number of Muslim women now wearing the hijab in America is likely even less than forty three percent. NPR reports: Rasmieyh Abdelnabi, 27, grew up attending an Islamic school in Bridgeview, Ill., a tiny Arab enclave on Chicago’s southwest side. It’s a place where most Muslim women wear the hijab. Abdelnabi explains why she stopped wearing the hijab. She says that Islam teaches modesty — but wearing the hijab is taking it a step too far. “I’ve done my research, and I don’t feel its foundation is from Islam,” she says. “I think it comes from Arab culture.”
The majority of Muslim women in America reject the hijab because:
American Eagle Outfitters certainly has the right to use whatever content it chooses in its advertising campaigns. Likewise, you have the same right to express disappointment and patronize companies that do not promote symbols of Islamist doctrine. Please urge American Eagle Outfitters to use advertising content that embraces the liberties of the United States Constitution instead of Islamist tenets that oppress women and minorities.
Florida Family Association has prepared an email for you to send to urge American Eagle Outfitters (DSW) officials to discontinue inclusion of women wearing hijabs, a symbol of Islamist oppression, in its advertising campaigns.
Contact information:
Jay Schottenstein, Executive Chairman, DSW, Inc
CEO American Eagle Outfitters
jayschottenstein@dswinc.com
Roger L. Rawlins, CEO
rogerrawlins@dswinc.com
Jared Poff, CFO
jaredpoff@dswinc.com
MediaRelations@dswinc.com
rawlins@dswinc.comd
Laurie Bibbo Zuckerman
American Eagle Outfitters, Inc.
BibboL@ae.com
I’m tempted to say that statism is sort of like a cult. Proponents of socialism and other big-government ideologies have a dogmatic zeal that blinds them to reality.
For instance, no nation has ever become rich with big government. But that doesn’t stop leftists from advocating in favor of higher taxes and more coercive redistribution.
They are equally capable of rationalizing that economic misery in places such as Greece and Venezuela has nothing to do with bad policy, and you can even find a few zealots willing to defend basket cases such as Cuba and North Korea.
So long as they don’t burn me at the stake for my heretical views, I guess I won’t get too agitated by their bizarre fetish for statism.
But I will periodically mock them. And that’s the purpose of today’s column. We’ll start with this nice comparison between a capitalist grocery store and a socialist grocery store. I have no idea, by the way, if the lower image actually is a supermarket in a socialist country, but let’s not forget that a real-world version of this comparison is one of the reasons there’s no longer an Evil Empire.
But the bad news about socialism is not limited to economic deprivation for the masses.
The system also leads in many cases to totalitarianism (see this article by Marian Tupy, for example).
Venezuela is a particularly poignant example. Once the richest nation in Latin America, it now is an economic laggard and also is a cesspool of oppression.
Which makes this set of images from Reddit‘s libertarian page both funny and sad.
As you might expect, Milton Friedman had some very pointed observations on this topic.
The really good part starts shortly before 2:00. He explains very clearly that socialism is based on force and coercion.
I’ve saved the best for last.
The PotL sent me this collection of risky temptations and it perfectly captures the attitude of many statists. No matter how many times socialism has failed, they never learn the appropriate lesson. It just hasn’t been tried by the right people, they tell us. Or been imposed in the right circumstances.
So they want us to give it one more try, just like a person with no willpower will eat one more bite of chocolate.
Which is the same message you find here, here, and here.
Incidentally, this analysis not only applies to socialism, as technically defined, but it also applies to redistributionism. Which is definitely more benign, but nonetheless produces bad results.
The bottom line is that statism is a recipe for stagnation and free markets are a route to prosperity.
Republished from International Liberty.
Daniel J. Mitchell is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who specializes in fiscal policy, particularly tax reform, international tax competition, and the economic burden of government spending. He also serves on the editorial board of the Cayman Financial Review.
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School officials in Rochester, New York are getting flak from angry parents and teachers for holding an event in solidarity with World Hijab Day. The event, held at the school and during school hours, encouraged the high school girls to wear the Islamic headscarf for the day. Boys were given carnations to wear in solidarity.
Unsuspecting students put on the 150 headscarves that were brought by teachers before the first bell rang. They were encouraged to participate in the “cultural event” by the school’s principal Sheela Webster, who insisted the headscarf had nothing to do with religion, but rather all about the “experiental” and “was actually around learning about the cloth.”
“Our perspective in it was not religious – it was really about experiential,” she said. “We are an experiential school; we engage kids in all kinds of activities and projects all of the time, so the perspective of being able to learn what a hijab is, why some women choose to wear it and why some women don’t choose to wear it, and we provide the opportunity to experience it; it is well within protocol of experiential learning.”
Unfortunately, learning about “why some women don’t choose to wear it” – or more pointedly, what happens to women in certain Muslim countries and societies who have no choice whether or not to wear it — was not part of the program.
As prominent Muslim human rights activist Asra Nomani writes in the Washington Post, events such as these are a “painful reminder of the well-financed effort by conservative Muslims to dominate modern Muslim societies. This modern-day movement spreads an ideology of political Islam, called ‘Islamism,’ enlisting well-intentioned interfaith do-gooders and the media into promoting the idea that ‘hijab’ is a requirement of Islam.”
Concurrent with the advent Islamism comes the culture of “honor,” the idea that a family’s or a husband’s honor lies in the chastity and modesty of their female members. To the Islamist, the hijab has become the quintessential symbol of that honor.
Stories have, unfortunately, become common in our time of women — both in the West as well in Muslim countries– who have been “honor” killed by their families or societies for not wearing a hijab.
Asra Nomani grew up in India in the 1960s in a conservative Muslim family. Yet, there was no Islamic law at the time that women should cover their hair. “But, starting in the 1980s,” she relates, “following the 1979 Iranian revolution of the minority Shiite sect and the rise of well-funded Saudi clerics from the majority Sunni sect, we have been bullied in an attempt to get us to cover our hair from men and boys.”
On a theological level, it is interesting to note how many prominent Islamic theologians reject the idea that women are required to wear a hijab.
It is likely that high school sophomore Eman Muthana, originally from Yemen, who wears a hijab and requested the event, was unaware of history of the cloth she wears around her head every day.
Commenting on the event, Muthana said, “I just feel proud that I’m sharing my culture and actually not forcing that on them, because everybody has the choice to do that so. I just feel happy that they are supporting me. We are in America; everybody has the freedom of religion, I cannot force anything. And also, I cannot do anything bad to a country that opened its door for me.”
But somewhere, it seems, that was some coercion. A spokesman for the school district said, after consulting with a lawyer, he was told “there would be more of a legal issue if the school said no to the event” than to host it.
Locals took to social media to voice their disapproval. High school teacher Jim Farnholz wrote, “As a high school teacher for over 30 years, let me say that this is wrong on so many levels. All religions are taught in our global studies classes. That being said, that is where understanding, tolerance and the good and bad of religion and history are taught. This, however, is a clear violation of separation of church and state.”
“What lesson will they wear a Yarmulke in? Or the Christian cross? Or the Hindu turban?” Dan Lane posted. “Funny how it always seems to be the Muslims they learn about, even in Common Core.”
“How disgusting and irresponsible for any educator to encourage a child to wear a symbol of oppression, whether it be religious or cultural,” Rebecca Sluman wrote.
Americans, who enjoy, religious freedom, must be wary of becoming unknowing accomplices to the agenda of political Islam. Commenting on events such as these, Nomani pleads, “Do not wear a headscarf in ‘solidarity’ with the ideology that most silences us, equating our bodies with ‘honor.’ Stand with us instead with moral courage against the ideology of Islamism.”
Meira Svirsky is the editor of ClarionProject.org
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Americans often move between different income brackets over the course of their lives. As covered in an earlier blog post, over 50 percent of Americans find themselves among the top 10 percent of income-earners for at least one year during their working lives, and over 11 percent of Americans will be counted among the top 1 percent of income-earners for at least one year.
Fortunately, a great deal of what explains this income mobility are choices that are largely within an individual’s control. While people tend to earn more in their “prime earning years” than in their youth or old age, other key factors that explain income differences are education level, marital status, and number of earners per household. As Mark Perry recently wrote:
The good news is that the key demographic factors that explain differences in household income are not fixed over our lifetimes and are largely under our control (e.g. staying in school and graduating, getting and staying married, etc.), which means that individuals and households are not destined to remain in a single income quintile forever.
According to the economist Thomas Sowell, whom Perry cites, “Most working Americans, who were initially in the bottom 20% of income-earners, rise out of that bottom 20%. More of them end up in the top 20% than remain in the bottom 20%.”
While people move between income groups over their lifetime, many worry that income inequality between different income groups is increasing. The growing income inequality is real, but its causes are more complex than the demagogues make them out to be.
Consider, for example, the effect of “power couples,” or people with high levels of education marrying one another and forming dual-earner households. In a free society, people can marry whoever they want, even if it does contribute to widening income disparities.
Or consider the effects of regressive government regulations on exacerbating income inequality. These include barriers to entry that protect incumbent businesses and stifle competition. To name one extreme example, Louisiana recently required a government-issued license to become a florist.
Lifting more of these regressive regulations would aid income mobility and help to reduce income inequality, while also furthering economic growth.
This post first appeared at HumanProgress.org.
Chelsea German works at the Cato Institute as a Researcher and Managing Editor of HumanProgress.org.
The student speech bullies have won at Yale. Erika Christakis, Assistant Master of Yale’s Silliman College, who had the temerity to suggest that college students should choose their own Halloween costumes, has resigned from teaching. Her husband, sociology professor Nicholas Christakis, Master of Silliman College, will take a sabbatical next semester.
One of the bullies’ demands to Yale President Salovey was that the couple be dismissed, and a resignation and sabbatical are a close second.
As had been widely reported, Erika Christakis said,
Is there no room any more for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious, a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive? American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition.
At issue are costumes such as wearing a sombrero, which might be offensive to Mexicans; wearing a feathered headdress, which might offend Native Americans, previously termed Red Indians; and wearing blackface to dress up as an African American.
Dr. Christakis’s comment is so obvious that it hardly needs to be said. Students who are admitted to Yale are some of the brightest in the country, and it should not be the role of the University to tell them how, or whether, to dress up at Halloween.
The speech bullies want mandatory diversity training, rules against hate speech, the dismissal of Nicholas and Erika Christakis, and the renaming of Calhoun College because its namesake, John Calhoun, defended slavery.
If America is to be whitewashed of the names of individuals from prior centuries who fall short of the political standards of the 21st century, we will be a nation not only without names but also without a past. The names of our states, our municipalities, and even our universities would disappear. Elihu Yale was a governor of the East India Company, which may have occasionally engaged in the slavery trade. It is easy to condemn the dead who cannot defend themselves. But if we curse the past, what fate awaits us from our progeny?
Not all Yale students agree with the tactics employed by the bullies. Freshman Connor Wood said,
The acceptance or rejection of coercive tactics is a choice that will literally decide the fate of our democracy. Our republic will not survive without a culture of robust public debate. And the far more immediate threat is to academia: how can we expect to learn when people are afraid to speak out?
The Committee for the Defense of Freedom at Yale has organized a petition in the form of a letter to President to express concern with the bullies’ demands. Over 800 members of the Yale community have signed. Zachary Young, a junior at Yale and one of the organizers of the petition, told me in an email, “We want to promote free speech and free minds at Yale, and don’t think the loudest voices should set the agenda.”
Nevertheless, it appears that the loudest voices are indeed influencing President Salovey. He has given in to protesters by announcing a new center for the study of race, ethnicity, and social identity; creating four new faculty positions to study “unrepresented and under-represented communities;” launching “a five-year series of conferences on issues of race, gender, inequality, and inclusion;” spending $50 million over the next five years to enhance faculty diversity; doubling the budgets of cultural centers (Western culture not included); and increasing financial aid for low-income students.
In addition, President Salovey volunteered, along with other members of the faculty and administration, to “receive training on recognizing and combating racism and other forms of discrimination.”
With an endowment of $24 billion, these expenses are a proverbial drop in the bucket for Yale. But it doesn’t mean that the administration should cave. Isaac Cohen, a Yale senior, wrote in the student newspaper,
Our administrators, who ought to act with prudence and foresight, appear helpless in the face of these indictments. Consider President Salovey’s email to the Yale community this week. Without any fight or pushback — indeed, with no thoughts as to burdens versus benefits — he capitulated in most respects to the demands of a small faction of theatrically aggrieved students.
Yale’s protests, and others around the country, including Claremont-McKenna, the University of Missouri, and Princeton, stem from the efforts of a small group of students to shield themselves from difficult situations. Students want to get rid of speech that might be offensive to someone that they term a “micro-aggressions.” This limits what can be said because everything can be interpreted as offensive if looked at in a particular context.
For instance, when I write (as I have done) that the wage gap between men and women is due to the sexes choosing different university majors, different hours of work, and different professions, this potentially represents a micro-aggression, even though it is true. Even the term “the sexes” is potentially offensive, because it implies two sexes, male and female, and leaves out gays, lesbians, and transgenders. The term “gender” is preferred to “sex.”
What about a discussion of the contribution of affirmative action to the alienation of some groups on campuses today? Under affirmative action, students are admitted who otherwise might not qualify. In Supreme Court hearings on Wednesday, Justice Antonin Scalia said, “There are those who contend that it does not benefit African Americans to — to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a less — a slower-track school where they do well.”
The majority of students at Yale want an open discussion of all subjects, but the attack on the Christakises have frightened them into silence. Zach Young told me,
If the accusers’ intent was to enlighten and persuade, their result was to silence and instill fear. I worry that because of this backlash, fewer students or faculty — including people of color and those of liberal persuasions — will feel comfortable expressing views that dissent from the campus norms. Why risk getting so much hate, disgust, calls against your firing, just for the sake of expressing an opinion?
Why indeed? The answer is that arguing about opinions is the only way to get a real education. Let’s hope that another university stands up for freedom of speech and offers the Christakises teaching positions next semester.
This article first appeared at CapX.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labor, is director of Economics21 and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Over 230 years ago, a group of men had a dream. They dreamed of a nation of free people. A nation that existed solely to allow its citizens to live out their own dreams on their own terms with their own God given talent and grit.
They dreamed of a people free from the fear of government oppression. A people free from tyranny from within and from without. They dreamed of a people that could not be stopped from achieving greatness.
They dreamed long and hard. They dreamed of that nation morning, noon and night. They shared their dream with others who had the same dream.
They would talk about their dream in back allies, in local pubs, in living rooms, in town halls, in their churches, in the streets.
It was a dream that would not die. It would not relent. It would burn itself into their very being. They woke with a burning desire to fulfill this dream every single day of their lives. They went to bed every single night hoping God would allow them to wake so they could pursue that dream.
It was a dream that was real in their eyes, in their minds and in their hearts. It was a dream that would lead them to war. It was a dream that they knew would not become reality easily. It was an elusive dream but it was an achievable dream.
So these men, these dreamers set out to fulfill their dream. They fought, they bled and some even died before they could realize that dream for themselves. But it was not a selfish dream. It was a dream they believed would become reality even if they would not live to see it.
They dreamed for their children. They dreamed for their grand-children. They dreamed for their posterity. They believed in the dream so much that they would willingly lay down their life if in doing so it would bring that dream to fruition.
It was a truly selfless dream. A dream to be free.
That dream is still alive today. That dream that those men fought and even died for became a reality. That dream became the United States of America.
That same dream is still alive today. Although it may seem that fewer than ever share that dream. That thought would be wrong.
Today we are still a bunch of dreamers. But we are now a strong nation of many dreamers. More dreamers than those who first had the dream.
Today we dream the same as they dreamed centuries ago. We dream about freedom. We dream about pursuing our own happiness. We dream of little of not government interference. We dream not only for ourselves but for our children, our grand-children. We dream for our posterity.
Today, the United States of America still attracts dreamers from all over the world. They come here in boats, in planes, in cars, even by foot. The people of the world have had the same dream and they heard the call. They heard the dreamers call. They heard the dreamers call from America. They come to answer the call.
They sometimes risk their very lives to make that dream come true. They do not dream only for themselves, but for their family, their children, their grand-children and their posterity.
This is a nation of dreamers. All that we have accomplished that history will consider to be great came at first as a dream.
The great industrialists of the 19th century dreamed of a nation that was fully modern and full of promise. The great minds of the 20th century dreamed of fast cars and landing on the moon.
The great minds of the 21st century dream of an intelligent world full of smart devices that help man dream even bigger.
Yes, we are a nation that still dreams. Yet in no ones dreams is their room or a place for an oppressive government. There is no dream about sliding backwards. There is no dream about having someone else take care of us.
Indeed, that would be a nightmare.
Instead we dream of being free to pursue our own dreams. And we dream of even better days for our children, our grand-children and even our posterity.
That is the American way. That is the American Dream. That is the dream we are still willing to lay down our lives for so that others may keep that dream.
That is the American dream. And that dream is not dead. It is very much alive. It is still very vibrant. And that is what drives others from around the world to risk everything they have to come here.
Dr. Martin Luther King had a dream. It was a dream of freedom for all. That has always been the true American dream.
And that is my dream.
Is it yours, too?
Speaking to a group of awestruck Chinese citizens, Michelle Obama recounted her years of oppression as a victim of racism and how she survived the American extermination camps.
“There were laws in America that discriminated against people like me because of the color of our skin,” said Michelle. A sharp inward gasp was heard as the interpreter finished her comment in Mandarin.
Still haunted by laws that were no longer in effect when she was born, Michelle outlined her plight as she endured racism in Princeton University, and narrowly escaped death at Harvard Law School. Tears were seen streaming down the cheeks of some of the visibly moved Chinese citizens.
“Sometimes we had to say no to caviar, or no to a really expensive Italian sports car because we just couldn’t afford it,” Michelle Obama recalled, her voice breaking, as one Chinese woman fainted and another one began sobbing uncontrollably.
However, when Michelle recalled the glorious day when her husband was chosen as the Democrat Party candidate for president – the day when she was proud of her country for the first time in her adult life – triumphant cheers broke out and she received a standing ovation.
Audience interviews showed just how significantly impressed the Chinese people were with the story of the First Lady’s painful ordeal. One young woman said, “Michelle give me hope that someday I make something of self. I not know how many opportunity I have in China until I hear how bad America be to black women.”
Another woman, who attended with her daughter, wiped away tears as she admitted, “I wish my other two children be with me to hear inspiring speech by so great woman, but number two child and number three child aborted by state. Still, I not know how good I have it until I hear how she suffer so big.”
An elderly man, who was leaning on an off-brand cane, also wished more could have been present. “If only more than eleven of my village survive Great Leap Forward, then more could hear elegant speech. I so happy state let me live to hear how bad America, and now I can die.”
After a brief time of handshakes, hugs, and selfies, Michelle Obama went on to continue her tour and spread her message of hope, made possible by statism.
Last week Samantha Power, who once discussed invading Israel and now serves as Obama’s Ambassador to the United Nations, decided to use the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army to link it to the Syrian Civil War: “In 1945, Russian soldiers liberated Auschwitz. Sixty-nine year later, if the United Nations is to live up to the noble purposes for which it was founded, the world again needs Russia to use its influence.”
The theme of being liberated by communist forces is apparently also haunting The New York Times writers: “The Congressional Budget Office estimated on Tuesday that the Affordable Care Act will reduce the number of full-time workers by 2.5 million over the next decade. That is mostly a good thing, a liberating result of the law.”
Rejoice, comrades! The Red Army has finally come to liberate you from the shackles of capitalist employment! The ACA, erroneously known as Obamacare, but recognized by the Party as the Affordable Communism Act, is only a tool – a weapon, if you will – a fiery sword in the mighty hands of the Red Army warrior.
But, as we all know, the Red Army doesn’t liberate one thing like your employment and then just goes away! There’s a lot more to liberate here, comrades – your wealth, schools, religion, sexuality, firearms, and even your sanity!
This post has been made possible through joined efforts by DDR Kamerad and Red Square.
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They are equally capable of rationalizing that economic misery in places such as 
