Faith Under Siege, Biden's COVID Whiplash, Biden's Bloated Budget, Patriot Graves, Goodbye, Foster

Gary Bauer

by Gary Bauer: Patriot Graves
Monday marks Memorial Day, a national observance first known as Decoration Day. The first Memorial Day was observed on May 30, 1868, on the orders of General John Logan, commander of the Grand Army of the Republic. Flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery.

Initially ment as a time to remember those who fell during the bloody battles of our brutal Civil War, the holiday's significance has been extended to honor all those who paid the ultimate price for our nation.

As they have done every year since 1948, soldiers of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment placed flags at more than 200,000 gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery. They will remain at Arlington National Cemetery throughout the holiday weekend, making sure that the flags remain upright.

Of all the dangers facing our country, perhaps the greatest is the one that doesn't make many headlines -- our collective national amnesia.

Our history textbooks are sanitized to be politically correct and give our children little sense of the greatness of the nation they live in. The Founders are seldom mentioned unless it is part of a controversy about slavery or some other scandal.

I am often struck by how many American kids have nothing good to say about their own country. Their knowledge of the sacrifices made to establish and preserve their freedom is virtually non-existent. They are the recipients of the greatest freedom and opportunity that any society has ever produced, yet they are unaware of the price that was paid for it.

At my father's table, I learned love of country in a way that only a Marine could teach it. Dad taught me that patriotism wasn't a theory -- it was flesh and blood, real sacrifice and pain.

You are your children's most important teacher. They are listening.

Explain to your children the price that was paid to stop the evil of fascism and the cancer of Soviet communism. Tell them why there was a Berlin Wall, what happened at Okinawa, on the beaches of Normandy, at Ground Zero and over the fields of Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Take a moment to teach your children and grandchildren to love the things we love and to honor the things we honor. Finally, let's remind ourselves that liberty is a gift from God and that each generation has paid in flesh and blood to preserve it.

As General George Patton said: "It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived."

All of these things – from these patriot graves and the memorials that honor them to the values they died for – are bound together, as Abraham Lincoln said, by the chords of memory. But they are also under tremendous assault from the radical left.

We are enjoying the weekend, as you are. But I pledge to you that when we return we will redouble our efforts in defense of Faith, Family and Freedom! I hope and pray you will stand with us at this most critical time in America's history.

Goodbye, Foster
America, the conservative movement and I all lost a great friend yesterday when the news came that Christian, patriot, successful businessman and philanthropist Foster Friess passed away at the age of 81.

I first met Foster at a Focus on the Family retreat, sponsored by Dr. James Dobson, at the Elk Canyon Ranch in Montana. We remained friends and stayed in contact over the years.

Foster supported many Christian and conservative organizations, and he was a visionary leader. He was also known for his incredible kindness and generosity to average people whose paths he happened to cross -- folks with no power or the ability to throw big galas to honor him. Just the people we see every day who open doors, carry packages and wait tables.

Foster truly lived a Christ-like life. Heaven's gain is our loss.

Please join Carol and me in praying for his wife, Lynn, their four children and 15 grandchildren.

Faith Under Siege
Last week, as a wave of anti-Semitism swept the country, a debate broke out among American Jews about the fear gripping their communities. The debate got really lively when Aaron Keyak, the Jewish Engagement Director for Joe Biden's presidential campaign, tweeted:

"It pains me to say this, but if you fear for your life or physical safety take off your kippah and hide your [Star of David]."

Keyak should be banned from speaking to any Jewish audience!

This is the United States of America in 2021. Not 1930s Germany. No Jew in America should ever feel they must hide their Jewish identity.

Breitbart's Joel Pollak responded, "The only thing you should conceal (legally) is your firearm. The Second Amendment protects the First." He's right!

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Turner, a Christian high school student in Michigan, was chosen to give the valedictory address at her school's graduation ceremony. Turner had planned to say that her future is built on her relationship with Jesus.

But Principal Amy Goldsmith tried to muzzle Turner's faith, telling her, "You are representing the school in the speech, not using the podium as your public forum."

That's not exactly how it works. The valedictorian isn't representing the school. People want to know what's unique about her and her values that resulted in her success. It's her speech, not the school's speech.

No Christian in America should be forced to hide their faith!

America was built on Judeo-Christian values. But today Jews and Christians are under assault by thugs on the streets and bureaucrats who want to silence religious expression in the public square.

My friends, we're going into Memorial Day weekend. Please find a way in your family and community to fight back and protect the liberties that so many have sacrificed so much to give us.

Biden's COVID Whiplash
The pressure to expose the truth about the origins of the coronavirus is clearly getting to the Biden Administration.

Amid mounting evidence that the virus likely leaked from a communist Chinese lab, news broke that the Biden Administration canceled the only U.S. investigation into the origins of the virus.

Consider this Tuesday headline: "Biden Team Shut Down State Dept. Inquiry Probing Possible Lab Link To COVID."

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki stonewalled at the White House microphone all the way until Tuesday night. She constantly deferred to the World Health Organization, which everyone knows is hopelessly compromised by communist China.

As Sen. John Kennedy put it, "If you took [Chinese] President Xi Jinping and turned him upside and shook him, the World Health Organization would fall out of his pocket."

New polling shows that 68% of voters believe it's likely that the virus came from a Chinese lab. Only 16% believe the propaganda – whether it's coming from the Chinese Communist Party or the American media – that the virus originated in nature.

It seems the Biden Administration is aware of that polling. Within 24 hours, their entire tone changed, and Jen Psaki didn't lead yesterday's White House press conference.

The president who abolished the only American investigation into the origins of COVID-19 suddenly demanded that U.S. intelligence agencies produce a report within 90 days on the origins of the virus.

Consider this headline from yesterday afternoon: "Biden Orders Deep Investigation Into COVID-19 Origins."

Needless to say, I have little faith in the Deep State. They are reportedly divided over the origin of the virus, and they won't get any cooperation from Beijing. Meanwhile, communist China is telling the world that COVID-19 originated in an American lab.

Will Big Tech use its power to censor that communist disinformation?

Biden's Bloated Budget
The Biden White House is getting ready to release a budget and it's a whopper. It will reportedly total $6 trillion, a third higher than anything Donald Trump proposed.

Among other things, it balloons the debt to 117% of America's gross domestic product, exceeding the debt record set during World War II. Defense spending is largely flat, while domestic spending grows by 16%.

As one left-wing media outlet put it, Biden's budget "is an unabashed call for a bigger role for government in the U.S. economy, [making spending] larger than any level before the pandemic."

By the way, there are reports that communist China has rejected three requests for top level military meetings between Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and his Chinese counterpart, General Xu Qiliang.

Just like the diplomatic fiasco in Alaska, this is another example of Beijing pushing Joe Biden around, and it's not surprising. Communist China believes America is well on the way towards cultural and economic collapse.

The GOP's Future
Rep. Liz Cheney clearly thinks quite highly of herself. She declared that her primary election is a referendum on the future of the Republican Party.

At last, there's something Cheney and I agree on! But we part ways on what the outcome of her election means. She believes that her victory will be a sign that the party has a future. I think if she wins her victory would be a sign that it has no future.

If you can savage a Republican president while serving in leadership and insist that a major principle of the party is fighting endless wars that we can't fight to win, the GOP has no future.

Unfortunately, at least eight candidates have lined up to challenge her. That's a prescription for disaster as they will cannibalize the conservative vote, allowing Cheney to prevail. (I suspect a couple of those candidates are pro-Cheney decoys who are only running in order to further split the populist conservative vote.)

Meanwhile, former Speakers Paul Ryan and John Boehner are holding fundraisers for Cheney and other weak-kneed Republicans. GOP candidates should think twice about asking Ryan for help. He's reportedly going to attack Donald Trump tonight during a speech at the Reagan Library.

And when he's not lobbying for the marijuana industry, John Boehner seems to spend his time attacking conservatives like Ted Cruz rather than going after Democrats.

Good News

• Former President Donald Trump and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich are working to develop a .
• A judge has ordered , to audit 145,000 absentee ballots.
• Alabama Gov. signed legislation banning vaccination passports.
• Florida Gov. signed legislation cracking down on Big Tech censorship.
• Tennessee Gov. signed legislation banning critical race theory in public schools.
• President Trump's is still meeting, in spite of Joe Biden's attempt to shut it down. This week, it issued a call for parents to fight critical race theory.
• Congressional Republicans are introducing legislation to fight the surge of .
• The Senate approved banning taxpayer-funding of "gain of function" research and banning U.S. tax dollars to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
• Fifteen Republican are warning that they will aggressively push back against efforts by the Biden Administration to pressure banks into canceling loans or investments in fossil fuel projects.
• A judge issued against COVID-19 restrictions that shut down church services in California. The judge also ordered the state to pay $1.35 million in attorney's fees to Harvest Rock Church, which spent a year fighting Gov. Gavin Newson's assault on religious liberty.
• , declared itself a "sanctuary city for the unborn."

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Gary Bauer (@GaryLBauer)  is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families

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