China’s aggression against America is currently our greatest threat

In July of this year, Dan Blumenthal wrote in National Review that “The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) long-term strategic objective is to displace the United States as the world’s most powerful country and create a new world order favorable to China’s authoritarian brand of politics, or its ‘socialist market economy,’”  

Today the Chinese economy is one of the strongest in the world, and its military is one of the largest and best equipped. China has stolen our technology, and uses it to get a leg up economically and militarily. Virtually every aspect of our lives has been infiltrated by CCP operatives, including in academia, the news media and politics.

We know that Communist China has tried to recruit American politicians, overtly or covertly. Congressional Democrats like California’s Senator Diane Feinstein and Representative Eric Swalwell are two who have been targeted. Swalwell’s Chinese friend Fang Fang had suspicious ties to the Chinese government, and Feinstein had a potential Chinese intelligence official working in her San Francisco office. 

Who knows how many others there might be? And who knows how much sensitive information they accessed, or how much influence they may have had on elected officials?

In academia, Chinese infiltrators can be found on college campuses involved in academic affairs and also creating dissent among impressionable young minds. Yet, the Chinese have successfully gained access to government research work at some of our colleges and universities.

None of that means, by the way, that all Chinese in the country are working against us.

Furthermore, CNBC reported that China has purchased 10 large American businesses. Among them are Smithfield Foods, AMC, GE Appliances, the Waldorf Astoria, Strategic Hotels and Resorts, and Motorola Mobility, and attempted to buy Forbes magazine.

Interestingly, Forbes magazine reported that “Since 2016, a company owned by Xinjiang-based real estate tycoon Sun Guangxin had spent an estimated $110 million buying up land in Texas’ Val Verde County,” which is on the Mexican border. Sun planned to use 15,000 acres for a proposed 46-turbine wind power project, called Blue Hills Wind Development.

The Forbes story said that critics of the project “alleged that a wind farm controlled by a Chinese company would seek to tamper with, or even shut down, the embattled Texas energy grid; some speculated the turbines would be used to gather military intelligence on the activities of nearby Laughlin Air Force Base.” 

Forbes also reported that in response to this the Texas legislature passed a bill aimed at preventing “business entities associated with ‘hostile nations’ from accessing the Texas electricity grid and other pieces of ‘critical infrastructure,’ including computer networks and waste treatment systems.”

A Chinese conglomerate has bought up more than 146,000 acres of farmland across the United States, worth about a half-billion dollars, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And now there is news that Rawlings will move a company it owns that produces products for Major League Baseball from Minnesota to China.

FBI Director Christopher Wray addressed the Hudson Institute last year. In his opening remarks, he said: “The greatest long-term threat to our nation’s information and intellectual property, and to our economic vitality, is the counterintelligence and economic espionage threat from China. It’s a threat to our economic security — and by extension, to our national security.”

“It’s the people of the United States who are the victims of what amounts to Chinese theft on a scale so massive that it represents one of the largest transfers of wealth in human history,” he said. “In 2017, the Chinese military conspired to hack Equifax and made off with the sensitive personal information of 150 million Americans” — nearly half of our population — and he noted that this wasn’t a standalone incident.

He also said that the FBI “is opening a new China-related counterintelligence case about every 10 hours,” and that “at this very moment, China is working to compromise American health care organizations, pharmaceutical companies, and academic institutions conducting essential COVID-19 research.”

“When considering the threat Communist China poses to our nation all one has to do is look on the streets of America in recent years,” wrote D.W. Wilbur on Townhall.com. “Much of the civil strife and unrest that we have been [experiencing] and continue to experience has the fingerprints of Communist China all over it.”

And then, “ANTIFA, BLM, and any other leftist organizations are most certainly quietly influenced — if not outright infiltrated and getting their marching orders from Communist China.”

The Biden administration — with the porous southern border; its colossal early blunders in Afghanistan, and the recent drone strike on a supposed enemy that turned out to kill civilians; and the foolish behavior that alienates allies like France and strengthens our challengers — is weakening the U.S. and our military.

And then there is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, who visited Great Britain. After listing some of the problems China is causing globally, but not America’s China aggression problems, she said what is the most critical thing involving China. “But we have to work together on Climate. Climate is an over-riding issue.” 

Are climate worries more important than national security? Congressional Democrats and the Biden administration seemingly don’t notice those.  

Two examples of how higher education is failing the country

Today, higher education has serious problems. Between political correctness, wokeness, equity and diversity issues, there are now many problems in classrooms and administrative offices.

Professors, who are the source of many of the classroom problems, are sometimes on the receiving end of political correctness and wokeness mania. 

One such example involves veteran University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) law professor Jason Kilborn.

Just before the first class on the first day of the spring semester this year, UIC’s administration abruptly suspended Kilborn from teaching. He said the administration would not explain what the basis for the indefinite suspension was when he asked.

“This hits you like a ton of bricks,” he said. “It was totally unexpected. You’re totally isolated.”

When he finally learned the reason behind this extreme administrative action, Kilborn learned that UIC had violated his rights to academic freedom. 

On an exam the preceding semester he had posed a hypothetical matter to which the law students were to respond. That issue set off alarms among some hypersensitive members of a student organization. Without discussing their concerns with their teacher, they complained to the law school dean, the University administration, and the media, calling his use of certain language “inexcusable.”

Just what momentous transgression had Kilborn committed? He had employed a long-used hypothetical issue in the law school exam that contained two redacted slurs. The question about employment discrimination included a female plaintiff being called “a ‘n____’ and ‘b____’” as explosive evidence of the discrimination. But even redacting the terms didn’t save Kilborn from being targeted by his university.

“Undergrad teaches students to think, but law schools, medical schools — they have to teach students how to do,” Kilborn said. As someone who has taught law for 21 years, he understands that concept, and had structured his curriculum to accomplish that goal.

Explaining his technique, he said, “In virtually every one of my law classes, I try to put that scalpel in my students’ hands and ask them: What do you do?”  “These hypotheticals,” he explained, “really force students, future lawyers, to be confronted with the messy reality they’ll be faced with in the outside world.”

Kilborn was eventually reinstated through action by FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), but this occurrence paints a very clear picture of some of what has driven higher education at many institutions in our country from being a valuable asset, to being a politically-driven wasteland.

This is not the only case where a professor has been targeted for controversial expression. FIRE research into the rise in collegiate scholars punished for their constitutionally protected speech reveals that fully 74 percent of targeting incidents are successful. What that means is that the target professor ends up with some type of punishment, such as investigations or suspension. And FIRE noted that one in four targeted scholars lose their job.

Working hard to not upset students while trying to help them learn how to deal with the real world they are preparing to enter has become, in far too many cases, more important than the actual process of preparing them to survive and prosper after college.

Another professor trying to cope with this new upside-down campus environment was not suspended. Instead, he decided he had had enough.

Professor Peter Boghossian had taught philosophy at Portland State University for the last decade. He quit his teaching post, submitting his letter of resignation to the school’s provost, and also publishing that letter.

His problems began, he explained, because he started asking critical questions. “Unlike my colleagues, I asked these questions out loud and in public.” The more he spoke out, the more push-back he got. So, he began publishing articles with two other people demonstrating how critical thinking had gradually faded from importance at Portland.

These articles resulted in him being attacked and verbally harassed by both students and faculty. This harassment included being spit on, and being threatened as he walked to and from classes.

When he went to Portland, he believed he was joining a group of professional people that were committed to growing critical thinkers, not machines. He believed his job was not to tell students what to think, but to teach them how to think, he said. But Portland no longer pursues its original mission.

In his letter to the university’s provost, Boghossian, explained, “But brick by brick, the university has made this kind of intellectual exploration impossible. It has transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a Social Justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender, and victimhood and whose only outputs were grievance and division.”

He continued, “Rather, I sought to create the conditions for rigorous thought; to help them gain the tools to hunt and furrow for their own conclusions” based on rigorous research, critical thinking and listening to diverse voices.

The education and degrees so many have sought and benefitted from for so long have, in many institutions, become little more than a certification of successful adopting of a political attitude that challenges America’s fundamental principles.

Helping young adults grow intellectually and gain needed skills isn’t their goal. Turning America into another socialist failure is their goal. And the movement is expanding.

Shakespeare was right: The past is prologue. We must pay attention.

Many of you will remember Richard (Dick) Lamm as a former Governor of Colorado. He ran for, but did not win, the Reform Party’s presidential nomination in 1996. Back in 2003, Lamm attended and spoke to an overpopulation conference in Washington, DC, filled to capacity by many of America's finest minds and leaders.

Among the other speakers was scholar and historian Victor Davis Hanson, who talked about a book he had written titled Mexifornia, addressing immigration, both legal and illegal.

Following Hanson’s address, Lamm gave a stunning speech on how to destroy America. The audience sat spellbound as he described eight methods for the destruction of the United States. He said, "If you believe that America is too smug, too self-satisfied, too rich, then let's destroy America. It is not that hard to do. No nation in history has survived the ravages of time. Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and fall and that 'An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.'"

First, to destroy America, he said, "Turn America into a bilingual or multi-lingual and bicultural country. History shows that no nation can survive the tension, conflict, and antagonism of two or more competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; however, it is a curse for a society to be bilingual.”

Second, to destroy America, "Invent 'multiculturalism' and encourage immigrants to maintain their culture. I would make it an article of belief that all cultures are equal. That there are no cultural differences.”

Third, "We could make the United States a 'Hispanic Quebec' without much effort. The key is to celebrate diversity rather than unity.”

"I would encourage all immigrants to keep their own language and culture. I would replace the melting pot metaphor with the salad bowl metaphor. It is important to ensure that we have various cultural subgroups living in America reinforcing their differences rather than as Americans, emphasizing their similarities."

"Fourth, I would make our fastest growing demographic group the least educated. I would add a second underclass, unassimilated, undereducated, and antagonistic to our population. I would have this second underclass have a 50 percent dropout rate from high school."

"My fifth point for destroying America would be to get big foundations and businesses to give these efforts lots of money. I would invest in ethnic identity, and I would establish the cult of 'Victimology.'”

"My sixth plan for America's downfall would include dual citizenship and promote divided loyalties. I would celebrate diversity over unity. I would stress differences rather than similarities. Diverse people worldwide are mostly engaged in hating each other — that is, when they are not killing each other.” He said. 

“A diverse, peaceful, or stable society is against most historical precedent. People undervalue the unity! Unity is what it takes to keep a nation together. Look at the ancient Greeks. The Greeks believed that they belonged to the same race; they possessed a common language and literature; and they worshiped the same gods. All Greece took part in the Olympic Games.”

"Next to last, I would place all subjects off limits — make it taboo to talk about anything against the cult of 'diversity.' I would find a word similar to 'heretic' in the 16th century — that stopped discussion and paralyzed thinking. Words like 'racist' or 'x! xenophobes' halt discussion and debate."

"Lastly, I would censor Victor Hanson Davis's book Mexifornia. His book is dangerous. It exposes the plan to destroy America. If you feel America deserves to be destroyed, don't read that book."

There was no applause. The audience sat in stunned silence. Every American in that room knew that everything Lamm had said was proceeding methodically, quietly, darkly, yet pervasively across the United States right then.

As stunned as the audience was in 2003, should we not be more stunned today?

FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform) reported that in 2019 there were 14.3 million illegal aliens — the politically correct term for which is “undocumented immigrants” — in the U.S. That is the number of “known” illegals, and it is rising daily. Are these millions all assimilating by learning to speak English and adopting American values?

Has not the focus on diversity taken a big jump, even in the military, where such distractions are a true threat to our national security? Is America not more divided than it has been for many decades?

Are there not far more “racists” in the country day-by-day, as we are told? And victimhood is at an all-time high, as small sub-groups now spurn long-accepted standards and clamor for attention and acceptance?

Have we not noticed our educational standing among nations having dropped over the last several years? The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development rated the U.S. the sixth best education system behind Canada, Japan, Israel, Korea and the United Kingdom.

Do we not see the danger of the anti-testing movement and lowering or eliminating some standards for high school graduation? Oregon has eliminated reading, writing and math requirements to “help” certain student groups?

In a recent poll by Politico’s “Morning Consult,” 61 percent of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. Like George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Lamm’s speech was prescient.

Democrats want to control how the states manage their own elections

 

Hurricane Ida’s destruction and the colossal Biden Afghanistan blunder dominate the news. And given the enormous impact of these two catastrophes, that is entirely appropriate. Yet, there are other things of importance that continue to move forward, that are covered up by the “big news” of the day.

One of those other things is alive and well in Congress. H.R. 4, the illegitimate offspring of H.R.1 and S.1 — known inappropriately as the “For the People Act of 2021” — moves in the same direction: aiding the federal government in taking control of election procedures that belong to the states, and weakening the election system.

The Heritage Foundation, hated by many on the left for its accurate perspective, had this to say about the “For the People Act of 2021”: “H.R. 1 would federalize and micromanage the election process administered by the states, imposing unnecessary, unwise, and unconstitutional mandates on the states and reversing the decentralization of the American election process —which is essential to the protection of our liberty and freedom,” the summary began. 

“It would (among other things) implement nationwide the worst changes in election rules that occurred during the 2020 election; go even further in eroding and eliminating basic security protocols that states have in place; and interfere with the ability of states and their citizens to determine the qualifications and eligibility of voters, ensure the accuracy of voter registration rolls, secure the fairness and integrity of elections, and participate and speak freely in the political process.”

Since H.R. 1 and S. 1 were not passed by Congress, this new effort to destroy our election security — H.R. 4 — is now alive and well. It has been named the “John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2021.” Naming it after a deceased and respected gentleman is a good thing to do, and has the added advantage of helping to disguise its true purpose.

“H.R. 4’s goal is to eviscerate the right of states to manage their own elections with appropriate transparency and ballot-security safeguards. It will attempt to misuse the 1965 Voting Rights Act to achieve this goal,” the Real Clear Politics (RCP) evaluation begins. 

“’Preclearance’ is central to H.R. 4 — this plank of the law would require every state election official to submit any election law changes to the Department of Justice for approval. In short, Democrats want states to ask Washington, D.C., for permission to pass local laws that would, for example, require voter ID — a policy that polls consistently find roughly 80% of Americans in support,” RCP continues. 

“Joe Biden and Democrats want their politicized Department of Justice to control how states manage their own elections,” RCP wrote, adding that the “Department of Justice is currently trying to strong-arm states into making their elections less secure and transparent, and Joe Biden wants to expand its mandate to control every aspect of state-level elections.”  

The U.S. Constitution, which controls how our government operates, very deliberately, and wisely, leaves much authority to the states. A country where everything is controlled by the federal government is not what America is or was ever supposed to be. In fact, without the necessary support from the individual states, there would be no federal government for the likes of Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and the rest to try to commandeer, by hook or by crook. 

Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of U.S. Constitution states: “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing [sic] Senators.”

While the Elections Clause does give the Congress the authority to “make or alter such Regulations,” that does not mean that Congress actually has the authority to replace all state legislatures’ decisions on how their state will hold elections. If the Clause was actually intended to empower Congress to change all election laws nationwide to suit its desires, the Founders would not have written the first half of the Clause that gives that authority to state legislatures.

We have been taught — through outright lessons of failure, or by our elders, if we had sense enough to listen to them — that we must protect the things that are most valuable to us. One of those things is the right and duty to vote. Through voting, American citizens steer their country forward.

Yet, despite that voting is one of the most sacred, most valuable of our rights, there are those who would subvert that process for their own selfish, political purposes.

Mailing out thousands or millions of unrequested election ballots, and not absolutely verifying voter’s identification are just stupid, and put election security at risk. And there are other actions that Congressional Democrats favor that weaken ballot security and invite fraud.

Common sense, which unfortunately is a tool too often not used, dictates making sure that every vote is cast by an eligible voter in that voter’s proper precinct. Yes, that sometimes causes inconvenience. But that is a small price to pay for a secure election system that our nation depends upon. 

There’s never a good time for military weakness. Especially now!

A story sent to me by a friend was written by a man with many years of active service in the United States Air Force. His story began, “Tomorrow morning will be the final day I lace up my boots and put on my Air Force uniform. I have now served my country in uniform for years but it is time to go.”

He said it wasn’t the pay and benefits, although he made less than the $15 per hour that some people think every person ought to make, regardless of skill, experience or value of the job. He said he wasn’t thrilled to have been deployed in some 25 countries, but that wasn’t the reason, either.

“I currently am an AMMO troop,” he said. “Our mission is to build bombs and process numerous other munitions to take the fight to the enemy. We pretty much put ‘Warheads on Foreheads!’"

He holds the position quaintly stated by the late Rush Limbaugh, that the military “is designed to kill people and break things.” That description engendered much backlash, and many still argue against it. But the underlying truth still rules: The U.S. military has a very specific, demanding and critical responsibility; it must never be side-tracked from that vital and narrow obligation.

Our airman agrees. “Even though our mission is to kill, we are more worried about upsetting someone’s feelings versus getting the mission done,” he wrote. “We spend more time doing ancillary training than actually training. Even though I have a military driver’s license I have to be signed off in another database to drive a vehicle and then have a competency card saying I know how to drive on top of that. That is just a few examples of why I have decided to call it quits.” 

He said that the country needs to focus on what is really important, not what is politically correct, or we will no longer be tough enough to defend ourselves from those who wish to destroy us. “Perception is reality, and right now we are more scared of speaking our mind and hurting someone’s feelings versus doing the right thing,” he wrote.

Another person with a military background agrees. Josiah LIppincot, writing in The Federalist, said, “Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress in June that he wanted to understand ‘white rage,’ why ‘thousands of people’ tried ‘to assault this building and … overturn the Constitution of the United States of America.’”

“As a Marine Corps officer who served at the tail end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he continued, “I saw firsthand the rapid ideological transformation pervading the military in the wake of these disasters in the Middle East.”

Also recognizing the dangerous transformation of our military’s philosophy is columnist Kurt Schlichter, writing for Townhall.com.

“Fire all the generals. Invite a few back, maybe a dozen,” he wrote. “Clean out the Pentagon. Can all the ‘Diversity Consultants,’ ‘Equal Opportunity Officers,’ ‘Climate Change Mitigation Specialists,’ and every other strap-hanging oxygen thief who doesn’t contribute to the only thing the military should be focusing on right now”; protecting America.

This transformation of the military began under the presidency of Barack H. Obama, according to Retired Army Major General Paul Vallely. “He's intentionally weakening and gutting our military, Pentagon and reducing us as a superpower, and anyone in the ranks who disagrees or speaks out is being purged,” he wrote in March of 2014, after listing 99 military officers, including 16 flag officers, who were fired or driven out.

Two others in Vallely’s article agreed: Retired Army Major General Patrick Brady: “There is no doubt he (Obama) is intent on emasculating the military and will fire anyone who disagrees with him.” 

Retired Army Lt. General William G. Jerry Boykin: “Over the past three years, it is unprecedented for the number of four-star generals to be relieved of duty, and not necessarily relieved for cause.”

The Afghanistan mess is also plagued in part by the goofy PC atmosphere that has invaded our military. Critical Race Theory (CRT), gender and racial equity, and other such things have no place in the U.S. military.

We need the most qualified person in every job, whether that is a position fighting the enemy, or a supporting position. And it makes absolutely no difference their skin color, whether male or female, and certainly not whether those categories are equally or fairly represented among active and reserve military personnel.

“A serious organization does not alternate its designation of America’s most serious threat between the weather, ‘racism,’” and other such things, Schlicter wrote.

Rest assured that generals, admirals and national leaders in China, Russia and the rest of the radical nations are not drumming their fingers on the table wondering what to do about alleged “supremacy,” racism, equity, how to defeat climate change, or which historical statues to take down and which buildings and bridges to rename.

We don’t need to be woke; we need to wake up, and get our act together, or before too long we’ll be kneeling before tyrants who kept their focus on what was important to them.

About Dr. Fauci, and the importance of the marketplace of ideas

Dr. Anthony Fauci is the face and official voice of all that is going on with the Covid pandemic, and how we should respond to it. Depending upon whom you ask, Fauci is either one who walks on water, or one who lives in hell.

I am one of the likely few outside the healthcare and scientific communities who had heard of the man prior to the invasion of COVID-19. That previous knowledge kept me from bowing down to him, as so many have. But at the same time, it gave me reason to give him the benefit of the doubt on the mysteries of, and prescriptions for dealing with the pandemic.

In the 1980s when AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) was a new thing, its causes were being investigated. Two schools of thought existed: one was that a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was the cause; the other was that long-term drug use and other factors that weaken the immune system were the cause.

Another scientist, Dr. Peter Duesberg, was prominent at that time. Duesberg isolated the first cancer gene through his work on retroviruses in 1970, and mapped the genetic structure of these viruses. This, and his continued work on viruses, resulted in his election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1986. He also received a seven-year Outstanding Investigator Grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Duesberg had made a name for himself in the scientific world. He is regarded as a specialist on viruses and retroviruses. He was a primary voice among those who argued that HIV is not the cause of AIDS.

One of the better-known opponents of Duesberg and his theory was, and is, Anthony
Fauci, and that is how I came to know who he is. Fauci has an MD degree and has worked in the National Institutes of Health, and as a clinical associate in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which he now heads. He no doubt has learned things beyond what a practicing physician knows in some areas. But does he know more about viruses than a virology expert?

Duesberg’s position is that HIV is merely a passenger in AIDS, and not the cause, a position that draws derision from the HIV = AIDS faction.

Through the decades, viruses have been defeated by vaccines. Those include: flu, SARS, measles, hepatitis A and B, mumps, chickenpox, whooping cough, tetanus, polio, and recently COVID-19. However, to date, decades after AIDS came on the scene, there is no vaccine for HIV.

Is that perhaps because, as Duesberg maintains, AIDS is not caused by a virus?

* * *

In his new book, The Case Against the New Censorship: Protecting Free Speech from Big Tech, Progressives, and Universities, liberal Democrat and civil rights attorney Alan Dershowitz makes the case for an unrestricted “marketplace of ideas.”

John Stuart Mill is generally credited with originating the concept of the marketplace of ideas back in 1859. He argued against censorship and in favor of the free flow of ideas, claiming that the free competition of ideas is the best way to separate falsehoods from fact.

However, in certain social media platforms today, the controlling oligarchs, likely unaware of Mills and his position, insist on removing content they regard as false, or perhaps just inconvenient.

But that creates potential problems. Dershowitz wrote: “If Facebook, Twitter and YouTube take down content which they deem to be untrue, then at least some viewers may come to believe that content that is not taken down must have passed the test of truthfulness.”

“So, when social media get into the business of selectively censoring some untruths,” he continues, “it is they who may be promoting false belief in the alleged truth of the untruths they do not censor. It is a no-win situation.”

And then getting to what many believe is the deliberate muzzling of conservative comments, Dershowitz wrote that, “censorship is almost never content-neutral. Codes that purport to ban ‘offensive’ or ‘untruthful’ words are inevitably invoked selectively against politically incorrect words.”

With the free flow of ideas comes the likelihood of false or misleading information being published, which Dershowitz defends by saying “the costs of imposing a regime of censorship outweigh the costs of tolerating dangerous speech and its consequences.”

He describes the present efforts to control speech and thought as “the current regressive war against freedom of speech being waged by ‘progressives,’ social media moguls, university administrators, and other well-meaning but dangerous censors.”

“The marketplace of ideas is the best option for a democracy not because it always produces the best ideas,” he wrote, “but because like democracy itself, the alternatives are far worse.” And then the kicker: “[W]ithout freedom of speech, democracy cannot survive.”

* * *

And then there are these gems from Louisiana Republican Senator John Kennedy, who has been called the Will Rogers of our time:

“This election in Georgia will be the most important in history. You have nothing to worry about, unless you are a taxpayer, parent, gun owner, cop, a person of faith, or an unborn baby!”

And about some members of Congress: “how did these morons make it through the birth canal?”

The infrastructure bill highlights what is wrong with Congress

The bill H.R. 3684, the Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act, known simply as the “infrastructure bill,” has been a controversial product from day one. 

The Democrat majority attempted to get a vote to pass the bill before it was even fully written. Yeah, what a wonderful idea: let’s vote to approve a bill before it’s written. What could possibly go wrong?

This situation is a serious contender for the dumbest idea dealing with pending legislation in our nation’s history.

Next, the bill is 2,702 pages long. Most books I read take many hours from start to finish, and most of them are not only a fraction of this bill’s length, usually 300 to 500 pages, but also have much smaller pages with fewer words.

The Christian Bible has about 1,300 pages and about 800,000 words. That makes this Democrat bill twice as long as the Bible. Another way of understanding how long this bill is: compare it to these weekly columns. Each weekly column word-count target is 858 words, give or take a few. Dividing 800,000 by 858 equals 932.4, or enough weekly columns to fill 17.9 years.

The International Christian College and Seminary tells us that it takes approximately 70 hours and 40 minutes to read the Bible. Extrapolating that to the infrastructure bill, someone who read the bill continuously from start to finish in one sitting would spend more than 140 hours, or six days, reading it. With time out to eat, sleep, visit the restroom, and other normal things, add more days. And experts tell us that reading federal legislation is a more difficult read than most books. It takes study time, in addition to reading time.

“These bills are not written for even the educated layperson, Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University, said. “They are written for specialists.” His comment was made back in 2009 when the Affordable Care Act and the Health and Education Reconciliation Act were under consideration. Those two bills dwarfed the infrastructure bill, adding up to 10,516 pages in the Federal Register.

This bill is simply way too big, in both length and dollars spent. It’s a safe bet that few if any of our representatives and senators will have personally read and studied the entire bill. Much of the work will be done by staff, and some topics may simply be accepted as good and proper without anyone actually reading or studying them. Is that really the best way to do things?

Furthermore, there is no emergency demanding that one ridiculously long bill that spends more than a trillion dollars be created and voted on. Truly important measures will have bipartisan support, and can be easily passed individually, or in small groups of two or three closely related topics, and a few dozen pages. 

Within its 2,702 pages the bill contains 10 divisions, and most of those could easily be, and should be, addressed as separate bills to be debated and voted on over time, rather than crammed through all at once.

One part of the bill proposes spending $110 billion for roads, bridges, and major projects. That’s a bunch of money. Will it all be spent on really needed projects? Or will some of it be used for pet projects that benefit some special interests?

Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute addressed some specific features: “The bill also contains various faddish ideas like elements of the Green New Deal and ‘Buy American’ provisions, all of which will simply increase costs to American consumers for no discernible benefit. Many of my criticisms of the president’s infrastructure plan as being bloated and wasteful continue to apply to this bill.”

“Finally, several Democrats have made it clear that they view this as the first of a two-part package,” Murray’s evaluation continued, “the second being a budget reconciliation bill with $3.5 trillion of new spending and a variety of progressive wish-list items that would seek to turn the U.S. into a European-style social democracy, with a vastly expanded welfare state. Again, it appears that the plan is to rush this through on the back of the infrastructure bill without proper scrutiny.”

One feature of the $1.2 trillion bill that appears to breach President Joe Biden’s “red line” pledge not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $400,000 a year is a “national motor vehicle per-mile user fee pilot program,” which would affect most drivers. Calling it a “fee” instead of a “tax” will do little to soothe the pain that drivers will have to endure when they drive to and from work or on vacation to help fund this massive spending plan.

And then we must ask, will there be the need for a “Mileage Czar” with a bloated staff to keep track of these taxes?

There is a need to address real infrastructure issues in the country. But the most important, the most critical area of need today, is securing the southern border. Thousands of illegal aliens, many of whom are gang members, drug dealers, and Covid-infected, enter this country every week. This bill does not address that. Congress needs to address the criminal nature of the border crisis first.

Biden’s failure to secure the border is dangerous and reckless

The Biden administration’s disaster at the southern border is dangerous and reckless. Illegal entry into the United States by thousands of illegal aliens occurs daily. Some of these people are taken under control by Border Patrol. Some are released into the state where they entered the country, and some are transferred by bus to cities and towns across the country. 

The largest of those borders belongs to Texas, and the impact on that state has finally reached the breaking point.

Appearing on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” on July 26th, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said, “if you recall, under the Trump administration, they pretty much had cross-border illegal immigration shut down,” he told host Maria Bartiromo.

“All that Biden had to do was to continue the Trump policies, and we would have no problem on the border whatsoever. But now it’s getting worse because Biden is opening the floodgates for people who are coming from countries where there’s an extremely low vaccination rate, and there’s an extremely high number of people coming across the border who do have COVID,” he said.

Now out of patience with the failure of the federal government to provide border security, Abbott introduced a plan to arrest and jail illegal aliens, put into effect by an executive order. “We had to open up a former prison that has now 1,000 jail beds that we’re starting to fill up,” Abbott said. “We are arresting people every single day, and we’re arresting for trespass. When you come across the [Rio Grande], you’re typically coming into private property or county property or state property. You are trespassing,” he said.

“And because I declared it an emergency, the punishment for the crime has been doubled. So, it’s either a Class B or Class A misdemeanor that can put them in jail for a half-a-year or a year,” he said. “And our goal is to continue to arrest people coming across the border, but, at the same time, surge more National Guard, more Texas Department of Public Safety officers to make sure that we’re doing everything that we can as a state to secure the border,” he continued.

Bartiromo then brought up the drugs being smuggled across the border by illegal aliens. Referring to the Biden administration’s failure to control the border from illegal entry and drugs, Abbott responded: “… fentanyl is one of the most deadly drugs that exists. It’s almost 100 times more potent than morphine, almost 50 times more potent than heroin. And it’s laced onto other drugs like ecstasy, Valium, Xanax, and other things that people are taking. And people are losing their lives,” Abbott said.

“But here’s the important mathematical fact, Maria,” Abbott continued. “And that is, when you put all law enforcement agencies together, they have seized more [than enough] fentanyl to kill, to kill every man, woman and child in the United States of America. All it takes is two milligrams for it to be a lethal dose,” he said.

“[T]he Biden administration is doing nothing to stop this,” Abbott explained. But Texas “once again is stepping up. And we are going after the cartels.” 

And, of course, being very sensitive to problems like this, the Biden administration immediately reacted. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland sent a letter threatening legal action against Texas for trying to protect its citizens from the malfeasance of the federal government.

“I urge you to immediately rescind the Order. If you do not do so, I’m providing notice that the United States intends to pursue all appropriate legal remedies to ensure that Texas does not interfere with the functions of the federal government,” Garland’s letter said. “To the extent the Order interferes with immigration enforcement, the Order is unconstitutional.”

So, the Biden administration’s immigration enforcement policy is to allow illegal entry of people and drugs into border states, and then take legal action against the states if they try to enforce their state laws.

The southern border of the United States is also the border of four states. If the federal government refuses to protect its border from illegal alien entry, the four states have not just the right, but the absolute duty to protect their citizens from illegal aliens entering their states. And if doing so gets in the way of the federal government’s “immigration enforcement policy,” that’s just too bad.

The Daily Wire reported last week that total apprehensions at the border for 2021 were expected to top one million by July 31, and that at this rate the border patrol will likely intercept two million illegal immigrants in 2021.

The report continued: “Around 50,000 migrants who were captured crossing the United States-Mexico border illegally have been released into the United States without court dates, only instructions to eventually report back to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office, according to a report from Axios. Only 13 percent of those, the outlet notes, have actually followed up with an ICE agent.”

The Biden administration’s failure to secure the border and protect the lives and property of Americans who live on or near the border, and protect against virus spread is a national disgrace.

America’s future is in doubt. It is under attack from within.

In past weeks this column has addressed the increasing weaknesses, outright failures, and attacks on once-stable components of our culture and our nation.

The deteriorating education system, particularly at the college level, but increasingly at the K-12 levels, has resulted in millions who have not learned about their country and its history. Lots of them have instead been, and are being, indoctrinated with distinctly un-American political ideology. And some professors and teachers willingly abandon their professional integrity to do this.

The latest big push is to fight what some call the “systemic racism” of the United States by seeking to convince members of one race that they are inherently evil, and members of the other races that they are perpetual victims.

News journalism is becoming more and more agenda driven. Relevant and important stories are often not presented by many news sources. Some who play the part of journalists will pass items off as news that are manipulated to benefit a political agenda. Some items presented are misinformation and are not researched for accuracy, because they advance the political agenda, as written. 

In the political sphere, where dishonesty exists, loyalty to partisan agendas has replaced forthright service to the American people for many office holders. The “progressives” are working hard to change things so that they will be in power forever.

The broad benefits to our culture of the two-parent family, and its educational and stabilizing effects on children, have been seeping away over recent decades. In 1960, 87.7 percent of children under 18 lived with two parents. In 2020, was 70.4 percent, almost 20 percent lower.

Concerns for protecting people’s oversensitive feelings have replaced responsible behavior as the guidepost for living a good and productive life. Efforts to make everyone equal in terms of outcomes — equity — to protect feelings, defy nature. Some people are simply stronger than others, faster than others, smarter than others, etc. It’s part of being an adult to accept our strengths and deal with our weaknesses.

The rise in violent crime in many American cities reflects the lack of appreciation for life, and the failure of families and schools to teach basic humanity and life lessons to millions of young people. Lots of these under-educated people are now adults.

An example of what results when families and schools fail is this: An adult male recently brought a pregnant 12-year-old girl to a hospital in Tulsa, OK because she was in labor. He told the people there that he was the father of the baby-to-be. He had no apparent recognition that impregnating a child of 12 is a crime, not to mention its immorality. 

This situation of improperly trained youth has been made worse by enacting truly foolish ideas. The idea of defunding the police is responsible for much if not most of this new pandemic of criminality, as police officers retire, quit, or back off of doing their job because they no longer have the backing of the local government.

And soft-headed “progressive” prosecutors who do not prosecute the accused, and the equally silly idea of no bail and immediate release of persons arrested for serious crimes, invite those criminals to hit the streets and commit more crimes. Every day criminals released or not prosecuted are availing themselves of this foolishly provided opportunity.

The rising acceptance of socialist, communist, and Marxist ideals results from the failure of families, and the education system, which is increasingly shoving un-American ideals down the throats of the young people it is intended to help learn important subject matter, like English, math, science, geography, the arts, and real history.

Today, many without a solid background in American history say they prefer socialism, because they apparently don not understand how it has failed every time it has been tried, with Venezuela and Cuba as current shining examples.

The southern border crisis is dramatic evidence of what happens when goofy “progressive” ideals replace the sensible and successful design of our federal government. Each day tens of thousands of people enter the country illegally, with the permission and assistance of the government, and not just from Cuba or the Northern Triangle countries, but also from Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil, Haiti, Colombia, Turkey, Russia, and China.

As the government continues to strongly encourage vaccinations to fight Covid, and hint at renewed restrictions, thousands of illegal immigrants are ushered across the border and transported around the country with no concern about how many of them are infected with the virus.

A friend sent an email of a Facebook post, which read, in part: “I was born in 1942, almost at the midpoint of the 20th century – the American century. America’s prestige and influence were never greater. 

“Thanks to the ‘Greatest Generation,’ we won a World War fought throughout most of Europe, Asia, and the Pacific. We reduced Germany to rubble and put the rising sun to bed. It set the stage for almost half a century of unprecedented prosperity. We stopped the spread of communism in Europe and Asia and fought international terrorism.”

Today, America is a mere shadow of that great nation. And many of its people are working hard to change it further.

Renewable energy to replace fossil fuels? Will that be much better?

We have been told for years about the damage to the environment of burning fossil fuels, and the marvelous benefits of renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Steps have been taken and more are being put forth to reduce the amount of CO2 we produce, on concerns of “climate change.” America, incidentally, has led most, if not all, of the world in reducing CO2 in recent years.

And, regardless of whether humankind is really harming the environment to a serious level, we can agree that wind and solar energy are far less polluting when they are in use than machines that burn oil, gasoline, diesel fuel and natural gas.

But when you look at what happens in the process of turning these sources into useful products, and what happens to them after their useful life is over, a very different story emerges.

The details of these processes and products were explained in a Prager University video featuring Mark Mills, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, who discussed the environmental costs of using these energy sources.

First, windmills and solar panels, and the batteries to store the electricity they produce, are made from non-recyclable materials, Mills said. And after some 20 years since the wind and solar energy technologies were born, and after billions of dollars of subsidies, those two sources provide less than three percent of the nation’s power. 

Mills explained that the maximum rate that wind can be turned into electrons is about 60 percent, and the maximum for sunlight is about 33 percent. As of now, we can convert 45 percent of blowing wind and 26 percent of shining sun. Technology is now able to get a little more than half the possible electrons from the wind and the sun. That will likely increase as technology advances.

Since the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine all the time, excess electricity must be stored in batteries. Mills put that into perspective: The world’s largest battery plant, created by Tesla in Nevada for its electric vehicles, would need 500 years to make enough of the batteries it makes today to store enough electricity for just one day of current U.S. demand.

Of course, more battery plants will gradually be built, and perhaps the capacity and efficiency of batteries will also increase. But this presents a tremendous challenge if the U.S. is to end using fossil fuels, as we are told we must, in favor of renewables.

The processes to enable wind and solar energy to produce electricity, he said, are quite expensive, in environmental terms.

One electric car battery weighs half a ton. But to acquire the materials to produce it, 250 tons of earth from somewhere must be mined and processed.

One 75 mega-watt wind farm powers 75,000 homes, and requires 30,000 tons of iron ore, 50,000 tons of concrete, and 900 tons of non-recyclable plastic. And a 75 mega-watt solar farm requires 150 percent more materials — concrete, steel and glass — than a wind farm.

The rare earth and other metals needed — lithium, cobalt, copper, iridium and dysprosium — will require a massive increase in mining activity: from 200 to 2,000 percent of the mining now occurring.  Rare earth materials are mostly not available in the U.S., but must be acquired from other countries Some of them, like China, are hostile to us. In 2019, China was responsible for 80 percent of rare-earth materials.

And, the equipment and processes used in acquiring and refining the materials, and constructing and installing the windmills, solar panels and batteries are powered by fossil fuels.

After about 20 years of production, these windmills and solar panels will have exhausted themselves, leaving millions of tons of non-recyclable waste behind that must be put somewhere.

Mills also said that the plastic waste from these sources will total more than twice the amount of all existing plastic waste.

Using the sun and the wind to our benefit makes perfect sense. The more seasoned readers may remember fondly your grandmother or mother hanging freshly washed clothes on the line in the back yard to dry in the sun and breeze. And then electric dryers came along.

The idea that transitioning from burning fossil fuels to wind and solar energy to produce electricity will be cleaner is false. We will trade polluting the air for producing tons of solid waste.

Too much of anything can be harmful: too much vitamin C, too much water, too much sun, too much oxygen, and too much CO2. But the environmental cost to replace fossil fuels with wind and solar power might be as expensive, or more expensive, than the cost of burning fossil fuels, in terms of the waste that is produced.

Geologist and earth scientist Professor Ian Plimer, who is called a “climate change denier” by some, said our “climate is cyclical,” and that Earth is heading to an ice age.

“We are getting towards the end of the warm period, the peak of the warmth was about 5,000 years ago and we are heading for the next inevitable ice age,” he told Sky News.

If so, someday we may want and need more CO2, not less.

The debate between educators and parents over CRT heats up!

Critical Race Theory (CRT), which has Marxist origins, is a version of America’s beginnings that is strongly at odds with the history of our country as it has been taught in public schools for more than a hundred years. The nation’s two largest teacher unions — the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) — support this version.

There are charges that CRT has sneaked into public education in recent years, that some teachers are teaching it, and that some school systems are preparing to start. AFT president Randi Weingarten, who calls CRT the “honest history” of America, denies that CRT is being taught below the college level, but said her union is prepared to defend any teacher accused of teaching it.

There are teachers, administrators and school boards that agree that CRT should be taught in schools now. But many parents and many other Americans strongly oppose it, believing that CRT pits people against each other and destroys the view of their country that generations of Americans have been taught and believe.

Questions arise: Is it appropriate for one or a few teachers, or a school faculty, or a school’s administration, or even a county school board to unilaterally make such a dramatic change in the history curriculum in public schools that are supported by taxpayers without first gaining broad support of the public?

At what stage of the education process should a new and radically different view of the nation’s history be implemented? 

It seems that CRT and other new ideas are right now considered more important than other aspects of education.

As some school teachers, administrators, board members and politicians push hard to justify CRT for children as young as the early grades, the U.S. continues to falter among the world’s nations in successfully educating students in important subjects.

For example, the U.S. placed 11th out of 79 countries in science, and did worse in math, ranking 30th, according to the Program for International Student Assessment tests of 15-year-old students around the world, administered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2018.

The U.S. scored below the OECD average in math of 489 with a score of 478. Asian nations placed 1st through 5th: Singapore - 569, Macao - 555, Hong Kong - 551, Taiwan - 531, and Japan - 527. Since only four of China’s provinces participated in the assessment, it was not included in this ranking.

The United States scored a 502 in science, above the OECD average. However, the top five scoring countries were: Singapore - 551, Macao - 544, Estonia - 530, Japan - 529, and Finland - 522.

Pearson.com, in its latest assessment, shows that the United States has a “cognitive skills and educational attainment” score of 0.39, fourteenth out of forty countries that it ranked. The top ten countries and their scores are: South Korea - 1.30, Japan - 1.03, Singapore - 0.99, Hong Kong - 0.96, Finland - 0.92, United Kingdom - 0.67, Canada - 0.60, Netherlands - 0.58, Ireland - 0.51, and Poland - 0.50.

What does it mean when our education system finishes so far down in the rankings of nations? Poor performance in languages means many or some will not be able to communicate effectively. The poor performance in math and science indicates that U.S. students are not prepared for high-tech jobs in an increasingly high-tech world.

Silicon Valley has achieved great success in the high-tech industry. That success is due to excellent software engineers. But many of them are foreign-born. If Americans are unable to perform well in these important, high-paying jobs, those jobs will instead go to people from other countries who work here, or worse, to companies in other countries.

It seems that the primary function of helping our children learn the basics of language, mathematics, science, social studies and the arts is suffering, and needs immediate attention. That is far more important than suddenly, and in some alleged cases, secretly trying to overturn the long-standing historical account of the United States, in favor of a highly disputed version of how the nation came to be.

Based upon America’s low rating in international educational performance, it seems U.S. educators have plenty of work to do to get our performance level up where it belongs, and where it once was, before they turn the system upside-down with a radical transformation of our history.

Stuffing controversial ideas — Marxist CRT, transgenderism, diversity, and other such things disguised as harmless ideas — down the throats of the children of the numerous parents who disagree with those ideas is a very divisive thing. Those parents will surely want, need and deserve better choices of schooling for their children. 

And since state and local taxes pay for much of public education, there should be a mechanism to financially assist those parents, who will likely have to pay for an alternative to public schools in order to have their children educated as they choose.

Not all teachers, administrators, schools or school systems are adopting this destructive belief system. But far too many of them are, and many people believe they are a threat to this country.

July 4th, and the reason true Americans celebrate that historic day

Two days ago, as most everyone knows, the United States celebrated Independence Day, the day in 1776 that the Continental Congress declared that the thirteen American colonies were united, free, and independent states, and no longer under the thumb and subordinate to the British monarch, King George III.

For most of my many years the Fourth of July has been something nearly all Americans understood and observed with respect and gratitude. Sure, there were some who didn’t share that respect, and there were periods where some even protested what the country was doing.

Times like the 1960s and 70s when those who proudly served their country in the military were roundly scorned and subjected to disrespect and hate from the anti-war crowd. But those people were not a majority, and their negative feelings ran their course, and normality was eventually restored.

Today, the number of people who do not really know America and think it is a systemically racist country is staggering. This failure of families and schools to teach young people about America has resulted in millions of misinformed younger people who do not understand or appreciate their country.

That negative storyline is getting far more play than the traditional one that sees America as “a shining city on a hill,” to quote former President Ronald Reagan.

But to provide a picture of how and why America has been so highly respected for so long, we have the testimony of some who came to America the right way, and became true Americans. 

Quang Nguyen came here as a 13-year-old boy who left South Viet Nam seeking political asylum 46 years ago. He spoke to a Freedom Rally in Prescott Valley, AZ in 2010. Here are seven excerpts from his address. His views are far more representative of reality than what is getting so much attention today.

“Man, every morning I wake up thanking God for putting me and my family in the greatest country on Earth. I just want you all to know that the American dream does exist and I am living the American dream. I was asked to speak to you about my experience as a first-generation Vietnamese-American, but I’d rather speak to you as an American.”

“I am a proud US citizen and here is my proof. It took me 8 years to get it, waiting in endless lines, but I got it, and I am very proud of it.”

“Thirty-five years ago, I left South Vietnam for political asylum. The war had ended. At the age of 13, I left with the understanding that I may or may not ever get to see my siblings or parents again. I was one of the first lucky 100,000 Vietnamese allowed to come to the U.S. Somehow, my family and I were reunited 5 months later, amazingly, in California. It was a miracle from God.”

“If you haven’t heard lately that this is the greatest country on Earth, I am telling you that right now. It was the freedom and the opportunities presented to me that put me here with all of you tonight.”

“I also remember the barriers that I had to overcome every step of the way. My high school counselor told me that I cannot make it to college due to my poor communication skills. I proved him wrong. I finished college. You see, all you have to do is to give this little boy an opportunity and encourage him to take and run with it. Well, I took the opportunity and here I am.”

“In 1982, I stood with a thousand new immigrants, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and listening to the National Anthem for the first time as an American. To this day, I can’t remember anything sweeter and more patriotic than that moment in my life.”

“You see, America is not just a place on the map, it isn’t just a physical location. It is an ideal, a concept. And if you are an American, you must understand the concept, you must accept this concept, and most importantly, you have to fight and defend this concept. This is about Freedom and not free stuff. And that is why I am standing up here.”

What a contrast to U.S. hammer thrower Gwen Berry, who recently placed third at the Olympic trials. She turned away from the American flag and displayed an “Activist Athlete” tee shirt as the National Anthem played while she and the two other female U.S. athletes stood on the podium. The other two appropriately honored the Anthem. Berry later said, “The Anthem doesn’t speak for me. It never has.”

Being born here, perhaps Berry didn’t notice the good things about America as she grew up, as opposed to Nguyen. Having grown up in and fled from a poor, war-torn nation to America, he saw the difference between America and South Viet Nam and so many other countries. He worked hard to become a citizen, and proudly tells the story to others of how much America means to him.

Berry, on the other hand, worked hard to earn the privilege of representing America, and then publicly disrespected it.

Thoughts on cancel culture, and the freedom of religion and speech

There seems to be no letting up in the manic drive to change everything in the country. From vestiges of the country’s founding, to the War Between the States, to being dissatisfied with one’s gender, to millions of relatively tiny things that trigger somebody’s feelings, such as calling a toy potato “Mr. Potato Head.” A stunning amount of emotional energy is spent on trying to satisfy the myriad of hyper-sensitive displeasures that some Americans agonize over.

One recent change involves the Randolph Township Board of Education in Morris County, New Jersey, where the Board unanimously voted to remove the names of all holidays from the school calendar.

“If we don’t have anything on the calendar, we don’t have to have anyone [with] hurt feelings or anything like that,” board member Dorene Roche told Fox 5 NY.

The board unanimously voted to remove the names of all holidays from the school calendar earlier this month. This decision was prompted by protests of an earlier decision to change the name of Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day.

Some of the people who object to these changes, that are being made to protect the feelings of a few that are upset, are pursuing some cancellations of their own.

“Now they’ve cancelled our holidays,” wrote Laura Assante of Randolph Township, “how will students learn about the significance of these days if our board doesn’t even deem them important enough to keep on the calendar? Enough! It’s time now to cancel the BOE and get a new, honest administration in place who values our children and community.”

And now that “Juneteenth” has been officially declared a national holiday, it will just be a “Day Off” on the school calendar.

The School Board has decided to review the decision.

***

Baker Jack Phillips is being punished by a Colorado court for refusing to design a cake that celebrates a person’s gender transition. His reason is that doing so violates his Christian beliefs.

So, if a person born a male believes he is a she, or a person born a female believes she is a he, the rest of us are expected to accept that, and in Phillips’ case, he must recognize it through his work. But a person’s religious preferences that do not recognize gender fluidity opens that person to legal action. Somehow, that doesn’t compute.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution begins: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …” If Phillips is prohibited by a court order from acting according to his religious beliefs, isn’t that actually “prohibiting the free exercise” of his religion?

***

Things get cancelled because some group — however large or small — dislikes them. Realistically, few things, perhaps nothing, can escape being disliked by someone. Thus, if we keep allowing this foolish cancelling of things, since nothing will be acceptable to everyone, therefore everything will be cancelled, and we will all just become dust in the wind.

***

The concept of free speech is one of the hallmarks of the United States of America. It separates us from the tyrannically ruled countries across the globe. Humanity benefits from the free exchange of ideas, as demonstrated by the very existence of the United States.

When an idea is brought forth, it will be accepted by some and opposed by others. It just makes sense that in a free country the opposition’s ideas are available to be considered by anyone and everyone. That is how a free people become informed and able to make decisions that are based on a variety of opinions on important topics.

How ironic that huge and popular organizations such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, et al, operate under the protection of the First Amendment’s free speech protections, and then use that protection to arbitrarily deny free speech to expressing other ideas.

Yes, some ideas expressed may not be truthful, or might be harmful. That can occur in a new idea, or in the responses to it. Who gets to decide: the issuer of the new idea, which may be flawed, or a respondent, whose point of view may be flawed? That is why speech must remain free, in all but the most undeniably dangerous cases.

What we have today is a political faction that doesn’t want the concepts it supports to be measured against differing opinions that might lead many people to oppose its concepts. When you fear that your ideas will not win the day, what more effective way to ensure that those ideas will win than to make them the only ideas people can know about?

Such anti-American behavior is the gold standard of Marxism and Communism, among other venomous, malicious and oppressive ideologies. The difference between those regimes and the USA is that here it is not the government that is cheating to get its ideas accepted by controlling what people have access to, it is private companies.

Interestingly, it was the freedoms of America — the very ones they are working so desperately to subvert — that enabled them to become the successful entities that they are.

News media hates Trump more than they love honest journalism

Last year as the pandemic swept the nation, and the presidential campaign heated up, the criticisms of then-President Donald Trump grew beyond fever pitch. Virtually everything the man said was met with denunciations and put-downs from the political left, stoked by the liberal news media that didn’t always probe the issue.

When Trump tested positive for COVID-19 in March 2020, he took a two-week regimen of the drug hydroxychloroquine, and praised it as being useful for treating the virus. The media criticism was immediate and vicious, with physicians and scientists, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci and the World Health Organization, saying that it wasn’t effective for the virus.

Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden joined in, saying at a Yahoo News town hall on COVID-19 and food insecurity, “C’mon, man! What is he doing? What in God’s name is he doing?”

And guess what? “A new study published by medRxiv shows hydroxychloroquine, combined with zinc, increased the survival rate of severely ill Wuhan coronavirus patients by 200 percent,” reported Townhall.com. 

Early on, Trump suggested that the virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab in China, rather than from a nearby wet market. Again, the media had a field day ridiculing that suggestion. 

It is a known fact that these kinds of labs, wherever they may be, have leaks, so the possibility that Wuhan’s lab could have had one is not crazy. Furthermore, we now know that three researchers at the Wuhan lab suffered from symptoms consistent with COVID-19 in November 2019, before the virus was heard of.

On an episode of CBS "Face the Nation" last month, former head of the Food and Drug Administration, Scott Gottlieb, said that the case for COVID-19 originating in a lab has become increasingly likely, and the likelihood that it came from an animal is dwindling. 

Trump was also ridiculed and chastised for urging against lockdowns. However, generally, the states with the strictest COVID lockdowns caused huge losses of jobs, but those with less severe restrictions have experienced low levels of unemployment

And the New York Post reported: “The five states with the strictest lockdowns over the last year — Hawaii, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York — have an average unemployment rate of 8.06 percent. In the five states with the lightest restrictions, unemployment sits at just 3.48 percent — lower than the 3.5 percent national rate before the pandemic hit the US.”

“At the same time,” the Post report continued, “ample scientific evidence points to the fact that lockdowns did not save lives, regardless of the media force-feeding its preferred narrative to the public.”

Trump early on initiated Project Warp Speed to quickly create a vaccine. The Washington Post reported Trump’s statement on the vaccine’s early completion at a coronavirus roundtable meeting on March 2, 2020: “We’re moving aggressively to accelerate the process of developing a vaccine. … A lot of good things are happening and they’re happening very fast,” he said. 

“Trump is not wrong in saying that scientists are rapidly developing a vaccine to combat the novel coronavirus,” The Post article said. “However, he seems to be overstating when a vaccine will be available to the public. Experts have emphasized that actual deployment of the vaccine is more than a year away, not a few months, as Trump has suggested.”

And a headline on NBC News’ Website read: “Trump says, without evidence, vaccine could be ready by Election Day.”

While the vaccines were not ready by Election Day, they were ready five weeks later, and far ahead of the one-to-ten-year timeline that skeptics expected.

And then there is the situation at Lafayette Square where “peaceful” protesters were attacked with “flash-bang explosions and doused with tear gas,” according to The New York Times. This was supposedly done to clear the way for Trump to walk over to the St. John’s Church for a photo op. That is the same church that the “peaceful” protesters had set afire earlier.

The problem is that none of the country’s finest reporters did their jobs as professionals should. Had they done it right, they would have learned that the clearing of the crowd was decided before Trump even planned on going to the church.

“But an investigation released this week by Interior Department IG Mark Lee Greenblatt says U.S. Park Police and the U.S. Secret Service deemed it necessary to remove protestors from the park on June 1, 2020, in order to install anti-scale fencing,” as reported by Fox News. “The decision was reached after at least 49 U.S. Park Police were injured while policing protests days earlier.”

Other “journalists” also got it wrong. MSNBC’s Joy Reid and CNN's Anderson Cooper also parroted that it happened so Trump could have a photo op. 

Though you don’t have to be a big city newspaper or network TV reporter to actually think about what you are doing and seek out accurate information, you might expect those folks would be the ones that would. But, no.

Much or most of the major media outlets relinquished their professional ethics and replaced them with political interests. Feelings trumped integrity.

Honest, objective news journalism is not something we can rely on.