What is wrong with America? The Left wants to dramatically change it!

October 25, 2022

Those among us who grew up when people learned about their country’s real history, agreed with its sensible principles, and appreciated its fundamental freedoms are very uncomfortable today. 

We watch as our traditions are being ignored or actively discarded, resulting in deconstructing what is generally regarded as the most free and successful form of government yet designed.

Mark Levin is a lawyer, former president of the Landmark Legal Foundation, and a conservative author, broadcaster and commentator. He discussed many things that are wrong with America today in a speech recently. 

“We don’t want to change the Constitution. We want to uphold the Constitution. They’re changing the Constitution. These people don’t even believe in the Constitution. 

“They don’t even believe in American history. They’ve destroyed Madison’s home. They’ve destroyed Jefferson’s home.

“They’re destroying our colleges and universities. They’re destroying our public schools. They’ve destroyed the southern border. They’re destroying our currency and our economy. They’re destroying our military; they’ve destroyed police forces across the country.

“We don’t need lectures from them about us destroying anything. We are the ones that want to uplift this country and believe in this country.”

“They” are the political Left. The Left is responsible for most of our current problems.

Our federal government as it was designed is virtually unrecognizable today. Under federalism, the system upon which the United States of America was formed, there is a balance between the federal government and the states. The federal government has certain authority given to it by the U.S. Constitution, and states have authority in areas not given to the federal government. The result was a limited federal government.

But the federal government has grown well beyond its intended size and scope. And the result is a gargantuan bureaucracy that costs a fortune to operate, and has produced bountiful regulations that so often interfere with the freedom our system was designed to insure.

Why should the federal government be telling people in the states what they can or cannot do with their property? Why should the federal government have any authority over how states and localities educate their children? Why should the federal government, control what businesses across the country pay their employees?

Why do elected officials continue to grow the size and influence of the federal government, increasing the need for higher taxes, and encroaching on the personal freedom of their constituents? Why is the Department of Justice paying any attention to parents in local school districts who attended board of education meetings to object to what is going on in their schools, and labeling them “domestic terrorists” for wanting to protect their children, which is their primary duty?

And why is one group of non-violent people facing large teams of armed federal agents confronting them to arrest them for non-violent crimes, while other groups are peacefully arrested for the same sort of crimes?

The political Left has a very different outlook on life in America. Since excellence in so many things is so critically important, why do they think it is better that good jobs or rewards be delivered to all ethnicities and genders equally, rather than all people having an equal chance to earn these things through performance and merit?

Since the best way to make good decisions is to be aware of the different possibilities that exist, why are ideas that liberals do not agree with being censored from being read or heard to the benefit of everyone? Why promote the ending of an unwanted pregnancy up to, and even beyond the minute of birth, rather than encouraging and assisting in the prevention of pregnancy, or suggesting adoption of the baby? 

Why do those in positions of authority in education or who teach in our public schools think it is okay to diverge from the approved curriculum and/or covertly insert controversial and often-dangerous social concepts into classwork?

Why is it suddenly necessary to change things that have worked to our benefit as a country for more than two centuries by trying to do things like packing or doing away with the Supreme Court, eliminating the Senate filibuster, or eliminating the Electoral College? Why do Democrats in the federal government not insist on a secure southern border that is able to prevent deadly drugs, child and sex traffickers, criminals and other illegal aliens from coming into the country so easily?

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden, who ended America’s energy dominance, now uses our Strategic Petroleum Reserve — which is intended to be used to provide fuel during real emergencies, not to lower Biden’s price increases by a few cents for a few days — to attract voters to Democrats in the mid-term election two weeks from now.

If America does not very soon reject these subversive efforts and return to the tried and true traditional values upon which it was established, it will be only a relatively short time before we will be kneeling to and obeying the Communist Chinese, or a cabal of Chinese, Russians, Iranians and North Koreans, all of whom are working hard to take us down.

As they say, elections have consequences, but offer opportunities

October 18, 2022

Voting in the midterm election of November 8th has already started, with early voting underway in some states. Exactly how the election will turn out is being debated, with predictions of Republican gains in Congress and statehouses, but is truly unknown at this point.

There are several issues that command the interest of voters. Those include the economy/inflation, the rising crime problem, abortion, education, immigration and voting policy.

A survey by the Pew Research Center in August placed the economy at the top of the list, with 77 percent of the registered voters polled ranking it first. Coming in fifth was voting policies, ranked first by 59 percent of those polled.

We all remember the chaos over the security of the 2020 election, but that one was not the only election that has been questioned. Four previous presidential elections have been seriously questioned, dating back to 1876 when Samuel Tilden ran against Rutherford B. Hayes. Amid much controversy, Hayes squeaked out a 185-184 majority in the Electoral College.

A bribery scandal marred the 1888 election between Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland. Ultimately, Cleveland lost the race. More recently, the 1960 election between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon had some of the closest results in presidential politics. Kennedy won by just 100,000 votes.

And then there was the election of George W. Bush over Al Gore in 2000. With Bush receiving just 527 more votes than Gore, a U.S. Supreme Court decision ultimately led Gore to concede the race to Bush.

There was also a lot of chatter about the 2016 election between Donald J. Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton, with many Democrats, including Clinton, complaining about the outcome. Many of these same Democrats were highly critical of Trump’s complaints about the 2020 election, which put Joseph R. Biden, Jr. in the White House.

The complaints by Trump and his supporters did not produce a change in the results of the election. And there is not going to be a discussion of that election here today.

However, it is appropriate to note that in many, if not most, elections, there are those who question the results, and there is the fact that in most elections voter fraud does exist, as well as other irregularities. The real issue is, to what extent do fraud and irregularities influence the outcome?

A very important issue in any election is the security of the process. 

Every eligible voter’s vote must be counted, and no ineligible votes can be counted. And while removing obstacles that make it a little inconvenient for people to vote is important, that is far less important than making the process as secure as possible. A little inconvenience in return for vote security is a small, but necessary price to pay.

In-person voting, where prospective voters go to the polling place, show their photo ID and are verified, and vote on paper ballots that are counted by honest poll workers, is generally considered the most secure method. Voting by mail is considered the most vulnerable to fraud, because the ballots are sent out and returned through the mail or in special ballot return boxes. This process makes the ballots available to being intercepted from home mailboxes and the boxes set up for ballots to be returned, and fraudulently used by those wanting to control the outcome.

And, states must insure that voting procedures are not changed by election officials or poll workers, etc. Only action by the state legislature may legally change election procedures. In 2020, five states did not abide by this requirement, perhaps for the best of reasons during the pandemic. But the law is the law, and it must be followed.

The country is in far worse condition than when Biden took office, and the problems that have resulted are causing much discomfort among Americans, both voters and non-voters.

Inflation has surged by double digits — 13 percent — since Biden first entered the White House. Higher prices of products like gasoline and food have put thousands or millions in financial distress.

Illegal immigration has killed people trying to cross the Rio Grande, thousands more who have mistakenly taken fentanyl brought across the border by illegals have died, as have others at the hands of illegal aliens who crossed the border, which is, for all intents and purposes, wide open.

Crime in many U.S. cities has spiraled out of control, as “progressive” prosecutors, judges, and others have eased up on punishing criminal behavior, refusing to prosecute some crimes and to jail criminals for some violent crimes, and generally catering to criminals, to the detriment of their victims.

This election and the 2024 General Election offer opportunities to reject the incompetence of the Biden administration, and to return life in America to where it was only a short time ago. Elect people who want to restore common sense to government, to use America’s resources to benefit Americans and the world, and move toward cleaner energy at a sensible, normal pace.

The policies of the radical left Democrats have created chaos, and put the lives of Americans at greater risk than ever before in our lifetime. It’s time to put a stop to that.

Lowering standards for success is a foolish and dangerous concept

October 11, 2022

Some of America’s younger generation are failing to understand what their country is all about, how it works, how they are supposed to work to succeed in it, and make the country work like it should.

In one of the more disturbing instances that demonstrate this problem, an 84-year-old New York University (NYU) professor with long tenure and wonderful credentials was recently fired.

Maitland Jones, Jr., who taught organic chemistry — an important subject for future medical doctors, and a necessarily difficult subject — authored the 1,300-page textbook “Organic Chemistry,” now in its fifth edition, and had been a star teacher at Princeton.

In its story on Jones’ firing, the New York Post wrote this about Jones’ subject: “Organic chemistry is a very difficult subject. Doing well in the course in college has been a litmus test for medical-school suitability. It demands discipline, ability to think in three dimensions, memorizing complex structures, managing a series of chemical rules and solving intricate problems. Its intellectual demands and need for disciplined study are surrogates for the discipline and problem-solving physicians must demonstrate throughout their careers.”

During the pandemic, Jones went the extra mile to tape his lectures, at his own cost, to help students who were having attendance problems attributed to the pandemic.

Despite Jones’ sterling credentials, his experience in the classroom, and his knowledge of the subject, 82 of his 350 students — about 23 percent — signed a petition against him claiming he had made his class too difficult and was at fault for their failing grades.

And that was enough for NYU to oust Jones for making the course “too hard.” The New York Times had a story about this saying that students revolted because they feared that “they were not given the grades that would allow them to get into medical school.”

Apparently, these students believe grades, that may not reflect what they actually learned, are more important than what they learned, or didn’t learn, in college.

The Post story, however, tells us, “The professor, meanwhile, saw a different problem: ‘They weren’t coming to class. … They weren’t watching the videos, and they weren’t able to answer the questions.’ But the school terminated his employment rather than the students, who are on track to become physicians despite struggling to get into med school.”

In an interview Jones had with the Times, he told the paper that “Students were misreading exam questions at an astonishing rate. In the last two years, they fell off a cliff. We now see single digit scores and even zeros.”

Don’t we want and need the country’s future physicians to have successfully mastered a difficult educational background in medicine and related topics? 

Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, who wrote the Post story, had this to say about the education of future physicians: “Jones could not be more correct in his judgment that his organic chemistry course should be tough. Entry into medical school these days is almost a guarantee that a student will one day have a medical degree and a license to practice medicine.”

Goldfarb then noted that “Even struggling students are coached through to graduation. I know this as I was the associate dean for curriculum at Penn’s medical school. But until recently, the standards for admission were so high that one could be sure that at least students admitted had the potential to excel. Jones’ experience at NYU makes clear that assumption is no longer correct.”

Today, many colleges and universities offer majors in subjects that may be interesting to students, but that do not prepare them to get a job when they graduate. 

NYU is bowing to fewer than 1-in-4 of Jones’ students’ demands that he be fired, because they think he is the problem. He was the problem because he made his class too hard — like it has been for many years — rather than that the students who were failing were the problem, using the pandemic as an excuse for why they didn’t study as they should have. This is a troubling sign, especially in a critical and demanding field like medicine. 

Goldfarb’s story increases concern: “Every American should be worried because this kind of standard-lowering is becoming commonplace in medical school.”

In every career field, in every job, we need the best available person to fill positions. That is accomplished not by the silly idea of equity, where positions are filled based upon gender and race, so that every gender and race gets its fair share, but on merit: he/she who is best suited for a position gets the position. 

The American standard is that we must all work to be the best we can be at whatever productive career we choose. That is what builds individual success, and what makes a country as good as it can be.

There are other countries in the world — China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, for example — that are doing their best to be effective and capable enemies of America. We need schools and the next generation to keep America at the top of its game against these and other challenges. And that means working hard, not easing up and looking for excuses.

The Biden administration has weaponized the Justice Department

October 4, 2022

A father often took his oldest son to a place he frequented. While there, a 72-year-old man often said “crude … inappropriate and disgusting things” to the 12-year-old boy. The father told the older man repeatedly to stop verbally harassing his son, but that didn’t stop the man from being vulgar.

One time the man got too close to the boy, into the boy’s personal space, and the father, after telling the man to stop harassing his son, and defending his son, pushed the man away. He fell back, but was not injured. The older man then sued the father.

The case was investigated by a District Court and the case was dismissed.

However, the family was awakened one morning by a team of 25-30 FBI agents carrying weapons.

“They had big, huge rifles” pointed at the father, “and pointed at me and kind of pointed throughout the house,” the mother said.

“The kids were all just screaming. It was all just very scary and traumatic,” the mother told a news agency, about the incident that she and her children witnessed. Her husband pleaded with the FBI agents to be calm, referencing the couple’s seven children, she said.  

Catholic News Agency reported that the FBI reported that the father was arrested outside his home “without incident.” According to federal court documents, the father was charged with assaulting the 72-year-old man.

Question: Why was the FBI arresting a man on a charge that the court had found warranted dismissal? And if an arrest was warranted in this case, why did the FBI show up early in the morning pointing weapons at the parents in front of their children, when a phone call, or a single agent appearing at the home with a warrant for the father’s arrest would have been a logical and appropriate way to proceed?

When you realize that the place the man and his son went was a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, that the man was a pro-life advocate, that the older man was a pro-abortion protester, and that the Biden administration supports very liberal abortion rules, this makes more sense.

CBS News reported that, “With guns drawn, FBI agents in combat gear and night-vision equipment fanned out just before dawn Friday in front of the Florida home of President Trump's former campaign adviser, Roger Stone.”

The report said one of the agents shouted, "FBI! Open the door!" as he repeatedly pounded on the door in a video of the raid broadcast on CNN. "FBI warrant!"

Soon a light came on, and Roger Stone appeared in sleepwear. Are you Roger Stone?" an agent asked him. "Yes," he responded. Stone was arrested and then led away.

Stone commented about the raid, "This morning at the crack of dawn, 29 FBI agents arrived at my home with 17 vehicles with their lights flashing, when they could simply have contacted my attorneys and I would have been more than willing to surrender voluntarily," he said. "They terrorized my wife, my dogs."

The raid was "completely unnecessary," Stone's attorney, Bruce Rogow, said. “He's not in hiding."

Stone was charged with seven counts: one count of obstruction of an official proceeding; five counts of false statements; and one count of witness tampering.

These charges do not indicate the need for a dawn swat team raid. And, how, exactly, did CNN know about the raid in advance?

While some Trump supporters have been charged with crimes, legitimate charges in at least some of the cases, this spectacular event seems more than a little over-the-top.

And the arrest of a pro-life supporter after a court had dismissed a lawsuit on the same charge as the arrest seems completely inexplicable.

These two incidents, as well as the incident where Trump supporter Mike Lindell was approached in public, rather than in a less spectacular way, indicates a particular motive on the part of the FBI, and the Department of Justice of which the FBI is a part.

Lindell was in the drive-through at a fast food restaurant when FBI agents approached him, showed him a warrant, and demanded he give them his cell phone.

This is the same DOJ that ignored the federal law-breaking by demonstrators at the homes of the judicially conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justices, following the Court overturning of the incorrect Roe v. Wade decision made decades ago.

This is the same DOJ that sent agents to harass parents who attended school board meetings and complained about the course of events at their children’s schools. 

In some cases, these parents were termed “domestic terrorists” because they used their First Amendment right to speak freely when they expressed their dissatisfaction with the behavior of school boards, schools, and teachers that abandoned the approved curricula, and began indoctrinating young students without notifying the parents of these changes in the curriculum. It is parents, after all, who are the ones whose taxes support public education.

The DOJ appears to be targeting the right. Is there a greater wrong against the people when their government targets one group for the benefit of another group?

The Democrats are moving the country in the wrong direction

September 27, 2020

We see liberal/Democrat prosecutors who deliberately refuse to enforce some laws, under-charge persons arrested for crimes, enact no-bail laws that release arrested persons back on the street hours after their arrest so that they can, and often do, commit more crimes. These dangerous moves are pro-criminal and anti-victim.

Liberals/Democrats also failed to curtail the crazy riots, arson and looting in well more than 100 cities that followed the killing of George Floyd in 2020 at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. This rioting, which was often defended as “mostly peaceful,” did as much as $2 billion dollars of damage to insured property, an unknown amount of damage to uninsured property, and worse, cost 15 people their lives.

Then came the not-so-brilliant idea of defunding the police, “re-imagining” law enforcement. This resulted in crime spikes in blue-run cities at shocking levels. Police officers grew tired of the lack of support, anger and violence they experienced, and took retirement or just quit working. And that contributed further to the crime sprees that still exist.

Liberal educators and school boards have been secretly changing approved and traditional curricula to include indoctrination; teaching young kids about dangerous gender transition, that boys can become girls, and girls can become boys at will, except that they say there are no such things as males and females anymore. 

Instead of teaching legitimate school subjects full time, there is the idea that everyone must use each persons’ chosen pronouns instead of their birth pronouns; mothers and fathers are now “birthing parents” and  “parents,” aunts and uncles are a “parents’ sibling”; and they falsely teach that America is filled with white oppressors mistreating the oppressed non-white minorities in what is called “Critical Race Theory.”

While China teaches its youth about math and science, the U.S. increasingly is spending less time on real education, and more time on indoctrination of “woke” ideas.

One political party is proposing radical changes to fundamentals of our Constitution and the way the nation operates. The Democrats in Congress support eliminating the Electoral College, a device created by our Founders to protect smaller states from being under the thumb of the most populous states.

Also in their tool chest of dominance, is doing away with the Senate filibuster, which Democrats have themselves used when desired. The filibuster enables the minority party to act to stop the passage of measures it believes are bad law. Without this long-time feature, the tyranny of the majority can become reality.

The Democrat leader, the President of the United States, is accusing the opposition party — the party that defends the Constitution and generally supports the current ways of doing things — of doing what his party is actually doing, which is radically attacking our democracy, our democratic republic style of government.

This party also supports weakening the election process, the security and reliability of which must be beyond question. For example, it opposes voters being required to show photo IDs that prove who they are in order to vote. 

But it also supports mailing ballots to all registered voters, even to voters who did not request a ballot, and collecting ballots by mail. It also supports voted ballots being dropped into unguarded drop boxes along the streets 24 hours a day for days on end so that anybody can dump as many “ballots” as they want.

In-person voting is the most secure method, and voting by mail is the least secure.

Other things on the Democrats’ list of accomplishments are these items, highlighted by Virginia 9th District Congressman, Republican Morgan Griffith in his weekly email communication. “In less than two short years, unified Democrat control of the Federal Government has diminished our country in ways that would astound even a pessimist,” Griffith wrote.

“Inflation has risen to levels not seen in forty years. Gas prices hit record highs earlier this year. More than two million illegal immigrants have been encountered at the southern border this fiscal year before it has even ended, not counting the significant number that have evaded detection.”

“President Biden and the liberals in Congress wreaked havoc on the economy by pouring trillions of dollars into it,” he continued. “Too many dollars chasing too few goods is the classic formula for inflation, yet Democrats persisted.”

With control of the Executive Branch and both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the Democrats could do so much to help the country. They could revise the U.S. tax code, designing it with fewer loopholes and sensible tax rates. They could have left intact our recently regained position of energy independence that would have allowed the U.S. to help provide energy to countries now buying energy from Putin’s Russia, among other things.

Instead, its control has botched the Afghanistan withdrawal that killed 13 U.S. military personnel and many local allies, allowed the highest inflation in decades, contributed to the death of many Americans from the Fentanyl flooding across the southern border, doubling the size of the Internal Revenue Service, and a new recession that shows no signs of letting up, to name a few.

And we have two more years of this disaster to come.