Yesterday, October 16, marked 70 years since General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece and commander of Democratic Army of Greece, Nikos Zachariadis, ordered a “temporary ceasefire to prevent the complete annihilation of Greece,” effectively ending the Greek Civil War. Repatriation of Greek Communists since the 50s and the Left’s cultural domination have whitewashed atrocities committed by Communists and their intentions for Greek society. And, as the losers of the war, there is no shortage of ex-guerillas willing to share their minimized accounts of red terrorism and good intentions with leftist cultural leaders and intellectuals. These unfortunate circumstances have portrayed the Greek Civil War as a war of rightest colonial aggression instead of a battle for what it was… the soul of Greece.
It was critical for the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), whose members admired the Russian Revolution, to distance their brand of Communism from the Bolshevik horrors in Russia. Afterall, as Philip Jenkins recounts,
“The regime also rooted up the churches and monasteries that were the heart of Russian culture and spiritual life. Officials wandered the country, vandalizing churches, desecrating saints’ shrines and seizing church goods, and murdering those who protested the acts. Militant atheist groups used sacred objects to stage anti-religious skits and processions. Between 1927 and 1940, active Orthodox churches all but vanished from the Russian Republic, as their numbers fell from 30,000 to just 500.”
Italy invaded Greece in 1940 followed by Germany the in 1941. In response, leaders of left-leaning political parties formed the National Liberation Front (EAM) in 1941. The KKE was the strongest of the five or six parties that comprised the EAM. The organization downplayed its revolutionary aspirations while emphasizing Greek unity to encourage non-Communists to join ranks of the only effective resistance group. EAM’s military arm was a guerilla army known as the Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS).
A prominent leader of the ELAS, Aris Velouchiotis, consciously made outward efforts to appear religious in order to appeal to a society steeped in 1900 years of Christendom. In one of his final speeches, Velouchiotis insisted that the Communists couldn’t destroy the Church if they wanted to, but rather “religion is an issue of consciousness.” Even so, Communists waged a brutal campaign against the “unenlightened” villagers in rural Greece that started during the Axis occupation. According to Panteleymon Anastasakis, regular reports of sacrilegious violence occurred in villages occupied by EAM/ELAS forces. One of the few academics to examine left-wing terror in the civil war Stathis N. Kalyvas writes,
The EAM terror campaign of winter 1943–1944 was hardly peculiar to the Argolid. A similar wave of killings swept the entire Peloponnese during the same time, and most probably the whole country as well. This campaign of assassinations was carried out by EAM’s newly formed OPLA squads—a combination of secret police and death squads. (OPLA is the Greek acronym for Organization for the Protection of the People’s Struggle; the acronym also means “weapons.”) These groups established very rapidly a reputation for ruthless violence that is still alive in the memories of many among my informants. In an interview he gave me, a former OPLA member described his job starkly: “I was not a regular guerrilla; I was a devil’s guerrilla.”
As a Nazi defeat became clear, ELAS’s toleration of religious foundations gave way to lessons on Communist doctrine and outward acts of evil. After the Nazi retreat, ELAS was dismantled and replaced by the Greek Democratic Army (GDA) which, unlike ELAS, fell directly under the KKE’s authority. One of the most ardent supporters of the GDA was Albanian dictator Enver Halil Hoxha who ruled Albania with an iron fist for 44 years. Hoxha declared Albania the “First atheist state of the world” in 1967 and no doubt had encouraged it in Greece during the war.
From 1946-49 Greece was in no holds barred civil war. Societal polarization left little room for political nuance. Nicholas Gage grew up in a Communist occupied village in northern Greece. Gage recalls that Communists kidnapped children who were sent to Eastern Bloc countries to be given a proper Communist upbringing. His sister was sent to a battlefield in Macedonia and his mother, Eleni, was executed after she arranged for Nicholas’ escape (Gage went on to author a memoir entitled Eleni which was made into a film). An op-ed by Nicholas Elias claimed “Communist guerrillas executed dozens of people for criticizing them or their, methods.” The Communists’ ruthless campaigns permanently traumatized the psyche of the Greek people. “‘I was here when the Communists came,’ an old woman in the village said. ‘I would rather have the junta for a hundred years than to have those bastards back for one day,’” reported the New York Times.
Post-independence political instability, Nazi occupation, and the civil war left Greece a broken nation. Amikam Nachmani writes, “By September 1949, at the end of the civil war, the cost of living was 254 times that of before the war, while 2,400,000 people were said to be “one step from starvation.” Between the Axis occupation and the civil war 10 percent of the population was estimated to have been killed. The guerillas killed more than 57,000 civilians while displacing more than 684,000. The anniversary of the Communist defeat in Greece should serve as a reminder of the horrific Communist legacy in the twentieth century and their deceptive lies to cover it up.
Yesterday, October 16, marked 70 years since General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece and commander of Democratic Army of Greece, Nikos Zachariadis, ordered a “temporary ceasefire to prevent the complete annihilation of Greece,” effectively ending the Greek Civil War. Repatriation of Greek Communists since the 50s and the Left’s cultural domination have whitewashed atrocities committed by Communists and their intentions for Greek society. And, as the losers of the war, there is no shortage of ex-guerillas willing to share their minimized accounts of red terrorism and good intentions with leftist cultural leaders and intellectuals. These unfortunate circumstances have portrayed the Greek Civil War as a war of rightest colonial aggression instead of a battle for what it was… the soul of Greece.
It was critical for the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), whose members admired the Russian Revolution, to distance their brand of Communism from the Bolshevik horrors in Russia. Afterall, as Philip Jenkins recounts,
“The regime also rooted up the churches and monasteries that were the heart of Russian culture and spiritual life. Officials wandered the country, vandalizing churches, desecrating saints’ shrines and seizing church goods, and murdering those who protested the acts. Militant atheist groups used sacred objects to stage anti-religious skits and processions. Between 1927 and 1940, active Orthodox churches all but vanished from the Russian Republic, as their numbers fell from 30,000 to just 500.”
Italy invaded Greece in 1940 followed by Germany the in 1941. In response, leaders of left-leaning political parties formed the National Liberation Front (EAM) in 1941. The KKE was the strongest of the five or six parties that comprised the EAM. The organization downplayed its revolutionary aspirations while emphasizing Greek unity to encourage non-Communists to join ranks of the only effective resistance group. EAM’s military arm was a guerilla army known as the Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS).
A prominent leader of the ELAS, Aris Velouchiotis, consciously made outward efforts to appear religious in order to appeal to a society steeped in 1900 years of Christendom. In one of his final speeches, Velouchiotis insisted that the Communists couldn’t destroy the Church if they wanted to, but rather “religion is an issue of consciousness.” Even so, Communists waged a brutal campaign against the “unenlightened” villagers in rural Greece that started during the Axis occupation. According to Panteleymon Anastasakis, regular reports of sacrilegious violence occurred in villages occupied by EAM/ELAS forces. One of the few academics to examine left-wing terror in the civil war Stathis N. Kalyvas writes,
The EAM terror campaign of winter 1943–1944 was hardly peculiar to the Argolid. A similar wave of killings swept the entire Peloponnese during the same time, and most probably the whole country as well. This campaign of assassinations was carried out by EAM’s newly formed OPLA squads—a combination of secret police and death squads. (OPLA is the Greek acronym for Organization for the Protection of the People’s Struggle; the acronym also means “weapons.”) These groups established very rapidly a reputation for ruthless violence that is still alive in the memories of many among my informants. In an interview he gave me, a former OPLA member described his job starkly: “I was not a regular guerrilla; I was a devil’s guerrilla.”
As a Nazi defeat became clear, ELAS’s toleration of religious foundations gave way to lessons on Communist doctrine and outward acts of evil. After the Nazi retreat, ELAS was dismantled and replaced by the Greek Democratic Army (GDA) which, unlike ELAS, fell directly under the KKE’s authority. One of the most ardent supporters of the GDA was Albanian dictator Enver Halil Hoxha who ruled Albania with an iron fist for 44 years. Hoxha declared Albania the “First atheist state of the world” in 1967 and no doubt had encouraged it in Greece during the war.
From 1946-49 Greece was in no holds barred civil war. Societal polarization left little room for political nuance. Nicholas Gage grew up in a Communist occupied village in northern Greece. Gage recalls that Communists kidnapped children who were sent to Eastern Bloc countries to be given a proper Communist upbringing. His sister was sent to a battlefield in Macedonia and his mother, Eleni, was executed after she arranged for Nicholas’ escape (Gage went on to author a memoir entitled Eleni which was made into a film). An op-ed by Nicholas Elias claimed “Communist guerrillas executed dozens of people for criticizing them or their, methods.” The Communists’ ruthless campaigns permanently traumatized the psyche of the Greek people. “‘I was here when the Communists came,’ an old woman in the village said. ‘I would rather have the junta for a hundred years than to have those bastards back for one day,’” reported the New York Times.
Post-independence political instability, Nazi occupation, and the civil war left Greece a broken nation. Amikam Nachmani writes, “By September 1949, at the end of the civil war, the cost of living was 254 times that of before the war, while 2,400,000 people were said to be “one step from starvation.” Between the Axis occupation and the civil war 10 percent of the population was estimated to have been killed. The guerillas killed more than 57,000 civilians while displacing more than 684,000. The anniversary of the Communist defeat in Greece should serve as a reminder of the horrific Communist legacy in the twentieth century and their deceptive lies to cover it up.
Here’s a rather sad story out of the Philadelphia suburb of Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. It’s youth football season, and the Conshohocken Golden Bears were on a roll last Saturday. In their Keystone State youth football league game they were up 30-0 over their opponents and once again had the ball and were driving toward the endzone. An excited five-year-old player took the handoff and broke for the endzone. And that’s when everything went wrong. The team was penalized and is now facing a stiff fine from the league. The reason? They scored too many points. (CBS Philadelphia)
A youth football team dominated its competition over the weekend. So what could be wrong with that? Apparently, their win was too big and now they may end up having to pay a fine.
“Don’t play well. Just play OK.”
That’s the message that some parents feel is being expressed to their young football players…
“There’s a 31-point rule that every organization, every team has to abide by. We violated that rule,” said Mike Mikalonis, president of the Conshohocken Bears.
In the local CBS news clip below, you can see the coash racing along the sideline trying to convince the kid to not go into the endzone. But the young boy is far too excited to slow down.
This is just sad. Nobody likes to lose, and certainly not in a blowout, but what sort of lesson are we sending kids who choose to participate in competitive sports with a rule like this? Don’t do too well or you might hurt someone’s feelings? There are no blowout rules in college and professional sports. You play to win. Sometimes a coach will pull the first string if they’re way up just to avoid injuries and give some of the rookies some experience in real action, but it’s not a requirement.
That seemed to be the message a former member of the Philadelphia Eagles was sending on Twitter.
@YouthKeystone is trippin! 1. Kids need to learn how to deal with failure. Don’t want to get smashed? Play better. 2. Life doesn’t let up. When it rains it pours. 3. The other kids can’t give their all because there is a rule. “Work hard but not too hard” that’s stupid.
This mentality of “everybody gets a trophy” doesn’t do children any favors. They’re getting an education in school but they’re also being prepared for the real world when they graduate. And the fact is that everyone doesn’t always get a trophy. If you lose, you pick yourself up, dust yourself off and try harder next time. (My disastrous efforts in junior varsity football hammered that lesson home on a regular basis.)
Come on, guys. Let the kids play. And if somebody takes a bad loss, use that as an opportunity to educate them and prepare them for the realities of life.
You haven’t been imagining it. Network television has seen “a marked increase in offensive content” and “expansion of adult-themed content into shows rated appropriate for children to watch” the Parents Television Council (PTC) confirmed on Tuesday with the release of its latest report on TV content ratings.
Protests by climate change alarmist group Extinction Rebellion erupted into violence on Thursday after radical activists got on top of trains, forcing the system to shut down and thus preventing London commuters from getting to work.
Extinction Rebellion, a loose affiliation of radical climate change activists, has been engaged in a series of protests intended to “disrupt” society in order to draw attention to the supposed “extinction”-level threat posed by global warming. As BBC‘s chief environment correspondent put it, this latest stunt “represents a significant escalation of its strategy of ‘disruption’.”
BBC reports that protesters from the group climbed on trains at Stratford, Canning Town and Shadwell during rush hour Thursday. As a result of their actions, service on the Jubilee Line and Docklands Light Railway was temporarily suspended, BBC reports, an extreme “disruption” that the radical group said was “necessary to highlight the emergency” of climate change.
At least eight of the activists have been arrested, according to British Transport Police.
As video posted online shows, the situation got particularly tense at the Canning Town station after multiple protesters climbed onto train carriages.
As a growing number of commuters became increasingly furious over the activists’ antics, a few of them took action, yanking protesters off train cars. When the protesters were forced into the middle of the livid commuters, things got even more tense, video showing pushing, shoving and shouting erupting, with officials reportedly being forced to intervene at some points to avoid an escalation of violence.
“The two activists used a ladder to climb up onto the carriage, causing passengers to begin shouting at them to get down before launching a physical attack,” Metro reports. “A man was seen throwing a bag of crisps at the pair, while others chucked their drinks and bits of cardboard as the number of people on the platform grew.”
“You guys have done nothing wrong. We’re so sorry about this,” one of the activists yelled, the outlet reports. But when a commuter attempted to use the ladder to get up to him, the activist kicked at him.
The activist is eventually grabbed by the legs and yanked down into the angry crowd, where he appears to be pushed, punched and kicked.
Another protester was chased down by a commuter on the top of the train and then shoved off and dragged down like his fellow climate alarmist.
Some of the footage of the chaos posted on social media below:
Furious London commuters have been pulling Extinction Rebellion protesters off the top of a train at Canning Town stationpic.twitter.com/ZHgsVCIxft
“A third Extinction Rebellion activist, who was broadcasting the protest on the group’s social media accounts, said he was also attacked and ‘kicked in the head,’” BBC reports.
British Transport Police described the situation in Canning Town as “concerning,” rebuking commuters for having taken “matters into their own hands” and “displaying violent behaviour to detain a protester.”
“It is important that commuters and other rail users allow the police, who are specially trained, to manage these incidents,” Assistant Chief Constable Sean O’Callaghan said in a statement reported by BBC. “Unfortunately, there is still a risk that Extinction Rebellion will target the rail network during this evenings peak. We will continue to have extra officers on patrol and will work to disrupt any potential criminal action before it happens.”
South Park tore into NBA superstar LeBron James just days after the Los Angeles Lakers player criticized Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey’s as “uniformed” for his seven-word tweet showing support for the pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.
The satire-heavy episode titled “Let Them Eat Goo” sees Cartman have a heart attack after he learns that the “sloppy Joe Day” lunch meal at South Park Elementary is actually fish. Turns out, “the girls” wanted “healthier options and food for those who don’t eat red meat.”
“Their protesting [of red meat] is ruining my lunch. Yes, we do have freedom of speech, but at times there are ramifications for the negative that can happen when you are not thinking about others and only thinking about yourself,” a wheelchair-bound Cartman says, echoing LeBron James’ China comments word for word. “They’re trying to change peoples’ lunch. They don’t realize it harms people financially, physically, emotionally, spiritually.”
The climate change and plant-based food phenomenon bashing episode skewers Burger King’s vegan “Impossible Burger.”
Since making his comments, LeBron James has been slammed by pundits on the right and on the left. The NBA champion endorsed Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign, has slammed President Donald Trump as a “bum” and the president’s supporters as “uneducated” but dodged direct questions on Tuesday about the human rights atrocities perpetuated by the Chinese government — James insisted that basketball player are “not politicians.”
Last week, the long-running Comedy Central show saw lead character Randy Marsh say “fuck the Chinese government” after the communist country banned South Park and scrubbed the show from its internet.
On Monday night NBA superstar Lebron James spoke out in defense of the Chinese Communists. The NBA star trashed Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey for tweeting his support for Hong Kong freedom protesters.
And then Lebron lectured reporters on the perils of free speech.
This is the same guy who posted this quote earlier.
-Injustice Anywhere Is A Threat To Justice Everywhere- Our Lives Begin To End The Day We Become Silent About Things That Matter- #ThankYouMLK50
Socialists are fond of saying that socialism has never failed because it has never been tried. But in truth, socialism has failed in every country in which it has been tried, from the Soviet Union beginning a century ago to three modern countries that tried but ultimately rejected socialism—Israel, India, and the United Kingdom.
While there were major
political differences between the totalitarian rule of the Soviets and the
democratic politics of Israel, India, and the U.K., all three of the latter countries
adhered to socialist principles, nationalizing their major industries and
placing economic decision-making in the hands of the government.
The Soviet failure has
been well documented by historians. In 1985, General Secretary Mikhail
Gorbachev took command of a bankrupt disintegrating empire. After 70 years of
Marxism, Soviet farms were unable to feed the people, factories failed to meet
their quotas, people lined up for blocks in Moscow and other cities to buy
bread and other necessities, and a war in Afghanistan dragged on with no end in
sight of the body bags of young Soviet soldiers.
The economies of the Communist nations behind the Iron Curtain were similarly enfeebled because they functioned in large measure as colonies of the Soviet Union.
With no incentives to compete or modernize, the industrial sector of Eastern and Central Europe became a monument to bureaucratic inefficiency and waste, a “museum of the early industrial age.” As The New York Times pointed out at the time, Singapore, an Asian city-state of only 2 million people, exported 20% more machinery to the West in 1987 than all of Eastern Europe.
And yet, socialism still beguiled leading intellectuals and politicians of the West. They could not resist its siren song, of a world without strife because it was a world without private property. They were convinced that a bureaucracy could make more-informed decisions about the welfare of a people than the people themselves could. They believed, with John Maynard Keynes, that “the state is wise and the market is stupid.”
Israel, India, and the United Kingdom all adopted socialism as an economic model following World War II. The preamble to India’s constitution, for example, begins, “We, the People of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic … ” The original settlers of Israel were East European Jews of the left who sought and built a socialist society. As soon as the guns of World War II fell silent, Britain’s Labour Party nationalized every major industry and acceded to every socialist demand of the unions.
At first, socialism seemed to work in these vastly dissimilar countries. For the first two decades of its existence, Israel’s economy grew at an annual rate of more than 10%, leading many to term Israel an “economic miracle.” The average gross domestic product growth rate of India from its founding in 1947 into the 1970s was 3.5%, placing India among the more prosperous developing nations. GDP growth in Great Britain averaged 3% from 1950 to 1965, along with a 40% rise in average real wages, enabling Britain to become one of the world’s more affluent countries.
But the government planners were unable to keep pace with increasing population and overseas competition. After decades of ever-declining economic growth and ever-rising unemployment, all three countries abandoned socialism and turned toward capitalism and the free market.
The resulting prosperity in Israel, India, and the U.K. vindicated free-marketers who had predicted that socialism would inevitably fail to deliver the goods. As British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher observed, “the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
1. Israel
Israel is unique, the only nation where socialism was successful—for a while. The original settlers, according to Israeli professor Avi Kay, “sought to create an economy in which market forces were controlled for the benefit of the whole society.”
Driven by a desire to leave behind their history as victims of penury and prejudice, they sought an egalitarian, labor-oriented socialist society. The initial, homogeneous population of less than 1 million drew up centralized plans to convert the desert into green pastures and build efficient state-run companies.
Most early settlers, American Enterprise Institute scholar Joseph Light pointed out, worked either on collective farms called kibbutzim or in state-guaranteed jobs.
The kibbutzim were small farming communities in which people did chores in exchange for food and money to live on and pay their bills. There was no private property, people ate in common, and children under 18 lived together and not with their parents. Any money earned on the outside was given to the kibbutz.
A key player in the socialization of Israel was the Histadrut, the General Federation of Labor, subscribers to the socialist dogma that capital exploits labor and that the only way to prevent such “robbery” is to grant control of the means of production to the state.
As it proceeded to unionize almost all workers, the Histadrut gained control of nearly every economic and social sector, including the kibbutzim, housing, transportation, banks, social welfare, health care, and education. The federation’s political instrument was the Labor party, which effectively ruled Israel from the founding of Israel in 1948 until 1973 and the Yom Kippur War. In the early years, few asked whether any limits should be placed on the role of government.
Then-future Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman urged Israeli policymakers to “set your people free” and liberalize the economy and embrace the free market. Pictured: Friedman in 1986. (Photo: George Rose/Getty Images)
Israel’s economic performance seemed to confirm Keynes’ judgment. Real GDP growth from 1955 to 1975 was an astounding 12.6%, putting Israel among the fastest-growing economies in the world, with one of the lowest income differentials. However, this rapid growth was accompanied by rising levels of private consumption and, over time, increasing income inequality.
There was an increasing demand for economic reform to free the economy from the government’s centralized decision-making. In 1961, supporters of economic liberalization formed the Liberal party — the first political movement committed to a market economy.
The Israeli “economic miracle” evaporated in 1965 when the country suffered its first major recession. Economic growth halted and unemployment rose threefold from 1965 to 1967. Before the government could attempt corrective action, the Six-Day War erupted, altering Israel’s economic and political map.
Paradoxically, the war brought short-lived prosperity to Israel, owing to increased military spending and a major influx of workers from new territories. But government-led economic growth was accompanied by accelerating inflation, reaching an annual rate of 17% from 1971 to 1973.
For the first time, there was a public debate between supporters of free-enterprise economics and supporters of traditional socialist arrangements. Leading the way for the free market was the future Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman, who urged Israeli policymakers to “set your people free” and liberalize the economy.
The 1973 war and its economic impacts reinforced the feelings of many Israelis that the Labor party’s socialist model could not handle the country’s growing economic challenges. The 1977 elections resulted in the victory of the Likud party, with its staunch pro-free-market philosophy. The Likud took as one of its coalition partners the Liberal party.
Because socialism’s roots in Israel were so deep, real reform proceeded slowly. Friedman was asked to draw up a program that would move Israel from socialism toward a free-market economy. His major reforms included fewer government programs and reduced government spending; less government intervention in fiscal, trade, and labor policies; income tax cuts; and privatization. A great debate ensued between government officials seeking reform and special interests that preferred the status quo.
Meanwhile, the government kept borrowing and spending and driving up inflation, which averaged 77% for 1978-79 and reached a peak of 450% in 1984–85. The government’s share of the economy grew to 76%, while fiscal deficits and national debt skyrocketed. The government printed money through loans from the Bank of Israel, which contributed to the inflation by churning out money.
Finally, in January 1983, the bubble burst, and thousands of private citizens and businesses as well as government-run enterprises faced bankruptcy. Israel was close to collapse.
At this critical moment, a sympathetic U.S. president, Ronald Reagan, and his secretary of state, George Shultz, came to the rescue. They offered a grant of $1.5 billion if the Israeli government agreed to abandon its socialist rulebook and adopt some form of U.S.-style capitalism, using American-trained professionals.
The Histadrut strongly resisted, unwilling to give up their decades-old power and to concede that socialism was responsible for Israel’s economic troubles. However, the people had had enough of soaring inflation and nonexistent growth and rejected the Histadrut’s policy of resistance. Still, the Israeli government hesitated, unwilling to spend political capital on economic reform.
An exasperated Shultz informed Israel that if it did not begin freeing up the economy, the U.S. would freeze “all monetary transfers” to the country. The threat worked. The Israeli government officially adopted most of the free-market “recommendations.”
The impact of a basic shift in Israeli economic policy was immediate and pervasive. Within a year, inflation tumbled from 450% to just 20%, a budget deficit of 15% of GDP shrank to zero, the Histadrut’s economic and business empire disappeared along with its political domination, and the Israeli economy was opened to imports.
Of particular importance was the Israeli high-tech revolution, which led to a 600% increase in investment in Israel, transforming the country into a major player in the high-tech world.
There were troubling side effects such as social gaps, poverty, and concerns about social justice, but the socialist rhetoric and ideology, according to Glenn Frankel, The Washington Post’s correspondent in Israel, “has been permanently retired.”
The socialist Labor party endorsed privatization and the divestment of many publicly held companies that had become corrupted by featherbedding, rigid work rules, phony bookkeeping, favoritism, and incompetent managers.
After modest expansion in the 1990s, Israel’s economic growth topped the charts in the developing world in the 2000s, propelled by low inflation and a reduction in the size of government. Unemployment was still too high and taxes took up 40% of GDP, much of it caused by the need for a large military.
However, political parties are agreed that there is no turning back to the economic policies of the early years—the debate is about the rate of further market reform. “The world’s most successful experiment in socialism,” Light wrote, “appears to have resolutely embraced capitalism.”
2. India
Acceptance of socialism was strong in India long before independence, spurred by widespread resentment against British colonialism and the land-owning princely class (the zamindars) and by the efforts of the Communist Party of India, established in 1921.
Jawaharlal Nehru adopted socialism as the ruling ideology when he became India’s first prime minister after independence in 1947.
For nearly 30 years, the
Indian government adhered to a socialist line, restricting imports, prohibiting
foreign direct investment, protecting small companies from competition from
large corporations, and maintaining price controls on a wide variety of
industries including steel, cement, fertilizers, petroleum, and
pharmaceuticals. Any producer who exceeded their licensed capacity faced
possible imprisonment.
As the Indian economist Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar wrote, “India was perhaps the only country in the world where improving productivity … was a crime.” It was a strict application of the socialist principle that the market cannot be trusted to produce good economic or social outcomes. Economic inequality was regulated through taxes—the top personal income tax rate hit a stifling 97.75%.
Jawaharlal Nehru adopted socialism as the ruling ideology when he became India’s first prime minister after independence in 1947. Pictured: Nehru with Mahatma Gandhi in 1946. (Photo: Underwood Archives/Getty Images)
Some 14 public banks were nationalized in 1969; six more banks were taken over by the government in 1980. Driven by the principle of “self-reliance,” almost anything that could be produced domestically could not be imported regardless of the cost. It was the “zenith” of Indian socialism, which still failed to satisfy the basic needs of an ever-expanding population. In 1977-78, more than half of India was living below the poverty line.
At the same time, notes Indian-American economist Arvind Panagariya, a series of external shocks shook the country, including a war with Pakistan in 1965, which came on the heels of a war with China in 1962; another war with Pakistan in 1971; consecutive droughts in 1971-72 and 1972-73, and the oil price crisis of October 1973, which contributed to a 40% deterioration in India’s foreign trade.
Economic performance from 1965 to 1981 was worse than than at any other time of the post-independence period. As in Israel, economic reform became an imperative. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had pushed her policy agenda as far to the left as possible.
In 1980, the Congress party won a two-thirds majority in the Parliament, and Gandhi adopted, at last, a more pragmatic, non-ideological course. But as with everything else in India, economic reform proceeded slowly.
An industrial-policy statement continued the piecemeal retreat from socialism that had begun in 1975, allowing companies to expand their capacity, encouraging investment in a wide variety of industries, and introducing private-sector participation in telecommunications.
Further liberalization received a major boost under Rajiv Gandhi, who succeeded his mother in 1984 following her assassination. As a result, GDP growth reached an encouraging 5.5%.
Economics continued to trump ideology under Rajiv Gandhi, who was free of the socialist baggage carried by an earlier generation. His successor, P. V. Narasimha Rao, put an end to licensing except in selected sectors and opened the door to much wider foreign investment. Finance minister Manmohan Singh cut the tariff rates from an astronomical 355% to 65%.
According to Arvind Panagariya, “the government had introduced enough liberalizing measures to set the economy on the course to sustaining approximately 6 percent growth on a long-term basis.” In fact, India’s GDP growth reached a peak of over 9% in 2005-08, followed by a dip to just under 7% in 2017-18.
A major development of the economic reforms was the remarkable expansion of India’s middle class. The Economist estimates there are 78 million Indians in the middle-middle and upper-middle-class category.
By including the lower-middle class, Indian economists Krishnan and Hatekar figure that India’s new middle class grew from 304.2 million in 2004-05 to an amazing 606.3 million in 2011-12, almost one-half of the entire Indian population. The daily income of the three middle classes are lower middle, $2-$4; middle middle, $4-$6; upper middle, $6-$10.
While this is extremely low by U.S. standards, a dollar goes a long way in India, where the annual per capita income is approximately $6,500. If only half of the lower-middle class makes the transition to upper-class or middle income, that would mean an Indian middle class of about 350 million Indians—a mid-point between The Economist and Krishnan and Hatekar estimates.
Such an enormous middle class confirms the judgment of The Heritage Foundation, in its Index of Economic Freedom, that India is developing into an “open-market economy.”
In 2017, India overtook Germany to become the fourth-largest auto market in the world, and it is expected to displace Japan in 2020. That same year, India overtook the U.S. in smartphone sales to become the second-largest smartphone market in the world.
Usually described as an agricultural country, India is today 31% urbanized. With an annual GDP of $8.7 trillion, India ranks fifth in the world, behind the United States, China, Japan, and Great Britain. Never before in recorded history, Indian economist Gurcharan Das has noted, have so many people risen so quickly.
All this has been accomplished because the political leaders of India sought and adopted a better economic system—free enterprise—after some four decades of fitful progress and unequal prosperity under socialism.
3. United Kingdom
Widely described as “the sick man of Europe” after three decades of socialism, the United Kingdom underwent an economic revolution in the 1970s and 1980s because of one remarkable person—Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Some skeptics doubted that she could pull it off—the U.K. was then a mere shadow of its once prosperous free-market self.
The government owned the largest manufacturing firms in such industries as autos and steel. The top individual tax rates were 83% on “earned income” and a crushing 98% on income from capital. Much of the housing was government-owned.
For decades, the U.K. had grown more slowly than economies on the continent. Great Britain was no longer “great” and seemed headed for the economic dust bin.
National Union of Railwaymen officials on picket duty outside Paddington Station, London, during the rail drivers strike on Oct. 2, 1979. (Photo: Mike Lawn/Evening Standard/Getty Images)
The major hindrance to economic reform was the powerful trade unions, which since 1913 had been allowed to spend union funds on political objectives, such as controlling the Labour Party. Unions inhibited productivity and discouraged investment.
From 1950 to 1975, the U.K.’s investment and productivity record was the worst of any major industrial country. Trade union demands increased the size of the public sector and public expenditures to 59% of GDP. Wage and benefits demands by organized labor led to continual strikes that paralyzed transportation and production.
In 1978, Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan decided that, rather than hold an election, he would “soldier on” to the following spring. It was a fatal mistake. His government encountered the legendary “winter of discontent” in the first months of 1979. Public-sector workers went on strike for weeks. Mountains of uncollected rubbish piled high in cities. Bodies remained unburied and rats ran in the streets.
Newly elected Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the United Kingdom’s first female PM, took on what she considered her main opponent—the unions.
Flying pickets, the ground troops of industrial conflict who would travel to support workers on strike at another site, were banned and could no longer blockade factories or ports. Strike ballots were made compulsory. The closed shop, which forced workers to join a union to get a job, was outlawed. Union membership plummeted from a peak of 12 million in the late 1970s to half that by the late 1980s.
“It’s now or never for [our] economic policies,” Thatcher declared, “let’s stick to our guns.”
The top rate of personal income tax was cut in half, to 45%, and exchange controls were abolished.
Privatization was a core Thatcher reform. Not only was it fundamental to the improvement of the economy, it was “one of the central means of reversing the corrosive and corrupting effects of socialism,” she wrote in her memoirs.
Through privatization that leads to the widest possible ownership by members of the public, “the state’s power is reduced and the power of the people enhanced.” Privatization “is at the center of any programme of reclaiming territory for freedom.”
She was as good as her word, selling off government-owned airlines, airports, utilities, and phone, steel, and oil companies.
In the 1980s, Britain’s economy grew faster than that of any other European economy except Spain. U.K. business investment grew faster than in any other country except Japan. Productivity grew faster than in any other industrial economy.
Some 3.3 million new jobs were created between March 1983 and March 1990. Inflation fell from a high of 27% in 1975 to 2.5% in 1986. From 1981 to 1989, under a Conservative government, real GDP growth averaged 3.2%.
By the time Thatcher left government, the state-owned sector of industry had been reduced by some 60%. As she recounted in her memoirs, about 1 in 4 Britons owned shares in the market. Over 600,000 jobs had passed from the public to the private sector. The U.K. had “set a worldwide trend in privatization in countries as different as Czechoslovakia and New Zealand.”
Turning decisively away from Keynesian management, the once sick man of Europe now bloomed with robust economic health. No succeeding British government, Labour or Conservative, has tried to renationalize what Margaret Thatcher denationalized.
The Lesson of China
How then to explain the impressive economic success of a fourth major economy, China, with annual GDP growth of 8 to 10% from the 1980s almost to the present?
From 1949 to 1976, under Mao Zedong, China was an economic basket case, owing to Mao’s personal mismanagement of the economy. In his avid pursuit of Soviet-style socialism, Mao brought about the Great Leap Forward of 1958-60, which resulted in the deaths of at least 30 million and perhaps as many as 50 million Chinese, and the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76, in which an additional 3 million to 5 million died. Mao left China backward and deeply divided.
Mao’s successor, Deng
Xiaoping, turned China in a different direction, seeking to create a mixed
economy in which capitalism and socialism would coexist with the Communist
Party monitoring and constantly adjusting the proper mix. For the past four
decades, China has been the economic marvel of the world for the following
reasons:
It began its economic ascent almost from ground zero because of Mao’s ideological stubbornness. It has engaged in the calculated theft of intellectual property, especially from the U.S., for decades. It has taken full advantage of globalism and its membership in the World Trade Organization, while ignoring the prescribed rules against such practices as intellectual property theft. It has used tariffs and other protectionist measures to gain trade advantages with the U.S. and other competitors.
It created a middle class
of some 300 million people, who enjoy a decent living and at the same time
constitute a sizable domestic market for goods and services. It continues to
use the forced labor of the laogai to make cheap consumer goods that are sold
in Walmart and other Western stores. It allows an enormous black market to
exist because Party members profit from its sales.
It permits foreign investors to buy into Chinese companies, but the government—i.e., the Communist Party—always retains a majority interest. It operates an estimated 150,000 state-owned enterprises that guarantee jobs for tens of millions of Chinese. It depends on the energy and experience of the most entrepreneurial people in the world, second only to Americans.
A poster is displayed in late 1966 in Beijing’s street featuring how to deal with so-called “enemy of the people” during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Since the May 1966 launch of the Cultural Revolution at Beijing University, the Red Guards were instrumental in Mao’s recapture of power after the failure of the Great Leap Forward. The movement was directed against “party leaders in authority taking the capitalist road.” The Red Guards went on rampage in Chinese towns, terrorizing people, particularly older ones. (Photo: Jean Vincent/AFP/Getty Images)
In short, the People’s Republic of China was an economic failure for its first three decades under Mao and Soviet socialism. It began its climb to become the second-largest economy in the world when it abandoned socialism in the late 70s and initiated its experiment, which so far has been successful, in capitalism with Chinese characteristics.
There are clear signs that such success is no longer automatic. China is experiencing a slowing economy, is ruled by a dictatorial but divided Communist Party clinging to power, faces widespread public demands for the guarantee of fundamental human rights, and suffers from a seriously degraded environment.
History suggests that these problems can best be solved by a democratic government ruled by the people, not a one-party authoritarian state that resorts to violence in a crisis, as Beijing did at Tiananmen Square and is doing in Hong Kong.
Socialism’s Fatal Conceit
As we have seen from our examination of Israel, India, and the United Kingdom, the economic system that works best for the greatest number is not socialism with its central controls, utopian promises, and OPM (other people’s money), but the free-market system with its emphasis on competition and entrepreneurship. All three countries tried socialism for decades, and all three finally rejected it for the simplest of reasons—it doesn’t work.
Socialism is guilty of a
fatal conceit: It believes its system can make better decisions for the people
than they can for themselves. It is the end product of a 19th-century prophet whose
prophecies (such as the inevitable disappearance of the middle class) have been
proven wrong time and again.
According to the World Bank, more than 1 billion people have lifted themselves out of poverty in the past 25 years, “one of the greatest human achievements of our time.” Of those billion, approximately 731 million are Chinese, and 168 million Indians.
The main driver of this uplift from poverty has been the globalization of the international trading system. China owes most of its success to the trade freedom offered by the U.S. and the rest of the world.
The latest edition of Index of Economic Freedom from The Heritage Foundation confirms the global trend toward economic freedom: Economies rated “free” or “mostly free” enjoy incomes that are more than five times higher than the incomes of “repressed economies” such as those of North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba.
Israel’s socialist miracle turned out to be a mirage, India discarded socialist ideology and chose a more market-oriented path, and the United Kingdom set an example for the rest of the world with its emphasis on privatization and deregulation.
Whether we are talking about the actions of an agricultural country of 1.3 billion, or the nation that sparked the industrial revolution, or a small Middle Eastern country populated by some of the smartest people in the world, capitalism tops socialism every time.
This week on “Problematic Women,” we discuss parents in the U.K. who sued a hospital for “wrongful birth” because their son was born with Down syndrome. They claim, had they known, they would have had an abortion instead.
We discuss how prevalent aborting children diagnosed with Down syndrome is, both in Europe and the United States, and the importance of fighting for the dignity of all lives.
We also break down:
—Netflix released a miniseries titled “Unbelievable.” Based on real events, it tells the story of a woman who was raped, but those around her weren’t sure about her story. We discuss the lessons learned from the show and different ways to think about the #MeToo movement.
—Victoria’s Secret is featuring both a size 14 model and a transgender model in its recent “Love Yourself” campaign.
—Our Problematic Woman of the week is Daily Signal reporter Rachel del Guidice. We talk to her about a recent interview she did (“The True Effects of Watching Porn”) and the responses she’s received from friends and listeners.
President Trump is castigated for calling out “fake news” as “the enemy of the people.” Yet he is correct, and journalists reinforce Trump’s view on an increasingly frequent basis.
For the Washington Post, “Democracy dies in darkness” yet for the American people, their faith and trust in media is dying, not in darkness, but in the light of day, right before our eyes.
I had the recent opportunity to watch filmmaker Joel Gilbert’s latest film, The Trayvon Hoax. Joel demonstrated a long-lost art, investigative journalism, and he did it in a fun and entertaining manner. Unlike cable news gabbers who get their talking points from echo chamber left-wing distributions networks like the former JournoList, Joel examined phone records, photos, and yearbooks. He knocked on doors and actually talked to people.
Once upon a time this would be called gumshoe journalism, walking around, investigating, putting in actual effort. Modern journalists only use their thumbs, checking Twitter and reporting tweets as verified news.
Gilbert’s film, aside from debunking the Trayvon Martin hoax, demonstrated how journalism should be done, in contrast to the shoddy reporting that now passes for journalism. This hoax was relatively small in scale, including creating a false witness to testify against George Zimmerman, but the implications of this hoax were huge and continue to this day, long after the 2012 shooting.
The Trayvon hoax spawned racial strife on a scale not seen in decades. From “hands up don’t shoot,” to the Ferguson effect of police backing away from traditional policing activities, to the detriment of poor and minority neighborhoods. We were treated to Freddie Gray, Jussie Smollett, and kneeling professional athletes. Political careers were born after the Trayvon hoax including attorney Benjamin Crump and the almost-governor of Florida, Andrew Gillum, just as the Tawana Brawley hoax thrust Al Sharpton onto the national stage several decades ago.
Big media played its part in the Trayvon hoax as in NBC doctoring George Zimmerman’s 911 call to make Zimmerman appear a racist, providing a racial angle for his self-defense shooting of Trayvon Martin. CNN referred to Zimmerman as a “white Hispanic” to keep the race angle front and center. Did they ever refer to Barack Obama as “half black” given the white skin color of his mother?
Are these hoaxes accidental or deliberate? Is this sloppy reporting or an attempt to shape a narrative rather than simply report the news? I’ll report, you decide, as Fox News now says.
A few days ago, “ABC World News Tonight” aired video described as a Turkish attack in Syria. ABC News Anchor Tom Llamas said on air,
This video, right here, appearing to show Turkey’s military bombing Kurd civilians in a Syrian border town.
The Kurds, who fought alongside the U.S. against ISIS, now horrific reports of atrocities committed by Turkish-backed fighters on those very allies.
This is more of the “Orange Man Bad” filter through which virtually every news report is presented. The incompetent president is creating chaos in the Middle East by removing a handful of troops from Syria. ABC was mum when, “President Obama ignored general’s pleas to keep American military forces in Iraq.”
That last bit is hypocrisy, not a hoax, holding Democrats and Republicans to far different standards. Instead the hoax is that the video was not of the Turkish military, as reported by ABC, but instead a, “military gun shoot” at a Kentucky gun range. Doubling down, “ABC foreign correspondent Ian Pannell repeats Llamas’ claim of the footage’s authenticity.”
This isn’t a simple mistake. The video was from a 2017 YouTube posting called, “Knob Creek machine gun shoot 2016.” This was deliberate, a hoax, an attempt to further a particular narrative. Once caught, ABC will “regret the error,” yet in reality their only regret is getting caught.
There are other hoaxes which perpetuate social or economic justice causes. The Book of Matt debunked numerous falsehoods surrounding the murder of Matthew Sheppard. Honest climate scientists are calling out the hoax of catastrophic man-made global warning with research articles like this one, “No experimental evidence for the significant anthropogenic climate change.” The climate hoax is costing taxpayers untold billions in useless climate initiatives and legislation. And journalists happily play along, perpetuating the hoaxes.
Obama and his minions blamed the Benghazi embassy attack was blamed on a YouTube video and the media played along with the hoax like useful idiots. Trump’s 2016 election victory over “the smartest woman in the world” was blamed on Russian interference and collusion. This story was promoted by the media and their Democratic Party comrades endlessly for two years until Robert Mueller’s investigation reluctantly debunked what the hoaxers had been telling us daily.
Now it’s on to Ukraine, with the media creating an elaborate ruse with the help of reps Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, and Nancy Pelosi. They report Trump said things to the Ukrainian president that are contradicted by the transcript of the call and the statements of the two participants on the call. But it’s the narrative and the hoax, not the truth that matters.
Speaker Pelosi just announced no vote to authorize a Trump impeachment inquiry but the hoax will continue. Rep. Schiff’s Intelligence Committee can conveniently hold hearings behind closed doors, under the guise of “secret intelligence hearings,” exclude Republicans from the process, leak selective and misleading bits to the media, then sit back as the media perpetuates the hoax that the president is about to be impeached, that once again, “The walls are closing in on Trump” as they have been since he took the oath of office three years ago.
A few honest journalists boldly go where CNN and the New York Times are uninterested or afraid to go. It’s left to these few brave journalists — Joel Gilbert, Sara Carter, John Solomon, Brian Cates, to name a few – to do the heavy lifting of actual investigative reporting, as Joel Gilbert did in debunking the hoax of Barack Obama’s life story through his film, Dreams from my Real Father.
Instead, journalism has been replaced by fiction writing, so-called reporters parroting partisan talking points, deliberately doctoring audio and video, ignoring inconvenient facts and contradictions, all to push a political narrative. It is, to borrow a line from FBI hoaxer James Comey, their “higher calling” to thwart the will of the people in favor of their preferences as to who leads our country.
Just like Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy, modern journalism is dead. They just don’t know it yet.
Brian C Joondeph, MD, is a Denver based physician, freelance writer and occasional radio talk show host whose pieces have appeared in American Thinker, Daily Caller, and other publications. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and QuodVerum.
President Trump is castigated for calling out “fake news” as “the enemy of the people.” Yet he is correct, and journalists reinforce Trump’s view on an increasingly frequent basis.
For the Washington Post, “Democracy dies in darkness” yet for the American people, their faith and trust in media is dying, not in darkness, but in the light of day, right before our eyes.
I had the recent opportunity to watch filmmaker Joel Gilbert’s latest film, The Trayvon Hoax. Joel demonstrated a long-lost art, investigative journalism, and he did it in a fun and entertaining manner. Unlike cable news gabbers who get their talking points from echo chamber left-wing distributions networks like the former JournoList, Joel examined phone records, photos, and yearbooks. He knocked on doors and actually talked to people.
Once upon a time this would be called gumshoe journalism, walking around, investigating, putting in actual effort. Modern journalists only use their thumbs, checking Twitter and reporting tweets as verified news.
Gilbert’s film, aside from debunking the Trayvon Martin hoax, demonstrated how journalism should be done, in contrast to the shoddy reporting that now passes for journalism. This hoax was relatively small in scale, including creating a false witness to testify against George Zimmerman, but the implications of this hoax were huge and continue to this day, long after the 2012 shooting.
The Trayvon hoax spawned racial strife on a scale not seen in decades. From “hands up don’t shoot,” to the Ferguson effect of police backing away from traditional policing activities, to the detriment of poor and minority neighborhoods. We were treated to Freddie Gray, Jussie Smollett, and kneeling professional athletes. Political careers were born after the Trayvon hoax including attorney Benjamin Crump and the almost-governor of Florida, Andrew Gillum, just as the Tawana Brawley hoax thrust Al Sharpton onto the national stage several decades ago.
Big media played its part in the Trayvon hoax as in NBC doctoring George Zimmerman’s 911 call to make Zimmerman appear a racist, providing a racial angle for his self-defense shooting of Trayvon Martin. CNN referred to Zimmerman as a “white Hispanic” to keep the race angle front and center. Did they ever refer to Barack Obama as “half black” given the white skin color of his mother?
Are these hoaxes accidental or deliberate? Is this sloppy reporting or an attempt to shape a narrative rather than simply report the news? I’ll report, you decide, as Fox News now says.
A few days ago, “ABC World News Tonight” aired video described as a Turkish attack in Syria. ABC News Anchor Tom Llamas said on air,
This video, right here, appearing to show Turkey’s military bombing Kurd civilians in a Syrian border town.
The Kurds, who fought alongside the U.S. against ISIS, now horrific reports of atrocities committed by Turkish-backed fighters on those very allies.
This is more of the “Orange Man Bad” filter through which virtually every news report is presented. The incompetent president is creating chaos in the Middle East by removing a handful of troops from Syria. ABC was mum when, “President Obama ignored general’s pleas to keep American military forces in Iraq.”
That last bit is hypocrisy, not a hoax, holding Democrats and Republicans to far different standards. Instead the hoax is that the video was not of the Turkish military, as reported by ABC, but instead a, “military gun shoot” at a Kentucky gun range. Doubling down, “ABC foreign correspondent Ian Pannell repeats Llamas’ claim of the footage’s authenticity.”
This isn’t a simple mistake. The video was from a 2017 YouTube posting called, “Knob Creek machine gun shoot 2016.” This was deliberate, a hoax, an attempt to further a particular narrative. Once caught, ABC will “regret the error,” yet in reality their only regret is getting caught.
There are other hoaxes which perpetuate social or economic justice causes. The Book of Matt debunked numerous falsehoods surrounding the murder of Matthew Sheppard. Honest climate scientists are calling out the hoax of catastrophic man-made global warning with research articles like this one, “No experimental evidence for the significant anthropogenic climate change.” The climate hoax is costing taxpayers untold billions in useless climate initiatives and legislation. And journalists happily play along, perpetuating the hoaxes.
Obama and his minions blamed the Benghazi embassy attack was blamed on a YouTube video and the media played along with the hoax like useful idiots. Trump’s 2016 election victory over “the smartest woman in the world” was blamed on Russian interference and collusion. This story was promoted by the media and their Democratic Party comrades endlessly for two years until Robert Mueller’s investigation reluctantly debunked what the hoaxers had been telling us daily.
Now it’s on to Ukraine, with the media creating an elaborate ruse with the help of reps Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, and Nancy Pelosi. They report Trump said things to the Ukrainian president that are contradicted by the transcript of the call and the statements of the two participants on the call. But it’s the narrative and the hoax, not the truth that matters.
Speaker Pelosi just announced no vote to authorize a Trump impeachment inquiry but the hoax will continue. Rep. Schiff’s Intelligence Committee can conveniently hold hearings behind closed doors, under the guise of “secret intelligence hearings,” exclude Republicans from the process, leak selective and misleading bits to the media, then sit back as the media perpetuates the hoax that the president is about to be impeached, that once again, “The walls are closing in on Trump” as they have been since he took the oath of office three years ago.
A few honest journalists boldly go where CNN and the New York Times are uninterested or afraid to go. It’s left to these few brave journalists — Joel Gilbert, Sara Carter, John Solomon, Brian Cates, to name a few – to do the heavy lifting of actual investigative reporting, as Joel Gilbert did in debunking the hoax of Barack Obama’s life story through his film, Dreams from my Real Father.
Instead, journalism has been replaced by fiction writing, so-called reporters parroting partisan talking points, deliberately doctoring audio and video, ignoring inconvenient facts and contradictions, all to push a political narrative. It is, to borrow a line from FBI hoaxer James Comey, their “higher calling” to thwart the will of the people in favor of their preferences as to who leads our country.
Just like Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy, modern journalism is dead. They just don’t know it yet.
Brian C Joondeph, MD, is a Denver based physician, freelance writer and occasional radio talk show host whose pieces have appeared in American Thinker, Daily Caller, and other publications. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and QuodVerum.
Time and again in every election we see politicians promise everything, and once elected deliver very little or nothing. Beth Van Duyne is a welcome exception and her past record clearly proves it. A person of impeccable integrity, Beth has always remained loyal to the values and wishes of her constituents and has not compromised them on the altar of political expediency so widely practiced by self-promoting politicians. A devoted mother beaming with energy and the talent to get things done, Beth is indeed the kind of person the US Congress desperately needs.
Under Beth’s leadership as a Mayor of Irving, TX, the city became one of the best and safest towns in the great state of Texas. Beth Van Duyne’s achievements attracted the attention of President Trump’s administration and accepted to serve, this time, at the national level in the Department of Housing and Urban Development Office in Fort Worth.
Myor Beth Van Duyne
City of Irving Islamic Tribunal
Van Duyne’s reputation soared outside her city since February 2015, when she became aware that some Muslims intended to create a Sharia court in Irving, TX. To follow with her oath of office, she wanted to make sure if in fact, these stories were accurate.
Van Duyne went directly to the source, the Islamictribunal.org website. What she noticed was shocking. The imams at the website referred to themselves as “attorneys” and “judges” even though none of them were lawyers or practice law in the State of Texas. She noted a phone number for legal services. There was also a disclaimer at the bottom that read:
“Don’t send us any confidential material, before an attorney client relationship has been established.”
They were even charging for their services. They listed divorce cases, product liability, business, and real estate litigations as their legal specialties. Mayor Van Duyne wanted to know why anyone would subject themselves to Sharia law in the United States while everyone is protected under the U.S. Constitution! And she repeatedly noted, her biggest concern was for women were treated differently than men under Sharia law, put at a great disadvantage, and denied basic rights we are all guaranteed.
Despite a great deal of pushback and non-stop attacks from the leftist media in Texas, Beth Van Duyne, a woman of great courage managed to push the envelope off the table on Sharia’s implementation in her own U.S. city: Irving, Texas. The Mayor wasn’t aware of the extent of Sharia practiced by the Islamic Tribunal. So, she asked lawmakers at the Texas Homeland Security Forum to investigate the legality of this group in North Texas.
In a direct and powerful response, she refuted that it was authorized or approved by her office. The Islamic Tribunal was the first of its kind in the nation. Its members had begun deciding “non-criminal” cases, even though none of the tribunal members was an attorney. On her Facebook page, the mayor wrote:
“Sharia Law Court was NOT approved or enacted by the City of Irving. Recently, there have been rumors suggesting that the City of Irving has somehow condoned, approved or enacted the implementation of a Sharia Law Court in our City. Let me be clear, neither the City of Irving, our elected officials or city staff have anything to do with the decision of the mosque that has been identified as starting a Sharia Court.”
In the hope that this issue would be put to rest, the Irving City Council, headed by Mayor Van Duyne, supported a bill in Texas Legislature, HB 562, to reaffirm people would be protected from the use of foreign laws. If passed, it prohibits Texas judges or justices the use of any foreign law in any cases where there was a possibility that a person could lose his or her Constitutional rights.
Being fully prepared for the backlash from the left-wing media, the resolution was crafted without using the words, “Sharia law,” “Sharia,” “Muslim,” “Islamic,” or “religion.” It simply stated the obvious, that the United States has at the tip of its legal pyramid the Constitution, and under it a substantial body of federal, state, local laws, ordinances, resolutions, and huge volumes of case law that together have served us well since the ratification of the Constitution. “This bill does not mention, at all, Muslim, sharia law, Islam, even religion,” said Van Duyne. “It specifically talks about foreign laws not taking precedence over U.S. laws and those in the State of Texas.”
When the City of Irving came out with this resolution, they invited Muslim imams to come and support it. “When we had met them in private, we asked the members of the mosque if they would support our American laws and if they would support and follow our Texas State Statutes, and they told me in that private meeting, yes, they would,” stated Mayor Van Duyne. The Mayor sent them the Bill, but not only did she not hear back from them, but when she did, a protest group went into the town hall to protest and object to it.
Muslim groups did their level best to have the resolution fail. Fortunately, the Mayor held a hair’s-breath margin when the resolution passed by a five to four vote majority.
The Texas Senate passed a bill that year, forbidding the implementation of any foreign laws, which would adversely affect any person’s Constitutional rights. Senator Donna Campbell said that her bill doesn’t mention Sharia law at all, only guarantees that no law from “foreign courts” would be used to override American law in settling civil matters according to TheNewAmerican.com. Unfortunately, the Bill failed to pass in the House.
On that day, Mayor Beth Van Duyne stood tall and strong to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States for you, me and all Americans.
Tarrant County, the State of Texas and the US Congress desperately need Beth Van Duyne, an effective leader who fights for American values.
Time and again in every election we see politicians promise everything, and once elected deliver very little or nothing. Beth Van Duyne is a welcome exception and her past record clearly proves it. A person of impeccable integrity, Beth has always remained loyal to the values and wishes of her constituents and has not compromised them on the altar of political expediency so widely practiced by self-promoting politicians. A devoted mother beaming with energy and the talent to get things done, Beth is indeed the kind of person the US Congress desperately needs.
Under Beth’s leadership as a Mayor of Irving, TX, the city became one of the best and safest towns in the great state of Texas. Beth Van Duyne’s achievements attracted the attention of President Trump’s administration and accepted to serve, this time, at the national level in the Department of Housing and Urban Development Office in Fort Worth.
Myor Beth Van Duyne
City of Irving Islamic Tribunal
Van Duyne’s reputation soared outside her city since February 2015, when she became aware that some Muslims intended to create a Sharia court in Irving, TX. To follow with her oath of office, she wanted to make sure if in fact, these stories were accurate.
Van Duyne went directly to the source, the Islamictribunal.org website. What she noticed was shocking. The imams at the website referred to themselves as “attorneys” and “judges” even though none of them were lawyers or practice law in the State of Texas. She noted a phone number for legal services. There was also a disclaimer at the bottom that read:
“Don’t send us any confidential material, before an attorney client relationship has been established.”
They were even charging for their services. They listed divorce cases, product liability, business, and real estate litigations as their legal specialties. Mayor Van Duyne wanted to know why anyone would subject themselves to Sharia law in the United States while everyone is protected under the U.S. Constitution! And she repeatedly noted, her biggest concern was for women were treated differently than men under Sharia law, put at a great disadvantage, and denied basic rights we are all guaranteed.
Despite a great deal of pushback and non-stop attacks from the leftist media in Texas, Beth Van Duyne, a woman of great courage managed to push the envelope off the table on Sharia’s implementation in her own U.S. city: Irving, Texas. The Mayor wasn’t aware of the extent of Sharia practiced by the Islamic Tribunal. So, she asked lawmakers at the Texas Homeland Security Forum to investigate the legality of this group in North Texas.
In a direct and powerful response, she refuted that it was authorized or approved by her office. The Islamic Tribunal was the first of its kind in the nation. Its members had begun deciding “non-criminal” cases, even though none of the tribunal members was an attorney. On her Facebook page, the mayor wrote:
“Sharia Law Court was NOT approved or enacted by the City of Irving. Recently, there have been rumors suggesting that the City of Irving has somehow condoned, approved or enacted the implementation of a Sharia Law Court in our City. Let me be clear, neither the City of Irving, our elected officials or city staff have anything to do with the decision of the mosque that has been identified as starting a Sharia Court.”
In the hope that this issue would be put to rest, the Irving City Council, headed by Mayor Van Duyne, supported a bill in Texas Legislature, HB 562, to reaffirm people would be protected from the use of foreign laws. If passed, it prohibits Texas judges or justices the use of any foreign law in any cases where there was a possibility that a person could lose his or her Constitutional rights.
Being fully prepared for the backlash from the left-wing media, the resolution was crafted without using the words, “Sharia law,” “Sharia,” “Muslim,” “Islamic,” or “religion.” It simply stated the obvious, that the United States has at the tip of its legal pyramid the Constitution, and under it a substantial body of federal, state, local laws, ordinances, resolutions, and huge volumes of case law that together have served us well since the ratification of the Constitution. “This bill does not mention, at all, Muslim, sharia law, Islam, even religion,” said Van Duyne. “It specifically talks about foreign laws not taking precedence over U.S. laws and those in the State of Texas.”
When the City of Irving came out with this resolution, they invited Muslim imams to come and support it. “When we had met them in private, we asked the members of the mosque if they would support our American laws and if they would support and follow our Texas State Statutes, and they told me in that private meeting, yes, they would,” stated Mayor Van Duyne. The Mayor sent them the Bill, but not only did she not hear back from them, but when she did, a protest group went into the town hall to protest and object to it.
Muslim groups did their level best to have the resolution fail. Fortunately, the Mayor held a hair’s-breath margin when the resolution passed by a five to four vote majority.
The Texas Senate passed a bill that year, forbidding the implementation of any foreign laws, which would adversely affect any person’s Constitutional rights. Senator Donna Campbell said that her bill doesn’t mention Sharia law at all, only guarantees that no law from “foreign courts” would be used to override American law in settling civil matters according to TheNewAmerican.com. Unfortunately, the Bill failed to pass in the House.
On that day, Mayor Beth Van Duyne stood tall and strong to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States for you, me and all Americans.
Tarrant County, the State of Texas and the US Congress desperately need Beth Van Duyne, an effective leader who fights for American values.
