In the immediate aftermath of the near-miss, but-for-the-grace-of-God attempt on Donald Trump’s life this weekend, many pundits and politicians on the Left felt compelled to moderate or soften their tone — at least briefly. President Biden — or more accurately, President Biden’s aides — put out a brief, curt statement calling for America to “unite as one nation to condemn” the attack, and paused ads and events for his re-election campaign. For years, Trump’s opponents have warned that his rhetoric would (and did) lead to real-world violence. Kamala Harris published a similarly blasé statement declaring that “assassination attempts have no place in our nation, or anywhere.” Miraculously, Pelosi herself somehow found a way to make the attack about her: “As one whose family has been the victim of political violence, I know firsthand that political violence of any kind has no place in our society,” the former House Democrat Speaker announced on X. But even in their ostensible condemnations, many progressives just couldn’t help themselves. Variations of the phrase “beat him with ballots, not bullets” bounced around the left-wing punditrosphere but often with various caveats or amendments: “Trump remains an existential threat to democracy,” wrote Star Trek actor-turned-left-wing-personality George Takei. “We’ll defeat him with ballots, not bullets.” (READ MORE from Nate Hochman: Whither ‘America First’?) While “political violence is ALWAYS wrong,” added the Never-Trump commentator Joe Walsh, “Trump is a direct threat to democracy & the rule of law.” Former Republican congressman and anti-Trump hysteric Adam Kinzinger reminded his viewers that “Trump is a danger to democracy — he absolutely is,” and urged them to “keep fighting this fight, but let’s fight it politically, obviously.” In this morning’s newsletter, titled “Bullets Can’t Save Liberalism,” The Bulwark intoned: “While Trump’s embrace of political violence, alleged criminal behavior, and attempts to short-circuit our elections present a grave threat to the liberal order, they are not the only threat against it.” These mental gymnastics routines were, admittedly, predictable: Those who have staked their careers on hystericizing about Trump as a harbinger of imminent fascism were never going to relinquish their paychecks that easily. But the obvious questions remain unanswered: If Trump really was an existential, unprecedented threat to democracy, why wouldn’t any and all means of preventing his rise be justified? If Trump really was on the cusp of a thousand-year Reich, why shouldn’t Americans stop at nothing to stop him? If Trump really was going to end America as we know it if given the chance to win an election, what reason is there to give him that chance in the first place? In The Atlantic, David Frum — yet another grizzled veteran of Never-Trumpism — exemplified this morbidly amusing contradiction with a Sunday essay titled: “The Gunman and the Would-Be Dictator.” (Subtitle: “Violence stalks the president who has rejoiced in violence to others”). “The attempted murder of Trump — and the killing of a person nearby — is a horror and an outrage,” Frum declared, before going on to devote thousands of words to painting a picture of Trump that would lead any reasonable reader (and a good deal of unreasonable ones) to the precise opposite conclusion. “The American political and social system cannot treat such a person as an alien,” Frum moaned. “It inevitably accommodates and naturalizes him.” And yet, “those who stand against Trump and his allies must find the will and the language to explain why these crimes, past and planned, are all wrong, all intolerable — and how the gunman and Trump, at their opposite ends of a bullet’s trajectory, are nonetheless joined together as common enemies of law and democracy.” For years, Trump’s opponents have warned that his rhetoric would (and did) lead to real-world violence. The standard never has been — and never will be — applied in the other direction. For all the talk of Trump as a would-be totalitarian, a fascist threat to all that is good and decent and holy, or “an insurrectionist against the American state,” to use Frum’s formulation. For all the grave warnings that his return to power would be the most catastrophic event in world history, bringing with it unspeakable horrors, barbarities, mass death, locusts, plagues, and more; for all the desperate entreaties that all decent Americans must do whatever is necessary to prevent this would-be tyrant from clawing his way into power; the very voices that spent the past nine years pouring these poisons into the ears of Americans are now shocked that somebody opted to take them to their logical conclusion — and outraged at the suggestion that their rhetoric may have played a role. Words are not, contrary to popular belief, “violence.” The First Amendment stands alone, even in the Western world, as a guarantor — despite its beleaguered condition — of a far greater sphere of liberty in the realm of speech than any other nation on Earth, and we should hope it stays that way. But if what is good for the goose is good for the gander, then the prominent voices who used their not-insubstantial platforms to accuse Trump and his allies of “stochastic terrorism” are as (frankly, more) responsible for what happened this weekend as any right-wing politician has ever been for an act of right-wing political violence. Any other conclusion defies all laws of reason. What is the correct response to something like terrorism? Good arguments? “Beating them at the ballot box”? Of course not. The correct response to terrorism is a swift, uncompromising, overwhelming use of retaliatory violent force. (READ MORE: Anarcho-Tyranny Is Official White House Policy) For nearly a decade now, nearly every major messaging and narrative-shaping institution in this country has whipped their readers and listeners into a state of perpetual hysteria with breathless fever-dream fantasies of the great orange evil — a larger-than-life supervillain who would, if ever given the chance, take away everything that they held dear. As it turns out, some people may have actually believed them. The post The Ballot and the Bullet Against Trump appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The disintegrating presidency of Joe Biden is a challenge for our country and so a challenge for us personally. Lies in the arrogant pursuit of power has so characterized the political culture of which Joe the figurehead that our country is clearly approaching a national reckoning. Turning from the sickly fascination of the Biden’s presidential death spiral, we must look to another politician for guidance. Always great principles are at play, but sometimes that is more obvious than others. This is becoming such a time. Observant commentators on the scene have turned to a universal truth. “What goes around comes around,” people say. “Instant karma’s gonna getcha,” said the Beatles. “Measure for measure,” wrote the Bard. Comrade Lennon was reaching back to the Hindu doctrine of karma, and Shakespeare was echoing a rabbinic concept, mida kenegged mida, which translates precisely as “measure for measure,” which in turn was merely a summary of several biblical texts, such as “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” or “as he did, so it shall be done to him” — no doubt, dear reader, you are familiar with others. (READ MORE from Shmuel Klatzkin: Biden Distracts Americans. Turns on Israel With New Ceasefire Proposal) Victor Davis Hanson, wearing his classicist hat, points out to us that this is a great theme of ancient Greek tragedy: nemesis follows hubris. The tragic hero is too proud and arrogant, a misstep which set him against the divine order, personified in the goddess Nemesis, who sees to it that the arrogance itself brings about the flawed hero’s downfall. Shakespeare uses the theme often, and daringly, and significantly for our tradition of freedom, in his histories. Richard II is an outstanding example in which King Richard’s supreme and arrogant use of his power in confiscating the lands of Gaunt push Gaunt’s son over the brink into rebellion and then the king’s continued pride, even when defeated, greases the skids for his precipitous fall and execution. It seems that a tragedy is playing out. Joe Biden has lived by the lie. He even renders the story of his own origins into a mish-mosh of truths and fantasy; his first presidential bid fell to ruin in the aftermath of one such lie. His fortune is based on maintaining a lie of integrity and lawfulness over a simmering pot of grift and he has been good enough at it to escape a reckoning despite boasting about the most flagrant use of his political power for preserving his  scheme. This is, of course, the famous talk before the cameras in which he boasted about threatening Ukraine with loss of American aid if it did not end the investigation into the corruption of Burisma, the energy company paying Hunter Biden a gigantic salary so that Joe Biden would see that America had their back. Joe was preening like a peacock in front of the friendly audience, who may or may not have known then about the flow of lots of money through Hunter to the Biden family that the Ukrainian investigator had sniffed. Joe insisted on his immediate dismissal — and got it. Hubris. Joe and his enablers eventually became so arrogantly sure of their ability to fool everyone about whatever they needed that they lied about the most obvious things. He and his enablers in government and in the media were good enough at their game to make the truth seem to most people as mere partisan defamation. John Selden, commented acidly at his lively table about such facile public liars as were in his day: [They] would have us believe them against our own reason; as the woman would have had her husband against his own eyes, when he took her with another man, which she stoutly denied: What! will you believe your own eyes before your own sweet wife? As President Joe might have chimed in, in his best rendition of Being Folksy — C’mon, man! The idea! And so they lied and lied again about Joe’s accelerating decline, which played itself out in plain sight, but was always met with what seemed to pass for an agile response. And the response was agile enough to keep the issue from exploding, even as the evidence increased in frequency and amplitude. It was only within this last month that his handlers thought to discredit those who dared to call attention to the truth by the lie of calling the evidence “cheap fakes.” As even most of the Biden team knows, the debate with Trump was a disaster. Now, even those who were on the Cheap Fake bandwagon even two weeks ago are trying to find the smoothest way of enabling Joe to disappear himself from his candidacy without implicating themselves in the lies that sustained him to this point. But as we can observe as this plays itself out, even those deserting Joe’s cause, are still lying to escape the consequences of the lies the lived by and benefited from. They are pretending still that the lie was no lie and they lie as they do so. As for the hard core, our American regent, Dr. Jill, and the one most immediately in danger of consequences for his role in the great grift, Hunter — they are the fully sentient ones left in charge of the leaky ship of this candidacy and presidency. The have lived by the lie till now and they are fully caught within it. Nemesis has them entirely in her grip. If we turn from Athens to Jerusalem, there is still the hope of redemption. Shakespeare shows Hamlet at fault when he denies the possibility of redemption to his mother and her king paramour. God calls to the sinner to return from his path and live. It would be a wondrous thing to see. We have seen precious few apologies, though, for any of the lies, only the desire to escape their consequences. Turning from the sickly fascination of the Biden’s presidential death spiral, we must look to another politician for guidance. What is it we seek? Vengeance? Not that deadly potion, surely. Justice — that is a worthy end, enough to justify our own contest for the power needed to bring justice about. But justice has often been of late mistaken for retribution. The whole woke enterprise lies on such a misprision. Our law tradition, though, steeped in the people’s desire for liberty, is rather for restorative justice. We have been diminished. We seek power solely in order to be made whole. We might though pray, with Lincoln, that as a country, we at last hearken to our better angels. There is surely something here to motivate us all to clean up our national political culture, to seek the good of the country and its redemption from what has it in its grip, to embrace the commonweal, in which we and our posterity unite for the  good of all. (READ MORE: Israel Abides by Rules of War Its Enemies Would Never Dream Of) In response to the national lie, we are called upon to stand for truth, in all its particulars. As living examples, can we teach what needs to be done and so avert the headlong plunge into national tragedy that surely lurks if we were to succumb to the venality and lies that has driven those in power. The nation needs no less than that generous commitment to the truth that must command us all. The post The Lies of the Biden Presidency Are a Problem appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The phrase “Putin’s murderers” has two meanings. One is to label people who want to kill Russian President Vladimir Putin and haven’t yet undertaken that task. The second is to label the people that Putin sends to kill his opponents, real or imagined. Mr. Putin’s killers are sent abroad to kill people important enough — or sufficiently symbolic to Putin — whenever he likes. Putin was a colonel in the KGB, one of the Soviets’ most aggressive tools to suppress any political opposition to the Soviet regime. The KGB had an entire department — Department V — which was dedicated to assassinations. Now Trump has picked Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate. Vance has opposed further aid to Ukraine. Putin, whose uncompromising aggressiveness is displayed daily in Ukraine, hasn’t lost touch with his KGB roots. An attempted assassination by Russian agents of one of Germany’s most important industry CEOs, Armin Papperger, was reportedly foiled by U.S. and German intelligence. Before we get to the attempt on Papperger’s life, a little history is in order. (READ MORE from Jed Babbin: Trump Is Lucky, but The Secret Service Blew It) It’s not easy to oppose Putin, especially within Russia’s borders. He has the ability to imprison political opponents and few have the courage to take him on. Those who do — e.g. Alexei Navalny — are usually imprisoned before they can accomplish much. Navalny was an international figure, recognized for his bravery in arguing that Putin’s government was entirely corrupt. Navalny, having fled Russia and then returned, died in a Russian prison camp a few months ago. We remember, too, Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian officer in the FSB, the domestic arm of Russia’s secret police, who managed to escape Russia. (The FSB and its international counterpart, the SVR, were created from the remnants of the old Soviet KGB.) Litvinenko was murdered by two Russian SVR agents in London in November 2016 in a very imaginative and agonizing way. He was poisoned with Polonium 210, a radioactive substance that killed him in a few days. And then there was the failed attempt, again in London, to kill former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in March 2018. They survived an attack with Novichok, a nerve agent produced in Russia. A policewoman barely survived exposure to Novichok in her investigation of the case. (And, please remember, that Navalny was also poisoned with Novichok but it isn’t clear that the nerve agent was the proximate cause of his death.) And now there is the case of the attempted assassination of Papperger. Why did he attract Putin’s attention? Because he is the CEO of Rhinemetall, the company that produces German tanks, armored vehicles, and ammunition some of which are employed by Ukraine’s army. It is quite evident that the attempt on Papperger’s life was intended to send a message to every manufacturer of Western weapons used in Ukraine that their executives’ lives are under threat. Had it succeeded, it could have caused an end to Germany’s support of Ukraine. Putin’s agents haven’t yet — as far as we know — attempted to kill anyone in America. But the key executives of U.S. weapons manufacturers will have to spend a lot of their companies’ money to protect themselves. They may become reluctant to support Biden’s continuing efforts to send U.S. weapons to Ukraine. And that is what it is all about. It is an attempt to put indirect pressure on Biden to stop aiding Ukraine. As the late Donald Rumsfeld was fond of saying, weakness is provocative. And Biden is terribly weak. At the NATO summit this week, he was sufficiently confused to introduce Ukrainian President Zelensky as Putin, though he corrected himself almost immediately. Biden’s weakness — and his lack of mental capacity to handle the job of the presidency — is on display for the world every day. Putin’s desire to conquer Ukraine is of existential importance to him as is NATO’s weakness. As this column has pointed out before, Putin believes that the fall of the Soviet Union was the greatest disaster of the 20th Century. He is a follower of Alexander Dugin, who has been called “Putin’s philosopher.” Dugin, in his book, The Foundations of Geopolitics wrote that if Ukraine is not made a part of Russia, Putin may as well not bother to restore the rest of what Dugin calls the great Russian empire. Russia’s economy has been put on a war footing. It is relatively clear that the NATO nations, including the US, are not prepared to support Ukraine indefinitely. Putin is a patient conqueror though it’s not clear that Russia’s economy can sustain its total support for his war in Ukraine. But the NATO nations’ weaknesses are also clear. How long will they support Ukraine no one knows. Former president Trump has been on both sides of the Ukraine issue. His son, Donald Jr., said a few days ago that his father will end the war in Ukraine but didn’t explain how he would do it. Now Trump has picked Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate. Vance has opposed further aid to Ukraine. In April, he whipped votes against Speaker Johnson’s bill for aid to Ukraine. (READ MORE: Biden’s Conspicuous Decline is a Joke — On Us) Will Vance move Trump to firmly oppose further aid to Ukraine? It’s not out of the question for Trump, if he’s reelected, to tell Europe that Ukraine is its problem, not ours. That would have enormous consequences in Europe, in NATO, and give Putin the means to do what Dugin has told him to do. The post Putin’s Audacious Murderers appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Didn’t hear your wicked words every day And you used to be so sweet, I heard you say You’re a woman without conviction You’re a woman who doesn’t know How to sell a contradiction You come and go, you come and go Karma, karma, karma, karma, karma chameleon You come and go, you come and go — Paraphrased excerpt adapted from Culture Club’s “Karma Karma Chameleon” Remember when the cackling idiot who now serves as Chief DEI Officer of the United States was at that public event when an Arab Muslim Jew-hating student ripped Israel and Zionism, accusing the Jews of “ethnic genocide”? It happens too often, but I am remembering the one where the Arab Muslim Jew hater sought to rile, with her vile bile, and instead got a smile from Kamala Harris, Biden’s Opus #1 in F minor. (Not to be confused with his other DEI Opuses (not Opi): his empty press spokeslgbia+ of Color or his Supreme Court Woman of Color who cannot define “woman”). Well, his DEI Opus in Chief, Kamala, responded to that hater: “[Y]our voice, your perspective, your experience, your truth, should not be suppressed. And it must be heard, right?” The significance of the passage of time. The ultimate political chameleon who adapts color to fit into every surrounding. Kamala Kamala Chameleon. It is imperative that we Americans grasp who this intellectual pretender and moral lowlife is because, if the constellations do not land in the proper order and if G-d Almig-ty opts to hide His face (Deut. 31:17) this November, G-d forbid punishing a nation whose electorate includes too many who have lost their moral way, we can end up with a level of “White House worst” that is worse than the worst imaginable. Remember the “You can’t handle the truth!” meme?  Well, not her problem — because she has no Truth. Whereas Biden is a pathological liar, Harris lies even more frequently and severely. Biden sometimes knows he is lying, sometimes believes his own yarns, and sometimes does not even know what he has said. By contrast, Harris always knows she is lying, has no moral compass, and is purely evil deep in her soul. Don’t let the cackling and giggling fool you. Murderers laugh, too, at the most evil moments. She has no core, no soul. Just ambition beyond her grasp. A woman who is not meritorious but meretricious. All his life, Joe Biden has been an opportunistic politician with few values, but he has some. He truly does. He is a liberal. If it does him well, he shifts to off-the-rails Woke or even a bit conservative, like when elections draw nigh. But at his core, he is a liberal in a party gone Obama Woke, so now is without an anchor other than Dr. Jill Ed.D. He truly thinks he is leaving behind a legacy of a cleaner world by forcing down everyone’s throats electric vehicles that the majority refuse to buy, and by trying to ban gas stoves.  His policies are horrible and his presidency among the most lackluster, but he has some rudimentary values, although he abandons them for political gain or under pressure from Lady MacBiden. By contrast — and this is My Truth: Kamala Harris has no values, no scruples, no beliefs at all. Hollow. If she is talking to Arab Muslim Jew haters, she honors Their Truth and emphasizes her DEI bonafides. Kamala Kamala Chameleon. When she talks to Jews, she praises Their Truth and tells them she is married to a Jew. Kamala Chameleon. That Jew knows less than nothing of Judaism. (He had a Reform temple bar mitzvah? Here is the G-dless nonsense that goes on in Reform temples.) He marries non-Jewish women. His daughter emphatically tells reporters she is not Jewish, and she raises money for “Palestine” on social media. There never has been more open vitriolic violent anti-Semitism in America’s 248 years since that Jew became, uh,  “Second Gentleman” and Cheeseburger-Grilling E. Coli Schumer rose to head the Senate. One more such Jew in high office, and we Jews all may as well pack and move to Ilhan Omar’s Somalia — or, better, to G-d’s Samaria. Yes, it all is about Her Truth. She idiotically tells Jews what our Chanukah is about — Her Truth. Remember the “You can’t handle the truth!” meme?  Well, not her problem — because she has no Truth. Her Truth is whatever she imagines that moment’s audience wants to hear. Kamala Kamala Chameleon. When it was cool to prosecute drug possession, she locked up marijuana users. More than 1,560 people went to prison for marijuana offenses during that time. Kamala Chameleon. When the mood of the nation changed, and she sought the 2020 presidency, she joked in a radio interview that, oh wow, she smoked weed in college. Even more Woke: while listening to Snoop Dogg and Tupac. Yet another knowing lie: She was a student in the 1980’s. Both those rappers arrived only a decade later. Until then, no one had heard of them — and neither had she. Her Truth. Back then, as I have written in the past, when Bernie had Democrats advocating “Medicare for All,” her handlers gauged the Democrat primary electorate and co-opted Bernie’s socialist-Marxist initiative as her trademark issue, but she did not understand it. When questioned by friendly left-wing media in interviews, it emerged she had never thought how to pay for it. Predictably, some then asked whether she realized that “Medicare for All” would mean that almost every American necessarily loses his or her private health insurance. The cackling bubblehead, never having grasped the implications of the Bernie Sanders agenda, responded quickly with a nod: “Yes. Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on.” Kamala Kamala Chameleon. A vertitable California earthquake! Even Obama had sense enough to lie and say that you would keep your doctor and would keep your insurance. But Kamala she hires aides for thinking. Most quit soon enough. That is how Kamala Harris “thinks” on her flats: as if to say “Sure, whatever. I guess so. Why not? Is there a downside? What am I missing?” Kamala Kamala Chameleon. As faces around her become dour, she engages her trademark escape valve: cackling, laughing hysterically. The same thing happened when she was asked whether she agreed with Elizabeth Warren that we should break up Facebook. She had no idea. But the mike was live, so she shifted into her standard fallback: “I think we have to seriously take a look at that.” Do you agree with Bernie Sanders that imprisoned felons should vote? “I think we should have that conversation.” Kamala Chameleon. After almost every such encounter, the outcries she engenders by mindlessly agreeing with her questioners ultimately compel her to walk back “her positions” days later. On abolishing private health insurance. On felons voting — OK, well maybe not the Boston Marathon bombers. She talks stupid, with all the intelligence she manifested as Willie Brown’s extramarital girlfriend with benefits. When she gets stuck, it either is about “My Truth” or “Your Truth” or “We should have that conversation.” Or just cackle. She has a hollow core, merely pure ambition, not mediated by ideas. Again, most recently, she offered these burps and belches to a reporter at The Nation, when discussing last month’s anti-America, anti-Jewish riots and encampments that highlighted the rot in American “elite” universities: “They are showing exactly what the human emotion should be as a response to Gaza … I understand the emotion behind it.” Kamala Kamala Chameleon. She is toxic. Poison. That is The Truth. No need to have to take a serious look or have a conversation about it. The most defining aspect of Kamala and Her Truths is how she rose from the political bottom. At the recent Great Debate when Joe Biden faltered, Biden arrived from a week of intensive preparation with a line of attack against Donald Trump. Feebly, he tried laying into Trump for what Biden alleged had been his opponent’s unfaithful behavior with a woman other than his spouse amid his marriage. It never seemed to occur to anyone there, not to Trump and not to the questioners — and, in light of how the night went, just as well — but Kamala, a relative nobody a few years earlier, even more disgracefully had publicly consorted with California Democrat then-kingmaker, Willie Brown, a man thirty years older than she, a slick operator who was very, very publicly married. Nor did Kamala necessarily dress in business attire. At least not in the entrepreneurial raiment of women who work the day shift. A married man does not belong with a seedy pole dancer behind his wife’s back. I don’t know what transpired with that, if anything. But for her to consort regularly, openly, and notoriously — in full light of the mass media — with a married man, sticking it to his wife, like a V. Stiviano with Donald Sterling in front of Sterling’s hapless wife, Rochelle (Shelly)? How did Willie Brown’s wife feel, seeing that floozy consorting with her husband, the father of her children. dressed like this. And like this. Biden trying to lecture Trump while this is his Vice President? Or is she, more accurately, his President of Vice? (Kamala Harris’ dancing tops her hip-hop 50th anniversary celebration): Blanche Brown, then married to Willie and deeply agonized by the incessant public media humiliation, shared with Herb Caen, the legendary San Francisco columnist, Her Truth shortly before Brown was sworn in as Mayor of San Francisco: “Listen, she [Kamala] may have him at the moment, but come inauguration day and he’s up there on the platform being sworn in, I’ll be the b***h holding the Bible.” The Chameleon Kamala Harris is vile and despicable. She is an opportunist with no core values at all, a chameleon with soul as hollow as her thoughts. Willie Brown was the first to say that the affair benefited her poltically. That is His Truth. He named her to a board that paid $72,000 annually and met once a month. He launched her career to California Attorney-General. In all-Democrat California, she predictably glided from there to U.S. Senator. Soon, this villain pocked by stained morals was grilling a righteous Catholic family man, the truly honorable Hon. Brett M. Kavanaugh, accusing him falsely of wrongs he never committed. Next thing we knew, she was elevated to DEI in chief. G-d forbid she ends up Commander-in-Chief, the certain result if Biden wins the November election.  G-d forbid. Subscribe to Rav Fischer’s YouTube channel here at bit.ly/3REFTbk  and follow him on X (Twitter) at @DovFischerRabbi to find his latest informative and inspiring classes, interviews, speeches, and observations. READ MORE from Dov Fischer: A Prayer and Thoughts After Shooting of President Incompetence Knows No Borders Why Biden Is So Insistent on Running The post Kamala Kamala Chameleon: Shameful Pretender appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Today’s college aged Americans are probably the first generation in American history that knows less about important consequential things than their parents or grandparents. This was reconfirmed recently in a new study commissioned by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA). It hired an organization, College Pulse, that surveyed over 3,000 current American college students from a large number of different schools. There is an arrogance about the contemporary era that causes much malaise. The results show that collegiate Americans today are extremely knowledgeable about relatively trivial matters of transitory interest, but rather clueless about important events, laws, and personalities related to our history and civic institutions.(READ MORE from Richard K. Vedder: Grade Inflation and Campus Protests) For example, responding to four-answer multiple choice questions, an overwhelming majority know that Jay-Z is married to Beyonce, or that Jeff Bezos is the owner of Amazon (as an Amazon stockholder not related to Bezos, I mildly resent the assertion that Bezos is the owner).  But more importantly, big majorities wrongly asserted who was the President of the U.S. Senate, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, “Father of the U.S. Constitution,” or which branch of government has the power to declare war. They know a good bit about contemporary business or entertainment icons who will become dim historical memories within a generation, but are abysmally ignorant about key facts contributing to making us the most exceptional nation to ever exist. To be sure, the survey is not perfect. While in this era of the disappearing male from college campuses, having more than twice the number of females as males in the sample struck me as inappropriate, as did having a rather large number (165) identifying themselves as “non-binary” or apparently not declaring any gender at all (70). Yet the ACTA survey confirms what earlier surveys, such as a Civic Literacy Test administered by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute show: young college attending Americans have only the foggiest knowledge of their heritage or civic institutions. And the ACTA results are so overwhelming that appropriate tweaking of the sample almost certainly would not hugely change reported outcomes. Yet one-third of a billion humans are called “Americans” while others living nearby in places like Winnipeg or Mexico City are not. Why? Civic institutions like governments and their constitutional framework, plus the history of the mingling of peoples form the glue that bind hundreds of millions diverse individuals together as “Americans.” They took people of diverse races, religions, ethnicities, language facility, incomes, etc., and made them into something they have in common — becoming part of a tribe, an extended family. And the knowledge of the creation and current operation of that national framework provides the foundations for national unity and respect, not to mention power and wealth. On College Campuses As someone who has been a direct participant in American higher education as student or professor over eight different decades (the 1950s through the 2020s), I have seen the instructional focus on our national identity decline dramatically. Enrollments are down in history departments but up in business and communications, not to mention subjects loved by the Woke Supremacy like gender studies. And on many campuses, students are asked to apologize for their “white privilege” and other nonsensical concepts with little historical legitimacy. Not only are students made ignorant of their past, they are often being taught in a style reminiscent of the old Soviet Union a factually inaccurate and pernicious secular (indeed, anti-religious) catechism. Within universities massive government subsidies dilute the operation of market forces, but they do not eliminate them, and the public is now revolting. Some much needed creative destruction is underway, with school closings and a firing of woke college presidents leading to a Counter Reformation. In Ohio where I live, I think there is a decent chance that like Florida the state government will soon mandate public universities teach some American history and civics to undergraduates. Doggedly traditional and anti-woke schools like Hillsdale and Grove City colleges seem to be surviving, even flourishing. Even amidst falling enrollments, a few new promising traditional schools like Thales College and the University of Austin are emerging as alternatives. (READ MORE: College Football Is About To Change Forever) There is an arrogance about the contemporary era that causes much malaise. Today’s Americans think everything important burst forth in the last few years or decades, and are dimly aware of the historical foundations of an exceptional nation. Yet in reality, in 1776, we were a nation of 2.5 million with total annual incomes of a small fraction of that of our smallest state by population today, Wyoming. Tens of millions made the greatest long-distance migration in world history creating today’s United States. It is a marvelous story, one with which every college educated American should have intimate familiarity. Thanks to ACTA for revealing the magnitude of our historical and civic ignorance. More broadly, the present generation of adults running our nation is diminishing our cultural capital, endangering national unity and future generations. In a similar way, it is debasing our financial capital by engaging in irresponsible federal deficit spending that, along with the precipitous decline in births, likely will lead to severe financial insecurity to the next generation of senior citizens (around 2050). In less than a century, we have moved from the Greatest Generation to the Most Selfish one. Richard Vedder is Distinguished Professor of Economics Emeritus at Ohio University, and Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute. The post College Kids Without Civics and History appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

One of the greatest rights we have as Americans is the ability to speak our minds without fear that some government bureaucrat will cancel us.  This is not just a perk of living in a free and open country.  It is a prerequisite.  For “we the people” to govern ourselves, we must be able to publicly discuss and debate different ideas.  If these groups want to engage in a private crusade against internet speech, they are free do so.  But they should do so without taxpayer dollars. This can be messy, uncomfortable, and even inconvenient, especially for those in powerful positions.  Government officials believe they know what is best, and that everyone would be better off if they simply agreed.  But the federal government does not have a monopoly on the truth.  It is a human institution that can and does get things wrong.   The prayer of St. Francis of Assisi asks “where there is error, may we bring truth.”  That can only happen when government does not place its thumb on the scale to suppress dissenting views and the discussion of ideas. Government cannot be the arbiter of what is or is not true in the public square. (READ MORE: Censorship Is More Dangerous Than Disinformation) At their core, this is what the claim at issue in a case decided by the Supreme Court, Murthy v. Missouri, were all about.  This case involved efforts by officials throughout the federal government, including the Biden White House, the CDC, the Surgeon General, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security, to flag disfavored social media posts and pressure social media companies to change their content moderation policies.  They particularly focused on issues relating to COVID-19 and elections.  The plaintiffs were states and individuals who had their social media posts suppressed by social media companies, purportedly in response to government actions to badger social media companies.   The lower courts determined that the government violated the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights and issued an order restricting government interaction with social media companies. The Supreme Court, however, said that those lower courts should never have even considered the cases. This abdicates the Court’s role as a forum where citizens can challenge government intrusions on their First Amendment rights. The majority slammed the courthouse doors shut to the plaintiffs, finding that they lacked “standing” to challenge the government’s actions.  As Justice Alito said in dissent, the majority’s ruling sends a message that “[i]f a coercive campaign is carried out with enough sophistication, it may get by,” leaving citizens with no chance to even have their day in court.  “That is not a message this court should send.” The Supreme Court’s decision does not have to be the last word on this matter. The fight against government censorship must now necessarily shift to Congress and the White House to protect the free and open discussion of ideas on social media. To do this, Congress can begin by drawing defined lines and boundaries between government officials and social media companies.  As reflected in the Murthy decision, government has often exploited a murky relationship where officials can demand action from social media companies then point a finger at social media companies for making decisions to implement their requests.  This can and should change.  While law enforcement agencies have legitimate reasons for asking to take down illegal content, and the rest of government should not be doing so. Congress can also leverage its power of the purse to end the funding of a public-private censorship complex.  Rather than act directly to censor speech on social media, some agencies partner with “outside” groups who receive generous government grants and funding.  If these groups want to engage in a private crusade against internet speech, they are free do so.  But they should do so without taxpayer dollars. Congress can also ensure that its anticensorship policies have teeth.  There must be consequences, ranging from adverse employment actions, termination, and even civil or criminal liability for public officials who trample upon the First Amendment rights of American citizens. Passing new laws through Congress can be difficult and time consuming.  Fortunately, there are things that can be done even without Congressional action.  For example, through the President’s power over the executive branch, this (or the next) White House can effectively reinstate many of the restrictions on coercive communications put in place by the lower courts in Murthy through executive action. (READ MORE: The Censorship Lobby Is Worried About … Censorship?) It has been said that “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” None of these actions are a silver bullet, but each are concrete steps we can take together to preserve, protect, and defend our freedom of speech for the next generation.   Curtis Schube is the Executive Director for Council to Modernize Governance, a think tank committed to making the administration of government more efficient, representative, and restrained. He is formerly a constitutional and administrative law attorney. Gary Lawkowski is a lawyer with the Dhillon Law Group, where he advises and represents clients on legal issues including matters concerning the Freedom of Information Act. He is also a Senior Fellow for the Council to Modernize Governance. The post Stop Government Censorship appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

EXCLUSIVE: The Desperate Deep State Is Going To Try To Kill Trump Again, Warns Roger Stone@RogerJStoneJr pic.twitter.com/xsVdz2phbJ — Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) July 15, 2024

from Paul Joseph Watson:  TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/

by Mish Shedlock, Mish Talk: As more videos and interviews turn up, it’s clear the SS failed its only mission. Will anyone be held responsible? Grossly Incompetent Meet the grossly incompetent Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle. Kimberly Cheatle is a veteran of the Secret Service who was appointed by President Biden to helm the agency nearly […]