Tag Archive for: Socialist

Jim Jones’ Deadly ‘Religious Socialism’ Gospel

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Jim Jones’ “sect was doomed to failure for it was founded on the lie that religious Socialism can save men,” wrote late Catholic priest and commentator Vincent P. Miceli in his 1981 book, The Antichrist: The Final Campaign Against the Savior. Recently republished by Sophia Institute Press, this volume’s previously examined incisive analysis of leftist evils contains provocative thoughts about Jones’ cult, which shocked the world in 1978 with a mass suicide.

With mad conspiracy theories, Jones incited his Peoples Temple cult members to kill themselves and each other on November 18, 1978, in the cult’s self-contained community of Jonestown, deep in the South American backcountry of Guyana. While he and some other cultists met their ends through gunshots, most of Jonestown’s inhabitants drank cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. This beverage has since become a byword for fanaticism, and exemplified for Miceli another example of modern tyranny, what he termed a “Moloch state.” “When they had all drained the chalice of cyanide, the Peoples’ Temple became a Church of the dead. The modern Moloch state was left a city of suicides-murders, a city of 911 rotting corpses,” he wrote.

Leftists commonly ascribe rationality to themselves and dismiss conservatives as fanatics, but Miceli, writing so soon after Jones’ demise, noted that this crazed man was thoroughly of the Left. Often forgotten in the intervening decades, Jones’ utopian and socialist obsessions found expression in his advocacy of what he called “Apostolic Socialism.” As Miceli wrote,

Jones himself was always a liberal, or rather, a zealous Communist posing as a liberal; to keep up appearances he preached the gospel of social salvation camouflaging it with a thin veneer of Christianity; his faith was a false and cruel caricature of Christianity.

Jones exhibited the pitfalls of the Social Gospel, a collectivist, secularist distortion of Christianity that megachurch pastor Rick Warren, himself no conservative, has denounced as “Marxism in Christian clothing.” As Miceli wrote, ultimately a “church of naïve, hoodwinked, simple folk was led astray by an evil, militant Communist, posing as a God-man liberal do-gooder.” Indeed, after the Jonestown slaughter letters appeared “testifying that the cult leaders were planning to bequeath more than 7 million dollars to the Communist Party that rules the Moloch state known as the Soviet Union.”

Yet Jones, “while doling out liberally social goodies…claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus,” Miceli astonishingly observed. In Guyana’s jungles, this false prophet to the last “demanded the service of adoration from his faithful,” Miceli added. “Jonestown, the Marxist-liberal-socialist caricature of a Christian Church, conferred on its faithful but one sacrament—the sacrament of death, of suicide.”

Over four decades after Jonestown’s horrors, Miceli’s reflections remain pertinent for an age of rising atheism:

What were the spiritual influences that unleashed the floodgates and fostered the mass suicides and murders in Jonestown? By way of preparing the social milieu for the creation of the Peoples’ Temple, one of the most basic causes must be the massive apostasy by Christians in the West from faith in the Judeo-Christian God of revelation.

With words no less relevant today, Miceli concluded with a

warning and somber lesson to be learned from the carnage exacted by the modern Moloch state, whether that takes place in the jungle of Jonestown or in the abortion mills of Western cities. The warning is that established forms of Christian religions have lost their hold on and power to attract most people—especially the educated middle class and even the masses of the poor. Why is this so? Because such religions have secularized the Christian message. They teach in favor of the Christ of Karl Marx instead of the Christ of the Gospels.

Thus, Jones stands on a smaller scale amidst history’s Marxist mass murderers such as Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong, who counted victims in the millions. Jones is yet another precedent of how ruthless wolves in sheep’s clothing exploit the vain search for salvation in this world, or even the next, in socialism. However, this ideology does not exhaust modern madness, as Miceli studied, for interrelated with this fanatical fool’s errand is also a distorted understanding of the male and female sexes, as a forthcoming article will examine.

AUTHOR

ANDREW HARROD

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

Why Do People Become Communists, and Why Do They Stick With It?

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So if there is no rational case for communism as such, why do people go for this stuff?

For as long as I can remember, I’ve puzzled about why people become communists. I have no doubt about why someone would stop being one. After all, we have a century of evidence of the murder, famine, and general destruction caused by the idea. Ignoring all this takes a special kind of willful blindness to reality.

Even the theory of communism itself is a complete mess. There is really no such thing as common ownership of goods that are obviously scarce in the real world. There must be some solution to the problem of scarcity beyond just wishing reality away. Perhaps ownership and trade? Slogans and dreams are hardly a suitable substitute for a workable program.

But how communism would work in practice is not something they want to talk about. They just imagined that some magical Hegelian shift would take place in the course of history that would work it all out.

So if there is no rational case for communism as such, why do people go for this stuff?

The Red Century

The New York Times has been exploring that issue in a series of remarkable reflections that they have labelled Red Century. I can’t get enough, even the ones that are written by people who are—how shall I say?—suspiciously sympathetic to communism as a cause.

The most recent installment is written by Vivian Gornick. She reflects on how her childhood world was dominated by communists.

The sociology of the progressive world was complex. At its center were full-time organizers for the Communist Party, at the periphery left-wing sympathizers, and at various points in between everything from rank-and-file party card holders to respected fellow travelers….

When these people sat down to talk, Politics sat down with them, Ideas sat down with them; above all, History sat down with them. They spoke and thought within a context that lifted them out of the nameless, faceless obscurity into which they had been born, and gave them the conviction that they had rights as well as obligations. They were not simply the disinherited of the earth, they were proletarians with a founding myth of their own (the Russian Revolution) and a civilizing worldview (Marxism).

While it is true that thousands of people joined the Communist Party in those years because they were members of the hardscrabble working class (garment district Jews, West Virginia miners, California fruit pickers), it was even truer that many more thousands in the educated middle class (teachers, scientists, writers) joined because for them, too, the party was possessed of a moral authority that lent shape and substance, through its passion for structure and the eloquence of its rhetoric, to an urgent sense of social injustice….

The Marxist vision of world solidarity as translated by the Communist Party induced in the most ordinary of men and women a sense of one’s own humanity that ran deep, made life feel large; large and clarified. It was to this clarity of inner being that so many became not only attached, but addicted. No reward of life, no love nor fame nor wealth, could compete with the experience. It was this all-in-allness of world and self that, all too often, made of the Communists true believers who could not face up to the police state corruption at the heart of their faith.

Sounds fascinating, if bonkers (Marxism is hardly a “civilizing worldview”). It sounds less like an intellectual salon of ideas and more like a religious delusion. Those too can be well intentioned. The key here is a dogmatic ideology, which serves as a kind of substitute for religion. It has a vision of hell (workers and peasants exploited by private-capital wielding capitalist elite), a vision of heaven (a world of universal and equal prosperity and peace), and a means of getting from one to the other (revolution from below, as led by the vanguard of the proletariat).

Once you accept such an ideology, anything intellectual becomes possible. Nothing can shake you from it. Okay, that’s not entirely true. One thing can shake you of it: when the leader of the cult repudiates the thing you believe in most strongly.

Khrushchev’s Heresy

She was 20 years old in 1956, when Nikita Khrushchev spoke to the Soviet Communist Party about the crimes of Stalin. Apparently the unrelenting reports of famine, persecution, and mass death, from the early years of Bolshevik rule – and even the revelation of the Hitler-Stalin pact – would have demoralized them earlier. But no:

The 20th Congress report brought with it political devastation for the organized left around the world. Within weeks of its publication, 30,000 people in this country quit the party, and within the year it was as it had been in its 1919 beginnings: a small sect on the American political map.

Amazing.

The Early Reds

And speaking of this small 1919 sect, I’m reminded of one of my favorite movies: Reds (1981). I could watch it another 20 times. It explores the lives of the American communists of the turn of the 20th century, their loves, longings, and aspirations. The focus is on fiery but deluded Jack Reed, but it includes portraits of a passionate Louise Bryant, the gentile Max Eastman, an edgy Eugene O’Neill, and the ever inspiring Emma Goldman.

These people weren’t the Progressives of the mainstream that history credits with having so much influence over policy in those days. These were the real deal: the Communists that were the source of national frenzy during the Red Scare of the 1920s.

The movie portrays them not as monsters but idealists. They were all very talented, artistic, mostly privileged in upbringing, and what drew them to communism was not bloodlust for genocide but some very high ideals.

They felt a passion for justice. They wanted to end war. They opposed exploitation. They longed for universal freedom and maximum civil liberty. They despised the entrenched hierarchies of the old order and hoped for a new society in which everyone had an equal chance.

All of that sounds reasonable until you get to the details. The communists had a curious understanding of each of these concepts. Freedom meant freedom from material want. Justice meant a planned distribution of goods. The end of war meant a new form of war against the capitalists who they believed created war. The hierarchies they wanted to be abolished were not just state-privileged nobles but also the meritocratic elites of industrial capitalism, and even small land owners, no matter how small the plot.

Why be a communist rather than just a solid liberal of the old school? In the way the movie portrays it, the problem was not so much in their goals but in their mistaken means. They hated the state as it existed but imagined that a new “dictatorship of the proletariat” could become a transition mechanism to usher in their classless society. That led them to cheer on the Bolshevik Revolution in its early stages, and work for the same thing to happen in the United States.

The Dream Dies

Watching their one-by-one demoralization is painful. Goldman sees the betrayal immediately. Reed becomes an apologist for genocide. Bryant forgets pretending to be political and believing in free love, marries Reed, and tends to his medical needs before his death. O’Neill just becomes a full-time cynic (and drunk). It took Max Eastman longer to lose the faith but he eventually became an anti-socialist and wrote for FEE.

The initial demoralization of the early American communists came in the 1920s. They came to realize that all the warning against this wicked ideology – having been written about for many centuries prior, even back to the ancient world – were true.

Eastman, for example, realized that he was seeking to liberate people by taking from them the three things people love most in life: their families, their religion, and their property. Instead of creating a new heaven on earth, they had become apologists for a killing machine.

Stunned and embarrassed, they moved on with life.

But the history didn’t end there. There were still more recruits being added to the ranks, generations of them. The same thing happened after 1989. Some people lost the faith, others decided that socialism needs yet another chance to strut its stuff.

It’s still going on today.

As for the Communist Party in America, most left-Progressives of the Antifa school regard the Party as an embarrassing sellout, wholly owned by the capitalist elite. And when we see their spokesmen appear on television every four years, they sound not unlike pundits we see on TV every night.

It would be nice if any article written about communism were purely retrospective. That, sadly, is not the case. There seem to be new brands of Marxian thought codified every few years, and still more versions of its Hegelian roots that take on ever more complex ideological iterations (the alt-right is an example).

Why do people become communists? Because human beings are capable of believing in all sorts of illusions, and we are capable of working long and hard to turn them into nightmares. Once we’ve invested the time and energy into something, however destructive, it can take a very long time to wake us up. It’s hard to think of a grander example of the sunk-cost fallacy.

AUTHOR

Jeffrey A. Tucker

Jeffrey Tucker is a former Director of Content for the Foundation for Economic Education.

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

VIDEO: Biden’s Inflation Plan Includes Increased Dependency on the State and Marxist Economics

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The Last Refuge reported on Biden’s plan to deal with out of control inflation. According to The Last Refuge,

Depending on income, the Biden administration plans to offset higher prices for Americans by providing the essential services and products they need.  In essence, Democrat-Socialism with a filter of equity in distribution, i.e. “enhanced dependency.”

Remarkably, Stephanopoulos references one of the most insane New York Times op-ed’s ever written around economics [ARTICLE HERE].  Within the reference, the Democrat legislative proposal is for the government to take over the purchasing of essential products like food, fuel, gasoline and medicine.  The government would then distribute those products.  The entire premise is based on some academic leftist theory of economics that is just nuts. It looks nothing like capitalism.

Read more

WATCH:

In this video Transportation Secretary Buttigieg blames profit-seeking oil companies for gas crisis:

Democrats never ever take responsibility for their own policy to totally eliminate fossil fuels in the name of climate change.

Welcome to CPUSA writ large

Biden, his administration and the media are all into Building Back Bigger Government.

Marc Morano reported on a New York Times article written by Culture & lifestyle journalist Annaliese Griffin writing on June 2, 2022. Griffin wrote,

“Inflation has the potential to drive welcome change for the planet if Americans think differently about the way they eat…We could adjust what we eat to save both our pocketbooks and our planet.”

“Climate change has motivated some to eat less resource-intensive meat and more vegetables, grains and legumes, but this movement has not reached the scale necessary to bring needed change — yet… A 2021 study in Nature found that animal products produce greenhouse gases at twice the rate of foods from plants. We should be paying attention to every ton of carbon dioxide that goes into the atmosphere — the same way shoppers are watching the cost of every addition to their grocery carts.” …

“Inflation resulting from the cost of fuel and feed, coupled with supply chain slowdowns, may make meat substitutes more affordable relative to traditional, factory-farmed meats.

… Historically, cost has been a powerful force that has changed Americans’ diets.”

Marc Morano responded to Griffin’s article with,

“The New York Times seems bent on updating Gordon Gekko’s phrase from the 1987 film Wall Street: Chaos, for lack of a better word, is GOOD. Climate activists in academia, the Biden admin. and the media seem to think the more humans suffer, the more the planet will benefit. This is more evidence that economic calamity, debt, inflation, supply chain issues, and skyrocketing meat and energy costs are not the unintended consequences of the climate agenda, but the INTENDED consequences. Chaos conditions the public to accept more centralized control of their lives. Vladimir Lenin reportedly once said, ‘worse is better’ or ‘the worse, the better’ to cheer on chaos and the destruction of the existing order to impose his ideology.”

The Bottom Line

A reader sent us an interesting commentary titled “Price of gas in France” about an art thief who stole a number of masterpieces. Here’s what he sent us:

A thief in Paris planned to steal some paintings from the Louvre. After careful planning, he got past security, stole the paintings, and made it safely to his van. However, he was captured only two blocks away when his van ran out of gas.

When asked how he could mastermind such a crime and then make such an obvious error, he replied, “Monsieur, that is the reason I stole the paintings—.”

Biden’s plan is no better than that of the thief, it is dramatically worse.

Americans are seeing Biden’s policies at the gas station, on store shelves, in the products and services they buy and in their retirement accounts.

It’s all bad, really bad.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

SOUND FAMILIAR? The Communist Goals as read into the Congressional Record on January 10, 1963

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The following was entered into the Congressional record by Albert Sydney Herlong Jr. who was an American politician from Florida who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1949 to 1969 as a member of the Democratic Party.

Congressional Record–Appendix, pp. A34-A35
Current Communist Goals
EXTENSION OF REMARKS OF HON. A. S. HERLONG, JR. OF FLORIDA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Thursday, January 10, 1963

Mr. HERLONG. Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Nordman of De Land, Fla., is an ardent and articulate opponent of communism, and until recently published the De Land Courier, which she dedicated to the purpose of alerting the public to the dangers of communism in America.

At Mrs. Nordman’s request, I include in the RECORD, under unanimous consent, the following “Current Communist Goals,” which she identifies as an excerpt from “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen:

CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, and policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, and healthy.”
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.” (Remember these goals were published to expose them in 1958) Coincidence?
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture–education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures, which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use [“] united force [“] to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.

©All rights reserved.

‘Light Them On Fire’: Bernie Sanders Organizer Wants Political Violence

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Imagine if a staffer of a conservative presidential candidate welcomed political violence and called for mainstream media to be dragged “out by their hair and light them on fire in the streets.”

Field organizer for Bernie Sanders Kyle Jurek was caught on an undercover video threatening that “Cities will burn” if Sanders doesn’t win the Democratic nomination. Jurek was also caught telling undercover journalists, “There is a reason why Stalin had gulags,” justifying forced re-education camps to ensure that Trump supporters are taught not to be a “Nazi.”

Jurek was exposed by Project Veritas. Here are a couple of the shocking clips:

https://twitter.com/JamesOKeefeIII/status/1217083949693968385?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1217083949693968385&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fclarionproject.org%2Fbernie-sanders-organizer-wants-political-violence%2F

Jurek might not be alone. According to the Washington Examiner, “Two Iowa field directors for Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign locked their Twitter accounts” after Jurek was outed. At least one of those organizers has worked with Jurek in some capacity in the past, identifying Jurek as a top-tier organizer.

Jurek deleted his Twitter account yesterday afternoon.

As journalist Andy Ngo discovered, 38-year-old Jurek was also arrested last week in Iowa and charged with drunk driving and possessing drug paraphernalia. Jurek has a history of advocating for Antifa-like political violence. He was recorded in a separate occasion justifying political violence.

Antifa, a domestic terrorist group, uses street violence as a means to an end. We’re in a climate where “social justice” activists (and increasingly, political operatives) are comfortable flirting with violence and anarchy as a means to achieve their end goals.

While the behavior of one person doesn’t reflect the whole party nor the presidential candidate, the trend in favor of open violence as a consequence for not getting one’s political way is dangerous for any republic.

For longtime civil rights activist Jeffrey Imm, the normalization of political violence as a rational response is a mirror reflection of how terrorists think. Imm spoke with Clarion Project on the disturbing trend of political violence.

“There are thousands if not millions of pro-violence troubled individuals using politics a a medium to express their hate and rage against others with impunity, [and] gaining approval from fellow troubled individuals. They believe hate gives their lives meaning.”

For conservatives, it’s increasingly frustrating to see the media ignore the open embrace of political violence by some members of society. After the 2016 elections, mainstream media predicted the conservative Right would turn to political violence but in fact the opposite has happened.

The lack of accountability to people taking to the streets and turning to brutality to achieve a political goal has been encouraged by the same media factory that is now on the target list of violent extremists like Jurek.

For Americans on the front lines working to challenge the Antifa-inspired political violence, the threat doesn’t just stop with the violence itself. Antifa also is very comfortable doxxing people it decides to single out, releasing personal information and targeting families.

If Antifa’s political violence is becoming the new norm for political operatives, the question is, what comes next and where will it stop?

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Sanders on List of 100 Members of Congress Supporting CAIR

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

Trevor Loudon documentary on ANTIFA, a worthy use of one’s time

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Published by Eeyore.

RELATED ARTICLES ON ANTIFA

Which Group Poses the Gravest National Security Threat to America?

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For decades I have said America’s number one national security threat is the Islamic ideology. Now in April 2016 as I have became a bit wiser about the ‘Big Picture’ of our world and how an elite few liberals control much of the world events, I feel there is a need to update my national security threat analysis.

Of course the Islamic ideology is dangerous and a threat to the entire world, but the question we must ask ourselves is how is Islam allowed to thrive in America despite many intelligent people understanding it can and likely will destroy the world.

Liberals in America, currently being led by America’s worst U.S. President (Obama), and by far the President who hates America and what it has stood for since it’s birth are the leading forces behind why the violent ideology of Islam is allowed to grow, flourish, and be accepted into all areas of Americans lives.

There are several definitions of a liberal, but my definition is the one you will never hear our media or politicians use. “Liberals in America are everything but American. Liberals are traitors to this great country and are the cause behind America’s destruction from within. Although many U.S. liberals were born here, they do not uphold basic American values and for this reason they are America’s number one threat to our nation security, our country’s survival, and the future of our children”.

There are a dozen or so legitimate counter-terrorism professionals in America. There are hundreds of self appointed fake counter-terrorism professionals in America who have fooled the American public into believing they know Islamic based terrorism issues inside and out. A few of the fakes include all major media people who pose as journalists, such as O’Reilly and Hannity. More such fakes are senior law enforcement officials at all levels of our government. Finally the leading fakes are Christian and Jewish leaders who pose as religious heads close to God and who by the very nature of their ‘jobs’ feel they understand Islam and Islamic based terrorism better than all others. Thankfully we do have a handful of Christian and Jewish leaders who truly understand the threat of Islam, but they are out numbered by a ration of 1000 to 1!.

Counter-terrorism professionals have proven over and over and over that the Islamic ideology is dangerous, violent, a threat to the entire world, and it’s poison has entrenched all corners of the world and America. Then why has the Islamic ideology, Islamic terrorists, Islamic supporters, and Islamic Centers been allowed to thrive and multiply in America? The answer is that liberals (American traitors) allow it to thrive. Liberals believe that the Islamic scholars and Jihadists throughout the world will give them a break when it comes to enforcing Sharia law in America, such as beheadings, being set on fire, rape of women, and death for the most minute obscure failings of human beings.

Liberals are very wrong of course. When Islam dominates America, there will be no safe zones for liberals or for any person who does not give their 100% allegiance to Islam.

  • Liberals are the people who advocate allowing illegal (criminals) to enter America, allowing mosques to advocate and promote violence, and even child marriages in America.
  • Liberals are the ones who advocate refugees who have not been properly vetted to come into our country by the hundreds of thousands.
  • Liberals are the one’s who give Islamic terrorist organizations such as CAIR, ISNA, MANA, and all mosques in America tax free non profit status.
  • Liberals are the one’s who allow the school text books of our children to be drafted by Islamic terrorists from such countries as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
  • Liberals are the people who allow Islamic terrorists from GITMO to be freed and allowed once again to target and kill our troops worldwide.
  • Liberals are the people who support Islamic based terrorists before they will American service members who have fought for America.
  • Liberals are the people who fight major wars using minor league rules and tactics.
  • Liberals are the people who voted an American traitor into office as our President.
  • Liberals are the people who support anti-Americans such as H. Clinton and a Socialist/Communist B. Sanders as possibly our next President.
  • Liberals are the people who will NEVER acknowledge that Islam is anything other than a peaceful religion that has been hijacked by a few.

Abe Lincoln, one of America’s greatest Presidents (the 1st President from the Republican Party) said, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves”.

Will Patriotic Americans defeat the liberals who are posing as Americans in America? Will true Americans save America before liberals destroy us forever? My answer is we could, but Americans have been so brainwashed by liberal thought for decades, that it is unlikely we can reverse the dangerous course of destruction we are on.

TIP OF THE DAY: “Black Lives Matter is a Propaganda tool of liberals and Islamic based terrorist groups”

Why Bernie Sanders [and Donald Trump] Matter

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why bernie sanders matters book coverWASHINGTON, D.C. /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Bernie Sanders’ appeal to young, often first time voters, is not a mystery to Harry Jaffe, whose recent book “Why Bernie Sanders Matters” was the subject of a Focus Washington interview with Chuck Conconi. Jaffe said the youthful voters are “attracted to” the VermontSenator’s authenticity.

In that, Jaffe explained, Sanders has “a commonality with (Donald) Trump” in that neither are part of the establishment. The comparison between the two maverick candidates, however, Jaffe points out is that Sanders is a “Populist Socialist,” while Trump is “Populist Fascist.”

In a comparison with the campaign style of Hillary Clinton, with whom he is vying for the Democratic Party nomination to run for president, Jaffe said Sanders says what he thinks and if you don’t agree with it, don’t vote for him. Clinton, on the other hand, he continues, first factors what her handlers think, then what her husband, former President Bill Clinton, thinks and then what she thinks before making a statement. Jaffe said younger voters can detect that difference.

Jaffe also said that the black vote is not monolithic and that southern African Americans — largely rural, more religious and conservative — are quite different from their northern counterparts, who are urban and prioritize good jobs and making a living. The contention is that while Clinton runs exceptionally well with African Americans in the southern states, she might not do as well among northern blacks in the upcoming Ohio and Illinois primaries.

A Washington Magazine editor at large, Jaffe, who has worked on books by educator Michele Rhee and former congresswoman Gabby Gifford, said that pollsters and much of the media were surprised by Sanders upset victory in the Michigan primary. Jaffe said he wasn’t surprised and doesn’t think Sanders was surprised either. He contends that Sanders will also do well in the upcoming Ohio and Illinois primaries because Sanders, who consistently votes against international trade agreements, has always been a spokesman for the working class who see their jobs outsourced overseas, and that they are not getting paid as well as they once were. They like his opposition to trade agreements, a factor that political pundits said was a major part of his Michigan victory.

Harry Jaffe provides interesting insights on democratic voters, upcoming primaries and even some surprises about the candidate himself as a college student during the 1960s. Bernie Sanders champions voters who feel like they don’t matter in Washington; and because he lets them know that they do matter, Bernie Sanders’Presidential bid matters.

See the full interview: http://www.focuswashington.com/2016/03/11/why-bernie-sanders-matters/

To learn more about the author, see his website at: http://www.harryjaffe.com/

About MSLGROUP

MSLGROUP is Publicis Groupe’s strategic communications and engagement group, advisors in all aspects of communication strategy: from consumer PR to financial communications, from public affairs to reputation management and from crisis communications to experiential marketing and events. With more than 3,000 people across close to 100 offices worldwide, MSLGROUP is also the largest PR network in Europe, fast-growing China and India. The group offers strategic planning and counsel, insight-guided thinking and big, compelling ideas – followed by thorough execution.
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About Publicis Groupe

Publicis Groupe [Euronext Paris FR0000130577, CAC 40] is a global leader in marketing, communication, and business transformation. In a world marked by increased convergence and consumer empowerment, Publicis Groupe offers a full range of services and skills: digital, technology & consulting with Publicis.Sapient (SapientNitro, Sapient Global Markets, Sapient Government Services, Razorfish Global, DigitasLBi, Rosetta) – the world’s largest most forward-thinking digitally centered platform focused exclusively on digital transformation in an always-on world – as well as creative networks such as BBH, Leo Burnett, Publicis Worldwide, Saatchi & Saatchi, public affairs, corporate communications and events with MSLGROUP, ad tech solutions with VivaKi, media strategy, planning and buying through Starcom MediaVest Group and ZenithOptimedia, healthcare communications, with Publicis Healthcare Communications Group (PHCG), and finally, brand asset production with Prodigious. Present in 108 countries, the Groupe employs more than 76,000 professionals.

Trump and Clinton Likely Winners in Florida Primary Races

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SAINT LEO, Fla. /PRNewswire/ — In Florida, Donald Trump is maintaining his lead among GOP presidential candidates, getting the support of 41.4 percent of likely Republican primary voters surveyed this week by the Saint Leo University Polling Institute.

Florida’s own Marco Rubio trailed behind, attracting just 22.8 percent of the 500 Republicans surveyed in the online poll. As for other GOP candidates, 12.4 percent favored U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, and 10.8 percent will vote for former Ohio Governor John Kasich. Another 12.6 percent said they are undecided.

The poll also surveyed 500 likely Democratic Florida primary voters and found U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton strongly in the lead, with 59.4 percent selecting her over U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Sanders supporters amounted to 27 percent of those polled, meaning he was more than 32 points behind Clinton. The proportion of undecided Democrats was 13.6 percent.

Political science instructor Frank Orlando said that Marco Rubio is under intense pressure in his home state. “If he loses Tuesday, he’s effectively done,” said Orlando. “Even if he wins, the road is still very difficult, but one could see him gaining some momentum back and surviving the process. He needs to use Thursday night’s debate performance and all the ground game he can manage to change the tide in a hurry.”

Trump’s results showed broad appeal, but more so among men, particularly among white males. In the poll, 47.3 percent of males said they would vote for Trump compared to 34.2 percent of females. “If he does end up being the [Republican] nominee, we might witness the greatest gender gap in recorded history,” said Orlando.

On the Democratic side, Orlando sees Clinton’s poll results foreshadowing victory in the Florida primary. “Being down by 32 is quite a mountain to climb,” Orlando said. “Also, Florida has a higher minority population and a larger proportion of older voters. Both of these things help Clinton.”

ABOUT THE SAINT LEO UNIVERSITY POLLING INSTITUTE

The Saint Leo University Polling Institute survey results about Florida and national politics, public policy issues, Pope Francis’ popularity, and other topics, can be found here: http://polls.saintleo.edu. You can also follow the institute on Twitter @saintleopolls.

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Bolshevic Bernie Sanders beats Hillary Clinton 42-4 among Texas Gamers

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SAN ANTONIO, Texas /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — NAVGTR CORP. — Young voters turned out in droves to support Bernie Sanders in San Antonio.  A mock Iowa caucus was held at the Penny Arcade Expo South (PAXS), a gaming festival drawing tens of thousands.

The caucus event was titled, “Decision 2016: Vote on Game ‘War of Awards’ or Donald Trump,” organized by the National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers (NAVGTR) for the Official PAXS panel schedule.

A 450-seat room was packed with 332 caucus-goers, clearly dominated by Democratic voters with only 24 self-declared Republican voters.  “All night there was a clear enthusiasm gap between those who were willing to climb over people in their rows of seats and those who chose to sit and watch impartially,” said academy president Thomas Allen.  “The plan was to clear half the room of chairs to have a large open space, but time was working against us.”

Among the caucus-goers, about 73 people voted publicly for the presidential candidates.  Forty-two Bernie Sanders supporters flooded the voting floor, while four and three people stood for Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley, respectively.

Among Republicans, Ted Cruz won with 8 votes.  Rand Paul was a close second with 7 votes.  Marco Rubio held in the top three with 5 votes.  Jeb Bush received two votes.  Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump received 1 vote each.

Game players also expressed who they thought should win the industry D.I.C.E. and Game Developers Choice Awards.  The crowd established fan-favorite front-runners such as “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt” for Achievement in Character (DICE), “Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain” for Game Design (GDC), “Undertale” for Innovation (GDC), and “Ori and the Blind Forest” developer Moon Studios for Best Debut (GDC).

In the final vote, “Fallout 4” won Game of the Year with an estimated 32 votes.  Even among gamers, supporters were therefore more able to consolidate top-tier votes behind Bernie Sanders than any one video game:

Presenters included Larry Asberry Jr., Vanessa Fernandez, Colby Sites, Justen Andrews, Geoff Mendicino, and George Wood.

The National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers announces its own nominations February 9.  Entries have been extended to a February 1 deadline.  NAVGTR will caucus again at South by Southwest (SXSW) and the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) Networking Event on March 15, 2016.  Subscribe at navgtr.org for updates.

RELATED ARTICLE: The Four Types of Socialists

Trustworthiness Issues? Politifact Calls Out Clinton Deception

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That there are apparently still people (though, increasingly few) that find Hillary Clinton at all trustworthy is becoming more and more incredible. Late last week, Politifact took Clinton to task over comments she made about the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA). According to Politifact, at a campaign event in Iowa, Clinton remarked “[p]robably one of the most egregious, wrong, pieces of legislation that ever passed the Congress when it comes to this issue is to protect gun sellers and gun makers from liability… They are the only business in America that is wholly protected from any kind of liability.” Politifact properly branded the statement “False.” That Politifact has been known to skew their work in favor of gun control advocates, shows just how patently false Clinton’s characterization of the PLCAA was.

The PLCAA was enacted to protect the firearms industry from frivolous and politically motivated lawsuits. In the mid-1990s, gun control advocates, big city politicians, and trial attorneys teamed up in an attempt to use the courts to bilk the gun industry for untold millions and force them to agree to gun control measures that gun control supporters were unable to enact in Congress. The suits sought to hold members of the industry liable for the criminal behavior of those who misused their products.

These suits, though they were of little merit, posed a grave threat to the industry; and in turn, America’s gun owners. In 1998, Executive Director of the anti-gun U.S. Conference of Mayors was quoted by the New York Times as stating, “[t]he lawyers are seeing green on this issue… they think they can bring the gun industry to its knees.” One of those attorneys “seeing green,” John Coale, was quoted in a 2000 Washington Post article remarking, “[t]he legal fees alone are enough to bankrupt the industry.”

Passed by Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2005, the PLCAA merely prohibits lawsuits against the gun industry for the criminal misuse of their products by a third party. Suits against the industry for knowingly unlawful sales, negligent entrustment, and those predicated on traditional products liability grounds are still permitted.

Further, the Politifact item makes clear that the gun industry isn’t the only industry for which Congress has limited tort liability. The piece cites similar protections given to vaccine makers, telecommunications companies, and aircraft manufacturers.

Clinton can’t seem to stop lying about guns and gun control. Earlier this month, we detailed how Clinton has hidden her true position on the Second Amendment; that it does not protect an individual right to keep and bear arms. Moreover, on the same day that Politifact issued their “False” rating, the Washington Post gave Clinton three pinocchios for stating the thoroughly debunked myth that 40-percent of firearms sales occur without a background check.

With her trustworthiness rating going down the tubes, one would think that Clinton and her campaign flunkies would be working overtime to make sure she sticks to the facts. That’s of course assuming they would even know how.

Bernie Sanders Is Wrong: Trade Is Awesome for the Poor and for America by Corey Iacono

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Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Democratic presidential hopeful, is no fan of free trade. In an interview with Vox, Sanders’ made his anti-trade position clear: “Unfettered free trade has been a disaster for the American people.”

He also noted that he voted against all the free trade agreements that were proposed during his time in Congress and that if elected President he would “radically transform trade policies” in favor of protectionism.

Sanders and his ilk accuse their intellectual opponents of promoting “trickle-down economics,” but that is precisely what he is advocating when it comes to trade. The argument for protectionism ultimately relies on the belief that protecting domestic corporations from foreign competition and keeping consumer prices high will somehow benefit society as whole.

However, the real effect of protectionism is to increase monopoly and consequently reduce overall economic welfare. In fact, according to a paper by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, “Government policies…such as tariffs and other forms of protection are an important source of monopoly” that lead to “significant welfare losses.”

In contrast to Sanders’ assertion that the expansion of free trade has been a disaster for the American people, there is a near unanimous consensus among economists that the opposite is true.

An IGM Poll of dozens of the most renowned academic economists found that, weighted for each respondent’s confidence in their answer, 96 percent of economists agreed, “Freer trade improves productive efficiency and offers consumers better choices, and in the long run these gains are much larger than any effects on employment.”

When the vast majority of economists of all sorts of ideological stripes agree that free trade is a good thing, maybe, just maybe, they’re onto something.

In fact, they surely are. Using four different methods, economists at the Petersen Institute for International Economics estimated the economic benefits from the expansion of technology that facilitates international trade (such as container ships), as well as the removal of government imposed barriers to international trade (such as tariffs). Since the end of World War II, they generated “an increase in US income of roughly $1 trillion a year,” which translates into an increase in “annual income of about $10,000 per household.”

This result is mostly driven by the fact that foreign businesses produce many goods which are used in the production process at a lower cost than their domestic competitors. Access to these low-cost foreign inputs allows American businesses to decrease their production costs and consequently increase their total output, making the nation as a whole much wealthier than it otherwise would have been.

Moreover, contrary to common conjecture, the benefits of international trade haven’t simply accrued to the wealthy alone. Low and middle income individuals tend to spend a greater share of their income on cheap imported consumer goods than those with higher incomes. As a result, international trade tends to benefit these income groups more so than the wealthy.

Indeed, according to the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, middle income consumers have about 29 percent greater purchasing power as a result of international trade.

In other words, middle income consumers can buy 29 percent more goods and services as a result of the access to low-cost imports from foreign countries.

Low income consumers see even greater gains with 62 percent higher purchasing power as a result of trade. In contrast, the top 10 percent of income earners only saw an increase in purchasing power of 3 percent as a result of trade.

On top of that, international trade has provided benefits by bringing new and innovative products to American consumers.

According seminal research by Christian Broda of the University of Chicago and David E. Weinstein of Colombia University, the variety of imported goods increased three-fold from 1972 to 2001. The value to American consumers of this import induced expanded product variety is estimated to be equivalent to 2.6 percent of national income, about $450 billion as of 2014. That’s not exactly small change.

The spread of free trade has also made considerable contributions to environmental protection, gender equality, and global poverty reduction. As a result of the spread of clean technology facilitated by freer trade, “every 1 percent increase in income as a result of trade liberalization (the removal of government imposed barriers to trade), pollution concentrations fall by 1 percent,” according to the Council of Economic Advisers.

The CEA also has found that “industries with larger tariff declines saw greater reductions in the [gender] wage gap,” suggesting that facilitating foreign competition through trade liberalization reduces the ability of employers to discriminate against women.

In regards to global poverty reduction, research has shown that in response to US import tariff cuts, developing countries, such as Vietnam, export more to the US, leading to higher incomes and less poverty.

Despite the large gains from trade America has already reaped, there is still room for improvement (contrary to Sen. Sanders’ accusations of “unfettered” free trade). The PIIE economists estimate that further trade liberalization would increase “US household income between $4,000 and $5,300 annually,” leading the them to conclude that, “in the future as in the past, free trade can significantly raise income — and quality of life — in the United States.”

Ultimately, the conclusion that most economists seem to reach is that, from being a disaster, the expansion of free trade has been a tremendous success, and that further trade liberalization would most likely make Americans, and the rest of the world, considerably better off.

Don’t let fear-mongering about foreigners and China scare you: free trade benefits everyone, especially the poor, while protectionism benefits only the politically powerful.

Corey Iacono

Corey Iacono is a student at the University of Rhode Island majoring in pharmaceutical science and minoring in economics.

New York City ‘Pissed Away’ by Mayor Ed ‘the Red’ De Blasio

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Pissed-AwayJoin us for a Tom-less episode of Enemies of The State. We cover the recently escaped Mexican drug lord El Chapo Guzman, and why his best bet might be to go to San Francisco.

New York City Mayor Ed “The Red” De Blasio’s policies of allowing crimes to go unpunished, and the devastating affects they have on life in the Big Apple.

More examples of the Islamic State acting like real Muslims should, like killing dozens for not fasting during Ramadan.

And finally we take a look back at Friday’s show and the infamous “Doctor” Kevin Barrett and his Jew-hating potty mouth! Join us, you won’t regret it!

Is the “Austrian School” a Lie?

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Is Austrian economics an American invention? by STEVEN HORWITZ and B.K. MARCUS.

Do those of us who use the word Austrian in its modern libertarian context misrepresent an intellectual tradition?

We trace our roots back through the 20th century’s F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises (both served as advisors to FEE) to Carl Menger in late 19th-century Vienna, and even further back to such “proto-Austrians” as Frédéric Bastiat and Jean-Baptiste Say in the earlier 19th century and Richard Cantillon in the 18th. Sometimes we trace our heritage all the way back to the late-Scholastic School of Salamanca.

Nonsense, says Janek Wasserman in his article “Austrian Economics: Made in the USA”:

“Austrian Economics, as it is commonly understood today,” Wasserman claims, “was born seventy years ago this month.”

As his title implies, Wasserman is not talking about the publication of Principles of Economics by Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian school. That occurred 144 years ago in Vienna. What happened 70 years ago in the United States was the publication of F.A. Hayek‘s Road to Serfdom.

What about everything that took place — most of it in Austria — in the 74 years before Hayek’s most famous book? According to Wasserman, the Austrian period of “Austrian Economics” produced a “robust intellectual heritage,” but the largely American period that followed was merely a “dogmatic political program,” one that “does a disservice to the eclectic intellectual history” of the true Austrian school.

Where modern Austrianism is “associated with laissez-faire economics and libertarianism,” the real representatives of the more politically diverse tradition — economists from the University of Vienna, such as Fritz Machlup, Joseph Schumpeter, and Oskar Morgenstern — were embarrassed by their association with Hayek’s bestseller and its capitalistic supporters.

These “native-born Austrians ceased to be ‘Austrian,'” writes Wasserman, “when Mises and a simplified Hayek captured the imagination of a small group of businessmen and radicals in the US.”

Wasserman describes the popular reception of the as “the birth of a movement — and the reduction of a tradition.”

Are we guilty of Wasserman’s charges? Do modern Austrians misunderstand our own tradition, or worse yet, misrepresent our history?

In fact, Wasserman himself is guilty of a profound misunderstanding of the Austrian label, as well as the tradition it refers to.

The “Austrian school” is not a name our school of thought took for itself. Rather it was an insult hurled against Carl Menger and his followers by the adherents of the dominant German Historical School.

The Methodenstreit was a more-than-decade-long debate in the late 19th century among German-speaking social scientists about the status of economic laws. The Germans advocated methodological collectivism, espoused the efficacy of government intervention to improve the economy, and, according Jörg Guido Hülsmann, “rejected economic ‘theory’ altogether.”

The Mengerians, in contrast, argued for methodological individualism and the scientific validity of economic law. The collectivist Germans labeled their opponents the “Austrian school” as a put-down. It was like calling Menger and company the “backwater school” of economic thought.

“Austrian,” in our context, is a reclaimed word.

But more important, modern Austrian economics is not the dogmatic ideology that Wasserman describes. In his blog post, he provides no actual information about the work being done by the dozens of active Austrian economists in academia, with tenured positions at colleges and universities whose names are recognizable.

He tells his readers nothing about the  books they have produced that have been published by top university presses. He does not mention that they have published in top peer-reviewed journals in the economics discipline, as well as in philosophy and political science, or that the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics consistently packs meeting rooms at the Southern Economic Association meetings.

Have all of these university presses, top journals, and long-standing professional societies, not to mention tenure committees at dozens of universities, simply lost their collective minds and allowed themselves to be snookered by an ideological sleeper cell?

Or perhaps in his zeal to score ideological points of his own, Wasserman chose to take his understanding of Austrian economics from those who consume it on the Internet and elsewhere rather than doing the hard work of finding out what professional economists associated with the school are producing. Full of confirmation bias, he found what he “knew” was out there, and he ends up offering a caricature of the robust intellectual movement that is the contemporary version of the school.

The modern Austrian school, which has now returned to the Continent and spread across the globe after decades in America, is not the dogmatic monolith Wasserman contends. The school is alive with both internal debates about its methodology and theoretical propositions and debates about its relationship to the rest of the economics discipline, not to mention the size of the state.

Modern Austrian economists are constantly finding new ideas to mix in with the work of Menger, Böhm-Bawerk, Mises, and Hayek. The most interesting work done by Austrians right now is bringing in insights from Nobelists like James Buchanan, Elinor Ostrom, and Vernon Smith, and letting those marinate with their long-standing intellectual tradition. That is hardly the behavior of a “dogmatic political program,” but is rather a sign of precisely the robust intellectual tradition that has been at the core of Austrian economics from Menger onward.

That said, Wasserman is right to suggest that economic science is not the same thing as political philosophy — and it’s true that many self-described Austrians aren’t always careful to communicate the distinction. Again, Wasserman could have seen this point made by more thoughtful Austrians if he had gone to a basic academic source like the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics and read the entry on the Austrian school of economics.

Even a little bit of actual research motivated by actual curiosity about what contemporary professional economists working in the Austrian tradition are doing would have given Wasserman a very different picture of modern Austrian economics. That more accurate picture is one very much consistent with our Viennese predecessors.

To suggest that we do a disservice to our tradition — or worse, that we have appropriated a history that doesn’t belong to us — is to malign not just modern Austrians but also the Austrian-born antecedents within our tradition.

Steven Horwitz

Steven Horwitz is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics at St. Lawrence University and the author of Microfoundations and Macroeconomics: An Austrian Perspective, now in paperback.

B.K. Marcus

B.K. Marcus is managing editor of the Freeman.

The Greatest Liberal in the World

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What evil deed must be done to win the “Greatest Liberal in the World” award?