A Major's Step Backwards on Religious Liberty

by Tony Perkins: The Biden administration doesn't mind if the military has chaplains -- it just doesn't want them to stand for anything. That's the message from the new commander-in-chief, who seems to be picking up right where his former boss left off. Transgenderism in, religious freedom out.

Like a lot of people who've struggled with the whiplash of the new administration, the Army's Chaplain Andrew Calvert struggled to find a good reason for bringing back the gender identity debate in the ranks. When President Biden dedicated one of his first executive orders to overturning the ban on transgender troops, Calvert had a hard time understanding the rationale. The Pentagon, under Donald Trump, had already ruled out the idea as a distraction, an unnecessary waste of taxpayer dollars, and a setback for military readiness.

"How is rejecting reality (biology) not evidence that a person is mentally unfit (ill), and thus making that person unqualified to serve," Calvert wrote on his personal Facebook page a couple of days before the decision came down. "There is little difference in this than over those who believe and argue for a 'flat earth,' despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary... The motivation is different, but the argument is the same. This person is a MedBoard for Mental Wellness waiting to happen. What a waste of military resources and funding!"

Almost immediately, Calvert was reported to his commander and an investigation ensued. "We are aware of Major Calvert's social media post," a spokesman for his branch told reporters. The matter is under review, he insisted, before adding, "We support the commander-in-chief, secretary of Defense, and all DOD policies and directives." Calvert, who's served since 2009 and has a Bronze Star, among other awards, didn't have to wait long for the Army's decision. II Corps Commander Lt. General Robert White handed down a reprimand that could essentially end his career. "Your actions," the general wrote, "cast serious doubt on your character and future as a leader in the Army."

Shell-shocked, Calvert reached out to First Liberty Institute, where Michael Berry and company are desperately trying to appeal. "The Army decided that [his] viewpoint, even expressed by a chaplain in accordance with his sincerely held religious beliefs, was impermissible," Mike explained on "Washington Watch." "The hits keep on coming," he shook his head. "History is now repeating itself. We hoped [it] wouldn't. We hoped that [even under Biden] religious freedom would still remain strong in our military... I mean, what's next? Are they going to go after chaplains for what they say from the pulpit during chapel services?"

And of course, the really outrageous piece of this is that under the Trump administration, members of the military were not only openly protesting the president's decisions -- they were applauded for it! "We had uniformed members of our military marching in political rallies and political parades in uniform, expressing openly their opposition to their commander-in-chief's policies. And that was all considered to be perfectly acceptable -- and in fact, something that should be celebrated and applauded by many in the military and in the media. And now you have a chaplain who expresses his support for [what was] at that time was the existing policy of the Department of Defense, and he's being punished. This just goes to show you're only really allowed to have one point of view and one perspective."

Chaplain Calvert's Facebook account clearly states that this is his personal page and he is only speaking as Andrew Calvert -- not a member of the Armed Forces. But that didn't matter to this Pentagon. They don't care that he's a chaplain who's required by his denomination to hold to these values. "If you express your religious views openly and you happen to be a member of the military, they will come after you," Mike warned.

And unfortunately, he believes, the purge is only going to continue. "And we know that that's exactly what the far-Left wants to happen. They want to root out anybody who holds a view contrary to what they believe... And the bottom line is, that's going to hurt our military. That is going to cause people to turn away from military service. We're already seeing problems with recruiting and retention. And if that continues, that's a national security concern." But then, as Joe Biden learned from his old boss, there's only one war that needs fighting in this country -- and that's the culture's.

To show your support for Chaplain Calvert, sign FRC's petition to his commander, Lt. General Robert White. Add your name to the many others who think Andrew's record should be restored and religious freedom everywhere respected.
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Tony Perkins (@tperkins) is President of the Family Research Council . Article on Tony Perkins' Washington Update and written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

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Words That Don’t Matter

From time to time, I’ll try to update our contemporary American vocabulary.

Victor Davis Hanson

by Victor Davis Hanson : Diversity/Diverse
This noun and its adjective have lost all currency. Ostensibly, diversity assumes that variety, in general, is better than uniformity. In some cases, perhaps it is, although the Japanese, for example, might argue their homogenous society avoids many of the problems in contemporary America. And, after all, our original motto of uniting states into the union was e Pluribus Unum, not ex uno plures.

“Diverse” has become a very narrowly defined adjective. It means solely different from white, male, Christian, and heterosexual—such as Latinos, blacks, women in general, Muslims or Buddhists, and transgendered and homosexuals. In other words, the “diverse” community comprises about 67-70 percent of America; the non-diverse, and supposedly dominant enemy of diversity, is only about 30-33 percent of the population. Under no circumstances can diversity imply hopes for political heterodoxy in hiring or admissions.

Instead, political diversity is supposed to be as incendiary as racial diversity is calming.

Privilege/White Privilege
This buzzword implies that 90 percent of citizens at the Founding were of Northern European (e.g., English, Scots-Irish) descent and rigged the country to favor their interests in perpetuity against a series of many different immigrants (Irish, Catholics, Jews, Eastern Europeans, Asians, etc.) as well as Native Americans and blacks. The word is data-free and cannot withstand cross-examination that might suggest that lots of groups (e.g., Punjabis, Koreans, Japanese, etc.), who are markedly different in appearance and religion from the founding norms, enjoy a great deal of wealth, status, and influence.

Usually, elite whites and minorities with privilege use the term “privileged” to castigate middle class and poor whites without it (e. g, “dregs,” “deplorables,” “Neanderthals,” “clingers,” “chumps,” etc.) As a rule of thumb, those who accuse others of having “privilege” or even “white privilege,” enjoy it, or something comparable to it, themselves.

Recently the adjective “unearned” has been attached. But its use is usually confined to scripted and public self-serving apologies, such as the sort that deans, provosts, and college presidents offer—as in “I have been the beneficiary of unearned privilege….” Such usage is meant to deflect the incoming fire of woke mobs and hysterias to someone else, through the use of preemptive and empty confessionals that do not entail any sacrifice or concrete concessions, or proof of contrition.

Racism/Racist
The inflation and promiscuity in the use of these once critical nouns and adjectives render them now empty and without meaning. If everyone and everything is racist, then nothing is. Increasingly, calling a person a “racist” is good proof that he is not, but that the accuser likely is. Like “Shut up!” or ‘F—k you!”, “Racist!” is simply an interjection used to end abruptly all conversation. It is as common and empty as the introductory adverb, “Well…,” or the pause word “uh.”

Soon we may see people use the word in a similar manner, “Racist, how are things going?” and “Racist, now let’s turn to another subject.” Or, “hmmm, racist, racist, racist, hmmm, as I was saying….”

“Underserved” or “Marginalized” Community</ br> These adjectives should suggest the pathologies of a geographical area or particular group are not an individual’s or a community’s fault—but largely to be blamed on society at large. Mostly they are euphemisms for “crime-ridden” or “dangerous.” The charge of “underserved” or “marginalized” is frequently lodged but rarely substantiated or documented. Ethnic or minority groups, who perform better on college entrance tests or have higher per capita incomes than do the majority of Americans, or lower crime rates, are rarely if ever termed “overserved” or “de-marginalized.”
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Victor Davis Hanson // Private Papers.

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Biden's Open Borders, Your Lying Eyes, AWOL Leaders

Gary Bauer

by Gary Bauer: Biden's Open Borders
After 500,000 illegal aliens crossed our southern border this year, some media outlets yesterday reported that the Biden Administration had "seen the light" and would begin construction of a small portion of border wall.

I was skeptical when I saw the report, and I was right to be skeptical. The administration rushed to reassure its radical left-wing base that it is only reinforcing a levee. There will be no additional border wall construction.

In fact, the Biden Administration announced last month that it is that Trump set aside to build the wall.

This administration has zero interest in stopping the crisis at the southern border. To them, mass illegal immigration is not a crisis. They want not 500,000 but millions of illegal aliens pouring into the country because these future voters will be grateful to the left.

That's why amnesty is a top priority for the left. It is central to their long-term strategy to fundamentally transform America.

Please stand with me now as we fight the left's radical open borders agenda.

Don't Believe Your Lying Eyes Our founding fathers intended the "free press" to be a vital check against overreaching government. Unfortunately, the "mainstream media" is anything but a "free press" dedicated to good government.

And it's striking just how confident this administration is that the media are willing partners in its agenda. It's the sort of thing you see in totalitarian regimes, particularly under communism.

For example, the Biden White House has spent more time trying to avoid referring to the border as a "crisis" than securing the border. Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, insists with a straight face that the border is closed.

But we just learned that 178,000 illegal aliens were apprehended in April, and many more were not apprehended. Plus, many who were caught are being allowed in.

That IS NOT a closed border!

Meanwhile, as gas stations were closing left and right in more than a dozen states, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm denied that we had a gas shortage, saying, "We have a supply crunch." Oh, okay. That's makes it all better.

There are multiple states where 50% or more of the gas stations are closed. There are lines that go on for blocks. Fights are breaking out as people get frustrated waiting for $7 a gallon gas.

And the Biden Administration refuses to admit that their hostility to pipelines is wrong. In fact, their allies like Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer are still trying to close even more pipelines!

Every small business owner in America will tell you that they are having an extremely hard time finding people willing to take available jobs. It's not surprising that a person who can get paid almost as much or more staying home will do so instead of going to work.

But the White House continues to insist that there is no evidence that unemployment benefits on steroids have anything to do with the fact that there are eight million job openings but only 266,000 people were willing to accept job offers last month.

And if you had any doubt at all that the media were eager "team players," we learned this week that they must clear certain reports past the Biden White House, which reserves the right to edit quotes or veto their use entirely.

No self-respecting journalist would ever agree to such a demand. But there are virtually no journalists in the "mainstream media" today. They are partisan hacks, more than happy to spread the administration's propaganda.

The Left vs. Israel
Not long ago, Israel enjoyed broad public support in America. But like so many things, the left has ruined that too.

When Hamas started firing rockets at Israel this week, Andrew Yang, who is campaigning for mayor of New York City, issued a statement defending Israel. He was immediately attacked by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who denounced Yang's statement as "utterly shameful."

I guess AOC is cheerleading for Hamas.

It wasn't long before "#YangSupportsGenocide" was trending on Twitter. Now Yang is rushing to show how "balanced" he is between the Jewish state and the terrorists.

Meanwhile, the State Department dispatched a top diplomat to the region yesterday, attempting to broker a ceasefire. And Biden said the bare minimum expected of an American president – that Israel has the right to defend itself.

Well, that was too much for the progressive wing of the Democrat Party. AOC attacked Joe Biden for "taking the side of occupation."

The progressive movement, which is the ascendant wing of the Democrat Party and represented by AOC's socialist squad, is rabidly anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. It will have serious implications for Israel and the United States in the decades ahead.

But none of Biden's assurances to Israel should be taken seriously as long as he remains committed to giving Iran billions of dollars in sanctions relief, which the ayatollah will inevitably use to replenish Hamas' missiles!

Blinken's Blunder
As we reported yesterday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted that Israel had "an extra burden" to avoid civilian casualties. To be clear, Israel always goes out of its way to avoid civilian casualties. But Blinken has it completely backwards. Israel is not putting civilians at risk – Hamas is!

Hamas is committing war crimes by deliberately locating its weapons and rocket launchers in civilian areas. Hamas does that because they are evil and because they know we will pressure Israel with misguided demands "to avoid civilian casualties," while Hamas continues to indiscriminately fire rockets at Israeli civilians.

But a sovereign state has an obligation to defend its citizens, which Israel is doing. It is absurd for any nation to demand that Israel handcuff itself in conflicts against barbaric terrorists who are intentionally risking civilian lives.

AWOL Leaders
As you know, Rep. Liz Cheney was voted out of her leadership role yesterday. She's also at risk of being voted out of office. Her approval rating in Wyoming has plummeted, and it's not hard to understand why.

Cheney seems to believe that her main opponent is Donald Trump, not the Biden/Harris socialist makeover of America. Since the election, Cheney has only made headlines for attacking Trump, who is supported by the vast majority of her party.

And that brings me to another prominent Republican, George W. Bush.

Where is "W" in this battle for our country? In recent weeks, he has been busy attacking the GOP with the same rhetoric that leftists use against us, the same leftists who tried to destroy his presidency.

Conservatives rallied to Bush's defense. Why is he not coming to ours?

I have seen nothing from Bush about Biden's failures, whether its empowering Iran or undermining our religious liberty or attacking law enforcement. Does Bush have no opinion at all on the left's effort to push critical race theory in our schools?

There is only one issue that seems to motivate him -- more immigration into the U.S., at a time when millions of Americans are unemployed.

And to think that before Donald Trump came down the escalator to announce his campaign for president, GOP elites were attempting to convince us that we needed a third Bush presidency (Jeb!) to save the country.
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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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Texas bans aborting babies with beating hearts, bill heads to gov’s desk for signature

When signed into law, the Texas Heartbeat Act will abolish elective abortions as early as six weeks, when the preborn child’s heartbeat is detectable using methods according to standard medical practice.

Photograph of 26-week-old baby in womb.

by Life Site News: This morning, May 13th, the Texas Senate gave final approval (amendment concurrence) for the final passage of the pro-life Texas Heartbeat Bill, SB 8 authored by Senator Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola) and sponsored by Representative Shelby Slawson (R-Stephenville).

The bill passed by a bipartisan vote of 18-12 and is now on its way to Governor Greg Abbott for his signature. The policy would take effect on September 1, 2021.

Rep. Shelby Slawson is serving in her first legislation session and has shown she is ready to lead on such an important issue, while Senator Bryan Hughes is a veteran of the Texas Legislature and one of the most distinguished pro-life members at the Texas Capitol.

Gov. Greg Abbott has already stated twice in Twitter posts that he will sign the Texas Heartbeat bill.

“A heartbeat is a universal sign of life, and that’s why so many Texans believe that when a heartbeat of an unborn child is detected, that child should be protected. The Texas Heartbeat Act is different than Heartbeat laws in others states, by relying on civil actions to enforce the law making it near impossible for the usual claims of a constitutional violation,” said Jonathan Saenz, president and attorney for Texas Values.

“Today is a great day for all future preborn children in Texas. The strongest pro-life bill in Texas history will soon be on the Governor’s desk. We are grateful the Legislature recognizes the importance of life,” said Mary Elizabeth Castle, Policy Advisor at Texas Values.

When signed into law, the Texas Heartbeat Act will abolish elective abortions as early as six weeks, when the preborn child’s heartbeat is detectable using methods according to standard medical practice.

A heartbeat is a universal indicator of life and a key medical indicator that an unborn baby will reach live birth. SB 8 requires physicians to check for a baby’s heartbeat and inform the mother if the presence of a heartbeat is detected. Once a heartbeat is detected, the doctor must take all necessary steps to protect the life of the child.

The bill also creates civil liability for a doctor that performs an abortion after a heartbeat is detected, and for aiding and abetting an abortion. SB 8 empowers citizens to file civil actions to enforce the Heartbeat law.

However, the Texas Heartbeat Act is novel in approach, allowing for citizens to hold abortionists accountable through private lawsuits. No heartbeat law passed by another state has taken this strategy. Additionally, the bill does not punish women who obtain abortions.

Since the government will not be in the position of enforcing the law, this makes it nearly impossible for there to be a claim of an unconstitutional violation. The government must be the one enforcing the law for there to be a constitutional violation or a successful pre-enforcement challenge.

Since 2013, Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, and Tennessee have all signed into law a similar Heartbeat bill, with Texas about to be the next.

Texas Right to Life Senior Legislative Associate Rebecca Parma welcomed the news, saying: “The Texas Heartbeat Act is the strongest Pro-Life bill passed by the Legislature since Roe v. Wade and will save thousands of lives. This is a historic day and now is the time to build on our momentum. State lawmakers must use the remaining weeks of session to pass additional life-saving legislation like the Texas Abolition Strategy and the Respecting Texas Patients' Right to Life Act.”

The Texas Heartbeat bill has been supported by a number of groups and individuals, looking to defend the life of the unborn.

Some key groups supporting the Texas Heartbeat Bill include: Texas Values, Human Coalition Action, Family Policy Alliance, Concerned Women for America (CWA) Texas, Texas Right to Life, Janet Porter (Faith 2 Action), Chairman Allen West (RPT), SBA List, Texas Eagle Forum, ACLJ, Texas Teens for Life, Fredericksburg Tea Party, Texas Young Republicans, Baylor Bears for Life/Students for Life Action, Texas Pastor Council, Texas Faith & Freedom Coalition, Ethics and Religious Liberty Committee of SBTC.

Key pro-life leaders supporting the Texas Heartbeat Bill: Abby Johnson, Gov. Greg Abbott, Dr. James Dobson, Ann Hettinger, Lauren Muzyka, Jason Jones, Kelly Shackelford, Janet Porter, Jonathan Saenz, Abortion survivors Gianna Jessen and Claire Culwell, Walter Weber, Pastor Frank Pomeroy, Tim Von Dohlen, Karen Garnett, Pastor Dave Welch, Jessica Colon, Tim Lambert.
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LifeSiteNews.com.

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The Great Elucidator

Thomas Sowell: Common Sense in a Senseless World

by Kyle Smith: If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago, and a racist today.” Thomas Sowell, who combines a Mark Twain-level gift for apothegms with the rigor of a data scientist, said that back in 1998, but like many of his sparkling one-liners, it’s more strikingly true now than ever.

At 90, Sowell remains “one of the great minds of the past half century,” as host Jason L. Riley puts it in the one-hour PBS documentary Thomas Sowell: Common Sense in a Senseless World, which can be viewed here, but fair warning: This film is a gateway drug. You are bound to get hooked on Sowell, just like many others interviewed in the film. These include podcaster Dave Rubin, a Silicon Valley executive with Overstock.com; a Dallas rapper named Eric July from the band Backwordz; and Sowell’s friend Steven Pinker, the Harvard professor and linguist. Riley, a Wall Street Journal columnist and author, makes a perfect guide because he is the Sowell whisperer: His new book Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell, is about to hit shelves.

In a film written and produced by Tom Jennings, Riley takes us through how Sowell, who lost his dad before he was born and his mother when he was a small child, rose from poverty. His early years he spent in a house with no electricity in North Carolina, then an apartment in Harlem, where a family friend guided him to a love of the Harlem branch of the New York Public Library when he was eight years old. At the University of Chicago, one of his professors was Milton Friedman, who proved unable to talk him out of being a Marxist. What did the trick was a government job. In the Department of Labor, Sowell found that increased minimum wages reduce employment, but this fact interested no one. “People in the government didn’t give a rip whether it worked or not. They were simply implementing the policy,” notes another black intellectual, columnist Larry Elder.

Sowell, a longtime economist at Stanford’s Hoover Institute, is, despite being a presence in the newspapers via his syndicated column for decades, tough to nail down for an interview, and there is no new footage of him in this film. But vintage clips showcase a talent for boiling down complex arguments that made him at least as effective a television communicator as WFB, who hosted him on Firing Line. As Sowell’s interests took him from economics to education to family structure to race, immigration, late-speaking children, and why civilizations flourish or fail — all of which subjects he discussed in detail in his many books — he fired off one diamond-tipped one-liner after another. “The first lesson of economics is scarcity,” he once wrote. “The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.” He observed, “Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true, but many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly.” He said, “The vision of the Left — and I think many conservatives underestimate this — is really a more attractive vision. The only reason for not believing in it is that it doesn’t work.” Aaron Hunsaker, the Overstock.com executive who has sleeve tattoos on both arms and more tattoos on his hands and knuckles, marvels that it’s “punk rock to base things off of individual freedoms and thought.” Rubin recalls asking Sowell why he stopped being a Marxist: “Uh, facts,” was Sowell’s reply.

Pinker, a longtime admirer, conflates Sowell’s amateur interest in photography with his professional ethos. To be a photographer, he notes, paraphrasing Sowell, is to understand that everything is a trade-off. “If you close down the diaphragm you get lots and lots of stuff in focus,” Pinker says. “On the other hand, you’re cutting down the amount of light.” In matters of public policy, Sowell has said, “There are no solutions, only trade-offs. Just like photography.”

Pinker and other friends and admirers such as Elder and Walter Williams, the George Mason University professor who died in December, emphasize that Sowell would never tailor his positions to suit whatever the current intellectual fashion might be, or what might be expected of a black intellectual. This made him toxic in some circles: “He spent a career putting truth above popularity,” notes Riley. “He will not compromise any of his opinions for the sake of social politeness,” says Pinker. As time went on, his cultural and political antagonists decided their best bet was simply to pretend Sowell didn’t exist, and so he was increasingly relegated to conservative media. “You can’t argue with Tom, so you might as well hide what he’s doing,” is how Williams put it.

Today, though, thanks to the democratic power of the Internet, Sowell’s reach is wide. A Twitter account that passes along one Sowell-ism per day has more than 700,000 followers. YouTube clips of his various TV interviews have racked up far more than 10 million views combined. And this documentary has itself been viewed 3.7 million times. Thanks to his immense reserves of courage, wit, and plainspoken wisdom, Sowell is an intellectual superstar, whether the legacy media admit it or not.

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Kyle Smith (@rkylesmith) is a fellow at National Review Institute and National Review’s critic-at-large.

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Biden Administration Is Mocking Ancient Wisdom

When an arrogant present dismisses the wisdom of the past, then an all too predictable future becomes terrifying.

Victor Davis Hanson

by Victor Davis Hanson: Human nature stays the same across time and space. That is why there used to be predictable political, economic and social behavior that all countries understood.

The supply of money governs inflation. Print it without either greater productivity or more goods and services, and the currency cheapens. Yet America apparently rejects that primordial truism.

The United States is more than $28 trillion in debt — about 130 percent of the country’s annual gross domestic product. The government will run up a $2.3 trillion budget deficit for 2021 after a record $3.1 trillion deficit the year before.

The Biden administration still wants to borrow more — another $2 trillion in new social programs and “infrastructure.”

In the crazy last 100 days, the price of everything from lumber, food, and gas to cars and houses has soared. Yet many interest rates are still stuck at or below 3%.

Jobs are plentiful; workers are not. Is it a surprise when government handouts discourage the unemployed from taking a pay cut to go back to work?

After being freed from 13 months of quarantine, Americans are splurging. But this huge pent-up demand is causing shortages.

Producers fear the Biden administration’s loose talk of higher taxes, greater regulation, and cutbacks in energy development.

Are the old principles really obsolete? Should we be printing money while expanding government debt? Is it wise to keep interest rates close to zero and to discourage employment, production and thrift? This dangerous behavior used to ensure inflation, followed by ruinous stagflation.

After George Floyd was killed while in police custody in Minneapolis, some U.S. cities slashed police spending. Police response times have slowed in many places, perhaps because officers are worried about being fired for using force.

The result? In major cities such as New York and Los Angeles, homicide and violent crime rates have increased by double digits. State

and local governments believed they were exempt from primeval laws of deterrence that warned when criminals assumed they would not be caught and punished, then they committed more crimes.

The same dangers of ignoring unchanging human nature apply to foreign policy.

Aggressive opponents such as Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia expect that the Biden administration will ignore their brinkmanship.

They assume the administration will cut American defenses. And Biden sounds to them more critical of Trump's foreign policy than of America’s enemies. Why not take previously unwarranted risks?

So, Russian troops predictably mass on the Ukrainian border. China steps up its harassment of Taiwan. North Korea launches more missiles, Iran hazes U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf. And now, rockets from Gaza pour into Israel.

Apparently, the Biden administration did not believe that dictatorships and theocracies would interpret its virtue-signaling as a weakness to be exploited rather than as magnanimity to be returned in kind.

The old dictum of the Roman writer Vegetius — if you want peace, prepare for war — was just too much of a downer to take seriously.

In the old days, the greater the impediments to crossing a nation’s border — walls and the enforcement of laws — the less likely was illegal immigration. Here too, the Biden administration apparently rejected the ancient warnings.

Stopping construction of the border wall, promising amnesties in advance, and damning the tough enforcement of the previous administration have only led to more illegal immigration.

Refusing to call the chaos at the southern border a “crisis” did not mean it was not a disaster.

Wisdom of the ages also warned that humans’ first allegiance was to their own tribe, as defined by race, ethnicity, or religion. That existential danger is why multiracial nations always wisely sought to tamp down tribal differences and to emphasize common ties of citizenship and transcendent common interests. Otherwise, a diverse country ended up like Lebanon, Rwanda, or the former Yugoslavia, where tribal feuding turned bloody and barbaric.

Yet for three months, the Biden administration has emphasized racial differences rather than our melting-pot commonalities. It has stereotyped America’s white population — hardly uniform in terms of class and ethnicity — as somehow uniformly enjoying unearned privileged and acting systemically racist.

Amid such talk, the danger is that racial tensions will increase, hate crimes will spike, racial demagogues will dominate, meritocracy will vanish and tribal solidarity will replace it. And the ancient idea of America will unwind.

When an arrogant present dismisses the wisdom of the past, then an all too predictable future becomes terrifying.
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Victor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson) is a senior fellow, classicist and historian and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution where many of his articles are found; his focus is classics and military history. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. H/T The Patriot Post.

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The Excruciating Pinch of Inflation

The CPI jumped 4.2% in April, but that’s only part of the frustrating picture.
by Nate Jackson: Have you ever compared the price of beef now versus a few months ago? Or picked up a package at the grocery store only to realize it’s smaller than it used to be and it’s more expensive? Are you building a house right now and pulling your hair out over the price of materials? And then have you seen news reports about inflation still sitting at 2% and thought, “What are they smoking?”

Well, the Labor Department issued its inflation estimate Wednesday in the form of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), and it jumped 4.2% over the last year, well above predictions of 3.6% and marking the fastest growth since 2008. That may be some validation for the inflation we’re all seeing, but it only begins to account for the hit to our wallets when buying goods and services these days.

What is CPI anyway? The Bureau of Labor Statistics defines it as “a measure of the average change over time in the prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of consumer goods and services.” In plain language, the Labor Department selects representative products and averages the increase or decrease in prices over a period of time.

The average, then, greatly depends on which items are selected for “the basket.” In the latest numbers, for example, used autos accounted for a third of the total increase after surging 10% in April alone, and 21% year over year. We’re told “core” inflation is more like 3%, but the rise in prices is drastic in a number of areas, from meat, milk, and eggs to airfare, hotel rooms, and rental cars. The Daily Caller adds, “The prices of several commodities have already risen rapidly. Lumber, gasoline, steel, copper, computer chips, homes and home appliances have all increased in price.” Homes are up 17%, while steel and lumber in particular have tripled and quintupled, respectively.

It’s important to remember that inflation is a form of taxation, and it often happens because the government prints more money as a way of stabilizing the national debt. The more money is printed, the less that money is worth.

A decade ago, the great economist Thomas Sowell explained, “Inflation is a quiet but effective way for the government to transfer resources from the people to itself, without raising taxes. A hundred dollar bill would buy less in 1998 than a $20 bill would buy in the 1960s. This means that anyone who kept his money in a safe over those years would have lost 80 percent of its value, because no safe can keep your money safe from politicians who control the printing presses.”

Another great economist, Milton Friedman, once said, “Central bankers always try to avoid their last big mistake. So every time there’s the threat of a contraction in the economy, they’ll over stimulate the economy, by printing too much money. The result will be a rising roller coaster of inflation, with each high and low being higher than the preceding one.”

Thus, when the federal government floods the market with trillions of dollars in “COVID relief,” the effect is to inflate prices, which reduces purchasing power. Suddenly, millions of Americans have a few thousand extra dollars to spend thanks to multiple rounds of direct government payments. The unemployed are often earning more than their working counterparts. Wages are being driven up by the fact that employers have to compete against the government for workers, and when it’s more expensive to employ someone, a business has to raise prices.

The Wall Street Journal reports, “Some 36% of small businesses indicated that they had raised selling prices in April, the highest share since 1981, according to a survey conducted by the National Federation of Independent Business.”

Meanwhile, just as demand is spiking, supply lines are a mess. Try ordering a bike, a couch, or an appliance. Not only are you going to wait for months, but you’re probably going to pay more, and there’s only one answer ever given: “COVID.”

The Biden administration’s response? Let them eat cake. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell shrugs it off as “transitory” and expected as part of the recovery. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen dismissively says, “I don’t believe that inflation will be an issue.” Perhaps not for overpaid Beltway bureaucrats, but for the rest of us out here in flyover country, it is indeed an issue.

Again, there are numerous reasons for the increasing inflation. Some is caused by uncontrolled market forces. Most, however, is due to manipulation from DC, as well as government-imposed lockdowns in states around the nation. While both parties went on a spending binge last year that goosed inflation numbers, Joe Biden aims to be the Six Trillion Dollar Man with his runaway federal spending proposals. Instead of slowing down on spending as the economy recovers, Biden insists “it’s working” and therefore we need more of it.

As long as “free money” policy predominates, we’ll all continue to pay a lot more for everything.
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Nate Jackson writes for The Patriot Post.

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The Flag Officers Who Want to Save America

by Douglas Andrews: A group of 124 retired generals and admirals made their patriotic voices heard — and pulled no punches in the process.

To no one’s surprise, James Mattis didn’t sign the letter. Nor, we suspect, did any other supporters of the Paris climate agreement and the Iran nuke deal.

Still, 124 retired generals and admirals did sign it, and that lends great significance to the open letter they published this week. Why? Because it’s not every day that such a large group of senior military officers speaks out as one, nor every day that such a group openly questions both the legitimacy of a national election and the physical and mental health of a sitting commander-in-chief.

But question they did.

“Our Nation is in deep peril,” their letter begins. “We are in a fight for our survival as a Constitutional Republic like no other time since our founding in 1776. The conflict is between supporters of Socialism and Marxism vs. supporters of Constitutional freedom and liberty. During the 2020 election an ‘Open Letter from Senior Military Leaders’ was signed by 317 retired Generals and Admirals, and it said the 2020 election could be the most important election since our country was founded. ‘With the Democrat Party welcoming Socialists and Marxists, our historic way of life is at stake.’ Unfortunately, that statement’s truth was quickly revealed, beginning with the election process itself.”

Apparently, the flag officers didn’t get the memo that the 2020 election was fraud-free and that Basement Joe Biden got all 81 million of his record-shattering votes on the up-and-up. No, these flag officers appear to have joined the tens of millions of Americans who aren’t satisfied that the issue of fraud was ever fully investigated and adjudicated. Or, as former House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney might say, they’re “spreading THE BIG LIE.”

“Without fair and honest elections that accurately reflect the ‘will of the people,’” their letter continues, “our Constitutional Republic is lost. Election integrity demands ensuring there is one legal vote cast and counted per citizen. Legal votes are identified by State Legislatures’ approved controls using government IDs, verified signatures, etc. Today, many are calling such commonsense controls ‘racist’ in an attempt to avoid having fair and honest elections. Using racial terms to suppress proof of eligibility is itself a tyrannical intimidation tactic. Additionally, the ‘Rule of Law’ must be enforced in our election processes to ensure integrity. The FBI and Supreme Court must act swiftly when election irregularities are surfaced and not ignore them as was done in 2020. Finally, H.R.1 & S.1, (if passed), would destroy election fairness and allow Democrats to forever remain in power violating our Constitution and ending our Representative Republic.”

Clearly, the flag officers recognize the grave threat posed by HR 1 / SR 1. So do we.

The collective group calls itself “Flag Officers 4 America” and it sports a simple website whose homepage reads, “We are retired military leaders who pledged to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Although retired from active service, each of us feels bound by that oath to do what we can, in our capacity today, to protect our nation from the threats to her freedom.”

After their critique of the 2020 election, the officers denounce President Biden’s unprecedented spree of executive orders and his failure to work with Congress. They then hit on eight issues that threaten our nation: open borders, China, Big Tech censorship, the Iran nuke deal, the Keystone pipeline, the misuse of our military, Rule of Law, and the mental and physical condition of the commander-in-chief. After each issue, the flag officers list the actions that a strong America must take.

Their language is forceful and patriotic throughout, and their prescriptions have an unmistakable “America First” edge to them.

“Under a Democrat Congress and the Current Administration,” the letter concludes, “our Country has taken a hard left turn toward Socialism and a Marxist form of tyrannical government which must be countered now by electing congressional and presidential candidates who will always act to defend our Constitutional Republic. The survival of our Nation and its cherished freedoms, liberty, and historic values are at stake. We urge all citizens to get involved now at the local, state and/or national level to elect political representatives who will act to Save America, our Constitutional Republic, and hold those currently in office accountable. The ‘will of the people’ must be heard and followed.”

If you like what you’ve read, the flag officers invite you to visit their website and add your own signature to the letter.
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Douglas Andrews writes for The Patriot Post.

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Bomb Squad

Anti-Israel squad Tlaib, AOC, and Omar are unsurprisingly praising the Hamas attack on Israel.
Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

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Organizing an Ouster

by Paul Jacob, Contributing Author: Despite everything, public schooling can help kids learn some important things.

But this schooling is also something that kids have to survive. If and when Johnny can’t add, spell, figure out who’s buried in Grant’s tomb, or relate premises to a conclusion — the lessons and educational theories he’s been subjected to often have something to do with it.

Now Johnny is being told, if his skin is white, that he must feel guilty about his skin color and work to find, dwell on, and exterminate super-subtle racism buried deep within his privileged soul. He can’t just be happy and learn.

The rationale for this assault on the individual is called “critical race theory.” And in some school districts, this mislabeled “antiracist” indoctrination is being imposed on students (as it is also being imposed throughout society).*

Parents in Loudoun County, Virginia, are fighting back by forming a PAC with the mission of ejecting purveyors of critical race theory from the school board. The PAC is led by Ian Prior, who says that county parents “cannot wait until 2023 to elect new leaders.”

Board members must be recalled because of the board’s failure to reopen schools, its imposition of “dangerously divisive critical race theory,” and its cooperation with “tactics designed to intimidate students, parents and teachers from exercising their First Amendment rights.”

Good luck, parents.

And if you can find a way to educate your kids without sending them to public schools, I suggest that you consider that alternative.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


* “On April 19, 2021, the Biden Administration proposed a rule,” alerts Heritage Action, “that would allow the Department of Education to prioritize recipients to receive K-12 grants if they include critical race theory in their curriculum.” The Federal Register is accepting public comments on the proposed rule here until May 19.
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Paul Jacob (@Common_Sense_PJ) 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. Jacob is a contributing author on the ARRA News Service.

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Israel's Jihad Crisis is the World's Jihad Crisis

Daniel Greenfield (@SultanKnish): Israel is a not a war zone because of geopolitics, but because it shares a common crisis with Europe, America, Russia, China and numerous other countries, most of whom are trying to buy time for their own internal Islamic insurgencies by siding with the Jihadist insurgency inside Israel.

A sizable hostile minority within your borders is always an explosive element, but Islamic migration is unique in that it emerged and still emerges from a tribal and religious manifest destiny of world conquest.

Israel's Islamic minority is particularly hostile because unlike those of America, Europe, Russia, and China it came to the Jewish State as a conquering force and made up the 'Herrenvolk', the colonial master race, within living memory (religiously, if not ethnically under the Ottoman Empire). The hostility was fed by a succession of foreign powers, Britain before and after WW2, Germany in WW1 and WW2, by Russian during the Cold War, by Iran, Qatar, and Russia after the Cold War, but it's still innate.

Tribal hostility is bad enough as even a brief look at Rwanda and African genocides, or those in the Balkans ought to show, but combine that with Islamic manifest destiny and you have a perpetual war.

While the legal fiction that is the international community has kept on pressuring Israel to "resolve" the conflict with territorial concessions, providing the insurgency with dedicated territory has worsened it.

Nor have any of the nations or alliances pressuring Israel to resolve the conflict managed to do it.

The responses have ranged from integration and appeasement in America and Europe, Russia's efforts to convince its Muslims that they have a common enemy in the West, and China's ruthless crackdown. What all these varying efforts have in common is trying to convince or compel a Muslim population to see itself as part of the local nation or empire, to bind its destiny to European liberalism, to the Han Chinese, to Greater Russia, or to American democracy, and not to a global Ummah of which it is a fragmented piece.

Israel's strategy of integrating the Arab Muslim population within randomly defined borders, convincing them to see themselves as part of the Jewish State, while treating those outside those borders as autonomous is even more paradoxical and contradictory than these same failed strategies.

The fragmented Muslim populations of the world are the remnants of an aspiring empire created by centuries of conquests and invasions. Islam convinces them to see themselves as part of that Ummah, a civilizational empire that is meant to encompass the world. Tribalism sharpens the edge of that religious hostility by giving it a personal edge and a familial aspiration.

Critics say that Muslim terrorism kills more Muslims than non-Muslims. That's true, but not much of a defense.

Islamic manifest destiny has traditionally destroyed Muslim societies comprehensively, but then again Roman imperialism and European colonialism destroyed their own societies quite thoroughly. Globalism usually destroys any society arrogant enough to be infected by the fever which is one reason why America is so endangered. It's also why China has survived for thousands of years by xenophobically turning inwards at key moments in its history. That's why China is likely to leave the scene within the next generation, taking its 'prizes' and going home, or will destroy its own society.

Israel doesn't have that option.

The Jewish State isn't suffering from an Islamic insurgency because it wanted to operate on a global scale, but because foreign invading powers, most notably the Syrian-Greeks and the Romans, imposed their dominion using Arab mercenaries. When Byzantium declined and fell, the barbarians they had been using to keep the peace turned on the Eastern Roman Empire, just as the barbarians Goths had turned on the Western Roman Empire, and assembled together a religion from the scraps of Judaism, Christianity, and assorted local pagan faiths based on their imperatives of conquest and domination.

The Islamic conquests failed to assemble any kind of global utopian empire. But then they never had a chance of doing that. They did however destroy countless peoples, eliminate many cultures, and create broken mirror images of the original Mohammedan Jihad with little emirates ruled by little Mohammeds. And they killed countless millions and ushered in a thousand years of tyranny and terror.

The fall of the Ottoman Empire revived Jewish hopes for reclaiming their homeland, but the Zionists had not counted on the endurance of that original war imperative or on the weakness of civilization.

And so the conflict continues.

It continues in Israel, in Europe, and in America, in Russia, and in China, and around the world.

The conflict has been particularly sharp in Israel because where Muslims are a minority in America, China, and (for a limited time before they become a majority) in Europe and Russia, they are a regional majority. And because of the strategic importance of the region, half the world has made it its business to intervene.

Israel's current two major factional antagonists, Fatah and Hamas, are products of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

The Nazis shaped the Muslim Brotherhood and the Soviet Union shaped the PLO with their strategies, tactics, and organizations, so that Israel is fighting both the Communists and the Nazis in its own territory.

But underneath the overlay of Third World liberationism and genocidal nationalist antisemitism familiar from the Soviet and Nazi projects is the old Jihadist manifest destiny and its much older antisemitism.

And while National Socialism has yet to control a major government or play more than a marginal role in America or Europe (though not for a lack of effort by the new generation of 'Hipster Nazis' more familiarly known as the alt-right), Marxism is a major player in American and European politics.

So the campaign against Israel gets plenty of support from the Left. As does Islamic terror in general.

Israel faces a sharper version of the dual crisis of Jihad that the world does.

The first part of the crisis is an internal insurgency while the second part of it is the development of nuclear weapons by Islamic powers like Iran and Pakistan that can destroy civilization (aided and abetted by the familiar Russian, Chinese, and North Korean pipeline for Third World insurgencies).

The Jewish State has adroitly managed to form a temporary alliance through the Abraham Accords with some regional traditional Sunni powers that have become alarmed at the threat of both of Shiite Iran and Islamist transnational ideological groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, but Iran and the Brotherhood have a direct insurgency operating on its soil.

Combine that with the fall of the Trump administration and the rise of a pro-Iran and a pro-Brotherhood Biden regime in Washington D.C. and the current conflict was inevitable.

But it was inevitable anyway.

Iran, Qatar, and various other players have not been investing a fortune in Hamas and other terrorist groups just to have them sit on the money. After a certain number of years they start a war to test Israel's defenses, military and diplomatic, leading to chaos, carnage, and a pressure for more concessions.

This time is no different.

The roots of the crisis are ancient, but they're also more recent. When confronting a civilizational Jihad, it takes only mistake. And a bad Israeli government mad that mistake in the 90s by agreeing to create an autonomous territory for the insurgents. Another bad government made another one a decade ago by withdrawing from Gaza and leaving it as a truly autonomous territory governed by Hamas.

Both moves were based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the resulting consequences.

Modern Islamic governments pursue utopian socialist schemes using a corrupt ruling class, much like the Communists and the Nazis, resulting in corruption, economic disaster, and external conflict.

Hamas and the PLO/Fatah, like ISIS, is no more capable of running a functional government.

Instead humanitarian NGOs, in this case UNRWA, provide some basic services for the population while the Jihad forges onward to kill and kidnap its enemies operating much like organized crime.

(A lot of Democrat inner cities run on the same gang warfare slash welfare state principle.)

Autonomy never does anything other than expand and spread the crisis. Treaties just define the starting point for the next phase of the conflict. Negotiations are a theater for extracting the maximum amount of concessions as a starting point for the next war whether it's with Iran, the PLO, or any Jihadists.

Israel hasn't figured out how to resolve the problem. But neither has anyone else in the world.

And there may be no answer.

The world is facing a 7th century crisis and trying to deal with it through 21st century means.

To be modern means believing that all problems have answers whereas to be postmodern is to believe that the answer is to repent of our past. The modern approach has led to ceaseless negotiations while the postmodern approach has meant endless appeasement and apologies for our past misdeeds.

Neither the modern nor postmodern way has done anything other than play into the hands of the Jihad.

Netanyahu, like other conservative Likud leaders, has appeared modern while eschewing modernity's preference for pat solutions and postmodernity's apologies and appeasement. And so Israel has been living in a premodern moment, adapting rapidly to circumstances as it has in some ways throughout its modern existence. But that's a survival strategy and not a healthy one either.

Israelis tend to take each day as it comes.

Flying El-Al is very different than flying normal airlines. Everything appears unready even minutes before boarding. The orderly process of boarding by class and status in most airlines is present only in theory as everyone rushes to get on board. It seems impossible that this whole thing should work or that the plane should take off in time. And yet it does, more reliably than most airlines, and works out.

That's Israel in a nutshell. And it's a familiar observation for Americans in Israel.

Israelis are always in crisis mode and they take one crisis at a time, and what ought to be a shambles somehow turns around. It's frustrating to the modern mind and many Americans can't take it.

Yet Israel persists.

But that perpetual crisis mode, a legacy of thousands of years of Jewish history, may offer few lessons to the world. Crisis mode works until it doesn't. And then the failure can be catastrophic.

Israel has fought an almost impossible war bravely, gallantly, and dashingly, jumping from one innovation to another, and then being miraculously rescued with that familiar certainty that neither it nor the Jewish people could exist without a G-d who intervenes invisibly at crucial moments so that the survivors of the ashes of the death camps went on to defeat enemy armies and found a nation.

But the world needs a better answer.

The answer may not be simple, but it begins with countries recognizing that they share a common problem and after generations of 'bargaining' with the Jihad, recognizing that we're all facing the same war, and that across cultures and even political affiliations, the West and the East, Right and Left, we may be enemies, but we also share a common enemy. One whose assault civilization may not survive.

We can either unite against the Ummah, that embryonic empire of Sharia and Jihad, whose boundaries are those of the world, or we can cut our separate deals with its separate parts, which will all fail.

And then we will fail and fall with them.
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Daniel Greenfield (@SultanKnish) writes at DanielGreedfield.org.

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Beware The Anti-Racism Agenda

by Bill Donohue comments on racism and what elites are saying about it:

The Catholic Church regards racism to be “intrinsically evil” and supports policies to check it. It must be noted, however, that today there is no shortage of educators, reporters, activists, and lawmakers who claim to oppose racism while harboring an agenda that sometimes promotes it.

They do so mostly for ideological reasons, though those in the diversity and grievance industry also profit from it monetarily. Critical race theory, which is an inherently racist prescription—it judges people on the basis of their skin color, not their individual traits—is a textbook example of promoting racism in the name of fighting it.

In my lifetime, never have non-whites been treated more fairly than they are today, yet there is an avalanche of news stories that say just the opposite. While objective conditions have definitely improved, the perception that we are a racist nation is widespread. How can this be?

When Senator Tim Scott, an African American, recently said that “America is not a racist country,” he was ridiculed, maligned, and insulted. Why the anger? Because he challenged, to great effect, the raging narrative in elite quarters that America is irredeemably racist.

Vice President Kamala Harris was asked to comment on what Scott said. “No, I don’t think America is a racist country,” she said, but we need to “speak truth about the history of racism.” Previously, she went further than that when she declared, “America has a long history of systemic racism.”

President Biden is concerned about racism as well, claiming that “white supremacists” constitute the “most lethal terrorist threat.” He took his cues from the FBI which is preoccupied with white supremacists.

Ask most Americans who qualifies as a white supremacist and the likely answer is someone who belongs to the Ku Klux Klan. But the Klan has actually been in decline. So who are these people who pose the “most lethal terrorist threat”?

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is the go-to site that journalists use to access information about white supremacy and hate crimes. It is a left-wing activist organization that claims to monitor such offenses.

Last month it sounded very much like President Biden when its president and CEO, Margaret Huang, said, “We’re facing a crisis of far-right extremism and deep threats to our democracy.” From whom? She identified the mob storming the Capitol in January as being “led by white supremacists and other far-right extremists.”

Huang provided no evidence to support her remarks; she simply asserted that white supremacists were the principal culprits. It apparently never occurred to her that these men and women were mostly angry pro-Trump supporters who felt disabused by electoral politics and political correctness, concerns that have nothing to do with feelings of racial superiority. Veterans and former police officers appear to have been overrepresented. If they are white supremacists, we need to see the empirical evidence.

In fact, the SPLC does a lousy job defining who these white supremacists are. Its lengthy report, “The Year in Hate and Extremism 2020,” says an awful lot about white supremacists but is noticeably short on identifying exactly who they are.

For example, it says they track “extremist flyers,” reporting that they found 4,900 “flyering incidents.” The worst offenders, it said, were those who promoted the “white nationalist ideology,” a train of thought it left undefined. It did not say who these white nationalists were or whether they were responsible for any violence. It did say that the Klan is no longer “a significant generator of white supremacist terror,” largely because it “saw its count dwindle to 25 groups in 2020.” So who are the new Klansmen? SPLC has racism on the brain. In its report, it expresses dismay over the fact that “only 38 percent of respondents” in a survey believed that “systemic racism” accounts for a disparity in health outcomes between whites and non-whites, “even as COVID-19 ravages communities of color.”

It did not say whether white supremacists were to blame for this condition, but it did say that it was unnerved to learn that the majority of Americans thought that Black Lives Matter (BLM) violence in 2020 was a bigger problem than police violence against blacks. With good reason: BLM killed 25 people, assaulted the police, burned down entire neighborhoods, and engaged in widespread looting. In 2019, police shot and killed 999 people: 452 were white and 252 were black; 26 of the whites and 12 of the blacks were unarmed.

For the record, SPLC regards as “far right” extremists anyone who thinks that boys who “transition” to girls should not be allowed to compete against girls in sports and shower with them. Perhaps they are the new Klansmen.

Real racism and extremism, as the Catholic Church understands it, must be opposed and defeated. It does not help this noble cause when prominent Americans and non-profit organizations are bent on finding racism under every rock.
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Bill Donohue writes for Catholic League.

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Biden’s America Resembles the Bad Old Days of 1973

Today’s headlines are ripped straight out of the newspapers of 1973.
by Rick Manning: While President Joe Biden may look fondly back on the year 1973, the year he began serving in the United States Senate, did he really have to bring the entire country back with him to that fateful year?

Today’s headlines are ripped straight out of the newspapers of 1973.

Jerusalem is on fire as Palestinian unrest is creating tensions unseen for years. Fueled by Biden’s U.S. policy changes which have provided millions of dollars to the Palestinian government, massive rocket attacks on Tel Aviv coming from the Palestinian Authority proxy Hamas have been chronicled in dramatic video of the Israel Iron Dome missile defense system destroyed them and prevented mass casualties in heavily populated areas. The scene is reminiscent of the coordinated attack by Israel’s neighbors, Egypt and Syria, forty-eight years ago on Yom Kippur and during the Islamic celebration of Ramadan. Eerily, the current attacks on Israel in 2021 are also occurring during the Ramadan celebration period.

Nineteen seventy-three was also marked by the first massive gasoline shortage in America resulting in gasoline lines and shortages that crippled America. The 300 percent increase in gasoline prices which resulted led to the determination that America would seek energy independence, which was finally achieved during Donald Trump presidency – an achievement the Biden administration is desperately attempting to undo. The eco-terrorism cyber attack has politicians on the left salivating at the thought of using the gas lines as a catapult to pass the crippling Green New Deal under the false guise of energy security.

For gearheads, the oil shortage, high gas prices, and environmental policies led to the end of the muscle car era. Similarly, today Biden’s New Green Deal aspirations would effectively end the dominance of the internal combustion engine. The symmetry is eerie.

And of course, in 1973 the United States signed an agreement with South Vietnam, North Vietnam and the Viet Cong, to begin the withdrawal process from Vietnam, a decision that led to the murder of millions in Vietnam and Cambodia due to their opposition to the communist forces in those countries. In 2021, Joe Biden is pledging a troop withdrawal from Afghanistan which will undoubtedly result in the Taliban takeover of control of that country. While continuing Trump’s policy to end U.S. ground presence in that country is the right thing to do, it will likely result in human slaughter as Afghanistan devolves into civil war, reminiscent of Indonesia in 1973.

Rising inflation is another Biden gift from 1973, a year where the inflation rate almost doubled from the previous year to 6.22 percent. In the first three months of the Biden administration, inflation has almost doubled to 2.6 percent with a reasonable expectation that the prices Americans pay for goods will continue to increase as the full effects of the helicopter money policies demanded by the Democrats continue to be felt throughout the economy.

For those who remember 1973, the idea of America traveling back to experience the travails of that era after experiencing four years of hopeful pursuit of peace and prosperity in our nation is a little bit depressing. Particularly when we realize that the one thing President Joe can’t bring back is the music of the early 70’s. Marvin Gaye, George Harrison, John Lennon and Jim Croce are dead, and the rest of the greats are in their 70’s (but still touring.) I guess we can always hang our hopes on the Rolling Stones Keith Richards leading a music revival, because he just might be the one person currently on earth who the Grim Reaper simply doesn’t want.
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Rick Manning is President of Americans for Limited Government.

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Carter's Second Term, Israel Under Siege, Cheney Removed

Gary Bauer

by Gary Bauer: Carter's Second Term
Joe Biden is taking us back to the 1970s. In the aftermath of the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack, Americans along the East Coast are facing significant gas shortages and long lines at the pump for the first time since the Carter years. And surging inflation is back too.

Jimmy Carter was a nice man, but he was a disastrous president because he was weak. Throughout the Carter years, America careened from one crisis to another, and it's happening again.

Some say Joe Biden is a nice man. But he immediately signaled weakness at the U.S. border. He canceled the border wall. And now record amounts of drugs and record numbers of illegal aliens are pouring across the border.

Biden signaled weakness in the Middle East by restoring funding to the Palestinians, and begging the Islamic thugs who run Iran for a new nuclear deal. Now, after years of peace, Israel is once again under attack. And Iranian gunboats are once again harassing the mighty U.S. Navy.

Biden signaled weakness against communist China by refusing to call the coronavirus what it is – the Chinese communist virus. He allowed communist Chinese officials to come to the U.S. and insult us. Now official communist Chinese propaganda outlets are openly mocking Biden, and Beijing is threatening to invade Taiwan.

Not everyone liked Donald Trump. For some, he was too loud and aggressive. I think he was a great president. More importantly, bad actors around the world were afraid of him. Today, those bad actors do not fear or respect our president.

So, they rush our border, mock our country, attack our allies and harass our navy. And it will continue to get worse until somebody in the White House wakes up.

Israel Under Siege
As fighting intensified yesterday between Israeli forces and Hamas, Arab Israeli mobs attacked their Jewish neighbors and ransacked synagogues. Historically, riotous anti-Semitic mobs attacking Jews is called a pogrom.

They bedeviled Europe for hundreds of years. Sadly, pogroms were often carried out by people who thought of themselves as Christians. Now it is happening again in the Jewish state itself.

When Donald Trump moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, virtually nothing happened in Israel. Yes, there was some rioting in Gaza. But it was far from the "eruption of violence in the Arab street" that so many foreign policy experts predicted.

That's because the Arab world and many Palestinians understood the clear messages from Donald Trump. He made it clear that America was standing firmly behind Israel, and they had better come to terms with Israel because we weren't going to force the Jewish state into a bad deal.

The contrast between the Trump Administration's support for Israel and the Biden Administration's ambivalence could not be more striking.

Even as pogroms are taking place and as Hamas rains down 1,200 rockets on Israeli communities, the Biden Administration today is insisting that "Israel has an extra burden . . . to avoid civilian casualties."

So, it's no surprise that with Biden back in the White House, not to mention the growing influence of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, Israel's enemies are emboldened and on the attack.

Please join me in praying for the peace of Jerusalem.

Cheney Removed
The House Republican caucus voted this morning to remove Rep. Liz Cheney from her leadership position. Democrats like Chuck Schumer and the mainstream media are rushing to Cheney's defense. And that tells you everything you need to know.

Schumer has never been a fan of the Cheney family. Nor has the left-wing media. Many left-wing politicians and pundits accused Dick Cheney of war crimes. They wanted him impeached, and frog-marched out of the White House. They loathed Lynne Cheney's pro-America history books.

But there's one thing the left and Liz Cheney have in common – they hate Donald Trump and they despise the America First agenda. And with Cheney's removal, the left lost a critical "resistance" ally.

As columnist Sean Davis put it, "The only people Liz Cheney attacked over the last several months were Republicans, and the only people who defended Cheney were Democrats."

Frustrated that they are losing their grip on power, other swamp creatures and RINO resisters are throwing a temper tantrum. They are threatening to take their toys and leave. They may even form a third party.

Good luck with that. I doubt these Biden supporters will find much support for a pro-amnesty, pro-China, pro-globalist, pro-war party.

Stand with CWF now as we fight the radical left and the Washington establishment. Help us elect more America First conservatives to Congress!

Centers For Declining Credibility
Yesterday, we learned just how little credibility the CDC has left. It turns out that when the CDC was clamping down on outside events – no sporting events, no Trump rallies, etc. – it was citing flawed research suggesting there was less than a 10% chance of getting COVID from outside contact.

Well, that's true to a point. But it's also a lie.

In reality, what the research showed was that the risk was less than 1%, and probably even far less than that. Technically, that's less than 10%.

But by quoting a possible 10% risk, the CDC gave an entirely false perception, which is why even today you are still seeing some people, like Joe Biden, wearing masks outside.

The CDC used to be the gold standard for public health. But COVID has destroyed its reputation. The CDC can take a step toward restoring its credibility by immediately changing its outdoor guidance, including its absurd guidance for the operation of summer camps.

Right now, the Pentagon is using COVID as the excuse for refusing to allow veterans to use the Pentagon parking lot for the annual Memorial Day Rolling To Remember event. Biden has been saying that if you don't get vaccinated, you can't have a cookout on July 4th. All of this is based on the bogus 10% number.

In fact, even the left-wing New York Times reports, "There is not a single documented COVID infection anywhere in the world from casual outdoor interactions."

It's time to end the pandemic paranoia!

The Abolition Of Common Sense
Colin Kaepernick, the multimillionaire athlete who thought injecting radical anti-Americanism into professional sports was a good idea, is back with another really "bright" idea.

He announced yesterday that his publishing company, named – wait for it – "Kaepernick Publishing," has a book coming out later this year. It's called, "Abolition For The People: The Movement For A Future Without Police & Prisons."

A better title for Kaepernick's book would be, "The Abolition of Common Sense."

So, let's get this straight: We're supposed to take advice on criminal justice and public safety from LeBron James and Colin Kaepernick? They should stick to basketball and football. I'll stick with the people who know something about law enforcement and criminal justice.

But for those on the left who think it's a good idea to take policing advice from James and Kaepernick, the next time you're in trouble I suggest you forget 911 and call Colin and LeBron for help. Let me know how it goes.
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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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