Category: Freedom of Speech

Attacks On Religious First Amendment Freedom And Christian Homeschooling Are No Longer Subtle

May 10, 2021

History shows our forefathers, in large part, fled Europe looking for a place where the government could no longer control everything to do with religion and education. They endured centuries in their Homeland during which a small group of elitists dominated both religion and the education of children. Those governments gave NO thought to how any citizen of those countries felt about or was impacted by the unilateral decisions made by this small group of power pundits. Our ancestors made it clear through the foundation process of America that both Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion were rights solely retained by the People when our federal government was formed.

For about 250 years, those rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights were the guiding tenets of life in the United States. Americans took them for granted. Doing so maybe our downfall.

Today, both Christian religion and Christian education are being pummeled by the politically Left among us. And with the Left in total control of our government, activists in both areas have assumed their majorities in the U.S. House and Senate are something of a consensus given to Congress and the Democrat President to “change” both. And both are already — in just the first few months of the Biden Administration — under egregious assault.

How so? Please take a look with us.

Freedom of Religion

The right to worship freely is often called America’s first freedom. Our founding fathers understood religious freedom not as the state’s creation but as an inalienable right from God.

This universal right is enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as well as the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states, “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion.”

Today, however, religious freedom is threatened or restricted entirely for millions of people around the world. Over 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries with high or severe restrictions on religious freedom. In far too many places across the globe, governments and others prevent individuals from living in accordance with their beliefs.

Recent reports by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and the pontifical foundation Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) found that violations against religious freedom worldwide are ongoing and widespread.

For example, USCIRF’s Annual 2021 Report recommended to the U.S. State Department that 14 countries receive its most severe designation, “country of particular concern (CPC),” because of their respective governments’ engagement or toleration of “systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations” against religious freedom. These countries included: Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, India, Russia, Syria, Vietnam, and Nigeria.

Further, ACN recently concluded, “During the period under review, there has been a significant increase in the severity of religiously motivated persecution and oppression.” It found that, in total, severe violations of religious freedom are taking place in 62 countries around the world.

Concerningly, the report authors wrote that some of the worst offenders are from some of the world’s most populous countries. For example, in China, the world’s most populated country with 1.4 billion people, the Chinese Communist Party is committing genocide in Xinjiang against Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities.

Moreover, USCIRF and ACN reported that in some countries, the COVID-19 pandemic was exploited to blame, target, and discriminate against minority religious communities, in some cases denying them access to food and medical aid.

As these reports have shown, the denial of religious freedom is not an issue that is unique to any one country or group. Rather, it is a global challenge that requires strong leadership, bold action, and an unwavering commitment to overcome.

During his tenure, President Donald J. Trump was a champion for religious freedom. In June of 2020, he signed an Executive Order on Advancing International Religious Freedom. This executive order defined international religious freedom as a moral and national security imperative. It ensured that $50 million per year be allocated for programs that advance international religious freedom and required international religious freedom training for U.S. federal officials.

The Trump administration also launched the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance, a group of 32 countries committed to protecting religious freedom or belief.

Moreover, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hosted two convocations to Advance Religious Freedom in 2018 and 2019, bringing together leaders worldwide to promote and protect religious freedom.

As religious persecution and repression continue to be widespread, protecting international religious freedom should remain a U.S. foreign policy priority. The Biden administration should build upon the work of the Trump administration to defend this fundamental human right. But, so far, it appears that this priority to protect religious freedom both here and abroad is nowhere to be found in this White House or Congress.

Who would have thought that attacks on the Freedom of Religion prevalent in OTHER countries would find their way into OUR nation even now!

Christian Education: “Homeschooling”

Christianity in the U.S. in our education systems is being annihilated as we speak. Again, an attack on religious freedoms while attacking Christian messaging in our schools at the same time!

Early in 2020, Elizabeth Bartholet, a professor at the Harvard Law School, became notorious for advocating a “presumptive ban” on homeschooling.

The 3 to 4 percent of U.S. parents who chose to educate their children at home would have to prove to educational authorities that “their case is justified,” and if they could not do so, have their children sent to public schools.

An article about Bartholet in Harvard’s alumni magazine, reiterating a position she had taken in a lengthy law-review article published shortly before, provoked a furor among parents and young people, some of them Harvard graduates, who had enjoyed successful homeschooling experiences.

Then came the coronavirus lockdown. With public schools shuttering their brick-and-mortar classrooms and teachers’ unions promising to keep them shuttered throughout the 2020–21 school year and beyond, the percentage of homeschooling households suddenly surged — to 5.4 percent in late April 2020 and to 11.1 percent by the end of September 2020. Many new homeschoolers were otherwise politically liberal urbanites, and the anti-homeschooling movement quickly faded as a progressive cause.

But now the homeschooling opponents are back, with a new, more specific focus: Christian homeschooling. The impetus was the January 6 invasion of the U.S. Capitol by disgruntled Trump supporters. It quickly became identified in the media with “white nationalism” and then with “white Christian nationalism,” on the premise that white evangelical Christians were an important voting bloc for Donald Trump in the 2020 election, and many had attended a huge Trump rally on the National Mall that day. From there, it was a quick jump to evangelical churches and schools and, of course, homeschools. Education pundits loudly urge the Biden Department of Education to push for accreditation entities across the nation to stop accrediting Christian schools that teach these alleged “white nationalism” and “white Christian nationalism” curricula.

On January 15, the Huffington Post ran a scathing critique of Abeka Publishing and the Bob Jones University Press, which publish textbooks and other materials used by many homeschooling evangelical parents: “Language used in the books overlaps with the rhetoric of Christian nationalism, often with overtones of nativism, militarism, and racism.”

Days later, Chrissy Stroop, a writer for the progressive website Religion Dispatches, chimed in: “It would be remiss of us to approach the ‘where were they radicalized’ question without addressing how the Christian schooling and homeschooling movement, along with many white churches and other evangelical, LDS, and ‘traditional’ Catholic institutions, fostered the subcultures” presumably responsible for the Capitol break-in.

A March 2 article in Ms. Magazine focused on “extremist, white supremacist” homeschooling curricula as “the product of a decades-long crusade to deregulate home-and private-school education, the fruits of which are visible in such phenomena as QAnon, COVID denialism, the Capitol riots …”

On April 22, numerous media outlets, including The Washington Post, ran a (now deleted) article from the Religion News Service by progressive pastor Doug Pagitt declaring that “homeschooling in conservative evangelical communities is a key channel for ideas to feed into Christian nationalism.”

“The conservative evangelical education system has become a pipeline of extremism,” Pagitt wrote.

Earlier, on March 30, Philip Gorski, a sociology professor at Yale who studies American religious trends, had tweeted: “Christian homeschooling was, and is often, if not always, a major vector of White Christian Nationalism.” (Gorski has since made his Twitter account private.)

None of this should come as a surprise. Although opponents of homeschooling have typically raised understandable concerns — such as whether parents with limited educations are equipped to teach math and reading, or whether some parents keep their children out of school as a pretext to abuse them — their actual animus as expressed in their writings is almost always directed at parents who are too religious for their tastes. That means evangelical and other conservative Christians (who still account for the vast majority of homeschoolers), along with Hasidic Jews who educate their children in their own yeshivas.

For example, in her article for the Arizona Law Review, Bartholet referred to what she called homeschooling parents’ ideological commitment to “isolating their children from the majority culture and indoctrinating them in views and values that are in serious conflict with that culture.”

Terms such as “indoctrinate,” “isolate,” views “far outside the mainstream,” and failure to “expose” children to “alternative perspectives” or to teach them to “think for themselves” — those are commonplaces of the academic writings of homeschooling opponents. To clarify whom they are talking about, these critics typically throw in a sarcastic reference to the Bible as “sacred, absolute truth.”

Up until very recently, however, homeschooling opponents kept their attacks reasonably subtle. That is, they didn’t come out and say directly that what they didn’t like about Christian homeschooling was the Christian part. Then, the January 6 invasion of the Capitol gave them an excuse to do exactly that, usually without being able to back up their attacks with evidence.

Yale professor Gorski, for example, admitted in a subsequent tweet that he had no idea how “big” the claimed “overlap between Christian Nationalists and Christian homeschoolers” actually might be.

It helps the critics’ cause, of course, that they and the media have redefined “nationalism” to mean mere patriotism or pride in America’s history and civilization and “Christian nation” to mean a theocracy instead of a country where 65 percent of the inhabitants of every ethnicity define themselves as Christians and hold some formulation of Christian ideals.

Hence, the trepidation over homeschooling textbooks from religious publishers that teach civic virtue asserts that God created the world as the Book of Genesis says and takes a dim view of such progressive shibboleths as feminism, transgender activism, the “1619 Project,” and climate alarmism.

The notion that parents, Christian or otherwise, should be forbidden by the government to educate their children in the values that they themselves hold dear — or be forced to “expose” them to values that they might find abhorrent but are definitely in the secular liberal “mainstream” (advocating unrestricted abortion or same-sex marriage, for example) — is totalitarianism at its crudest. And now that the gloves are off the anti-homeschoolers and their real aims, it’s also part of a particular war against a large number of Christians as well.

These same sycophants care not just about Christian homeschooling but are simultaneously attacking Christian schools, some of which offer the finest educations to today’s youth. Testing children from these Christian schools historical results in dramatically higher scores in the fundamental classroom subjects and life integrations with fellow students and others in their universe of contacts.

Christianity is a common trait. Therefore, Christianity MUST be driven out of our education system altogether. Sadly, their basis for doing so has nothing to do with the actual education of our children! Its sole purpose is to eliminate Christianity as an option to be considered while the maturation process occurs.

The saddest of all is that while the replacement god for the U.S. perpetuates the singular objective to eliminate Christianity, millions of Americans are sleeping while giving no thought to what’s happening. The pushback from even some Evangelicals is, “There’s no way that can happen! We have the guaranteed right to Free Speech. If they try that, the Law will back us up.”

Don’t forget: the other big target for these Leftists is to destroy the Rule of Law itself! Remember: sleeping Americans thought that would never happen either. But don’t forget this: it’s estimated there are actually 20-40 million illegal immigrants living among us today. “Illegal” means those 20-40 million broke federal law to come and remain here. Those federal laws that are numerous were broken, and no one does anything about it!

Knowing that, do you think it’s a far reach to believe no one will enforce the First Amendment’s obliteration in the cause to “keep Americans safe from white nationalism?”

To Download Today’s (Monday, May 10, 2021) “TNN Live” Show, click on this link:

Conservative Media Under Attack By The Government!

March 2, 2021

Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH) said that Democrat efforts to censor dissident media are “eerily similar” to communist China’s during the House Committee hearing on “Fanning the Flames: Disinformation and Extremism in the Media.”

“Just two weeks ago, China’s national radio and television administration banned BBC World News from broadcasting in China, because it found BBC’s reports, I quote, ‘seriously violate’ broadcast guidelines, including, and I quote again, ‘the requirement that news should be truthful, and fair, and not harm China’s national interests,’” said Johnson during the hearing on Wednesday.

“So I have to say, I am disappointed and seriously blown away by my House Democrat colleagues’ letter to the broadcasters, pressuring them to remove conservative news channels from their networks — a letter that looks eerily similar to the statement released by the CCP when it banned BBC,” the congressman added.

“So, this begs the question,” Johnson continued. “Does the American government have the authority to dictate what can and cannot be broadcast to the American people? I suggest it does not, but Democrats here on this committee seem to think that it should.”

The congressman went on to ask Professor Jonathan Turley of the George Washington University Law School if it is “constitutional for members of Congress to pressure private businesses to do what Congress cannot legally do itself.”

Professor Turley acknowledged that the Democrats’ behavior is “an attack on free speech.”

“Well, it’s constitutional in the sense that the First Amendment doesn’t expressly prohibit it,” said Turley. “But it is an attack on free speech. We should be concerned when members are trying to do indirectly what they cannot do directly.”

The professor continued:

And this creates what is sometimes referred to as the “little brother problem.” We do have an excellent system in dealing with “big brother” and avoiding state media. But what we’ve seen in the last few years is that the use of private companies like Twitter and Facebook is far more damaging to free speech. It’s no accident that recently, Vladimir Putin called out Twitter and Facebook and said, “You’re endangering Democratic institutions.” This is one of the most authoritarian figures in the world, he obviously cares nothing about Democratic institutions, but he seemed to indicate an almost begrudgingly respectful view that Twitter and these companies could achieve this level of control, something that exceeds his own abilities.

Rep. Johnson responded by mentioning that, “from the other side of the aisle, if I didn’t know better, I would think that Fox News or Newsmax issued a direct rallying call to storm the Capitol on January 6.”

“But all of us know nothing even close to that happened,” the congressman added. “In fact, all of the intelligence suggests that any planning for the riots occurred predominantly on social media, including on Facebook.”

Can the U.S. Government Ban the Media?

The Constitution gives Congress responsibility for promoting the general welfare. While it is difficult to define what this broad dictate means, Congress has used it to protect citizens from media content it deems inappropriate. Although the media are independent participants in the U.S. political system, their liberties are not absolute, and there are rules they must follow.

Media and the First Amendment

The U.S. Constitution was written in secrecy. Journalists were neither invited to watch the drafting nor did the framers talk to the press about their disagreements and decisions. Once it was finished, however, the Constitution was released to the public, and almost all newspapers printed it. Newspaper editors also published commentary and opinions about the new document and the form of government it proposed. Early support for the Constitution was strong, and Anti-Federalists (who opposed it) argued that the press did not properly cover their concerns. The eventual printing of The Federalist Papers, and the lesser-known Anti-Federalist Papers, fueled the argument that the press was vital to American democracy. It was also clear the press had the ability to affect public opinion and, therefore, public policy.

As part of the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment’s approval demonstrated the framers’ belief that a free and vital press was important enough to protect. It said:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

This amendment serves as the basis for the United States’ political freedoms, and freedom of the press plays a strong role in keeping democracy healthy. Without it, the press would not be free to alert citizens to government abuses and corruption.

The media act as informants and messengers, providing the means for citizens to become informed and serving as a venue for citizens to announce plans to assemble and protest actions by their government. Yet, the government must ensure the media are acting in good faith and not abusing their power. Like the other First Amendment liberties, freedom of the press is not absolute. The media have limitations on their freedom to publish and broadcast.

Does anyone besides me see a deep problem with THIS government “assuring the media are acting in good faith and not abusing their power?” OMG! Imagine giving the partisan hacks in Congress a go-ahead to determine “good faith” in the Mainstream Media.

Who would this Congress “rein-in?”

That’s really a silly question. There’s little doubt that any conservative media outlets of every kind would quickly be determined by Leadership in both the House and the Senate are definitely NOT to be “acting in good faith and are egregiously abusing their power.” Media outlets such as ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, the Washington Post, New York Times, L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune would all have the perpetual green light from Congress to continue to “let-‘er-rip” when it comes to attacking any of the political opponents of those Leftist government leaders. FOX News, Newsmax, One America Network, Sean Hannity, and Limbaugh’s EIB Network would quickly be toast.

Summary

World History is full of examples of heavy-handed governments that grew tired of a segment in the populace who published news in various ways. People reported things that happened among the populace, sometimes in interactions with members of those governments. Sometimes those interactions were ugly. Sometimes they devolved into violence against those citizens for their disagreements with those governments.

The beginning of the Naziism style that played out in Europe in the ’40s actually began in the early ’30s. The German people watched as a young military officer  rose through the military ranks, spreading his political philosophies with which tens of thousands of Germans identified. His rise to power put his specific perspectives about Germans and immigrants who called Germany their home front-and-center.

Some disagreed with this man. And there were newspaper publishers who disagreed with his ideas. And they published stories about some of the atrocities that resulted from Germans acting on his ideas. And sometimes, they published editorials speaking against his actions and those of many who agreed with him.

As this man’s power among Germans grew, he began a process in which the German military on his authority began to demand these newspapers not to write stories or editorials dissenting with him. Eventually, Adolph Hitler, with the military in total support of his edicts, forced every newspaper to publish stories that Hitler approved. And if any other stories were published, those newspapers would be shut down.

Honestly, throughout history, government and the media in whatever forms it has existed at best have tenuous relationships. Consider the conundrum these two sectors of society always have: the news media’s only job is to give readers information about all important matters. Government has all the power of control of pretty much everything, including what and how the media report to the people! There’s a natural rub that evolves into a confrontation between the government and the media in almost every case. Historically, the government always wins.

This current U.S. government is under the heavy-handed control of one political party: the United States House of Representatives, the United States Senate, and the White House. Don’t forget within this political party are true adherents who, at heart, are actually totalitarians. And within that political structure, the government controls EVERYTHING. To those in Congress today of that ilk, the Media are in their bullseye. And the “Kracken” of Totalitarianism has been loosed!

Will Americans allow the U.S. government to grab control of the media, picking winners and losers? Leftists are going to do their best to do that. In fact, they already are.

Come to think of it: we are now in the middle of a Leftist “control experiment.” This same group has used the COVID-19 pandemic to see just how much of our freedoms Americans are willing to cede to the government in the name of keeping us safe. And, honestly, we’ve given up a much larger portion of personal freedoms than I expected would occur.

But the Media question has yet to be answered: Are we witnessing the demise of conservative media at the hands of the government with the complicit actions of the Leftist media outlets that are little more than the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party?

To Download Today’s (Tuesday, March 2, 2021) “TNN Live” Show, click on this link:

Authoritarianism in America IS Alive: And It Isn’t in Donald Trump

June 12, 2020

We’ve seen the Left point fingers at Donald Trump as far back as just weeks after he declared his 2016 run for the White House. They’ve spouted claims of his desire to be a king, a dictator, a monarch, and an authoritarian. Subsequent to his successful service as President, many of those same critics have softened their attacks a bit, no longer claiming he wants to be a king or dictator. But they are holding fast to the “authoritarian” moniker. I think they chose that word simply because it sounds sinister and evil. And they need something evil to attach to this President. I think they also use it because very few know its meaning!

Just to show Americans how brilliant Leftist university professors are, two political scientists from Harvard University have identified four warning signs that indicate if someone poses a dangerous authoritarian risk to a nation. No U.S. politician, at least dating back to the Civil War, has come close to ticking off all four boxes, one of the authors told Newsweek—until Donald Trump came along. And Mr. Trump, according to those two, is certainly exhibiting the characteristics that lean toward the “A” word.

Do you even know what “authoritarian” means? If you don’t, you are certainly not alone. One on-the-street survey conducted near several university campuses showed that a large majority of students when asked for the definition had NO idea what it meant. In fact, most confused an authoritarian with a dictator. But one thing with which almost all agreed is that Donald Trump certainly qualifies!

What the Heck Defines “Authoritarian?”

Authoritarian: “1. favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority, especially that of the government, at the expense of personal freedom. 2. favoring complete obedience or subjection to authority as opposed to individual freedom.”

Those two Harvard political scientists took it upon themselves to align the authoritarian definition with the current President. The used a broad brush in painting the picture in their writing to show the President’s authoritarianism by stating that “anyone not committed to the democratic rule of governing is an authoritarian.” And they summed up their allegations of POTUS:

“Trump was easily identifiable as someone who is not committed to the democratic rules of the game,” Levitsky told Newsweek on Thursday. “There is real cause for concern for the health of our democratic institutions.”

According to the pair, here are the four markers proving one’s authoritarian mentality:

  1. Rejecting or showing a weak commitment to democratic rules.
  2. Denying the legitimacy of political opponents.
  3. Encouraging or tolerating violence.
  4. A readiness to stifle or limit civil liberties of opponents, including media.
After they painted those four traits for us, they pontificated their “objective” summary, stating, “Those are things that Democratic candidates in the U.S. simply do not have,” they said. At least, until Trump.

Have I Missed Something?

First, in spite of all the noise of what was to be a heavy-handed presidency led by Donald Trump, we’ve seen a universal governing style by this president showing an undeniable commitment to democratic rule. As compared to the governing of his predecessor, Donald Trump, again and again, has railed against the top-down government from Washington, encouraging states over and over to take charge of their decision-making in governing themselves. He has lashed out at the Congressional control of Nancy Pelosi and others that almost daily stifle attempts by states and voters to push back against Big Government overreach.

Pelosi is the Congressional power jockey who in every piece of legislation proposed in the House under her leadership floods each bill with outlandish spending proposals that seldom have anything to do with assistance for everyday Americans. They almost always favor big campaign spenders and wealthy Democrat Party donors that most Americans are certain are just paybacks from the House Speaker.

Secondly, the Harvard scholars have confused Mr. Trump’s analyses of his opponent’s lack of governing proficiency for denying their legitimacy. Let’s face facts: just because someone is inept and unqualified in no way means they are illegitimate. He just as many Americans who are voters often question “capabilities” of his opponents and the opponents of other candidates. That’s not questioning legitimacy. It’s questioning capabilities to perform the tasks included in the position they seek. Doing so is actually an integral part of Democracy.

Regarding violence, Mr. Trump continually lashes out against ALL violence. He has never tolerated it and has taken dramatic steps to combat it numerous times with the authority of a U.S. President but always within his Constitutional authority. The recent responses to looting and rioting in several large U.S. cities show his demeanor is certainly not that of an authoritarian.

Finally, any allegation of attempts on his part to limit the civil liberties of any opponents is laughable. He certainly points out the fallacies of numerous opponents both political and media. But doing so is vastly different from “stifling” or “limiting” civil rights.

There ARE Plenty of American Authoritarians

They are everywhere! And we watch as they reveal their evils over and over in very public and demonstrative ways. They are not ALL in politics. But they ALL are in positions of power and seldom miss an opportunity to exert their powers over others. Do you want a few examples?

  • A Louisiana professor called on her colleagues to keep a list of students who engage in “hate speech” and “drop” them from classes at the public university after George Floyd’s death. Louisiana State University Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences Alyssa Johnson made the comments after the school’s official Twitter responded to those calls, saying, “we are subject to the constitutional limitation on our ability to take action in response to free speech.”

    Johnson wrote, in a now-deleted tweet: “If @LSU won’t take action, we as professors can. Keeping a list of names and if I see them enrolled in my course, I will drop them. It’s not just free speech, it’s hate speech and it’s a threat to student safety. #safespace #BlackLivesMatter”

  • Another professor in Johnson’s department, LSU Associate Professor William T. Doerrler, responded to another deleted tweet, writing: “Thank you!! If he enrolls in my class I’ll drop him too!”
  • The myriad of actions taken by governors and mayors during the COVID-19 pandemic have already resulted in lawsuits filed against states, counties, and cities for violating the Constitutional rights of citizens. The political leaders (none of which are the President) who are subjects of this litigation somehow draw their power to take such actions with total disregard for the infringement of citizens’ rights drawing from a mythical authority to do so because of the pandemic. In almost every case, one individual or a small group determines what action is necessary and initiates that action. These perfectly fit the definition of authoritarianism as described by these Harvard political scientists.
  • A Barack Obama rogue Department of Justice in conjunction with his FBI trampled all over the Constitutional rights of numerous members of the Trump Campaign when conducting illegal activities designed specifically to overturn the democratic election of a U.S. president. Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee were not only complicit in the attempted coup, but actually funded the production of false documents with which to initiate the attack.

Summary

There are two things many on the Left politically have either forgotten or never knew were factual. They have been mentioned numerous times here at TruthNewsNetwork. But in this environment and with these nonstop allegations against the President, it makes sense to repeat them:

  1. “Just because one thinks something is right doesn’t mean it is right.”
  2. “Just because one thinks something is wrong doesn’t mean it is wrong.”

Rather than relying on facts and reason, many in this charged political environment have abandoned reason and the pursuit of facts with which to form legitimate perspectives, we are daily witnessing the cries of a Mob’s desperation to attack this President just because of their dislike and disdain. But their emotional state is no basis for a Constitutional attack on individual Americans or their legal rights.

I have been patiently waiting for four years for those legal and political scholars to publish their narratives in support of the expressions of Constitutional rights guaranteed in the First Ten Amendments. I as of today have seen or heard none! Instead, the talking heads of the Left — the Mainstream Media — parrot the hollow threats in non-stop attacks against the Rule of Law, Equal Justice under the Law, and the freedoms retained by the States for the People contained individually and collectively in the First Ten Amendments.

Do you know why Jefferson was adamant to detail the specific authorities and rights our forefathers were NOT giving to the federal government but rather were specifically retained by the States? Because he knew actions, like we see playing out daily, would happen at some point in the future. He and others were adamant that they would guarantee future generations would NOT experience the authoritarian rule that crushed the spirits of individuals in Europe. That crushing was the final straw that led them to the New World. And they made certain it would never be infringed by any leaders in government, education, or business in America.

I’m not surprised by the authoritarian allegations made by the two Harvard scholars against Donald Trump. But I’m ashamed to hear that LSU professors have fallen into that trap. (I’m a rabid LSU supporter: Geaux Tigers!)

Lock-down Anger Just Got Started

May 19, 2020

Protesters shouted “I want my life back” and held up signs with slogans such as “Protect constitutional rights,” “Freedom isn’t everything but without freedom, everything is nothing,” and “Daddy, what is a kiss?” Police said on Twitter they had arrested more than 100 people.

Some protesters tried to keep a distance from each other, sitting on the ground and wearing masks, but others clustered together.

Like dozens of countries around the globe, strict guidelines have been enacted on public activity to slow transmission of COVID-19, imposing its lockdown on March 17. The protesters handed out newspapers entitled “Democratic Resistance,” which said the new coronavirus is an attempt to seize power by spreading fear. The papers quoted 127 doctors from around the world who question the need for strict lockdowns.

A Police spokesman said permission had been granted for a flyer distribution campaign, but authorities had not granted permission for a public demonstration.

“According to state emergency declarations, we are obliged to prevent a gathering,” a spokesman said, adding 180 police officers were on duty.

A State Court ruled earlier this month that people have the right to hold demonstrations if they adhere to social distancing rules after activists brought a case that argued that the lockdown breaches freedom of assembly.

On Saturday, some protesters sat peacefully on the ground at a distance from each other, holding white roses in reference to the White Rose resistance movement against the Nazis in Germany. “We are here today … to stand up for our opinion. For the protection of constitutional rights, freedom, and above all freedom of speech,” said a woman holding a rose who gave her name only as Sandra.

This story actually came from a German newspaper and is about the demonstrations and protests currently underway in Germany! That story eerily parallels what could easily be an exact story about the United States. Are there any ties there?

There is so much of this type of protest going on around the world, it’s hard to accept that each is about a specific nation’s issues addressing COVID-19 and its fallouts in each. But in the case of Germany, it appears that the German people are taking plays from U.S. workers playbook on protests. Or maybe it’s just the opposite. Either way, citizens of at least these two countries are facing similar horrors at the hand of the virus — or is it the fault of COVID-19?

Who Is In Control?

If we only knew! Is it possible that there is someone who is maybe not actually pulling these strings, but might be coordinating the pulling? Don’t take this the wrong way: I am NOT claiming there is any such coordination nor is this a conspiracy theory. But in numerous countries around the world, similar protests are underway for the same reasons.

Let’s be perfectly clear: I don’t know of any of these protests that are actually protesting COVID-19. Covid-19 is NOT the culprit. There’s no doubt it is “a,” if not “the” major player in all this. But the disease is NOT locking down the citizens of Germany, Hong Kong, the U.S. or Kyiv. Protests are underway in India and Lebanon.

Protests have been ongoing in Colombia since November 2019 against a range of proposed economic and political reforms. While they stopped in January 2020, following the outbreak of coronavirus, they appear to have started once again. Since March 24, Colombia has been under lockdown, first starting at city levels and expanding across the country.

France has been under lockdown since March 17 to curb the spread of COVID-19 and amid the global health crisis, the news of riots in a Paris suburb that occurred on March 18 may have slipped under the radar. Paris has become accustomed to the “yellow-vest” demonstrations of which some turn violent. It was natural for those to morph into protests against France for lockdowns regarding the virus.

Is it just a coincidence that all these countries along with others find themselves not only dealing with a health crisis but a crisis that involves their citizens protesting? Sometimes protests turn violent as a result of their governments’ attacks on the economies of their nation in the name of beating a virus.

Usually, when something like this happens in places that appear to be unattached there are some connections. But I have no idea if any or all of these have some ties to the others or, if so, with whom and why they are related in some way.

Why is The Anger so Threatening?

That’s the easiest question to answer. Peoples’ lives have been turned upside down by those who are supposed to make sure everything is OK. And when the entity that is chosen to do that suddenly becomes the entity that shuts down the economic life source for everyone one of their citizens, tempers quickly boil over.

It’s the same across the Globe.

But the protests while are partly due to economic reasons, most of these countries are democratic or some combination of democracy and socialist in their governments. Their populace is accustomed to working in jobs and being paid for their work. And their pay allows them to survive, paying necessary amounts for their families to make it. Through no choice of their own — no election and therefore no authorization of shutdowns — citizens find themselves with no jobs and no way to make it financially without government assistance. And turning to federal governments for that assistance leaves bad tastes in everyone’s mouth.

Summary

That’s why the populace in these countries have resorted to demonstrations and sometimes even protests: to have their lives restored. In each of these countries impacted there have been numerous epidemics of various sorts through the years, none of which has forced these total lockdowns that are in place today.

The U.S. is NOT the only such country whose citizens have Constitutional rights that preclude governments from arbitrarily taking the lockdown and quarantine actions that have been put in place. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution ensures that Americans’ right to free speech and to assemble will be unilaterally maintained “by the People.” And the state governments seem to have weaponized the coronavirus against its own citizens.

We didn’t see that happen in the Spanish flu, the HIV epidemic, H1N1 flu, or any other epidemic. So why now?

Any answer here is totally subjective. We may be given an answer or some answers to the “why” question. But we don’t know right now.

What we DO know is that our government at the federal level and at state levels had better act quickly to get these skirmishes resolved before protestors create an environment that can easily escalate and create real problems for many people.

What exacerbates the problem is that none of the “experts” can give solid and believable information about the virus and how to defeat it. Having so many die with only guesses for answers just lights the fires of fear and anguish. That must be stopped.

It’s horrible but typical of many in government to shed any responsibility or any of this and point to President Trump when blamed by the People. In fairness, at its inception, those same people were prosecuting him for abuse of power! But even while that was happening he established the White House task force to spearhead the quick building of a response team with all the “experts” that Democrats demanded he brings to the fray already in place. Unilaterally he quickly through executive order closed our borders to any travel from China. Such is only rare exceptions. Democrats, on the other hand, in all of January and the first week of February this year dealt with one and only one matter: the impeachment of the President. The House of Representatives were allowed by Speaker Pelosi to take up any coronavirus matters until February 5 — 6-days after Trump closed our borders to travelers from China. They were too busy attacking him first in impeachment and then for racism and xenophobia on his part for the China travel ban. Their own experts would state that Trump’s actions doing so saved thousands of U.S. lives.

Will we discover who, what, and why for all this? I hope we do, but not for the purpose of blaming someone politically. We need to find out the causes and the “caus-ers” so we can confront all those involved and implement processes to assure it will never happen again.

Shame on any Americans who are scrounging for the answer just to use for ammunition about their counterparts! We’re a better nation than that. Let’s while we’re looking for those answers continue to find ways to restart our economy and quickly, efficiently, and safely as possible to put Americans back on the job! Unless we find ways and find ways quickly to do that, our nation as we know it is doomed.

But in retrospect, that may be the actual objective of those who continue to want division and animus in our political atmosphere, knowing it will spill out into the streets and perpetuate the atmosphere. Nothing but further division can possibly result from that scenario.

Who’s responsible? Don’t look to others for those answers: Watch the players in all this. They’ll give you a sign — the proof — of who’s making it happen.

We need that to happen immediately!

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Totalitarianism Is Knocking at Our Door

May 3, 2020

At TruthNewsNetwork, we for several years have cautioned each of you about the stealthy incursion into our lives of totalitarianism. Many scoffed at our alarm. But in this “Corona-Demic” many are aghast at what state and local governments are doing in what is little more than a mandatory lockdown or incarceration of free people. And we just sit by idly allowing our freedom to be — in the name of “protecting us from Coronavirus” — snatched away through a really safe-sounding order requiring Americans to stay inside.

“Totalitarianism” sounds like Communism. We don’t have that!

Do we?

Tucker Carlson weighed-in this past week with an eye-opening editorial that is absolutely horrifying. We are actually looking into the face of the same oppressive totalitarian ideas that have kept Russian and Chinese citizens captive for decades! 

Hard to believe? You bet it is. Let’s get right to the facts. Here’s Tuck:

“Government of, by, and for the People?”

Last week we interviewed a longtime partner at the consulting firm McKinsey & Company named Peter Walker. Like so many in finance and consulting, Walker spent an awful lot of his career doing business in China. We have no idea how much money he made doing that.

We do know that along the way, Walker internalized a lot of the attitudes of China’s totalitarian government. During our interview, we asked Walker what he thought of China’s lockdown that was imposed in an effort to halt the spread of the coronavirus.

I asked Walker: “Now credible reports suggest that Chinese authorities locked people in their apartments and left them to die. We know they snatched people off the streets and threw them into police vans – God knows where they went. That’s the quarantine that you think they deserve high praise for. Why?”

Walker replied: “Well I think … if you just look at the results, I know there’s always going to be questions about exactly what the numbers are, but I think the harsh action that they took, given the scale of China and number of big cities in it, was exactly what they needed to do to prevent the outbreak from going any further. The reality is the outbreak hasn’t gone much beyond Wuhan.”

The secret police kidnapping citizens off the street, authorities locking people in their apartments from the outside until they starve to death – just look at the results. All of that, Walker said, was “exactly what they needed to do.”

This is the view of one of America’s most prominent business leaders. He didn’t seem ashamed to say it. Later in our interview, Walker suggested that American authorities could have done the same things in New York, if only they’d gotten an earlier start. Kind of a shame they didn’t.

Your jaw dropped watching it. But here’s the striking thing: nobody seemed to notice that he said it. Walker didn’t find himself on the front page of The New York Times the next morning. No one in American business denounced him. He went home and went to bed. Totalitarianism doesn’t shock us anymore.

Maybe that’s because, all of a sudden, it’s all around us.

In a recent incident, two armed police officers arrived at a family’s home in Wisconsin. Someone had reported the mother to police for arranging a play date for her daughter. That’s now a crime.

The first police officers asked the woman: “Are you aware that we’re in a stay at home order right now, by the government of Wisconsin? I don’t need to explain that to you?”

The woman responded by asking: “Why are you here?”

The police officer responded: “Because your daughter is going to play at other people’s home and you’re allowing it to happen…..  Stop having your kid go by other people’s home.”

“Are we done here?” the woman asked.

The other officer then asked the woman for her name.

“I’m not giving it to you,” the woman said. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

The first officer then said he already had the woman’s name.

“We got it,” the second officer told the woman. “And that’ll be documented too, that you’re uncooperative.”

“You are uncooperative. That will be documented.” Notice the tone they strike with this mother. They’re standing on her property, uninvited, hectoring her about the so-called crime of allowing her daughter to play outside the house.

The police officers aren’t apologizing for this. They don’t seem embarrassed to be carrying out an order that has no basis in science. They are utterly self-confident. They treat the woman with pure contempt, like a peasant. … They believe they have the right to do that.

Where exactly do they get that right? That’s a good question – a question we are strongly discouraged from asking. The short answer is, governors told them they could.

Never in American history have politicians been more powerful than they are now. Effectively, they are God. In the state of Maine, Gov. Janet Mills now has the power to suspend any law she doesn’t like. She can seize any state resource she feels like seizing. She can force any citizen or all citizens from their homes.

The governor can do all of this for as long as she believes Maine is in a state of “emergency.” There is virtually nothing Janet Mills can’t do. Many governors now have these powers.

J.B. Pritzker is the governor of Illinois. On Monday, Pritzker did his best to explain why his word is now law in the state. It has to be law, he explained. Otherwise, thousands would die:

“The stay-at-home order has prevented tens of thousands of illnesses and thousands of deaths,” Pritzker said. “History will remember those who put politics aside to come together to keep people safe. It will also remember those who so blindly devoted to ideology and the pursuit of personal celebrity that they made an enemy of science and of reason.”

In three sentences, Gov. Pritzker framed himself as a leader of historic stature. Those who doubt his decrees are “enemies” of science and reason – enemies of civilization itself. Enemies of the state.

Two days later, on Wednesday, it emerged that Pritzker’s own wife, who has state employees of her own, was one of these people. She had apparently violated the lockdown herself. Pritzker was asked about this.

“What is your response to people who say the stay at home order and non-essential travel bans aren’t being abided by your family?” a reporter asked Pritzker. “I believe there’s a report from Illinois Rising Action that says that she recently traveled to Florida.”

The governor responded: “Well, first of all, I want to say that in politics it used to be that we kept our families out of it. My official duties have nothing to do with my family, so I’m just not going to answer that question. It’s inappropriate, and I find it reprehensible honestly that that reporter wrote a story about it.”

Asking about whether or not J.B. Pritzker’s own family is obeying the order your family is morally obligated to follow is “inappropriate.” Indeed, the governor says it is “reprehensible.” How dare you?

It would be very useful in moments like these to have an independent media. News organizations exist to hold the powerful to account. Here we have the powerful acting with no accountability at all.

And our news media? They’re cheering it on, besotted fan girls. No abuse is too grotesque for them. No talking point is too stupid to repeat. Reporters will do whatever they are told. They’re all in.

MSNBC recently sent a camera crew to document one of the latest and most Orwellian developments in America’s decent into Chinese-style social control: barking drones that harangue citizens from the air. MSNBC was were delighted by it:

A voice coming from a drone said to people below: “|Please move away from each other and separate.”

A reporter said: “Elizabeth, New Jersey is now using drones to spread the life-saving message.”

The voice from the drone said: “You are not immune to this virus.”

“Move away from each other!” commands the state of New Jersey. “Break it up! Your God-given right to free assembly has been suspended indefinitely! Back inside, or you will face the consequences!”

MSNBC applauds this, as if it’s completely normal.  It is, they tell us, “a lifesaving message.” Handmaidens to the corona-security state.

But to their credit, at least MSNBC put it on television. Most outlets don’t even bother to cover stories like this.

The other day, prosecutors in New Jersey charged nine people for daring to participate in a Jewish wedding in their backyard. A few months ago, this would have been news.

For 250 years, Americans have enjoyed the unfettered right to practice their faith as they choose. Now they don’t. It happened overnight.

Last month, Christians across the country were legally prohibited from celebrating Easter in their own churches. The national media barely noted it.

How exactly is this happening? It turns out, that’s not clear. Strangely, not very many people have asked.

Politicians have no right to do any of this. They can’t make it illegal for people to go to religious services. The Constitution of the United States expressly prohibits that. The words couldn’t be clearer.

The First Amendment explicitly prevents government from making any law that inhibits the exercise of religious faith. It’s a cornerstone of our history and our law.

Millions of people have fled to America from around the world precisely because our Bill of Rights gives them this guarantee. It’s why this country was founded. Now it’s gone.

Where did politicians get the authority to do all this? Because some elderly, power-drunk doctor told them to? That’s not how our system works – or can work.

Occasionally, you’ll hear some lonely civil libertarian fret that we may be on a “slippery slope” toward losing our rights. If only. We’re already there.

We’ve slid to the bottom of that slope. Our rights are gone. No one has explained how politicians are allowed to do this, to override the Constitution. No one seems to care. They’re too afraid.

But if we think this is moment scary, consider what might come next. Now that we’ve ceded all authority in the country to our political leaders, what can’t they do? What are the limits to their power?

That’s not a theoretical question. It’s not an argument over philosophy or political theory. It’s the most practical possible question. The answer will define where this country goes next. What can’t politicians do in the name of public health?

As it stands, politicians won’t let people worship, or work, or go to school, or see their aging parents. They’ve placed the nation under house arrest. That’s happening today, right now. But let’s say we all get more afraid. What then? What couldn’t they start doing? Could they intern people? Seriously.

You can dismiss the possibility if you like. But remember just a few months ago, most of us would have dismissed the idea of propaganda-spewing drones from above. Now we have them. So what’s next? What can’t they do? Let’s draw a line at some point.

The First Amendment is Dead

December 27, 2019

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Most Americans consider this, the first of the ten Bill of Rights, the most important guarantee to Americans of the Constitution. Many think the Bill of Rights dictated to the People what authority, rights, and power we have given to us by our government. However, the exact opposite is true: Each of those ten amendments informed the government what powers the People expressly released TO the government. Any others not detailed in those ten amendments belong to the People — not the government. This fact is mentioned often in discussions about the Second Amendment, but seldom in conversations about the First Amendment. It should be the other way around.

Everybody knows the right to free speech is universal and everyone understands and respects it, right? Not so much anymore, unfortunately. There are people in the United States who gleefully parse speech contents of thousands of Americans and are quick to “pull them down.” What does “pull them down” mean and who does it? “Pull them down” means to block or delete spoken or printed words from some source seen or heard by the public. And those who sit at the desk of “Speech Think Police” are the sole arbiters of Free Speech in America. And those folks live and work in many different places parts of the American information landscape: Newspaper, radio, and television editors, Social Media editors, even publishing company editors, and, certainly, political elites.

How so?

We could launch into the specifics of hundreds of examples of today’s abridgment of Free Speech. We won’t do that. We will, however, give you examples from the “10,000-foot” level. You’ll understand our thought process after thinking through THAT process.

“Thought Police”

How many college campus Free Speech rallies have you heard that were canceled either before or stopped during because of demonstrations that often devolved into riots? Dozens and dozens of such cancellations have happened in the last several years. In fact, it is now more common than not for speakers with a certain political ilk to be banned from appearing at such rallies, especially on liberal university campuses.

Before we move forward, consider the previous sentence: “speakers are banned from appearing at rallies on college campuses.” College campuses were formerly the incubators for new ideas. During the ’60s and ’70s, campuses were the hot spot for the introduction of new political and social ideas. Those campuses were the “Moms” that gave birth to numerous currently embraced concepts. And they each were birthed through the First Amendment: NO government control of speech which meant ANY idea was allowed to be expressed.

Within that context, do you think there’s something sinister going on in our nation today regarding Free Speech? Our examination begins with “Hate Speech.”

Hate Speech

Hate speech is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as “public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation. Hate speech is “usually thought to include communications of animosity or disparagement of an individual or a group on account of a group characteristic such as race, color, national origin, sex, disability, religion, or sexual orientation.”

There has been much debate about freedom of speech, hate speech and hate speech legislation. The laws of some countries describe hate speech as speech, gestures, conduct, writing, or displays that incite violence or prejudicial actions against a group or individuals on the basis of their membership in the group, or which disparage or intimidate a group or individuals on the basis of their membership in the group. The law may identify a group based on certain characteristics. In some countries, hate speech is not a legal term.

A website that contains hate speech (online hate speech) may be called a hate site.

Those conclusions about Hate Speech certainly force us to consider the First Amendment. Are Americans no longer accepting that Amendment as a necessary part of our lives? If so, how do they justify their opposition?

First, I doubt any American if asked would say “I want to abolish the First Amendment.” Generally, that feeling is almost universal. But when drilling down to determine what that means, some may change their tunes a bit. Let’s use Hate Speech to make this easy to understand.

There certainly are horrible things that are said from time to time that many wish would not be said. Some things are just unacceptable and certainly distasteful. As an example, few think it’s OK to demean someone’s personal appearance. During the 2016 presidential campaign, millions jumped on then Candidate Donald Trump for what  they felt were disturbing words to denigrate a Washington Post reporter, Serge Kovaleski, who has a physical disability. That incident raised immediate uproar against Mr. Trump for his alleged “Hate Speech.”

So why don’t we just stop such examples from ever happening?

The Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly rejected government attempts to prohibit or punish “hate speech.” Instead, the Court has come to identify within the First Amendment a guarantee of “freedom for the thought that we hate,” as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes described the concept in a 1929 dissent. In a 2011 ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts described our national commitment to protecting “hate speech” in order to preserve a robust democratic dialogue:

Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and—as it did here—inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a Nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.

In other words, the First Amendment recognizes that the government cannot regulate “hate speech” without inevitably silencing the dissent and dialogue that democracy requires. Instead, we as citizens possess the power to most effectively answer hateful speech—whether through debate, protest, questioning, laughter, silence, or simply walking away. 

As Justice Louis Brandeis put it, the framers of the Bill of Rights “believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.”

Justice Brandeis argued that our nation’s founders believed that prohibiting “evil counsels”—what today we might call “hate speech”—would backfire:

They recognized the risks to which all human institutions are subject. But they knew that order cannot be secured merely through fear of punishment for its infraction; that it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope, and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies; and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones. Believing in the power of reason as applied through public discussion, they eschewed silence coerced by the law – the argument of force in its worst form. Recognizing the occasional tyrannies of governing majorities, they amended the Constitution so that free speech and assembly should be guaranteed.

Banning “hate speech” without restricting political speech is tremendously difficult because of subjectivity. Each American certainly has a different understanding of exactly what expression should lose First Amendment protection as “hate speech.” One citizen’s hateful speech is another’s religious text; one citizen’s slur is another’s term of endearment; or, as the Court put it, “one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric.” As a result, creating a generally applicable definition of “hate speech” is all but impossible without silencing someone’s “legitimate” speech.

“Hate speech” is also a moving target, making a real definition still impossible to find. Conceptions of what constitutes “hate” do not remain stable over time. As ideas gain or lose acceptance, political movements advance or recede, and social commitments strengthen or erode, notions of what is unacceptably “hateful” change, too. Today’s majority viewpoint should not be allowed to foreclose that of tomorrow.

For example, thirty years ago, the Board of Regents of Texas A & M University sought to deny recognition to a gay student organization because it believed that  “so-called ‘gay’ activities run diabolically counter to the traditions and standards of Texas A & M.” At the time, the Board may have voiced the majority view, which found the gay students’ speech to be beyond the pale. Today, the opposite characterization might be true.

In some countries, including the United States, hate speech is constitutionally protected. In other countries, a victim of hate speech may seek redress under civil law, criminal law, or both. But one thing is certain: our founders came to America from living under a government that dominated in determination of what could be and not be used in speech by their citizens and retained the unilateral authority to arbitrarily determine what was and what was not OK to use and who could use it.

What happens when governments regulate speech?

Unlike the United States, there are a variety of countries that cannot practice freedom of speech, including Burma, North Korea, Turkmenistan and Libya. Other countries that abide by a strict censorship include Cuba, Syria, Eritrea and Uzbekistan.

A strict censorship basically isolates the citizens of these countries because the government prevents the media from providing any information on the rest of the world. Typically, these governments will impose violence on any journalists who come in to report news or to seek information on the well being of citizens living in these countries. There are also laws in place that restrict the use of the Internet and prevent citizens from speaking out negatively against the government.

Are we headed for our government taking away our rights to Free Speech?

Under the guise of advancing what anti-free speech groups refer to as “human rights,” the dictator-dominated global body is waging a full-blown assault on free-speech rights by pressuring governments to criminalize so-called “hate speech.” Indeed, working alongside radical government-funded activist groups and anti-liberty politicians around the world, the UN and other totalitarian-minded forces have now reached the point where they openly claim that what they call “international law” actually requires governments to ban speech and organizations they disapprove of. Critics are fighting back in an effort to protect freedom of speech. Think about it: the United Nations — a supposed peaceful, rights-thinking world organization headquartered in southeast New York City is pushing for the abolition of free speech!

UN “human rights” bureaucrats are currently terrorizing and bullying people of Japan — among others — in an effort to drastically curtail speech rights. Pointing to a tiny group of anti-Korean activists holding demonstrations in Japan, politicians and self-styled promoters of “human rights” have also joined the UN in its Soviet-inspired crusade to ban free expression. The Japanese Constitution, however, like the American one, includes strong protections for freedom of speech. Still, that has not stopped the UN from seeking to impose its radical speech restrictions on Japan anyway.

Meanwhile, right here in the United States, groups like ANTIFA (which stands for “Anti-Fascist”) are attacking conservatives left and right at Free Speech rallies around the country, stating that in doing so, they are stopping those who denigrate certain groups or individuals. Those groups and individuals that are the supposed “protection ones” one ANTIFA don’t exist! ANTIFA is nothing more than a 100-year-old political activist European organization that is a remnant of Nazi Germany! Don’t believe it? Check your history book.

Summary

There is no doubt Americans need to tamp-down our hateful, denigrating, and caustic rhetoric — both in writing and speaking. We need to embrace the universal belief that we are all created equal in the eyes of our Creator and therefore each have “unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Our Constitution while re-stating those tenets of basic Humanity is the roadmap of freedom for all people. And that means that there are people who are hateful, who choose to demean others personally for all manner of things they view as are wrong with those others. As evil as that may be for them to do, Free Speech from the First Amendment gives all that basic right.

Here’s what is at the end of the road of American governments — local, state, and federal — stepping in and putting Big Brother’s foot down on derogatory things spoken or written by others: Where does their doing so stop? Who decides what is wrong to say or write, what can or cannot be said, spoken, written, or sung in a song? Who decides who makes the rules?

Americans — if enough feel doing so is justified — have a legal method to change it all: Amend the Constitution. Our framers, knowing that American life would change in many ways, made sure to create a clear path for altering our founding structure.

So here’s what we do: Follow the Process! I’m not going to teach a Civics class here. For those who want to abolish the Second Amendment, read the Constitution and set the Amendment process in motion.

Our structure of government is a Representative Republic. It was founded and exists as such for reasons just like this. Reasonable people can disagree. But those same reasonable people must choose legal methods to resolve disagreements. It would be foolish to try to do otherwise. Without taking the path of Constitutional guidance, all that will be accomplished is Anarchy and all that comes with it.

ANTIFA has already opened that door to Pandora’s Box. Do Leftist Anti-Free Speech proponents really want to try that road?

My prediction is if tried, what is at the end of the road will not be attractive for them. And when done, the Second Amendment will still be intact.

Oh: so will the First Amendment!

 

 

 

Naziism Is Alive in America: And It Has No Color

December 4, 2019

You probably have not heard of Malcolm Nance. You need to know who he is. You need to know what he’s about. You need to know what he represents.

We’ll get into the specifics of his background in a bit, but what is most important is that he is a radical leftist cloaked in his claims of his patriotism, his belief and “undying support” to the Constitution and that President Trump has ushered a criminal enterprise into the White House.

There’s much we will share with you today and later about Mr. Nance. Why? It’s essential you know just how deep the Deep State is. You need to know how far left some in the Deep State are. You need to know and understand why the likes of those in ANTIFA and other radical left groups somehow find justification for actually attacking the Constitution and what it stands for while they declare they are doing so to PROTECT the Constitution.

Meet Malcolm Nance:

You have now seen and heard Malcolm Nance. He owns a pretty significant pedigree in National Security. And as you just witnessed, he fashions himself to be a Constitutional scholar, a political ethicist, and a narcissist who makes the claims by some of Trump’s alleged narcissism appear laughable. Malcolm Nance is scary. Why?

He has a pulpit — a big one. MSNBC has given it to him. Just knowing that NBC and its political arm are all-in with the Nance message isn’t unusual. But what IS surprising is that NBC’s doing so legitimizes the beliefs of many that Nance makes sense. If what he said in that short interview segment you just witnessed does not awaken you to the “Malcolm Nance reality,” you need to rethink it. Nance is not alone in his thoughts and beliefs. And the results of his messaging could easily loose the dragon of violence in the U.S. — that is really isn’t already walking among us.

Read/listen on.

White supremacist “foot soldiers” perceive President Donald Trump’s rhetoric as “subliminal orders in their head,” warns MSNBC’s national security analyst Malcolm Nance.

In an interview with MSNBC’s Hardball during a segment on the massacres in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, Nance claimed mass shootings in the United States are fueled by far-right, white supremacist ideology by shooters who want to eliminate liberalism.

”I think that we’re finally in for a significant societal change where we’re finally addressing this issue. I wrote a book last year called The Plot to Destroy Democracy, and in one of the chapters, I led off with the massacre of 68 children in Norway by the original white supremacist terrorist who created the concept of this terrorist manifesto — Anders Behring Breivik,” he said. “And he did that because he thought “The Great Replacement” was underway in Norway and that the government was allowing unbridled immigration into that country.”

So in his trial, he said he massacred those children because he wanted to eliminate the next generation of liberal leadership from Norway as a warning,” he continued. “This country has had several of these mass incidents, but I think we’re overdue for a Breivik-style real massacre of a political nature.”

Trump is fostering a culture that facilitates white supremacist terrorists, Nance argued.

“These people feel that they are the foot soldiers and executors of what the disenfranchisement that the white race is feeling, and Donald Trump is giving them subliminal orders in their heads,” he said. “They are no different than the mobilized, self-starting, self-radicalized terrorists of ISIS here in the United States and Europe, who take cars and drive down streets. It’s just that they have a permissive environment in which they can get firearms and go out and attack their perceived enemies.”

While Nance, in conjunction with many Democrat lawmakers and the Lame-stream media establishment, insist Trump’s “racist” rhetoric inspired the mentally ill mass shooters, an abundance of evidence, first reported by conservative media outlets, irrefutably verifies they were leftists – not Trump supporters.

Nance appeared in May of 2019 on AM Joy on MSNBC. Here’s a sample of Nance’s opinions about President Trump and those in his administration:

MALCOLM NANCE: This administration is completely and wholly a corrupt criminal enterprise now. You have the Attorney General of the United States acting as a hit man for the President of the United States, not looking out for the interests of the people of the United States, and laws now no longer matter. I’ve dedicated every second of my life to defend this nation. I love and believe in the Constitution of the United States. My country is now under attack by the President of the United States. Who will stand for it? Who in our own Congress is wanting to negotiate with him, right? Their last bit of power is now going to come under 18 months of crushing pressure from a man that is all but in name a dictator. And I would like to hear how we’re going to handle this problem.

You know, I come on here and I try to be nice and calm when I come in, and then I listen to all this analysis and it just brings out the inner patriot in me, and it should in everyone in this country. We have got to stand for our Constitution, we’ve got to stand for our laws, and to say we’re going to negotiate it out, we’re going to create a nice paper trail, that is not fighting for this country. That is not fighting for what we believe, that is not fighting to defend this nation.

So, I think, all these people that write me every day. They need to just blow up the telephone lines on Monday. They need blow up the Twitter, and they need to hold Democrats accountable. Not the Republicans, hold the Democrats accountable, and say, this nation and our laws, you will now stand and defend. Because if you don’t them, we may not have them in 18 months. This White House now feels it can do anything. Robert Mueller has now given him permission to believe that he is untouchable. And he is not the Eliot Ness that we all wanted. And if this Congressman comes in here and says okay, we’re going to have this discussion, then that’s what you’re gonna have: you’re going to have a harshly-worded letter in a machine-gun fight.

Summary

It’s hard for me to believe there are people who are considered “experts” who espouse such wild and crazy ideas. It’s harder to think that someone like Nance has credibility and credentials sufficient to command a seat on the most significant media stage in world media: New York. It’s mind-boggling to me that Malcolm Nance has tens of thousands of Americans who believe these same things he spouts! But they do. And they live among us.

What’s the fuel for all this? If you stop and look at the world around us today, there is no realistic way to equate what this totalitarian ex-military expert claims about the United States and this government with what is playing out in the lives of Americans every day. It just cannot be reconciled.

For what Nance claims in today’s story to be true even in a small part, tens of millions of Americans must be living in a fog of unseen dementia or are too uninformed or mentally incapable of reason. Most of us live in a world in which we rely on circumstances of life and how they directly impact us: our families, our homes and neighborhoods, our cities in which we live and work, and the extended environment in which we live and function daily.

I suggest that you do an internet search to view exactly what his pedigree is. It’s lengthy. He’s lived and worked in an intelligence and military environment for many years. On the surface, he strikes me as something of a James Bond or at least a Bond wannabe.

I don’t know Malcolm Nance; I just know “about him.” He sounds amazingly intelligent. He speaks clearly and certainly believes what he says. But what scares me is that so did Adolph Hitler!

The United States is undoubtedly the melting pot of those from 100+ nations on Earth. That means it’s the melting pot of those with numerous political and social perspectives. Expressing those through a couple of centuries has resulted in a great part in creating the greatness of our nation. But such creation has been based on respect for the differences of others — differences of all kinds. The success of where we realistically find ourselves today is rooted in those first ten Constitutional amendments that detail the elements of life that “we the people” did NOT relegate to the government but retained for ourselves. It’s those ten that will keep us safe from despots of every kind who attack those with different ideas.

But facts are required for any lasting positive results in a country. Let’s face it: ours is pretty good. No doubt there’s a large amount of tweaking necessarily going on. That’s a good thing. I don’t want to take the streets to start blowing up things and people just because I might disagree with them. It seems like doing so might be a pretty good alternative for Malcolm Nance.

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Google: Gone Rogue

August 8, 2019

There’s something up with social media giants Google, Facebook, and Twitter. You’ve heard about it continuously during the last two years: conservative posts are being blocked or taken down, “demeaning” or supposed “hate” speech posts are quarantined. Users’ accounts are even being blocked and sometimes deleted.

The conclusion: the Big Three are no longer just social media, news and information platforms — they are “Political Machines.” And they’re political leanings are obviously tilted to the left. And they’re using political bias to regulate what Americans see and read. In fact, in their doing so, “they” are choosing which political narratives and opinions are acceptable to the general public and which are not.

Yesterday we gave you examples of concrete proof that Democrats now have a choke-hold on their Media lapdogs. The Big Three network news divisions along with CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and others are releasing news stories that are not just biased but are in-the-tank for Democrats already in office and for those who want to be. (If you haven’t already, take about twelve minutes and take a look/listen to yesterday’s story at https://truthnewsnet.org/fact-democrats-control-mainstream-media-content/)

Of the three — Google, Facebook, and Twitter — the media giant Google seems to be the one which is further Left politically and more intense in their editing of its users. But who is Google?

Google

Google was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University in California. Together they own about 14 percent of its shares and control 56 percent of the stockholder voting power through supervoting stock. They incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4, 1998. An initial public offering (IPO) took place on August 19, 2004, and Google moved to its headquarters in Mountain View, California, nicknamed the Googleplex. In August 2015, Google announced plans to reorganize its various interests as a conglomerate called Alphabet Inc. Google is Alphabet’s leading subsidiary and will continue to be the umbrella company for Alphabet’s Internet interests. Sundar Pichai was appointed CEO of Google, replacing Larry Page who became the CEO of Alphabet.

The company’s rapid growth since incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions, and partnerships beyond Google’s core search engine (Google Search). It offers services designed for work and productivity (Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides), email (Gmail/Inbox), scheduling and time management (Google Calendar), cloud storage (Google Drive), instant messaging and video chat (Google Allo, Duo, Hangouts), language translation (Google Translate), mapping and navigation (Google Maps, Waze, Google Earth, Street View), video sharing (YouTube), note-taking (Google Keep), and photo organizing and editing (Google Photos). The company leads the development of the Android mobile operating system, the Google Chrome web browser, and Chrome OS, a lightweight operating system based on the Chrome browser. Google has moved increasingly into hardware; from 2010 to 2015, it partnered with major electronics manufacturers in the production of its Nexus devices, and it released multiple hardware products in October 2016, including the Google Pixel smartphone, Google Home smart speaker, Google Wifi mesh wireless router, and Google Daydream virtual reality headset. Google has also experimented with becoming an Internet carrier (Google Fiber, Google Fi, and Google Station).

Here’s the most interesting and most important segment of today’s article: Google.com is the most visited website in the world. Why is that so important? Because Google has access to almost every electronic device on Earth that is connected to the internet.

Google In Politics

The driving force between any of these social giants is revenue. How do they each create $$? There are only two ways to do it: the sale of goods and products, and the sale of advertising. Google has a lock on the ability to rake in the dough because of their bevy of products, devices, (even their own cellphone line) and advertising. Google, as do all of these companies, do the best they can to parlay their goods and products into expansion and growth opportunities. In the media industry the statement that “he who is first is best” holds true as it does in all sectors of business. Google started the internet browser industry.

Founders Page and Brin were technology innovators who pounced on the importance to find ways to use the internet. In their quest to conceptualize, then create and build a product that could easily be used by a world market just awakening to the world of the Internet and its potentials, they needed to capture other technology gurus to join-in this project. Where else in the U.S. is there a larger and more qualified such group than in Silicon Valley? Answer: Nowhere. Google has captured the largest group of electronic techno-geeks not just in the U.S. but on Earth. And they’re good — really good at what they do.

But here lies the problem: almost all of those at Google 20-years later are born from the prevailing west-coast liberal philosophies that have overtaken America’s political system. This group of Americans — and not just from Silicon Valley — are the products of a generation of educators who promoted liberal political ideas to these young people.  As a result, this generation of computer hackers are almost all far-left. And here’s where the social media problems at Facebook, Google, Twitter, and even Amazon and Apple originate. What are they? Left-wing activists using their technology outlets to surreptitiously impact American politics. And they’re changing millions of Americans’ fundamental political ideals and sometimes even their votes!

Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony before Congress just gave us a small peek at how prevalent this is. Add Apple, Google, Twitter, Amazon and other techno giants into the mix and we could POSSIBLY be at the verge of a new generation of young Americans driven by a technology-created political ideology unto itself!

Do you know what’s scarier? It’s already been done!

What Has Happened?

Take Facebook and Google for example. Here’s a few minutes of a real expert — Dr. Robert Epstein, a Hard Left Professional — testifying before Congress about Facebook and Google’s significant and already in place operations to impact elections:

What better way than to use something already in your hands to secretly play with and directly impact the results of American elections! According to Dr. Epstein, it’s already been done! More astonishing and egregious is that no one (but probably Facebook and Google) knows how much of this was done, how many people were included in such attempts, and exactly how many people’s votes were impacted. But as Dr. Epstein testified to, MILLIONS of votes were changed.

Social Media Gone Amuck

(The following segment published by FOX News August 5, 2019)

“When President Trump won in 2016, Google executives went on stage right away and cried — literal tears streaming down their faces. They vowed that it would never happen again and they want to use all the power and resources they have to control the flow of information to the public and make sure that Trump loses in 2020,” Kevin Cernekee said on “Fox & Friends” Monday.

Cernekee said Google will “ramp up the censorship” as a method to ensure Trump loses the election — including the censoring of political advertisements, and the filtering of search results to promote its political agenda.
“They are very biased. There is bias at every level of the organization…and if you disagree with them even one iota, they will come after you, they’ll target you, they’ll make you an example.”— Kevin Cernekee, former Google engineer

“Google has a huge amount of information on every voter in the U.S.,” Cernekee explained. He claimed the company will use it to “build psychological profiles” in an attempt to change the minds of voters across the country.
The former Google worker said he noticed early on that the tech giant was mistreating its conservative employees, and he raised his concerns with human resources. In response, he received an official warning, which he took to the labor board. Cernekee was eventually fired in 2018.

Summary

Every American should be horrified. Think about this: the U.S. just came through 2.5 years and $30 million of the exhaustive Robert Mueller investigation into the alleged 2016 campaign violations of members of the Trump Campaign who purportedly worked with Russia to impact 2016 election results. These companies on the west coast are NOT comprised of Russians and are — on the most part — comprised of Americans. Yet Americans employed by American companies have been shown to have aggressively impacted the final vote results of the 2016 election — and not for the benefit of President Trump, but his opponent.

Oh, in case you forgot, here’s the former President’s response on election hacking claims by Candidate Trump during the 2016 election campaign:

“Because democracy, by definition, works by consent, not by force. I have never seen, in my lifetime or in modern political history, any presidential candidate trying to discredit the elections and the election process before votes have even taken place.

It’s unprecedented. It happens to be based on no facts; every expert, regardless of political party, regardless of ideology, conservative or liberal, who has ever examined these issues in a serious way, will tell you that instances of significant voter fraud are not to be found, that — keep in mind, elections are run by state and local officials, which means that there are places like Florida, for example, where you’ve got a Republican governor, whose Republican appointees are going to running and monitoring a whole bunch of these election sites.

The notion that somehow if Mr. Trump loses Florida, it’s because of those people that you have to watch out for, that is both irresponsible and, by the way, doesn’t really show the kind of leadership and toughness that you want out of a president.

If you start whining before the game’s even over, if whenever things are going badly for you and you lose, you start blaming somebody else, then you don’t have what it takes to be in this job because there are a lot of times when things don’t go our way or my way.

That’s OK, you fight through it, you work through it, you try to accomplish your goals. But the larger point I want to emphasize here is that there is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even — you could even rig America’s elections, in part, because they are so decentralized and the numbers of votes involved.

There is no evidence that that has happened in the past or that there are instances in which that will happen this time. And so I’d invite Mr. Trump to stop whining and go try to make his case to get votes.”

Every American should be horrified. Election tampering DID happen in 2016. It certainly happened again in 2018. Yet no one in Washington is shouting about the violation of the most basic institution of the United States, not by foreign governments, but by U.S. companies!

Did President Obama know this was going on? It’s likely. We are still waiting for investigation results into the U.S. elements of government intervention in the 2016 election. But more and more testimony and simple addition are showing that the Obama White House at least “knew” about the shenanigans going on if not initiated them. We may never know for certain.

But what we DO know for certain is that 2020 and the federal elections in November of that year are rapidly approaching. All this knowledge and information screams for transparency of the existing investigations and what DOJ processes have been implemented to clean up the certain social media voter-changing attempts that will occur unless stopped.

It’s shameful that Americans are just now discovering how deep is this intrusion into our election process. It’s MORE shameful to discover that heretofore revered American companies seem to be joining forces with political entities to purposefully impact election results to favor certain candidates!

No wonder millions of Americans stay away from the polls and when asked why, they respond “My vote doesn’t mean anything.”

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Is Free Speech Free?

June 2, 2019
Short answer: “No!”

Think about it: the very foundation of America was to guarantee free speech for all people. Our founders did NOT have the ability to speak free while living in any of the countries from which they emigrated to America. Oppression from the elitist ruling class in Europe despised the allowance of the “lower class” to speak freely. So they simply disallowed commoners to do so. Americans should realize the “rescue” of the right to free speech DROVE those settlers to the New World. And IF Americans really did understand that, they would be much more adamant about preserving Free Speech. Remember the line in that famous song that says, “You just don’t know what you have till it’s gone.” Sadly, we’re headed in that direction.

We could spend much of your time today to talk about the faux “Free Speech” rallies which Antifa protestors attended and turned into riots with the pretense of attacking those who are AGAINST free speech — or “fascists.” These rallies all were for the presentation and discussion of FREE SPEECH! And Antifa nut jobs fought to keep them quiet. What a paradox! (The light of Truth most of the time exposes the evil that hides in the darkness)

Instead of us pontificating about Free Speech, let’s look in on the words of Robert Charles who recently gave a speech at one of the liberal bastions of the Ivy League — Dartmouth. You’ll be surprised at the results!

Robert Charles is a former assistant secretary of state for President George W. Bush, former naval intelligence officer and litigator. He served in the Reagan and Bush 41 White Houses. He was assistant secretary of state at the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs from 2003 to 2005. He served under Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Attack!

Free speech is under attack on college campuses – but reaction to a conservative speaker at Dartmouth this month offers a glimmer of hope.

Data shows America’s college campuses are under siege. Anti-Trump sentiment, combined with socialist-leaning progressive tendencies, are dominant.  From “safe spaces” for delicate ears to violence against conservatives, the nation is in the throes of intolerance toward free speech.

As violence against conservative students, faculty and speakers has risen, it has chilled intellectual diversity.  While an overwhelming body of constitutional law supports free speech, the reality is discomfiting.

In June 2017, the Daily Caller News Foundation chronicled a spike in violence against conservatives on college campuses – including those speaking out in defense of free speech, opposing abortion, favoring border security, urging respect for the American flag, defending law enforcement, rejecting socialism, supporting Israel, or wearing a Trump “Make America Great Again” hat.

There were 35 violent acts that made headlines between June of 2016 and June of 2017 – including felony destruction, vicious beatings and black-masked “protestors” shutting down campuses.

A 2017 Cato Institute survey shockingly found a majority of Democrats believe “controversial” or “offensive” speakers – e.g. those defending police or opposing transgender mandates– should not be allowed to speak on college campuses.  A 2018 Gallup college poll showed an eight percent jump – to 30 percent – among those who want no “offensive speech” on campus, with more than half putting cultural diversity above free speech, and a third supporting verbal suppression – shouting down speakers.

Add to that elected officials and other political figures jumping into the fray, telling people to: confront Trump administration officials in public and “tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere” (Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.); “get up in the face” of conservatives (Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J.); “when they go low, kick them” (Obama Attorney General Eric Holder); and “you cannot be civil” to Republicans (former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton).

Is it any wonder aggression against conservatives is on the rise – both on campus and off?

And don’t forget restaurant confrontations against White House staffers and Republican senators, or a group of Kentucky high school students participating in a pro-life march who were taunted, taped and mercilessly ridiculed by national media and Hollywood – because one of them was wearing a “MAGA” hat.

Which brings me back to Dartmouth. This month. A lifelong conservative and an alum, I was invited to speak on campus, opposite a Democratic National Convention Committee “political operative,” another alum.

Having spent time in the White Houses of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, five years with Newt Gingrich in the House, a decade in naval intelligence, and serving as Assistant Secretary of State under George W. Bush – plus being a FOX commentator – I expected rough water. Especially in light of the fact that the Foundation for Rights in Education, non-profit defending rights at universities, had downgraded Dartmouth to a “red light rating” in 2018 for “restricting protected speech.”

Nevertheless, I rolled out conservative themes such as an emphasis on strong defense, smaller government and lower taxes.  I expressed pro-life views and a commitment to free speech – noting the importance of placing nation above party, history and law above emotion.

Challenged to name areas for cooperation, I started with the national drug crisis, then immigration and border security, infrastructure, and free speech on college campuses.

It’s how they did it at the Constitutional Convention – which is how they settled on the First Amendment in the first place, assuring us freedom of speech. Wherever you may be.

Summary

After facing years of attacks from every side, free speech on college campuses finally has a supporter in the White House.

The Trump administration is set to release a new executive order requiring colleges and universities to support free speech in order to receive federal research funding. President Donald Trump’s proposal would add a “free speech requirement” to the contractual obligations that come with said funding, forcing academic institutions to demonstrate their First Amendment bona fides.

Whether or not one supports this executive order, Trump is right to call attention to an epidemic that has plagued American academia for years. From talk show host Bill Maher’s boycott petition at the University of California at Berkeley to the more recent protests aimed at conservative commentators like Ben Shapiro, campus liberals have become increasingly vitriolic toward differences of opinion — as well as those who voice them. Just last month, a conservative activist was assaulted at Berkeley simply for protesting hate crime hoaxes.

Freedom of speech is not a left vs. right issue. Both parties have an obligation to fight the radical activists’ assault on the First Amendment. As Americans, our right to speak freely and openly is guaranteed by the Constitution. Whether we agree with those speaking is irrelevant to their legal right to do so.

While Trump’s support is encouraging, we still need to remain skeptical of executive power (even when used with the best of intentions). A cursory glance at the earliest years of American history tells us exactly why unrestrained executive power hardly produces a harmonious existence for anyone. Renowned writer and journalist H.L. Mencken once told us, “I believe in only one thing: Liberty, but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.”

This is not to oppose the president’s executive order, but it is clearly not the optimal outcome. The American people must defend the First Amendment themselves — on the ground — so that an executive order isn’t necessary.