Why This Potential Pick for DHS Would Be a Huge Reversal on Trump’s Biggest Campaign Promise

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The possible appointment of Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Tex. (F, 56%) to the position of Homeland Security chief may finally signal to Donald Trump’s most loyal supporters that the president-elect is not going to follow through on his chief campaign proposals of border security and immigration.

McCaul, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, met with the president-elect Tuesday in Trump Tower. He is said to be among a handful of individuals in the running to become the next secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

During his presidential campaign, especially in the GOP primary, Trump promised to build a security wall along the southern border to strengthen domestic national security. He has also pledged to enforce immigration law and restore order to the immigration system as a whole.

Conservative critics of Rep. McCaul say he’d be a “very disappointing” pick to lead DHS, a gargantuan government department created in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

McCaul, of course, has also earned the scorn of many a conservative for floating the idea of challenging Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas (A, 96%) in a primary.

“We certainly hope that Donald Trump would not reward a deceptive pro-amnesty lawmaker like Michael McCaul with a Cabinet position,” William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, told the Washington Times on Tuesday. “That would be very disappointing to all of us that believed his campaign promises to secure our borders and deport millions of illegal immigrants under current U.S. laws.”

Immigration hawks are particularly startled by McCaul’s 2015 Secure Our Borders First Act. Critics say the Texas representative’s co-authored bill ignored policy solutions to deal with the millions of people living in America illegally, like the administration’s “catch and release” policy.

Another factor working against McCaul’s credibility to head the Cabinet department simply in charge of “keeping America safe” is his support for Obama’s Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) agenda, which seeks to prevent jihadist radicalization through a mix of community and counter-propaganda approaches.

The overarching goal of the CVE approach is to stop would-be jihadists before they act, by countering the destructive narratives that may radicalize them within their local communities and online. The problem, critics claim, is that the structure of the program does not actually lend itself to countering violent extremism.

Obama’s pilot program has been criticized as a “catastrophic failure,” primarily because it fails to address the roots of this brand of violence and extremism (jihadism), and engages Muslim organizations with extremist ties, instead of reformist outfits.

As Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a Muslim reformist and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy puts it, entrusting groups like these with counter-terrorism responsibilities is akin to “treating arsonists like firefighters.”

What was Rep. Mike McCaul’s role in this? After criticizing President Obama’s approach during the White House CVE conference in Feb. 2015, the House Homeland Security Committee chairman sponsored a bill to create an entire CVE office inside the Department of Homeland Security.

Other potential nominees for DHS secretary (and related national security posts) include: Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, California Rep. Duncan Hunter, former Pennsylvania Rep. Robert Smith Walker, Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, and former CIA officer Clare Lopez. (For more from the author of “Why This Potential Pick for DHS Would Be a Huge Reversal on Trump’s Biggest Campaign Promise” please click HERE)

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Will Trump and Republicans Finally Shut Down Suicidal Somali Immigration?

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For years, our political leaders have learned all the wrong lessons from Israel. They spent two decades trying to localize the jihad and diminish its significance to that of a conventional land dispute between “Israelis and Palestinians.” All the while forgetting Israel was confronted with a global Jihadist threat and that they were the harbinger of what was going to come to the West. Yet, rather than tightening immigration, Europe and the United States opened the doors to the Islamic world and are now facing the same enemy Israel has faced for years, albeit without their robust security apparatus. Now, with the news of the Ohio State attack fresh in our minds, we can appreciate that much like in Israel, bombings, stabbings, and vehicular attacks have become a regular occurrence.

If we don’t get serious about prioritizing our security needs through immigration policy, yesterday’s attack in Ohio State could be just the beginning of things to come. In fact, it is a reflection of a new norm that has already come to our shores. From Chattanooga and Fort Hood to San Bernardino and Orlando, we’ve witnessed jihad through mass shootings. From University of California Merced and the first Columbus, Ohio stabbing last year, to the Minneapolis mall stabbing and yesterday’s stabbing and vehicular attack at Ohio State, we are witnessing jihad by other means. The common thread is not the weapon of choice, but the jihadist motivation perpetrated on America by individual Muslim immigrants or children born to immigrant parents that have been admitted over the past two generations to this country.

Nowhere do our suicidal immigration policies exemplify this problem more than with Somali immigration over the past two decades. We’ve brought in over 130,000 Somali refugees ever since Somalia collapsed into a failed state in the early ‘90s. To my knowledge, we have never taken in a consistent and significant flow of refugees from any other country for this many consecutive years. While everyone is focusing on Syrian refugees, we have brought in at least as many Somali refugees this year, even though the conflict there has been raging for over a generation.

What have we gotten for our hospitality?

At least 40 young Somalis have been investigated for terrorism in the Minneapolis area since 2008 and some of them were convicted earlier this month. But the problem runs much deeper than a few dozen individuals. What sort of climate of neighbors, friends, family, and religious community leaders cultivates the mentality that leads to involvement in terrorism?

Last year, U.S. Attorney Andrew Lugar warned that there is “a terror-recruiting problem in Minnesota” among the Somali youth and that it does not stem from overseas but “may be their best friend right here in town.” Similarly, a federal judge warned earlier this month, “This community needs to understand there is a jihadist cell in this community. Its tentacles spread out.”

Last year, Ami Horowitz (no relation), a filmmaker who produces documentaries, recorded “man on the street” segments with Somali immigrants in Minneapolis’s Cedar Riverside community. His findings were quite disconcerting to say the least. Almost all of the dozen or so people he interviewed said they preferred Sharia law over the Constitution and felt it should be a crime to insult Muhammad. This random sampling, while more pronounced in the Minneapolis Somali community, jives with other findings that show these sentiments to be widespread among American Muslims. A poll commissioned by the Center for Security Policy last year found that 51 percent of Muslims living in America believe “Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to sharia.” Twenty-nine percent agree that violence against those who insult Mohammad is acceptable and 25 percent agree that violence against America can be justified as part of Global Jihad. Among males under the age of 45 that number rises to 36 percent.

Thus, the threat of homegrown terrorism is born out of the threat of homegrown subversion and a culture that is fundamentally incompatible with our values. This is why the entire debate over “vetting” refugees is a non-sequitur. Authorities will rarely discover official ties to known terror groups when investigating families with young children apply for refugee status from a Middle Eastern country. But a large number of these families subscribe to Sharia law and raise their children accordingly. In other words, they are not people “who are attached to our Country by its natural and political advantages,” a quality James Madison felt should be a litmus test for immigration.

What experience in America and Europe has shown over the past few years is that the children of immigrants are the ones who are most likely to be drawn into jihad. Yet, there is no way to vet people like Abdul Razak Ali Artan, the Ohio State jihadist, who came to America as a teenager. The Chattanooga shooter was just two years old when he came from Kuwait, the Elizabeth New Jersey bomber was a young boy when he came with his asylum-seeking family from Afghanistan, and the Orlando and San Bernardino terrorists were born after their families immigrated here.

Perforce, there is no way to vet a mentality born out of a religious worldview that rejects our values. Europe’s experience stands as a testament to the suicidal path we are following with regards to immigration, particularly from countries like Somalia.

As with any form of immigration, there will always be decent and productive people from any country. Somalia is no different. But it is downright reckless for our political leaders to continue risking our security when we are having such widespread difficulty with many of the Somali immigrants already in America. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali, herself a Somali immigrant, wrote last year, “I have no objection to other people coming to America to seek a better life for themselves and their families. My concern is with the attitudes many of these new Muslim Americans will bring with them – and with our capacity for changing those attitudes.”

This is Trump’s first big test. Instead of focusing on flag burning or other sensational headlines, he needs to return to his campaign promises to end these suicidal immigration policies. The Ohio State jihadist demonstrates the veracity of his campaign rhetoric on refugee resettlement. Why is Trump not being more vocal about it?

Furthermore, this will be Rep. Tom Price’s, R-Ga. (D, 62%) other major test, aside from overseeing the repeal of Obamacare. Many people forget that the head of HHS oversees the Office of Refugee Resettlement. He must immediately rein in the private resettlement contractors and enforce the letter and spirit of the statutes which require advanced consultation with states and to ensure that local communities are not fundamentally transformed and burdened by resettlement, as required by law. He should work with governors, such as Texas Governor Greg Abbot who are drawing the right conclusions from recent terror attacks committed by refugees:

As I noted last week, Trump can shut off immigration from dangerous countries at will on the first day of his presidency without an act of Congress. Concurrently, it would be advisable for Republicans in Congress to back up his executive order with permanent legislation to prioritize the safety of the American people over the cult of multiculturalism.

Over two decades after Black Hawk Down, the mistakes of our Somalia intervention are plaguing us more acutely than ever and have now become an enemy within. It’s time to stop the madness. (For more from the author of “Will Trump and Republicans Finally Shut Down Suicidal Somali Immigration?” please click HERE)

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The Gay Rabbi and My Mother’s Funeral

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There are few things more intimate than a gravesite funeral service attended by a handful of family members and friends, and if I were a homophobic person, you would think that I would have been mortified at the news that the rabbi presiding at the ceremony was openly gay. The truth is that I welcomed him warmly (knowing exactly who he was) and he in turn welcomed me warmly (knowing exactly who I am). In fact, he is a regular listener to my radio broadcast, and I’m writing this article with his full permission and encouragement.

You see, it really is possible to love your gay neighbor as yourself while at the same time opposing the goals of gay activism, and it really is possible to recognize that every human being is created in the image of God (yet fallen) while at the same time having massive differences on religious, cultural and moral issues.

In the case of my precious mom’s funeral, I was told by the local funeral director that there could be a potential issue with the Jewish cemetery in New Jersey where my mother would be buried because I am a well-known Messianic Jewish leader (Messianic Jews are Jews who believe that Jesus is the Messiah). There was also the issue of having a rabbi do the ceremony at the funeral, since my sister and her son, who would also be attending, were not believers in Jesus. Would the rabbi have a problem with my participation in the service?

After meeting with the funeral director in North Carolina (where my mother passed away), I heard from the rabbi, who is Reform (which is the largest and most liberal branch of Judaism in America). He wanted me to know that he had no problem with “interfaith” services, and he assured the cemetery things would be fine. He also wanted me to know — to my absolute surprise — that he was a regular listener to my radio show. How extraordinary!

I, for my part, told him to focus on my sister and her son in terms of the ceremony, since he was especially there for them, while I would concentrate on giving the eulogy and he need not be concerned about offending me in any way.

Out and Proud

When we finished our talk, I got online to see if I could find out more about him and, again to my absolute surprise, I learned that he was an out and proud gay rabbi who strongly advocated LGBT-affirming synagogues.

I immediately texted him to let him know that I had read about him online and that it appeared that our lives intersected in yet another unexpected way, making me all the more eager to meet him.

You might say, “But that’s outrageous! How could you let a gay rabbi officiate at something as sacred as your mother’s funeral service?”

Actually, the rabbi was there at the request of my sister and her son, so in that respect, the ceremony was for them. But from my perspective, it was altogether fitting that, on the day of my mother’s burial, I would be standing side by side with an openly gay rabbi and that we would be treating each other with kindness and respect.

You say, “But don’t you believe what the Torah says about homosexual practice?”

Yes, I certainly do, without apology, and the rabbi, Bill Kraus, is fully aware of my position. Yet he, for his part, was quite willing to perform the ceremony for my mother, even though some rabbis once branded me “Public Enemy Number One” because of my Jewish outreach work, while some gay activists have branded me one of the nation’s “most vicious homophobes.”

Our Shared Humanity

The reality is that I am not a Reform Jew and the rabbi is not a Messianic Jew, and so what brought us together last week was our shared humanity, our shared (albeit very different) Jewish heritages, and our commitment to honor the memory of the dead, me as a grieving son and he as a hospice and cemetery rabbi.

I truly believe all this was ordained by God rather than coincidental, and from my perspective, it illustrated what I have said for years: My profound opposition to LGBT activism is biblical, not personal, and I truly do care about those whose agenda I resist and whose “marriages” I do not recognize.

That’s why I often recount that my first organ teacher, when I was just 7-years-old, was an openly gay man named Russ, and he would often come to our house with his partner, Ed, a hair dresser. After teaching my sister and me, they would stay for dinner, and Ed would do my sister’s hair.

These are distinct childhood memories, and this reflects the openness with which our parents raised us. My faith in Jesus and my belief in the authority of God’s Word has only deepened my love for those who identify as LGBT, and only God knows the holy tension I live with in following the mandate to “reach out and resist,” meaning to reach out to the LGBT community with compassion while resisting their agenda with courage.

As for Rabbi Kraus, my greatest desire is that he comes to recognize Jesus as our Messiah, and I imagine that one of his greatest desires would be to introduce me to his “husband” so as to lovingly challenge my views of gay couples.

In any event, the funeral service was meaningful to both of us in that it provided an unexpected opportunity in a most personal (and painful setting) to demonstrate that, while we can be deeply entrenched, ideological opponents, we are even more deeply committed to treating each other with kindness and respect, seeking to win the other over with a message of truth and love.

That’s why we have been texting each other since the funeral, that’s why Rabbi Kraus was kind enough to check on my daughter Megan and I to be sure we arrived safely home (she traveled with me to New Jersey for the funeral), and that’s why he assured me that his comments to his friends and colleagues about me were as respectful of my comments about him (he heard me speak about him on the radio after the funeral).

In that spirit, then, may I suggest a prayer that you could pray for both the rabbi and me? It would simply be, “God, bring these men into your very best plan for their lives, whatever that plan might be. Where either one is following the truth, affirm them, and where either one is following error, correct them.” I welcome that prayer warmly and believe that Rabbi Kraus would as well.

As for those who think I’m going “soft” on LGBT issues, it would appear they have not heard a single word I’ve said for the last 10-plus years. (The same would apply to my LGBT critics who would be shocked to read this article.) I do what I do because I seek to love God with all heart and love my neighbor as myself. That’s why I take the stands that I take, and that’s why I deeply care about Rabbi Kraus and his gay friends and colleagues.

Thank you in advance for praying that prayer for us. (For more from the author of “The Gay Rabbi and My Mother’s Funeral” please click HERE)

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Why Intellectuals Adore Tyrants Like Castro

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My best friend in high school was Will, a Cuban exile, who later went on to become a Catholic priest. When I complained that one of our teachers was a “tyrant,” Will laughed at me ruefully. “You have no idea what that word means.” He’d lived in a tyranny, and knew what it was like.

His father and grandfather had both supported Castro against the corrupt usurper Batista — then turned against the regime when it betrayed all its liberal promises, and turned a once-prosperous island into a rusting, starving outpost of the dismal Soviet bloc. Both those men were sent to prison camps, where they were tortured periodically during their multi-year sentences. “My father never wanted to take off his shirt in front of me, so I wouldn’t see all the scars,” Will told me.

Will recounted the heavy pressure his grade school teachers put on him not to go to church. “You should come to our parade, instead!” The Cuban Communist Party sponsored a festive march with bright red flags every Sunday morning, to draw the children from God and toward the Party. Will remembered the heavy emphasis that Cuban schools put on literacy: “They wanted everyone to be able to read their propaganda, and the orders sent by the Party. So there was no excuse for disobedience.”

Finally, after a harrowing escape from that prison island, Will and his parents made their way to New York City, to pursue the ordinary middle class lives that the poor worldwide still dream of — and that too many self-styled intellectuals hold in bemused contempt. That was one thing that Will always found puzzling. “Do these people have any idea what people in Cuba would give to live an American middle-class life? Or even a working-class life?” he would ask me, flabbergasted. In fact, many thousands gave their lives, sailing rickety boats through shark-infested waters, sometimes with the Cuban military shooting at them, as Castro had ordered.

Will would wonder aloud why so many intellectuals — and wannabes, like Hollywood actors — trooped off to Cuba over the decades? Why did they rally to the support of a vicious dictator who

drove one of the wealthiest nations in Latin America into poverty and stagnation;

oppressed and destroyed its middle class, nationalizing virtually all private property;

filled his jails with priests, nuns, businessmen, and ordinary citizens;

and tortured dissident authors and ordinary people whose only “crime” was that they’d been denounced as homosexual?

Why did anti-poverty icon Dorothy Day proclaim, “God bless Castro” in 1961, and poo-poo the obvious signs that he was imposing a totalitarian government that crushed Cuba’s churches? Why did the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, just offer an anodyne eulogy for Castro’s death that has set off a worldwide parody epidemic of comparably blind, bland praise for Pol Pot, Hitler, and Idi Amin?

Socialism: A Disease of the Spirit

There is something deeper going on than simple partisan blindness. What we are seeing grows from a disease of the spirit. We need to diagnose it.

The attraction that lures intellectuals to socialist tyrants like a dog to its master’s leg has its roots in three temptations, that build on one another.

Snobbery

To this day, “bourgeois” is an epithet that college students and teachers toss off with a satisfied smirk, in the same way that too many white Americans used to sling the “n-word.” But it’s still perfectly respectable, even clubbable, to scorn the middle class. In fact, it’s a method of social-climbing, a way to convey to listeners that you — of course — have always enjoyed the perks of good education, nutrition, economic opportunities, and personal freedom. No need for you to scramble after them. In fact, you are actually jaded by them, like an archduke bored with his family’s art collection.

You now have seen beyond the materialistic allure of abundance and social mobility — without, of course, sacrificing either one by embracing actual poverty or relocating to live in some socialist tyranny. (Not one leftist American threatened that if Donald Trump were elected, he would move to Cuba.) Piercing the bourgeois veil has freed you up for the next stage in socialist enlightenment.

Secret Knowledge

Unlike the sweaty, materialistic masses, you have enjoyed an education that would have put most aristocrats over the centuries to shame. You have read enough Marx or Zizek or Zinn in college to see through the empty rhetoric of a free society, to perceive the secret core of pulsating truth: that the status quo, which has cossetted you, is in fact profoundly evil. It is a mechanism by which the wealthy “one percent” hijack control of society’s money and power, while duping ordinary workers with the fleeting dream of a comfortable, peaceable life. That dream numbs these exploited masses to the damage being done to them, and dulls their appetite for struggle.

So it is your business to enlighten them — whether they want your enlightenment or not. In fact that is your duty, as one who has risen above their sad obsessions with cars and houses and tacky white picket fences, to the cold and austere vision offered by the socialist conspiracy theory. It is also deeply satisfying to know that you have a kind of political and economic X-ray vision, which sets you apart from the vast majority of dupes and victims. That superpower which you have gained introduces you to an elite, a class of supermen who make it their business to seize and redirect the course of human history.

God-Like Power

The great Catholic freedom advocate Frederic Bastiat observed that the socialists of his day (the mid-nineteenth century) imagined themselves to be philosopher-kings in exile. They awaited only the moment when they could impose their private designs for a perfect society by the force of the state on millions of hapless citizens — those who had been too blinkered and deluded by bourgeois slogans to know what they actually wanted.

As Bastiat put it, these socialist thinkers imagined their fellow men to be shrubs and trees, while they themselves were the gardeners. The men of Bastiat’s day had at least the excuse that they had not witnessed the Gulag, the famine in Ukraine, the tens of millions of needless deaths imposed by Mao in China, or Pol Pot in Cambodia. They didn’t dream that the shears they’d need to use to carve up human nature into the new shape of Socialist man would be drenched in innocent blood.

What possible excuse is there for favoring socialism today? (For more from the author of “Why Intellectuals Adore Tyrants Like Castro” please click HERE)

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The Left Continues to Self-Destruct

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Rather than learn some valuable lessons from the resounding electoral victory of Donald Trump and the Republican Party, it appears that the left is lurching further leftward, thereby paving the way to its own demise.

Here are some recent examples.

The Washington Examiner claims, according to inside sources, that “CNN is taking an increasingly negative approach toward its coverage of President-elect Trump, causing at least some tension within the network.”

Another inside source told the Examiner that “CNN has always pledged to hold Trump accountable and that’s what we should be doing.” However, “Since the election, CNN has out MSNBCed MSNBC,” meaning, become even more liberal than the very liberal MSNBC. “In the long term,” the source said,“that’s a dangerous place to be.”

Does CNN not recognize that its reputation for being the Clinton News Network has greatly damaged its credibility? Does the network not understand that appearing to be even more blatantly biased against the president-elect will do far more harm than good?

Perhaps even worse is a major article in the Washington Post, claiming (in the words of the Post’s Executive Editor Marty Baron) that a “Russian propaganda effort helped spread fake news during election,” according to “independent researchers.” (These “independent researchers” are behind the anonymous PropOrNot website, which was the primary source of the attempted exposé.)

According to Ben Norton and Glenn Greenwald, writing on TheIntercept.com on November 26, “This Post report was one of the most widely circulated political news articles on social media over the last 48 hours, with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of U.S. journalists and pundits with large platforms hailing it as an earth-shattering exposé. It was the most-read piece on the entire Post website on Friday after it was published.”

And what, exactly, did this article claim? (Remember that we’re talking about the Washington Post, not the National Enquirer.) Norton and Greenwald explain, “The group’s list of Russian disinformation outlets includes WikiLeaks and the Drudge Report, as well as Clinton-critical left-wing websites such as Truthout, Black Agenda Report, Truthdig, and Naked Capitalism, as well as libertarian venues such as Antiwar.com and the Ron Paul Institute.”

So, it is the evil and ubiquitous Russian Empire that is fueling the right-wing fires of Drudge Report (which, of course, is simply a news aggregator rather than a news manufacturer) along with the libertarian fires of the Ron Paul Institute. Who knew?

So much for the liberal media being careful not to discredit itself in the aftermath of its election misreporting, because of which one can only wonder how long the New York Times slightly introspective mea culpa will last and how deep it will go.

The Times did, though, make a strong appeal for the Democrats to put their emphasis back on the economy rather than on leftist agenda items. But have the Democrats learned their lesson? Their consideration of Rep. Keith Ellison for party chair indicates that they are not getting the message either.

As noted by Fred Lucas on The Stream, “The leading candidate to be the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., has said he wants the Democratic Party to come out against the Second Amendment, compared the 9/11 attacks to the Nazi Reichstag fire, and was affiliated with the controversial Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam.”

Lucas also points out that Ellison “once said eventual nominee Hillary Clinton would have to prove she’s not a Republican to get his support.” Seriously?

Do the Democrats really think that identifying a radical-left Muslim as their party chairman will help them regain political power in America? Have they learned nothing from the Trump victory?

To give just one more example of the left’s failure to put its finger on the pulse of America, consider ESPN’s response to the death of Fidel Castro. But first, to put this in context, note that, in the month of October alone, ESPN lost 621,000 subscribers, which is a staggering number. And while it is impossible to state with certainty that some of this loss was due to ESPN’s liberal political views (baseball legend Curt Schilling accused ESPN of being “bigoted and intolerant” towards conservatives like himself), note that in January, 2016, an ESPN memo advised that “we should refrain from political editorializing, personal attacks or ‘drive-by’ comments regarding the candidates and their campaigns (including but not limited to on platforms such as Twitter or other social media).”

How, then, did ESPN report the death of the Cuban dictator? It praised him for his sporting accomplishments, with the headline of the 1,100 word article reading, “Fidel Castro, 90, fused sports into Cuba’s national identity.”

To be fair, the extended obituary did speak candidly (albeit non-condemningly) of Castro’s conflicts with America and did mention the negative effects of some of his economic policies. But rather than devote even one syllable to the many atrocities committed by Castro (see here and here and here for some examples), ESPN chose to celebrate Cuba’s athletic prowess, noting, “Soon after coming to power, Castro recognized the potential benefits of national excellence in athletics and Cuba eventually became one of the strongest sporting nations in the world — despite a population only slightly greater than New York City’s.”

Yes, ESPN reminds us, “At the Olympics, Castro’s athletes were at their best,” closing the article with a recent (and representative) quote from Castro, one meant to present his defiance of America in a positive light. What fight he had, to the end!

In light of this small but representative sampling, I have a word of free advice for the “progressive” left wing, including CNN, the Washington Post, the Democratic Party, and ESPN: Just as Communism rose and fell, you too will go into extended decline unless you learn from the error of your ways and make a course correction.

For the media, that means reporting the news rather than manufacturing the news and striving for unbiased, honest reporting. For the Democrats, that means stepping back from radical leftist causes. For ESPN, it means staying out of politics and being a network devoted entirely to sports.

Will the left learn? I do hope so, but I’m not holding my breath. (For more from the author of “The Left Continues to Self-Destruct” please click HERE)

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How Abolishing the Electoral College Would Destroy the Power of the States

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Nearly a month after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in this year’s presidential election, progressive groups and activists are attempting to undermine the result along with fundamental institutions created by the Founding Fathers.

Clinton appears to have won the national popular vote in 2016, primarily fueled by massive landslides in populous Democratic states like California and New York. This has sparked efforts to do away with the state-based and not entirely democratic Electoral College.

Though a huge part of the anti-Electoral College push is sour grapes in the wake of a surprise electoral defeat, it serves the broader interest of the progressive movement’s goal to both delegitimize the incoming administration and subvert the idea of federalism as enshrined in the Constitution.

Electoral College Worked in 2016

The Electoral College was carefully designed by the Founders after lengthy deliberation at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. The design is this: Americans don’t cast their vote for president, but instead for electors pledged to their preferred candidate. Each state has a set number of electors based on the total number of representatives and senators. You can read about why the Founders created this seemingly complex system here.

Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, who was fairly popular with progressives just a week ago, supported the Electoral College process in Federalist 68. He said that “if the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent.”

But a number of prominent Democrats have ignored Hamilton and called for an end to the Electoral College post-election.

Opponents of the Electoral College claim that the institution is fundamentally flawed. The fact that the winner of the most recent presidential contest didn’t have the highest total vote further demonstrates why it needs to be scrapped, according to their logic.

This narrative couldn’t be farther from the truth, as the issues surrounding the election prove exactly why the Electoral College is such an excellent system for the United States.

For instance, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein is leading a movement to recount votes in three key states that Trump won: Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. This was in part justified by the idea that Russia had tampered with the election.

The recount process will likely be messy, but it would be vastly more complicated if America had to undergo a national as opposed to state-level recount. Votes have trickled in for the last month, and it is possible that without the state-based system it might still be unclear who the next president would be.

As ugly as the 2016 election was, it would have been far uglier without the moderating, stable process afforded by the Electoral College.

Having states conduct their own elections is a strength of our system, not a weakness. For instance, without the Electoral College and respect for state powers, it would be difficult for America to experiment with solutions to prevent voter fraud. This should be a priority for those suddenly concerned about voting integrity.

Assault on Federalism

What is lost in the Electoral College debate is the underlying attack on America’s cherished and inherited idea of federalism.

The Founders in their wisdom designed this republic with the intent of checking ambition with ambition, and delegating specific powers to both the national as well as state governments. They created a nation in which states could operate independently, experimenting with different policies and laws to fit their people.

The elimination of the Electoral College would be just another blow to the role of the states in the American system of government. No longer would presidential candidates have to appeal to the farmers of rural Iowa alongside the bankers of urban New York. They would be incentivized to campaign directly to the interests of the largest population centers alone.

The reasoning used to abolish the Electoral College could easily be applied to some of the most important aspects of America’s constitutional republic.

If the Electoral College is simply an ancient, undemocratic, and defunct relic of the Founding, then why isn’t the Senate? After all, treating the states equally and allowing them only two senators regardless of population is silly if one thinks the states hold no special place in our system. One writer was open about this in a Washington Post op-ed calling for abolishing the states entirely.

“Times have changed, and we need to rethink the notion of the ‘United States of America,’” Lawrence R. Samuel wrote in The Washington Post. “Our states are no longer culturally diverse regions with their own respective identities; rather, they are artificially constructed geographic entities that certainly would not be formed today.”

Samuel concluded:

A federation of states was a wonderful idea in the late 18th century, but represents an unnecessary and costly burden in the early 21st. Two layers of government—federal and local—offers a cleaner, more sensible, and much more affordable system than our current one …

This is the essential issue at the heart of the Electoral College that extends far beyond the results of a single election.

The left wants to fundamentally change the system of federalism so venerated and protected by the founding generation. But those who believe that the United States was built on timeless ideas about man’s relation to man should look to preserve the system that allowed America to rise to the status of a superpower while preserving individual liberty. (For more from the author of “How Abolishing the Electoral College Would Destroy the Power of the States” please click HERE)

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I’ve Had It With the Phrase ‘You White Evangelicals’

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A gentleman named Luis posted a lengthy comment to a YouTube video where I explained why I ultimately decided to vote for Donald Trump, and I cite his comment here because it reflects the sentiments of many others who have declared open season on white, conservative Christians in America.

Luis began by saying, “I respected you as a wise Christian Dr. Brown,” but that respect disappeared when he noticed who I voted for. As he stated, “It makes me think of you as the same hollow headed Christians who think they vote on principles when there’s nothing to vote on principles for.”

So, despite my many caveats and concerns regarding Donald Trump, and despite the important pro-life, pro-family, pro-religious liberties of the Republican platform, no solid principles of any kind could cause anyone to vote for Trump. There must be other reasons, none of them good.

Of course, Luis is not alone in his disdain for Trump — he does a good job of summarizing the most egregious charges against Trump, be they true or not — which is why I stated numerous times in writing and on radio that I respected those who could not vote for him.

The Flippant and Easily Flipped Charge of White Evangelical Bias

Unfortunately, Luis is not alone in claiming that a vote for Trump was a reflection of white evangelical bias. As he explained, “Your view is casually related to the view of white evangelicals in this country but if you ask Christian Hispanics and black and Asian Christians, our views are totally different. Why would that be Mr. Brown?”

Actually, Luis could have asked the same question four years ago or eight years ago, when roughly the same percentage of black and Hispanic Christians voted Democrat. Was it because Romney and McCain were also evil men, or was it because these minorities have a history of voting for Democrats? And what of the 28 percent of Hispanics, 27 percent of Asians, and 8 percent of blacks who voted for Trump? Were they as blind as the many white evangelicals who voted for him? Were they also hollow-headed and lacking in principles?

After making the claim that I voted for Trump because of pressure from my radio audience (is he referring to the large number of African American listeners or the large number of anti-Trump listeners?) he continued, “But you have become the mockery of this world who can’t trust you because of your amoral morality and have show[n] us the minorities that your huge bible studies, books and Universities are worthless when politics are involved, because of your grandeur white evangelical spirituality all us Christians will suffer with this man in the White House.”

There you have it in a nutshell. Trump will be our next president because of the sinful “grandeur” of “white evangelical spirituality.”

Does Luis really believe that it was some kind of white nationalism that caused so many evangelicals to vote for Trump? Did we all just wake up one day and decide to sell our souls to the devil?

Racism is Sometimes in the Eye of the Beholder

But there’s more. Luis writes, “And if it’s true that God chooses and deposes Kings, when Obama is and was President you white evangelicals disrespected him as many times as possible calling him a Muslim, a dictator and the Antichrist and since it is a biblical imperative and spiritual law that people reap what they sow, it might come to be that all you call President Obama will become true in President Donald Trump.”

There it is again. A professing Christian man writing with passion and conviction throws around the phrase “you white evangelicals,” as if he himself is exempt from racism. After all, he is (presumably) a minority Christian and therefore, as a member of a minority, cannot himself be guilty of racism (at least, according to the latest, PC definitions of racism, which claim that only the majority class can be racist).

The reality is that racism is a two-way street, and just as we must call out anti-black or anti-Hispanic or anti-Asian or anti-Native American racism when we see it, we must call out anti-white racism too. Justice and fairness and honesty require it, whether it’s PC or not to do so.

Critics can shout “white privilege” all they want, but truth is truth. They can claim that minorities cannot be guilty of racism against the cultural majority, since racism, they say, has to do with oppression. But that is a conveniently manufactured definition of racism rather than the real definition of racism.

Of course, some people claim that you can only address the sins and shortcomings of your own community, not someone else’s community. But if that is true, it would mean that blacks, for example, could not call out racism when they saw it among whites. Does anyone really believe this? And can we not address sins within our own, larger community, namely, the Body of Christ?

Unfortunately, Luis makes the all-too-common error of assuming that all criticism of President Obama was based on race, failing to realize that: 1) our issues had everything to do with the content of his policies and nothing to do with the color of his skin; 2) liberal criticism of President George W. Bush was as least as harsh as conservative criticism of Obama; 3) those making the ridiculous claim that Obama was the antichrist did so despite his race rather because of his race (which prophecies speak of a black antichrist?); and 4) most of those falsely claiming that Obama was a Muslim did so because of his background (being the son of a Muslim who was listed as a Muslim while in school in Indonesia) and because of his pro-Islamic words, not because of his skin color.

Unfortunately, like many of those who throw around the race card today, Luis fails to see his own blind spots, asking, “Who of you white Christians will stand now and openly accuse Donald Trump of his policies that will harm minorities?”

We Can Do Better Than This

Is he truly unaware that, for more than one year, prominent white Christians raised many concerns regarding Trump’s policies, even leading the way in the Never Trump movement? And is Luis truly unaware that many of those who voted for Trump believe that, in the end, he will prove himself to be the president of all Americans, including minorities?

Again, I fully understand why many Americans, including Christians, have deep concerns about President-elect Trump, and I recognize (and have many times addressed) the highly divisive nature of his campaign.

I also understand how his campaign and election have unearthed a lot of ugly attitudes (perhaps among Christians in particular), one of which is an anti-white hostility, a hostility fueled by bitterness, judgmentalism, and misinformation.

I urge my brothers and sisters in the Lord to search their hearts and ask Him to reveal racism of any kind – be it anti-black, anti-Hispanic, anti-Jewish, anti-Asian, anti-Native American, or anti-white. It is unbecoming for the family of God and contrary to our nature as followers of Jesus.

Surely we can do better than this. (For more from the author of “I’ve Had It With the Phrase ‘You White Evangelicals'” please click HERE)

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How Trump Can Reshape US Policy Toward Refugees

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As a candidate for president, Donald Trump advocated a restrictive U.S. policy toward refugee resettlement and other forms of legal immigration.

In his speech accepting the Republican nomination for president, Trump said he would suspend immigration from countries that are “compromised by terrorism.”

Trump, when he assumes office in January, will find that he has significant authority to fulfill his pledge.

“He can decide how many refugees we take and from what regions of the world we take them,” said Kevin Appleby, senior director of international migration policy at the Center for Migration Studies in New York, in an interview with The Daily Signal. “He has a pretty broad brush to pick and choose who he thinks is worthy of admission to the United States.”

Trump has not clarified his position on refugees since becoming president-elect.

But throughout his campaign, Trump targeted the U.S. refugee resettlement program, arguing the government’s vetting system needed to be tougher, especially for Syrians fleeing war and terrorism.

The Obama administration says the current vetting process for Syrian refugees is the most stringent screening for any category of legal immigrant. The process can take up to two years and involves in-person interviews, health tests, and other security checks with multiple government agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department.

About 14,500 Syrians have been resettled in the U.S. since last October. There is no known case of a Syrian refugee being involved in a terror plot in the U.S. In January, the U.S. government arrested two men on terrorism-related charges who came to the U.S. as refugees from Iraq.

In September, the Obama administration announced that it wants to resettle 110,000 refugees from around the world—including a substantial number of Syrians—for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. That’s up from 85,000 refugees last year.

The Refugee Act of 1980 gives the U.S. president unilateral power over how many refugees the country admits each fiscal year, and where they come from.

Congress is only consulted in the process and does not get an up or down vote on the numbers.

Traditionally, the refugee resettlement gets broad bipartisan support, but this year, many Republicans protested President Barack Obama’s pledge to raise the number admitted to the U.S.

“This has become a politically correct program where we are led to believe that we have to take refugees from all over the world no matter how dangerous the threat is,” said Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, in an interview with The Daily Signal. “We are out here trying to keep Americans safe. That is our No. 1 duty we have as elected officials.”

Babin has sponsored legislation pausing refugee resettlement from “terrorism hot spots” to the U.S.

He was among 37 Republicans who tried, but failed, to attach language to a must-pass spending bill passed in September that would have blocked federal funding to refugees from Syria, other countries in the Middle East, and North Africa until national security officials could guarantee that terrorists cannot infiltrate the screening process.

“Trump has the authority to do what we in Congress could not do, and suspend this program immediately, particularly from Islamic terrorist hot spots,” Babin said. “I urge him to follow through on his campaign promise.”

Refugee and immigration experts say Trump can indeed use his executive powers immediately to keep Obama’s 110,000 refugee target number for this fiscal year, or reduce it. He can even pause the program completely, or restrict refugees from specific countries.

“Trump has the authority to resettle 110,000 like Obama or zero refugees,” said Matthew La Corte, an immigration policy analyst at the Niskanen Center. “That is his decision with consultation with Congress and the State Department.”

Trump can also limit other forms of legal immigration to the U.S., as he and his incoming administration have hinted they may try and do.

Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” this weekend, Reince Priebus, the incoming White House chief of staff, said, “We’re going to temporarily suspend immigration from [certain countries or regions] until a better vetting system is put in place.”

Under U.S. law, the president has authority to use a proclamation to suspend the entry of “any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States [who] would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

Over six decades ago, Congress, worried that communists would try and enter the U.S., authorized this executive authority as part of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.

Obama used this power in 2011 when he issued a presidential proclamation suspending the entry of “any alien who planned, ordered, assisted, aided, and abetted, committed or otherwise participated in” war crimes or other violations of humanitarian law.

But immigration experts say the power has not been applied as broadly as Trump has proposed.

For example, early in his campaign, Trump called for “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the U.S.” He later removed the reference to religion and instead proposed barring people from regions of the world with a “proven history of terrorism” against the U.S. and the West.

“The statutory authority is clearly there for Trump to do what he said he would do,” said William Stock, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, in an interview with The Daily Signal. “But the power under the law has usually been used in a case-by-case manner, impacting narrow classes of people. The broader the assertion of the authority, the more likely a successful court challenge against it.”

Opponents of Trump’s proposals, including refugee advocates and national security experts, say that limiting U.S. assistance to the most vulnerable of immigrants is detrimental to the fight against terrorism.

They say that such a withdrawal from the world makes the case for terrorist groups such as the Islamic State that seek to turn Muslims against the West.

“We are at a pivotal moment in our country,” Appleby said. “If we start closing our doors, pulling up the drawbridge will undermine our national interests. It gives the extremists more power to demonize us and use it as a propaganda tool. We are looked at as a humanitarian leader, and if we withdraw that commitment, the rest of the world will follow and then we will really have a crisis on our hands.” (For more from the author of “How Trump Can Reshape US Policy Toward Refugees” please click HERE)

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MARK LEVIN: Populism, Nationalism and Americanism

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I would like to discuss something rather foundational.

What do you think about this “new nationalism”? Do you think it’s new? What does it mean? Does it mean putting America first? Does it, in fact, put America first? Has this new nationalism been tried before? It very much has.

NEW NATIONALISM

The phrase “new nationalism” was actually coined by Theodore Roosevelt in a speech he gave in Kansas on Sept. 1, 1910. In that speech, Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, later to become a Progressive Party candidate, in essence denounced the Declaration of Independence, and embraced the new nationalism.

He rejected the American heritage, in many respects, the limitations placed on the federal government, and he argued for a powerful central government that would take care of the general welfare of the people. It was a quintessential, aggressive, progressive speech. This is a speech that the Left venerates. In fact, Barack Obama, just a few years ago, visited the exact site where Theodore Roosevelt gave this speech. He gave his own speech and was extremely complimentary of Roosevelt’s.

Roosevelt thought that the general welfare of the people — their health, education, basic jobs and wages, and so forth — should be determined by the federal government. The Republican Party was the progressive party. The Democrat Party became the progressive party. You had two Progressive Era parties. The Republican Party, under Theodore Roosevelt, then William Howard Taft (albeit less so), and then of course Woodrow Wilson, who took the Democrat Party to the hard Left in what’s known as the Progressive Era.

Now before Theodore Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson, there were a few decades of what was called the Populism Era. There was even a political party called the People’s Party. The People’s Party was a populist party. It would become, in effect, a branch of the progressive movement and it was eventually devoured by that movement.

AMERICANISM

These terms — populism, nationalism, progressivism — are not the same as Americanism. Americanism is the embrace of our founding principles. Americanism is the embrace of our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. Americanism is the embrace of free market capitalism, not crony capitalism. But for free market capitalism, there wouldn’t be a great middle class in this country. But for free market capitalism, we could have gone the way of Russia or these other communist regimes — the so-called proletariat rising up.

People forget the results of free market capitalism — our trajectory from electricity in every home to heat and eventually air conditioning. Free market capitalism gave birth to new forms of energy, which massively improved the lifestyles of almost all Americans. It made possible everything that runs on fossil fuels, including automobiles, engines, things we take for granted. It made possible the production and the refinement of steel. In other words, it created this great explosion of industrial America, making us the greatest, most powerful economic force on the face of the earth (and eventually, the greatest military force on the face of the earth). That’s what free market capitalism gave.

The progressives are an offshoot of the European socialists. Of course, there are 15,000 types of socialism. Broadly speaking, it is a mentality. The Europeans never had a Declaration of Independence. They had their own history to deal with, including monarchies and feudalism. We never had that in America. We were a clean slate. In many ways, that’s what enabled us to do what we did.

COMMERCE, TARIFFS, AND TAXES

When the framers of the Constitution met in Philadelphia, they didn’t sit there and think about how to create the most powerful central government they could to regulate trade. In fact, they included a Commerce Clause in our Constitution, the purpose of which is to promote commerce and trade between and among the states and between and among countries. Because we were getting killed with protectionism, from state to state and from our country to other countries. We couldn’t compete.

The purpose of the Commerce Clause is not to prohibit commerce. It is not to enable big government.

It is also true that they used tariffs at the time, after the Constitution was adopted, because they didn’t have an income tax, and in part, those tariffs were necessary to fund the federal government. But they weren’t for the purpose of empowering far-off Washington bureaucrats and politicians to manipulate the economy.

But back to the Progressive Era. These words — nationalism, populism, progressive — they’ve been around a very long time. They gave us, in 1909, the 16th Amendment — the income tax amendment, the federal income tax amendment. The vehicle for government to “let’s get the rich,” to get American companies to “pay their fair share.”

These words gave us the 17th Amendment in 1912. In the name of populism, we get to elect our senators directly. It’s very appealing, but we’re not supposed to be a pure democracy. We’re not supposed to be a populist society. We’re supposed to be a republic. Two of the worst ideas during the Progressive Era: the 16th and 17th Amendments — pushed by Republicans. Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. Both parties strongly supported it.

Then came President Herbert Hoover. President Hoover was a very successful businessman, and he believed he could manage the economy. He was very concerned about free market capitalism; he was very concerned about the loss of American jobs, the loss of American industry and so forth.

In 1922, again, the progressive Republicans — the populist nationalist Republicans — controlled Congress. And they passed the Fordney–McCumber Tariff; it covered all agricultural imports. And thus began trade wars. Other countries don’t sit back and watch this. They put their own tariffs in place. Our farmers were severely economically affected by this. They couldn’t sell into foreign markets, which they needed to do. So, in a short period of time, there was a recession. I call this a soft depression. Then in 1930, rather than protect farmers, a Republican Congress came up with Smoot–Hawley, enacting tariffs on over 20,000 imported products, which resulted in a worldwide tariff war.

In virtually every industry — ironically enough, in the automobile industry in particular — we couldn’t sell many products overseas. Countries responded to us and many of them ganged up against us. Of course, after the 1929 stock market crash, they were trying to fix these things. To save American jobs and stop them from going overseas, they destroyed American jobs, farmers and businesses. Of course, the federal government wasn’t getting the revenue it needed given what had taken place. So what did they do to compensate?

They turned to that precious federal income tax. They passed something called the Revenue Act of 1932. It increased the personal income tax dramatically, boosting the standard rate from 1.5 percent to five percent, and in some cases to eight percent. It placed a large surtax on higher income earners, leading to a total tax rate, depending on your income, anywhere from 25 percent to 63 percent. It massively increased the corporate income tax, along with several taxes on other forms of income and wealth.

What did that do? It further killed the economy. The Republicans did what the Democrats would later to: they panicked. They knew what they had started and how the chain-effect had led to this new suffocation of growth. You see, there was a small New Deal, under Hoover, before there was the big New Deal. Hoover put in place the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to lend money to banks, a home-loan bank, so the government could help the construction sector. Direct loans to state governments for spending on relief, infrastructure, and the Public Works Administration that could better coordinate federal public works and state public works, creating jobs for the unemployed.

Sound familiar? This all came along before we even got to Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. This was populism, nationalism, progressivism.

Franklin Roosevelt raised taxes to 90 percent. He created the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Civil Works Administration, the National Industrial Recovery Act, and the Public Works Administration. They took over a huge percentage of the gross domestic product. They had wage and price controls throughout all industries, even created trust councils that would oversee the grouping of various industries and regulate them just to make sure people weren’t “ripped off.”

We had double-digit unemployment. So a bad recession was turned into a depression, which was turned into a horrendous depression that lasted a decade. Study after study has said that the government did the exact wrong thing. They had a double-digit unemployment for years. No matter how much taxes were raised, no matter how many programs were put in place, no matter how much redistribution of wealth occurred, no matter how powerful the central government became, the people were miserable and suffering.

Why is this history important?

Because these terms are being thrown around by a lot of people who don’t quite comprehend the history behind them.

THE NIXON PERIOD

Moving into the Nixon period: We had wage and price controls that were set in place in 1971 to try to attack inflation. But what did wage and price controls do? Terrible dislocation of markets. And when the controls were lifted, of course, they spun out of control. Massive spending and massive redistribution of wealth.

Now Donald Trump is proposing $1 trillion in infrastructure spending — twice as much as Hillary Clinton did. They insist this is going to create jobs for the middle class and union workers and so forth.

How many more times are we going to do this? How many more times are we going to take money out of the private sector to fund some mastermind’s idea about how to create jobs?The great power of the American economy was not created by government or tariffs or protectionism or progressivism or populism or nationalism. It was created by Americanism, by Americans.

Economies go through evolutions. There was the horse and buggy, now we have the car. We used whale blubber to light lanterns, now we have electricity. Are we supposed to kill economic progress and evolution that improves lifestyles for the vast majority of Americans? Any country would kill to have the standard of living that we have in this country. Of course, you’d never know that listening to our politicians.

And yet it is they — with their government departments, their government agencies, their 80,000 pages of regulations this year and last year and the year before — it is they who destroy American jobs. It is they who create economic dislocation.

Man isn’t perfect. That means all of us together are imperfect. But if I make a mistake or you make a mistake, well then, I might feel it and 25 other people may feel it. But if I’m making these decisions for all of society, for the entire economy, and I happen to get elected to office so I have the power to do it, any decisions or mistakes I make impact everybody. That’s why you do not want concentrated control, centralized control of decision making.

What we lack is more economic competition, because the government plays favorites through its tax schemes and so forth. Our economy needs to be unleashed. We’ve have tried more government spending for a century. A trillion dollars over 10 years? This is a massive expense, and yet, in the big scheme of things, when you look at our GDP, it is a drop in the bucket. On the one hand, it bloats federal spending and the federal debt; on the other, the economy is so big it’s of minimal consequence. Whether these ideas come from Theodore Roosevelt or William Howard Taft or Herbert Hoover or Franklin Roosevelt, whether these ideas come from Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, or yes, Donald Trump, they’re the same warmed-over ideas that do not work. This is why we believe in individualism, capitalism, and constitutionalism. That’s Americanism.

JACKSONIAN POPULISM

People romanticize the Jacksonian period. First of all, ironically, people who want to compare Trump to Jackson: Jackson, in his first race for the presidency, won the popular vote and lost the Electoral College vote. He won the popular vote like Hillary Clinton, but lost to John Quincy Adams.

Andrew Jackson wanted, among his top priorities, to eliminate the federal debt, and he did. How does spending a trillion dollars, on top of a $20 trillion fiscal operating debt and a $200 trillion unfunded liability debt come anywhere close to Jackson’s thinking on this sort of thing? It’s been tried a numerous times, and yet we’re going to do it again?

In this centralized government that gets to make all these decisions, Jacksonian democracy, as it came to be called, was not about centralized federal government. It was a rejection of the increasingly centralized decisions coming out of the federal government. But we need to be blunt, too. In the 1820s and 1830s, if you still owned slaves, you were in a distinct minority.

Jackson was a slave owner, and he was a brutal owner. But a lot was going on at the time, such as the battles between “the mercantilists,” the elitists on the East Coast and some of the other areas of the country (the agrarians, slave owners, non-slave owners, cotton growers, tobacco growers). There were a lot of tensions that would eventually lead to the Civil War.

Jacksonian democracy was an attempt to create a populist revolt against what was taking place. When people talk of Jacksonian democracy and agrarianism and nationalism and populism, that’s what they’re talking about. But in the end this was very destructive. Jackson got rid of the national debt, alright, and he did it so quickly that what happened was his vice president, who became his successor, Martin van Buren, inherited what would soon become the worst depression in American history.

PRESENT DAY POPULISM

You see, these notions of populism, nationalism, progressivism, they are antithetical to republicanism. The reason our Constitution is structured the way it is structured is to prevent mobocracy and to prevent despotism, by one or by an oligarchy. We have a beautiful system of checks and balances, of limited powers, that secure the unalienable rights of the individual.

Under a republican form of government, the individual has a responsibility to take care of his or her family. It’s what is called rugged individualism.

How does that ideal compare to today?

How does it compare to a government that swallows up an enormous percentage of the gross domestic product — of all goods and services produced in the private sector? A government that spends far in excess of what it collects with confiscatory taxes. The issue isn’t what it regulates, the issue is what it doesn’t regulate. To now say that we need a trillion-dollar infrastructure program, to now say that we need to further regulate our economy, which is heavily regulated with over 12,000 tariffs, to now say that that’s what the working men and women of America need? That that’s what’s going to give us the shot in the arm to create American jobs? This will be disastrous, as it always has been, as it always will be.

Many of the people hawking this are not men and women of the assembly line. They’re not men and women of agriculture. They’re not men and women of the steel mills and the oil fields and so forth. They’re bankers, developers, and businessmen. Like Hoover. Hoover didn’t get dirt under his nails. Woodrow Wilson didn’t get dirt under his nails. Franklin Roosevelt didn’t get dirt under his nails. These are theoreticians who reject or have forgotten what made this country great. That’s the problem. Nationalism and populism have far more in common with status-quo progressivism than they can possibly have with constitutional conservatism.

Virtually every form of tyranny that I’m familiar with is wrapped in populist arguments.

Tyranny comes packaged as “for the people,” or representing “the will of the people.” That’s how Mao Zedong represented his genocidal tyranny, that’s how Vladimir Lenin represented his genocidal tyranny, that’s how Hugo Chavez, the Fidel and Raul Castro brothers, Robert Mugabe, and the like represented their reigns. But populism is not republicanism.

This is not about class warfare; it’s about liberty. You want to live free or don’t you? When you live free, that means at times, things get difficult. But let me tell you something: When you don’t live free, it means things are always difficult.

How many more experiments must humanity go through before it becomes obvious that our system, as set up by the framers, is and was the best? How many more human experiments must we have? How much more spending until it becomes clear that the government doesn’t create jobs? Nobody spent more to “create jobs” than Franklin Roosevelt. Obama spends a hundred billion dollars on infrastructure, what did that do? Now Trump wants to spend a trillion dollars. What will that do?

I don’t care if you’re blue collar or white collar; I don’t even like those terms. Those are terms that some egghead came up with — just like “working people.” Well you’re either working or you’re not. What does that mean? What is a working people? I work very long hours, am I not a working person? Whatever my income is, whatever your income is, this is the vernacular of the progressive leftist. Working people, blue collar, white collar: No, we’re Americans. We are Americans. The goal is to create and defend and improve upon a society that has created the greatest amount of wealth for the most people, the greatest amount of freedom for the most people, despite and in fact due to our diversity. Our diversity of thinking, our diversity of acting, our diversity of producing.

All of these populist movements, whether on the pseudo-right or the Left, always demand egalitarianism. They demand material equality, on different levels and to a different degree. Somebody’s “earning too much,” somebody has “too much wealth.” Why should they have that when you have nothing? These philosophies overlap. And you know what they have something in common? The iron fist. (For more from the author of “MARK LEVIN: Populism, Nationalism and Americanism” please click HERE)

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Donald Trump Shouldn’t Trust Anything Chuck Schumer Says on Supreme Court Nominees

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When it comes to loathsome political figures, there isn’t a person serving at any level of government than Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. (F, 2%). He’s just awful, and the Senate will be a better place now that he is leaving. That said, one of those most conniving, back-stabbing Senators will be taking his place.

New York Senator Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. (F, 2%) is a career politician through and through. Schumer was elected to office in 1974, soon after graduating from Harvard Law School. Schumer passed the New York State Bar Exam but never practiced. He’s never worked a single day in the private sector. He is also fond of using the word “bipartisan” when he engages in some of the most partisan nonsense of anybody in the entire Congress.

Schumer was on Fox News Sunday this week. When asked by Chris Wallace about the Supreme Court and Donald Trump, Schumer said the following:

WALLACE: Let’s talk about an issue where you won’t agree and that is that Donald Trump intends to name a conservative, a real conservative, to the Supreme Court.

SCHUMER: Right.

WALLACE: If you think that it’s the wrong person, are you prepared — and will Democrats be prepared to filibuster that nomination, which has only happened once in the history of the Senate.

SCHUMER: I would hope first and foremost that President Trump nominates a mainstream nominee capable of getting bipartisan support.

If he does, then we’ll give it just a very, very thorough vetting, but we won’t ipso facto say no.

If it’s out of the mainstream, yes, we’re going to fight that nominee tooth and nail. And let’s remember two things. Let’s —

WALLACE: But wait. Fight — does that mean filibuster?

SCHUMER: Let me say two things.

First, we — when we had power, we changed the rules, but I argued with Harry Reid not to change it for Supreme Court, because it should get that bipartisan support.

So, it’s still 60 votes. We didn’t change the rules. If they, you know, I hope our Republicans won’t.

And second, when our Republican colleagues say, “Let’s do this quickly, without filibuster,” they don’t come here with clear, clean hands. After what they did to Merrick Garland and held him up for a whole year, a bipartisan nominee who Senator Hatch, conservative Republican, Utah, former head of Judiciary, said would be a very good nominee.

So, let’s — let’s try to get a mainstream nominee, but let’s not jump to conclusions, because what the Republicans did, past is sometimes prologue.

To get straight to the point: A “mainstream” nominee is one Schumer supports. In 2010, Schumer had the audacity to say about Sonia Sotomayor, “…no one questioned that she was out of the mainstream.” Not even Politifact bought this and rated the claim “false” showing some Republicans said she was out of the mainstream.

Schumer’s blather about bipartisanship and the treatment of Merrick Garland is ridiculous considering he gave a speech in 2007 imploring Democrats to reject any Supreme Court nominee by President George W. Bush in the wake of the confirmations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Schumer said:

We should reverse the presumption of confirmation. The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance. We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts; or Justice Ginsburg by another Alito.

Given the track record of this President and the experience of obfuscation at the hearings, with respect to the Supreme Court, at least: I will recommend to my colleagues that we should not confirm a Supreme Court nominee except in extraordinary circumstances.

There are a few things to consider. First, the Republicans did not engage in any poor treatment of Garland. When Justice Scalia died, the GOP immediately informed President Obama they would not consider a Supreme Court nominee during an election year. Obama went ahead and nominated Garland anyway, arguing the Senate had some constitutional obligation to consider him, even though no such legal edict exists.

Secondly, Schumer’s complaints about a one year wait for Garland are hypocritical given there were 543 days left in Bush’s administration when he gave this speech. Schumer was perfectly fine with filibustering a nominee for nearly 18 months.

Finally, exactly what obfuscation is Schumer talking about? He not only voted against Roberts and Alito, but he also worked with then-Senator Obama to filibuster Alito’s nomination. Is Senator Schumer arguing his Democratic colleagues are not smart enough to see they were being hoodwinked? Also, if he’s so concerned about obfuscation, where was his denouncement of Elana Kagan who ruled to affirm same-sex marriage is a constitutionally protected right when she testified to the exact opposite during her confirmation hearings?

Donald Trump submitted a list of very well qualified people to nominate to the Supreme Court. Charles Schumer will no doubt argue all of them are out of the “mainstream.” It’s going to be up to President Trump to tell Schumer he doesn’t get to make a choice. His role is to take part in the hearings and then put it to an up or down vote. (For more from the author of “Donald Trump Shouldn’t Trust Anything Chuck Schumer Says on Supreme Court Nominees” please click HERE)

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