Why Conservatives Should Take Heart Despite Socialist Upsurge

Socialism is the zombie ideology of our era: It fails everywhere,
and yet it keeps rising back from the dead.

Despite embarrassing socialist failures in China, Russia, North Korea,
Cuba, and now Venezuela, the true believers march onward. Good intentions are
unassailable. The revolution must go on.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., arguably has done more than any other
living American to market socialism to the next generation. And with Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., following closely in his wake, rest assured
we’ll be contending with socialism for years to come.

A recent Gallup survey shows that their message is resonating with more and more Americans.

While 51% say socialism would be bad for America, 43% say it would
be good. And notably, among the 18-34-year-old cohort, 58% favor socialism
while 37% disfavor it.

Those numbers hang like a dark cloud over America’s future, but
they don’t tell the whole story.

Interestingly, according to Gallup, Americans still favor the free
market over government in multiple areas, including technological innovation,
health care, and even basic things like wages, distribution of wealth, and the
economy overall. And the comparison isn’t even close.

By contrast, Americans favor government over free markets when it comes to protecting consumers’ online privacy and environmental protection.

This creates quite a mixed picture, even a contradictory one. As a
matter of simple math, there have to be millions of Americans who say they
favor some form of socialism, yet favor the free market in general when it
comes to certain aspects of their lives.

How can that be?

As it turns out, Americans define “socialism” in quite different
ways. Traditionally, socialism has meant government ownership of the means of
production—businesses, factories, etc. But today, only 17% of Americans hold
that definition, according to Gallup. Meanwhile, 23% equate socialism with
vague notions of social equality. Another 23% have no opinion on the matter.

So, the public meaning of “socialism” today is indeterminate,
meaning that public opinion toward “socialism” doesn’t tell us very much about
people’s policy preferences.

But even if it did tell us a lot, public opinion isn’t the surest
predictor of what will pass in Washington. After all, big-government policies
have often passed in spite of public disapproval.

Obamacare is case-in-point here. At the height of the Obamacare
debate in 2010, 59% of Americans disapproved of the bill while just 39% approved. That didn’t stop Obamacare
from passing with a supermajority in the Senate.

We should also recall that big-government policies have often come
in moments of great national crisis. These moments are often exempt from the
dominant themes in public opinion.

Polling trends may be stable in a free-market direction, but when
a moment of crisis comes, the public often tolerates—and even demands—immediate
action from the government.

That usually translates into an expansion of government.

This happened in both the Great Depression and the Great Recession
following the 2007 financial crisis. A host of new programs were created that
had little to do with immediate economic recovery—yet they became entrenched
parts of the federal government and remain with us to this day.

What’s more, Americans have come to assume these programs are
legitimate functions of the federal government. The status quo trains us in
what is acceptable, so once a policy becomes enshrined in law, it’s very hard
to get rid of. That makes staving off such policies in the first place all the
more urgent.

Today’s fight over socialism is in large part a branding war. The
left constantly rebrands itself. In the mid-20th century, progressives decided
to adopt the word “liberal,” since “progressive” had fallen into disrepute. The
same thing eventually happened to the word “liberal,” so now, they’re back to
the word “progressive.”

We see this with socialism, too. America’s avowed socialists know
the word “socialism” is radioactive in America, so they’ve championed their
policies in terms of “fairness” and “equality” while allowing socialist
ideology to color those terms.

Such is the strategy with Sanders’ “Medicare for All” bill, a proposal
that would allow the government to take over American health care, putting us
in league with Canada and the U.K. The bill polls surprisingly well with the
public (56% approve) until respondents learn that the
bill would abolish private insurance. Then, support plummets to 37%.

That’s why the fight for truth in policymaking is so important—and
why the left’s branding tricks are so pernicious.

Americans still have a gut instinct in favor of freedom and the
free market, as shown in the details of the Gallup survey. Conservatives should
use that to their advantage by dismantling the left’s branding charade.

The truth of each policy proposal must be placed into the light of
day—because once such bills pass, America will “find
out what’s in it
.” Once that happens, yesterday’s
fringe view could become the new normal.

The post Why Conservatives Should Take Heart Despite Socialist Upsurge appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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SHOCK VIDEO: “We Build the Wall” Foreman: Military Cartel Specialists Are Probing Our Project – Got Within 15 Feet of Our Construction Workers

“We Build the Wall” released two absolutely shocking videos on Saturday night.

The first video is of “Foreman Mike” at the construction site in Sunland Park, New Mexico west of El Paso, Texas.

This past week and over the Memorial Day Weekend the “We Build the Wall” organization led by founder and organizer Brian Kolfage built their first major border wall section on the West Texas-New Mexico border.

Brian Kolfage and “We Build the Wall” raised over $20 million in private donations from over 260,000 individuals to build a border wall on the US southern border with Mexico.  The GoFundMe page was launched after Democrat and Republican lawmakers refused to work with President Trump to secure the border.

** Please donate to this incredible organization here.

On Saturday “We Build the Wall” released two videos.

In the first video “Foreman Mike” discussed the latest progress on the Sunland Park project.  “We Build the Wall” is closing up on their first half mile of wall.  They project is approximately 2,300 feet and they have 350 more feet to go to finish the project.

The construction team has used over 600 concrete trucks so far.  They are also pouring concrete for a 25 foot speedway behind the all for Border Patrol agents.

Border Patrol officials say the current project when complete will cut off 19 different foot trails on Mount Cristo Rey on the border.  The cartels are bringing $100,000 to $200,000 in drugs each day through the open border in this area.

Mike added this on the effectiveness of the current project, “When I got here 17 days ago there were 450 people a night crossing.  When equipment started arriving it went to 300.   When manpower started working we went down to 200.  When we started placing the bollards it went from 70 to 30 to 0.  We’ve had no crossings in the last 8 days.”

Then Mike added this on the very security  situation,  “We have military clad specialists from the cartels probing our line.  The only thing stopping them is our specialists in the hills counteracting with them.  We expect to be completed late, late, late this evening or early tomorrow with the first segment of the wall. “

When asked about the security needed to deal with the drug cartels, Mike replied, “It’s extremely dangerous.  They got within 15 feet of the escavators last night.  They’re coming down and trying to probe against the new wall… We have approximately 15 guards on post, armed security individuals.”

The post SHOCK VIDEO: “We Build the Wall” Foreman: Military Cartel Specialists Are Probing Our Project – Got Within 15 Feet of Our Construction Workers appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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Mueller Report busted for doctoring transcript and misleading on obstruction of justice evidence

It’s all downhill now for Robert Mueller and the very costly report fashioned by his team of Trump-hating lawyers. They have been exposed as propagandists attempting to falsely implicate President Trump’s team in obstruction of justice by doctoring a transcript of a telephone call, omitting exculpatory words.

Because they were paid tens of millions of dollars by taxpayers to accurately assess the Russia hoax charges only to come up with nothing, obstruction was their fallback option to fuel impeachment talk among House Democrats and thereby obstruct the performance of the duties of the presidency by the elected incumbent, Donald John Trump. But now we can plainly see that they stacked the deck out of sheer animus to the president.

On Friday, following an order from Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is tasked with sentencing General Michael Flynn for his guilty plea in a dubious process crime the Mueller Team charged him with, the government filed “on the public docket ‘the transcript of the voicemail recording’ from President Trump’s attorney John Dowd to Michael Flynn.” That recording — in doctored form — had been part of the Mueller Report section on obstruction of justice. The first to notice the discrepancy between the report’s version and the actual transcript was Rosie Memos:

 

 

Now that we know that the Mueller team was willing to cover up relevant facts in order to make it appear that something possibly illegal took place, there can be no more trusting of any parts of its report.

No wonder Robert Mueller doesn’t want to testify before Congress. Too bad. He can still get subpoenaed and compelled to answer questions under oath.

Image credit: Donkey Hotey (cropped)

It’s all downhill now for Robert Mueller and the very costly report fashioned by his team of Trump-hating lawyers. They have been exposed as propagandists attempting to falsely implicate President Trump’s team in obstruction of justice by doctoring a transcript of a telephone call, omitting exculpatory words.

Because they were paid tens of millions of dollars by taxpayers to accurately assess the Russia hoax charges only to come up with nothing, obstruction was their fallback option to fuel impeachment talk among House Democrats and thereby obstruct the performance of the duties of the presidency by the elected incumbent, Donald John Trump. But now we can plainly see that they stacked the deck out of sheer animus to the president.

On Friday, following an order from Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is tasked with sentencing General Michael Flynn for his guilty plea in a dubious process crime the Mueller Team charged him with, the government filed “on the public docket ‘the transcript of the voicemail recording’ from President Trump’s attorney John Dowd to Michael Flynn.” That recording — in doctored form — had been part of the Mueller Report section on obstruction of justice. The first to notice the discrepancy between the report’s version and the actual transcript was Rosie Memos:

 

 

Now that we know that the Mueller team was willing to cover up relevant facts in order to make it appear that something possibly illegal took place, there can be no more trusting of any parts of its report.

No wonder Robert Mueller doesn’t want to testify before Congress. Too bad. He can still get subpoenaed and compelled to answer questions under oath.

Image credit: Donkey Hotey (cropped)

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The Obama economic disaster revealed in one glance

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has produced a summary report showing key performance measurements of America’s economy during the eight years of Obama/Democrat malfeasance. It’s another trip through the looking glass where everything that should be up is down while everything that should be down is up, and in the case of student loans, food stamps and federal debt, up stratospherically. Here’s the snapshot from Gateway Pundit:

When your liberal friends and relatives go on a silly rip about how great Obama’s economy was, whip this out—and be sure to point out that these numbers aren’t from a Republican source, but rather are analyses from the politically independent Federal Reserve, performing one of their assigned federal functions. Gaze upon these graphs for a while and contemplate whether or not the Obama administration was embarked upon a Cloward-Piven strategy to bring this nation to such a precarious and perilous financial state as to justify a massive federal seizure of local programs and local governance, centralizing all power in Washington, DC, the Democrat dream.

We dodged a bullet by keeping Hillary Clinton from continuing this destructive social, financial and amoral race to the abyss. Many of us reluctantly voted for Trump in 2016 as the lesser of two evils. We shall vote for him in 2020 as the savior of this great nation that Obama couldn’t kill.

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has produced a summary report showing key performance measurements of America’s economy during the eight years of Obama/Democrat malfeasance. It’s another trip through the looking glass where everything that should be up is down while everything that should be down is up, and in the case of student loans, food stamps and federal debt, up stratospherically. Here’s the snapshot from Gateway Pundit:

When your liberal friends and relatives go on a silly rip about how great Obama’s economy was, whip this out—and be sure to point out that these numbers aren’t from a Republican source, but rather are analyses from the politically independent Federal Reserve, performing one of their assigned federal functions. Gaze upon these graphs for a while and contemplate whether or not the Obama administration was embarked upon a Cloward-Piven strategy to bring this nation to such a precarious and perilous financial state as to justify a massive federal seizure of local programs and local governance, centralizing all power in Washington, DC, the Democrat dream.

We dodged a bullet by keeping Hillary Clinton from continuing this destructive social, financial and amoral race to the abyss. Many of us reluctantly voted for Trump in 2016 as the lesser of two evils. We shall vote for him in 2020 as the savior of this great nation that Obama couldn’t kill.

via American Thinker Blog

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