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One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics
is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -- Plato
(429-347 BC)
Friday, May 20, 2016
John Kerry: Enthusiastic Proponent Of A 'Borderless World'
How the Secretary of State's globalist agenda renders him unfit for his job.
by Michael Cutler: John Kerry's Department of State is responsible for functions that are so essential to the well-being of America and Americans that the Secretary of State is in the line of succession to the U.S. Presidency.
Here is an important excerpt from Kerry's remarks:“I think that everything that we’ve lived and learned tells us that we will never come out on top if we accept advice from soundbite salesmen and carnival barkers who pretend the most powerful country on Earth can remain great by looking inward and hiding behind walls at a time that technology has made that impossible to do and unwise to even attempt.”
“The future demands from us something more than a nostalgia for some rose-tinted version of a past that did not really exist in any case.”His delusional statement that it is impossible and unwise to look inward or attempt hide behind walls should give us all a serious “cause for pause.” His blatantly globalist philosophies are diametrically opposed to oath of office and responsibilities and America's best interests.
It is, perhaps understandable that Kerry, a key member of the Obama administration would not want Americans to “look inward” because looking inward will disclose the rot and dysfunction that America is now suffering from. Record levels of heroin addiction, a rapidly shrinking middle class, wage suppression and contrary to labor statistics, record levels of unemployment by working age Americans.
As for “hiding behind walls”- metaphorically, our borders are America's walls. With the growing threats posed by ISIS and other international terrorist organizations and transnational criminal gangs and organizations, our borders must be secured and seen for what they truly are- our first and last line of defense. I discussed these issues in my recent video, Michael Cutler Moment: Obama’s Pathway to the 'Borderless World'.
During his commencement address Kerry referenced the Boston terror attack- stating:And as we were reminded earlier, you are still mourning the tragic loss of Victoria McGrath and Priscilla Perez Torres. Even before, on Patriot’s Day 2013, when Victoria was among those hurt by a terrorist’s bomb, this community felt the weight of a wounded world. So this morning, we grieve and we celebrate all at the same time.Yet Kerry ignored that the Tsarnaev brothers, who carried out that deadly attack, were admitted into the United States with visas the State Department issued or that the recent San Bernardino, California terror attack involved a woman, Tashfeen Malik, who was admitted into the United States on a K-1 (Fiancee) visa.
While CBP (Customs and Border Protection) Inspectors inspect aliens seeking to enter the United States, the State Department issues visas to aliens who are required to secure visas prior to entering the United States. It also determines policies concerning the admission of refugees into the United States.
Indeed, over the past several decades, most of the terrorists who have carried out, or attempted to carry out, attacks in the United States were aliens who had been admitted into the United States with visas.
The State Department is an integral component of border security and hence, national security.
The 9/11 Commission focused considerable attention on the lack of integrity to the visa adjudications process. The preface of the “9/11 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Travel” begins with the following paragraph:It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.Page 54 contained this excerpt under the title “3.2 Terrorist Travel Tactics by Plot:”
Although there is evidence that some land and sea border entries (of terrorists) without inspection occurred, these conspirators mainly subverted the legal entry system by entering at airports.
Each year roughly one half million nonimmigrant aliens who are admitted into the United States subsequently violate their terms of admission. This should cause the State Department to consider how to more effectively screen aliens who apply for visas but under Kerry's “leadership,” this has not been done.
Carefully scrutinizing aliens who seek visas and entry into the United States, especially given the multitude of threats we face today is not a matter of “isolationism” but of commonsense.
Kerry went on to note:“Now, graduating class, I got to tell you, you really do look spectacular. I want you to – I mean, just look around you. Classmates of every race, religion, gender, shape, size – 85 countries represented and dozens of languages spoken. You are the most diverse class in Northeastern’s history – in other words, you are Donald Trump’s worst nightmare.”That statement is disturbing for two reasons. First of all, commencement addresses are not supposed to be campaign events. Second- the statement outrageously accuses anyone who believes the United States must secure its borders- especially in a historically perilous era, is demonstrating xenophobia or racism.
Our immigration laws are utterly and totally blind as to race, religion and ethnicity.
It is also disconcerting, but not surprising, to note that Kerry expressed delight that Northeastern University has so many foreign students in attendance. His State Department issued every one of those foreign students their visas. On April 29, 2016 ICE issued a press release, “ICE releases quarterly international student data” that included the following:Based on data extracted from SEVIS (Student and Exchange Visitor Program) March 7, 2016 international student enrollment at U.S. schools increased 6.2 percent compared to March 2015. In March, there were 8,687 U.S. schools with SEVP certification to enroll international students, a three percent decrease from the previous year.
Forty percent of international students studying in the United States, equaling almost 479,000 individuals, were enrolled in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) coursework. Approximately 417,000 international students from Asia pursued STEM studies, an increase of 17 percent since March 2015.The ICE press release went on to note:Other key points from the report include: 77 percent of all international students were from Asia. The top 10 countries of citizenship for international students included: China, India, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Vietnam, Japan, Taiwan, Brazil and Mexico.I have written a number of articles on why educating so many foreign students at our universities undermines national security and also has a negative impact on American workers. Two such articles are: Educating Our Adversaries and Educating 'Engineers of Jihad' at US Universities.
Kerry used his address to decry poverty around the world and while celebrating the growth of the middle class in foreign countries, ignored how increasingly, poverty in American cities undermines U.S. national security and public safety and destroys the futures of millions of poverty-stricken American children as America's middle class faces extinction.
Consider this excerpt from his commencement address:“Today, extreme poverty worldwide has fallen below 10 percent for the first time in history. The revolution that is taking place on a global basis has brought hundreds of millions of people in India, hundreds of millions of people in China into the middle class. And while that’s welcome news, we’re not satisfied because 700 million people still have to survive on less than what it costs for us to grab a couple of Dunkin Donuts a day, because the gap – the gap that was referred to earlier between rich and poor – remains far too wide.”The New York Post reported on the economic crisis in the United States in its article, “America’s middle class is headed toward extinction.” This topic is one I wrote about in one of my earlier articles, Immigration ‘Reform’: Engineered Destruction of the Middle Class.
Kerry's commencement address that touted the growth of the middle class in China and India, while blithely ignoring the economic plight of Americans and America's middle class, made his speech far more appropriate for the Secretary General of the United Nations than the U.S. Secretary of State to deliver at Northeastern University.
-------------- Michael Cutler is a retired Senior Special Agent of the former INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) whose career spanned some 30 years. He served as an Immigration Inspector, Immigration Adjudications Officer and spent 26 years as an agent with half of his career in the Drug Task Force. He has testified before well over a dozen congressional hearings, provided testimony to the 9/11 Commission. His website is michaelcutler.net. He also writes for FrontPage Mag a publication of theDavid Horowitz Freedom Center. David Horowitz is a Contributing Author of the ARRA News Service Tags:Michael Cutler, FrontPage Mag, Border, Illegal Immigration, John KerryTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Those are just a few examples of terrorist attacks carried out in America by Islamic extremists. Sadly, we can expect more death and suffering in the long battle ahead.
James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, recently told CNN that ISIS can carry out Paris and Brussels-style attacks in the United States. "They do have that capacity," Clapper said. "That's something we worry about a lot in the United States, that they could conjure up a raid like they did in Paris or Brussels."
It should be obvious that we have a problem with radical Islamic terrorism, and we have not yet figured out how to screen out the murderous extremists. Under these conditions, it only makes sense to consider a pause in Muslim immigration.
Yet that common sense approach to a growing security threat continues to be a huge stumbling block for the left-wing media and the left in general. Sadly, even a shocking number of leaders on the right continue to rule out a pause as "un-American."
Here's one example. The late Senator Bob Bennett of Utah, practically on his death bed, reportedly made a point of going around to every Muslim he could find in his hospital to apologize for Republican voters embracing Donald Trump and his idea of pausing Muslim immigration.
Quite frankly, I would feel better if I saw more American Muslims apologizing for the death and destruction being committed by their co-religionists!
Fighting Back: You asked for it, so we did it!
Last week, I offered a number of suggestions for Congress to fight back against the Obama Administration's outrageous "guidance" letter ordering public schools to allow boys who claim to be girls to use the girls' bathrooms. We received an avalanche of positive feedback urging us to communicate that message with our elected leaders in Congress.
So today, I am pleased to report that we, along with dozens of conservative leaders, sent a letter to Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell demanding that they:
Denounce Obama's order;
Stand with schools and families that are resisting it;
Hold public hearings forcing administration officials to explain this policy;
Draft legislation clarifying that Washington bureaucrats have no authority to dictate local bathroom policies; and
Vote on this legislation so that the American people know where their representatives stand.
Read our letter here. I promise you, we will do everything we can to fight back in defense of our values!
The Intolerant Left:
Ryan Bomberger is a brave man. He recently went to Harvard to point out the terrible fact that more black babies in New York City are aborted than born. That is the legacy of Planned Parenthood founder, Margaret Sanger, a eugenicist who wanted to limit reproduction among what she called "the lower classes."
This is a subject that reasonable, intelligent people should be able to discuss, especially given that Planned Parenthood concentrates its facilities in minority communities. But instead of a rational discussion, Bomberger was shouted down, called the most disgusting names and was even accused of being a racist, a bizarre charge to make against a black man defending black babies.
His experience [WARNING: GRAPHIC LANGUAGE] is another shocking example of the growing intolerance and bigotry that is so rampant on America's college campuses -- places that should be havens for free speech and free thought.
It is amazing how the left, which bases so much of its bizarre agenda on demands for tolerance, is increasingly incapable of demonstrating any tolerance for opposing points of view.
------------- Gary Bauer is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families Tags:Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families, Misguided Elites, Fighting Back, The Intolerant LeftTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Newt and Callista Gingrich: This election year has been defined by candidates in both parties who are promising a political revolution. A majority of the American people are calling out for real change — for dethroning a comfortable and overbearing elite and replacing it with a more accountable government.
But if 2016 is a revolutionary year, it is also an appropriate year to remember the real revolution in our American history.
After all, in this 240th anniversary year of American independence, who better to look to than the key figure of the American Revolution, George Washington? Certainly his contemporaries — men like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison — saw Washington as the greatest of them all.
The Founding Fathers knew that George Washington was truly the indispensable man, as we portray in our new documentary film, The First American. While many of the Founders focused on words and ideals, it was up to Washington to win the war and hold the new nation together.
Today, in this season of insurgency in both parties, the story of Washington’s leadership during the summer of 1776 is the perfect reminder that aspirations are not enough to win a revolution. Big goals require action and hard work to accomplish. Presidential candidates and their supporters who aspire to carry forward a political revolution in 2016 should take note.
The first Independence Day, July 4, 1776, began with lofty aspirations. On that day, the delegates to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia issued the Declaration of Independence. And certainly, this was a historic achievement: their vision has been the underlying political inspiration for Americans across many generations, and it remains so today. Presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Barack Obama have pointed to our shared belief in the ideals of the Declaration as the very thing that makes us American.
But in fact, it was not the Declaration that finally won Americans their independence. It was the unfathomable effort of an army, and the sheer fortitude of its leader, George Washington.
In this sense, Philadelphia was not the most important theatre during the summer of 1776. Instead, it was New York City, 100 miles northeast, where the Patriots determined whether the Declaration of Independence would have real meaning.
In New York harbor in early July of that year, more than 30,000 British troops and highly trained Hessian mercenaries were being offloaded on Staten Island. The British goal was to defeat the Continental Army and kill the American Revolution in its infancy.
Watching the British from across the harbor on Manhattan were just 9,000 troops under the command of General George Washington.
The stakes could not have been higher. As Washington himself wrote in his general order of July 2, 1776:The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves…The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army — Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; this is all we can expect — We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die.One week later, on July 9, 1776, General Washington ordered the Declaration read to his troops in southern Manhattan. The troops listened to the inspiring words of the Declaration as they watched the British ships on the horizon. Afterward, in response, soldiers joined civilians rushing to the statue of King George III on Bowling Green. The crowd tore it down, and later melted the lead to make more than 40,000 bullets for use against the British.
Despite the excitement among his troops, Washington faced an impossible military situation in New York that summer. Without ships to transport his army swiftly across the waters surrounding New York City, there was no way he could prevail against a superior military force with a gigantic navy.
Nevertheless, Washington was determined to make a stand. He divided his army and put troops on Long Island to meet the British in what would be the largest battle of the entire war. It was a courageous move, but one that proved a disaster for the Patriots. Washington retreated to Brooklyn Heights, where his army faced annihilation. And yet, miraculously, he organized a successful nighttime evacuation of his troops from Brooklyn back to Manhattan. The final stretch of the evacuation, occurring after dawn, was shielded from the view of the British by a dense fog that suddenly appeared to cover the retreat. Eyewitnesses reported that Washington was the last person on shore.
The Continental Army lived to fight another day. And Washington learned a lesson that proved among the most important of the war: as long as he could avoid defeat, he could continue the fight and deny the British victory.
As we learned making The First American, keeping the Continental Army together for eight years as a fighting force that could hold its own against the British was a monumental challenge. It was a feat that no other Founding Father could have achieved. And it was the leadership of George Washington that eventually led to victory — and true American independence from Britain.
After the war, Washington resisted the temptation to become the new “King George” and returned to civilian life at his beloved Mount Vernon. Britain’s King George III said that this extraordinary act of deference to the rule of law made Washington the greatest figure of his age. It certainly earned him Americans’ universal trust as our first president.
Looking back from 2016, we know how Washington succeeded after eight long and difficult years. But looking forward from 1776, George Washington, the other founding fathers, and the troops of the Continental Army didn’t know the future. They only knew that they were mutually pledged in support of the Declaration, with a firm reliance on Divine Providence.
Together with incredible effort and sacrifice, it was enough to win a revolution. It is our hope that the legacy of George Washington is not forgotten and will continue to inspire future generations of Americans.
---------------------- Newt Gingrich is a former Georgia Congressman and Speaker of the U.S. House. He co-authored and was the chief architect of the "Contract with America" and a major leader in the Republican victory in the 1994 congressional elections. He is noted speaker and writer. Callista Gingrich is the President of Gingrich Productions, a multimedia production company based in Washington, DC. The above commentary was shared via Gingrich Productions. Tags:Newt Gingrich, Callista Gingrich, The Real Revolutionary, George Washington, video, Gingrich ProductionsTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Kerby Anderson, Contributing Author: Is Christianity really as bad as atheists say that it is? For decades we have heard the charges from the new atheists. So we shouldn’t be surprised that many of those criticisms showed up at the 17th annual “White Privilege Conference” held last month in Philadelphia.
Paul Kivel (founder of the Challenging Christian Hegemony Project) blamed Christianity for “almost every dysfunction in society, from racism and sexism to global warming and a weak economy.” He warns that the United States is run by thousands of predominantly white Christian men who want to “colonize our mind” with Christianity’s core beliefs.
It is hard to take some of his criticisms seriously, but they deserve some response, if to merely remind others about the benefits they enjoy because of Christianity. Jerry Newcombe in a recent column provides a long list.
If you are educated, you should probably thank Christianity. “Education for the masses was a gift of Christianity to the world.” Education in America was established so that citizens could read the Bible for themselves and not be deluded. Nearly all of the colleges in America’s early history were founded on Christian principles.
If you have ever been in a hospital, you should also thank Christianity. “St. Basil of Caesarea, who lived in the fourth century, is credited with creating the first hospital in the history of the world.” And let’s not forget the advances in science. As Norm Geisler and I explain in our book on origin science, most of the pioneers in the field of science had a Christian worldview and others were theists who believed in God.
Most of the social movements in the 19th and 20th century sprung from Christian convictions. The abolition movement, child labor law movement, suffrage movement, and the civil rights movement are a few examples.
Christianity shouldn’t be blamed for what is bad in the world. We should be grateful for the many blessings it provides each of us.
----------- Kerby Anderson is a radio talk show host heard on numerous stations via the Point of View Network endorsed by Dr. Bill Smith, Editor, ARRA News Service Tags:Kerby Anderson, Viewpoints, Point of View, ChristianityTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Hillary And The FBI:- Another Milestone On The Road To Tyranny.
by Bruce Thornton: Beneath the drama of the primaries the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s home-brew server keeps humming along, though one wouldn’t know it from the cursory coverage by the mainstream media. It’s not that there isn’t anything new to report. Romanian hacker Guccifer claims he got into Clinton’s server with ease, and the Kremlin asserts it’s in possession of 20,000 of her emails. Hillary’s standard verbal brush-off––“it’s a routine security inquiry” ––was exploded by FBI Director James Comey’s laconic “I don’t even know what that means . . . We’re conducting an investigation. That’s what we do.” But these new developments are dismissed by Democrats with increasingly desperate rationalizations and lies, and Republicans haven’t yet worked through the seven stages of grief over Donald Trump’s ascendancy, leaving little time to mine this scandal for electoral gold.
The Republicans need to get on with it. Sometime soon the FBI will release its report, and just based on what’s leaked so far, Clinton should be indicted for mishandling classified material. But “should ain’t is,” as my old man used to say. There are several scenarios that can follow the report, and most will reveal just how we have fallen from the fundamental principle of representative government going back to ancient Athens: equality before the law.
In the first scenario, the FBI recommends an indictment. Supporters of this view cite the institutional culture and professionalism of the FBI, which will be angry if after spending so many thousands of man-hours Clinton gets to walk. There is talk of mass resignations, similar to the 1973 “Saturday Night Massacre,” when the Attorney General and Deputy AG resigned after Richard Nixon fired the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate break-ins. Others cite the professional integrity of James Comey as the rock upon which their hopes rest. If undercut by the Attorney General, he too will resign, creating a storm of negative publicity for Clinton and the Democrats. In 2004, Comey threatened to resign when White House aides pressured the hospitalized AG John Ashcroft to overrule Comey’s refusal to certify the legality of important aspects of the NSA’s domestic surveillance program. A few years later in Congressional testimony Comey stoutly defended the independence of the Department of Justice.
I hope this estimation Comey’s integrity is true, but when it comes to political appointees, we should take George Orwell’s attitude towards saints: guilty till proven innocent. The political rewards of not recommending an indictment would be huge for Comey if Hillary is elected president. Career FBI employees will have to make painful financial and career calculations about the effects of resignation. There are any number of ways the Bureau could spin such a recommendation in a way to let Hillary off the hook: no proof of intent, evidence of carelessness but not criminality, or throwing some staffers and aides under the bus. I believe there are men and women of principle in the FBI who can face these consequences and do the right thing. But we won’t know for sure until the time comes.
If resignations don’t follow a failure to recommend indictment, Hillary will reap a huge publicity windfall. She will crow about the “vast right-wing conspiracy” being thwarted by the integrity of the FBI. Her campaign will cite the months spent, the 150 agents on the case, and all the interrogations that turned up nothing. No matter how much scolding from the Bureau, she will trumpet her vindication as proof that the Republican Party has hounded her for 25 years because she’s a woman who cares for the little guy.
In the next scenario, Comey recommends an indictment, and AG Loretta Lynch demurs. Her recent suit against North Carolina for its law mandating that public restrooms be differentiated by biological sex is evidence of her progressive prejudices and disrespect for the separation of powers and federalism. Her interpretation of the Civil Rights Act’s language about discrimination on the basis of sex as justifying her suit is fatuous, and usurps the law-making power of Congress. No Congressman in 1964 believed that “sex” meant anything other than biological sex. Lynch is a “living Constitution” acolyte who feels justified in “interpreting” the language of law to suit ideological and political prejudices. Her public statements against state voting requirements and her support of Obama’s abuse of executive orders are revealing of the same tendencies.
With such a record of partisanship, it is very likely that she will refuse to indict Clinton. Or, if the bad publicity of such a decision would be too intense before the election, she could draw out the deliberation process for months, and then refuse after Hillary’s sworn in. Or if Hillary didn’t win, I could easily see Obama granting her a preemptive pardon before he left office, just as Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon in September 1974. There could be blowback, but Obama would be off to six-figure speaking gigs and an eight-figure advance for his memoirs.
If this scenario unfolds, make sure to remember some of the culprits: those Republican Senators who confirmed Loretta Lynch as Attorney General. Whether they confirmed her out of fear of being called racist and sexist, or a sincere belief in her qualifications, or a gesture of bipartisan comity, their confirmation will share some blame for Hillary escaping legal and political accountability for sacrificing this country’s security to her ambition.
But the worst consequence of Hillary’s disregard for the law will be the blow to the foundational principle of representative government. Politics began 2500 years ago when power was based not on men because of their wealth, charisma, or prestigious ancestors, but on laws that applied equally to all citizens. Power was no longer a personal possession, but belonged to the body of citizens, to be used by them according to transparent rules and procedures that limited the scope of such power and held those who used it accountable. This same fundamental principle animated the Founders who, as John Adams put it, created “a government of laws, and not men,” for all men are vulnerable to the temptation to abuse power.
This principle of divided, distributed, and accountable power that men use, not own, is the greatest protector of our freedom, for it protects us from tyranny, which Aristotle defined asthat arbitrary power of an individual which is responsible to no one, and governs all alike, whether equals or betters, with a view to its own advantage, not to that of its subjects, and therefore against their will. No freeman willingly endures such a government.We have already drawn closer to such tyrannical power. From government agencies like the EPA and the IRS, which are responsible to no one, arbitrarily abusing their power against the will of the citizens; to progressives like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who recognize no limits to their will and bend the law to suit their personal ambitions and ideological dogma. For all their talk of “equality,” they live in the world of Animal Farm, where “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” The Constitution, the rules of the State Department, the laws governing the handling of classified material, none of these apply to Hillary. Letting her get away with this outrage will be, like Obama’s disregard for the law, yet another milestone on the road to tyranny.
----------------- Bruce Thornton is Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a Research Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, and a Professor of Classics and Humanities at the California State University. He is the author of nine books and numerous essays on classical culture and its influence on Western Civilization. His most recent book, Democracy's Dangers and Discontents (Hoover Institution Press), is now available for purchase. David Horowitz is a Contributing Author of the ARRA News Service Tags:Hillary Clinton, FBI, Hillary, Investigation, Bruce Thornton, FrontPage MagTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Patrick Buchanan: In his coquettish refusal to accept the Donald, Paul Ryan says he cannot betray the conservative “principles” of the party of Abraham Lincoln, high among which is a devotion to free trade.
But when did free trade become dogma in the Party of Lincoln?
As early as 1832, young Abe declared, “My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance. I am in favor of a national bank … and a high protective tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles.”
Campaigning in 1844, Lincoln declared, “Give us a protective tariff and we will have the greatest nation on earth.”
Abe’s openness to a protective tariff in 1860 enabled him to carry Pennsylvania and the nation. As I wrote in “The Great Betrayal: How American Sovereignty and Social Justice Are Being Sacrificed to the Gods of the Global Economy” in 1998:
“The Great Emancipator was the Great Protectionist.”
During his presidency, Congress passed and Abe signed 10 tariff bills. Lincoln inaugurated the Republican Party tradition of economic nationalism.
Vermont’s Justin Morrill, who shepherded GOP tariff bills through Congress from 1860 to 1898, declared, “I am for ruling America, for the benefit, first, of Americans, and for the ‘rest of mankind’ afterwards.”
In 1890, Republicans enacted the McKinley Tariff that bore the name of that chairman of ways and means and future president.
“Open competition between high-paid American labor and poorly paid European labor,” warned Cong. William McKinley, “will either drive out of existence American industry or lower American wages.”
Too few Republicans of McKinley’s mindset sat in Congress when NAFTA and MFN for China were being enacted.
In the 1895 “History of the Republican Party,” the authors declare, “the Republican Party … is the party of protection … that carries the banner of protection proudly.”
Under protectionist policies from 1865 to 1900, U.S. debt was cut by two-thirds. Customs duties provided 58 percent of revenue. Save for President Cleveland’s 2 percent tax, which was declared unconstitutional, there was no income tax. Commodity prices fell 58 percent. Real wages, despite a doubling of the population, rose 53 percent. Growth in GDP averaged over 4 percent a year. Industrial production rose almost 5 percent a year.
The U.S. began the era with half of Britain’s production, and ended it with twice Britain’s production.
In McKinley’s first term, the economy grew 7 percent a year. After his assassination, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt took over. His reaction to Ryan’s free-trade ideology? In a word, disgust.
“Pernicious indulgence in the doctrine of free trade seems inevitably to produce fatty degeneration of the moral fibre,” wrote the Rough Rider, “I thank God I am not a free trader.”
When the GOP returned to power after President Wilson, they enacted the Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922. For the next five years, the economy grew 7 percent a year.
While the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, signed eight months after the Crash of ’29, was blamed for the Depression, Nobel laureate Milton Friedman ferreted out the real perp, the Federal Reserve.
Every Republican platform from 1884 to 1944 professed the party’s faith in protection. Free trade was introduced by the party of Woodrow Wilson and FDR.
Our modern free-trade era began with the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. Among the eight no votes in the Senate were Barry Goldwater and Prescott Bush.
Even in recent crises, Republican presidents have gone back to the economic nationalism of their Grand Old Party. With the Brits coming for our gold and Japanese imports piling up, President Nixon in 1971 closed the gold window and imposed a 10 percent tariff on Japanese goods.
Ronald Reagan slapped a 50 percent tariff on Japanese motorcycles being dumped here to kill Harley-Davidson, then put quotas on Japanese auto imports, and on steel and machine tools.
Reagan was a conservative of the heart. Though a free trader, he always put America first.
What, then, does history teach?
The economic nationalism and protectionism of Hamilton, Madison, Jackson, and Henry Clay, and the Party of Lincoln, McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, and Coolidge, of all four presidents on Mount Rushmore, made America the greatest and most self-sufficient republic in history.
And the free-trade, one-worldism of Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and Obama enabled Communist China to shoulder us aside us and become the world’s No. 1 manufacturing power.
Like Britain, after free-trade was adopted in the mid-19th century, when scribblers like David Ricardo, James Mill and John Stuart Mill, and evangelists like Richard Cobden dazzled political elites with their visions of the future, America has been in a long steady decline.
If we look more and more like the British Empire in its twilight years, it is because we were converted to the same free-trade faith that was dismissed as utopian folly by the men who made America.
Where in the history of great nations — Britain before 1850, the USA, Bismarck’s Germany, postwar Japan and China today — has nationalism not been the determinant factor in economic policy?
Speaker Ryan should read more history and less Ayn Rand.
----------- Patrick Buchanan is currently a conservative columnist, political analyst, chairman of The American Cause foundation and an editor of The American Conservative. He has been a senior advisor to three Presidents, a two-time candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and was the presidential nominee of the Reform Party in 2000. He blogs at the Patrick J. Buchanan. Tags:Patrick Buchanan, conservative, commentary, U.S., history, nationalism trade, Conservative Heretic, editorial cartoon, AF Branco, Speaker Paul Ryan, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Tags:Hillary Clinton, economic advisor, NY Times, attacks, Donald Trump, ignores, Bill Clinton, Clinton's, Sexual IndiscretionsTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Paul Jacob, Contributing Author: A few days ago, the Barna Group released the results of its latest poll, asking “Americans whether capitalism or socialism align better with the teachings of Jesus,” explainsThe Hollywood Reporter. The results are that “socialism won 24 percent compared to 14 percent, with the rest answering ‘neither’ or ‘not sure.’”
And what about the year’s big race?
“When asked which presidential candidate’s policies aligned closest to the teachings of Jesus, Sanders was on top with 21 percent, compared to 9 percent for Hillary Clinton and 6 percent for Donald Trump.” Ted Cruz, no longer in the race, fared better than Hillary, but below Bernie, at 11 percent.
Now, it is worth mentioning that more significant polling on issues relating religion to politics has been done by Barna. Still, the commentary over at Fox on this poll was . . . interesting.
On Bill O’Reilly’s show, Monica Crowley made the crucial distinction between Jesus’ command to give to the poor and modern socialists’ demands to take from some, through taxation and by force, to give to others.
O’Reilly himself, however, went on a bizarre and joking riff about “buying his way to heaven” by leaving his wealth to charity . . . after he dies.
Looking over these poll numbers, I can only conclude that advocates of a free society have much work to do convincing Americans of the justice and benevolence of free markets, of “capitalism.”
And Christians have their work cut out for them, too . . . at the very least to disencumber themselves from the stench of socialist states and the brutal force those states inevitably rest upon.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
------------------ Paul Jacobs is author of Common Sense which provides daily commentary about the issues impacting America and about the citizens who are doing something about them. He is also President of the Liberty Initiative Fund (LIFe) as well as Citizens in Charge Foundation. Jacobs is a contributing author on the ARRA News Service. Tags:Paul Jacob, Common Sense, Guilt, Association, Christians, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Because feeling better about one’s self by punishing others is an addictive pleasure, victories can never satiate those who wage identity politics as war. ~ Dr. Angelo Codevilla
by Dr. Anfelo Codevilla: Our ruling class’s forceful exaltation of the persons, proclivities, and symbols by which it defines itself, along with its pretense that its preferences trump reality, defeat themselves by their absurdity. That absurdity stems from its members’ conceit about who they are.
Led by Barack Obama’s Democrats, echoed by the media, backed by big corporations’ muscle, and trailed by Republicans with tail tucked between legs, our rulers demand no less than the paradigm of totalitarianism in George Orwell’s novel, “1984.”
Recall that Big Brother’s agent berated the hapless Winston for preferring his own views to society’s dictates, then finished breaking his spirit by holding up four fingers and demanding that Winston acknowledge seeing five. Our rulers, like Big Brother, hector us to accept their rewritten history and to superimpose their scales of value on ours. They end by demanding that we substitute their will for what our very senses tell us is reality—because they please to be who they are.
There is a sense in which the ruling icons of political correctness—lesser Americans are racist, sexist, religiously bigoted, and infested by pathologies for which they must make amends—are petty partisanship meant to squeeze the last drops of voter participation out of the Democratic Party’s habitual constituencies. But our Progressive rulers’ partisanship is more. It is identity politics waged as war.
Ignoring the irony, Obama described what the war is about by accusing Americans unlike himself (and the progressives to whom he was speaking) of being inferior because of their “antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.” Specifically, he said, they “cling to guns or religion.” Hence, pursuing identity war requires breaking the American people’s grip on their sense of worth, on their very connection to reality. That is why, over decades, our Progressive ruling class has penalized Americans who say the wrong thing in front of the wrong person, re-written schoolbooks, etc.
It’s All About Us
But 2016 will be remembered as the year in which Progressives forced their redefinition of American history upon one and all by re-facing America’s currency with their favorite faces. Obama took Andrew Jackson off the $20 bill and replaced it with a glowering image of anti-slavery activist Harriet Tubman. Jackson’s victory at the 1815 battle of New Orleans ended the War of 1812 and removed doubt about America’s independence by securing America’s possession of the Mississippi valley. But Progressives think it more important for Tubman to reproach us (not themselves, for sure) every time we open our wallets.
We may also remember 2016 as the year in which Progressives dropped pretenses about asserting the rise of their class as world history’s main event, that all concerning the clash of empires and civilizations must be judged by its relevance to themselves. This Obama did when he justified to a British audience his decision to remove Churchill’s bronze bust from the Oval Office. Churchill had led the Western world to recognize Nazism’s evil and to vanquish it. Churchill had also fought the Communist empire and championed the Western world’s civilization.
But for Progressives, the first is of small account, while the latter is unforgivable. Symbolically, Obama replaced Churchill’s bronze with one of Martin Luther King Jr. who, Obama said, had done so much to “allow me to have the privilege of holding this office.” That’s what’s really important.
Our Progressive ruling class’s war on our scale of values climaxed in 2016 with a campaign in favor of “transgender rights”: a demand that Americans accept that someone with a penis can be a “woman” while another with a vagina can be a “man.” Object to that mandate to take leave of your senses, insist that sex-specific public bathrooms be used exclusively by persons with the requisite personal plumbing, and be expelled from polite society. Next to this, Big Brother’s demand to call four fingers five is small, mild stuff.
Subjugating Fellow Americans to Make Our Rulers Feel Good
Why also, for example, do our rulers force schoolchildren to recite Islam’s act of submission, order male soldiers to walk around in pink high heels and wear simulated female breasts; why do they lecture others on how ashamed they should be of their “white privilege”; why do they proscribe common words and prescribe others in their stead, etc. ad nauseam?
Surely these impositions are not attempts to turn inferiors into equals by persuading them. Progressives view those outside their class not as fellow citizens who are capable of being persuaded into equality with them, but rather as a herd to be prodded into alienation from their irremediably flawed natures and affections. But why do that? To what end?
The answer is one of mankind’s oldest stories. Confessing other people’s sins (real or imagined) and inflicting punishment on them has ever been human beings’ preferred path to feeling good about themselves. The more fault I find and the more penance I impose on thee, the holier I am than thou The worse you are, the better I am and the more power I should have over you.
Because feeling better about one’s self by denigrating and punishing others is an addictive pleasure the appetite for which grows with each satisfaction, victories can never satiate those who wage identity politics as war. The insatiability of their need to bolster self-esteem at others’ expense is the reason why our rulers must trump every imposition with another, without end.
It is why satisfying any of political correctnesses’ demands only generates more. Finding or manufacturing new ones is cheap and fun. But precisely that unwillingness, that incapacity, to aim at an end point in which our rulers might be satisfied ensures that they engender more revolt than submission. The sort of people against whom Americans revolted 250 years ago were not as pretentious.
------------- Dr. Angelo M. Codevilla is Professor Emeritus of International Relations at Boston University and a fellow of the Claremont Institute. He is the author of To Make and Keep Peace, Hoover Institution Press, 2014. He is a contributor to The Federalist. Tags:political correctness, war by another means, The Federalist, Angelo M. CodevillaTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Lauretta Brown (CNSNews): The House of Representatives unanimously passed the Frank Wolf International Religious Freedom Act Monday afternoon, which upgrades the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 giving the administration and the State Department new resources to help combat the worldwide escalation in persecution of religious minorities.
The bill’s author Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) said upon the bill’s passage that “the world is experiencing an unprecedented crisis of international religious freedom, a crisis that continues to create millions of victims.”
The legislation would amend the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA) to “locate the Office on International Religious Freedom in the Office of the Secretary of State” and include “mandatory training on religious freedom for all Foreign Service officers.”
The bill would also create “a Designated Persons List of individuals sanctioned for participating or directing religious freedom abuses,” and would create a “tier system” for International Religious Freedom reports on countries of particular concern (CPC) and a special watch list to identify countries with religious freedom violations that do not yet meet the criteria to receive a CPC designation.
Under the new legislation, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom would be required “to compile and make publicly available regularly updated lists of persons imprisoned, detained, disappeared, placed under house arrest, tortured, or subject to forced renunciations of faith by: (1) a foreign government recommended for designation as a country of particular concern for religious freedom, or (2) a violent nonstate actor.”
The president is also directed by the bill to appoint to the National Security Council a “Special Adviser for Global Religion Engagement and International Religious Freedom (in lieu of the Special Adviser to the President on International Religious Freedom)” to “coordinate executive branch international religious freedom policies and global religion engagement strategies.” . . . [Read More] Tags:House Passes, Upgraded, International Religious Freedom Law, Lauretta Brown, CNSNewsTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
TSA’s Union Power Grab: Thousands Slowing Down Airports
by Michelle Malkin: When it comes to public employee unions, there’s no such thing as a coincidence.
All you travelers stuck in mile-long TSA security lines are pawns. Convenient political pawns. Big Labor bosses want more power and more money. Stranded travelers are just the latest victims in this age-old game of D.C. extortion.
Union leaders want you to think the fault lies with a stingy Congress unwilling to fork over enough money to fill screener shortages. White House spokesman Josh Earnest poured more partisan fuel on the fire last week by blaming the nationwide slowdowns on “the inability of Republicans in Congress to govern the country.”
What a load of flying horse hockey.
The 15-year-old Transportation Security Administration now has a massive annual budget of nearly $7.6 billion and a workforce of nearly 60,000. They had enough tax dollars to waste on an idiotic $1.4 million iPad app that randomly points left or right; $3 million on more than 200 useless explosive detection “puffer” machines that didn’t detect explosives reliably; and unknown gobs in awards and automatic bonuses to senior TSA managers at a time when the agency was repeatedly failing internal tests of its ability to stop weapons, bombs and terror threats.
Yet, last week, with airlines, airports and customers all raising holy hell, Congress scraped together $34 million more to pay TSA screeners overtime and fund nearly 800 more screeners to address the summer travel crush.
It’s still not enough of course. It’s never enough. Since last fall, the TSA workforce (unionized under the Obama administration) has staged protests at major airports (including Dallas-Fort Worth, JFK, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis/St. Paul and Atlanta) organized by the American Federation of Government Employees, which is demanding full collective bargaining rights under federal labor law, along with hefty pay increases.
Obstruction is priority number one.
The agitators whine that TSA workers are not “respected” enough as a profession. “Morale for TSA Officers is at an all-time low,” AFGE TSA Council President Hydrick Thomas complained in a recent statement. “We work very hard under some of the most stressful and dangerous conditions, but are treated like second-class employees as compared to the rest of the federal workforce. We just want equal treatment.”
Perhaps if TSA officials weren’t letting 95 percent of mock explosives and firearms through during audits and inspections, or if they weren’t gratuitously groping grandmas and breast-feeding moms and wounded veterans, or recklessly handing out TSA Precheck status “like candy” as one whistleblower put it last year, or dumping 3,000 pieces of luggage in parking lots as a result of software “glitches,” as happened last week at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport, or employing unknown numbers of criminals, or rewarding serial failures, we wouldn’t all be snickering at their Rodney “I don’t get no respect!” Dangerfield comedy routine.
Expanding TSA workers’ collective bargaining rights is about expanding union bosses’ authority to dictate every last detail of employment — from pay and officer assignments to schedules and uniforms. The reason full bargaining rights under Title V of U.S. labor law have not been extended to TSA agents is to protect the agency’s flexibility and discretion in the interest of national security. Yep, remember that? You know, the very reason the TSA was created in the first place?
If you think the current lapses in TSA hiring practices are bad, just wait until you have a system dominated by union negotiators who are allergic to merit pay and committed to protecting every last incompetent member to the death.
TSA union leaders hungry for new members and fattened coffers don’t care about your security. This is all about control and money. Multiply 55,000 by $50/month in mandatory union dues and — voila! — they’ll have $33 million a year to shower on politicians who’ll do their bidding.
Is there anything the flying public can do to put a stop to this cynical exercise of Big Labor muscle?
Let me remind you of Government Shutdown Theater in 2013, when Washington held America’s monuments and national parks hostage. Remember? Fed-up taxpayers finally revolted and broke down the Barry-cades blocking them from access to the public spaces they subsidize.
I’m not advocating breaking through those long lines in grand acts of civil disobedience (not just yet, anyway). But it is long past time for sick and tired, beleaguered and molested, robbed and overtaxed travelers to demand respect of their own and call out this selfish, security-undermining Big Labor power grab.
------------------ Michelle Malkin is mother, wife, blogger, conservative syndicated columnist, and author. She shares many of her articles and thoughts at MichelleMalkin.com. Tags:Michelle Malkin, TSA, TSA Union, power grab, slowing down airports To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Facebook Scandal Is A Warning For The Future Of The Internet
CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with conservative leaders about the social network's news feed.
by Phil Kerpen, Contributing Author: Many conservatives are waving off concerns about Facebook manipulating its Trending News feature because it’s a private company. In addition to legal concerns related to the fact the feature was deceptively misrepresented, there is a bigger reason Facebook’s conduct should set off alarm bells: the company has long advocated regulatory changes that could eventually make mandatory for the whole Internet the type of content manipulation that Facebook has been imposing on its own site.
During Obama’s first term, Facebook was a member of the so-called Open Internet Coalition, which included among its members the neo-Marxist group Free Press. The founder of Free Press, Robert McChesney infamously praised Hugo Chavez and suggested that America should emulate his regime’s oppressive media policies, saying: “Aggressive unqualified political dissent is alive and well in the Venezuelan mainstream media, in a manner few other democratic nations have ever known, including our own.”
Quite a bedfellow for Facebook. And their key ally on the FCC, who voted for the so-called Open Internet Order, was another interesting fellow named Michael Copps.
Copps gave away what the regulatory push branded with the happy name “net neutrality” was really about when he said: “Can you tell me that minority and women’s voices on the Internet are getting through to major audiences—really being heard—like the big corporate sites? Should we just take it for granted that the small ‘d’ democratic potential of new information technologies will somehow be magically realized without questions being raised about how they are designed and managed?”
That sounds eerily similar to what Facebook got caught doing. “Facebook got a lot of pressure about not having a trending topic for Black Lives Matter,” awhistleblower told Gizmodo. “They realized it was a problem, and they boosted it in the ordering. They gave it preference over other topics. When we injected it, everyone started saying, ‘Yeah, now I’m seeing it as number one’.”
Although Facebook has denied that they inject stories, their own guidelines have detailed instructions for “how to inject a topic.” It is a stonewall reminiscent of Lois Lerner (a name likely unfamiliar to people who rely on Facebook for news).
Which brings us back to the FCC, which also denies it would ever regulate Internet content – despite the Copps confession. Yet when the 2010 order was struck down as illegal, rather than go to Congress for a sensible compromise that Senator Thune has long had on offer, Facebook and its allies escalated their fight for FCC regulatory control of the Internet.
Their new lobbying group, the Internet Association, picked up where their old one left off and lobbied successfully for the FCC to adopt the nuclear option: reclassifying the Internet as an old-fashioned public utility under a Depression-era law.
Facebook even met with an FCC commissioner to echo their trade group’s demand for regulation and stated in Orwellian terms: “Facebook has long supported a free and open Internet that is accessible to people around the world, and urged the FCC to adopt enforceable rules against paid prioritization or the creation of Internet fast lanes, so that the Internet remains an open platform for speech and commerce.”
But why would an open platform require heavy-handed government regulation? Whose speech were they talking about? Would the Internet have to be “designed and managed” to promote “minority and women’s voices,” as their ally had explained a few years ago?
Now private broadband investment is plummeting. The FCC has voted to start replacing that private investment with government spending. The big tax hike to pay for that decision looms. One FCC commissioner helpfully explained: “One might reasonably suspect that this decision is conveniently being put off until after the November elections.”
As private investment continues to decline under the weight of federal regulation it will be replaced by higher and higher taxes and spending. Then the Internet will likely be subject to public interest regulation, content controls, equal-space requirements, and worse as a condition of continued government funding.
In practice that means a heavy thumb on the scale for promoting politically correct liberal stories that are not actually popular but that elites think should be – just as the Fairness Doctrine once did on radio. And just as Facebook has been caught doing with Trending News. When Facebook does it, people can vote with their clicks and head somewhere else. When the whole Internet is “designed and managed” in the same fashion there will be nowhere to go. And that’s why it is imperative that if the courts don’t overturn Obama’s Internet regulations, the next president and Congress must.
----------------- Phil Kerpen is president of American Commitment. Follow him at (@kerpen) and on Facebook. He is a contributing author at the ARRA News Service. Tags:Phil Kerpen, American Commitment, Facebook, FCC, FCC Commissioner, Michael Copps, broadband investment, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Brian Kilmeade On The Tripoli Pirates & Untold American Stories
Fox News host and author reveals how little the threats against America have changed since"Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates."
by David Horowitz, Contributing Author: Fox News host Brian Kilmeade is also an author and reveals how little the threats against America have changed at the West Coast Retreat. Below are the video and transcript to Brian Kilmeade's lecture at the David Horowitz Freedom Center's 2016 West Coast Retreat. The event was held April 8-10 at the Terranea Resort in Palos Verdes, CA.
Brian Kilmeade: But yeah, I was at the Beverly Hills Hotel last time. I had a chance to address this crowd and it was fantastic. It was one of the highlights of the George Washington Secret Six Tour and this is it. And this is the book. It's now bendable and available. It's in paperback, and what I found most encouraging about that book is that I think I tapped into something that's latent. And everybody in this room is patriotic. Everyone understands where we came from and where we're going and you have opinions on what we should be doing now, but I was as stunned to see the so-called average American, who wasn't a history major, might even be a truck driver or a grocery store manager, they were patriotic. They said, "I did not know about this. I cannot believe we came from these people."
Everyone knows about George Washington and the Founding Fathers, and they are hall-of-famers, but do you know this country was built on so-called "everyday Americans" doing extraordinary things for a cause? Never gained any acclaim nor did they want it. So I told everybody and had a chance to bring forward the story of a longshoreman, the story of a farmer, the story of a bartender, the story of a guy that ran a printing shop, who was more of journalist, and somebody else that ran a grocery store, who became a journalist, and found out that they were everyday Americans who put their lives on the line, literally. And they knew what would happen if they got caught. Nathan Hale was the perfect example. If you get caught, you die. If you spy, you die. And they said, "Bring it on. We'll do it anyway. We believe in this idea of a country." And that book, when you look the paperback, the online sales, as well as the hardback, sold close to 1 million copies. And a lot of people don't even know I was on Fox.
In the beginning you get a boost, but after a while it starts feeding on each other. And I think people got a sense of pride, almost like the team you were following wins a championships over a series of years, but then instead it's a different pride. It's more like a family. Somebody in your family makes the major leagues. "I can't believe I came from these people." And they get more of an idea of how great this country is.
So after doing that book, I wanted to take a bow and call it quits. And they said, "We've got to go back and do something else," and I said, "Let's find a story that's not often told, rarely known, that'll give people a sense of pride in our country." And then when President Obama comes out with these statements where he's not sure that we're an exceptional nation -- yeah, we think we're exceptional, but every other nation thinks they're exceptional. I said, "I've got to double down and prove to the so-called average American, who doesn't live and breathe politics or history, to understand where we came from." Because I'm under the belief that we are an exceptional nation, and that isn't Brian Kilmeade's spin on the country he was born in. If you look around, there's a reason why people try to sneak in here. There's a reason why people of hundreds of years ago came here with nothing to start over again. They're not doing that in Bulgaria, they're certainly not doing that in Germany, they're not doing that in England. They're coming here, and they still are, and they go through extraordinary means to do so. And a look back at our history reveals it.
So, when we first started "Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates" there was no ISIS. There was the winning surge opportunity and all of a sudden the Iraq War that looked so bad after the invasion, people said, "Wow, this turned out pretty good." But, we pulled out, ISIS came in, and once again, this story took place. And essentially, picture this: The year is 1783. We win the war, but we're buried in war debt, and we took out loans to win this war. We're 13 colonies, and the colonies, for the most part, said, "I'll come together to fight, but once this fighting's over, I really don't want anything to do with you." So we had to convince these colonies to become a country and lace them together -- without a president and without a constitution. The last thing we needed was an enemy, but that's exactly what we got. By 1785 it became clear. Our hard efforts, our natural resources, we were going to trade out way and work out way out of it like Americans always do. But as we got to the Mediterranean, as we got to our best customers in Europe, we had a problem, and those problems were Islamic pirates in Algeria, Algiers then, Tunis, Tunisia then, and Baraka, and no nickname. And then you had Tripoli, which became Libya.
And as our ships started going through, starting with Maria and the Dauphin, they were not only taken hostage, not only was the cargo pillaged, not only were the ships taken, they were enslaved. And they turned around and said, "Hey, I'm not really sure what you're doing America, but if you want your guys back, it's going to cost you a lot of money, and if you want to use this area of international waters, you're going to have to pay us tribute," which is extortion.
Got a bit of a problem. We're trying to get on our feet and we're being terrorized by these Islamic pirates whose agenda we can't figure out. But we have an asset. It's called John Adams in England. We have an asset. It is called Thomas Jefferson in France. So working off the Articles of Confederation, just the Congress, no president, we have a problem, and John Adams goes and seeks out and knocks on the door of the Tripoli ambassador. The guy's a nice guy. He welcomes him in. They have a few days hanging out together. He writes to Jefferson. He goes, "I think I can work this out." They're kind of intrigued about our country, about our future. Can you meet me over here?" Jefferson goes, "This is fine."
Now there was no text message, just Instagram back then. So I'm talking weeks and months, but I'm giving you the short course because you guys want to go golf and party. I know you. So Thomas Jefferson comes over and he does seem like a nice guy, and after a third and fourth day, they say, "Okay, let's cut a deal. We need our guys back. We need a way to use the Mediterranean. Your problem -- and all the Europeans are paying this tribute -- is with them. We're brand new. We have nothing against Islam, we certainly have nothing against you." And they go, "That sounds good. Well, I'm going to need some money, and this is the amount of money you're going to need in order to use the Mediterranean." It was three times as much as England, Spain and France were paying. So, what are you talking about? And they use this quote, "Well, if you're going to use this area, international waters, you're going to have to pay us because you're not Muslim." And here's the quote from the Ambassador: "All nations which have not acknowledged the prophet are sinners whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave." Essentially, Christian sailors, plain and simple, are fair game. That was the rationale.
Now John Adams is repulsed. Thomas Jefferson had read and studied the Quran and stated, "Listen, I read that book, that's not what it says." So they walk out and they go, essentially, "We've got to make a deal." So Adams says, "These guys scare me and we're not going to fight them unless we're going to choose to fight them forever." Jefferson says, "We've got to fight them. The world's watching. We've got to stand up to them."
Now Adams won this fight, essentially, because we had no Navy. We had nothing. We had no warships. We used to have the protection of the British. We didn't have this problem. Now we've got this problem. So in the short-term, we pay.
So Jefferson said, "My price is going to go up. Our guys are not going to get out and it's going to continue." And, sure enough, we had to cut four deals, borrow money to get it. We start paying the money and for a little while it was no problem, and then in come the kidnappings again. In come the enslavement. The letters of horror from behind the doors. We're going to write about it in the paperback, but what these guys went through for over 10 years, some of it, is beyond comprehension. Because they were Christian, they were American and their main source of income was ransom. It's unbelievable. But what we also found out later was the people that were paying the most, the biggest price, were the people of Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Tripoli. They were living horrendous lives, under horrific rulers, who only cared about themselves and their power. Jefferson said this along the way: "Weakness provokes insult and injury, a condition to punish it often prevents it. I think it's in our interest to punish the first insult because insult unpunished is the parent of many others." Put so much better than I ever could put it. That's why I read it. And he's saying, "If we don't hit now, we're going to pay the price in the future."
Little by little, we get a constitution, then we get a President Washington. Washington has a secretary of state. His name is Thomas Jefferson. And he said, "Thomas, write a report. How do we get our guys back? How do we solve this problem?" So Jefferson writes this dispassionate report, but it leads to the conclusion: We're going to have to fight for our guys back and we're going to have to fight these guys. Washington had this problem, no Navy, so he decides I'm going to cut deals, but we're going to build a Navy, and if we can't get a deal we want, we're going to use that Navy. After 2 years we get the deals. We still build the boats. We have six frigates and we build these boats learning from England and learning from the pirate ships.
So Jefferson becomes president after Adams has a chance to use this Navy. He said, "These guys are crazy. I don't want to fight them 'cause we're going to fight them forever. Little concerned about the French, so let's not fight them." Jefferson takes over after 4 years. He goes, "I'm not going to choose to fight them, but I'm going to choose to not pay them." So as soon as they realize there's no more money coming, they chop down our flagpole, which is their way of declaring war, and we have our first foreign enemy, Tripoli.
So did Jefferson respond? Sends the six frigates over. But, again, we have problems with congressional approval. It turns out they didn't get along back then either. They were split on how to handle this. So Jefferson sends them over and they leave them there. But without congressional approval, we have a little problem with rules of engagement. So he goes, "I really can't fight them. Even though I didn't write the Constitution, kind of like it. I'd rather not violate it within the first 10 years of its existence. So we'll just blockade." Well that's a mess.
Think about this: sitting in a ship for months, trying to get these sleek pirate ships as they weave in and out and almost taunt us. So then Jefferson says, "Let's get congressional approval." And then we have the wrong admiral. Then we get the right admiral and then we start moving. We start hunting them down, taking them out, chopping down their masts and sending them into the ocean, letting them know we're going to stand up to them. It's costing us a ton of money, there's no quick victory.
So then we get the right admiral in charge. We get Bainbridge over there. We get Steven Decatur over there. We get some great guys, and they start moving in and they start pounding the shore. We start blowing up this port city and we think it's going to be a matter of time before we take them out and they're going to quit. But the problem is, like air power today, these people who run these cities only care, and these states, only care about themselves. They didn't care that their guys are getting killed. Just like they don't care about the drones taking out the people or the F16s taking out the village; because they only care about their power. Hence, Saddam Hussein, hence, Bin Laden hiding in a cave or a villa while his guys are getting killed wearing body bombs. Same mindset back then.
I want to enter in a guy named William Eaton, and one of the best things about writing this book is introducing people. Not Thomas Jefferson and George Washington -- there's always going to be 90,000 people who know more about them, who wake up in the morning and they're biographers and historical experts, and that's fine. There were tremendous resources. But enter a guy named William Eaton. At 15 years old he decides, I'm one of four boys. I'm seeing this fight go on. I'm joining the war. His dad's like, "You're not going to join the war. You're 15. You barely know how to use a gun." He goes, "I'm going."
He leaves home. He gets sick, comes back, rejoins the war. The war ends, he joins the military right afterwards. Then he comes back, goes to Dartmouth, pays his own way. He studies under General Matt Anthony and he learns how to fight. He picks up three different Indian dialects. He learns how to deal with the American Indians of that day. He sees how to fight. He sees how to be relentless and ruthless, and this was written about William Eaton by General Wayne Anthony: "Eaton is firm in constitution as in resolution, industrious, indefatigable, determined and persevering. When in danger, he is in his element and never shows to so good advantage as when leading a charge." This guy's badass and he's smart. So he's impressed a lot of people. So during this time, they decide, I have an idea, get the crazy guy, who's half Mike Ditka, half General Patton, and send him over to be ambassador to Algeria.
So he goes over there and he's going to break a few windows. He starts talking to these guys, talking to the people. He realized the people don't hate Americans. The leaders hate Americans. He's standing up to them. He sees what we're fighting against. He sees the ruthless nature. He sees these rulers that are in charge. He's got respect for them and he lets them know it. He almost gets captured and enslaved himself. He finally fights his way out of there, they move him out because of the controversy, and he's under the belief that we can take these guys out and the longer we wait, the worse it's going to be. The problem is, he comes back and the only guy that's really listening to him is Jefferson. So he says to Jefferson, once this war actually started, he said, "I got an idea. Give me about $10,000.00. Let me go find the deposed leader Hammed. He was a good guy. This current leader threw him out of Tripoli. I'll get an Army. I'll take these guys out." Jefferson goes, "Wait, wait, you want to start a land war?" Yeah. He goes, "Just give me 1,000 muskets, $20,000.00." He goes, "Okay, $10,000.00, $20,000.00, fine." So for 3 years after pounding them and winning, but not getting ultimate victory, it was called 1-800-William-Eaton.
He goes, "Eaton, I need to see you." They meet in an open park, an open display. That's when the presidents could walk amongst the people if there was a block party, and that's essentially what it was. Eaton said, "I hear you want to see me." He goes, "Yeah, we're not having this conversation. We're going to send you over with Admiral Barron. He's going to drop you off in Alexandria. Think you can find this guy and get an Army together?" He goes, "Yeah." He didn't know if he could do that.
So he goes over, gets a few Marines, 12 in all. He lands in Egypt. He hunts down Hammed, who's hoping to find a guy with a deposed army ready to go. He finds a guy who's a weak leader with about a handful of guys who were just there because he had some money, enough to inspire Hammed. He's going to put together an army of Greeks. He's going to put together an army of Arabs, of Muslims and some Italians, because he needs a good cook with a sense of humor. And he goes, "I got some money. Let's go."
He puts together this hodgepodge army, and they start in Alexandria, and they've got to get into Darnah, Libya. There's a problem: no GPS, no maps, no one's ever done it before. No problem. We got the stars and I'm William Eaton. I can do anything.
He puts together these guys with his Marines, Presley O'Bannon, and you know the Marine hymn "From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli"? This is where it came from. So you've got to read, if I could ask you to Google today after you're done, in between swims in the pool with the spa, or the rubdown you promised yourself you'd have, go ahead and Google Presley O'Bannon. Unbelievable guy. He defines leadership. He worshipped William Eaton, who was an Army guy, which doesn't happen today easily. So they put together this army and when they get in the middle, it's a series of mutinies. In the middle, these mercenaries say, "We're not going any further unless you double our pay." Little problem, Eaton's got no more money. So what does he do? He finds a way to call their bluff. He goes, "Well, we're marching straight ahead. You want to march back by yourself, you can do it. I'm keeping the provisions."
It's a series of leadership lessons that we don't even know about today. No one knows about William Eaton today. Maybe David Horowitz does, but that's somebody who's extraordinary. Maybe an historian, if you go to the Jefferson Library perhaps, but that's somebody that wants to look past the Louisiana Purchase, the writing of the Declaration of Independence, everything else that he accomplished, that we're going to focus on this guy.
He does it. He goes 500 miles through the dessert, on to Darnah, to take on an army that outnumbers him three to one. He had to inspire these Muslims. He had to inspire these Arabs, these mercenaries. Hammed's hodgepodge of an army, who were deposed. Hammed, without showing any leadership. And they've got to go take this city. It is a lesson in leadership and it also shows what America is about; coming together with different nationalities, different ethnic backgrounds, for one common cause. By the time they were done, they were on the same page.
I did take this quote out that I wanted to share with you. He did say this along the way: "We find it almost impossible to inspire these wild bigots" -- he was talking about the Muslims and Arabs -- "with confidence in us or to persuade them that being Christians we can be otherwise than enemies to musselmen." The same thing we're wrestling with today. The Jewish community and the Christian community has no problem with the Muslims. I'm sorry what happened in the 12th century. We don't know any of them. I'm pretty sure they passed away on natural causes, or got hit by rocks or got in some type of traffic jam accident, or overall stress problems. So we don't know those people.
We have a problem with many in the Muslim community who don't seem to be able to turn the page on that or live off that or give their reason to live because of that. So that's why I pulled that quote out. But you know what he did? He inspired them to fight to the death for him because they saw what type of person he was. And they were able to figure out in this journey who Americans are.
So he's about to take on an army who's a standing army. They got word that they're coming. They're going to take them out, right? Well it turns out, when Marines are outnumbered, they do this thing called charging. They scaled the wall, they get these guys so freaked out, they abandon their cannons. We turn them on them. Guess what happened in 2½ hours? We took the City of Darnah. We cut down their pole. We put up the American flag, and William Eaton -- which even Jefferson didn't think was possible -- when the admiral dropped him off, he didn't think it was close to it. He thought it was a folly. We took the city.
So Eaton goes, "Great. We need a few days and we're taking Tripoli. Sound good?" The people come up to him and they say, "Okay, what are you going to do?" He goes, "Guys, live your life. We're not going to hurt you. We're here to inspire you." Then the people of Darnah start going, "I love these guys." These Arabs that were fighting with Eaton, go, "I can't believe he's doing what he said he was going to do." He's going to leave, but he's going to leave us in charge. And Hammed said, "I cannot believe this. I'm going to take my rightful place on the throne in Tripoli because Jefferson commissioned it, Eaton pulled it off and Americans are true to their word." They fought because they didn't want to conquer. They fought to stop the attacks. We're well on our way.
Well in that short time, the word gets to Tripoli that we've taken Darnah. They can't figure us out. They try to retake the city twice. By the end of it, they don't even need the Marines. The people of Darnah repelled their own army. So they want to take Tripoli.
Enter Tobias Lear. Tobias Lear was an aide to Washington. For some reason, Jefferson liked him, and there's a lot to go into that, and we discuss it in the book. And Tobias Lear says, "I got a chance to be a hero." The guy's quaking in his boots. After being repelled over and over again about some type of peace plan, they go, "Oh, Tobias, come on board. We're going to give you 303 guys back, and there's going to be no more payments, no more problems." Tobias Lear goes, "Great. Sounds good." Cuts a deal. Eaton's ready. "I need to go to Tripoli." They come in and they go, "Oh, we don't need you to go. We're going to pull out. We got our deal." He was like, "Wait, I promised these guys they were going to have a shot at taking their country back. I give these guys 2, 3 weeks of freedom. We can't leave now." "We're leaving. You got a week to get -- no you've got 2 days to get in the ship with your Marines or we'll leave you here."
We come back. Eaton is beside himself, obviously. Everyone else cheers. The real story comes out. He is greeted as a hero, and this is the story of William Eaton. His biography was written in 1812, 1815, somewhere around there. He passes away before the year, before he could actually see it published. There's about 1,000 in print. I got his biography for $109.00 on eBay. This should be $100,000.00. It's the true story.
When I'm reading and researching this, along with Don Yeager, I sense that this is just written by an American. This is so unbelievable I can't believe I don't know this. I need to get his book. I get it online. I read the actual book. It is actually even more extraordinary of a life. To me, he died of PTSD. He came back. He had a series of mishaps, came back, never could reclaim -- he thought it was his destiny to take Tripoli and establish an American presence, and when it didn't happen, it sounds like what we experience now when we hear about our guys and women coming back and experience PTSD.
So we end up in 1815 and Madison finally cleans it up. After the War of 1812, they started taking our guys again. Madison sends back Steven Decatur and William Bainbridge and they go and they scoped Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Tripoli. And they say, "Not only do we want our guys back, we want you to pay us for the inconvenience." And at the end of this, Pope Pius VII says this about Steven Decatur: "And his men, the American commanders with a small force and in a short space of time, have done more for the cause of Christianity than the most powerful nations of Christendom have done for ages."
Do you realize what kind of country we're in? We're 20 years old and we're still trying to do the right thing. But what problems do we have? Rules of engagement to begin with. Rogue generals in charge. Made the adjustment. Didn't go for complete victory. Persian Gulf War in 1992. Don't go out and get the American support behind us. That's still happening. Americans don't have the stomach for a long war. That's still the case. Do we fight fearlessly, relentlessly? Do we always, when put in battle, come out victorious? And in the end, do we take their oil? Do we take their natural resources? Do we dominate them and make them a colony? No. Unlike every nation, especially at that time, we do this thing called leaving. And when people condemn the Iraq War -- and that seems to be the en vogue thing -- keep in mind, we gave these people of Iraq a chance at peace. They didn't capitalize on it. We tried and went back again and again to do that. They decided not to take advantage of it. And when the story of the Iraq War and this year is done, including Afghanistan, it's going to be the Americans came in not to dominant and take over, but to give you an opportunity not to be a little America, but a chance to reach your potential. And because you didn't, don't blame us. Because we tried. Give us nothing but credit because that's what kind of country we are.
It started back then, and we're wrestling with the same things today. What is our role in the world? Should we pull back because America doesn't want to insert itself arrogantly in other peoples' affairs? Well how's that gone for the last 7 years? The world is going to hell. Yeah, take good care of your family first, your country first, but we have an opportunity here because we came to the best place in the world, to the best country on the plant, to do the best we can for mankind.
Do you just worry about your family? Or do you also worry about the family down the block that just lost a parent and is going to have trouble making their ends meet? I guarantee you the people in this room care about their family, but they also care about their neighborhood, their town, their county and their country. Because it's more than about us, it's more than about your family, and I believe that's the same principle we have with our country today.
So we have a leader that decides to give Afghanistan, Vietnam, Iraq, a chance at freedom. It's not because we are arrogant America, it's because we realize that human potential can only be reached without the oppressive government that exists, and these oppressive governments rattle other governments and they make the world a horrible place. We're trying to make it a little bit better, and every day I get up saying, not what the country's done wrong, but man, what we're doing right. And when we get it wrong, it's not because we tried. We had the wrong plan, we didn't have the wrong effort. We had the right objective. So I believe that this book is successful, not just because I'm cute, because I am, and not because it's got a great cover and great publisher, because I do, but I think, fundamentally, the average American, who isn't as politically involved as the people in your room, can't be, because they've got two or three jobs. They've got so many things on their plate. If you ask them on a daily basis, they're patriotic. We saw it after 911 when we were focused and we see it today. If you could tap into them, 1-800-ancesty.com, this is what you come up with, and that's why I think the book did well.
I just hope I exposed other people to other people who lived and died in our country without getting any of the acclaim they deserve, from Steven Decatur to William Bainbridge to William Eaton. So, at that point, that's the story of the book. I can't thank David enough for having me back. I loved coming back here and addressing when the book came out on Washington. And I'm definitely open to any of your questions whether it's about this election, which is so typical, run-of-the-mill, I really don't know what kind of questions you'd have. Or anything about the book and kind of feedback.
Audience Member: You mentioned that Thomas Jefferson disagreed with the Tripoli ambassador about what was in the Quran. Could you please expand upon that, 'cause we know that Thomas Jefferson read the Quran, but did he really disagree that the Quran orders the plundering and the killing of non-Muslims?
Brian Kilmeade: One of the things I researched in doing the book is there's a little bit of disagreement about what Jefferson thought of the Quran, but I also read the book "Thomas Jefferson and the Quran" by Denise Spielberg, who took exact excerpts and did not think the book was -- they felt like it should have been filed under fiction. However, he did see a lot of good things in the Quran and did see how, would actually go to bat to say a Muslim could be President of the United States. So he did battle for that and he did think that they were bastardizing it. So if I could encourage anybody to go to a resource to go back, they take actual excerpts from the Jefferson study of the Quran and what he came to believe.
Audience Member: Brian, after I heard you speak at the Beverly Hills Hotel, I bought your book and I thought it was a wonderful read, and easy read. It was just terrific. It sounded like you wrote it yourself 'cause I'm certain you did. My question is really regarding today. I mean, we do need that leadership. We do need the people. Give us a couple of answers about what you see we need to do right now. Politically, what can we do?
Brian Kilmeade: Wow, okay, get your pens out, 'cause I'm going to change the country. All right, a couple things. All right, locally, politically, this might not be the best thing you want to hear right now: The more I read about the past and the more vicious our struggles and debates were back then, I realized this is nothing new. We just didn't have television and cable. There were such bitter fights about policy and the direction of the country back when we first started. In fact, one of the things I found extraordinary is that, when we weren't fighting this war, there was a big debate on "has America lost their Spirit of '76?" in 1805. So I know, everyone was like, "Oh, my God, what would the Founders think?" Well, the Founders know exactly what we're going through. Some deals have to be made. I think the next president has got to be able to cut some deals. That doesn't mean you jack up taxes. It doesn't mean you pull back all our troops. But there is a school of thought on the other side and they get votes. Our country does not think the same way. What you do is you work extremely hard and you try to micro-target and you try to convince people of your message.
I think that when Congressman Ryan, now Speaker Ryan, is starting a plan to attack poverty -- because this idea that Republicans don't like minorities and don't like poor people is the craziest thing I've ever heard. But Republicans let it happen because they don't fight it. They don't even campaign there. And when Speaker Ryan says, "I'm going to spend 6 to 8 months just going to these minority communities, into the inner cities, and finding out what the problem is. And now he's putting together a plan to go forward. There might be some commonality with Democrats on that, that writing checks to poor people might not be the best way to do it, nor can we afford to do it, but the real problem is the family. Well, how do you deal with that in the short term and long term? I believe that there's some commonality to bring people together. There's also some commonality in the criminal justice system reform. I think that you've got to start cutting deals.
The XL Pipeline; here's a fundamental thing. The XL Pipeline will be a big boon. I didn't think oil would drop so much. Neither, did you. But they get it done. So how much do Republicans want it done? They want it done, okay? It means a lot for various reasons. China's going to get that oil and we want it done. Well, if Barack Obama was doing what almost every other president would do, he'd say, "Hey, listen, I got this guy Merrick Garland. Really want to get him forward. You've got a 50/50 chance of having Hillary Clinton president, and you're getting a more liberal judge up here. Before I even go public with my choice, who's your choice that you might be able to deal with? And what do you say I build that pipeline." That's the way we used to do it.
Now that might be a no. You guys might be saying that's not a good enough deal. Well, it's fine. Just an example, but that's the way it used to get done. What do you need? What do we need? We've got to get it done. Unless you get the 60 in the Senate and you have the majority in the House, you could be the most ideological person, you might be 100 percent correct, but in America, we can't get it done unless you get a deal. And I listen to the people. The conservatives come on and liberals come on. They're not moving. They're not talking to each other. If you talk about doing a deal with a Democrat or if you're Democrat, you talk about dealing with a Republican, you're going to get challenged in your primary.
So I think there's got to be spirit. We've got to get things done. Pick the points on which you can get along. That TPP that was put out. I haven't read it, but fundamentally, it's a good idea to combat the rise of China. What the hell is in it? Can you explain that to us? Can you get some Democrats and Republicans on board to explain it quickly, rather than having it vilified? Because in the big picture, the international experts say, the trade experts say it will be a benefit, but not the way it's written now. We haven't seen it. They're trying to hide it. They're trying to jam it through. So some transparency, some walking across party lines and I wouldn't mind somebody saying, "Don't reelect me. This is what I'm going to do for the country. If you don't like it, don't reelect me." But they're so scared about losing their seats, as if they're going to end up in the soup kitchen, that they don't stand for anything. Internationally, I think it's the biggest travesty I've ever seen in my adult life. For 7 years, we told everybody else to run things.
Sarkozy covered our butt when they had the problems. When he left, when they had problems in Libya and other areas, nobody stood up. So there's no one leading in Syria. There's no one leading against Russia. NATO's not leading anything. No one's taking on China. We're going to Cuba. We're making these ridiculous deals with Iran and no one seems to care. Everyone seems to be scratching their head quietly, privately, but we're watching a world in which America doesn't exist. Just stays within its borders, cuts deals with its enemies, and I think this is the most dangerous period in our lifetime.
So I want an America that's involved. I know that's not the most popular thing. Doesn't mean we have to call every shot. Doesn't mean we can't cajole them to pay some of the freight. Doesn't mean that it's okay that five of the 28 nations are actually spending as much on their military as they should. That's not acceptable. But for the most part, if you have something that's not acceptable, can you use this thing called leverage to make it acceptable? Can you embarrass them publicly? But don't abandon NATO because only five nations are doing what they're supposed to be doing. Make it better. Don't tell me that you want to arm the rebels. You don't want to arm the rebels. Well, let's try with barely arming the rebels, pretending to train the rebels, and 250,000 to 350,000 people lose their lives over the last 4 years and have the President of the United States take a bow for it in a big interview in The Atlantic. There has to be a president that understands we have to get involved in these areas. Sadly it's called earth. We're the only ones who really understand that and can give the people of this plant a chance at a decent life. I don't want to be involved in every country, but we have to do it ourselves to have some influence. That's my answer.
-------------- David Horowitz is founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center (formerly the Center for the Study of Popular Culture) and author of many books and pamphlets published over the last twenty years. Horowitz was a left-minded radical who transitioned over his life into a conservative. Yet despite the effort of the left "to deprecate and diminish him, Horowitz has succeeded in his main task of exposing the left's agenda and decoding the way it seeks to control American culture and politics." (The Life and Work of David Horowitz) He is a Contributing Author of the ARRA News Service. Tags:David Horowitz, Freedom Center, David Kilmeade, America, Tripoli Pirates, President Thomsas Jefferson, untold historyTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
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