A Look at 4 of the GOP’s Obamacare Replacement Plans

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As Republicans debate their strategy for repealing and replacing Obamacare, GOP lawmakers have been accused of failing to put forth a replacement plan for the health care law.

But since President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law in 2010, Republicans in both the House and Senate have unveiled a number of proposals mapping out how the health care law would be replaced, should it be dismantled.

Most of the major plans share some key provisions: they offer tax credits to consumers; expand the use of health savings accounts, or medical savings accounts; and reform Medicaid.

But differences emerge in the nitty gritty details of each proposal, including whether tax credits are based on age or income, where to cap the tax exclusion on employer-sponsored coverage, and whether to turn Medicaid into a block grant program or per capita allotment.

House and Senate Republicans, along with President Donald Trump, are meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Thursday and Friday for their annual retreat, where House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said earlier this month lawmakers will have a “full, exhausting” conversation on their plan for repealing and replacing Obamacare.

Already, there are at least four plans crafted to replace the law. On Monday, Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Susan Collins of Maine introduced another proposal ahead of this week’s GOP gathering.

While the other major Republican proposals repeal all of Obamacare, the Cassidy-Collins plan repeals only the health care law’s mandates, like the individual and employer mandates; maintains its subsidies and taxes; and allows states that like Obamacare to keep Obamacare.

In addition to the Cassidy-Collins plan, The Daily Signal examined proposals offered by Ryan and the Republican conference; Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., who Trump nominated for secretary of health and human services; the Republican Study Committee; and Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, and Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan.

See how these Obamacare replacement plans stack up.

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(For more from the author of “A Look at 4 of the GOP’s Obamacare Replacement Plans” please click HERE)

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Majority of Americans Want Some Abortion Restrictions, Object to Taxpayer Funding, Poll Says

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A majority of Americans are in favor of stopping taxpayer funding of abortions and banning most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, according to a new Marist poll commissioned by the Knights of Columbus.

“There is a consensus in America in favor of significant abortion restrictions, and this common ground exists across party lines, and even among significant numbers of those who are pro-choice,” Carl A. Anderson, CEO of the Catholic organization Knights of Columbus, said in a statement.

“This poll shows that large percentages of Americans, on both sides of the aisle, are united in their opposition to the status quo as it relates to abortion on demand. This is heartening and can help start a new national conversation on abortion.”

When polled, 61 percent of Americans opposed using tax dollars to fund abortions within the United States, while 83 percent of respondents opposed subsidizing abortions outside of the United States.

When it came to the partisan breakdown of individuals polled, 41 percent of Democrats and 87 percent of Republicans opposed using taxpayers’ money to fund abortions.

Large majorities of the Marist poll’s respondents supported significant restrictions on abortion, including banning the practice after 20 weeks, unless the mother’s life is in danger.

The poll found that 85 percent of Americans supported some restrictions on abortion.

“It’s also worth pointing out, we have 74 percent of all Americans who support these [significant] restrictions and 77 percent of women who would support these restrictions,” Andrew Walther, the vice president of communications and strategic planning for Knights of Columbus, said in a conference call to reporters.

Walther added:

We’ve been doing this now going back to 2008, asking Americans what kind of restrictions they would support on abortion, and what we found here, as in previous years, was an overwhelming support for limiting abortion to at most the first three months of pregnancy, with substantial support for limiting it to cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother.

The Marist poll’s numbers, showing the majority of Americans support some sort of restriction on abortion, were released during the same week as the annual March for Life event, an annual pro-life event that meets in the District of Columbia.

Additionally, on Monday, Donald Trump reinstated a policy that specifies that federal funds designated for family planning can only be used to support foreign nongovernmental organizations that will not promote or perform abortions in foreign countries.

The Marist poll sponsored by the Knights of Columbus was conducted between Dec. 12 and Dec. 19, 2016. The survey included responses from 2,729 adults living within the continental United States and has a margin of error of ±1.9 percentage points. (For more from the author of “Majority of Americans Want Some Abortion Restrictions, Object to Taxpayer Funding, Poll Says” please click HERE)

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4 Questions Trump MUST Ask His Potential SCOTUS Nominees

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Since the election, the country has been waiting with bated breath at who President-elect Donald Trump will nominate to fill Justice Antonin Scalia’s vacant Supreme Court seat.

Recent Marist polling found that 80 percent of Americans believe that appointing originalists to the highest bench in the land was either an “immediate” or “important” priority. Now, short lists are circulating and the Trump transition team is reportedly holding meetings with potential nominees.

While during the election it seemed that the only requirements to fill the seat was a two-box checklist (“Pro-life” and politically conservative), when an entire branch of government has gotten so far away from its original purpose, it requires a bit more than that.

Here’s what Trump’s team (and eventually the Senate) ought to be asking candidates:

1. What are rights, and what does the Constitution have to do with them?

One of the most visible consequences of the judicial oligarchy is a never-ending regime of ever-changing rights. Rather than being fundamental, transcendent, and bound up with our human dignity, “rights” are now construed to mean whatever the state wants them to mean.

Of course, one of the most egregious historic examples of this is Justice Anthony Kennedy’s infamous line that everyone has the “right to define the universe” as they see fit in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992. But this sort of thinking has promulgated across the spectrum, from immigration to voting laws.

A solid justice would be quick to respond that rights cannot be created by Congress or willed into existence by an activist judge, but preexist any form of government and are best protected by the federal system envisioned in the Constitution.

2. What does the 14th Amendment really do?

The 14th Amendment was originally written with the intent of undoing the legal atrocities of chattel slavery. Since then, its provisions have been used as a blanket justification to codify a never-ending list of positive rights into the body of constitutional case law. This modern understanding of the amendment has not only been used to create “rights” to abortion and same-sex marriage, but has also been used by leftist judges to arbitrarily manufacture “rights” to early voting, transgender bathrooms, and a host of other issues.

This has, in turn, created a legal regime where the imaginary rights begin to devour the fundamental negative ones that are actually referenced in the Constitution – as has been the case of conscience rights under the Obama administration.

So where does it stop? Does the 14th Amendment give the judiciary license to create a never-ending catalogue of imaginary rights? Or is its scope far more limited?

3. Does the Supreme Court create “settled law”? Is it the final arbiter?

What the founders envisioned as the weakest branch of government has now become a place where political discourse goes to die. Antonin Scalia pointed out as much in the Obergefell decision months before his death. Is Obergefell v. Hodges truly “settled law”?

Is any watershed ruling? Or was the concept of judicial supremacy something contrived in the 20th century and since been used to pull issues out of public debate and put them squarely at the control of the legal profession?

A solid Supreme Court candidate would articulate that the founders never granted the court with anything close to the current power that it enjoys, and never intended for it to have the power to “settle” issues of public debate.

Candidates might also add that the founders explicitly rejected a judiciary council of review to do this. And as Daniel Horowitz has pointed out at CR, even the oft-cited Marbury v. Madison decision never granted the Supreme Court the final say on political questions. The court, along with Congress, the president, and the states each had their own responsibilities of interpretation.

4. What is the Supreme Court’s role?

This is an area ripe for review. If the court isn’t meant to act as a super legislature – as it has been doing for the past few decades – then what is it meant to do? The best answer for this would be to rule on issues of statute – along with its areas of original jurisdiction – while sharing the role of constitutional interpretation along with the other branches and the states.

However, the pithiest answer might be, “Whatever the Constitution and the Congress allow it to rule on, and nothing more.”

As pundits, politicians, and journalists over the next few weeks take to deriding and extolling various portions of judicial records for Trump’s short list, these questions will fall by the wayside in favor of media postmortems on how they’ll affect political questions from the bench.

As we have explained repeatedly here at Conservative Review, the problems facing our court system can’t be fixed by simply putting political conservatives (read: “good” judges) on the bench and hoping the problem rules itself away. Decades of Republican appointees have proven this. The kind of constitutional bona fides necessary to fill Scalia’s seat are going to have to be proven by the answers to the above questions.

These questions don’t nearly encompass the breadth of what should be asked of a worthy potential jurist the American people want to see Justice Scalia succeeded by someone who understands our constituting document as written, they ought to be first on the list. (For more from the author of “4 Questions Trump MUST Ask His Potential SCOTUS Nominees” please click HERE)

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Women’s March on Washington Is Really a March against Women, Science, and Life Itself

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The Women’s March on Washington has taken sides. There will be no partnership between their efforts and pro-life organizations. And the argument between life and death for the unborn just crystallized.

Outraged by the inauguration of President-elect Trump, the organizers of what is estimated to be 200,000 “women’s rights are human rights” marchers, have made it clear they stand for the cavalier liquidation of life springing from the wombs of women across the nation.

Masked by the false narrative that women ought to be able to do what they wish with their own bodies, the pro-aborts are blind to the fact that the body growing within a woman’s womb is a completely different body, given life from God above at the moment of conception. The child has a different circulatory system, different blood, and different DNA, making arguments in favor of “women’s reproductive rights” anti-science, not to mention profoundly brutal.

Saline abortions — in which the child can be viewed on an ultrasound thrashing in immense pain as her skin burns — causes no sympathy from the pro-aborts. Nor do suction aspiration abortions induce a heartfelt tear, where the baby can be viewed (again, via ultrasound) trying to move away from the powerful vacuum that rips off her legs and arms before her body and head is crushed.

A D&E abortion is one in which the doctor uses instruments to break bones and tear off the arms and legs of a baby who no doubt is screaming at the obvious pain that would induce at 20 to 32 weeks of age.

No problem, say the pro-aborts, there is an uptick in post-conception pill use, which supposedly kills the child at a much more acceptable phase of life, between five and nine weeks. Only, the pill starves the child to death over a long period of time.

The whitewash of the mass genocide and torture of the unborn in America by pro-abort groups is a stain on this great nation equal to the acceptance and proliferation of slavery. Yet some women continue to refuse to look at what they claim is their right for what it actually means.

Women are not stupid, but the abortion industry in America has made many of them believe these horrific acts are somehow part of their handbook on how to be a woman.

So the women will march on Saturday, Jan 21, funded by Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the nation. There will be foolish women wearing outfits made to look like their own genitals, and, if the past is any indicator, being generally distasteful, gross, and foul-mouthed. They are getting more and more desperate to “get their message across” because their heyday is waning.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, the number of abortions in America has dropped below one million for the first time since 1975 to 958,700 in 2013 and 926,200 in 2014. Pro-aborts had this happen on their watch, with the most pro-abortion president this nation has ever seen.

They claim the numbers of abortions have dwindled because Republican state legislatures are making access to abortion facilities more difficult. But despite the Institute’s pro-abortion narrative, they did admit there was not a “clear and consistent relationship between state restrictions and changes in state abortion rates,” nor was there a “clear correlation between the number of clinics and abortion rates.”

Which means the pro-life movement is changing hearts and minds, and state legislatures are working to meet the demand of their constituencies who are overwhelmingly pro-life.

There is no doubt the media will cover the “women’s march for death” with the excitement and hype of the Oscars. However, each year the March for Life gets a blip, if anything, on the media’s radar, even though the annual march gathers between 200,000 and 500,000 people.

Saturday’s estimated 200,000 women may seem to be an overwhelming amount of people who agree with pro-aborts, but six days later, the 44th Annual March for Life will bring hundreds of thousands of activists to the Capitol who fight for the right to life for the most defenseless among us, and who have resolved to bring an end to the senseless killing of innocent people.

Someday in this nation, a vast majority of the female population will frown upon abortion, just as the nation turned away from slavery, and do everything they can to educate their daughters that life is precious and that they play the most important role of anyone. They must emphasize that the role of responsibility — motherhood — involves genuine love and care. This is the only way that the sick, twisted, deceitful, and scarring mantras of the pro-aborts can someday become obsolete. (For more from the author of “Women’s March on Washington Is Really a March against Women, Science, and Life Itself” please click HERE)

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Here’s One Thing Conservatives Must Cease and Desist Immediately

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As conservatives we are supposedly attempting to conserve things.

Things that are predetermined by nature and nature’s God — so they are, by definition, reality. Things that history has proven are what are best for the human condition this side of eternity. And the things that gave birth to American Exceptionalism.

When your ideology is based on such objectively defined criteria, there really shouldn’t be as much disagreement among us as there is. After all, shouldn’t the Left—with its self-centered emphasis—be the side constantly arguing among itself? Unfortunately, that all too often doesn’t seem to be the case. This column is about one of the main reasons that happens.

Our movement is so driven by what we’re against we have forgotten to conserve what we’re actually for. Even to the point of allowing our opponents to determine for us what/who is shrewd, noble, and virtuous for us to support and pursue. Now, why you’d ever want to trust the words of those who cry “racist” every time you dare to disagree with them is beyond me, but here we are.

I swear, if I hear someone allegedly smart on our side say one more time “since the Left hates it/him/her that must be good,” I’m gonna pull a Waiting for Guffman and go home and bite my pillow in a fit of frustration.

Permit me to share a recent example of this foolishness to drive my point home.

A month ago I conducted an interview here at CR with Andy Schlafly from Eagle Forum, based on his research into the judicial records of several judges known to be on Donald Trump’s short list once he becomes president. While I obviously think enough of Schlafly’s work on such an important subject to highlight it, and think it’s something conservatives should definitely consider, I also think there’s certainly room for conservatives to disagree with his assessment.

I’ve even read some on our side who disagree with Schlafly’s conclusions, and that’s healthy for our movement. Didn’t a best-selling book once say something about there being “wisdom in a multitude of counsel”?

So this week in response to my interview with Schlafly, a conservative activist with more than 10,000 Twitter followers contacted me on social media. He was incredulous that Schlafly would dare to deem some on Trump’s wish-list as not true conservatives in the Antonin Scalia mold. That’s fine, I love a good back-and-forth, but before I could respond to him he had sent me a follow-up tweet. This one included the source of his incredulity. Can you guess what it was?

Was it Ed Whelan at National Review, who is a Schlafly critic? No.

Was it the Federalist Society standing up for its own? No.

Was it anything all that analyzes such matters from a conservative viewpoint? No.

His source was none-other than the paid, leftist trolls at Think Progress. Because, of course, since they think these potential Trump judges are going to create internment camps for trannies they must be just grand.

Before you laugh, please realize this is how much of our movement thinks and/or communicates—including some very big names. Why? Some of it is intellectual laziness, sure, but most of it is the oldest motivation of them all.

It’s heavy lifting advocating for conservatism given the spirit of the age. Especially because just as there are lots of people who have never given their lives to Christ, but think they’re Christians because they went to an Easter service once and know a few of the Ten Commandments. There are also plenty in our movement who, because they hate the nanny state, believe they are conservatives when they don’t even know what we’re trying to conserve.

However, just because you’re against what we’re against doesn’t mean you’re for what we’re for.

Yet in this day and age it’s much easier to click-bait those who still nurse on intellectual milk and aren’t ready for such solid food. Low-hanging fruit such as easily-debunked conspiracy nitwitism and straw men arguments draw an audience and generate traffic. Like when Drudge fired his siren on Tuesday night after noted Trump shill Roger Stone claimed to Alex “what makes the friggin frogs gay” Jones he was poisoned by his political enemies.

Low information, it’s not just for the liberals anymore.

Let’s face it, too many people on our team are really just clock-punchers and check cashers. So when you’re selling something you don’t really believe in, you peddle infantile tripe such as “this makes (fill-in-the-blank liberal) really mad, so it must be good.” And you help train a generation of earnest activists hanging on your every word, like this one who contacted me on Twitter.

For the critical thinker would realize there are people on both sides who are simply compensated to gaslight and demagogue the other. That if Trump gave the Rainbow Jihad everything it wants, and even offered to undergo gender re-assignment surgery himself, the dutiful trolls at Think Progress would still call him a bigot. Because in their eyes Trump’s chief crime isn’t what he stands for, it’s that he’s a Republican.

Which is the same reason race-baiters like Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga. (F, 22%) boycott the inaugurations of George W. Bush and Trump, even though each man’s approaches and messaging as it pertains to minorities couldn’t be much different. For Lewis has himself transitioned from civil rights icon to Democrat Party hack, who has attempted to label every GOP standard-bearer in my lifetime a racist.

If Trump tried to appoint Obama’s pick Merrick Garland to replace Scalia, Garland would suddenly become “the most anti-reproductive choice judge ever” according to the likes of the George Soros funded Think Progress. This is the way this gaslighting game of demagoguery is played. I can’t believe I have to spell this out, but apparently I do.

We must cease and desist allowing phony outrage from the perpetually grieved fake victims on the Left determine who or what is conservatism. But that will be hard, because although reactionaryism isn’t conservatism, it sure pays well. (For more from the author of “Here’s One Thing Conservatives Must Cease and Desist Immediately” please click HERE)

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Inside the Radical Islamic Law Firm Representing the Orlando Terrorist’s Widow

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Noor Salman will utilize a fringe Islamic law firm in her attempt to prove innocence against charges she assisted her deceased husband, Omar Mateen, in conducting the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11.

In June, Mateen — who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State terror group — killed 49 innocents at the Pulse nightclub, wounding an additional 53.

Salman faces charges of aiding and abetting and providing material support to ISIS. She has also been accused of obstructing the investigation and deliberately misleading local and federal law enforcement officials. She claims to be innocent of any wrongdoing, but there is a stack of evidence showing Salman was fully aware of her husband’s plans and radicalization.

She will be represented by the Texas-based Constitutional Law Center for Muslims in America, which is part of the Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA).

The MLFA has been involved in several high-profile Islamic terror cases. They represented clients in the Holy Land Foundation Trial, which was the largest terror-financing trial in U.S. history. Five officers of the Holy Land Foundation were charged with providing material support to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

MLFA has also represented Sami Al-Arian, a fundraiser for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group, who was deported to Turkey in 2015.

In 2003, the legal fund held a fundraiser for five brothers accused of setting up a financial front for Hamas.

Along with their controversial work defending terrorists, the MLFA board of directors is stacked with individuals who are closely connected with the international Muslim Brotherhood.

One board member, Mouffa Nahhas, is the past president of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) — Dallas Fort-Worth chapter. CAIR was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial. The FBI has showcased in federal court how CAIR was created to support Hamas.

Another board member, Hatem Bazian, is a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and the president of American Muslims for Palestine. Bazian has called for an intifada (armed Islamic uprising) in America. He also co-founded the Students for Justice in Palestine, an anti-Israel hate group that has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Prosecutors insist Noor Salman was intimately involved in the planning stages of her husband’s jihadi massacre. Her counsel claims Salman was actually a victim in the entire situation, suffering abuse at the hands of Mateen. Nonetheless, her reported choice of the MLFA-affiliated Constitutional Law Center for Muslims in America as her counsel is sure to raise some eyebrows. (For more from the author of “Inside the Radical Islamic Law Firm Representing the Orlando Terrorist’s Widow” please click HERE)

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When Feminism Was Pro-Life

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Serrin Foster has been talking about Susan B. Anthony probably for as long as she can remember. She’s president of Feminists for Life, and a Saturday Night Live skit recently gave her even more opportunities.

A skit on that comedy show ended with Anthony telling a group of modern women that “abortion is murder,” providing an unlikely gift to Foster’s group, which aims to educate women about nonviolent alternatives to abortion.

As it happens, Foster was already fielding press calls because of a billboard that Feminists for Life put up in Rochester, New York, where Anthony lived and spent her activist years. “Peace Begins in the Womb,” it says, which was essentially the message that Mother Teresa told Bill and Hillary Clinton and the rest of us when she spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast in 1994.

The billboard didn’t invoke Anthony, but it provoked a debate about her record on abortion. Foster makes the points that Anthony and other “feminist foremothers … without known exception, spoke out against abortion during the first wave.” The suffragettes were unmistakably pro-life, as Foster explains, using words and phrases like “crime against humanity,” “feticide” and “child murder.” “They used infanticide and abortion interchangeably,” Foster says.

What an opportunity for reflection — about the history that Foster and Carol Crossed, the president of the Susan B. Anthony Birthplace Museum, have dedicated years to exploring and communicating and about what we have been doing to ourselves — to human lives, to our culture and law.

“Sometimes SNL gets it right,” Grazie Christie, a doctor in Miami and senior fellow with the Catholic Association, tells me. She saw in the sketch the “superficial banality of modern feminism is in full display.” About Anthony she said: “The suffragist struggled to change a society where women could not divorce a drunk and abusive husband, vote, speak in public, own separate property when married or be joint guardians of their children. The millennials, affluent and liberated heirs to the fruits of her labor, argue about taxi fare and whether to eat on the train or grab takeout.”

Foster sees it as “an opportunity to instruct both sides about our rich, pro-life feminist history. It begins with the women who fought for the rights of slaves to be free and for women to vote, and who also argued to protect women and children from abortion. Women deserve better than abortion — and so do all children. We seek to fulfill the unrealized vision of the first wave feminists. May peace begin in the womb.”

Anthony, who did not have children of her own, was once complimented on what a good mother she would have been. Foster points to her response: “Sweeter even than to have had the joy of caring for children of my own has it been for me to help bring about a better state of things for mothers generally, so that their unborn little ones could not be willed away from them.”

Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life Foundation, which every January sponsors a large annual gathering celebrating life and protesting the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, says, “Given the many conflicting messages these days about what it means to be a woman, to be a feminist, I appreciated the skit and its humorous poke at a sound-bite culture that is lacking a deeper understanding of the inherent dignity and vocation of woman. I appreciated that the skit depicted Susan B. Anthony’s stance on respecting and protecting life from conception.”

I take some solace in the fact that the first major female presidential candidate, who was an extremist on abortion, wasn’t elected. Unlikely as it may be, an SNL skit could be a gateway to liberation from our cultural assumption that women’s politics and health are wedded to legal abortion. It’s not so. It hasn’t been so. It doesn’t need to be so. We can’t live like this forever. And we don’t have to. See the opening now — it’s even showing up on SNL. (For more from the author of “When Feminism Was Pro-Life” please click HERE)

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Living under a President You Didn’t Want: Four Words of Encouragement for Liberals

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Liberal Americans, may I speak to you for a moment? I have some words of encouragement for you.

I know that today, Inauguration Day, is a rough day for you. Very rough. Actually from my perspective as a conservative it looks like you’re in a panic.

As I write this, you’re planning protests all around the country — “massive” ones, according to some reports. The ACLU is printing 10,000 leaflets on protestors’ rights, for use in Washington alone. At least one other legal group has laid plans to be ready to help you if you get arrested.

It’s going to be a long day for you. I’m sure you see it as the start of a long four years.

There are conservatives, too — #NeverTrumpers — who would prefer it if we were swearing in someone else as president today. But I haven’t seen any sign that they’re joining in with your protests. I’m sure that’s partly because they, like all conservatives, have practice in this already.

You see, we, too, know what it’s like to have a president we didn’t want.

When Barack Obama was inaugurated we expected things would be rough — just as you are expecting as Trump is inaugurated today. Undoubtedly you see his administration in a much better light than we do, but for us, this past eight years has been disastrous in matters including health care, energy policy, marriage, right to life, and a host of foreign policy matters.

But we made it through not just one but two inaugurations, plus eight years of Obama in charge, without the kind of panic many of you are displaying.

I know it’s risky to offer unsolicited advice, but I think our experience may be instructive to you. So let me offer you four words of encouragement if I may: four things you can do to make it through the Trump administration with patience, with grace, and especially without splitting apart the country more than it already has been.

Don’t Forget It’s a Democracy

President Obama reminded us eight years ago that “elections have consequences.” Conservatives would have to live with his leadership and his agenda, he said, because the country elected him president: “At the end of the day, I won.”

He won twice. Now someone else has won. Donald Trump will be our president, because elections have consequences.

Some of you love to proclaim, “Not my president!” Please understand how anti-democratic this appears from our point of view. Barack Obama was president for both liberals and conservatives. If we had denied that, we would have denied American democracy itself; for America’s historically revolutionary democratic processes are defined by our free elections and the country’s acceptance of their results.

So we accepted Barack Obama as our president.

Of course we knew we would get our chance again in four years, and again in another four. You, too, will get your chance in 2020.

In the meantime you should feel welcome to use every legitimate democratic means at your disposal to stand for your view of America. You can protest; that’s American democracy in action. It does no good, though, if it turns disruptive or violent, so please be on guard for that. In your panic you appear not more than frightened: you look angry and sometimes hateful, which in large crowds often turns dangerous. I know you don’t want that to happen, but you’re running quite a risk of it.

I think you might want to re-consider your use of protests anyway. You’ll get further in the long run by working with the rest of us than by shouting at us.

Take the Long View

We are swearing in our 45th president today. There will be a 46th, and it won’t be Donald Trump. Nothing lasts forever. Conservatives have kept that in mind over the last eight years. Our patience has yielded this day for us, the end of extreme progressive national leadership — for now. There will be a 46th president for us, too, and who knows who that will be?

Social movements take time, too. The Civil Rights movement began with the abolitionists before the Civil War. It’s advanced since then through a series of huge ups and downs. If this is a “down” moment — as I’m sure you think it is — it’s still part of the long advance.

That might be little comfort if you want change right now! But change can’t be hurried. Eight years under Obama didn’t bring you the change you wanted. It isn’t because he wasn’t on your side. It’s because no matter how fast you might want change to happen, some things can’t be rushed.

While you’re taking that longer view, I suggest you also take a broader one. You don’t know conservative America. Of course we don’t agree with all your policies and politics, but we aren’t as hateful as you think we are. You might want to get to know us as we are, rather than the way your fellow liberals and progressives describe us. To judge us simply by the label “conservative” without knowing us is to stereotype us, and I’m sure you don’t believe in stereotyping.

Trust God

onald Trump may be president, but he’s not the one who’s ultimately in charge. God is. And God is good. The Bible assures us that God takes a longer view and for higher purposes than we could even begin to comprehend.

Not every conservative lives by that belief, but it’s fair to say there are enough of us to influence the overall mood on our side of the American public. Sure, we’ve cringed over many of Obama’s decisions, yet we’ve been able to stand firm with the confidence that God is in control.

And I think that confidence explains our relative calm. It’s the reason we haven’t resorted to panic measures like your protests. There’s something to be said for bearing under bad news with equanimity. It would be healthier for you, as it was healthier for us while Obama served as president.

Your trust in God could include prayer:

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way. This is good. (1 Tim. 2:1-3a)

Calm Down

Finally, take a deep breath. If you can remember this is still a democracy, if you can take the long view, and especially if you can trust God, you might be able to calm your panic.

It will do you a lot of good. It will do us all good. (For more from the author of “Living under a President You Didn’t Want: Four Words of Encouragement for Liberals” please click HERE)

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Protests and News of Protests: The Noisiness of Negativity

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I’ve been watching the AP Exchange this morning — the behind-the-scenes site where news organizations pick up Associated Press stories for republication. It’s been nothing but grim there on this first day following Donald Trump’s inauguration. The world is “jittery,” says AP, virtually without exception around the globe. Women are protesting today in Washington. And in Prague. And in Copenhagen. And in Stockholm. …

Trump has been in office less than a day and already everyone hates him, right? Wrong.

Democracy comes in many flavors. One of them is the protest gathering. Protest can be a legitimate form of civil expression, if indeed it remains civil. But to really measure the mood of the people, it’s hard to beat an old-fashioned election.

Trump won in November. Why? Because enough people in enough states chose him over his challengers. Sure, he did better among men, but he still couldn’t have won without substantial numbers of women voting for him, including 53 percent of white women.

Likewise the global scene is more diverse than some news reports might lead you to believe. I surveyed major news sources from several countries this morning, and found only a minority of them raising cries of alarm.

Negativity’s Noisiness

But the media’s negativity is to be expected. It isn’t just that they have a bias against Trump, though of course they do; it’s also that just as anger is noisier than love, so also complaints naturally run louder than words of appreciation.

Social researchers are well aware of “negativity bias” in surveys. Ask a group of people to fill check boxes to express their opinions and you’ll probably get a balanced response that represents the mood of the whole group. Ask them to write open-ended comments, though, and you’ll hear a flood of negativity.

But you knew this already anyway. When are you most likely to speak up, to contact a store manager, for example? Once in a restaurant I asked our server to bring his manager to the table. He blanched in fear; I let him suffer with it. (I suppose that was not entirely kind of me.) Then I asked him to listen as I told his boss how greatly we appreciated his exceptionally good service. He wasn’t expecting that – because he knew how seldom people will register any opinion other than a complaint.

The beauty of elections is that they’re like the check-boxes on those surveys. They may be quiet — but they’re effective. They measure the mood of the people a lot better than either post-election celebrations or protests.

The protests will continue, but don’t let their noise obscure the rest of the news. When the country was asked who we wanted to be president, we chose Donald Trump. (For more from the author of “Protests and News of Protests: The Noisiness of Negativity” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Fake News Is Not New

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Is anyone besides me tired of hearing about “fake news”? You would think it was a new discovery on the level with fire. It isn’t It’s been going on for a long time.

The serpent wove a pretty fantastic story in the Garden of Eden. After all, fake news is simply a false narrative constructed to incite people to follow a specific agenda. The recent political campaign had more than its share of such. The current headlines do too.

The media has been exposed as less objective than we thought or hoped. Who could believe the accounts presented about Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton or President Obama? If the story fit your bias, it was tempting to certify it as true, and even pass it on as legitimate news.

Competing Narratives

During my early high school days, before I had a driver’s license, I had to catch a ride for the ten miles home after football practice. My uncle who lived just a mile away was a good prospect. He was the clerk of the district court and left for home at 5:00 p.m. most days. Sometimes when court was in session, he would be forced to stay later, and I would sit in the courtroom and watch the proceedings.

I was always amazed at how an attorney could take the presented evidence and create a narrative to account for it in such a way to benefit his desired conclusion. The jury had to decide between competing narratives. This has been going on a long time.

Back to the Garden. The serpent reinterpreted the circumstances and wove a story about how much better it would be if the original pair would distrust God and believe his version of reality instead. Later in history, Jesus said that the devil was a liar from the beginning, and “the father of lies.” All alternative narratives come from him, through the minds and mouths of those who, like the serpent, reject God’s word as final truth.

Sadly, many don’t even admit that such a dynamic is going on. They ignore the reality of spiritual deception and walk headlong into issues they have no ability to discern.

On Christmas night, the shepherds heard real news and it was good. A new day had come! A new King had arrived. Blessings would come from His reign. Sin would be forever defeated. Life as designed would be possible for those who submitted to Him. They would be given His name as authority and His Spirit as power to live.

Fake News, Real News

You might have heard some fake news. For instance, the accuser, Satan, likes to broadcast that God is angry with you and that you should probably avoid Him. After all, look at the circumstances around you. Why are you having all these problems? Surely this is incontrovertible evidence that God doesn’t want to bless you.

The good news that Jesus brings is that He took upon Himself the wrath of God for your sins. If you trust in Him, you are now viewed by God as righteous as Jesus. You are blessed in Christ. Your circumstances are opportunities to discover His grace and sufficiency.

Or, you might have heard that evil is so pervasive that it will ultimately win. Again, if you look at the circumstances, with all the bad things going on, it’s easy to wonder, if God is ruling, why so much evil?

But try looking at the good things going on. God is using His people to address issues of injustice and hostility, and will ultimately vindicate His own. Give thanks for the blessings and your eyes will open to more.

Finally, you might have heard that life is just unfair and random and you are one of the victims. Look at how the wicked are blessed and the righteous are ignored.

Far from being a victim, you are God’s delegated representative on earth. As one who trusts in Him, you carry His approval and His name. He is using you to address the issues that you see with the truth of the good news that is real.

There is real news and it is good. You can trust it if it aligns with the word of God. He can be trusted and so can His word. When you know the truth you can be free. (For more from the author of “Fake News Is Not New” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.