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Barr: Public Schools Are Now So Hostile to Christians, They’re Unconstitutional

A MUST READ AND SHARE -Jerry Broussard

REPORTED BY: JOY PULLMANN | JUNE 27, 2022

Religious devotion, the keystone of ordered liberty in the West, has been under systematic assault by anti-religious forces Barr called an ‘atheocracy.’

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The West is facing its deepest civilizational crisis since Jesus Christ resurrected, and addressing the crisis requires removing militant secularists’ monopoly on education, former U.S. attorney general William Barr told a packed Christian conference in Chicago, Ill. on Saturday.

“We are going through a fateful crisis in western civilization. This is the deepest crisis we’ve faced in my mind since Christ,” Barr said. “That’s because our whole civilization is based on the Judeo-Christian tradition and that tradition is under sustained attack by increasingly militant secular forces.”

In a reprise of a 2019 speech at Notre Dame University that met massive corporate media backlash, Barr told the audience U.S. public schools have become hostile to traditional religion while wresting control of American children’s upbringing from their parents. This is a threat to the entire Western order, Barr said, because the unique American system of self-government cannot exist without a citizenry that is committed to traditional religion.

That’s because there are only two ways to restrain people from following disordered passions, Barr said: internal restraints, which are largely provided by one’s beliefs; and external restraints, which are typically provided by government. So, in order to have a limited government, Barr noted in an explicit echo of the American Founders, citizens must practice self-restraint. Such self-restraint is primarily developed through religious devotion, he said. But religious observance, the keystone of ordered liberty in the West, has been under systematic assault by anti-religious forces Barr called an “atheocracy,” his amalgam of the words “atheist theocracy.” These anti-religious forces now control the minds of American kids due to their monopoly on U.S. education institutions.

“The threat today is not that religious people are about to establish a theocracy in the United States, it is that militant secularists are trying to establish an atheocracy,” Barr said. Barr also spoke to The Federalist about the asymmetric justice being carried out under Joe Biden by the agency he has led twice, the U.S. Department of Justice.

In a 2021 interview with the legal nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom, Barr said anti-religion leftists have effectively turned public schools into “secular-progressive madrassas.” In his Chicago speech on Saturday, the nation’s former top lawyer told the audience this state of affairs is likely a violation of the Constitution’s ban on government establishment of one religion over others, as well as a violation of the Free Exercise Clause that forbids the government from interfering with Americans’ religious obligations.

“What we’re living through is not a situation where religion is intruding into the government’s rightful arena, it’s exactly the opposite: It’s that government and politics is usurping the role of religion,” Barr said.

Barr told the sold-out Chicago audience at the 2022 conference of the Christian radio show “Issues, Etc.” that American politics now aligns with religious beliefs. The dichotomy in American life is no longer about prudential issues but religious ones: whether one acknowledges an objective, external, unchanging reality ordered by a transcendent deity or whether one insists the material world is all there is, which makes one’s god the self.

This anti-God materialism now maps onto and fuels political leftism, Barr said:

When a purely materialist worldview takes hold in society, it’s drawn to a messianic utopianism. Its adherents become enthralled with the idea that the meaning of life, what gives them purpose and meaning, is to be found in the quest for a perfect earthly society. The manipulation of the material world to achieve some form of nirvana here on earth. And the means used is achieving political power.
The main obstacle to this earthly paradise is the existing structure, conventions and superstitions like religion. Any obstacle to our earthly paradise has to be torn down.
These ideas are represented by the progressive movement in the United States. It basically is an ersatz religion that gives them a sort of truncated version of the place filled by religion in people’s lives. It also explains the bitterness in our politics today. Because once you adopt this view, then your political opponents aren’t just disagreeing with you, they’re evil. They are standing in the way of the salvation of mankind.
…Another part of this revolutionary era and the consequences we have been witnessing over the last couple of hundred years is a worldview that boils questions of morality solely down to an individual’s internal feelings. And their interior sense of pleasure and satisfaction. That’s how we gauge acts, whether people feel internally satisfied. And anything that advances that feeling is good, and anything that constrains or restricts that feeling is bad. This is a fundamental change in the worldview of the West.

Because the U.S. Supreme Court and other American political institutions have turned public schools from essentially Christian schools into essentially anti-Christian schools, Barr said, the U.S. school system has been erasing the faith required to sustain limited government. Multiple studies provide evidence this is true.

Banning Christianity from education created a moral vacuum that has ultimately been filled badly with political leftism. This has not only increasingly turned younger American generations against their own faith, families, and country, it has turned public schools into indoctrination camps.

“Personal and civic moral systems don’t just sort of hover in the air,” Barr explained. “They have to rest on an explanatory foundation, a metaphysical foundation. When people tell you to do something, you ask ‘Why?’ Why is it necessary to be good and what is it that consists of being good? So, the extent to which an education seeks to contribute to a student’s moral formation, it necessarily invades the space of religion when explaining what the moral values are and how they should be inherited.”

Thanks to the current Supreme Court’s adherence to the original Constitution as written, Barr said he thinks this is an opportune moment for both court and legislative work to address this existential national crisis.

“Public education was established as a melting pot that would establish a common American identity. How are the public schools doing on that front?” Barr asked, at which the audience burst into laughter. He continued: “The curriculum is now attacking the fundamental legitimacy of our form of government and our founding documents. That’s no way to bring us together as a nation.”

The most direct way to resolve this constitutional and existential crisis in American education is to end the government monopoly over the provision of education, Barr said, with full school choice. (The form of school choice that offers the fewest opportunities for hostile bureaucrats to interfere with parent choices, by the way, is education savings accounts.)

“The variety of American beliefs now makes a monopoly on education untenable,” Barr said. “You can’t finesse it anymore. You can’t pretend what’s being taught in schools is compatible with traditional religion, nor can you pretend schools are neutral anymore.”

Because anti-religious public schools hold a monopoly on public education funds, Barr noted, parents are forced to fight mostly ineffectively over what public schools teach, such as transgender ideology to kindergarteners and anti-white racism. Allowing parents to take their children’s public education dollars to institutions that match their beliefs will end such culture wars, he said, as well as help families more effectively pass their republic-sustaining faith on to their children.

This alone can’t solve the entire existential crisis of the West, Barr conceded: “It’s not a panacea, but I cannot see a way out for us and the way for Christian citizens to live in peace in this republic until we address the educational system.”

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Sign up here to get early access to her next ebook, “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” Mrs. Pullmann identifies as native American and gender natural. She is also the author of “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books. In 2013-14 she won a Robert Novak journalism fellowship for in-depth reporting on Common Core national education mandates. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.

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Why Violence Is An Inevitable Outcome Of Critical Race Theory

BY: J. ALLEN CARTWRIGHT | APRIL 19, 2022

For true believers of critical race theory, America is too steeped in racial oppression to be changed from within. Destruction is the only alternative.

J. ALLEN CARTWRIGHT

Our nation has been rocked by at least two significant acts of domestic terrorism in a five-month span. Last week, Frank James opened fire in a New York City subway, injuring 23 people. In November, Darrell Brooks drove his SUV through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, killing 6 people and injuring 60 others.

Both perpetrators are black, which is a bit unusual given that mass shootings have historically been perpetrated by white men. More significantly, both Brooks and James had expressed radical views on social media advocating violence towards whites in the lead-up to their attacks, strongly suggesting race relations were a key motive for their acts of violence. (Naturally, the mainstream media has neglected to find out if it was indeed their motivation).

Ditto for Quintez Brown, a Black Lives Matter activist who was charged with the attempted assassination of Louisville mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg in February, and Micah Johnson, who killed five Dallas police officers in 2016. Meanwhile, public perceptions about the state of race relations in the country have plummeted.

These anecdotes, particularly during increasing dissemination of critical race theory (CRT), suggest CRT has been a detriment to racial progress rather than a force for good. The harmful impacts of CRT on race relations are unsurprising when considering several of its basic tenets.

CRT Teaches America Is Racist

The New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project,” the brainchild of Nikole Hannah-Jones, expresses a historical view in which America’s true founding was in 1619, the year African slaves were first brought to the United States. American history is thus viewed and analyzed through a lens of anti-black racism.

For example, Hannah-Jones controversially asserts that the Revolutionary War was primarily fought to preserve slavery, argues that the U.S. Constitution was meticulously crafted to establish a “slavocracy,” and criticizes Abraham Lincoln’s approach to the issue of slavery and race. Similarly, a report last June from our very own National Archives argued that America’s founding documents are steeped in “systemic racism.”

Philadelphia-based attorney and radio host Michael Coard perhaps best sums up the CRT view of American history, as he decried the Fourth of July as “a celebration of kidnapping, transporting/buying/selling human beings, separating families, torture, whippings, rapes, castrations, lynchings and enslavement.” The conclusion, then, is that the history of slavery persists, impacting all aspects of American life to this very day.

CRT Teaches American Government Is Racist

The Constitution remains the law of the land, and if you believe that the Constitution is racist, then it follows that the American system of government, which is based on the Constitution, is also racist. This is a core argument of CRT: American institutions, including the Electoral College, the Senate, and the Second Amendment have all recently been attacked as systemically racist to justify their abolition.

In the words of The Nation’s Elie Mystal,“[t]he Constitution is kind of trash… It was written by slavers and colonists, and white people who were willing to make deals with slavers and colonists. They didn’t ask anybody who looked like me what they thought about the Constitution.”

Allegations of widespread government-sanctioned suppression of minority voters also continue to persist. Therefore, according to CRT, minorities are forced to live in a system designed to oppress them, and the system is too flawed to allow for any reform internally.

CRT: Non-Whites Cannot Succeed Within the System

Perhaps most important to CRT and “wokeness” is the tenet that you cannot truly be successful as a minority in America. This was most clearly illustrated in a July 2020 display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which accredited several objective measures of successful behavior (e.g. hard work, planning for the future, delayed gratification, the scientific method) as part of “White Culture.”

Minorities who achieve wealth and/or educational success in the United States are openly attacked as exhibiting “white characteristics” or “acting white.” Successful African-Americans who don’t adhere to every woke political or social stereotype are quickly dismissed as “cornball brothers,” “oreos,” or “Uncle Toms.”

Thus, success for minorities in America is not taken as evidence of racial progress, but as a sign of conformity with “white” values and a betrayal of racial identity.

That Leaves Violence as the Only Option

If you wholeheartedly believe in those three statements, violence inevitably becomes your only option for progress. You live in an oppressive society, with built-in systems of oppression that prevent you from altering that society, and have no way to be successful within the system while staying true to yourself. Your only alternative is to destroy that system.

That is the thought process that Brooks and James expressed. “White people and Black people should not have any contact with each other,” James argued. A June 2020 tweet by Brooks was even more direct: “[W]hen we start bakk knokkin white people TF out ion wanna hear it…the old white ppl 2, KNOKK DEM TF OUT!! PERIOD.”

Of course, the leaders of the CRT movement who craft these beliefs and pass them on to others clearly don’t believe their own teachings. Prominent CRT figures such as Ibram Kendi, Patrisse Cullors, and Robin DiAngelo have achieved tremendous financial and professional success within the very systems they rail against. They are able to live in upscale neighborhoods and run in social circles that are far removed from the violence and poverty that plague many minority neighborhoods.

The corporate, educational, and entertainment institutions that score public relationship points by peddling CRT propaganda are similarly largely insulated from the harm that their teachings cause. Unfortunately for passengers on the New York subway and parade-goers in Waukesha, some people believe in CRT wholeheartedly, and thus embrace violence as the ultimate solution to systemic racism.

J. Allen Cartwright writes about the interplay of politics with cultural and scientific institutions. He can be followed on Parler at @jallencartwright.

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Million-Dollar Bounty Placed on Vladimir Putin

Reported By Abby Liebing | March 3, 2022

A bounty has been put out for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Alex Konanykhin, a Russian businessman, has offered a $1 million bounty to Russian officers to arrest Putin as a war criminal, Business Insider reported.

“I promise to pay $1,000,000 to the officer(s) who, complying with their constitutional duty, arrest(s) Putin as a war criminal under Russian and international laws. Putin is not the Russian president as he came to power as the result of a special operation of blowing up apartment buildings in Russia, then violated the Constitution by eliminating free elections and murdering his opponents,” Konanykhin wrote in a Facebook post.

The explosion to which Konanykhin referred is part of a theory that the Russian Federal Security Service, of which Putin was head from 1998 to 1999, blew up apartments in 1999, then blamed it on Chechens. That explosion, was part of what sparked the Second Chechen War, an effort that made Putin very popular in Russia. In 1999, Putin became the Russian prime minister, before being named acting president on Dec. 31 of that year. He was elected to the presidency in March 2000, the Independent reported. With obvious animosity, Konanykhin also noted that he felt it was his duty to oppose Putin’s war and keep assisting Ukraine against the Russian president.

“As an ethnic Russian and a Russia citizen, I see it as my moral duty to facilitate the denazification of Russia. I will continue my assistance to Ukraine in its heroic efforts to withstand the onslaught of Putin’s Orda,” he added in his post.

Konanykhin’s original Facebook post included a photo of Putin, with the caption, “Wanted: Dead or alive. Vladimir Putin for mass murder,” the Independent reported.

Facebook then banned his post.

But Konanykhin then re-posted with just the text informing about his bounty offer.

“Facebook banned my post; do you think it was a correct decision? I omit the picture as it was a ‘dead or alive’ poster, but this is the text,” he wrote.

Konanykhin is one of the many Russian businessmen who rose to wealth and prominence after the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to Newsweek. Konanykhin said he has not visited Russia since 1992, Business Insider reported.

The Russian businessman has a complicated history with the Russian government. In 1996 he was in the U.S. but was arrested after Russian authorities claimed he has embezzled $8 million from the Russian Exchange Bank, the Independent reported. However, the U.S. gave him political asylum after several FBI agents testified that the Russian mafia had put a contract on Konanykhin. Several years later, his asylum was revoked, but he was not deported. A U.S. district judge cancelled his deportation, saying that returning Konanykhin to Moscow “stinks.”

After placing a bounty on Putin, Konanykhin was asked if he feared that Putin would come after him for putting a bounty on his head.

“Putin is known to murder his opponents,” he said, Business Insider reported. “He has millions of them now.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Abby Liebing, Associate

Abby Liebing is a Hillsdale College graduate with a degree in history. She has written for various outlets and enjoys covering foreign policy issues and culture.

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International Politics

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Pennsylvania Court Strikes Down Mail-In Voting Law As Unconstitutional

REPORTED BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JANUARY 31, 2022

On Friday, a Pennsylvania court declared the state’s statute authorizing no-excuse mail-in voting was unconstitutional. Within hours, Pennsylvania officials filed a notice of appeal with the state Supreme Court, putting on hold the lower court decision and thereby leaving in place the vote-by-mail option until the state’s high court rules.

With Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices elected on a partisan ticket and Democrats currently holding a 5-2 majority on the state’s high court, Democrats are predicting the no-excuse mail-in voting law will be upheld. That forecast seems accurate given the hyper-partisan approach to legal analysis seen since the 2020 election. It’s unfortunate because yesterday’s opinion in McLinko v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania reached the proper conclusion as a matter of constitutional analysis and controlling precedent.

The McLinko case consisted of two lawsuits consolidated by the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court. Both cases challenged the constitutionality of no-excuse mail-in voting. Doug McLinko, a member of the Bradford County Board of Elections, was the plaintiff in one case, and Timothy Bonner and 13 additional members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives were the plaintiffs in the second case.

At issue in the consolidated case was Act 77, which, as the court explained in Friday’s opinion, “created the opportunity for all Pennsylvania electors to vote by mail without having to demonstrate a valid reason for absence from their polling place on Election Day.” The plaintiffs argued that provision violates Article VII, Section 1 of the Pennsylvania Constitution.

Article VII, Section 1 of the Pennsylvania Constitution provides (emphasis added):

Every citizen 21 years of age, possessing the following qualifications, shall be entitled to vote at all elections subject, however, to such laws requiring and regulating the registration of electors as the General Assembly may enact.
1. He or she shall have been a citizen of the United States at least one month.
2. He or she shall have resided in the State 90 days immediately preceding the election.
3. He or she shall have resided in the election district where he or she shall offer to vote at least 60 days immediately preceding the election, 10 except that if qualified to vote in an election district prior to removal of residence, he or she may, if a resident of Pennsylvania, vote in the election district from which he or she removed his or her residence within 60 days preceding the election.

The key language in Section 1, the plaintiffs argued, and the court held, was “shall offer to vote,” which the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had previously interpreted in Chase v. Miller, a case from 1862. At issue in Chase was whether 420 votes received from Pennsylvania soldiers fighting in the Civil War, who had cast their ballots by mail, were valid. While Pennsylvania’s legislature had authorized absentee ballots for military members, the state Supreme Court held the Military Absentee Act of 1839 violated the state’s constitution because “offer his vote” required in-person voting, explaining:

To ‘offer to vote’ by ballot, is to present oneself, with proper qualifications, at the time and place appointed, and to make manual delivery of the ballot to the officers appointed by law to receive it. The ballot cannot be sent by mail or express, nor can it be cast outside of all Pennsylvania election districts and certified into the county where the voter has his domicile.
We cannot be persuaded that the constitution ever contemplated any such mode of voting, and we have abundant reason for thinking that to permit it would break down all the safeguards of honest suffrage. The constitution meant, rather, that the voter, in propria persona, should offer his vote in an appropriate election district, in order that his neighbours might be at hand to establish his right to vote if it were challenged, or to challenge if it were doubtful.

In other words, “to offer his vote,” required a qualified elector to “present oneself. . . at the time and place appointed” and to make “manual delivery of the ballot.” The fuller discussion in Chase, however, provides a helpful reminder of the long-understood danger of absentee voting: “a break down” of “the safeguards of honest suffrage.”

Pennsylvania’s constitution was later amended to permit electors in military service to vote by absentee ballot. Then in 1923, the state legislature again attempted to expand absentee voting to allow non-military citizens, “who by reason of his duties, business, or occupation [are] unavoidably absent from his lawfully designated election district, and outside of the county of which he is an elector,” to cast an absentee ballot in the presence of an election official.

Another election dispute, however, resulted in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 1924 In re Contested Election of Fifth Ward of Lancaster City, declaring the 1923 Absentee Voting Act unconstitutional. The Lancaster decision again concluded that the “offer to vote” language of the Pennsylvania state constitution requires in-person voting. Because at that time the constitution only authorized absentee voting for individuals absent by reason of active military service, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held the 1923 Absentee Voting Act unconstitutional.

“However laudable the purpose of the [1923 Absentee Voting Act], it cannot be sustained,” the Pennsylvania Supreme Court explained, adding: “If it is deemed necessary that such legislation be placed upon our statute books, then an amendment to the Constitution must be adopted permitting this to be done.”

In Friday’s decision in McLinko v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the three-judge majority opinion found Chase and Lancaster City controlling and struck down Act 77’s authorization of no-cause mail-in voting. In holding Act 77 unconstitutional, the McLinko court rejected the acting secretary of state’s argument that Article VII, Section 4 of the Pennsylvania Constitution granted the state legislature authority to allow mail-in voting for any reason. That constitutional provision provides: “All elections by the citizens shall be by ballot or by such other method as may be prescribed by law: Provided, That secrecy in voting be preserved.”

The court rejected Pennsylvania’s argument, noting that when Lancaster City was decided, the Pennsylvania high court had quoted the entire text of Article VII, Section 4, and yet held that the “offer to vote” language required in-person voting unless the constitution expressly authorized absentee voting. Friday’s decision explained that Section 4 merely authorized the state to allow mechanical voting, as opposed to voting by ballot. (Two judges dissented from the McLinko decision, reasoning that mail-in voting is not a subset of absentee voting but a new method of voting the legislature may be approved under Section 4.)

Pennsylvania’s acting secretary of state’s argument that Section 4 of the state constitution authorizes the legislature to permit no-fault mail-in voting defies logic. As the McLinko court explained, if Section 4 gave the legislature that power, then there was no need for the state’s constitution to be amended in 1997, to add as a permissible basis for absentee voting, “observance of a religious holiday or Election Day duties.”

While concluding it was bound by Chase and Lancaster City, the majority in Friday’s decision in McLinko added that “no-excuse mail-in voting makes the exercise of the franchise more convenient” and that, “if presented to the people, a constitutional amendment to end the Article VII, Section 1 requirement of in-person voting is likely to be adopted.” “But a constitutional amendment must be presented to the people and adopted into our fundamental law,” the court in McLinko concluded, “before legislation authorizing no-excuse mail-in voting can ‘be placed upon our statute books.’”

The majority’s detailed analysis in McLinko was correct, both as a matter of constitutional interpretation and precedent. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, however, will not be bound by its decisions in Chase and Lancaster City, even though the principal of stare decisis should caution the justices against overturning that precedent.

That prudential principle is especially relevant here, where the “offer to vote” language “has been part of the Pennsylvania Constitution since 1838 and has been consistently understood, since at least 1862, to require the elector to appear in person, at a ‘proper polling place’ and on Election Day to cast his vote.”

A decision by the Democratic-controlled Pennsylvania Supreme Court abiding by that precedent and reminding its citizens that the constitution controls notwithstanding the passions of the day would also go a long way toward healing a divided populace.

Further, striking Act 77 now, when no votes have been cast and no citizens would be disenfranchised, would do no harm to Pennsylvanians. That was the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s justification in Kelly v. Commonwealth, for refusing to consider the constitutionality of Act 77 as part of a challenge to the results of the November of 2020 based on the equitable doctrine of “laches.”

“At the time this action was filed on November 21, 2020, millions of Pennsylvania voters had already expressed their will in both the June 2020 Primary Election and the November 2020 General Election,” the state Supreme Court explained in Kelly v. Commonwealth and striking the state statute at that point, “would result in the disenfranchisement of millions of Pennsylvania voter.”

There is no such danger, now, however. So, will the constitution control or will the partisan interests of the Democratic-majority of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court supplant the rule of law? Sadly, that latter danger is everpresent.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Special Ed

A.F. BRANCO on June 10, 2021 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-special-ed/

Critical Race Theory is unconstitutional but that doesn’t stop public schools from teaching.

Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.

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History Repeats Itself: Democrats Are Using Tactics of the Marxists of 1917 in Russia to Steal 2020 Election

Reported By Jim Hoft | Published December 22, 2020 at 7:19am

Once again we are republishing this analysis by John L Kachelman, Jr. We first published this piece back in October before the election.

2020 the “Perfect Storm” facing our Republic— All three branches of our Government are in peril

Historical Discovery…An election in 1917 forecast the election in 2020! Here are the elements from 103 years ago!

Years of preparatory work were spent in misleading and mis-directional propaganda
Contested voting results marred the election’s finality and ultimately its dismissal
Claims that the poor were going to be disenfranchised of their votes
The scheduled voting was extended by two months
Division, violence, slander and libel were widespread
A delusional/cunning/conniving campaign made unrealistic promises to win the population
Anger and mob violence were deliberately stirred against “privilege,” possessions, and status
Deceptive claims persuaded the “majority” they were robbed of their electoral victory
Inevitable civil war was sparked at the election’s end because Lenin’s group failed to win the majority
The dissolution of the old State and a “transformation” of the new system was promised to lead to true socialism but it brought history’s worst and longest ruling tyrant

And here is how it happened…

Here is a basic reminder of your 9^th Grade American Civics materials…The Founding Fathers of our Republic designed a system of governing to prevent the evils inherent in the onerous governing systems of Europe. The Republic was to be governed in a way that the majority would have a say BUT safeguarded against a rogue majority controlling the nation. A deliberate system of “checks and balances” was wisely incorporated against evil efforts to seize national control.

The ultimate safeguard was the separation of the State’s governing into three distinct bodies. While each would have an impact upon the others, that impact was deliberately limited. The Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of the Republic were designed to be independent but function with unity to guide the nation, preserve freedoms, and guard the human rights that are often disenfranchised by evil systems and philosophies. One of the greatest feats of our Republic is the exercise of individualism when these three branches of governing are properly functioning.

However, at this point in our nation’s historical narrative the “perfect storm” threatens ALL THREE of these safeguards of our Republic. And my disconcerting observation is that many prance and dance around with a Pollyannish attitude denying the reality of our current situation. The prevailing cultural concern is as absurd as the attitude of one busily rearranging the deck chairs on the sinking Titanic!

The assault on the EXECUTIVE BRANCH

The resistance has been hard at work even prior to President Trump’s inauguration. Attempts to nullify the electoral process have been constant. The evil agenda was visible. Our President has suffered evil resistance of historic proportions. The basic cause is his commitment to the U.S. Constitution. It is the unchanging Constitution that provides the legal governing making the USA an exceptional nation of individuals. This fixed and knowable Constitution gives our nation the strength and energy envied by the world and loathed by tyranny. )The Resistance/DEMS/BLM/ANTIFA demand an activist Court that will change our Republic’s basic foundational principles.)

The stated position of the resistance has been loud and long—they have robbed President Trump of his first four years as President. They have dared to present the most ridiculous reasons for his disqualification and removal. They have manipulated, deceived and extorted support for their evil agenda. They have ignited violence that has divided and destroyed the civility of the USA. Their evil purpose was to achieve the political purge of a duly elected President of the United States of America. Our President has been nominated for multiple Nobel Peace Prizes for his exceptional ability to broker true peace between Middle Eastern nations. But the resistance shrugs forgetting they excitedly embraced the Peace Prize awarded to Obama which is admitted now as an award for nothing! The resistance’s political maneuvering and evil mission is well documented.

Those of the resistance are described by inspiration. Their conniving and cunning evil is a constant action seeking to destroy legitimate order. Psalm 36:4, “He plans wickedness upon his bed; He sets himself on a path that is not good; He does not despise evil.” (See also Ecclesiastes 10:20)

Even the classics describe the reality of this evil. From Stevenson’s pen we remember the confession that describes those seeking to nullify the legality of President Trump’s election. Like the pained soul of Henry Jekyll the resistance can confess, “I lost my identity beyond redemption…had I risked the experiment while under the empire of generous or pious aspirations, all must have been otherwise, and from these agonies of death and birth, I had come forth an angel instead of a fiend…At that time my virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion.” Perhaps the most troubling reference that Stevenson’s pen gives to the resistance character states, “O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan’s signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend.”

Inspiration and the Classics unite in describing today’s controlling evil that occupies every thought of the Progressive/Liberal/BLM/ANTIFA “resistance” as “Satan’s signature upon a face.”

This is the first element of today’s “Perfect Storm.” There are two more elements…

The assault upon the LEGISLATIVE BRANCH

It is the Legislative Branch of our Republic’s government that involves the citizenry in the governing process. The population’s vote is a significant and treasured freedom. That vote expresses the desires of each State of the Union and is recorded by the Electoral College so that a free election is not controlled by a militant mob. The Founding Fathers wisely saw the potential of a militant group manipulating and coercing control. The establishment of the Electoral College was a masterful move safeguarding the Republic’s freedoms. By this method the most populous States are equal with the least populous—true equality.

The 2020 General Election is recognized as a critical point in our nation’s history. It can be said that every election is critical and previous elections have suffered the militancy of Progressives/Liberals attempting to undermine the Constitutional foundation of our nation. These past challenges failed because the general population was aware of the evil being campaigned and were educated regarding the safeguards of our Constitution. But the context has dramatically changed for the 2020 General Election. In this current election the Constitutional safeguards are condemned and the population is ignorant of just how fragile individual freedom is. It appears that many have been groomed and are eager to believe the Progressive/Liberal/Democratic lies and embrace anarchy. This is not a new situation. History is amazing as it details how the past continues to explain the present.

Consider the Russian Revolution. I offer just a scant discussion on Lenin’s role in this aspect of Russian politics. Hopefully I will have opportunity to offer a more complete discussion. Consider the first “free election” that Russia experienced. It was held in October or November 1917 (the month depends upon which calendar you consult). Lenin promised a “free” election where all votes would be equal and each citizen would be heard. The election was scheduled and a number of political parties provided the voters a choice. Among the many parties were two dominating parties: the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Lenin’s Bolsheviks).

The propaganda fueling this election is intriguing. Lenin had confidence that his party would be an overwhelming victor. He was convinced that his pamphleteering during his exile was persuasive. He was convinced that only he knew best what the poor citizens needed for happiness in life. Lenin had devised a governing system by which the State would help the poor citizen to have free health care, free food, personal land ownership, and the erasure of all class “privileges” by redistributing wealth/financial resources/personal property. Under Lenin’s control there would be no more denial of personal rights, no more prejudice of persons, and no more unjust financial levels. All would be totally “equal” IF Lenin’s perfect Revolutionary State was allowed to transform into the Marxist utopia.

Here is where history becomes instructive regarding the Legislative Body of the State.

When the Tsar abdicated, the Russian Provisional Government was formed. Its purpose was to organize the free elections for the Russian Constituent Assembly. The provisional government lasted only eight months and was replaced by the Bolsheviks. A significant footnote to this period is that the Provisional Government was unable to make decisive policy decisions due to political factionalism and a breakdown of state structures. The anarchy fomented by Lenin and the Bolsheviks rendered a civil governing impossible. Whatever legislative bills were presented were instantly killed by opposition. Revolutionary unrest fueled violence. This was a deliberate design of non-cooperation and pure resistance! The deliberate campaign for divisiveness and refusal to perform governing duties is a sobering similarity to the resistance in modern day American politics. Lenin’s free election was conducted but here are some troubling facts from its history:

1) The election was designed to be held on specific dates BUT some argued that the peasants in the outlying territory needed more time to get their votes counted. So, the ballot counting was extended in some places by TWO MONTHS!

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2) Throughout the 1917 campaign Lenin argued that the citizens deserved a government that represented “the proletariat’s interests” because, in his estimation, all other governments represented the “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.” Lenin argued that the rich would never give up their “privileges” and so the soviets would need to seize power by violence. Lenin’s propaganda fueled the division that would destroy the Russian nation. He urged violence nurtured by envy and jealousy arguing that some had “privileged status” that others did not and this great “inequity” could only be removed with a violent overthrow.

3) Even though the first free election included a number of different political parties, Lenin was confident that his Bolsheviks would win. That did not happen. The final tabulation exposed Lenin as suffering defeat and his Bolsheviks only garnered 23.26% of the vote. The Socialist-Revolutionaries emerged with 37.61% of the vote. Lenin was unhappy and contested the results! Lenin refused to concede protesting the legitimacy of the election.

4) The objective of the resistance was a one-party government and an absolute silencing of opposition. “It is the duty of the revolution to put an end to compromise, and to put an end to compromise means taking the path of socialist revolution” Lenin, Speech On The Agrarian Question November 14 (1917).

Carefully consider how Lenin embraced the freedom of voting while masterfully disguising his evil objective of silencing the opposition and developing a one-party ruling government.

After the election results were announced, Lenin stood and revealed the coup. The results were called flawed. Those in opposition were eventually murdered. Lenin instituted his famous “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Lenin said this was the best course for the average citizen and this dictatorship would dissolve when all privileged distinctions were erased, all wealth inequities removed, and all land ownership seized. And the Russian population permitted this dictatorship to exist!

When applied to the 2020 General Election in the USA, this historical anecdote should sound national alarms! The very concepts that Lenin used to nullify the free election of Russia in 1917 are being used in today’s election. In fact, some of the very words and phrases that were used by Lenin are parroted by the Democratic Progressives today and characterize the membership of Democratic Party in the USA!

When the election process of our governing Constitution is compromised and dismissed as archaic and inapplicable THEN our nation has lost the compass for safely navigating the treacherous existence in this world.

The assault upon the JUDICIAL BRANCH

History reminds its students that the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justices were forever changed in 1987 with Joe Biden’s Judiciary’s malevolent confirmation hearing of Judge Robert Bork. Biden was campaigning to be the nomination of the Democratic Presidential candidate (which he would lose to Dukakis because of Biden’s plagiarism). In 1987 the custom was for such hearings to last two days or less. Under Biden’s chairmanship Bork’s hearing was weaponized and lasted TWELVE days. Such a reprehensible action has earned its own idiom in American language—“so and so was ‘Borked’.”

The 1987 Democratic Party’s politicizing and weaponizing the confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court appointments opened the floodgates for the most contentious events in the governing of the United States of America. One only needs to go back to the recent hearings to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. The personal slander, insidious innuendos, manufactured complaints and a host of other evil actions have become accepted political weapons (Or as Speaker Pelosi remarked, “arrows in our quiver”). In past times it was customary that the sitting President was respected and his nominations were accorded with approval, even if the conservatives knew they were approving a Progressive/Liberal who despised the literalist view of the U.S. Constitution they voted for the confirmation. But now there is a horrid specter of divisiveness and vindictiveness enveloping the process.

The General Election of 2020 spotlights the tragic devolving of the status of the U.S. Supreme Court. It is suggested by some, with validity, that the Supreme Court is no longer focused upon apolitical justice but has assumed an active role in establishing law that the U.S. Constitution reserves only for the Legislative Branch.

The Democrats/Progressives/Liberals have announced their intent to “pack” the Supreme Court with Justices who disrespect the U.S. Constitution. They want a left-leaning Court that will sanction the total dismemberment of the constitutional statutes that made America a great nation. The far-left Daily Kos cautioned Republicans that a “future government controlled by Democrats is likely to pursue — court-packing — as the best way to rebuff a conservative Court majority viewed as illegitimate.” Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told voters during an October 2018 campaign event that Democrats should “pack the Supreme Court of the United States of America” after taking the House, Senate, and Presidency. Leading Democrats also warned that if the justices issue a pro-Second Amendment ruling, and if Democrats win the White House and the Senate in 2020, then they will fundamentally remake the High Court.

Former President Franklin Roosevelt issued this same threat in the 1930s after facing legal obstacles with his New Deal and subsequently “threatened to expand the Court by six seats for a new total of 15 justices so that he could get the rulings he wanted.” The American people, however, rejected his threat, leading to massive Republican victories in the 1938 midterm elections.

Former Democrat presidential candidates Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and now vice-presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) announced that they were open to reshaping the court. “We are on the verge of a crisis of confidence in the Supreme Court,” Harris said, according to Politico. “We have to take this challenge head on, and everything is on the table to do that.”

During the summer of 2020 several major progressive groups, including Take Back The Court, Demand Justice, Progressive Change Institute, and the Sunrise Movement, signed a letter declaring their support for increasing the number of justices by “at least” two seats. The resistance wrote in part: “The fastest, most effective way to make the court representative of all Americans is to enact legislation increasing the size of the Court by at least two seats, and to quickly fill those seats with justices who will safeguard our democracy.” Note: In the context of this reference it is best to remember Lenin’s manipulative ploy that his “free” election would best represent “all Russians”?

In March 2019, President Trump astutely dismissed mounting calls from his Democratic opponents to pack the Supreme Court. “The only reason they’re doing that is they want to try and catch up, so if they can’t catch up through the ballot box by winning an election, they want to try doing it in a different way,” he added.

The late Justice Ginsburg balked at the proposition of packing the Supreme Court. “It would make the Court look partisan,” the late justice told National Public Radio’s Nina Totenberg last year.

The Judicial Branch of the government is to interpret laws respecting the United States Constitution’s limits. Once this unbiased governing is compromised, there is no lawful regulations for civility in our nation.

Concluding Thoughts…

This is where the United States of America is positioned as the General Election of November 2020 nears. A discord and division prevail that has never existed. This violence has been stoked with bitterness. The Progressives/Democratic Party/BLM/ANTIFA assure us that regardless of the election there will be violence. We are being conditioned to think that electoral results will take weeks or months to be validated and even then, they will be challenged. The vitriol marking the battleground is undeniable. Following Lenin’s example in 1917 the Democrats have been told never to concede. The results are already announced, “Furious Democrats are considering total war — profound changes to two branches of government, and even adding stars to the flag (i.e. adding the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as States thus insuring Democrats have two solid additions to their column) — if Republicans jam through a Supreme Court nominee then lose control of the Senate.”

As the National Election of 2020 approaches we read of violence, destruction and carnage in the public sphere…Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s recent death sparked a political firestorm, as Republicans prepare for a contentious, pre-election confirmation showdown and some Democrats threaten to, quite literally, burn the country down.

The ”Perfect Storm” facing the Republic of the United States of America has formed and threatens the three pillars of our civility.

After Lenin’s Bolsheviks permitted a “free election” they moved quickly to strangle freedoms. Lenin’s opinion of the poor proletariat having the right to vote for individual choices morphed into a ruling class identified as the “Politburo.” The first Politburo consisted of: Lenin, Trotsky, Krestinsky, Kamenev, and Stalin. Lenin died. Trotsky was exiled to Mexico and was murdered. Krestinsky and Kamenev were assassinated. That left Stalin. Stalin manipulated the bureaucratic apparatus and seized power. By the 1930s, Stalin had transformed the Politburo into the supreme executive and legislative body of the Communist party and the Soviet government. Stalin was in command of its membership, decisions, and debates. The party congress now not only did not elect the politburo, but its own membership was fully controlled by the politburo. Not only had Lenin’s vision of a one-party political government been achieved but now it became a one-man political government! Individualism had been erased. The individual had ceased to exist and all had become “the State.”

The ”Perfect Storm” in Russia’s history resulted in the totalitarian reign of Stalin’s terror. Such is the conclusion of Russia’s first free election.

What will YOU do regarding the “Perfect Storm” in which our Republic is now struggling?

Please read the historical documentation available and you will realize
this is not a conspiracy theory but a historical constant!

Jim Hoft

Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.

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Biden Appoints ‘Anti-Free Speech’ Richard Stengel to Transition Team Media Post

Reported by JOEL B. POLLAK | 17 Nov 2020

Richard Stengel (Jemal Countess / Getty for TIME)

Former Vice President Joe Biden has appointed Richard Stengel, who advocates restrictions on free speech, to a key media post in his presidential transition team.

The New York Post reported last week:

Richard Stengel is the Biden transition “Team Lead” for the US Agency for Global Media, the US government media empire that includes Voice of America, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Stengel, an Obama administration alumnus, wrote last year in a Washington Post op-ed that US freedom of speech was too unfettered and that changes must be considered.

In the Post op-ed, “Why America needs a hate speech law,” Stengel argued:

[A]s a government official traveling around the world championing the virtues of free speech, I came to see how our First Amendment standard is an outlier.

…

All speech is not equal. And where truth cannot drive out lies, we must add new guardrails. I’m all for protecting “thought that we hate,” but not speech that incites hate.

As Breitbart News noted in May, Stengel, an MSNBC analyst, also defended restrictions on speech about the coronavirus:

The First Amendment doesn’t protect false speech about a virus or false speech that endangers the health of your users. And by the way, Facebook and Twitter have been taking things down, but they need to be even more vigilant about it, and Google needs to be even more vigilant about what they prioritize in their search results.

Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley warned about Stengel’s appointment in a column Tuesday: “[I]t would be difficult to select a more anti-free speech figure to address government media policy, one has to assume that Biden will continue the onslaught against this core freedom as president.”

He noted that Biden himself had publicly advocated restrictions on speech during the campaign: “Biden called for greater speech controls on the Internet and denounced Twitter for allowing others to speak freely.”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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Texas Lt. Gov. Has Solution to Racism That Libs Will Hate Even More Than They Hate Trump

Reported By Amalia White | Published June 5, 2020 at 8:37pm

URL of the originating web site: https://www.westernjournal.com/texas-lt-gov-solution-racism-libs-will-hate-even-hate-trump/

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said that America must “turn to God” to overcome race-related problems.

“We have racism in this country, Shannon,” Patrick told “Fox News @ Night” host Shannon Bream on Wednesday. “But it’s really an issue of love. It’s loving God. You cannot love your fellow man, if you don’t love God — and we have a country where we’ve been working really hard, particularly on the left, to kick God out.”

“We need a culture change to address this racism. You cannot change the culture of a country until you change the character of mankind,” Patrick continued.

Protests surrounding George Floyd, who died in police custody on May 25, have spread internationally. In some case, protests have turned violent, causing injuries and property damage.

“The crime against George Floyd, in my view, was a crime against all black America and against humanity and we’re coming together,” Patrick said. “We’ve got a lot of healing to do and we can’t do it unless we turn to God and we need to do that now more than ever.”

“We need a culture change to address this racism,” he explained. “You cannot change the culture of a country until you change the character of mankind. And you can’t change that unless you change the heart.

“And for billions of us on the planet, we believe you can’t do that unless you accept Jesus Christ, unless you accept God.

“And God has been left out of this equation,” he added, “through all of this.”

You can watch the entire interview with the lieutenant governor here:

Patrick also called out former Secretary of Defense James Mattis’ for his recent comments about President Donald Trump. Mattis came out hard against Trump on Wednesday, releasing a statement to The Atlantic blaming him for the violence.

“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try,” said Mattis, whom Trump asked to resign in December 2018. “Instead, he tries to divide us.”

“We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort,” he added.

“I think the timing was terrible, Shannon,” Patrick said in regard to Mattis’ remarks. “And I think there are a lot of people speaking up now that are creating real distractions and undermining what we’re all trying to do in this country.”

Amalia White

Amalia is a passionate free speech supporter and aims to encourage conservatives to put their principles into action. She is currently working for a state senator, has a business degree and has contributed to several publications.

@AmaliaWhite

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Today’s THREE Politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Corn Pop Music

A.F. BRANCO | on May 23, 2020 at 1:03 pm | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-corn-pop-music/

There’s Pop Music and then there’s Corn Pop Music by Joe Biden with “you Ain’t Black” if you don’t vote for him.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Power Hunger Games

A.F. BRANCO | on May 24, 2020 at 10:51 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-power-hunger-games/

Minnesota Governor Walz appears to be enjoying this lockdown way too much or is it just the power?

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Stand Your Ground

A.F. BRANCO | on May 25, 2020 at 7:40 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-stand-your-ground/

People are standing their ground against unconstitutional state policies like California, and Michigan.

Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and has had his toons tweeted by President Trump.

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Former NYC Top Cop Kerik Blasts Officials Using COVID as Excuse To Take Americans’ Freedoms

Authored By C. Douglas Golden | Published April 13, 2020 at 9:07am

URL of the originating web site: https://www.westernjournal.com/former-nyc-top-cop-kerik-blasts-officials-using-covid-excuse-take-americans-freedoms/

A teen being given a citation for merely driving in her car. Hiking trails closed. Church congregants for Easter services having their license plate numbers taken down by the police so that they can be told to be in quarantine for 14 days no matter what kind of social distancing was being practiced. That’s where we are now, and former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik isn’t particularly happy about it.

In a tweet Thursday, Kerik blasted officials who are using the coronavirus outbreak as a pretext to clamp down on freedoms that wouldn’t necessarily affect the spread of the virus.

“Yesterday, governors/mayors shut down walking trails,” Kerik tweeted.

”Some police have been ordered to arrest people for walking outside their homes. The government is considering a #coronavirus surveillance system.

“WTF! Americans better start paying attention and getting vocal! #Constitution.”

He went on to criticize New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, for his decision to stop construction projects.

“Today @GovMurphy stopped all non-essential construction,” he tweeted.

“Construction is a profession in which many will not be able to receive government assistance.

“Instead of mandating by order that they wear protective equipment and follow CDC directives, this will destroy them/families.”

Murphy had announced the halt to construction the day before Kerik’s tweet.

“We must continue to work together to flatten the curve of new COVID-19 cases in New Jersey,” Murphy said in a statement.

“By ceasing all non-essential construction projects and imposing additional mitigation requirements on essential businesses, we are furthering our aggressive efforts to enforce social distancing and limiting our public interactions to only the most essential in order to reduce the spread of COVID-19.”

In the executive order, Murphy also limited the number of customers who could be in an essential retail outlet at any given point in time and required those outlets to mark 6-foot increments on the floor in order to indicate how to socially distance, among many, many other things.

Park systems, meanwhile, have been shutting down across the country.

Here’s part of Oregon’s explication for closing its state park system late last month: “A single person walking on a trail is fine. There are a few million people in the west who are thinking the same thing, and then next thing you know, people are parking alongside roads to get into a park. That’s bad for you, it harms other people, and it puts stress on local groceries and health care systems.

It’s not just the hiking trails that have been shut down. The status of churches varies from state to state, with some listing them as an essential service and others shutting them entirely. Kentucky is one of the states in the latter category — and it managed to make a show of it this weekend when police took down the license plate numbers of the 50 people worshipping in the Maryville Baptist Church and put quarantine notices on their car, according to USA Today.

Newly elected Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, has engaged in a high-profile battle with a handful of churches that are still holding in-person services. In a move that absolutely won’t escalate the situation, state police threatened “further enforcement measures” for individuals receiving the quarantine notices if they decide not to quarantine.

At least there was some good news in this department last Wednesday, though: A 19-year-old Pennsylvania woman who was cited for “going for a drive”will have the ticket dropped, according to the York Dispatch. Anita Shaffer became one of the most prominent victims of over-officiousness in the time of coronavirus when Pennsylvania State Police hit her with a $200 ticket because she needed to get out of the house. She was the first person ticketed under Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s stay-at-home order. A few days later, officialdom decided it was probably best not to pursue the case.

Beside the fact that the troopers cited her under the wrong statute, York County District Attorney Dave Sunday felt that ticketing Shaffer didn’t serve “the interests of justice.”

“Ironically, if Ms. Shaffer had lied to the [trooper] and stated that she was driving to obtain food, medicine, or to a path to engage in outside exercise, Ms. Shaffer could not have received a citation for violating the stay at home order because no facts would exist to support its issuance,” Sunday wrote in his request to have the charges dropped. A district court judge granted the request.

I suppose kudos are in order to Mr. Sunday, a man who can probably figure out how to be six feet away from someone on a hiking trail. Alas, we live in a time when the government can’t trust us to hike or shop or drive correctly.

Mind you, this isn’t to say that all of this is smart.

No matter how much social distancing you practice and how much closer you feel to God when you go to church, you’re significantly better off if you decide to just go online. That said, the freedom of assembly and the freedom of religion are both enshrined under the First Amendment, so I wish Kentucky good luck defending that quarantine in court.

Kerik, by the way, isn’t exactly a wild-eyed libertarian. This was the top cop in New York City under Rudy Giuliani and during 9/11. That’s not the kind of resume that leads one to flights of anarchist fancy. He’s bringing up a very real concern that our rights have taken a backseat to trying to beat this disease. In some respects, that’s understandable. However, we’re about to be met with very sticky constitutional issues, including contact tracing and coronavirus “passports” to prove someone has antibodies and can re-enter society.

If the Constitution takes a backseat here, there’s the inevitable slippery slope: It can take a backseat anywhere. The fear is understandable, but fear cannot be allowed to set our rights afire.

Following are some images that, hopefully, will get you active in the fight for freedom. – Jerry Broussard

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

C. Douglas Golden

Contributor, Commentary

C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal for four years.

@CillianZeal

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Trump DOE Promotes School Prayer on National Religious Freedom Day

Written by Penny Starr | 16 Jan 2020

URL of the original posting site: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/16/trump-doe-promotes-school-prayer-on-national-religious-freedom-day/

Girl closed her eyes and folded her hand in prayer on a Holy Bible / Sasiistock/Getty Images

The guidance will be posted in the Federal Register on January 21, 2020 and it states, in part:

Section 8524(a) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act and codified at 20 U.S.C. 7904(a), requires the Secretary to issue guidance to State educational agencies (SEAs), local educational agencies (LEAs), and the public on constitutionally protected prayer in public elementary and secondary schools. In addition, section 8524(b) requires that, as a condition of receiving ESEA funds, an LEA must certify in writing to its SEA that it has no policy that prevents, or otherwise denies participation in, constitutionally protected prayer in public schools as detailed in this updated guidance.

Education Week’s report on the guidance noted precedent for the Trump administration’s move:

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, in its current and past versions, requires the U.S. Department of Education to provide guidance on prayer in schools every two years, but that guidance hasn’t been updated since 2003, a senior administration official said.

“President Trump is committed to making sure that people of faith, particularly children,” are not discouraged from constitutionally protected rights to pray, an administration official said in a conference call with reporters.

The new school prayer guidance, which will be published in the Federal Register Thursday Jan. 21, reiterates requirements under existing law that school districts must annually certify to their state departments of education that they have “no policy prohibiting participation in constitutionally protected prayer,” officials said. State education departments must have a process for fielding complaints the right to prayer has been violated, and they must report any complaints or lawsuits over school prayer to the federal Education Department, the guidance says.

The guidance also states that student religious groups should have the same access to school facilities as secular groups, which has been in place since 1998, Education Week reports.

The Trump administration will also issue a directive on Thursday that states religiously affiliated groups can get federal grants even if the group is located in a state that prohibits public funding of such groups.

“Those laws, known as Blaine amendments, are the subject of a case on tax-credit scholarships for private schools that will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court next week,” Education Week notes in its report.

Follow Penny Starr on Twitter

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Change of Heart

A.F. Branco | on December 19, 2019 at 7:40 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-change-of-heart/

After years of disdain for the U.S. constitution, the Democrats are now pledging their undying love for it and the founders to Justify impeaching Trump.

See more Legal Insurrection Branco cartoons, click here.

A.F. Branco 13/Month 2020 Calendar here.

A.F. Branco Coffee Table Book “Make America Laugh again”

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Will impeaching the President backfire on Democrats in the next election?

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and has had his toons tweeted by President Trump.

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Blue States Band Together in Open Attack on Constitution: Aim To Completely Destroy Electoral College

Reported By Benjamin Arie | Published March 4, 2019 at 2:39pm | Modified March 5, 2019 at 9:20am

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/blue-states-band-together-open-attack-constitution-aim-completely-destroy-electoral-college/

Voices should be heard even if they aren’t able to scream the loudest.

Liberals claim to believe in “equality” and standing up for the “little guy” in the face of bullies, but a movement gaining steam in blue states is putting that in doubt. Frustrated that they didn’t win in 2016, the left has a new plan: Sidestep the Constitution and effectively get rid of the Electoral College.

Colorado is the latest state to jump on board. Last week, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis announced that he would sign a bill which basically re-writes the electoral process, and could pave the way to letting big cities dominate every future presidential election.

The liberal called the Electoral College an “undemocratic relic,” apparently believing that he knows better than the Founding Fathers. “I’ve long supported electing the president by who gets the most votes,” Polis declared on Feb. 24, according to The Hill.

That plan would force Colorado’s electors — the people who actually cast the official votes for president — to side with whichever candidate wins the national popular vote, no matter what. By changing the regulations at the state level but still using puppet electors, liberals would avoid amending the Constitution to get their way.

“It’s a way to move towards direct election of the president,” Polis said.

At first glance, it’s no big deal. Democracy means that people vote and the person with the most votes wins, right?

The problem, of course, is that America was founded as a republic for reason — and it’s quickly evident just how dangerous it could be to bypass the Electoral College.

The United States is a huge and diverse country. The whims and demands of voters in Manhattan are drastically different from the concerns of rural farmers in Iowa — yet the voices of those smaller locations are just as important, especially when you realize that huge percentages of our food and supplies come from the heartland.

The entire purpose of having state and local governments is that a far-off central government can’t bully the rest of the country, but that’s exactly what would happen if the Electoral College were abandoned.

A presidential candidate would only need to win a handful of big cities such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, completely ignoring the concerns of the interior of the vast nation. The voices of millions of Americans who live outside of coastal population centers would be ignored.

Ironically, the plan could also mean that the votes of Colorado’s own citizens don’t really count, because they would be negated if they don’t match the whims of the popular vote. As one Colorado county commissioner rightly pointed out, “we do not support the National Popular Vote, which allows California and New York to decide Colorado’s votes for President.”

But the Rocky Mountain State isn’t alone. An eye-opening number of other states are joining the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, all moving toward similar legislation.

“The states making up the compact, which already includes New York, Illinois and all the New England states except for New Hampshire, would commit to awarding their electoral votes to whomever wins the popular vote nationally, regardless of the results in the Electoral College,” The Hill explained.

That Interstate Compact is not likely to have enough support to make a difference in the 2020 election, but it could play a major role in subsequent votes unless conservatives stand up and stop it. The United States of America was founded on the separation of power, not a no-holds-barred popularity contest.

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch,” it’s been said.

Exactly right.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Benjamin Arie

Contributor, Commentary

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After Using Her, Feinstein Actually Threw Ford Under the Bus with Jaw-Dropping Accusation

Reported By Cillian Zeal | September 28, 2018 at

11:49am

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/feinstein-threw-ford-accusation/

If you had the stout constitution to sit through every moment of the Kavanaugh/Ford hearings Thursday, I’m both envious and curious. The envy stems from the fact that you could watch a room of craven politicians preen for the camera and donor-email clips and not lose interest. The curiosity stems from the fact that I get paid to do it, while most of our readership does not.

If you waited until the end, however, you got to glimpse the guiding spirit of the whole affair — or what a certain anonymous Op-Ed writer might have called the “lodestar” that directed the proceedings — in a line from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

After being accused of leaking the letter that set this whole thing rolling, the California senator denied either she or her staff released it. Instead, she blamed the leak on a woman who was now utterly disposable to her — Christine Blasey Ford.

The exchange began after Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz questioned the leaking of the letter, which had been passed on to Sen. Feinstein.

“We also know that the Democrats on this committee engaged in a profoundly unfair process,” Cruz said.

“The ranking member had these allegations on July 30th and for sixty days, that was sixty days ago, the ranking member did not refer it to the FBI for investigation, the ranking member did not refer it to the full committee for an investigation.

“This committee could have investigated those claims in a confidential way that respected Dr. Ford’s privacy,” Cruz continued.

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“Dr. Ford told this committee that the only people to whom she gave her letter, were her attorneys, the ranking member, and her member of Congress.

“And she stated that she and her attorneys did not release the letter, which means the only people who could have released the letter were either the ranking member (Sen. Feinstein) and her staff, or the Democratic member of Congress, because Dr. Ford told this committee those are the only people who had it.

“That is not a fair process,” Cruz said.

There were two options for Sen. Feinstein in this situation: a) apologize or b) deny. If she chose option b), however, there wasn’t the obligation to take path c): throw Christine Blasey Ford under an entire Greyhound station of buses.

That’s what she decided to do, however.

“Mr. Chairman, let me be clear, I did not hide Dr. Ford’s allegations. I did not leak her story, she asked me to keep it confidential and I kept if confidential as she asked,” Feinstein said in response.

“She apparently was stalked by the press, felt that what happened, she was forced to come forward, and her greatest fear was realized,”Feinstein continued.

“She’s been harassed, she’s had death threats, and she’s had to flee her home.”

After blaming the Republicans for their investigation, which she called “a partisan practice,” she continued to talk up the possible imperilment Ford was in.

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“I was given some information by a woman who was very much afraid, who asked that it be held confidential, and I held it confidential until she decided that she would come forward,” Feinstein said.

She was then asked if her staff had leaked the letter by Sen. John Cornyn, another Texas Republican.

“I have not asked that question directly, but I do not believe — the answer is no,” Feinstein responded. “The staff, they did not.”

“Well, somebody leaked it if wasn’t you,” Cornyn said.

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“I did not, I was asked to keep it confidential, and I’m criticized for that too!” she said.

“It’s my understanding that her story was leaked before the letter became public, and she testified that she had spoken to her friends about it and it’s most likely that that’s how the story leaked, and she had been asked by press.

“But it did not leak from us,” Feinstein concluded. “I assure you of that.”

Yes, the letter leaked because this woman, who thought she was in grave jeopardy, leaked the whole thing to the press by telling her friends, who were willing to put her in that grave jeopardy by passing it on.

It had nothing — nothing — to do with the Democrats who would have benefited most from this and would have had the motivation to pass it on.

Right.

Every single problem with this entire process can be, in some way, traced back to Dianne Feinstein. She’s the one who sat on the letter, refusing to bring it up when it should have been addressed. She’s the one whose cryptic statements helped stoke the embers of curiosity. She’s the one who would call for an FBI investigation even though the FBI added the letter to Kavanaugh’s background file and moved on. She’s the one who helped oversee the circus we witnessed Thursday.

And, once Christine Blasey Ford was finally disposable to her, she was tossed to the tigers as an encore.

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Anti-Gunner Students Allowed To Edit US Paper, End Up Humiliating Themselves

Authored By Cillian Zeal | March 26, 2018 at 2:19pm

URL of the original posting site: https://conservativetribune.com/anti-gunner-students-paper/

Publications have editors. Real ones. As in, those whose experience is commensurate with the paper, magazine or website they’re working for. They’re not just there to make sure their staff don’t “wreite like” th1s. Their function is edit for style, to check facts, to see if arguments cohere. For this, they’re paid handsomely. (Well, by the standards of the industry, anyhow.)

I mention this all because on Friday, the U.S. edition of The Guardian allowed the staff of the Eagle Eye — the official newspaper of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, site of one of the most horrific acts of evil we’ve witnessed on school grounds in many a year — essentially to write and edit their own piece detailing their recommendations to “halt mass shootings.”

It’s worth noting that the paper’s parent publication, the London Guardian, is easily the most liberal mainstream publication in Great Britain. That certainly explains why they would engage in an experiment like this.

And, common sense unfortunately dictated exactly how the experiment went. The piece — which I’m sure did very well in terms of readership, given the quasi-celebrity nature of the authors and the fact that it was published a day before the March for Our Lives — is a farrago of unresearched errors, logical fallacies and appeals to emotion so threadbare and maudlin you wish that a real editor would have saved them from themselves.

Here are a few “highlights” from the piece, titled “Our manifesto to fix America’s gun laws.”

“We have a unique platform not only as student journalists, but also as survivors of a mass shooting. We are firsthand witnesses to the kind of devastation that gross incompetence and political inaction can produce.”

This is in the introduction and it sets the tone for what’s to come. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: neither surviving a mass shooting nor being a student journalist makes you an expert on either firearms or public policy.

In the latter department, it shows in this very sentence: the movement they are supporting (and the manifesto they wrote) wishes to place more — not less — power in the hands of those whose gross incompetence and political inaction caused the Parkland shooting in the first place.

“Ban semi-automatic weapons that fire high-velocity rounds: Civilians shouldn’t have access to the same weapons that soldiers do. That’s a gross misuse of the second amendment. (sic) These weapons were designed for dealing death: not to animals or targets, but to other human beings. The fact that they can be bought by the public does not promote domestic tranquility. Rather, their availability puts us into the kind of danger faced by men and women trapped in war zones.

“This situation reflects a failure of our government. It must be corrected to ensure the safety of those guaranteed the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

This is the kind of misinformation from which an actual editor — one who works for The Guardian as opposed to the Eagle Eye — would have saved these individuals. Hunting rounds available to the general public already fire at higher velocity than some ammunition used in military rifles, because hunters often shoot at moving targets.

So, in fact, they were mostly designed for “dealing death” to animals. They’re often for varmint control. However, in a mass shooting situation, they would actually have little practical advantage over most other guns (but more about this later).

While there may be the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence, there is also the right to bear arms (which “shall not be infringed upon”) in the Constitution. Nowhere in these documents, it must be noted, is the promotion of “domestic tranquility” (again: this kind of clubfooted phraseology is why you let professionals edit your work) guaranteed.

The most sadly laughable line, however, is the part about “a failure of our government.” The government has failed in so many ways in Parkland, but in ways where handing more power over to them would only exacerbate the problem. I know these students write and edit a newspaper; perhaps they should read a few, as well.

“Ban accessories that simulate automatic weapons: High-capacity magazines played a huge role in the shooting at our school. In only 10 minutes, 17 people were killed, and 17 others were injured. This is unacceptable.

“That’s why we believe that bump stocks, high-capacity magazines and similar accessories that simulate the effect of military-grade automatic weapons should be banned.

“In the 2017 shooting in Las Vegas, 58 people were killed and 851 others were injured. The gunman’s use of bump stocks enabled vast numbers of people to be hurt while gathered in one of the most iconic cities in America. If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere. That’s why action must be taken to take these accessories off the market.”

Let’s start here with the idea that bump stocks “simulate automatic weapons.” They allow weapons to fire more rapidly — and very inaccurately. In the case of Las Vegas, it was a unique situation where accuracy didn’t matter to the gunman because of the press of the crowd into which he was firing. In most mass shootings, bump stocks would be useless. They also do not “simulate the effect of military-grade automatic weapons.”

As for the high-capacity magazines, this is again something that anyone familiar with guns would know to be useless. In a soft-target situation like a school where security either cannot or refuses to engage a shooter, a handgun with a regular magazine would be more than enough to inflict the kind of damage the shooter did, irrespective of the size of the magazine. And, if targets were hardened, the size of the magazine wouldn’t matter; a student would likely be either stopped or deterred before it made a significant difference.

Nowhere is evidence provided for any of their claims in this department, likely because none exists.

Oh, and speaking of security:

“Increase funding for school security: We believe that schools should be given sufficient funds for school security and resource officers to protect and secure the entire campus. As a school of over 3,000 students, teachers and faculty, Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school (sic) was only supplied funds to hire one on-campus armed resource officer by the state.

“Without backup, this officer’s hesitation proved to be disastrous and allowed for the senseless deaths of people who were killed on the third floor of the 1200 building. Though this idea has been proposed in the past, these funds should not be appropriated from the already scarce funding for public education. Governments should find resources to secure the millions of children that attend public schools without taking away from the quality of education that is offered at these institutions.”

Given the scarce resources, you mean a plan like, I don’t know, training and arming already-extant faculty members at your institution to back up armed resource officers? Like the president proposed? Probably not, given that one of the soi disant leaders of Stoneman Douglas gun control posse (who, in fairness, is not an editorial member of the Eagle Eye) has called that idea “stupid.”

“Allow the CDC to make recommendations for gun reform: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should be allowed to conduct research on the dangers of gun violence. The fact that they are currently prohibited from doing so undermines the first amendment.(sic) It also violates the rights of the American people.

“It is hypocritical to rally people to protect the second amendment, (sic) while remaining silent on the ways that blocking research violates one of our most basic constitutional freedoms.”

At least someone from The Guardian should have had the basic kindness to explain how incoherent this would sound. The Centers for Disease Control is a government organization. If it is commissioned by the government to provide gun death research — and the omnibus bill authorizes that — it can conduct said research. It would then present its findings.

Nowhere is a taxpayer-funded organization granted the right to officially opine on any issue without legislation or regulations that prompt it, under the First Amendment. This would be patently absurd — and, by the way, since the CDC is currently headed up by an appointee of the Trump administration, I seriously doubt the editorial members of the Eagle Eye would exactly be in favor of the CDC somehow utilizing the First Amendment to remark on how they feel about the Second Amendment.

Other arguments that you may have heard before that are included in the piece are the proposal to raise the minimum age for firearm purchases from 18 to 21, greater sharing of mental health information between mental health care providers and law enforcement, the “gun show loophole” argument and calls for more stringent background checks.

No particularly new points were contributed to the discussion and none of the arguments were rendered more astutely than they have heretofore been. There is no unique perspective brought to anything (aside from the idea that government agencies ought to have autonomous First Amendment rights to speak however they want), and certainly no particular view expressed in the article is unique to an individual who has survived a mass shooting.

Instead, it is an exploitative document (on the part of The Guardian) riddled with poor reasoning and nonexistent research (on the part of the students) which only exists in mass media circulation because of who wrote it.

You may feel that I am being inordinately cruel and unjust by attacking what these students have written. They are, after all, survivors of an unspeakable tragedy. They are also public figures and have made themselves so by their decision to lecture Americans on what constitutional and legal rights they should and should not have. The expectation that those they have chosen to lecture ought to sit down and stay silent ignore the fact that the media is using these teenagers as cultural satraps to weave a proxy narrative of their own.

If the media is going to engage in such puppetry, the very least they could do is give these kids a decent editor.

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Bernie Sanders Shows the Left’s Refusal to Coexist With Traditional Believers

Reported by Daniel Davis / @JDaniel_Davis / June 09, 2017

URL of the original posting site: http://dailysignal.com/2017/06/09/bernie-sanders-shows-lefts-refusal-coexist-traditional-believers/

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders aggressively questioned an executive nominee on Wednesday about his religious views. (Photo: Michael Reynolds/EPA/Newscom)

Religious tests for holding public office are banned in the Constitution and go against the very core of the American tradition. But you wouldn’t have learned that listening Wednesday to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., as he questioned Russ Vought, the nominee for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.

His questioning of Vought was nothing less than theological interrogation, and in the end, excoriation.

Here’s what unfolded when Sanders took the mic.

In a disjointed line of questioning that had nothing to do with budgetary issues, Sanders veered into the theology of salvation, singling out an article Vought had written for a conservative publication in 2015 that outlined basic Christian doctrine about God in contrast to the Islamic view.

Here’s the heart of the exchange (transcript courtesy David French of National Review):

Sanders: You wrote, “Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ, His Son, and they stand condemned.” Do you believe that that statement is Islamophobic?

Vought: Absolutely not, senator. I’m a Christian, and I believe in a Christian set of principles based on my faith. That post, as I stated in the questionnaire to this committee, was to defend my alma mater, Wheaton College, a Christian school that has a statement of faith that includes the centrality of Jesus Christ for salvation, and—

Sanders: I apologize. Forgive me, we just don’t have a lot of time. Do you believe people in the Muslim religion stand condemned? Is that your view?

Vought: Again, senator, I’m a Christian, and I wrote that piece in accordance with the statement of faith at Wheaton College.

Sanders: I understand that. I don’t know how many Muslims there are in America. Maybe a couple million. Are you suggesting that all those people stand condemned? What about Jews? Do they stand condemned too?

Vought: Senator, I’m a Christian—

Sanders (shouting): I understand you are a Christian, but this country are made of people who are not just—I understand that Christianity is the majority religion, but there are other people of different religions in this country and around the world. In your judgment, do you think that people who are not Christians are going to be condemned?

Vought: Thank you for probing on that question. As a Christian, I believe that all individuals are made in the image of God and are worthy of dignity and respect regardless of their religious beliefs. I believe that as a Christian that’s how I should treat all individuals—

Sanders: You think your statement that you put into that publication, they do not know God because they rejected Jesus Christ, His Son, and they stand condemned, do you think that’s respectful of other religions?

Vought: Senator, I wrote a post based on being a Christian and attending a Christian school that has a statement of faith that speaks clearly in regard to the centrality of Jesus Christ in salvation.

Sanders: I would simply say, Mr. Chairman, that this nominee is really not someone who this country is supposed to be about.

This exchange spotlights comprehensive ignorance on the part of Sanders—ignorance of the American tradition, of religious toleration, and even of what religion is. It’s unlikely that Sanders doesn’t realize religious tests for public office are banned in the Constitution. I suspect he would applaud that ban as much as the next person, at least in the abstract.

Yet his line of questioning seems to show an ignorance of Article VI of the Constitution, which states that “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

Traditional Believers Need Not Apply

The implications of Sanders’ questioning are far-reaching. If taken to its logical conclusion, Sanders’ view would exclude all orthodox followers of an Abrahamic faith from holding public office.

Every Abrahamic religion—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, in their historic forms—believes that some people either will, or may be, condemned in eternity. This is Abrahamic Religion 101.

But for Sanders, such mainstream beliefs demonstrate bigotry and racism. Just read the statement his office released after his exchange with Vought:

In a democratic society, founded on the principle of religious freedom, we can all disagree over issues, but racism and bigotry—condemning an entire group of people because of their faith—cannot be part of any public policy.

This statement crystalizes the problem. Sanders wants public officials to have religious freedom, except when their religious views contain something he might consider bigoted, such as a view of hell or condemnation.

What Sanders is really pushing for, whether he knows it or not, is a “Universalists Only” policy for those who would serve in public office. You can believe what you want, as long as your theology doesn’t teach that others might one day be judged.

And with that brush stroke, Sanders excludes historic Christianity, Judaism, and Islam from the public square. Ironically, his view of religion makes little room for some of the most devout followers of religion.

What’s at stake here is meaningful diversity in the public square. As Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., noted in a statement:

We have diverse political perspectives, we can also have diverse faith perspectives. Many faith traditions have complex and exclusive theological beliefs, and whether we agree with them or not, those diverse beliefs are protected by the Constitution.

Such beliefs have always been part of the fabric of American public life.

But that doesn’t deter Sanders. Religion that is pure and undefiled in the eyes of Bernie Sanders is progressive, nonjudgmental—in a word, unorthodox. Instead of a government that is truly of and by the people, Sanders’ logic would give us government of and by the unorthodox—a kind of theocracy of the heretical.

Have an Imagination, Bernie

But what is perhaps most tragic here is Sanders’ complete lack of imagination for how people with deep differences in worldview can coexist with each other. In Sanders’ view, if you think others will be condemned in eternity, you cannot possibly love or respect them, let alone live in peace with them. Your belief that they might be condemned is proof enough that you hate them.

But how is that logical? That’s as absurd as saying Joe sees a man in the street who is going to get hit by a bus, and therefore, Joe hates him.

Perhaps Sanders has only encountered hateful examples of religion in his 75 years of life. Perhaps the reason he can’t fathom true religious coexistence in the midst of deep disagreement is that he’s never seen it happen.

Yet it does happen, all the time.

To see a beautiful picture of this, Sanders need look no further than the conservative movement. Conservatives are a diverse smattering of evangelicals, Roman Catholics, Mormons, Jews, and secular Americans. We believe all kinds of things about each other’s eternal fate that Sanders would probably find abhorrent—yet here we are, arm in arm, working for a common political cause.

Sanders’ total lack of imagination here is tragic at a time when America’s ideological center is splintering. We’ve reached a critical time of polarization in which coexistence in the midst of profound disagreement is becoming more necessary than ever.

Yet it seems that only conservatives are prepared to deliver that kind of tolerance. The American left pays lip service to diversity, yet in practice routinely shuns the most important kind of diversity: diversity of viewpoint.

The left is very good at respecting diversity at the level of externals: skin color, religious tradition, ethnicity, etc. But when it comes to actual viewpoints, the left is a seamless monolith and wishes to stay that way.

Sanders is proof of this. He seemingly couldn’t care less whether Vought identified as Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, or Hindu. Those are just externals.

What he really cares about is the substance of Vought’s views. That’s the deep level of disagreement that the American left has not learned to coexist with.

Learning to Practice Actual Tolerance

Sanders’ line of questioning shows an alarming disregard for the Constitution’s ban on religious tests, but it also highlights the deeper problem of our cultural moment. Chiefly, it shows that the left needs to develop a greater imagination for how people with stark differences in worldview—including about other people’s eternal fate—might actually respect one another and live in harmony.

Until the secular left soaks this in, its lip service to diversity and tolerance will remain hollow and vacuous, constantly undermined by its own actions.

Disclosure: Russ Vought’s wife, Mary Vought, works for The Heritage Foundation, the parent organization of The Daily Signal. Russ Vought was formerly employed by Heritage Action for America, the think tank’s lobbying affiliate.

Commentary By

Daniel Davis/ @JDaniel_Davis

Daniel Davis is the commentary editor of The Daily Signal.

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Perspectives; Thoughts; Comments; Opinions; Discussions

Posts tagged ‘Constitution’

A MUST READ AND SHARE -Jerry Broussard

REPORTED BY: JOY PULLMANN | JUNE 27, 2022

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Why Violence Is An Inevitable Outcome Of Critical Race Theory

CRT Teaches America Is Racist

CRT Teaches American Government Is Racist

CRT: Non-Whites Cannot Succeed Within the System

That Leaves Violence as the Only Option

J. Allen Cartwright writes about the interplay of politics with cultural and scientific institutions. He can be followed on Parler at @jallencartwright.

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Reported By Abby Liebing | March 3, 2022

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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REPORTED BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JANUARY 31, 2022

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Special Ed

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2020 the “Perfect Storm” facing our Republic— All three branches of our Government are in peril

Years of preparatory work were spent in misleading and mis-directional propaganda

Contested voting results marred the election’s finality and ultimately its dismissal

Claims that the poor were going to be disenfranchised of their votes

The scheduled voting was extended by two months

Division, violence, slander and libel were widespread

A delusional/cunning/conniving campaign made unrealistic promises to win the population

Anger and mob violence were deliberately stirred against “privilege,” possessions, and status

Deceptive claims persuaded the “majority” they were robbed of their electoral victory

Inevitable civil war was sparked at the election’s end because Lenin’s group failed to win the majority

The dissolution of the old State and a “transformation” of the new system was promised to lead to true socialism but it brought history’s worst and longest ruling tyrant

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Richard Stengel is the Biden transition “Team Lead” for the US Agency for Global Media, the US government media empire that includes Voice of America, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Stengel, an Obama administration alumnus, wrote last year in a Washington Post op-ed that US freedom of speech was too unfettered and that changes must be considered.

[A]s a government official traveling around the world championing the virtues of free speech, I came to see how our First Amendment standard is an outlier.

…

All speech is not equal. And where truth cannot drive out lies, we must add new guardrails. I’m all for protecting “thought that we hate,” but not speech that incites hate.

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“We need a culture change to address this racism. You cannot change the culture of a country until you change the character of mankind,” Patrick continued.

“The crime against George Floyd, in my view, was a crime against all black America and against humanity and we’re coming together,” Patrick said. “We’ve got a lot of healing to do and we can’t do it unless we turn to God and we need to do that now more than ever.”

“We need a culture change to address this racism,” he explained. “You cannot change the culture of a country until you change the character of mankind. And you can’t change that unless you change the heart.

“And for billions of us on the planet, we believe you can’t do that unless you accept Jesus Christ, unless you accept God.

“And God has been left out of this equation,” he added, “through all of this.”

“We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort,” he added.

“I think the timing was terrible, Shannon,” Patrick said in regard to Mattis’ remarks. “And I think there are a lot of people speaking up now that are creating real distractions and undermining what we’re all trying to do in this country.”

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Corn Pop Music

There’s Pop Music and then there’s Corn Pop Music by Joe Biden with “you Ain’t Black” if you don’t vote for him.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Power Hunger Games

Minnesota Governor Walz appears to be enjoying this lockdown way too much or is it just the power?

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Stand Your Ground

People are standing their ground against unconstitutional state policies like California, and Michigan.

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“Yesterday, governors/mayors shut down walking trails,” Kerik tweeted.

”Some police have been ordered to arrest people for walking outside their homes. The government is considering a #coronavirus surveillance system.

“WTF! Americans better start paying attention and getting vocal! #Constitution.”

“Today @GovMurphy stopped all non-essential construction,” he tweeted.

“Construction is a profession in which many will not be able to receive government assistance.

“Instead of mandating by order that they wear protective equipment and follow CDC directives, this will destroy them/families.”

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Change of Heart

After years of disdain for the U.S. constitution, the Democrats are now pledging their undying love for it and the founders to Justify impeaching Trump.

Will impeaching the President backfire on Democrats in the next election?

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Reported By Benjamin Arie | Published March 4, 2019 at 2:39pm | Modified March 5, 2019 at 9:20am

Voices should be heard even if they aren’t able to scream the loudest.

The entire purpose of having state and local governments is that a far-off central government can’t bully the rest of the country, but that’s exactly what would happen if the Electoral College were abandoned.

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch,” it’s been said.