Conservatives Need Courage: We can’t win the culture back without it. “The more conservatives who exemplify that courage and speak out, the fewer victims there will be. The more conservatives who cower in fear and capitulate to intimidation, the more dangerous the situation will be for those who do courageously bear witness.” See the article below!!! A great read.
Democrats Threaten Supreme Court Packing: In a brutally honest and blatant political shot at the Supreme Court, the liberal progressive Democrats of today are threatening to restructure and pack the court in their favor if they don’t get their way. Clinton and Obama politicized the courts more than anyone in history with liberal judicial activists and now liberal Democrats are threatening to do that to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court, whether liberal or conservative, has served as a moderating influence of the politics from lower courts and states. One may not always agree with their rulings, but the balance and closeness on the court has kept most ruling pretty down the middle.
Now Democrats are frustrated by a Supreme Court that doesn’t appear to be going along on ALL of their leftist ideas, but upholding and supporting many, and they are threatening to “pack” or “restructure” the “politicized” Supreme Court.
That’s EXACTLY what the Democrat’s proposal is… a politicization of the Supreme Court. I couldn’t think of a more dangerous threat to our democratic republic.
Senate elections matter now, more than ever!
ALEC & NCSL Participants: Several legislators from different states who happen to be on my list came by and thanked me for my Sunday Newsletter and said they were “confessing” that they regularly cut and paste material from my newsletter to share with their constituents and social media posts. Awesome!
I could be happier. This newsletter was designed to share news and information activists could use to motivate, inform and engage conservatives. Please use whatever you want, in whatever format that makes sense for you.
Feel free to share all, part or any variation of this information to help the cause. Thank you all for what you do to help our party and the movement.
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Newsreel Summary:
Americans unprepared for retirement
While Social Security has helped prevent older Americans from falling into poverty, a report noted that there have been sharp declines in the other two main sources that fund retirement, personal savings and pensions.
Social Security, at 84 years old, is more important than ever in working to support retired Americans
Eighty-four years ago, in the midst of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the law creating Social Security, helping to lift millions of elderly Americans out of poverty.
Democrats’ newest climate platform: Hammering fossil fuel companies
The rhetoric from candidates like Sanders, Warren and even Biden echoes the fervor of the climate change activists backing the Green New Deal.
-Saul Anuzis
Conservatives Need Courage They can’t win the culture back without it.
Conservatives face many challenges today in a society eager to silence them. In academic, social, and professional settings alike, conservatives feel hesitant to express their beliefs for fear of retribution. Meanwhile, the entertainment industry and mainstream media ostracize and marginalize conservative ideas; diversity, tolerance, and acceptance, it seems, are marvels reserved for progressive tribalists.
Professor Robert P. George echoed these sentiments at the Western Conservative Summit earlier this month as he received the 2019 William L. Armstrong Award. “The virtue we lack today, I submit to you my friends, the virtue we lack — and it is an indispensable one — is courage,” George stated in his speech.
“Courage for conservatives today means refusing to be bullied or intimidated into acquiescing to, or silently going along with, the dogmas that the progressive movement, via the exercise of its extraordinary cultural power, is attempting to force on us,” George tells National Review. “Courage means boldly speaking truth to cultural (and economic) power — out loud and in public.”
Conservatives’ reluctance to assert themselves has allowed leftists to define the boundaries of acceptable thought. “Courage means standing boldly in solidarity,” George says, “with those whose rights of conscience are trampled by cultural elites deploying the coercive power of government to force them to conform to progressive ideological orthodoxy.”
Only Nine Democrat Candidates Are Qualified for Upcoming Debate
The August 28th deadline for 2020 Democrat presidential candidates to qualify for the next debate is rapidly approaching and so far only nine candidates have made the grade.
To qualify, each candidate must reach 130,000 unique donations and also must register at least 2 percent support in four qualifying polls.
The ‘FiveThirtyEight’ website published its finding on who has already qualified, who is close, and a number of candidates who may no longer have any hope.
According to its tally, the nine candidates who have secured a spot on the debate stage on Sept. 12 and perhaps Sept. 13 in Houston are: Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, and Andrew Yang.
“Tom Steyer’s campaign announced Tuesday morning that it had hit the 130,000 donor mark,” the website reported. “He now needs just one qualifying poll to make the third debate.”
Julian Castro is also close to qualifying, just needing a 2 percent ranking in one more poll, FiveThirtyEight reported.
Senate Dems deliver stunning warning to Supreme Court: ‘Heal’ or face restructuring
Several high-profile Senate Democrats warned the Supreme Court in pointed terms this week that it could face a fundamental restructuring if justices do not take steps to “heal” the court in the near future.
The ominous and unusual warning was delivered as part of a brief filed Monday in a case related to a New York City gun law. Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., referenced rulings by the court’s conservative majority in claiming it is suffering from some sort of affliction which must be remedied.
“The Supreme Court is not well. And the people know it,” the brief said. “Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be ‘restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.”
The last part was quoting language from a Quinnipiac University poll, in which 51 percent favored such restructuring. In the same poll, 55 percent believed the Supreme Court was “motivated by politics” more than by the law.
The Series Occupied
Occupied (Norwegian: Okkupert) is a Norwegian political thriller TV series that premiered on TV2 on 5 October 2015. Based on an original idea by Jo Nesbø, the series is directed by Erik Skjoldbjærg. Season 2 premiered on 10 October 2017.
A great series about how the Russians could use both their soft power and hard power to manipulate and control a country… Norway. Its very informative and goes on to show how the Russians could play games.
It is really worth watching… very well done.
I’m A Professor, And I Carry A Gun On Campus. Here’s Why
I am an ethics professor, and I carry a concealed handgun in the classroom. In the event of a mass shooting, I am the first line of defense between my students and an attacker. I refuse to let myself and my students be victims.
I’m sure many of my fellow professors would disagree with my actions. In fact, many would probably brand me as a traitor to academia for admitting such a thing. For them, it is inconceivable that a member of the intelligentsia — an ethics professor, of all people — could support the right to carry a so-called instrument of death.
So in what follows, let me make the moral case for campus carry. Those wanting a more rigorous statement of my argument may be interested in reading one of my academic journal articles on the topic.
Are AR-15 Rifles a Public Safety Threat? Here’s What the Data Say
From Parkland, Florida, to San Bernardino, California, the semi-automatic AR-15 rifle and its variants have seemingly become the weapons of choice for mass shooters in the United States.
Many people simply cannot believe that regular civilians should be able to legally own so-called “weapons of war,” which they believe should only be in the hands of the military.
According to Pew Research, for example, 81 percent of Democrats and even 50 percent of Republicans believe the federal government should ban “assault-style rifles” like the AR-15. Given the massive amount of carnage AR-15s and similar rifles have caused, it makes sense that the civilian population simply cannot be trusted to own such weapons, right?
Perhaps, but is it really true that the AR-15, a popular firearm owned by millions of Americans, is a unique threat to public safety, so dangerous that it deserves to be banned or even confiscated by the federal government?
…Mass shootings involving rifles like the AR-15 can produce dozens of victims at one time, and combined with extensive media coverage of these events, many people have been led to believe that such rifles pose a significant threat to public safety.
However, such shootings are extremely rare, and a look at the FBI data informs us that homicide with these types of rifles represents an extremely small fraction of overall homicide violence. Banning or confiscating such firearms from the civilian population would likely produce little to no reduction in violent crime rates in America.
Despite Mass Shootings, We Must Not Demonize Legal Gun Owners
The vast majority of lawful gun owners will never use their firearms for unlawful purposes. In fact, they are much more likely to use their firearms for self-defense than criminals are to use firearms to harm innocent people.
As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted in a 2013 report, almost all national studies of defensive gun uses have found that firearms are used in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times every year in the United States.
Even the center’s own internal data indicates that firearms are used defensively about 1 million times a year.
And, of course, this doesn’t include the countless number of times that tens of millions of Americans use their firearms for other lawful purposes, such as hunting or recreational target shooting.
When Gun Buyers are Caught in ‘Lie-and-Try,’ How Many are Prosecuted? Twelve.
Every time children are slaughtered in a school, or movie goers in a shopping mall or worshipers in a church, a refrain echoes from the National Rifle Association: America doesn’t need more firearm laws; just enforce those already on the books.
Well, now the nation has a president the NRA loves. How’s that enforcing-what’s-on-the-books thing workin’ out?
Not so good.
Trump’s Justice Department, as well as several states that do their own background checks, almost never prosecute what are called “lie and try” felonies. This is when someone legally barred from owning a gun — often a convicted felon, a violent spouse abuser or someone with a serious mental illness — lies on a federal background check to make a purchase.
The FBI, in reviewing instant background checks for firearm purchases, detected 112,000 lie-and-try crimes in fiscal 2017 alone, and federal investigators had names and addresses on the filled-out forms. How many were prosecuted? Twelve, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report.
What Would We Do Without the Word ‘Racism’?
If the country had a National Language Commission, and I were appointed commissioner, the first word I would put in cold storage—filed permanently away beside the N-word, the C-word, the K-word and other prohibited words—would be “racism.” In our day the word has been used imprecisely, promiscuously, perniciously and well beyond abundantly. If you are politically on the left, racism is what you accuse people of who don’t agree with you. If you are on the right, you can accuse them, I suppose, of socialism, but it doesn’t carry anything like the same resonance in moral opprobrium or self-awarded virtue as does racism.
The racist, if we can use the dictionary definition, believes that all members of a particular race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, which distinguish it as superior or inferior to other races. The true racist of course feels his own race is superior, and thereby he hasn’t any difficulty in discriminating or otherwise ill-treating members of other races, sometimes through government policy—as formerly under apartheid in South Africa or during the strict segregation once pervasive in the American South—or sometimes through ugly personal actions.
I am old enough to remember Jim Crow racism in action. When I lived in Arkansas in the early 1960s, there were still “colored” and white drinking fountains, separate bus and movie seating, and obvious differences in the quality of school buildings and other facilities available to blacks, and most people made no bones about it. Blacks were suppressed, oppressed and made to feel inferior in nearly every way that local governments could devise. The word racism wasn’t much in vogue in that place, or anywhere else, at that time. The majority of people who could rightly be called racist would not know what you were talking about if you accused them of racism.
Europe Needs to Calculate for the U.S. Military’s Shortcomings
European governments can either think very hard about the obvious implications stemming from the United States’ inability to fight two major powers at the same time or neglect them altogether.
“No, Sir!” replied James Mattis in 2017, when asked if the United States could fight two wars simultaneously. Thereby, he had made it unmistakably clear that America could not fight two major powers at the same time.
While America’s strategic limitations have not withered away, a serious debate about the implications has not occurred. This has to be recognized as an urgent problem. Putin’s support for Trump during the 2016 election campaign, the latter’s repeated questioning of NATO’s Article 5, the new trade war against China and other crises, including Iran, have all generated news but obfuscated the most vital and simmering question of today: assuming that Mattis is right, how will the United States, if at all, address the empty strategic space created by its decidedly limited capacity to confront and, if necessary, fight China and Russia at the same time?
At the moment, Congress views itself as a bulwark against any softening of U.S. policy regarding Russia. The suspicion that some lawmakers have about Trump’s sympathetic relationship with Putin helps, to some extent, compensate for the loss of White House credibility in the eyes of European NATO partners. In fact, while the alliance has seen squabbles amongst its members about its cohesion and strategy throughout, today attaining such cohesion is about alienating the U.S. President from the Kremlin’s leader. Whether or not Congress, or European allies for that matter, will be successful in that endeavor remains to be seen. But such is the central focus of transatlantic attention for now.
What Hong Kong Unrest Tells Us About China’s Plans for the Rest of the World
The outside world can do little to assure the future of freedom in Hong Kong beyond making the case that preserving the principles of liberty are at stake. Nevertheless, the plight of that territory’s more than 7 million souls can teach us an important lesson about what China has in mind for the rest of the world. It is not good.
For starters, the continuing protests speak volumes about China’s commitment to “one country two systems.” When the British transferred sovereignty over Hong Kong to China in 1997, Beijing agreed to this arrangement. It guaranteed that Hong Kong would be allowed to maintain its own governance and economic system.
The Hong Kong system—one of great economic freedom–has produced tremendous economic success. But economic freedom is no more popular than political freedom among the Chinese Communist Party. And in recent years, Chinese authorities have been encroaching on the rights supposedly guaranteed to Hong Kongers under the “one country, two systems” agreement.
Matters came to a head this April, when the Hong Kong government, under heavy pressure from Beijing, introduced legislation that would allow people accused of crimes against mainland China to be extradited. The proposal set off alarms among residents who know well that the mainland’s thoroughly politicized legal system is not to be trusted.
Fear that Beijing would quickly weaponize the proposed law to target democracy activists and journalists sparked massive protests. Efforts to suppress the demonstrations have only ignited more public demonstrations. The protests also tell us a lot about mainland China. There is one strain of thought that Beijing, while quite happy to bully Hong Kong, would not be so rash as to put down the protests with harsh military action. That kind of response repulsed the world when the Soviets did it, ultimately leading to the break-up of the USSR.
Why The U.S. Will Win The China Trade War
Increasingly, U.S. imports from China are being replaced by imports from other Asian countries. In June, exports to the U.S. from South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Singapore combined rose 9%, using a three-month moving average, while their exports to China fell 9%. Still, Asian economies beyond China are suffering from the global slowdown and the depressing effects of the trade conflicts. South Korean exports in May fell for the sixth straight month. Semiconductor exports, a bellwether for global trade, fell 31% in May from a year earlier, according to the South Korean trade ministry.
As another measure of the shift of production out of China, Singapore’s shipments to that country plunged 23% in May from a year earlier, the fourth drop in five months. Many of those imports from Singapore are components that China assembles into final exports to the West.
Rising costs in China have encouraged manufacturing of apparel, footwear and other low-margin consumer items out of China in recent years. China is increasing minimum wages in order to generate the consumer purchasing power needed to fuel a domestic spending-led economy. But the departure of electronics and other high margin products is not desired by Beijing. And Chinese leaders are aware that once these facilities leave and labor is trained and supply chains established elsewhere, they are highly unlikely to return.
While China suffers from the departure of high margin production, the U.S. will still enjoy low-cost imports from other Asian countries. In a world of surplus goods and services, the buyer has the upper hand. Therefore, the U.S. should win the trade war with China. But the long-term gain that follows the short-term pain may be limited by China’s determined challenge for world domination.
Trump Administration Approves F-16 Fighter Jet Sales to Taiwan
The $8 billion arms package, the single largest from the United States to Taiwan in years, is certain to anger China and could complicate the trade war.
The Trump administration is moving forward with an $8 billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan, American officials said Friday. The move is certain to further anger China at a time when a long-running trade war between Washington and Beijing has upended relations between the world’s two largest economies and contributed to stock market turmoil.
The Faith of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas
When I first received the invitation to attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the law building at Mercer University, I did not anticipate that I would end up writing a story on Clarence Thomas. In fact, I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but after hearing Supreme Court Justice Thomas speak, I felt compelled to share his story.
Mercer University is a liberal arts college located in Macon, Ga. Recently, they built a law building and invited Thomas to speak at its opening.
Thomas, who was born in rural Georgia, appeared to feel right at home at Mercer University. The crowd he was speaking to was mixed with familiar faces an
Thomas, who was born in rural Georgia, appeared to feel right at home at Mercer University. The crowd he was speaking to was mixed with familiar faces and fellow lawyers.
In his speech, Thomas made it clear that not only does he love the law, but he also values his faith and people. Thomas specifically emphasized that his success was made possible only through the support of others; mainly his mother. According to Thomas, his mother still works every day even though she is in her 90s.
Thomas – who has recently spoken out against abortion – clearly explained that he was concerned about the lack of unity and civility in our current culture. Thomas even exhorted the audience to engage with people that you may not agree with and to engage intelligently.
