Amnesty Advocates Claim Progress in House GOP

Amnesty advocates claim progress in the GOP House towards a quick, no-strings ‘dreamer’ amnesty, but a supposed leading GOP supporter says he actually opposes the ‘clean Dream Act.’

“I don’t support a clean Dream Act,” Virginia Rep. Scott Taylor told Breitbart News.

Amnesty advocates are touting reports that roughly 30 GOP legislators have signed a Taylor-launched letter backing an amnesty for the illegals this December.

But the letter does not tie an amnesty to the 2018 budget, and it does not urge amnesty for the 3 million younger illegals which the Democrats want to amnesty via an unmodified Dream Act,  said Taylor, adding:

Just the [690,000 people in the] DACA population. I don’t think there is a significant amount of GOP folks who favor a clean [unconditional] Dream Act … I think that most of the GOP folks who want to deal with the DACA population would be absolutely willing to negotiate more security and more distinctive for illegal immigration.

It is not going to be the clean Dream Act … there are going to more negotiations on security.

For example, Taylor added that he wants to see an end to the visa lottery program, and he said he supports tougher vetting of would-be immigrants and visitors, plus real cuts to chain migration. Those issues are likely to be part of a larger immigration debate in early 2018. 

The claims of current progress towards a Christmas amnesty — and Taylor’s  denial — are part of a larger effort by amnesty advocates to build apparent momentum in the media for the no-strings quick amnesty. This week “some of the Democrats were trying to use our letter for their own advantage,” Taylor said.

For example, Todd Schulte, the director of a pro-amnesty lobbying group for investors, dubbed FWD.us, touted Taylor’s supposed support.

Schulte’s group is pushing for a no-strings amnesty, in part, because it wishes to block the immigration curbs required by President Donald Trump’s popular immigration principles. Those principles would likely shrink the foreign supply of cheap white-collar labor, so pushing up the salaries that FWD.us’ investors would have to pay white-collar Americans in the marketplace.

Similarly, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus touted claim of amnesty progress by linking to an article about Taylor and his letter. The article is titled “DACA advocates see efforts gaining steam in the House”:

Alida Garcia, an organizer for Schulte’s FWD.us, also claimed progress in the push for a no-strings Dreamer amnesty.

Another group, dubbed #Vote4Dream, is claiming progress for making “personal contact” with legislators, even though “contact” is not an endorsement or pledge of support.

But the actual movement of GOP towards a no-strings Christmas amnesty is minimal.

Two GOP legislators have signed a discharge petition, Arizona Rep. Mark Amodei and Colorado Rep. Mike Coffman, alongside 196 Democrats. If 218 legislators sign the petition, then the ‘Dream Act’ amnesty would be sent to the chamber for a full vote. As of December 1, the discharge petition has only 198 votes.

Roughly 33 Republicans have co-sponsored the “Recognizing America’s Children Act,” drafted by Florida Rep. Carlos Curbelo. The bill would provide an amnesty to roughly 2 million illegals, without requiring any safeguards or offsetting reductions in migration. The act of co-sponsoring the legislation carries little risk because few legislators expect the bill ever to get a vote. One reason for the bill’s unimportance is that the Democratic leadership is backing the more generous ‘Dream Act.’

The Taylor letter is also being promoted by amnesty advocates. According to a CNN’s Tai Kopan:

The letter, organized by Virginia Rep. Scott Taylor and Washington Rep. Dan Newhouse, already has signatories numbering in the 20s, according to a source familiar with the letter, and could reach into the 30s by the time it is sent. Taylor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The letter originated with the Republican Main Street Caucus and will remain open for signatures with the hope of sending it by next week, according to the office of Illinois Rep. Rodney Davis, who chairs the nascent caucus.

Neither the GOP legislators nor the pro-amnesty activists have released the letter, but Breitbart News has learned that it does not include the demands or timelines preferred by advocates. For example, the letter asks House Speaker Paul Ryan to help the 690,000 DACA beneficiaries, not the 3 million younger illegals, dubbed ‘dreamers’ by business lobbyists, progressives, and Democratic legislators. The letter requests legislation by the end of the year but does not link the amnesty to the 2018 budget. The letter does not endorse a “clean Dream Act,” but instead urges Ryan to include additional border security measures to any amnesty, and also leaves room to incorporate growing GOP consensus for reforming “chain migration.”

On Thursday, November 30, Ryan again shot down business’ hopes for a quick win, after noting that Democratic leaders bailed out from a White House meeting when President  Trump slammed their push for the no-strings Dream Act:

You gotta show up if you want to make your point, and I don’t think the Democrats are in a very good position to be making demands if they are not even going to participate in the negotiations that are necessary to move legislation forward and to solve problems. Do we have to have a DACA solution? Yes, we do. The deadline is March, as far as I understand it. We’ve got other deadlines in front of that, like fiscal year deadlines and appropriation deadlines, but if they want to get to a solution, they ought to come to the table and start talking.

Also, Ryan has repeatedly said he has no plans to include an amnesty in the 2018 budget. His Task Force on immigration is debating whether to go for a big bill that would combine some form of amnesty with an overhaul of the chain-migration system.

Both President Trump and the Senate’s GOP leadership have developed proposals that would tie an amnesty to a larger package of reforms, including an end to chain migration. That broader immigration reform is likely to be debated in early 2018 — and perhaps play a role in the 2018 election.

A Nov. 27 report by the McClatchy news service included an admission by an amnesty proponent that the push for a December amnesty is losing ground:

“Two months have now passed, and I’m sad to report that we’re arguably further away from a solution today than we were then,” said Neil Bradley, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s chief policy officer.

Although nearly all Democrats have signed the Dream Act discharge petition, Democrats have not faced the task of selling a no-strings amnesty which threatens the wages of their blue-collar voters. For example, the Blue Dog Caucus consists of 18 Democrats who are somewhat centrist. Since October 1, the group’s Twitter feed has not endorsed the DACA or Dream Act causes.

Also, the Congressional Black Caucus has backed Dream Act legislation, but voters in the members’ districts may strongly oppose any amnesty which delivers more foreign cheap-labor workers into their workplaces. In an October 12 statement, CBC leaders Rep. Cedric Richmond and Rep. Yvette Clarke declared:

Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant principles are an affront to the millions of people who have travelled from across the world to make America their home. Many of these people, through DACA, TPS, and other programs, were brought here at a young age and have known no other country but the United States as their home. They are among the thousands of Black DACA recipients, and more than 60,000 Black TPS recipients from Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, and Haiti.

If Donald Trump has his way, they would be forced to return to war-torn countries and areas affected by cholera, famine, and other inhumane conditions. The time has come to build bridges, not walls, and reject Donald Trump’s unprincipled immigration principles. Congress must pass legislation that protects both DREAMers and those granted TPS.

Democrats embrace the industry-funded “nation of immigrants” polls that shame Americans to say they welcome migrants. But the alternative “fairness” polls show that voters put a much higher priority on helping their families, neighbors, and fellow nationals get decent jobs in a high-tech, high-immigration, low-wage economy. The political power of the voters’ fairness priorities was made clear during the GOP primaries and again in November 2016.

The workplace impact is being highlighted by a bakery in Chicago, which was forced to hire Americans to replace 800 illegal immigrants this year. The enforcement and subsequent reorganization cut revenue at the Cloverhill bakery by 7.5 percent, and trimmed profits from 16 percent to 9.5 percent of revenue once up to $176 million was redirected towards higher wages.

Public support for a “dreamer” amnesty is also declining. Giving “children … protection from deportation” is the “top priority” for only 11 percent of American voters who identify as independents and “a top priority” for 23 percent of independents in a November poll by Morning Consult and Politico, which was headlined in “Polling Shows Waning Enthusiasm for Congressional Action on Dreamers.”

Also, new evidence is undermining business claims that DACA and dreamer illegals are vital for business. According to a Migration Policy Institute report, only 1.7 percent of older ‘dreamers’ and 4 percent of DACA recipients have earned a college degree, compared to 18 percent of comparable-age Americans.

Each year, four million Americans turn 18 and begin looking for good jobs in the free market.

But the federal government inflates the supply of new labor by annually accepting one million new legal immigrants, by providing almost two million work-permits to foreigners, by providing work-visas to roughly 500,000 temporary workers, and doing little to block the employment of roughly eight million illegal immigrants.

The Washington-imposed economic policy of mass-immigration floods the market with foreign labor and spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. It also encourages discrimination against American workers, drives up real estate priceswidens wealth gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, and hurts kids’ schools and college education. Furthermore, it pushes Americans away from high-tech careers and reduces the work activity rate below the rate in foreign rivals, which sidelines millions of marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.

via Breitbart News

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Walmart Selling ‘Antifa’ Fan Gear

Walmart Selling ‘Antifa’ Fan Gear



Walmart is selling “Antifa” clothing that “will [allow you to] express yourself inside the opposition to the ideology, organizations, governments and people from the far right (fascism).”

The mega-retailer is offering at least 13 different sweatshirts “made in Mexico of 100% COTTON for all-day comfort” promoting the group whose activities were “formally classified” by the Obama Administration “as domestic terrorist violence” as early as April 2016, according to Politico, despite the group’s efforts to downplay this determination.

“Antifa,” or Anti-Fascist Action, is an informal grouping of communist, anarchist, and other far-left street gangs. Drawing inspiration from the German Communist Party’s street fighters of the 1930s, the modern movement grew out of the European far-left punk scene in the 1980s. These unapologetically violent bands of leftists were largely unknown in the United States until recent years, when America’s post-Occupy Wall Street far-left began adopting the name.

Antifa is well known for dozens of violent crimes against people they consider “fascists” on both sides of the Atlantic. As Breitbart News’ Ian Mason cataloged, to Antifa, “fascists” include:

…in no particular order, former Breitbart News Tech Editor MILOhis readersTrump supporters, other Trump supporters, members of Germany’s populist AfD party, a 20-year-old woman who chose to wear a Spanish-flag bracelet, a Philadelphia free speech rally, former UKIP and Brexit leader Nigel Farage, libertarian VICE News co-founder Gavin McInnes, French policemen, and Israeli-owned bookstores. Interesting, a Salafist Muslim who attacked a “filthy white” Antifa writer because he disrespected Islam does not qualify.

None of this has stopped Antifa from receiving a rash of positive press from American left-leaning media outlets; acceptance from both Democratic politicians and Republicans like John McCain, Marco Rubio, and Mitt Romney; and, now, its own clothing collection at Walmart.

“Just remember to keep creating a better world,” the clothing advertisements encourage.

This glorification of Antifa was mirrored Friday by the New York Times, which published a fashion style guide for the group: “practical advice on how to dress for a riot.” In their guide, the Times explains why a uniform look is needed, from Breitbart News’ Charlie Nash:

“These defensive methods work only if there are enough black-clad others nearby. A single person in all black and multiple face masks is an eye grabber.”

Finally, the Times claimed that dressing in black militant gear and concealing your face forms an “emotional connection” with other rioters.

“Tactical considerations aside, it’s this emotional connection with other members of the bloc that many practitioners highlight the most in interviews,” they proclaimed. “It’s why soldiers and police have uniforms.”

Walmart has come under previous criticism for selling “Black Lives Matter” shirts and other items. Following a request from the national Fraternal Order of Police, the retail giant eventually removed one of the items last December, shirts that said “Bulletproof”, but refused to remove the rest.

As with the “Black Lives Matter” paraphernalia, the Antifa products are being sold by a third party manufacturer, in this case, Tee Bangers, on Walmart’s website.

Tee Bangers list as partners the following household names on their “About Us” page:

In June, Walmart said it wanted to avoid offending any of its customers and, joining Amazon, Sears, Ebay, and others, stopped selling products displaying the Confederate flag. The chain released a statement saying, “We never want to offend anyone with the products that we offer. We have taken steps to remove all items promoting the Confederate flag from our assortment — whether in our stores or on our web site.”

Here are Walmart’s current “Black Lives Matter” online offerings:

Amanda House is Breitbart News’ Deputy Political Editor. You can follow her on Twitter at @AmandaLeeHouse.

via Breitbart News

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American Exceptionalism and Antifa’s Phony War


However, if fascism is really evil, then there really is nothing anyone can do about it, unless the Creator of the Universe is such a bumbler that He needed FDR, Churchill, and Stalin (an atheist, of all people) to correct His mistakes.


No, the answer is that fascism is European and that America’s Constitution of 1787 achieved everything for which Europe would struggle for the next century and a half.


The French Revolution of 1789 failed when Napoleon Bonaparte returned from his Egyptian-Syrian campaign as a French Caesar in 1799 and then plunged into wars until his defeat and first exile in 1814.


Europe rejoiced with the return of peace and the Ancien Régime.  After 23 years of revolution, genocides, and war, “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” were despised.  The Allied powers (Russia, Prussia, England, and Austria) assembled under Prince Metternich in the Congress of Vienna, determined that this would never happen again.  Within a few years, however, ancient problems returned.


The Ancien Régime was a hierarchical class system based upon inequality.  The king, hereditary aristocracy, and high clergy legislated privileges and restrictions for each class according to its function.  It was so intrusive that a peasant could not marry without permission of his craft guild or seigniorial lord.  Bourgeois businessmen enjoyed greater liberty but chafed under trade restrictions.  Aristocrats were prohibited from many occupations even if impoverished.  All functions accrued power to the state, viewed as encompassing the good of all, in a predatory contest with other states doing the same thing.


Additionally, the sale of offices and tax-farming invited corruption, since the buyer expected personal profit from dispensing government services.


Napoleon’s return of “The 100 Days” in 1815 convinced the Congress that liberals or nationalists, as they became known, remained a threat – so much so that Metternich obstructed assistance to the Greek War of Independence against Ottoman rule.  However, working-class revolts in the 1830s and 1848 forced the nobility to ally with bourgeois bankers and businessmen who only proved more efficient exploiters of the workers than aristocrats.


Liberals split into nationalist and socialist camps.  Both found inspiration in nostalgic tales of Napoleon, who became the mythical liberator of both classes and nations from monarchs.  To an extent, he was.


 Napoleon had hit upon a formula of harnessing mass politics for military conquest.  He abolished feudal privileges, installed a professional bureaucracy, and imposed his Civic Code equally upon all.


When his conquests stalled at the English Channel, he turned east into Russia and a defeat in 1812.  His continental empire suffered more from his own embargo on English trade than Britain’s empire overseas.  Bankruptcy added to his burdens of war taxes and conscription.  His secular liberation antagonized deeply Catholic Spain into unremitting guerrilla war.


Baron von Stein turned Napoleon’s formula into a German war of liberation from the French.  The Italian Republic, Napoleon’s consolidation of feudal states, stood with Napoleon.  Under Metternich, however, both returned to Imperial Austrian rule, which regarded their national aspirations as a threat.  In Spain, Ferdinand VII restored a regime so reactionary that a French army had to rescue him in 1823.


This, however, was Metternich’s system.  Austrian Emperor Francis I summed it up: “My people are strange to each other and that is all right[.] … I send the Hungarians into Italy, the Italians into Hungary. Every people watches its neighbor[.] … From their antipathy will be born order and from their mutual hatred, general peace” (1).


Socialists posed the greater threat.  They elevated Robespierre‘s idea of virtue and terror into a cult of ideological purity, the possibly 80,000 victims of his Reign of Terror and genocide in the Vendée offered as proof.  Gracchus Babeuf had added the idea of abolishing private property and “equality of results,” ideas for which he was executed in 1797.  Karl Marx consolidated all this into a secular religion after the revolutions of 1848.  His “dictator of the proletariat” would be a second Bonaparte.


The nobility leaned on the nationalist cult of tradition and religion.  They proposed modernizing the hierarchy of class, pedigree, and money into one of merit rather than destroying it all for a Marxist utopia.


Between 1860 and 1871, the kings of Piedmont and Prussia turned Napoleon’s formula into wars of national liberation and united their feudal principalities into the Kingdom of Italy and the German Empire, respectively.  Both were constitutional monarchies and adopted a Charter of 1814, which Metternich accepted as a concession to Napoleon’s reforms, which he could not reverse.  It provided a representative body that ratified budgets and legislation that only the king could propose.  Liberals tried to expand its authority while monarchs ignored it.  Additionally, Germany crushed the Second Empire of Napoleon III and relieved Europe of another Bonaparte scourge.


WWI destroyed the ancient Hapsburg, Romanov, and Hohenzollern dynasties, while Bolsheviks, now in tenuous possession of Russia, incited global class war and revolution.  Civil wars broke out from Spain to Finland and east into Russia.  Not even the Middle East was spared.  But only in Russia did the “Reds” succeed.  Nationalists dominated “White” coalitions while adopting Red methods and branding their corporatist economics as “socialist” for mass appeal.  Derived from 1 Corinthians, corporatism recreated the craft guild system on an industrialized, capitalist basis under government planning.


By 1939, most continental regimes were White and authoritarian.  Mussolini’s National Fascist Party was one of them, the only significant party to use the term at the time.  Red propaganda transformed it into a pejorative to smear most of these regimes, at one time or another, effectively transferring the Reds’ own subversive stigma in order to acquire allies for the next war.


Mussolini served as prime minister under King Emanuel III, who remained until 1946.  Hitler and his aristocrat generals overran the continent and then followed Napoleon’s path from the English Channel into Russia and defeat.  For Franco’s Nationalists, the Spanish Third Republic was another Napoleonic regime with Bolshevik advisers.


On 8 May of 1945, the White Nationalists were done, forever.  The USSR was poised for another war.


Almost two hundred years prior, by 1776, the American colonies had already become a nation without feudal classes.  After the Seven Years War, 1756-1763, there was no foreign power on the American continent to seriously contend with.  Establishing a liberal republic went as stated in the Declaration of Independence and nothing more: “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them[.]”


Antifa is fighting something that never did and never can exist in America, or anywhere else in the Western world, at this point in time.  Even worse, they’re fighting for identity politics and American elites who are creating a feudal class system of their own.


(1) Frederick Artz, Reaction and Revolution, 1814-1832, Harper and Rowe, New York, 1934, pg. 238.










Antifa poses a problem no one is comfortable with.


What’s wrong with fighting fascism?  Ever see a movie in which the sallet helmet wasn’t a symbol of evil?  Not even Star Wars could resist.  FDR also used some pretty strong-arm tactics.


However, if fascism is really evil, then there really is nothing anyone can do about it, unless the Creator of the Universe is such a bumbler that He needed FDR, Churchill, and Stalin (an atheist, of all people) to correct His mistakes.


No, the answer is that fascism is European and that America’s Constitution of 1787 achieved everything for which Europe would struggle for the next century and a half.


The French Revolution of 1789 failed when Napoleon Bonaparte returned from his Egyptian-Syrian campaign as a French Caesar in 1799 and then plunged into wars until his defeat and first exile in 1814.


Europe rejoiced with the return of peace and the Ancien Régime.  After 23 years of revolution, genocides, and war, “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” were despised.  The Allied powers (Russia, Prussia, England, and Austria) assembled under Prince Metternich in the Congress of Vienna, determined that this would never happen again.  Within a few years, however, ancient problems returned.


The Ancien Régime was a hierarchical class system based upon inequality.  The king, hereditary aristocracy, and high clergy legislated privileges and restrictions for each class according to its function.  It was so intrusive that a peasant could not marry without permission of his craft guild or seigniorial lord.  Bourgeois businessmen enjoyed greater liberty but chafed under trade restrictions.  Aristocrats were prohibited from many occupations even if impoverished.  All functions accrued power to the state, viewed as encompassing the good of all, in a predatory contest with other states doing the same thing.


Additionally, the sale of offices and tax-farming invited corruption, since the buyer expected personal profit from dispensing government services.


Napoleon’s return of “The 100 Days” in 1815 convinced the Congress that liberals or nationalists, as they became known, remained a threat – so much so that Metternich obstructed assistance to the Greek War of Independence against Ottoman rule.  However, working-class revolts in the 1830s and 1848 forced the nobility to ally with bourgeois bankers and businessmen who only proved more efficient exploiters of the workers than aristocrats.


Liberals split into nationalist and socialist camps.  Both found inspiration in nostalgic tales of Napoleon, who became the mythical liberator of both classes and nations from monarchs.  To an extent, he was.


 Napoleon had hit upon a formula of harnessing mass politics for military conquest.  He abolished feudal privileges, installed a professional bureaucracy, and imposed his Civic Code equally upon all.


When his conquests stalled at the English Channel, he turned east into Russia and a defeat in 1812.  His continental empire suffered more from his own embargo on English trade than Britain’s empire overseas.  Bankruptcy added to his burdens of war taxes and conscription.  His secular liberation antagonized deeply Catholic Spain into unremitting guerrilla war.


Baron von Stein turned Napoleon’s formula into a German war of liberation from the French.  The Italian Republic, Napoleon’s consolidation of feudal states, stood with Napoleon.  Under Metternich, however, both returned to Imperial Austrian rule, which regarded their national aspirations as a threat.  In Spain, Ferdinand VII restored a regime so reactionary that a French army had to rescue him in 1823.


This, however, was Metternich’s system.  Austrian Emperor Francis I summed it up: “My people are strange to each other and that is all right[.] … I send the Hungarians into Italy, the Italians into Hungary. Every people watches its neighbor[.] … From their antipathy will be born order and from their mutual hatred, general peace” (1).


Socialists posed the greater threat.  They elevated Robespierre‘s idea of virtue and terror into a cult of ideological purity, the possibly 80,000 victims of his Reign of Terror and genocide in the Vendée offered as proof.  Gracchus Babeuf had added the idea of abolishing private property and “equality of results,” ideas for which he was executed in 1797.  Karl Marx consolidated all this into a secular religion after the revolutions of 1848.  His “dictator of the proletariat” would be a second Bonaparte.


The nobility leaned on the nationalist cult of tradition and religion.  They proposed modernizing the hierarchy of class, pedigree, and money into one of merit rather than destroying it all for a Marxist utopia.


Between 1860 and 1871, the kings of Piedmont and Prussia turned Napoleon’s formula into wars of national liberation and united their feudal principalities into the Kingdom of Italy and the German Empire, respectively.  Both were constitutional monarchies and adopted a Charter of 1814, which Metternich accepted as a concession to Napoleon’s reforms, which he could not reverse.  It provided a representative body that ratified budgets and legislation that only the king could propose.  Liberals tried to expand its authority while monarchs ignored it.  Additionally, Germany crushed the Second Empire of Napoleon III and relieved Europe of another Bonaparte scourge.


WWI destroyed the ancient Hapsburg, Romanov, and Hohenzollern dynasties, while Bolsheviks, now in tenuous possession of Russia, incited global class war and revolution.  Civil wars broke out from Spain to Finland and east into Russia.  Not even the Middle East was spared.  But only in Russia did the “Reds” succeed.  Nationalists dominated “White” coalitions while adopting Red methods and branding their corporatist economics as “socialist” for mass appeal.  Derived from 1 Corinthians, corporatism recreated the craft guild system on an industrialized, capitalist basis under government planning.


By 1939, most continental regimes were White and authoritarian.  Mussolini’s National Fascist Party was one of them, the only significant party to use the term at the time.  Red propaganda transformed it into a pejorative to smear most of these regimes, at one time or another, effectively transferring the Reds’ own subversive stigma in order to acquire allies for the next war.


Mussolini served as prime minister under King Emanuel III, who remained until 1946.  Hitler and his aristocrat generals overran the continent and then followed Napoleon’s path from the English Channel into Russia and defeat.  For Franco’s Nationalists, the Spanish Third Republic was another Napoleonic regime with Bolshevik advisers.


On 8 May of 1945, the White Nationalists were done, forever.  The USSR was poised for another war.


Almost two hundred years prior, by 1776, the American colonies had already become a nation without feudal classes.  After the Seven Years War, 1756-1763, there was no foreign power on the American continent to seriously contend with.  Establishing a liberal republic went as stated in the Declaration of Independence and nothing more: “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them[.]”


Antifa is fighting something that never did and never can exist in America, or anywhere else in the Western world, at this point in time.  Even worse, they’re fighting for identity politics and American elites who are creating a feudal class system of their own.


(1) Frederick Artz, Reaction and Revolution, 1814-1832, Harper and Rowe, New York, 1934, pg. 238.





via American Thinker

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British Labor Party: We Banned Pamela Geller; Now Let’s Ban Trump, Too

The Guardian reported Thursday that “Chris Bryant, a senior Labour backbencher,” has written to British prime minister Theresa May, urging her to “issue an official ban on Donald Trump from entering the UK on the grounds he is condoning fascism and his presence is ‘not conducive to the public good.'”


When Western historians look back at the 21st century, the Geller-Spencer ban in the U.K. will be viewed as one of that once great nation’s darkest moments and a low point for freedom.  It was the victory of Islamic law over Western law, sharia over freedom.



This because Trump retweeted three videos showing Muslims being violent.  Bryant, a former Foreign Office minister, supported this madness by pointing to…me.  He cited the cases of two U.S. far-right bloggers, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, who were banned by May in 2013 from entering the U.K.  I was going to be among a group of freedom-fighters – a true rainbow coalition of human rights activists from all over the world (a Hindu princess had been set to join us) – to honor the memory of Lee Rigby, the British soldier who had been murdered on a London street in broad daylight by an Islamic jihadist on May 22, 2013.


We planned to pay our respects to Lee Rigby by placing a wreath at his memorial, in his memory and in memory of his service.  We planned to bring the Stars and Stripes, as well as British and Danish flags, and participate in Armed Forces Day memorial commemorations at the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, where Rigby served.


For this we were banned.


When Prime Minister Theresa May, who was the head of the Home Office when she banned us and was thus directly responsible for the ban, threw us under the bus in order to satiate savages who threatened violence, did she really think she or anyone would be safe?  Safe by surrender?  When did they ever work in the history of humankind?


The über-left pol citing the Geller-Spencer ban in the U.K. to ban Trump was inevitable.  It’s like the Geller ban on ads on buses and subways in every major American city: the Catholic Church just tried to run ads on buses in Washington, D.C., and discovered that it couldn’t because of the ban on all political ads that was enacted in order to prevent my ads from running.  Once you sanction the silencing and persecution of one, inevitably, you’ve sanctioned it for all.  It’s open season on the opposition.  Who decides what’s good and what’s forbidden in a totalitarian society?  The totalitarians.


The worldwide howl at Trump’s retweets of videos tweeted out by a British politician is further proof of the Islamization of the West.  It speaks to how deeply and far and widely sharia has been normed and accepted by Western elites.  The videos in the retweets are authentic and have circulated for years.  They’re neither “far-right” nor “Islamophobic”; they’re just factual.  Once again the media are blaming the messenger instead of dealing with Islamic violence.


Trump didn’t add any rhetoric to his tweets.  He retweeted authentic videos.  (The Dutch media now claim that one of them doesn’t depict Muslim migrants being violent, as was claimed.  Even if this is true, Muslim migrant violence is a grim and increasingly common reality in Europe.)  If Muslims sincerely condemn jihad terror and sharia oppression, they shouldn’t oppose him.


In a letter to May, Bryant wrote: “I am writing to you to ask you and the home secretary to take immediate action to ban the president of the United States, Donald Trump, from entering the United Kingdom, due to his apparent support for far-right groups in this country. In retweeting Jayda Fransen’s posts, it is absolutely clear to me that President Trump is supporting and condoning fascism and far-right activity. This activity has frequently taken the form of violence on our streets. Ms Fransen herself has a long history of racism and Islamophobia, some of it criminal. Many of the people you have rightly banned from entering the UK were guilty of less than this.”


“Fascism.”  By that Bryant means “defending British values.”  While admitting numerous jihad preachers, Britain is keeping out the voices of sanity that would call that nation back to a path that would secure freedom for her children and her children’s children instead of a path to national suicide.  And now a call to ban the president of the nation that saved their nation from extinction not 70 years ago.


The full story of my being banned from the UK for standing against jihad, and much more, is in my new book,  FATWA: Hunted in America.  Get the book.  Buy it for friends.  Educate those around you.


Pamela Geller is the president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of the Geller Report, and author of the already bestselling book FATWA: Hunted in America as well as The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance.  Follow her on Twitter here.  Like her on Facebook here.










The Guardian reported Thursday that “Chris Bryant, a senior Labour backbencher,” has written to British prime minister Theresa May, urging her to “issue an official ban on Donald Trump from entering the UK on the grounds he is condoning fascism and his presence is ‘not conducive to the public good.'”


When Western historians look back at the 21st century, the Geller-Spencer ban in the U.K. will be viewed as one of that once great nation’s darkest moments and a low point for freedom.  It was the victory of Islamic law over Western law, sharia over freedom.


This because Trump retweeted three videos showing Muslims being violent.  Bryant, a former Foreign Office minister, supported this madness by pointing to…me.  He cited the cases of two U.S. far-right bloggers, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, who were banned by May in 2013 from entering the U.K.  I was going to be among a group of freedom-fighters – a true rainbow coalition of human rights activists from all over the world (a Hindu princess had been set to join us) – to honor the memory of Lee Rigby, the British soldier who had been murdered on a London street in broad daylight by an Islamic jihadist on May 22, 2013.


We planned to pay our respects to Lee Rigby by placing a wreath at his memorial, in his memory and in memory of his service.  We planned to bring the Stars and Stripes, as well as British and Danish flags, and participate in Armed Forces Day memorial commemorations at the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, where Rigby served.


For this we were banned.


When Prime Minister Theresa May, who was the head of the Home Office when she banned us and was thus directly responsible for the ban, threw us under the bus in order to satiate savages who threatened violence, did she really think she or anyone would be safe?  Safe by surrender?  When did they ever work in the history of humankind?


The über-left pol citing the Geller-Spencer ban in the U.K. to ban Trump was inevitable.  It’s like the Geller ban on ads on buses and subways in every major American city: the Catholic Church just tried to run ads on buses in Washington, D.C., and discovered that it couldn’t because of the ban on all political ads that was enacted in order to prevent my ads from running.  Once you sanction the silencing and persecution of one, inevitably, you’ve sanctioned it for all.  It’s open season on the opposition.  Who decides what’s good and what’s forbidden in a totalitarian society?  The totalitarians.


The worldwide howl at Trump’s retweets of videos tweeted out by a British politician is further proof of the Islamization of the West.  It speaks to how deeply and far and widely sharia has been normed and accepted by Western elites.  The videos in the retweets are authentic and have circulated for years.  They’re neither “far-right” nor “Islamophobic”; they’re just factual.  Once again the media are blaming the messenger instead of dealing with Islamic violence.


Trump didn’t add any rhetoric to his tweets.  He retweeted authentic videos.  (The Dutch media now claim that one of them doesn’t depict Muslim migrants being violent, as was claimed.  Even if this is true, Muslim migrant violence is a grim and increasingly common reality in Europe.)  If Muslims sincerely condemn jihad terror and sharia oppression, they shouldn’t oppose him.


In a letter to May, Bryant wrote: “I am writing to you to ask you and the home secretary to take immediate action to ban the president of the United States, Donald Trump, from entering the United Kingdom, due to his apparent support for far-right groups in this country. In retweeting Jayda Fransen’s posts, it is absolutely clear to me that President Trump is supporting and condoning fascism and far-right activity. This activity has frequently taken the form of violence on our streets. Ms Fransen herself has a long history of racism and Islamophobia, some of it criminal. Many of the people you have rightly banned from entering the UK were guilty of less than this.”


“Fascism.”  By that Bryant means “defending British values.”  While admitting numerous jihad preachers, Britain is keeping out the voices of sanity that would call that nation back to a path that would secure freedom for her children and her children’s children instead of a path to national suicide.  And now a call to ban the president of the nation that saved their nation from extinction not 70 years ago.


The full story of my being banned from the UK for standing against jihad, and much more, is in my new book,  FATWA: Hunted in America.  Get the book.  Buy it for friends.  Educate those around you.


Pamela Geller is the president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of the Geller Report, and author of the already bestselling book FATWA: Hunted in America as well as The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance.  Follow her on Twitter here.  Like her on Facebook here.





via American Thinker

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: http://ift.tt/TYiPDP

Benign Violation Theory: An Explanation for ‘Pocahontas’ Outrage

When I was six years old and my brother was eight, each of us was given a quarter to spend in a candy store before seeing a movie.  I thought my quarter was a fortune, but not so my brother.  The third-grader was unhappy with the quantity of popcorn he could get for his coin and complained to the shopkeeper.  The impatient shopkeeper asked my brother, “What do you want for 25 cents, the Brooklyn Bridge?”  My brother said, “Yeah, ya got any in stock?”


This exchange happened in the late 1950s on Staten Island.  The TV show Impractical Jokers is also a creation of Staten Islanders: four guys who stage embarrassing hidden camera pranks around New York City.  It is no coincidence that this show features New Yorkers pulling weird, sometimes humiliating and disgusting pranks on other New Yorkers.  It’s the only place they could get away with it.  Humor, sarcasm, laughing at yourself and others, acerbic name-calling, and “ranking out” are essential coping mechanisms for life in New York – especially so for the mensches, the real people in the streets, stores, and neighborhoods.



New Yorkers have what psychologists call a large capacity for benign violation.  In other words, they can take it, and they can dish it out, too.  When the New Insensitive Male in the White House calls the identity-hoaxer Senator Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas” – punctuated by adding that the only apology he makes is to the real Pocahontas for comparing her to goofy Liz – Trump is being an archetypal guy from Queens. He is deploying humorous mockery, a powerful coping mechanism in conflict situations, which, like my brother, he learned to use as a child.


President Trump is liberating Americans from the mental prison of political correctness and allowing them to laugh again.  But the sourpuss left wing doesn’t get the joke.  On the contrary, left-wing media are all panty-wadded about Trump’s Pocahontas jibe, and of course, they are wailing about racism.  Senator Warren herself wrote that Trump showed “the very worst of gutter politics.”  The senator thinks nothing in politics could be worse than her being called a sarcastic name?  She must consider herself a supremely important person.


Psychologists have advanced many theories to understand the dynamics of humor and what makes people laugh.  Benign violation theory is a recent addition to this literature by Caleb Warren and A. Peter McGraw.  It is particularly robust in explaining why many people find Trump’s Pocahontas moniker amusing while others are greatly offended.  Benign violation theory posits that humor is experienced when a circumstance is simultaneously perceived as a violation but also as being benign.  Most violations do not amuse, but a violation that is perceived as OK, acceptable, or safe produces amusement and laughter.  The theory explains that major forms of humor such as puns, sarcasm, punch lines, practical jokes, slapstick, and horseplay make people laugh because they involve violations of linguistic, physical, or cultural conventions (“Take my wife – no, please, take her.”) yet at the same time are benign and therefore acceptable to the recipient of the humorous attempt.


Because sarcasm involves saying one thing but meaning the opposite, it violates conversational norms of meaning.  When it is perceived as safe, such as the proverbial sale of the Brooklyn bridge, it can be funny.  Trump gives Senator Warren the name of a Powhatan Indian princess who died in 1617 because he believes that the senator is not an American Indian as she has claimed to be.  The senator and others of the far left not only don’t find the sarcasm amusing, but splutter that it is a racist outrage.  BVT theory neatly accounts for this: “Sarcasm isn’t funny to people who don’t detect the speaker’s true intention.  Nor is it funny to people who don’t approve of the speaker’s true intention.”


The left wing strongly disapproves of the president’s intention to call out Senator Warren’s hoax.  This is because classical liberalism is gone, replaced by dogma focused on oppressions of the distant past and sustained by bitter delusions that seek the worst in the human heart – politics founded upon the purported original and eternal sin of American white racism.  The priestcraft of the cult that replaced liberalism is driven by an obsessive search for innovative examples of white racism to confirm itself, enlarging upon loony white privilege theory and sniffing around every sombrero for signs of “cultural appropriation.”  This season’s fashion-forward term on the bigotry runways is “white supremacy.”  Regarding the knee-jerk outrage at the president’s jokes, blind dogmatists are not known for their sense of humor.


Trump’s humor will prevail against the left’s addiction to racism-spotting because his sarcasm is benign to people who love America as she is.  Calling Warren Pocahontas resonates with the wish of Americans for the restoration of a meritocracy and equal opportunity in academia.  In her (unsuccessful) outrage, Senator Warren is hoping that people who really are of American Indian ancestry will continue to burn in the long banked fires of historic victimization.  But she is also stoking a non-benign attitude toward America.  Leftists can’t laugh at themselves or anything else anymore, and everybody needs a good laugh sometimes.










When I was six years old and my brother was eight, each of us was given a quarter to spend in a candy store before seeing a movie.  I thought my quarter was a fortune, but not so my brother.  The third-grader was unhappy with the quantity of popcorn he could get for his coin and complained to the shopkeeper.  The impatient shopkeeper asked my brother, “What do you want for 25 cents, the Brooklyn Bridge?”  My brother said, “Yeah, ya got any in stock?”


This exchange happened in the late 1950s on Staten Island.  The TV show Impractical Jokers is also a creation of Staten Islanders: four guys who stage embarrassing hidden camera pranks around New York City.  It is no coincidence that this show features New Yorkers pulling weird, sometimes humiliating and disgusting pranks on other New Yorkers.  It’s the only place they could get away with it.  Humor, sarcasm, laughing at yourself and others, acerbic name-calling, and “ranking out” are essential coping mechanisms for life in New York – especially so for the mensches, the real people in the streets, stores, and neighborhoods.


New Yorkers have what psychologists call a large capacity for benign violation.  In other words, they can take it, and they can dish it out, too.  When the New Insensitive Male in the White House calls the identity-hoaxer Senator Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas” – punctuated by adding that the only apology he makes is to the real Pocahontas for comparing her to goofy Liz – Trump is being an archetypal guy from Queens. He is deploying humorous mockery, a powerful coping mechanism in conflict situations, which, like my brother, he learned to use as a child.


President Trump is liberating Americans from the mental prison of political correctness and allowing them to laugh again.  But the sourpuss left wing doesn’t get the joke.  On the contrary, left-wing media are all panty-wadded about Trump’s Pocahontas jibe, and of course, they are wailing about racism.  Senator Warren herself wrote that Trump showed “the very worst of gutter politics.”  The senator thinks nothing in politics could be worse than her being called a sarcastic name?  She must consider herself a supremely important person.


Psychologists have advanced many theories to understand the dynamics of humor and what makes people laugh.  Benign violation theory is a recent addition to this literature by Caleb Warren and A. Peter McGraw.  It is particularly robust in explaining why many people find Trump’s Pocahontas moniker amusing while others are greatly offended.  Benign violation theory posits that humor is experienced when a circumstance is simultaneously perceived as a violation but also as being benign.  Most violations do not amuse, but a violation that is perceived as OK, acceptable, or safe produces amusement and laughter.  The theory explains that major forms of humor such as puns, sarcasm, punch lines, practical jokes, slapstick, and horseplay make people laugh because they involve violations of linguistic, physical, or cultural conventions (“Take my wife – no, please, take her.”) yet at the same time are benign and therefore acceptable to the recipient of the humorous attempt.


Because sarcasm involves saying one thing but meaning the opposite, it violates conversational norms of meaning.  When it is perceived as safe, such as the proverbial sale of the Brooklyn bridge, it can be funny.  Trump gives Senator Warren the name of a Powhatan Indian princess who died in 1617 because he believes that the senator is not an American Indian as she has claimed to be.  The senator and others of the far left not only don’t find the sarcasm amusing, but splutter that it is a racist outrage.  BVT theory neatly accounts for this: “Sarcasm isn’t funny to people who don’t detect the speaker’s true intention.  Nor is it funny to people who don’t approve of the speaker’s true intention.”


The left wing strongly disapproves of the president’s intention to call out Senator Warren’s hoax.  This is because classical liberalism is gone, replaced by dogma focused on oppressions of the distant past and sustained by bitter delusions that seek the worst in the human heart – politics founded upon the purported original and eternal sin of American white racism.  The priestcraft of the cult that replaced liberalism is driven by an obsessive search for innovative examples of white racism to confirm itself, enlarging upon loony white privilege theory and sniffing around every sombrero for signs of “cultural appropriation.”  This season’s fashion-forward term on the bigotry runways is “white supremacy.”  Regarding the knee-jerk outrage at the president’s jokes, blind dogmatists are not known for their sense of humor.


Trump’s humor will prevail against the left’s addiction to racism-spotting because his sarcasm is benign to people who love America as she is.  Calling Warren Pocahontas resonates with the wish of Americans for the restoration of a meritocracy and equal opportunity in academia.  In her (unsuccessful) outrage, Senator Warren is hoping that people who really are of American Indian ancestry will continue to burn in the long banked fires of historic victimization.  But she is also stoking a non-benign attitude toward America.  Leftists can’t laugh at themselves or anything else anymore, and everybody needs a good laugh sometimes.





via American Thinker

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: http://ift.tt/TYiPDP

A Time for War: The Cold Civil War Continues…and Trump Is Winning


Our economic growth is over 3%.  After nearly a decade, our economy is clearly coming out of the doldrums, and the U.S. population is becoming optimistic about its future.


Trump is remaking the judiciary, an extraordinary achievement.


Illegal immigration is down, eventually to be controlled.  A real border for a real country.


The military is strong, confident, and doing its job.  ISIS and radical Islam are genuinely being defeated.


Our alliances overseas are strengthening, and our leadership is successfully realigning friends from the Obama-Clinton years of destruction.  Other countries respect and fear us once again.


America is becoming great again.


Domestically, embittered adversaries on the left are melting down, in multiple ways.  Their elites are being shown as irrational, immoral, hypocritical, rudderless, and foolish in an overwhelming wave of self-induced negativity.  Their illusion of cultural greatness is falling apart, from Hollywood to the media to the educrats to the Democratic Party itself.  They are failing miserably.


The Clinton crime family is going under for the third time, dragging others with it.


Yes, it’s wonderful to watch the left disintegrate, but don’t forget: they still own the education system and have won too many hearts and minds to their own party.  It ain’t over ’til it’s over.  We may be winning, but we haven’t won yet.


So let’s talk about really winning this thing.  In order to really win, there are a few things we need to remember.  And never forget: the things we must remember are those qualities that made us a great nation.  Those unique strengths that define humanity at its best, corporately and individually.  They include the freedoms to excel and improve.


We are between the great holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas, and as the song says, it’s the most wonderful time of the year.  It’s a time to recall and reflect on what are the best things this life has to offer.


Reagan said this in 1986:


Perhaps no custom reveals our character as a nation so clearly as our celebration of Thanksgiving Day. Rooted deeply in our Judeo-Christian heritage, the practice of offering thanksgiving underscores our unshakable belief in God as the foundation of our nation and our firm reliance upon Him from Whom all blessings flow.


Succinct.  And this quote was taken in the middle of the Cold War, when the winner was in doubt.  Reagan was reminding us of how to be thankful in the midst of a time of great strife and difficulty.  He wanted us to know that “winning” was not enough.  We needed to know that winning was tied up with high character and purpose, for our nation and for each of us as individuals.


Giving thanks for what we have and have been given.  To God.  With our families and friends.  Hoping, by faith, to achieve higher character.


Yes, we are in a cold civil war.  We cannot truly win that war if we devolve.  We cannot win that war if we become like those we have been fighting.  Stooping to their level will not fly.  We cannot become like the Jacobins of the left.  That is a construct we have to follow.  We cannot allow hate or bitterness to succeed in gaining a foothold in us.


We can hate what they’ve done without hating them personally.  We can be confident when we come against hate, but we must not let ourselves take on the character of those we have fought so hard against.


George Washington said the following about division:


The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.


As much as we need to despise what the left has done and ofttimes has stood for, we cannot let ourselves become despots.  We can’t exact revenge on individuals or groups that have wished us ill or even have done wrong things to us.  Instead, we need to remember the importance of forgiveness.  And please, I am not confusing forgiveness with approval, consent, or seeking justice for criminality.  We need to look forward to convincing as many as possible on the left to move toward a reconciliation and a reunification.  Gloating, dominating, excluding, and belittling those who would move toward betterment should not be done.


Yep, that may be a pipe dream with many we know and see on the left, but it has been done before.  And yes, it will take a long time.


The Civil War was not yet over when Lincoln said it this way:


With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.


Once again, the calling onward of a citizenry to high character and not revenge.


Without this we cannot become great again.  Make America Great Again.  What an amazing slogan.  It’s simple and powerful, and it calls us upward to better things.  Those things are not simply material, meaning rising economic fortune; they’re the deep improvement of virtue that brings on and fulfills a strong economic well-being.  This would be virtue in the classic sense, in its finest and fullest sense.


No, perfection isn’t possible, so get that out of mind.  Betterment, however, is.  We cannot confuse virtue with church lady-like pronouncements, nor take a sourpuss attitude of clucking at things we deem unclean.  Humor, building families, building businesses, building friendships and communities.  So much to do, so little time.


“Character is destiny” is a saying attributed to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus.  This is a truth that should be remembered, a truth once upon a time embedded in our culture, a truth we must renew.  With malice toward none, with charity for all.


How do we develop character?  To what do we aspire?  I’ll leave it to the real expert, who was asked what the most important things are.  He replied that virtually everything else hung on us following these two instructions freely:


“‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the first and great commandment. 


 And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”


The faith to build character for now and for future generations.


The way to truly make America great again.










The cold civil war we are fighting is not just going well.  Contrary to what was once expected, this war right now is in a stage of overwhelming success.  Not that we have won anything permanent, but one has to be amazed at how positively things are going.


Consumer confidence is close to an all-time high.


Our economic growth is over 3%.  After nearly a decade, our economy is clearly coming out of the doldrums, and the U.S. population is becoming optimistic about its future.


Trump is remaking the judiciary, an extraordinary achievement.


Illegal immigration is down, eventually to be controlled.  A real border for a real country.


The military is strong, confident, and doing its job.  ISIS and radical Islam are genuinely being defeated.


Our alliances overseas are strengthening, and our leadership is successfully realigning friends from the Obama-Clinton years of destruction.  Other countries respect and fear us once again.


America is becoming great again.


Domestically, embittered adversaries on the left are melting down, in multiple ways.  Their elites are being shown as irrational, immoral, hypocritical, rudderless, and foolish in an overwhelming wave of self-induced negativity.  Their illusion of cultural greatness is falling apart, from Hollywood to the media to the educrats to the Democratic Party itself.  They are failing miserably.


The Clinton crime family is going under for the third time, dragging others with it.


Yes, it’s wonderful to watch the left disintegrate, but don’t forget: they still own the education system and have won too many hearts and minds to their own party.  It ain’t over ’til it’s over.  We may be winning, but we haven’t won yet.


So let’s talk about really winning this thing.  In order to really win, there are a few things we need to remember.  And never forget: the things we must remember are those qualities that made us a great nation.  Those unique strengths that define humanity at its best, corporately and individually.  They include the freedoms to excel and improve.


We are between the great holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas, and as the song says, it’s the most wonderful time of the year.  It’s a time to recall and reflect on what are the best things this life has to offer.


Reagan said this in 1986:


Perhaps no custom reveals our character as a nation so clearly as our celebration of Thanksgiving Day. Rooted deeply in our Judeo-Christian heritage, the practice of offering thanksgiving underscores our unshakable belief in God as the foundation of our nation and our firm reliance upon Him from Whom all blessings flow.


Succinct.  And this quote was taken in the middle of the Cold War, when the winner was in doubt.  Reagan was reminding us of how to be thankful in the midst of a time of great strife and difficulty.  He wanted us to know that “winning” was not enough.  We needed to know that winning was tied up with high character and purpose, for our nation and for each of us as individuals.


Giving thanks for what we have and have been given.  To God.  With our families and friends.  Hoping, by faith, to achieve higher character.


Yes, we are in a cold civil war.  We cannot truly win that war if we devolve.  We cannot win that war if we become like those we have been fighting.  Stooping to their level will not fly.  We cannot become like the Jacobins of the left.  That is a construct we have to follow.  We cannot allow hate or bitterness to succeed in gaining a foothold in us.


We can hate what they’ve done without hating them personally.  We can be confident when we come against hate, but we must not let ourselves take on the character of those we have fought so hard against.


George Washington said the following about division:


The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.


As much as we need to despise what the left has done and ofttimes has stood for, we cannot let ourselves become despots.  We can’t exact revenge on individuals or groups that have wished us ill or even have done wrong things to us.  Instead, we need to remember the importance of forgiveness.  And please, I am not confusing forgiveness with approval, consent, or seeking justice for criminality.  We need to look forward to convincing as many as possible on the left to move toward a reconciliation and a reunification.  Gloating, dominating, excluding, and belittling those who would move toward betterment should not be done.


Yep, that may be a pipe dream with many we know and see on the left, but it has been done before.  And yes, it will take a long time.


The Civil War was not yet over when Lincoln said it this way:


With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.


Once again, the calling onward of a citizenry to high character and not revenge.


Without this we cannot become great again.  Make America Great Again.  What an amazing slogan.  It’s simple and powerful, and it calls us upward to better things.  Those things are not simply material, meaning rising economic fortune; they’re the deep improvement of virtue that brings on and fulfills a strong economic well-being.  This would be virtue in the classic sense, in its finest and fullest sense.


No, perfection isn’t possible, so get that out of mind.  Betterment, however, is.  We cannot confuse virtue with church lady-like pronouncements, nor take a sourpuss attitude of clucking at things we deem unclean.  Humor, building families, building businesses, building friendships and communities.  So much to do, so little time.


“Character is destiny” is a saying attributed to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus.  This is a truth that should be remembered, a truth once upon a time embedded in our culture, a truth we must renew.  With malice toward none, with charity for all.


How do we develop character?  To what do we aspire?  I’ll leave it to the real expert, who was asked what the most important things are.  He replied that virtually everything else hung on us following these two instructions freely:


“‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the first and great commandment. 


 And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”


The faith to build character for now and for future generations.


The way to truly make America great again.





via American Thinker

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: http://ift.tt/TYiPDP

Elizabeth Warren sowing panic to ‘regulate’ the credit industry

It’s a point that’s been made to death: U.S. politics have never been polarized as much as it is polarized today.  Rhetoric has become more heated in what seems like an arms race to stoke – and capitalize on – the most outrage.


Christmas came early for regulation demagogues on September 7, when Equifax, a credit-reporting agency, announced that it had suffered a catastrophic data breach.  People panicked – up to 145 million Americans had their identity data compromised.  Nobody can blame Americans for reacting this way to being exposed to identity theft.  But not so blameless are Senators Elizabeth Warrior (D-Mass.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who introduced the FREE Act.  It’s regulation of an increasingly common kind: thoughtless, opportunistic legislation with bad solutions.



The FREE Act and other bills inspired by it would mandate that companies provide credit freezes to consumers for free.  The rhetoric behind it follows the same rubric as all demagoguery: approach complex issues with


1.outrage-mongering and




2.simplistic solutions.




It goes without saying that the government can’t just mandate prices of services to become zero without any negatives.  The result will be less efficiency in the credit industry, and average Americans will be the ones hurt the most due to the constraint in the availability of credit.  Credit ratings exist as a metric to rationally evaluate credit risk, and preventing resources from being used in this evaluation will just make credit harder to come by.  And shrinking the credit availability of an entire sector of the economy has serious consequences.


Regulating credit freezes would also serve to empower the notoriously lawless Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the brainchild of Senator Warren before she took office.  The rhetoric supporting her pet agency should be familiar in its hyperbolic slant: Warren characterizes any criticism of the CFPB as a conspiracy between banks and “their Republican friends in Congress.”


That’s ridiculous and should immediately raise a red flag.  Serious people seeking the common good do not characterize their critics as Saturday-morning cartoon villains.


And perhaps more worrying is the intersection of this overblown rhetoric with its stated goals.  Warren thinks the whole credit-reporting industry “should be completely transformed.”  That’s a big goal, and far-reaching legislation can’t be motivated by hyperbolic black-and-white thinking.  That’s how the worst kind of policy finds its legs.


Senator Warren should prove that she is committed to a sober pursuit of rational policy.  Here’s how she can do it:


1. Offer an evidence-based, non-emotional explanation for why the FREE Act won’t lead to new costs for consumers and businesses.  Economic theory indicates that credit freezes and unfreezes are a service that requires resources, and mandating that such a service be provided for free will lead to market disruptions.  Argue convincingly that this will not happen.


2. Offer evidence that Equifax’s blunders indicate that the credit industry in general is broken and in need of transformational reforms.


3. Honestly engage with the discussions of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s lack of accountability.  Arguments that Republicans are wicked henchmen of a conspiracy to hurt consumers are not an honest engagement of these ideas.


4. Paint what is, in your mind, the most realistic picture of how the credit industry works.  Then compare this to the models that are the consensus of non-partisan economists. 


5. Demonstrate how better oversight and enforcement with on-the-books regulations would not suffice.


6. Demonstrate that you understand the actual arguments of the critics of the FREE Act and not your own emotionally laden caricature of those arguments.  This can be done through what’s known as an ideological Turing test.


Point number five is perhaps the most important.  Senator Warren expects hyperventilating words and absurd misrepresentations of her opponents to do the work for her.  But that isn’t how good policy is crafted.  Good policy comes from sober and evenhanded analyses of the facts.  Until proponents of the FREE Act can demonstrate their commitment to such analyses, they can’t be taken seriously as crusaders for the common good.


The two sides of this argument couldn’t be more different.  One sees apocalypse and conspiracy in every instance of opposition to the latest regulatory power-grab.  The other calls for scrutiny and moderation.


It’s not going to be the end of the world if the FREE Act passes.  That’s an absurd thing to believe.  Elizabeth Warren isn’t evil.  That’s also absurd.  The FREE Act is a well intentioned but badly reasoned piece of legislation – the precise type that tends to further bloat the morass of the federal bureaucracy.


It’s a point that’s been made to death: U.S. politics have never been polarized as much as it is polarized today.  Rhetoric has become more heated in what seems like an arms race to stoke – and capitalize on – the most outrage.


Christmas came early for regulation demagogues on September 7, when Equifax, a credit-reporting agency, announced that it had suffered a catastrophic data breach.  People panicked – up to 145 million Americans had their identity data compromised.  Nobody can blame Americans for reacting this way to being exposed to identity theft.  But not so blameless are Senators Elizabeth Warrior (D-Mass.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who introduced the FREE Act.  It’s regulation of an increasingly common kind: thoughtless, opportunistic legislation with bad solutions.


The FREE Act and other bills inspired by it would mandate that companies provide credit freezes to consumers for free.  The rhetoric behind it follows the same rubric as all demagoguery: approach complex issues with


1.outrage-mongering and




2.simplistic solutions.




It goes without saying that the government can’t just mandate prices of services to become zero without any negatives.  The result will be less efficiency in the credit industry, and average Americans will be the ones hurt the most due to the constraint in the availability of credit.  Credit ratings exist as a metric to rationally evaluate credit risk, and preventing resources from being used in this evaluation will just make credit harder to come by.  And shrinking the credit availability of an entire sector of the economy has serious consequences.


Regulating credit freezes would also serve to empower the notoriously lawless Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the brainchild of Senator Warren before she took office.  The rhetoric supporting her pet agency should be familiar in its hyperbolic slant: Warren characterizes any criticism of the CFPB as a conspiracy between banks and “their Republican friends in Congress.”


That’s ridiculous and should immediately raise a red flag.  Serious people seeking the common good do not characterize their critics as Saturday-morning cartoon villains.


And perhaps more worrying is the intersection of this overblown rhetoric with its stated goals.  Warren thinks the whole credit-reporting industry “should be completely transformed.”  That’s a big goal, and far-reaching legislation can’t be motivated by hyperbolic black-and-white thinking.  That’s how the worst kind of policy finds its legs.


Senator Warren should prove that she is committed to a sober pursuit of rational policy.  Here’s how she can do it:


1. Offer an evidence-based, non-emotional explanation for why the FREE Act won’t lead to new costs for consumers and businesses.  Economic theory indicates that credit freezes and unfreezes are a service that requires resources, and mandating that such a service be provided for free will lead to market disruptions.  Argue convincingly that this will not happen.


2. Offer evidence that Equifax’s blunders indicate that the credit industry in general is broken and in need of transformational reforms.


3. Honestly engage with the discussions of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s lack of accountability.  Arguments that Republicans are wicked henchmen of a conspiracy to hurt consumers are not an honest engagement of these ideas.


4. Paint what is, in your mind, the most realistic picture of how the credit industry works.  Then compare this to the models that are the consensus of non-partisan economists. 


5. Demonstrate how better oversight and enforcement with on-the-books regulations would not suffice.


6. Demonstrate that you understand the actual arguments of the critics of the FREE Act and not your own emotionally laden caricature of those arguments.  This can be done through what’s known as an ideological Turing test.


Point number five is perhaps the most important.  Senator Warren expects hyperventilating words and absurd misrepresentations of her opponents to do the work for her.  But that isn’t how good policy is crafted.  Good policy comes from sober and evenhanded analyses of the facts.  Until proponents of the FREE Act can demonstrate their commitment to such analyses, they can’t be taken seriously as crusaders for the common good.


The two sides of this argument couldn’t be more different.  One sees apocalypse and conspiracy in every instance of opposition to the latest regulatory power-grab.  The other calls for scrutiny and moderation.


It’s not going to be the end of the world if the FREE Act passes.  That’s an absurd thing to believe.  Elizabeth Warren isn’t evil.  That’s also absurd.  The FREE Act is a well intentioned but badly reasoned piece of legislation – the precise type that tends to further bloat the morass of the federal bureaucracy.






via American Thinker Blog

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Gun-Rights Groups File Suit Against New California Assault Weapons Regulations

A number of gun-rights groups joined forces to file a lawsuit against California’s latest assault weapons regulations on Thursday.

The Second Amendment Foundation, Calguns Foundation, Firearms Policy Coalition, and Firearms Policy Foundation joined with a number of individual California residents to sue the state’s attorney general. The suit, Holt et. al. v. Becerra et. al., alleged the way California’s Department of Justice implemented new gun regulations was unlawful. It said the process by which the department broadened the definition of what the state considers an illegal "assault weapon" sought to avoid a mandated public comment period in a way that renders the underlying regulations unenforceable.

"The Department of Justice has pushed through a broad set of ‘assault weapons’ regulations through the state Office of Administrative Law without any oversight or public input," the Second Amendment Foundation said in a release. "As a result, the state DOJ has essentially revamped California’s regulatory scheme."

Alan Gottlieb, the group’s founder, said the lawsuit was necessary to protect the rights of gun-owning Californians from bureaucratic overreach.

"The state’s relentless effort to crush the rights of law-abiding gun owners has gotten completely out of hand," Gottlieb said. "In this particular case, the new regulations not only exceed the scope of the law, they are in conflict with the law, and are contradictory in some cases. It amounts to an illegal regulatory scheme that should not be allowed to go forward. The government agencies responsible for enforcing the law must also follow the law. This case is an important step in protecting millions of law-abiding gun owners from an out-of-control regulatory state."

The individual plaintiffs in the case—George Holt, Irvin Hoff, Michael Louie, and Rick Russell—said the firearms they lawfully purchased before the regulations in question would be subject to either a burdensome new registration process or effectively outlawed. They argue the regulations created by the DOJ would make them subject to potential criminal prosecution that wouldn’t otherwise exist under California law.

"By making and enforcing unlawful rules, and going around the rules to do it, the DOJ is putting tens if not hundreds of thousands of law-abiding people at risk of serious criminal liability," said plaintiffs’ attorney George M. Lee. "This case seeks to make the DOJ follow the same laws they impose on others and protect law-abiding gun owners in the process."

The California gun-rights groups attached to the case argued the DOJ was working in bad faith and needed to be challenged in court.

"The DOJ has used every trick in the book to avoid good faith rulemaking action, and we cannot allow that to go unchallenged," Gene Hoffman, chairman of the Calguns Foundation, said. "California laws are bad enough without piling on unlawful and harmful regulations, so we seek here to restore the rule of law—and some sanity."

Firearms Policy Coalition president Brandon Combs called the state’s gun-control policies "bipolar."

"On one hand, the State is requiring people to register virtually all of their guns," Combs said. "On the other hand, the DOJ is doing everything it can to suppress compliance and prevent people from registering their guns."

Firearms Policy Foundation vice president Jonathan Jensen warned many law-abiding Californians could be arrested if the regulations are allowed to stand.

"The DOJ is playing a dangerous game with the law, and it needs to stop," Jensen said. "Tens of thousands of people could face potential felonies in just a handful of months, and meanwhile the DOJ has moved the goalposts with the registration clock ticking."

The post Gun-Rights Groups File Suit Against New California Assault Weapons Regulations appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

via Washington Free Beacon

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The NFL will hear ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ from fans like me

We hear that the NFL will contribute $100 million to the players’ social concerns, or something like that.    


This is from Jim Hanson:   



NFL owners seem poised to donate nearly $100 million (including some contributions from players) over seven years to support the favorite social justice causes of the players. 


But in a perfect show of how incompetent they are, the owners will get nothing from the players in return. No promise to stop disrespecting the national anthem or any other meaningful concessions.


Who taught these clowns to negotiate, Neville Chamberlain? Obviously, they are used to trying to buy their way out of problems. 


Can you even imagine the sum total spent bailing their pampered players out of legal beefs, domestic violence and sexual misconduct issues? 


It would likely dwarf even Congress and Hollywood. But do they really think this will solve their problem?


Maybe the commissioner got his negotiation lessons from the Obama Iran nuclear deal or the Cuba detente?


As an NFL fan, I find this deal rather weak.   


First, these “social concerns” do not need money. What we need is for players to get involved in their communities, from working with the police chief to telling young people about the importance of fatherhood.   


Second, I am angry with the NFL because the players are not respecting the national anthem. I understand that there are grievances and would be happy to hear them. Please don’t tell me about them when you being disrespectful to your flag or anthem.


It is still incredible to me how the NFL has allowed the actions of a small group of “employees” to hurt the brand of the employer. This is not a civil rights issue but rather players who’ve chosen to “demonstrate” when they are on the clock.


It’s incredible that Commissioner Roger Goodell has allowed all  this happen!


So the NFL moves on and more fans like me will move on too. I will watch the Cowboys but I’m done with the other games. Remember that spring training and play ball is about 90 days away!


P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.


We hear that the NFL will contribute $100 million to the players’ social concerns, or something like that.    


This is from Jim Hanson:   


NFL owners seem poised to donate nearly $100 million (including some contributions from players) over seven years to support the favorite social justice causes of the players. 


But in a perfect show of how incompetent they are, the owners will get nothing from the players in return. No promise to stop disrespecting the national anthem or any other meaningful concessions.


Who taught these clowns to negotiate, Neville Chamberlain? Obviously, they are used to trying to buy their way out of problems. 


Can you even imagine the sum total spent bailing their pampered players out of legal beefs, domestic violence and sexual misconduct issues? 


It would likely dwarf even Congress and Hollywood. But do they really think this will solve their problem?


Maybe the commissioner got his negotiation lessons from the Obama Iran nuclear deal or the Cuba detente?


As an NFL fan, I find this deal rather weak.   


First, these “social concerns” do not need money. What we need is for players to get involved in their communities, from working with the police chief to telling young people about the importance of fatherhood.   


Second, I am angry with the NFL because the players are not respecting the national anthem. I understand that there are grievances and would be happy to hear them. Please don’t tell me about them when you being disrespectful to your flag or anthem.


It is still incredible to me how the NFL has allowed the actions of a small group of “employees” to hurt the brand of the employer. This is not a civil rights issue but rather players who’ve chosen to “demonstrate” when they are on the clock.


It’s incredible that Commissioner Roger Goodell has allowed all  this happen!


So the NFL moves on and more fans like me will move on too. I will watch the Cowboys but I’m done with the other games. Remember that spring training and play ball is about 90 days away!


P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.






via American Thinker Blog

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BREAKING: Trump Supporter Hospitalized After Being Viciously Attacked By Left-Wing Antifa Terrorists in Boston

BREAKING: Trump Supporter Hospitalized After Being Viciously Attacked By Left-Wing Antifa Terrorists in Boston

Matthias Thorpe, a co-organizer for the Boston free speech rallies, was brutally attacked by a mob of Antifa on Friday evening — resulting in multiple fractures in his face.

Thorpe, 28, and a few friends had attended a discussion about Antifa featuring Mark Bray, the author of the Anti-Fascist Handbook at the Harvard Coop. He stated that they had not attended with intentions to shut down the event or disrupt it, but did ask meaningful questions about the implications of communism — such as asking if fascism that killed six million people is worse than communist fascism which has killed approximately 100 million people.

“He never answered my question, but people in the crowd recognized me because my picture was on one of the Antifa websites,” Thorpe told Gateway Pundit.

The group was eventually thrown out of the event as they lightly trolled towards the end, chanting “Trump” and “build the wall.”

Once outside, Thorpe said that he and his friends stuck around to attempt to have discussions with others who had attended. He stated that he had a few interesting interactions and everything was going reasonably well.

Around 9 p.m., as he was planning to leave, a woman walked out of the Coop, pointed to him and began shouting that he is a “Nazi.”

“Before I could even respond this girl tries to hit me, so I defend myself and all of a sudden someone came up behind me and grabbed me. There was a whole swarm of them around me punching me in the face,” Thorpe said.

Thorpe was being assaulted with the fists of a mob that he believes was “at least 7-10 people.” His assailants were not wearing masks.

Once he broke free, the group began mocking him and shouting things like “run Nazi, run,” leading to him running back into the group and throwing a punch. “The group came in and swarmed me again and began punching me over and over,” he said.

Eventually, Thorpe found himself on the ground, covered in blood, swollen and in a lot of pain. His face is fractured in three places — so severely that a bone completely detached. He will need to see a plastic surgeon to make sure that the bone does not drift away and repair itself improperly — but he does not have health insurance.

“What was interesting to me is that they did this right outside a store, in a main area of Harvard Square,” Thorpe explained. “They knew who I was and that’s why they attacked me.”

Thorpe has described the assault as a domestic terrorist attack and vowed to attempt to identify his attackers and pursue charges.

“I’m looking at this as a terrorist attack to be honest. It was a politically motivated attack, which I think in definition would be a domestic terrorist attack. I am going to try to go forward with prosecuting these people as much as I can, but I need to find video from the event,” Thorpe stated.

Thorpe hopes that people sharing his story will help put pressure on law enforcement to more heavily investigate Antifa.

“These people were bold enough to do this in a heavily populated area, what else are they bold enough to do?” Thorpe asked.

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via The Gateway Pundit

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