Tag Archive for: revolution

Recovering a more perfect union: A rebuke of the 1619 Project

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A new book describes the importance of memory, history, and national identity in saving America from desolation.

One of the worst sins of the present — not just ours but any present — is its tendency to condescend toward the past, which is much easier to do when one doesn’t trouble to know the full context of that past or try to grasp the nature of its challenges as they presented themselves at the time.
— Wilfred M. McClay, Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story

Jay Leno used to do a regular schtick, Jaywalking, in which he would interview random persons on the street, often young ones, and ask them questions about American history, such as: “Who did America fight in the Revolutionary War?” “How many branches of the U.S. government are there?” “What year was the War of 1812?” Invariably, they could not answer the question, standing mute with Leno’s impertinent microphone pointed at their gaping mouths, or they gave a ridiculous answer.

As deflating as these performances were, it turns out that the state of American education is even worse than Leno documented. Not only does ignorance characterise so much of the citizenry, but Americans are now also imbibing, i.e., being taught, pernicious lies or partial truths about the founding and history of the United States from a tendentious, ideological, and solidly left-wing perspective.

Twisted narrative

This sorry state of affairs is documented in excruciating detail in Timothy S. Goeglein’s enlightening, depressing, and, ultimately, hopeful new book, Toward a More Perfect Union: The Moral and Cultural Case for Teaching the Great American Story.

The distortion of history now routinely fed to elementary and high school students, as well as those attending hopelessly “woke” universities and colleges, has produced many young people who are “cynical, entitled, and aggrieved.” Continues Goeglein:

Rather than being thankful, they are indignant. Rather than proud, they feel ashamed. Rather than feeling free, they feel oppressed. Rather than wanting to fix America’s faults, they want to burn America down. Rather than asking what they can do for their country, they demand to know what their country can do for them — and the answer is increasingly to “cease to exist.”

We have created “a citizenry divorced both intellectually and emotionally from its heritage.” Further, “[w]hen we disassociate history — and memory — from facts, we are lost,” writes Goeglein, a former special assistant to President George W. Bush, a former Senate staffer, and, presently, vice-president of external and government relations for Focus on the Family.

Our predicament is exemplified by the absurd, anti-historical 1619 Project of the New York Times, an initiative repudiated by many respected, liberal historians. It is being taught in roughly 4,500 schools nationwide.

In a feat of historical and moral inversion, it maintains that the American Revolution was designed primarily to protect the institution of slavery from being destroyed by the British Empire.

Such a one-sided view of history will alienate Americans from one another, given the dissolution of a common identity and love of country, and disregards those who struggled to make the Declaration of Independence a reality in spite of its obvious flaws, such as slavery.

On the matter of slavery, always a leading complaint against America’s founding, the Washington Post’s George Will has rightly observed that the founders’ Constitution “gave slavery no national validation. It left slavery solely a creature of state laws and therefore susceptible to the process that, in fact, occurred — the process of being regionally confined and put on a path to ultimate extinction. Secession was the South’s desperate response when it recognized this impending outcome that the Constitution had facilitated.”

So, it comes as no surprise that, as “a 2020 Pew Research study found a month before the presidential election, roughly eight in ten registered voters in both camps said their political disagreements with others were about core American values, with roughly nine in ten — liberal and conservative — worried [that] a victory by the other would lead to ‘lasting harm’ to the United States” [emphasis added]. We are now in a situation in which tribe is pitted against tribe, race against race, rich against poor, red against blue states.

We have succumbed to the “termites of self-loathing,” to use a term coined by Ben Stein. There is hardly a historic personage — Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, Columbus, St Junípero Serra — who is not vilified, “cancelled,” and banished into outer darkness by woke activists and educators. One should be grateful that at least Frederick Douglass and Dr Martin Luther King Jr are spared such treatment, given their devotion to American ideals in the Declaration of Independence, classical literature, and Scripture. They are just ignored.

Dearth of patriotism

Recently, a friend whose daughter attended one of the tonier prep schools in Washington, DC, related that his conversations with her on US and Western history were disappointing. She, and her friends, showed no “piety” toward her country or heritage.

It was an interesting word choice and recalled my own school days studying Virgil’s Aeneid, an epic poem written between 29 and 19 BC. It tells the story of the Trojan Aeneas, who fled the destruction of his city, travelled to Italy, and would later become the ancestor of the Romans.

I remember my Jesuit instructor lauding “pius Aeneas,” “pious” being the most used adjective throughout the poem. In following the will of the gods — he even left the captivating Dido in Carthage — Aeneas demonstrated pietas, a virtue in the eyes of Virgil and my teacher, in his devotion to family, country, and mission. Such piety is no longer encouraged in our educational institutions, or so it would seem.

Major culprit

What brought America to this sorry state? In the beginning there was the “Original Zinn” — Howard Zinn, that is, a Boston University professor of political science and “the godfather of the radical attack on America’s history”, as Goeglein outlines in a pivotal chapter of Toward a More Perfect Union.

Zinn’s “epic screed,” A People’s History of the United States (1980), and his supplemental book for high schoolers, A Young People’s History of the United States (2007), have had an unparalleled impact on social studies teachers. The historian “refram[ed]” and “reimagin[ed]” facts to fit a Marxist critique of the US and a Western civilisation marred, claimed Zinn, “by the religion of popes, the government of kings, the frenzy for money.” For Zinn, “standards of historical analysis are merely ‘technical problems’ to be dismissed.”

“You wanna read a real history book?” Matt Damon’s titular character, Will, asks Robin Williams’ Dr Sean Maguire in the movie Good Will Hunting (1997). “Read Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States. That book’ll f***ing knock you on your ass.” Indeed, it does. It also boggles the mind.

Zinn claims that the nation “has been taken over by men [the founders] who have no respect for human rights or constitutional liberties.” Again, in service to ideology, Zinn does not believe in objective history as documented by Mary Grabar, PhD, a refugee of communist Yugoslavia, on whom Goeglein draws heavily.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the main author of the 1619 Project, backtracked after respected historians critiqued her work. She claimed that the project was not about history but about “memory.” This is not historically grounded memory, but memory saturated with ideology and politics. This is pure Zinn in methodology. Hence, noted historians such as Arthur Schlesinger Jr, Eugene Genovese, and Michael Kammen — hardly a crowd of right-wingers — criticised Zinn as a “polemicist, not a historian.”

“His ultimate goal is not a historical one but a political one,” writes Goeglein. “[H]e wanted to depict the United States as an illegitimate enterprise, one demanding a revolution.”

Pushback

According to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, today, only 18 percent of colleges require that students take a US history or government class to graduate. Maybe that is a blessing, given what passes for “history” in today’s woke environment. Ultimately, however, this is devastating to national unity.

Goeglein describes survey after survey that all indicate Americans’ ignorance of their rights under law and history. When the Constitution is taught, it is derided as being not radical enough in terms of the outcomes desired by left-of-centre teachers and advocates.

Toward A More Perfect Union does not specify a political agenda for reform, although it does note efforts made by some governors to reign in educational bureaucracies on, say, critical race theory. It does make a plea for parents to make a concerted effort to teach and counsel their children on the history of the nation and to pay close attention to what their schools are teaching.

It points to excellent resources available with which parents can educate themselves and their children on the complete story of American exceptionalism, not excluding the darker chapters. Parents who can afford the cost should look for alternatives to public schools that sacrifice true learning for the sake of ideology. “Classical” schools, home schooling, and parochial schools — all of which boomed during the COVID lockdowns — are possible options.

Parents who cannot afford private schools or who have special-needs children “must be extra vigilant and expect to receive the full wrath of Leftist activists if they stand up and demand that civics be taught while also standing against the indoctrination their children are receiving.” Specifically, they need to insist on the rights to inspect curricula, to opt out of the teaching of certain subjects, and to insist that controversial issues be discussed impartially. No easy tasks these.

Goeglein concludes:

[W]e must rededicate ourselves to the teaching of history — true, verifiable, factual history, with all its glories and tragedies. We need not fear to teach the ugly truths about America alongside the beautiful ones, because America’s founding vision is pure and her ideals are noble. Our failures do not change that.

Toward a More Perfect Union makes a compelling case that the country’s future, as one nation, demands a reclamation of our educational system and a recovery of the authentic teaching of history and constitutional government rightly understood.

This article has been republished from The American Spectator with permission.

AUTHOR

G. Tracy Mehan III

G. Tracy Mehan, III, was Assistant Administrator for Water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the Administration of President George W. Bush. He is an adjunct professor at Scalia Law School,… More by G. Tracy Mehan III

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

Troubling Trends: Is the Christian Era coming to a Close?

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Secularisation is decimating the world’s largest faith group.

We live in precarious times. The world is changing in ways we could not fathom a short forty years ago. Believing Christians, pro-family advocates and patriotic folks are fast becoming today’s marginalised communities.

For centuries the West, aka “Western Christendom”, was a dynamic and expanding enterprise that by the late 1800s effectively ruled the world. Even when warring among themselves, Westerners did their utmost to spread the faith. The world has been tremendously enriched by missions, schools, clinics and much else founded in the spirit of Christianity.

Today that is a flagging spirit, something painfully obvious. Two recent batches of demographic data seem to bear that out.

Replacement

The first came from the UK’s Office of National Statistics (ONS), reporting that only 42.6% of people in England and Wales identify as Christian. The UK Telegraph headline summed it up:

“Christians now a minority in England and Wales for first time”

ONS reports that in 2001, 72% of people in England and Wales identified as Christian. Those identifying as “no religion” increased from 15% in 2001 to 37.2% in 2021. In the last decade self-identified Muslims rose by almost a third to 6.5%. For the same period, Hindus realised a 13% increase, rising to 1.7%.

Interestingly, self-identified Muslims are more religious than Christians. More people attend mosque every week in the UK than attend church. It has been that way for a while. According to a Christian Research study from twenty years ago:

51 per cent of the Muslims quizzed in the 2001 census said they prayed every day, compared to just 6.3 per cent of Christians who attend church services each week.

A 2005 Christian Research study, “The Future of the Church”, predicted that the  number of Muslims attending mosque every week would double that of Christians attending church by 2040, forecasting:

[T]he number of Christians attending Sunday service could see a two-thirds drop over the next three decades. The current 9.4 per cent of the population currently in regular attendance at Sunday service is expected to be under 5 per cent by 2040.

The UK is well on the way to meeting that forecast.

Secularisation

The second batch of troublesome data is the Pew Research Center’s study, “Modeling the Future of Religion in America”. Their findings are that Americans are leaving Christianity   in droves and identifying as “atheist, agnostic or ‘nothing in particular.’”

[I]n 2020, about 64% of Americans, including children, were Christian. People who are religiously unaffiliated, sometimes called religious “nones,” accounted for 30% of the U.S. population. Adherents of all other religions — including Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists — totaled about 6%.

[P]rojections show Christians of all ages shrinking from 64% to between a little more than half (54%) and just above one-third (35%) of all Americans by 2070. Over that same period, “nones” would rise from the current 30% to somewhere between 34% and 52% of the U.S. population.

Similar figures are cited in British sociologist Stephen Bullivant’s just published book Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America (Oxford University Press).

The same trend is found throughout the Anglosphere, Europe and even Latin America. Is the Christian Era coming to a close?

Consider: For the sake of “religious neutrality,” the Christian calendar devised 1500 years ago by Dionysius Exiguus, denominating history per the Incarnation, used B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. (Anno Domini) for dating history. That practice has been abandoned for BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era). While doing so may well be more “inclusive”, it nonetheless attests to the diminishing influence of Christianity. This is just one of modernity’s thousand cuts.

While religious transition is usually a lengthy process — consider the Great Schism, the Renaissance and Reformation — the twentieth century vastly accelerated secularisation of the West. Depleted and demoralised by two world wars, quickly followed by unprecedented affluence and lightning technological progress, the West saw mammon thoroughly triumph by the 1960s, when religious expression was banned from the public square in America.

Sobering consequences

With secularism comes moral relativism, where there are no absolutes. Rather, all is relative, situational and governed by feeling rather than thinking. In fact, those steadfastly standing by absolutes are often the object of chattering class derision. Despite the proliferation of “Pride” festivals throughout the West, today any public declaration of pride in being Christian, Western or White can be a career-terminator.

Along with mammon-worshiping secularism, there has been, worldwide, a 50% decline in fertility in 50 years. This is most acute in the Global North countries and is leading to unsustainable economic and social conditions. Little wonder that governments in the West and elsewhere are doing backflips to boost birthrates. Nothing like the Biblical injunction “be fruitful and multiply” is to be found in globalism, mammon-worship or whatever label that comports with modernism/secularism.

In fact, the fanatical zeal of acolytes of the secular religion, aka “wokeism”, is comparable to that of the early Bolshevik regime. Just note the ostracising, cancelling and complete intolerance of those with whom they disagree. And these folks are in power in most of the West. If you have any doubt, remember your history: as a friend recently reminded me, statues are pulled down and place names are changed after revolutions.

It is long past time that people of faith, the family-friendly and the patriotic types trying to preserve their respective historical nations cease quibbling among themselves and circle the wagons. Yes, the best defence is offence, but we need to consolidate our position first. That is called building community.

Remember that appeasement doesn’t work. Virtue signalling and sacrificing kindred spirits to persuade your enemies that you’re not racist, bigoted, homophobic, etc., are just bending the knee to the bad guys. They validate the regime. That doesn’t build community and solidarity. As the folks say down home, don’t feed the alligator, hoping to be eaten last.

AUTHOR

Louis T. March

Louis T. March has a background in government, business and philanthropy. A former talk show host, author and public speaker, he is a dedicated student of history and genealogy. Louis lives with his family… More by Louis T. March

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

Islamo-Leftism [Part 6]

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Editor’s note: The following is a translation by Ibn Warraq and Robert Kerr of Michel Onfray’s L’Art d’Etre Francais (The Art of Being French, Bouquins, 2021), published here for the first time. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here. Part 4 is here. Part 5 is here.

Let us note in passing that this gratuitous and rather unscientific association of the working classes of yesterday with xenophobia remains to be demonstrated: on the other hand, we know that many journalists, intellectuals, publishers, writers, philosophers, academics, actors, comedians, lawyers, academics, and composers were certainly not latecomers in endorsing Vichy’s xenophobia, racism, and antisemitism. When de Gaulle launched his appeal of June 18[10], it was modest sailors who were the first to respond, not academics.

The sociologist refuses to use the term “Muslims” claiming that it is a fiction, a “phantasmatic category”. However, he has no difficulty in talking about the French, the Germans and the English by reactivating the old theory of the character of peoples. The French woman will do this, the English intellectual that, the Russian thinker something else…

Moreover, the book uses and abuses this rejected concept. Essentially, one may therefore not use the term “Muslims” if one has misgivings [scil. about Islam], but if one speaks well of them, one may. Muslims are thus all followers of a “minority religion adhered to by a disadvantaged group” – the italics are the author’s…

Of course, another platitude of the Islamo-leftist method, is that the young people (largely of North African descent) who burn cars in the Parisian banlieues cannot be considered delinquents; they ransack the property of the poor out of love for France and its republican values, since this is how they can reclaim the equality that the motto of the Republic promises them. An unprecedented patriotism indeed…

Another cliché of Islamo-leftism is the criticism of secularism, which is said to be a covert weapon of war to attack Muslims alone. Our sociologist then passes from secularism to laicism, which he presents as an intolerant religion. The right to blasphemy is for him “the right to spit on the religion of the weak” – nevertheless, in his conclusion he defends it all the same…

The researcher having discovered this additionally decrees that atheism necessarily accompanies “a world devoid of meaning and a human species without purpose”. It is therefore “a generator of anguish”. The Marxist thesis of religion as the opium of the people is no longer valid: the Muslim religion is understood as the ideology of legitimate salvation to which poor Muslim victims are forced by evil capitalism…

To the question: what is the seductive appeal of Islam? Emmanuel Todd answers: “The existence of an ideal combining individual morality, a collective project and the possibility of a beautiful future can help people in their effort to become something more than frail animals let loose in a world devoid of meaning. That is why we must consider the possibility that Islam contributes positively, in certain circumstances and in some of its manifestations, to the psychological equilibrium of individuals, to good school results and to successful integration into French society” (emphasis of Onfray).  Let us recall that this ‘demonstration’ is found in a book that condemns those who marched to denounce the attacks…

If Islam provides for an ideal, a morality, a project, a beauty, a balance, good school results, successful social integration, this would merit more than peremptory assertions: we would like to see the reputed figures, those indispensable tables, the incontrovertible statistics that would validate the scientific nature of what, otherwise, is just showmanship! Unfortunately, we have a lot of figures that rather tend to prove the opposite.

If Emmanuel Todd believes that the category “Muslim” is phantasmatic, he also thinks that Islam has little to do with the Qur’an! Which is why he can turn a religion whose founding text reveals itself to be misogynistic, phallocratic, anti-Semitic and warmongering, in more than one place, into an ideology that is… egalitarian! In Indonesia, it is even an opportunity for women!

Of course, our sociologist, even if he is not specialized in religion, is aware that there are verses that frankly endorse the inequality of men and women or that theorize that a woman’s testimony is not equal to that of a man, in addition to the fact that in the case of inheritance, the shares are unequally distributed depending on one’s gender. How does one get out of such a conundrum? By denying outright – contrary to all that we know to be true and against all evidence – that these verses are still in force in the modern world.

Thus Emmanuel Todd writes: “Nowhere in the Muslim world are the rules of inheritance found in the Qur’an applied.” I doubt that in Afghanistan or Yemen, in Qatar or Saudi Arabia, to mention only two or three countries that come to mind, the Qur’an is trashed in favor of Olympe de Gouges’[11] Declaration of Women’s Rights.

In the same way, young people in the suburbs are also, according to our sociologist, more devoted to the feminist revolution than to Sharia law. Todd goes so far as to assert that the beurs[12] of the suburbs have gone “nine or ten tenths of the way towards an egalitarian conception of the status of men and women.” One can appreciate the scientific character of such an assertion: one can imagine that Max Weber would not have been satisfied with a method that could be described as “give or take”, the notorious “nine or ten”; Libération, on the other hand, even more so! Emmanuel Todd proposes a genealogy of anti-Semitism that is really something else: for him, there is no point in questioning the quranic text itself, which is full of anti-Semitic passages, or even consulting the Hadiths that confirm hatred against Jews, for whom Allah ordains slaughter, or indeed the wars waged against the Jews by the Prophet himself – anti-Semitism rather is the product… of Islamophobia!

COLUMN BY

MICHEL ONFRAY

REFERENCES:

[10] The Appeal of 18 June (French: L’Appel du 18 juin) was the first speech made by Charles de Gaulle after his arrival in London in 1940 following the Fall of France. Broadcast to France by the radio services of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), it is often considered to have marked the beginning of the French Resistance in World War II. It is regarded as one of the most important speeches in French history. A part of the speech goes like this: “I, General de Gaulle, currently in London, invite the officers and the French soldiers who are located in British territory or who would come there, with their weapons or without their weapons, I invite the engineers and the special workers of armament industries who are located in British territory or who would come there, to put themselves in contact with me…“

[11] Olympe de Gouges [1748-1793] In her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen (1791), she challenged the practice of male authority and the notion of male-female inequality. She was executed by guillotine during the Reign of Terror [1793-1794].

[12] Beurs: Beur (or alternatively, Rebeu) is a colloquial term, sometimes considered pejorative, in French to designate European-born people whose parents or grandparents are immigrants from the Maghreb [NWAfrica]. The equivalent term for a female beur is a beurette.

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

An Overthrow of the Government

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Sure enough, presidential candidate Donald J. Trump racked up impressive statistics in his Fox News debate tonight, effectively trouncing the competition that included Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

Once again, however, Fox’s Megyn “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” Kelly ambushed Mr. Trump by falsely stating that the Better Business Bureau had given Trump University a D-minus rating, when in fact it’s rating is, as Trump asserted, an A!

Here is the Better Business Bureau report, with an ‘A’ grade for Trump University.

trump university bbb report grade a

The same trouncing happened last week when Trump’s victories in the primaries garnered him the lion’s share of electoral votes by winning Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Virginia, which, according to Philip Bump of The Washington Post, “no Republican has ever won…going back to 1960.”

Both pundits and pollsters attributed the massive turn-outs to Mr. Trump’s having excited, inspired and therefore mobilized the electorate––in some cases well over 100% increase above the 2012 midterms. In one instance, Mr. Trump beat Sen. Cruz by 450,000 votes; in another he beat Sen. Rubio by over a million votes! According to writers Bill Barrow and Emily Swanson, Trump had “significant support across educational, ideological, age and income classifications.”

In his victory speech last week, looking and sounding presidential, Mr. Trump accurately proclaimed: “We have expanded the Republican Party.”

This ought to have been music to the ears of Republicans everywhere, especially “establishment” types who constantly seek to attract influential voting blocs comprised of African-Americans, Hispanics, and young people, all of whom––mysteriously, incomprehensibly, self-destructively––have huddled under the Democrat tent for decades, gaining not a micrometer of progress in their personal lives, wages, schools, crime rates, the pathetic list is endless.

Trump, only nine months into being a politician, has accomplished this incredible feat. But the more he succeeds, the more the Grand Poobahs of the Grand Old Party, as well as the media (both right and left), have devolved into what appears to be a clinical state of hysteria.

Think about this. Barack Obama’s record violates every principle and value that Republicans and Conservatives claim they stand for. Under his watch, we have…

  • 94-million unemployed Americans
  • An almost-insurmountable debt of nearly $20 trillion
  • Borders so porous that not thousands but millions of unvetted and potentially murderous illegal aliens (i.e., jihadists) have been able to invade our shores and set up their U.S.-government-dependent shop in sanctuary cities around our nation
  • A severely diminished military and nothing less than vile treatment of our veterans
  • Trampling on the Constitution
  • Bypassing Congress to act unilaterally (and illegally)
  • Appeasing our enemies and spitting at our allies

…and yet those same Republicans and Conservatives––in full control of the Senate and House––have been notably absent in mustering up anything more than mild rebuke to counter Mr. Obama’s assaults on our country.

But to them, Trump is the real threat!

BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES

That’s what the frenzied GOP, media, and also-rans are trying to do, figuratively closing any openings in what they believe is their own personal Ship of State now that the threatening weather called Donald Trump is upon them. They are in a state of impotent horror, given their abject failure––in spite of multimillions spent and generous media assistance––to stem the Trump juggernaut.

Ironic, isn’t it. If any entity deserves a comeuppance, it is the very arrogant, go-along-to-get-along, ineffectual, leftist-whipped, emasculated, cave-to-Obama, bow-to-the-lobbyists, accommodate-the-Arab-lobby establishment!

Impotent? Emasculated? Yes, money and power are mighty motivators, but it is a tacit acknowledgment of their own sissified selves that is now spurring Trump’s critics into action.

And they’re trying their damnedest!

On March 2, a gaggle of Republican national security leaders––no doubt many of them members of the globalist Council on Foreign Relations whose animating raison d’ȇtre would be threatened by a Trump presidency––wrote an open letter to Trump expressing their “united opposition” to his candidacy.”  They don’t like his “vision of American influence and power in the world….advocacy for aggressively waging trade wars…rhetoric [that] undercuts the seriousness of combating Islamic radicalism…insistence that Mexico will fund a wall on the southern border…,” on and on. Comical, isn’t it, that everything they’ve failed to address with any seriousness or success compels them to slam the guy who promises to address those issues and succeed.

On March 3, 22 Republicans––including philandering Congressman Mark Sanford and the execrable Glenn Beck––declared that they would not vote for Trump.

August writers like the Wall St. Journal’s Bret Stephens have been apoplectic about Trump for months, sparing no slur or invective. Author and military historian Max Boot has dug deep into his assault repertoire to make sure no insult has gone unhurled.  And the usually dazzling Andrew C. McCarthy at National Review Online is simply unable to contain his hostility to Trump’s candidacy, just as most of the other writers at NRO have jumped on the anti-Trump bandwagon. And that’s not to omit the florid hysteria emanating from Commentarymagazine.com.

On March 4, desperate anti-Trump operatives pimped out good ole patsy Mitt Romney to go before a teleprompter and read the words written for him by an anti-Trump operative. So sad––a man who once had class.

But no one forgot that Romney, a lifelong liberal, lost both senatorial and presidential elections and that the last image of him––etched indelibly in the American public’s consciousness––was of him debating his rival for the presidency, Barack Obama, and simply folding like a cheap suit!

Romney––who The Wall St. Journal called “a flawed messenger”––didn’t look or sound like he had dementia, so it’s strange indeed that he barely mentioned the endorsement Trump gave him for his campaign for president, and the lavish praise he heaped upon Trump.

Romney’s hit job evoked the following 22-word, devastating and well-deserved tweet from Trump: “Looks like two-time failed candidate Mitt Romney is going to be telling Republicans how to get elected. Not a good messenger!”

All of the abovementioned people––and dozens I haven’t named––are growing frustrated that their old tricks of marginalizing and finally destroying the target in question haven’t worked. They long to emulate the JournOlist  of 2007, when over-400 members of the leftist media colluded to quash any and every criticism or fact-based doubt about Mr. Obama’s Constitutional eligibility to hold office, to intimidate any critic into silence.

To this day, has anyone seen even one of Barack Obama’s college transcripts, his marriage license, a doctor’s evaluation? Now it’s the Republicans––actually those cocktail-swigging “conservatives” who routinely cozy up to the lobbyists they’re beholden to––who have gotten together to defeat Trump. These feckless so-called leaders decided that their target, a self-funded former liberal, was worth more of their negative, insult-laden literary output and passionate commentary than the Marxist-driven, jihadist-defending, anti-Constitutional, anti-American regime in power.

If you ever wonder how this could happen, why Republicans and self-described Conservatives could rebel so ferociously against a candidate who promises to strengthen our military, bring jobs and industry back to America, seal our borders against the  onslaught of illegal aliens, and make America great again, wonder no more.

FOLLOW THE MONEY

Doesn’t it always come down to money? Money leads to power and influence and control, all of which politicians––that too-often pliable and buyable species––lust for. It’s not only the ephemeral day-to-day power they fear losing, it’s the entire network they’re enmeshed in, which involves all the treaties and deals and “arrangements” they’ve signed onto and the pelf it promises to keep on yielding (for Exhibit No. 1, see The Clinton Foundation and the mountain of cash it reaps).

Imagine their fear of a president who actually cuts the pork, actually strikes deals that don’t line his own pockets, actually exposes the bad deals that have been made by the bad players in Washington, D.C. Imagine what Trump will learn about the massive under-the-table, self-serving deals that were made in the Iran deal and others.

The same lust for power applies to media moguls whose wealth is not limited to TV stations and newspapers but to the very deals made by government and on Wall St. No one knows this better than Mr. Trump, the author of the mega-bestseller, The Art of the Deal. That’s why his critics are so terrified. They pretend to be offended by the kind of comment or gesture that they themselves express routinely. But they’re really afraid of being in the presence of someone who is utterly immune to either their blandishments or strong-arm tactics.

Roger Stone, a former advisor to Mr. Trump, told writer S. Noble at WorldNetDaily.com, that the perceived threat is so real that “The GOP establishment would rather suffer through four years of Hillary––whose policies are indistinguishable from Marco Rubio’s or Mitt Romney’s––than to have an outsider be president, like Trump who is beholden to no one.”

As Mark Cunningham wrote in the New York Post: “All the noise about Donald Trump’s ‘hostile takeover’ of the Republican Party misses a key point: Such takeovers only succeed when existing management has failed massively. And that’s true of both the GOP and the conservative movement. Trump’s a disrupter—but most of the fire aimed his way is just shooting the messenger.”

Monica Crowley, editor of online opinion at The Washington Times, explains that the “emotionally fragile Republican ruling class” deluded themselves into thinking that Mr. Trump couldn’t possibly win. “Then actual voting began. And the first-timer, the brash anti-politician, began racking up resounding victories…”

In addition, Crowley writes: “Like his style or not, Mr. Trump is an in-your-face guy. Voters want that kind of guy taking it to President Obama’s record, [to] Hillary Clinton…and to the unbridled, destructive leftism that has rendered America virtually unrecognizable.” And, I might add, taking it to the wimps in the GOP!

Former Governor Mike Huckabee told Fox News that Donald Trump’s success represents a peaceful “overthrow of the government” and that the Republican establishment should be glad it’s being achieved with “ballots not bullets.” He added that the Trump phenomenon was a “political revolution in the Republican Party and in the country.”

SCOTUS Ignites New Level of Resistance

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My sofa felt pretty comfortable. Ninety percent of the time, I’m on the road as chairman of the Conservative Campaign Committee. This was a rare occasion to be in town for the Volusia 9/12 Project monthly meeting. I saw the email reminder about the meeting earlier that day and thought it might be good to attend considering the two devastating outrageous rulings handed down by the Supreme Court (Obamacare and same sex marriage).

But when 5:00 p.m. rolled around and I would have to leave at 6:00 p.m. to get there on time at 7:00 p.m., I was sorely tempted to stay home on my extremely comfortable sofa. And yet, almost robotic, I showered and prepared to leave. At our front door, my wife Mary gave me a kiss and said, “I’m proud of you for going.” I asked, “Why?” She replied, “I don’t know.”

The 9/12 group’s meeting was the same day the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same sex marriage. I’m a Christian and know that God has everything under control. Still, I was emotionally shaken; angry, frustrated, hurt and concerned about the dark place our country is headed – evil appearing to triumph everywhere you turn.

Thank God I attended that meeting. It was awesome. The hall was filled with patriots, mostly Christian, still passionately engaged after meeting for the past seven years. The Supreme Court’s judicial activism though dispiriting appears to have sparked a new level of commitment in them to fight for God and country.

The leader of the group is Ray Sanchez. Wow, I regret not bringing in my phone to record Ray’s inspiring rip-roaring opening monologue, pledging to continue pushing back and seeking new ways to defend the Godly traditions and values that have made America great.

There was talk of churches bowing out of 501c3 status; liberating them from government dictates.

A gentlemen at the meeting lamented that the GOP is committed to staying away from social issues. Meanwhile, Democrats/Leftists are cramming their consensus on social issues down our throats. He said the Supreme Courts rulings punctuates how crucially important it is to put people of moral character in office.

Allowed a moment on the microphone to speak about his travels, I was blown away by the passion and commitment of 79 year old Reynerio Sanchez (not related to the group’s leader Ray Sanchez). Last year, Mr Sanchez drove 10,464 miles giving away copies of the U.S. Constitution. He also gives away copies of the Ten Commandments; upbeat, enthusiastic and not showing any signs of slowing down. Mr Sanchez read the group a moving “thank you” email he received from a young waitress on the other side of the country. Mr Sanchez’s website is: reysan.org

PATRIOT CAMP

Patriot camp for children.

One of the ladies excitedly reported about this year’s “Patriot Camp” for 1st to 6th graders. She and her team teach American history through storytelling, drama, crafts and games. I was told that Patriot Camp is extremely popular with kids and parents.

The keynote speaker was Dr Tom LaHue. His topic was “The Decline of the Church” which appears to be a worldwide phenomenon. The stats Dr LaHue shared showing the decline in attendance and effectiveness of the church in our culture were pretty disheartening.

When asked what we can do to change the direction of our country, Dr LaHue said we should “have a burden for America”. He said some may be called to Christian ministry, while others are led to fight back in other ways. His point was it is crucial that every patriot continues to do their part; continuing to fight to restore America.

From the ladies who run the group’s Patriot Camp to elderly Mr Sanchez touring America handing out Constitution booklets and the Ten Commandments, these are people simply doing whatever they can to restore the country they love. We did not reach this current level of debauchery in America over night. It will take faithfulness, prayer and wisdom to turn it around.

The unwavering determination and commitment of the Volusia 9/12 Project truly inspired me. I suspect their “burden for America” is representative of Tea Party groups across America.

My brother said, in essence, SCOTUS made it illegal to be a Bible believing and functioning Christian. I told him I do not think we are totally there yet, but are swiftly headed in that direction.

I pray that there is a silver lining in the Supreme Court’s betrayal, the igniting of a new intensity in the level of resistance to Obama and his minion’s fundamental transformation of America.

Brother and sister patriots, go with God. Go with God.

Victory for Ukrainian Revolution

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Ukrainian revolution has won today and it’s very emotional for me, since that is where I was born and raised. eighty-two protesters are dead, the president is running, government thieves are being hunted down and brought to justice, communist party headquarters ransacked, and all remaining statues of Lenin and other communist leaders torn down all over Ukraine.

I spent all day watching live feed from the victory rally on Independence Square, or Maidan (pronounced as My-DONE) in Kiev, wishing I were there. In fact, this is the first time in almost 20 years that I’ve been in the US that I wanted to be back in Ukraine and celebrate. So many memories, so much to say. So excuse me if I don’t write more now. Perhaps, later.

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EDITORS NOTE: We stand with the Ukrainian people and salute their victory over a tyrannical socialist regime. Our prayers are with them as they rebuild their great nation into a center of prosperity, beauty and freedom.