Jon Voight Vows to Stand Against Socialism with Gold Star Moms at July 4 ‘Rally for Freedom’

Veteran actor Jon Voight joined the Fox & Friends couch Friday morning and spoke about his intention to attend the pro-freedom, anti-socialist “Rally for Freedom” alongside Gold Star moms at the U.S. Capitol lawn July 4.

Although the Democrat Party appears to be moving in the direction of socialism, not everyone in Hollywood is jumping on board. Actor Jon Voight, an outspoken conservative, talked about his intention to stand alongside Gold Star families at a freedom rally next week. He said he often looks for something to do on patriotic holidays and said Moms for America’s invitation answered his prayer.

“There’s no greater honor than to stand with these moms who have lost their loved ones who sacrificed for our country, for our freedoms, and who love and honor and respect our nation,” he said while sitting next to Gold Star mom Karen Vaughn.

Her son, a Navy SEAL named Aaron Carson, lost his life in 2011.

“He [Trump] is rebuilding the nation my son gave his life for. I feel like our country was rescued in November of 2016 from I don’t even know what, and I will fight with my last breath to get him re-elected in 2020,” she said.

“If they knew anything about the Second World War, they’d know that socialism is a disaster It’s never produced anything anywhere in the world. It’s an economic sinkhole, but it also produces nothing but misery and violence,” Voight added.

The actor was also asked to respond to a snarky tweet from left-wing actress turned activist Alyssa Milano.

“Now I understand why Republicans like to discredit actors and our political views,” she said in a response to a quote showing Voight praising President Trump.

“I have sympathy for people that are in ignorance. It doesn’t scare me. Ignorance doesn’t scare me. I was like that myself. I just root for everybody to come to the truth,” Voight said.

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Bernie Doubles Down on Bleeding Middle Class Dry: ‘Yes, They Will Pay More in Taxes’

This isn’t going to end well — for somebody. Just as Thursday’s Democratic primary debate was getting started, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders made a declaration that should have had all adult Americans reaching for their wallets. And Democrats of a certain age getting very scary flashbacks from the past. Under questioning from NBC’s Savannah Guthrie,…

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Illegals Crossing the Rio Grande Now Have to Contend with Massive Prehistoric Beast

Contrary to liberal talking points, conservatives understand the plight of migrants attempting to cross the southern border. We understand that parents in Central America and Mexico often can’t provide their children the life they want for them, so they risk it all by trekking hundreds or thousands of miles in an attempt to reach the…

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New Report Accuses Google of Election Interference To Stop Trump

Google intends to intervene in the 2020 presidential election in an effort to thwart President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, according to a new report from Project Veritas.

The accusation comes after one of Google’s executives, Jen Gennai, was recorded admitting that Google was focused on “never letting somebody like Donald Trump come to power again.”

Gennai said that Google was “training our algorithms, like, if 2016 happened again, would we have, would the outcome be different?”

The Project Veritas report claims Google’s efforts against President Trump could violate the Federal Election Campaign Act.

Specifically, the report says, “As an incorporated entity, Google is forbidden under the FECA to use resources to ‘never let [] somebody like Donald Trump [to] come to power again.’

TRENDING: Hours After Trump Jr. Exposes Google’s 2020 Election Plan, YouTube Deletes Video… But Now We’ve Got It

“It is similarly forbidden to promote candidates it would favor. Using its massive resources to alter search results, impact electoral internet traffic, or otherwise attempt to prevent a candidate from winning an election are all illegal acts when done by corporate actors.”

Because FECA prohibits corporations from making in-kind contributions to support or oppose a candidate for office, Google “is forbidden under the FECA to use resources” in this way.

Benjamin Barr, a partner with Statecraft Law who drafted the report for Project Veritas, listed examples of past violations of FECA.

“[I]t would be illegal for a corporation to give free private jet transportation to favored candidates, but not to others,” Barr wrote.

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“Any use of corporate resources to advance or hinder candidates online is equally suspect and should be evaluated. This should be a grave concern for the Department of Justice and the Federal Election Commission.”

The report’s conclusion is printed in clear and concerning language:

“Through Project Veritas’s investigative reporting, it has found:

  • Big tech companies are likely using corporate resources to influence elections.
  • Big tech and social media companies hide behind the grant of congressional immunityunder Section 230 to manipulate speech and search queries.
  • Free speech is being hindered, not advanced, by these trends.”

In a touch of literary flair, Barr closes the report with a quote from George Orwell who said that if “liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

RELATED: This Could Be the Most Damning Google Leak Yet: Internal ‘Resist’ Guide Goes Public

Project Veritas sent Statecraft’s report to 11 members of Congress including Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Josh Hawley.

The Western Journal reached out to Google for comment, but did not hear back in time for publication of this article.

Read the full letter here.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

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Andrew Sullivan: 2020 Dems are offering a great deal…to people who aren’t Americans

The usual caveat up front, i.e. I can’t believe I’m agreeing with Andrew Sullivan. But his piece on immigration and the 2020 candidates restates a lot of the points I’ve tried to make in the last few weeks about this topic. The Democratic Party has long winked at illegal immigration but these days it is openly advocating for open borders. There’s a fantastic deal being offered to millions of people around the world: If you can get here and don’t commit a felony, you can stay indefinitely.

Since 2014, there has been a 240 percent increase in asylum cases. As Fareed Zakaria has pointed out, the number of asylum cases from Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela has soared at the same time as the crime rate in those countries was being cut in half…

Last month alone, 144,000 people were detained at the border making an asylum claim. This year, about a million Central Americans will have relocated to the U.S. on those grounds. To add to this, a big majority of the candidates in the Democratic debates also want to remove the grounds for detention at all, by repealing the 1929 law that made illegal entry a criminal offense and turning it into a civil one. And almost all of them said that if illegal immigrants do not commit a crime once they’re in the U.S., they should be allowed to become citizens.

How, I ask, is that not practically open borders? The answer I usually get is that all these millions will have to, at some point, go to court hearings and have their asylum cases adjudicated. The trouble with that argument is that only 44 percent actually turn up for their hearings; and those who do show up and whose claims nonetheless fail can simply walk out of the court and know they probably won’t be deported in the foreseeable future.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement forcibly removed 256,086 people in 2018, 57 percent of whom had committed crimes since they arrived in the U.S. So that’s an annual removal rate of 2 percent of the total undocumented population of around 12 million. That means that for 98 percent of undocumented aliens, in any given year, no consequences will follow for crossing the border without papers. At the debates this week, many Democratic candidates argued that the 43 percent of deportees who had no criminal record in America should not have been expelled at all and been put instead on a path to citizenship. So that would reduce the annual removal rate of illegal immigrants to a little more than 1 percent per year. In terms of enforcement of the immigration laws, this is a joke. It renders the distinction between a citizen and a noncitizen close to meaningless.

Again, what Democrats want are defacto open borders. As Sullivan puts it, “This amounts to an open invitation to anyone on the planet to just show up and cross the border. The worst that can happen is you get denied asylum by a judge, in which case you can just disappear and there’s a 1 percent chance that you’ll be caught in a given year.” If you want to know why there’s a surge at the border it’s not just because things are bad in Central America. It’s because we’re giving away permanent residence, free school, and maybe soon free health care, etc. to anyone who arrives.

As I pointed out yesterday, that’s why Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez left El Salvador and why he tried to cross the Rio Grande with his toddler daughter. He was an economic migrant who wanted a better life and planned to use our broken immigration system to get it.

Sullivan believes the Democrats stance on immigration is “political suicide.” He may be right but I’m not so sure. I don’t think most Americans agree with open borders. That’s still a fringe position. But as long as the left can label opposition to open borders racist, a lot of people will hesitate to speak up in opposition to it. And as long as the media lets Dems talk as if there is only upside to illegal immigration, most people won’t ever hear about what all this generosity is costing them.

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Lawsuit: Google Obtained ‘Sensitive and Intimate’ Medical Records

A new lawsuit alleges that information on shared medical records could be combined with Google’s location data to reveal identifying information about patients.

CNET reports that a lawsuit has been filed against the University of Chicago Medical Center and tech giant Google over a partnership between the two groups. The lawsuit, which was filed on Wednesday in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois, alleges that too much personal information of patients was revealed as a result of the alliance between the university and the Masters of the Universe.

The lawsuit claims that “the personal medical information obtained by Google is the most sensitive and intimate information in an individual’s life, and its unauthorized disclosure is far more damaging to an individual’s privacy” than leaked credit card or social security numbers that are often targeted in hacking attempts.

The project developed by Google and the University used A.I. to predict medical events including how long a patient could be hospitalized for and whether or not their health is deteriorating. The lawsuit alleges that the inclusion of certain dates violates HIPAA which requires that hospitals hide personal information of patients. The lawsuit claims that the dates, when combined with geolocation that Google collects from apps such as Waze and Maps, could be used to identify when individuals entered or exited the university’s hospital.

Google and the University of Chicago defended the project, with a Google spokesperson stating: “We believe our health care research could help save lives in the future, which is why we take privacy seriously and follow all relevant rules and regulations in our handling of health data.”

A spokesperson for the University of Chicago stated: “The University of Chicago Medical Center has complied with the laws and regulations applicable to patient privacy. The Medical Center is committed to providing excellent patient care and to protecting patient privacy.”

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com

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The List: Every Democrat Makes Extreme Statements on Debate Stage

Both debates displayed the left’s commitment to driving the party even further to the extreme left in what appears to be a desperate attempt to satisfy the Democrat Party’s new crop of “woke” voters.

Candidates hit on a range of issues and pivoted from their traditional methods of trying to appear moderate, instead embracing radical policies like Medicare for All, taxpayer-funded abortion, and marginal tax rates 70 percent and beyond.

Here is a compilation of some of the most extreme statements made by each candidate both nights.

1. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA): “I’m with Bernie on Medicare for All.”

NBC moderator Lester Holt asked the stage of candidates if they supported abolishing private insurance altogether. Only two raised their hands – Warren and de Blasio. Warren argued that Medicare for All would solve a range of issues, from affordability to access to care, but provided little to no logistical details.

2. Julián Castro (D): “I don’t believe only in reproductive freedom, I believe in reproductive justice. And, you know, what that means is that just because a woman — or let’s also not forget someone in the trans community, a trans female, is poor, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have the right to exercise that right to choose. And so I absolutely would cover the right to have an abortion.”

Castro’s answer was in response to a question about his government health care option covering abortion. Castro said it would and pivoted to a conversation about trans-females having the “right to choose.” His point remains unclear, as trans-females are incapable of becoming pregnant, making their right to “choose” nonsensical, at best.

3. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ): “If you need a license to drive a car, you should need a license to buy and own a firearm.”

Booker temporarily dodged a hypothetical question on Republicans confirming his court nominees, instead addressing a previous question on gun violence.

“In states like Connecticut that did that, they saw 40 percent drops in gun violence and 15 percent drops in suicides,” he claimed. “We need to start having bold agendas on guns.”

4. Mayor Bill de Blasio (D): “I want to make it clear. This is supposed to be the party of working people. Yes, we are supposed to be for 70 percent tax rate on the wealthy. Yes, we are supposed to be for free college, free public college for young people. We are supposed to break up big corporations when they are not serving our democracy.”

The NYC mayor’s remarks were in response to a question about addressing “income inequality.” Mayor de Blasio used his experience governing New York to preview his lofty plans, which include upping marginal tax rates to astronomical levels and making “free” college a reality.

5. Gov. Jay Inslee (D): “There is no reason for the detention and separation. They should be released pending hearings and have a hearing and the law should be followed. That’s what should happen.”

Savannah Guthrie asked candidates what they would do with the illegal immigrant families residing in the U.S. on day one. Inslee also bragged about his state’s law that “prevents local law enforcement from being turned into mini-ICE agents.”

6. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI): “This president and his chickenhawk cabinet have led us to the brink of war with Iran.”

Holt asked Gabbard about her previous promise to revive the Iran Deal. While she admitted serious flaws within the deal, she said President Trump and his cabinet are “creating a situation that just a spark would light off a war with Iran,” adding that Trump needs to “get back into the Iran nuclear deal and swallow his pride.”

7. Beto O’Rourke (D): “But unfortunately, under this administration, President Trump has alienated our allies and alliances. He’s diminished our standing in the world and he’s made us weaker as a country, less able to confront challenges, whether it’s Iran, North Korea, or Vladimir Putin and Russia, who attacked and invaded our democracy in 2016, and who President Trump has offered an invitation to do the same.”

O’Rourke claimed Putin “attacked and invaded our democracy” as a response to a question about the U.S. and its role of combating genocide and crimes against humanity. He later referred to the attack as an “invasion democracy.”

8. Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH):  “I think it’s abhorrent — we’re talking about this father who got killed with his daughter — and the issue here with the way they are being treated is if you go to Guantanamo Bay, there are terrorists being held that get better health care than those kids that tried to cross the border into the United States. That needs to stop.”

Ryan’s answer was in response to a question about the nature of crossing the border illegally.

“Should it be a crime to illegally cross the border? Or should it be a civil offense only?” Guthrie asked.

Ryan added that “there are other provisions in the law that will allow you to prosecute people for coming over here if they’re dealing drugs and other things.”

9. John Delaney (D): “All the economists agree that a carbon pricing mechanism works. You just have to do it right.”

Chuck Todd asked candidates about their climate change plans and the prospect of taxing carbon.

“If pricing carbon is just politically impossible, how do we pay for climate mitigation?” he asked. Delaney said his plan would “put a price on carbon” and “give a dividend back to the American people.”

10. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN): “And my plan would be to, first of all, make community college free and make sure that everyone else besides that top percentile gets help with their education.”

Guthrie asked Klobuchar about her past remarks, in which the Minnesota senator said she would make college free if she were “a magic genie.” She did not completely dismiss the idea of free college during the debate but added, “I do get concerned about paying for college for rich kids.”

11. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA): “You asked before what is the greatest national security threat to the United States? It’s Donald Trump.”

During Thursday night’s debate, Todd asked Harris about climate change, which she said “represents an existential threat to us as a species.” She connected it to Trump and referenced his denial before making the declaration.

12. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT): “People who have health care under Medicare-for-all will have no premiums, no deductibles, no co-payments, no out-of-pocket expenses. Yes, they will pay more in taxes, but less in health care for what they get.”

Guthrie asked Sanders if his administration would raise taxes on middle-class Americans, and he eventually admitted that it would. He attempted to spin it as an incredible deal though.

13. Joe Biden (D):  “I’m also the only guy that got assault weapons banned, and the number of clips in a gun banned. And so, folks, look, and I would buy back those weapons. We already started talking about that. We tried to get it done. I think it can be done. And it should be demanded that we do it.”

Biden bragged about his ambitious plans to tread on the Second Amendment, adding that gun buybacks are a “good expenditure of money.”

14. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY): “Women’s reproductive rights are under assault by President Trump and the Republican Party.”

Gillibrand promised to make “women’s reproductive rights” one of her top priorities in the event that she makes it to the White House. She described herself as the “fiercest advocate for women’s reproductive freedom for over a decade.”

15. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA): “But I’m the only candidate on this stage calling for a ban and buyback of every single assault weapon in America.”

Swalwell declared his gun platform the strongest of all the candidates’ and claimed that their plans “would all leave 15 million assault weapons in our communities.”

16. Marianne Williamson (D): “What Donald Trump has done to these children — and it’s not just in Colorado — Governor, you’re right, it is kidnapping, and it’s extremely important for us to realize that. If you forcibly take a child from their parents’ arms, you are kidnapping them.”

Not only did Williamson accuse Trump of “kidnapping” children, she also said that the administration is inflicting them with trauma and abusing them.

“And if you take a lot of children and you put them in a detainment center, that’s inflicting chronic trauma upon them. That’s called child abuse. This is collective child abuse,” she added.

17. Andrew Yang (D): “That’s right.”

While the quote does not sound extreme on its own, it is in response to the following moderator statement: “Mr. Yang, your — your signature policy is to give every adult in the United States $1,000 a month, no questions asked.”

He later added:

I would pass a $1,000 freedom dividend for every American adult starting at age 18, which would speed us up on climate change, because if you get the boot off of people’s throats, they’ll focus on climate change much more clearly.

18. Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D): “Well, the reality is we need to begin adapting right away, but we also can’t skip a beat on preventing climate change from getting even worse. It’s why we need aggressive and ambitious measures. It’s why we need to do a carbon tax and dividend.”

Buttigieg confirmed that a carbon tax is part of his exhaustive list of policy proposals.

19. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO): “When I — when I — when I see these kids at the border, I see my mom, because I know she sees herself, because she was separated from her parents for years during the Holocaust in Poland.”

Bennet essentially compared children at the southern border to his mother who was separated from her parents during the Holocaust.

20. John Hickenlooper (D):  “I recognize that, within 10 or 12 years of actually, you know, suffering irreversible damage, but, you know, guaranteeing everybody a government job is not going to get us there.”

Hickenlooper happily toed the party line on the time frame on climate change, although he added that socialism is “not the solution.”

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Democratic socialism Newspeak

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders unveiled his vision of “democratic socialism” during a recent speech at George Washington University. Unfortunately, he did more to confuse the meaning of democratic socialism than to clarify it. 

The words capitalism and socialism have meanings, so let’s get things clear up front. Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of property coordinated through voluntary exchange in markets. 

Socialism is an economic system that abolishes private property in the means of production — the land, capital, and labor used to make everything — and replaces it with some form of collective ownership. Whenever socialism has been implemented at a national level, collective ownership in practice has meant state ownership and government plans have replaced markets as the primary mechanism to coordinate economic activity. 

Capitalism and socialism can be thought of as two poles of a spectrum.  Some countries are more capitalistic, and some are more socialistic, but all fall somewhere between these two poles. This is where Sanders starts mucking things up. 

He claims that “unfettered capitalism” is causing economic problems in United States. The reality is that capitalism in the United States is far from “unfettered.” The Economic Freedom of the World Annual Report is the best measure of where on the socialism-capitalism spectrum a country lies. In the most recent rankings the United States scored an 8.03 out of a possible 10 points, and even a 10-point score would fall short of “unfettered.” 

However, this score does rank the United States the sixth most capitalist in the world. The five countries ahead of us — Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Ireland — are all pretty nice places. This fits with research that overwhelmingly finds that greater economic freedom (i.e., capitalism) produces good socioeconomic results. 

Meanwhile, Sanders contrasts his democratic socialism with the “movement toward oligarchy” which he conflates with unfettered capitalism. The problem is that none of the six authoritarian regimes he calls out — Russia (87th), China (107th), Saudi Arabia (102nd), the Philippines (49th), Brazil (144th), Hungary (59th) — is close to the capitalist end of the spectrum.   

More disturbingly, he leaves socialist countries off of his list of authoritarian regimes. Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela explicitly identify as socialist and come closest in the world today to practicing real socialism. The governments in these countries own and/or control much of the means of production and attempt to direct and plan their economies. 

Sanders stated that he faces attacks “from those who attempt to use the word socialism as a slur.” But it is not “red-baiting” to recognize that socialism means a particular form of economic organization and that those authoritarian countries come closest to using that form of organization. I visited them while researching a new book, and they are all economic disasters as well as authoritarian nightmares. It’s incumbent on Sanders to recognize these countries as socialist and explain how his socialism would differ. 

So does Sanders want real socialism? The closest he got to specifics was to argue that his democratic socialism would entail an “economic bill of rights,” which would include the right to a decent job that pays a living wage, quality health care, a complete education, affordable housing, a clean environment, and a secure retirement. 

But listing aspirations tells us nothing about how he would achieve them. Based on his voting record and advocacy, his program would likely involve massive new interventions that would curtail our economic freedoms and place greater reliance on government planners. 

Would those interventions be enough to label them socialist? They would likely make the United States less capitalistic than the Nordic countries that are often labeled democratic socialist. Yet those countries – Denmark (16th), Norway (25th), Sweden (43rd) – all rank high in economic freedom, so they likely don’t represent the right standard. Whatever the answer to my question, a national debate would be more productive if both Sanders and his critics were clearer on the definition of socialism and on whether his policies are, or aren’t, socialist. 

Benjamin Powell is a senior fellow at the Independent Institute, director of the Free Market Institute, a professor of economics at Texas Tech University, and co-author of the forthcoming book Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way through the Unfree World.

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders unveiled his vision of “democratic socialism” during a recent speech at George Washington University. Unfortunately, he did more to confuse the meaning of democratic socialism than to clarify it. 

The words capitalism and socialism have meanings, so let’s get things clear up front. Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of property coordinated through voluntary exchange in markets. 

Socialism is an economic system that abolishes private property in the means of production — the land, capital, and labor used to make everything — and replaces it with some form of collective ownership. Whenever socialism has been implemented at a national level, collective ownership in practice has meant state ownership and government plans have replaced markets as the primary mechanism to coordinate economic activity. 

Capitalism and socialism can be thought of as two poles of a spectrum.  Some countries are more capitalistic, and some are more socialistic, but all fall somewhere between these two poles. This is where Sanders starts mucking things up. 

He claims that “unfettered capitalism” is causing economic problems in United States. The reality is that capitalism in the United States is far from “unfettered.” The Economic Freedom of the World Annual Report is the best measure of where on the socialism-capitalism spectrum a country lies. In the most recent rankings the United States scored an 8.03 out of a possible 10 points, and even a 10-point score would fall short of “unfettered.” 

However, this score does rank the United States the sixth most capitalist in the world. The five countries ahead of us — Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Ireland — are all pretty nice places. This fits with research that overwhelmingly finds that greater economic freedom (i.e., capitalism) produces good socioeconomic results. 

Meanwhile, Sanders contrasts his democratic socialism with the “movement toward oligarchy” which he conflates with unfettered capitalism. The problem is that none of the six authoritarian regimes he calls out — Russia (87th), China (107th), Saudi Arabia (102nd), the Philippines (49th), Brazil (144th), Hungary (59th) — is close to the capitalist end of the spectrum.   

More disturbingly, he leaves socialist countries off of his list of authoritarian regimes. Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela explicitly identify as socialist and come closest in the world today to practicing real socialism. The governments in these countries own and/or control much of the means of production and attempt to direct and plan their economies. 

Sanders stated that he faces attacks “from those who attempt to use the word socialism as a slur.” But it is not “red-baiting” to recognize that socialism means a particular form of economic organization and that those authoritarian countries come closest to using that form of organization. I visited them while researching a new book, and they are all economic disasters as well as authoritarian nightmares. It’s incumbent on Sanders to recognize these countries as socialist and explain how his socialism would differ. 

So does Sanders want real socialism? The closest he got to specifics was to argue that his democratic socialism would entail an “economic bill of rights,” which would include the right to a decent job that pays a living wage, quality health care, a complete education, affordable housing, a clean environment, and a secure retirement. 

But listing aspirations tells us nothing about how he would achieve them. Based on his voting record and advocacy, his program would likely involve massive new interventions that would curtail our economic freedoms and place greater reliance on government planners. 

Would those interventions be enough to label them socialist? They would likely make the United States less capitalistic than the Nordic countries that are often labeled democratic socialist. Yet those countries – Denmark (16th), Norway (25th), Sweden (43rd) – all rank high in economic freedom, so they likely don’t represent the right standard. Whatever the answer to my question, a national debate would be more productive if both Sanders and his critics were clearer on the definition of socialism and on whether his policies are, or aren’t, socialist. 

Benjamin Powell is a senior fellow at the Independent Institute, director of the Free Market Institute, a professor of economics at Texas Tech University, and co-author of the forthcoming book Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way through the Unfree World.

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Islam, Terrorism, and Censorship

In his newest book, Paul Cliteur, author and jurisprudence professor at Leiden University, examines a largely forgotten 1987 German television comedy skit that sparked Muslim protests. Cliteur asserts that the incident, involving Dutch comedian Rudi Carrell, became the forerunner for other protests, many of them deadly violent, that now characterize the ongoing conflict between Islamic theoterrorism and Western free speech. In Theoterrorism v. Freedom of Speech:  From Incident to Precedent (Amsterdam University Press, 2019), Cliteur calls the Carrell incident a turning point in global politics. It made the West conclude that offending Islam was a global capital offense and it brought about the start of a precipitous decline in Western civil liberties. 

Born in the Netherlands, Carrell began appearing on German television in the mid-1960s, ultimately attracting 20 million viewers. In 1987, eight years after the Ayatollah Khomeini established an anti-Western theocracy in Iran and instituted strict Islamic sharia, Carrell depicted women throwing their underwear at Khomeini’s feet. The sketch poked fun at the Ayatollah’s edict forbidding Iranian women to show their hair or body shape.

After the show aired, an Iranian ambassador complained to the German government that Muslims “all over the world” had hurt feelings. Iranian consulates in West Berlin and Hamburg closed. A Frankfurt-to-Tehran flight was delayed for six hours while the ground crew, under Tehran’s command, protested. Iran expelled two West German diplomats and Iranian students demanded an apology during a government-incited protest at the West German Embassy. Carrell received death threats and required police protection.  

The German Foreign Ministry apologized for Carrell’s insensitivity but restated the German government’s commitment to freedom of the press and artistic expression. The entertainer feared for his life and issued a public apology, saying he hadn’t meant to “offend the feelings of believers.”  He also expressed regret to the Iranian ambassador.

The Carrell broadcast also impacted the Netherlands. Eight days after the German program, Dutch radio scheduled a rebroadcast. Minutes before it began, the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs asked the broadcaster to reconsider, even though shutting down the program violated Dutch laws guaranteeing freedom of the press from government interference. The Dutch Minister was concerned a rebroadcast would cause repercussions, especially for Dutch citizens living in Tehran after the Dutch embassy had said embassy workers were at risk.

In his comprehensive analysis of the incident, Cliteur examines the impact of appeasing Iran’s theocratic dictatorship. He asserts it validated the assumption that insulting the Iranian regime was an insult to all Islam and was, in effect, a capitulation to sharia blasphemy laws. Cliteur asks if appeasing Muslim sensitivities and bowing to threats set a precedent for other nations to follow, thereby altering culturally acceptable norms of Western behavior.

“What is the appropriate response when a foreign power threatens violence to one of your citizens when nothing has been done to violate national law or when the event is protected by national law?,” Cliteur writes. Are national sovereignty, civil liberties, free speech, and the safety of citizens within the borders of threatened nations undermined, Cliteur asks? In the Carrell case, a fanatical religious leader essentially set TV programming standards for a free nation in which freedom of the press is essential to democracy. A foreign power issued threats, causing a faraway democracy to willingly disavow its own constitution.

Cliteur then examines other incidents. In 2004, Theo Van Gogh, an Islamic critic since 9/11, and Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim who denounced Islam’s anti-feminist doctrine, co-produced a film exposing Islam’s subjugation of women. The film, which depicted a veiled actress on whose naked body verses from the Koran were painted, drew praise and anger. A few months later, Van Gogh was shot to death and his body left with messages denouncing Hirsi Ali, Jews, and Western democracies.

The murder sent a clear message to Europeans that mocking the prophet and criticizing Islam was a death penalty offense. Did Van Gogh’s assassination reveal the true nature of jihadist ideology or did Van Gogh cause his death by coarsely criticizing a religion? According to Cliteur, these questions after Van Gogh’s murder revealed a cleavage in Dutch society mirrored in other western European countries.

Cliteur also analyzes controversial cartoons of Mohammed published in Jyllands-Posten in 2005. The publisher wanted to advance the debate about criticism of Islam and self-censorship. When only 12 out of 42 cartoonists queried by the publisher agreed to depict Mohammed, it proved that cartoonists engaged in self-censorship. The subsequent destruction of property and deaths of over 200 people after the cartoons’ publication clearly demonstrated the need for such concern. It also ironically supported the idea that so offended Muslims: that Islam is violent and related to terrorism. Although some critics rebuked the cartoons as a “senseless provocation” like shouting “fire” in a crowded theater, Cliteur writes that Islam is in fact a real “fire” and that people needed to be warned.

The author also examines in depth what was considered a supreme test of the commitment of western democracies to free speech: the 1988 publication of Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses. Khomeini issued a fatwa that included a $1.5 million reward for killing the author. The book was banned in India, South Africa, Venezuela, and eight other countries.  Protestors burned the book in England and the publisher, Penguin, was petitioned to cease publication. Despite Muslim demands, the British government announced that blasphemy laws would not be changed. Rushdie went into hiding, eventually issuing an apology that was rejected with his death sentence reconfirmed.  Massive rioting took place in Bombay, demonstrations occurred in New York City, two Berkeley bookstores were firebombed and 50,000 Muslims protested in London. 

The Rushdie incident illustrated the contradiction between secular constitutions and Islamic blasphemy laws, Cliteur says. The author maintains that eliminating offensiveness in a free society is not possible and asks, if a religion can be offended, then how about a philosophy, a political ideology or a scientific theory?  He also asks that if respect is required for all religions, even cults and satanic beliefs, is it legitimate to discriminate? 

He astutely observes that Rushdie and his work would not have been criticized if a fatwa hadn’t been issued.  Cliteur asserts that Rushdie’s critics, primarily multiculturalists, rejected The Satanic Verses based on the interpretations and feelings of others. Many critics denounced Rushdie for offending Muslims and failing to consider their response, mistakes that justified the call to violence. They viewed consciousness raising and critical discussion of religious beliefs as misguided and felt that Western liberal thinkers needed to “learn to reach out more” and be less “self-satisfied.”  They focused on understanding the terrorists and not the cartoonists, novelists and artists threatened by religious zealots. 

The author asks if by calling for “respect for Muslims,” multiculturalists were, in fact, condoning Islamic violence. Furthermore, the novel’s publication was completely legitimate under the legal system where Rushdie resided.  Was it fair for him to be punished under the laws of an unknown and foreign legal system by a self-appointed judge with no respect for national sovereignty?

Common to all incidents cited by the author in Theoterrorism is that “Islamophobia” accusations and retaliation threats can be instruments of hostage-taking of entire populations, spreading fear among targeted citizens, entire societies and governments.  They impose Islamic blasphemy laws or sharia on non-Muslim societies, democracies that honor citizen rights to free expression without censorship or restraint. Cliteur wonders if the careers of cartoonists and political satirists could end as a result of Muslim appeasement. A fatwa of unknown duration creates fear everywhere when people realize they lack government protection in their own lands under their own laws. Can hurt feelings by any group be a precondition to undermine core values of free speech, freedom of conscience and freedom of religion by democratic societies?  If so, the creep of sharia law will surely annihilate these western values.

In his newest book, Paul Cliteur, author and jurisprudence professor at Leiden University, examines a largely forgotten 1987 German television comedy skit that sparked Muslim protests. Cliteur asserts that the incident, involving Dutch comedian Rudi Carrell, became the forerunner for other protests, many of them deadly violent, that now characterize the ongoing conflict between Islamic theoterrorism and Western free speech. In Theoterrorism v. Freedom of Speech:  From Incident to Precedent (Amsterdam University Press, 2019), Cliteur calls the Carrell incident a turning point in global politics. It made the West conclude that offending Islam was a global capital offense and it brought about the start of a precipitous decline in Western civil liberties. 

Born in the Netherlands, Carrell began appearing on German television in the mid-1960s, ultimately attracting 20 million viewers. In 1987, eight years after the Ayatollah Khomeini established an anti-Western theocracy in Iran and instituted strict Islamic sharia, Carrell depicted women throwing their underwear at Khomeini’s feet. The sketch poked fun at the Ayatollah’s edict forbidding Iranian women to show their hair or body shape.

After the show aired, an Iranian ambassador complained to the German government that Muslims “all over the world” had hurt feelings. Iranian consulates in West Berlin and Hamburg closed. A Frankfurt-to-Tehran flight was delayed for six hours while the ground crew, under Tehran’s command, protested. Iran expelled two West German diplomats and Iranian students demanded an apology during a government-incited protest at the West German Embassy. Carrell received death threats and required police protection.  

The German Foreign Ministry apologized for Carrell’s insensitivity but restated the German government’s commitment to freedom of the press and artistic expression. The entertainer feared for his life and issued a public apology, saying he hadn’t meant to “offend the feelings of believers.”  He also expressed regret to the Iranian ambassador.

The Carrell broadcast also impacted the Netherlands. Eight days after the German program, Dutch radio scheduled a rebroadcast. Minutes before it began, the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs asked the broadcaster to reconsider, even though shutting down the program violated Dutch laws guaranteeing freedom of the press from government interference. The Dutch Minister was concerned a rebroadcast would cause repercussions, especially for Dutch citizens living in Tehran after the Dutch embassy had said embassy workers were at risk.

In his comprehensive analysis of the incident, Cliteur examines the impact of appeasing Iran’s theocratic dictatorship. He asserts it validated the assumption that insulting the Iranian regime was an insult to all Islam and was, in effect, a capitulation to sharia blasphemy laws. Cliteur asks if appeasing Muslim sensitivities and bowing to threats set a precedent for other nations to follow, thereby altering culturally acceptable norms of Western behavior.

“What is the appropriate response when a foreign power threatens violence to one of your citizens when nothing has been done to violate national law or when the event is protected by national law?,” Cliteur writes. Are national sovereignty, civil liberties, free speech, and the safety of citizens within the borders of threatened nations undermined, Cliteur asks? In the Carrell case, a fanatical religious leader essentially set TV programming standards for a free nation in which freedom of the press is essential to democracy. A foreign power issued threats, causing a faraway democracy to willingly disavow its own constitution.

Cliteur then examines other incidents. In 2004, Theo Van Gogh, an Islamic critic since 9/11, and Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim who denounced Islam’s anti-feminist doctrine, co-produced a film exposing Islam’s subjugation of women. The film, which depicted a veiled actress on whose naked body verses from the Koran were painted, drew praise and anger. A few months later, Van Gogh was shot to death and his body left with messages denouncing Hirsi Ali, Jews, and Western democracies.

The murder sent a clear message to Europeans that mocking the prophet and criticizing Islam was a death penalty offense. Did Van Gogh’s assassination reveal the true nature of jihadist ideology or did Van Gogh cause his death by coarsely criticizing a religion? According to Cliteur, these questions after Van Gogh’s murder revealed a cleavage in Dutch society mirrored in other western European countries.

Cliteur also analyzes controversial cartoons of Mohammed published in Jyllands-Posten in 2005. The publisher wanted to advance the debate about criticism of Islam and self-censorship. When only 12 out of 42 cartoonists queried by the publisher agreed to depict Mohammed, it proved that cartoonists engaged in self-censorship. The subsequent destruction of property and deaths of over 200 people after the cartoons’ publication clearly demonstrated the need for such concern. It also ironically supported the idea that so offended Muslims: that Islam is violent and related to terrorism. Although some critics rebuked the cartoons as a “senseless provocation” like shouting “fire” in a crowded theater, Cliteur writes that Islam is in fact a real “fire” and that people needed to be warned.

The author also examines in depth what was considered a supreme test of the commitment of western democracies to free speech: the 1988 publication of Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses. Khomeini issued a fatwa that included a $1.5 million reward for killing the author. The book was banned in India, South Africa, Venezuela, and eight other countries.  Protestors burned the book in England and the publisher, Penguin, was petitioned to cease publication. Despite Muslim demands, the British government announced that blasphemy laws would not be changed. Rushdie went into hiding, eventually issuing an apology that was rejected with his death sentence reconfirmed.  Massive rioting took place in Bombay, demonstrations occurred in New York City, two Berkeley bookstores were firebombed and 50,000 Muslims protested in London. 

The Rushdie incident illustrated the contradiction between secular constitutions and Islamic blasphemy laws, Cliteur says. The author maintains that eliminating offensiveness in a free society is not possible and asks, if a religion can be offended, then how about a philosophy, a political ideology or a scientific theory?  He also asks that if respect is required for all religions, even cults and satanic beliefs, is it legitimate to discriminate? 

He astutely observes that Rushdie and his work would not have been criticized if a fatwa hadn’t been issued.  Cliteur asserts that Rushdie’s critics, primarily multiculturalists, rejected The Satanic Verses based on the interpretations and feelings of others. Many critics denounced Rushdie for offending Muslims and failing to consider their response, mistakes that justified the call to violence. They viewed consciousness raising and critical discussion of religious beliefs as misguided and felt that Western liberal thinkers needed to “learn to reach out more” and be less “self-satisfied.”  They focused on understanding the terrorists and not the cartoonists, novelists and artists threatened by religious zealots. 

The author asks if by calling for “respect for Muslims,” multiculturalists were, in fact, condoning Islamic violence. Furthermore, the novel’s publication was completely legitimate under the legal system where Rushdie resided.  Was it fair for him to be punished under the laws of an unknown and foreign legal system by a self-appointed judge with no respect for national sovereignty?

Common to all incidents cited by the author in Theoterrorism is that “Islamophobia” accusations and retaliation threats can be instruments of hostage-taking of entire populations, spreading fear among targeted citizens, entire societies and governments.  They impose Islamic blasphemy laws or sharia on non-Muslim societies, democracies that honor citizen rights to free expression without censorship or restraint. Cliteur wonders if the careers of cartoonists and political satirists could end as a result of Muslim appeasement. A fatwa of unknown duration creates fear everywhere when people realize they lack government protection in their own lands under their own laws. Can hurt feelings by any group be a precondition to undermine core values of free speech, freedom of conscience and freedom of religion by democratic societies?  If so, the creep of sharia law will surely annihilate these western values.

via American Thinker

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