Opinion Archives | Page 129 of 301

It’s Time for Team Hillary to Shut up About Conspiracy Theorists

September 12, 2016/0 Comments/in Featured, Opinion /by Brian Darling

Hillary Clinton collapsed after a 9/11 remembrance ceremony at Ground Zero yesterday. This is a critical event that may finally force some medical transparency on the Clinton campaign for president. If Clinton continues to stonewall the press and make believe that she does not owe the American people an in depth explanation of her health problems, Sunday’s medical incident might prove to be a turning point where voters shift to Trump and Hillary’s campaign falls apart.

The “Ill-ary” jokes and Trump’s constant ribbing that Hillary needs a nap have gone from humorous a serious matter. It is time for Team Clinton to come clean.

According to the New York Times:

Hillary Clinton on Sunday abruptly left a ceremony in New York marking the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, and a video appeared to show her struggling to maintain her balance as a pair of Secret Service agents lifted her into a van. The incident, according to a statement from her physician, was related to pneumonia and dehydration.

The video released to the public is shocking. It appears that she did more than struggle “to maintain her balance.” It looked like she collapsed.

What the Media, Academics Get Wrong When They Blame Crime Rate on Poverty, Discrimination

September 11, 2016/0 Comments/in Featured, Opinion /by Walter E. Williams

Some are puzzled by the dishonesty, lack of character, and sheer stupidity of many people in the media. But seeing as most of them are college graduates, they don’t bear the full blame. They are taught by dishonest and irresponsible academics. Let’s look at it.

“A Clash of Police Policies,” a column written by Thomas Sowell, presents some readily available statistics:

Homicide rates among black males went down by 18 percent in the 1940s and by 22 percent in the 1950s. It was in the 1960s, when the ideas of Chief Justice [Earl] Warren and others triumphed, that this long decline in homicide rates among black males reversed and skyrocketed by 89 percent, wiping out all the progress of the previous 20 years.

Academics and the media blame poverty and discrimination for today’s crime. No one bothers to ask why crime was falling in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, when blacks faced far greater poverty and discrimination.

The 1960s riots were blamed on poverty and discrimination. Poverty and discrimination were worse in the South than in the rest of the country, but riots were not nearly so common there. Detroit’s deadliest riot occurred at a time when the median income of black families in Detroit was 95 percent of their white counterparts, plus the black unemployment rate was 3.4 percent and black homeownership was higher than in other major cities.

Academics teach that the breakdown of the black family is the legacy of slavery and discrimination. They ignore the following facts.

In 1950, 72 percent of black men and 81 percent of black women had been married. Also, only 17 percent of black children lived in single-parent households; today it’s close to 70 percent. Every census from 1890 to 1950 showed that black labor force participation rates exceeded those of whites. During the late 1940s, the unemployment rate for black 16- and 17-year-olds was less than that for white teens.

According to the 1938 Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, that year 11 percent of black children and 3 percent of white children were born to unwed mothers. Before 1960, the number of teenage pregnancies had been decreasing; both poverty and dependency were declining; and black income was rising in both absolute and relative terms to white income. As late as 1965, 75 percent of black children were born to married women. Today, over 73 percent of black babies are born to unwed mothers. Again, so much for the “legacy of slavery” argument.

Academics teach that school integration is a necessary condition for black academic excellence. Blacks, their logic implies, cannot achieve academic excellence unless they go out and capture a white kid to sit next to their kids. Public charter schools such as those in the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, and Success Academy Charter Schools are having some successes without race mixing.

Sowell points out that only 39 percent of students in New York state schools who were tested recently scored at the “proficient” level in math, but 100 percent of the students at the Crown Heights Success Academy scored at that level in math. Blacks and Hispanics are 90 percent of the students in the Crown Heights Success Academy.

More than 43,000 families are on waiting lists to get their children into charter schools. Teachers unions are opposed to any alternative to public education and contribute to politicians who place obstacles and restrictions on the expansion of charter schools. The NAACP, at its 2016 national convention in Cincinnati, voted to support “a moratorium on the proliferation of privately managed charter schools.”

It’s easy to understand why the NAACP is against any alternative to public schools. Many of its members work in public education. However, many of those people do want alternatives for themselves.

In Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, 25 percent of public school teachers send their children to private schools. In Philadelphia, 44 percent of teachers send their children to private schools. The percentages are similar in several other cities: Cincinnati, 41 percent; Chicago, 39 percent; and Rochester, New York, 38 percent. This demonstrates the dishonesty, hypocrisy, and arrogance of the elite. They effectively say, “One thing for thee and another for me.” (For more from the author of “What the Media, Academics Get Wrong When They Blame Crime Rate on Poverty, Discrimination” please click HERE)

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200 People Jumped From the Twin Towers on 9/11. This Is What It Felt Like to Watch It From the Street Below

September 11, 2016/0 Comments/in Featured, Opinion /by Chris Pandolfo

My father recalls watching the North Tower burning from the 100th floor up and thinking to himself, “How would they put this out?’”

I grew up in Rockland County, New York, and dad used to work in the city, styling himself as an “architectural carpenter.” What that means is that he worked with his hands — and on his knees —installing cabinetry, wood flooring, and the heavy, polished oak doors that decorate the high-end offices of Manhattan with his union brothers in NYC District Council of Carpenters Union Local 157. It was hard work and it took its toll on my father, who is now retired and living comfortably in Pennsylvania.

Fifteen years ago today, on September 11, 2001, at 8:46 a.m, American Airlines Flight 11 flew south over Manhattan and crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

On that particular day, Peter Pandolfo (my dad) was working on the 20th floor of the Ritz Carlton, staring in shock toward the World Trade Center three blocks away.

“We had a clear view of the debris and smoke coming out the North Tower. Then a terrifying vibration with a loud screaming engine-noise was directly over our building and startled us.”

It was the second plane. United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower at 9:03 a.m.

“Terrorism was my immediate thought.” As my father tells the story, he immediately went into “survival mode” and began to rifle through his tool belt, emptying some tools to lighten his load and keeping others on his person in case he needed them. He and his coworkers then evacuated the building.

“The whole crew ran 20 floors down the stairs to the street. It was mayhem. All the people who had evacuated the towers — the tourists and their babies, the workers, and everybody else — were on the street in shock, crying and afraid.”

Dad remembers that they couldn’t call for help, or tell their loved ones what was happening.

“All cell phone activity seemed to be dead. We couldn’t call home, and I thought, at least we were out of the building.”

On that day, I was sitting at my desk in Mrs. Brown’s third-grade classroom at George W. Miller Elementary School in Nanuet, N.Y. I remember our teacher calling us over to gather on the rug where we would have story time. Crestfallen, with tears in her eyes and a voice on the verge of breaking, Mrs. Brown told our class that “something terrible has happened.”

We children were sent home early that day. My father didn’t come home that night.

On the street in Manhattan, people were talking in hushed and anxious voices. Why did two planes just crash into the World Trade Center buildings? Did the air traffic controllers make a mistake? Were the planes hijacked? Were more planes going to descend on New York City? Were more people — my father and those by-standers — in danger?

As my dad and the other bystanders watched the towers burn, to their horror, they began to notice “large objects” falling from the buildings. There were people leaping from the towers, falling to their deaths, to escape the incinerating heat of the flames. You can find videos on YouTube, if you have the stomach for it.

“I saw two people hold hands and jump together. That made me sick,” my dad remembered.

As the crowd watched in horror, my father remembers, they would moan each time another person jumped. Each time, someone would scream. USA Today estimated that at least 200 people jumped that day.

Powerless, is how my father describes feeling back then. Unable to do anything to help those people. The crowd unsure of what they should do standing there, on the street.

Stunned disbelief turned to desperate panic.

“The South Tower began to fall straight down on itself, pancaking and exploding from the compression of each floor slamming on the next. A cloud of concrete ash, and who knows what else, billowed around the buildings and was headed straight for us. There was no way of escaping it. This cloud surrounded us and blocked out the sun.”

Providentially, perhaps, my father’s carpenter crew had dust masks on their person, necessary for breathing through sawdust and chemical fumes on the job. They gave those masks to the people with babies and young children.

To have a chance at breathing, my dad ripped off his t-shirt and dipped it in a building’s outside koi pond he found on that street, wrapping it around his face. New Yorkers made an attempt to flee as the debris, smoke, and ash descended, enveloping them in darkness and fire.

“I felt the hot, smoky, dust through my wet shirt, and it began to burn my lungs.” There was a moment Peter Pandolfo thought he could duck into some bushes; maybe they would help filter some of the dust. He had other thoughts, too.

“I thought at that moment, I was going to die. I began to pray.”

It was two coworkers — union brothers — who came to my dad’s rescue. They grabbed hold of my father, pulling him away. One of them lived on Long Island, you see, and they had decided to make for the Brooklyn Bridge hoping to get out of the city and rest there. They “zigzagged” northerly through the streets of Manhattan, smoke and dust clouds obstructing their view such that they could only see about 50 feet in front of them. Eventually, the sun broke through and they could see again.

Thousands of people made for the Brooklyn Bridge that day, carrying the same hope that they could cross on foot and leave the dust, and death and destruction, behind them. Noise filled the air as much as smoke. Noise of people running, of sirens wailing. Shouts. Mourning. There were those who were eerily silent, too.

First responders ran in the opposite direction of the crowds, toward the death and destruction. 411 emergency workers in New York City died in response to the terrorist attacks on September 11. 343 New York firefighters, 37 Port Authority police officers, 23 NYPD officers, and eight emergency medical technicians. They died heroes, saving many lives through their sacrifice.

My father and his coworkers could not get to the bridge without heading to the ramp, which was behind them, toward the towers. They kept going on foot, passing more bridges and eventually the United Nations building. They hurried past, thinking “a plane was definitely going to crash into it.”

Tired and scared, the carpenters decided to cross over at the next bridge, unsure if that too would become a target for the terrorists. They climbed a construction scaffold on the side of the Williamsburg Bridge. It turned out, my dad’s tool belt came in handy after all.

“It was abandoned, and workers left everything, dropped it where they were to get out of there thinking the bridge would be a target. We thought that as well and hurried across. At the end of the bridge there were hoses spraying water over wet concrete to cure it, and blocked us. So I had my tool belt still on with tools I thought would be useful, like my utility knife. I used the knife to cut through the netting that kept the occupied side separate from the construction side, and we got off the bridge onto Metropolitan Ave. in Brooklyn.”

Hours and miles later, dad spent an anxious night at his coworker’s house in Long Island. The Twin Towers were gone. 2,996 people died and more than 6,000 people were injured in the attacks that knocked them down.

I share this story with you because my father made it home to my mother and their three boys (and, later, girl) the next day. Other kids weren’t so fortunate. Too many fathers’ and mothers’ lives were claimed by evil men doing evil deeds in service of an evil ideology. An ideology that, as President George W. Bush rightly said on that day, targeted America and her countrymen “because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world.”

September 11, “is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace. America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time. None of us will ever forget this day, yet we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world.”

None of us have forgotten the terrible things that happened on that terrible day 15 years ago. But at times, in the midst of this heated and divisive election season, I do wonder if some of us Americans have forgotten the things that came under attack from evil that day.

I shared my father’s story with you because regardless of who wins the presidency, who controls the Senate or the House or the judiciary — whatever political party or individual is put in control of the government — it is imperative, it is essential, it is good and it is right that we as Americans never cease to fight for and defend freedom and justice for all.

There is a specter of fear, of distrust and outrage that is dividing us today. Discourse over ideas has devolved into bickering, name-calling, trolling, and contests of insult and ego. Each side of every argument seems less interested in showing how their ideas defend freedom and justice and more invested in forcing those who disagree into submission.

I am guilty of this as much as anyone. And when I engage in that behavior, I am wrong.

What is good and decent in America is under assault today from forces that hate us and seek to destroy us every bit as much as the people who hijacked those planes did. We do a disservice to the people who died on September 11, 2001, whether as victims or as heroes, and to our living countrymen and ourselves when we forget that defending the freedom of every American, and ensuring that justice prevails for every American — even those that disagree with us — makes this country good and decent.

The purpose of American conservatism is to conserve freedom and justice for the good and happiness of all of us. Its purpose is to defend liberty from hatred and evil that seeks to destroy. That is what we must remember on September 11, and on every day. We must never forget that.

My father won’t. (For more from the author of “200 People Jumped From the Twin Towers on 9/11. This Is What It Felt Like to Watch It From the Street Below” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Here’s Why Conservatives Should Be Wary of Google’s New Anti-ISIS Efforts

September 10, 2016/0 Comments/in Featured, Opinion /by Nate Madden

Google is trying to stop online radicalization of wannabe jihadists with a new, seemingly-effective program. While it could be a mild boon for counter-terrorism efforts, it also comes packaged with some reasonable suspicions — especially for conservatives.

Google is trying to combat extremist indoctrination by tinkering with its search and advertising algorithms, as well as YouTube’s video platform, to redirect would-be ISIS militants to content that counters the insurgency’s narrative — for example, sending someone looking for ISIS propaganda videos to a video testimonial by a former jihadist.

Andy Greenberg reports for Wired:

Jigsaw, the Google-owned tech incubator and think tank—until recently known as Google Ideas—has been working over the past year to develop a new program it hopes can use a combination of Google’s search advertising algorithms and YouTube’s video platform to target aspiring ISIS recruits and ultimately dissuade them from joining the group’s cult of apocalyptic violence. The program, which Jigsaw calls the Redirect Method and plans to launch in a new phase this month, places advertising alongside results for any keywords and phrases that Jigsaw has determined people attracted to ISIS commonly search for. Those ads link to Arabic- and English-language YouTube channels that pull together preexisting videos Jigsaw believes can effectively undo ISIS’s brainwashing—clips like testimonials from former extremists, imams denouncing ISIS’s corruption of Islam, and surreptitiously filmed clips inside the group’s dysfunctional caliphate in Northern Syria and Iraq. […]

The results, in a pilot project Jigsaw ran early this year, were surprisingly effective: Over the course of about two months, more than 300,000 people were drawn to the anti-ISIS YouTube channels. Searchers actually clicked on Jigsaw’s three or four times more often than a typical ad campaign. Those who clicked spent more than twice as long viewing the most effective playlists than the best estimates of how long people view YouTube as a whole. And this month, along with the London-based startup Moonshot Countering Violent Extremism and the US-based Gen Next Foundation, Jigsaw plans to relaunch the program in a second phase that will focus its method on North American extremists, applying the method to both potential ISIS recruits and violent white supremacists.

Cyber radicalization is a huge problem in the global war against jihadism, as evidenced by the staggering number of terrorists in recent years who have been inspired to carry out terror attacks in the United States and Europe. Among the responses to the phenomenon have been Twitter’s efforts to shut down hundreds of thousands of ISIS-related accounts and the Obama administration’s attempts to combat online jihadist propaganda as part of its largely-failed anti-extremism agenda. Efforts like these, however, have resembled a game of online Whac-A-Mole, with extremists constantly making new social media profiles and with the Obama program being outsourced to Abu Dhabi, for example.

First off, it’s essential to remember that even if the jigsaw program works perfectly, it won’t be a catch-all for radicalization in the West. Yes, ISIS has capitalized on social media and other online platforms to recruit in ways never imagined, but person-to-person radicalization through extremist mosques and Islamic centers is still going to happen.

Regardless of whether or not this project proves to be effective brings us to the next caveat. Jigsaw could have very well produced the free market’s best response yet to addressing the jihadist threat online; however, given recent stories of leftist bias in Silicon Valley, the efficacy of the program should give conservatives at least a moment’s pause.

Depending on the platform, Google currently boasts anywhere from roughly 80 to 95 percent of the search engine market share, according to recent numbers from StatCounter. The tech giant has also been criticized in recent months for skewing search results in favor of Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Analysis by the Washington Free Beacon in June shows a clear distinction between the kinds of search results produced for Hillary Clinton across different search engines.

Additionally, Facebook and Twitter have also come under fire over the past year for allegedly suppressing conservative content. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg went as far as inviting conservative media figures to his house in May after it was revealed that the site’s “Trending Topics” feed wasn’t based on a news algorithm, but rather a group of people with a bias against conservative content. Furthermore, a New York Post story from February highlights how Twitter’s ostensible efforts to crack down on online harassment have led to conservative voices being shut out.

“The power of Facebook, Google and Twitter is enormous. One could argue that they have a monopoly on the content Americans see every day. The content that people read is a way to control public opinion and voting patterns,” explains CR’s Brian Darling. “[W]e as liberty minded people need to recognize the enormous power that these companies have over the news we read every day.”

When someone develops a new, more efficient hammer, it’s good to remember that it’s still capable of hitting more than nails. What Google is creating here through Jigsaw isn’t just a market-driven solution to just one part of jihadist recruitment, it’s also a means by which Google could more effectively and surreptitiously suppress other kinds of content while redirecting readers elsewhere.

Google’s latest efforts may offer a slight hand against one of the most dangerous and pervasive threats to the civilized world, but it should also be viewed with caution and scrutiny for however else — and, against whomever else — it could be applied. (For more from the author of “Here’s Why Conservatives Should Be Wary of Google’s New Anti-ISIS Efforts” please click HERE)

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The Left’s Religious Liberty Fig Leaf Is Slowly Falling Off

September 10, 2016/0 Comments/in Featured, Opinion /by Nate Madden

A recent report from the United States Commission on Civil Rights shows how the political fig leaf covering up the LGBT lobby’s assault on religious freedom is slowly starting to rot away.

According to a story published Thursday at the Washington Times, the USCCR — an independent, bipartisan commission — released a report in which Chairman Martin R. Castro referred to Americans’ first freedom as “code words” for simply opposing the agenda of the sexual identity movement:

The phrases “religious liberty” and “religious freedom” will stand for nothing except hypocrisy

so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia,

Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance.

Religious liberty was never intended to give one religion dominion over other religions, or a veto

power over the civil rights and civil liberties of others. However, today, as in the past, religion is

being used as both a weapon and a shield by those seeking to deny others equality.

“Progress toward social justice depends upon the enactment of, and vigorous enforcement of, status-based nondiscrimination laws,” wrote commissioners Castro, Achtenberg, Kldaney and Yaki — every Democrat on the commission — later in the report. “Limited claims for religious liberty are allowed only when religious liberty comes into direct conflict with nondiscrimination precepts.”

And make the following recommendations:

RFRA [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act] protects only religious practitioners’ First Amendment free exercise rights, and it does not limit others’ freedom from government-imposed religious limitations under the Establishment Clause.

Federal legislation should be considered to clarify that RFRA creates First Amendment Free Exercise Clause rights only for individuals and religious institutions and only to the extent that they do not unduly burden civil liberties and civil rights protections against status based discrimination.

States with RFRA-style laws should amend those statutes to clarify that RFRA creates First Amendment Free Exercise Clause rights only for individuals and religious institutions. States with laws modeled after RFRA must guarantee that those statutes do not unduly burden civil liberties and civil rights with status-based discrimination.

Clearly the targets here are corporations and institutions that don’t necessarily fall under the government’s narrow view of a “religious institution.” These would be entities like the bakery owned by Aaron and Melissa Klein, which is still going through a legal battle after the state of Oregon shut it after the owners declined bake a wedding cake for a same-sex wedding. Or the Little Sisters of the Poor, who despite being an order of consecrated religious sisters in the Catholic Church, were being forced to go against their conscience with the Obamacare contraception mandate.

Of course – as Castro states – the sort of provisions for which the report calls should only get narrower and narrower and the enumerated right to free expression outlined in the First Amendment will be legally redefined to freedom of worship. This would, of course, be akin to telling a protestor that they’re still free to carry a picket sign in their backyard, so long as they have the proper government permits to demonstrate in said backyard.

Furthermore, the fact that report comes from an independent, nonpartisan commission ought to help us realize that this assault won’t magically go away once Barack Obama is out of office, and it won’t simply be staved off by preventing a Hillary Clinton administration. The idea that millennia-old faiths should lose out when their tenets clash with the whims of a decades-old political agenda, that thought has permeated nearly every sector of our government.

But it does show that the argument that conservative Christians and the LGBT movement’s political agenda could somehow balance out the enumerated constitutional rights of the former with the judicially-manufactured ones of the latter was nothing more than a fig leaf. The real end goal of policies like these — or, at least, their natural logical end — is to enforce an over-sexualized brand secularism as a de facto state religion.

Finally, the title of the USCCR report — “Peaceful Cooexistence” — is nothing short of ironic, because what its authors demand is anything but peaceful. A truly peaceful coexistence is where people engage in free association, and don’t resort to using government force when they get their feelings hurt. A truly peaceful coexistence between people of different views looks like a story from earlier this week in which a baker refused to make a Trump cake for a girl’s 18th birthday party. Rather than seek out ways to harness the government’s coercive power for her own ends, the woman simply found another bakery to do the job. Just like with the Klein’s, it clearly wasn’t a matter of discrimination; it was a matter of the specific services rendered.

Free to believe, free to express, free to associate, free to find another vendor — that’s how it works.

This isn’t just a matter of acceptance, or even peaceful coexistence; this is a matter of coercion. This is a matter of making sure that people who have adhered to the same set of values and beliefs for thousands of years don’t get in the way of creating the Left’s brave new world. (For more from the author of “The Left’s Religious Liberty Fig Leaf Is Slowly Falling Off” please click HERE)

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Was Jesus a Social Justice Warrior?

September 9, 2016/0 Comments/in Featured, Opinion /by John Zmirak

The following is a political conversation between a Christian progressive (“Dorothy”) and a free market Christian conservative (“Jeremiah”) sparked by this year’s election.

DOROTHY: I agree with you that abortion is killing. It’s tragic and wrong, and we as Christians should be doing everything we can to discourage it. But I object when people like you think you can corral our political allegiance to your candidates over that single issue, especially when your party treats opposition to abortion as an ugly stepchild, which it trots out every four years then puts back in the corner wearing a dunce cap.

JEREMIAH: I agree that the pro-life issue is a hill worth dying on. It’s crucial to rid the GOP of pro-choice candidates and public officials. We’ve actually done a pretty good job of doing that; all but one (sub 1% George Pataki) of the GOP presidential contenders in 2016 was pro-life. But your party won’t even let pro-life Democrats speak at its convention — and hasn’t, since 1992 when the Clintons banned Robert Casey. Inside that party, pro-life Democrats barely rise to the level of “cranks.” They’re more like … exotic pets.

DOROTHY: You’re wrong to claim the “pro-life” label. Like me, you’re anti-abortion, but you’re not comprehensively “pro-life.” The rest of your party’s platform makes that obvious.

JEREMIAH: I assume you’re invoking the “Seamless Garment,” a statist ideology that was cooked up to dissipate the pro-life movement in a dozen irrelevant directions while helping the Democrats. It pretends that a million voluntary murders of innocent babies are interchangeable with, say, accidental gun deaths or side-effects of climate change. Hold on, while I email you some articles from The Stream which address that.

[He takes out his phone and sends links.]

Why is it, you think, that conservatives just happen to be right about the abortion issue, on which every prominent, successful, or even vocal liberal politician or organization just happens to be wrong? That’s a coincidence, is it?

DOROTHY: I’ll agree with you that progressives have a blind spot on abortion. They see it as a crucial piece of the feminist agenda, granting equal sexual autonomy to women as to men. We need to wake them up on how it exploits and hurts women. But that would be easier, I think, than converting the whole conservative movement on a long list of subjects where it’s out of sync with Gospel priorities.

JEREMIAH: I think you’re mistaken about “Gospel priorities,” and even on what the words “pro-life” mean. You’re against abortion thanks to some residual trace of good sense and common decency that you’ve clung to. But otherwise you’ve signed on to an ideology that rejects individual responsibility and hence human dignity, which sees us not a citizens with rights and duties but termites in a hive, whose work and wealth and daily activities must be controlled by the Collective. Abortion fits in perfectly with such a worldview, since it’s the ultimate means of dodging responsibility for one’s actions.

You have far more common ground with pro-choice secular leftists such as George Soros than you do with any historic Christian church, the Gospel itself, or any world view that is remotely compatible with orthodox Christianity. You can no more be an authentically Christian leftist than you can be a faithful Catholic Social Darwinist, or a devoutly Muslim Hindu.

DOROTHY: So you think that Donald Trump is a model Christian statesman? Why don’t you explain that to me. This should be good.

JEREMIAH: The Republicans this year chose a flawed candidate, who isn’t completely in sync with the party’s platform, or with most GOP elected officials in the country. If elected, Trump will have tangle with those people, who will moderate his views and water down his proposals. He may have tried to grab control of the party, but as we saw in the GOP primaries, he failed. Every single Trumpian challenger he supported got defeated, so even if he wins, he will be isolated within his own party. In other words, we’ll restrain him.

The Democrats, by contrast, nominated a lockstep left-wing multiculturalist who will have the full backing of their governors, senators and congressmen in promoting the radical policies she endorsed in their party’s platform. The main objections Democrats had to Hillary Clinton were to her appalling personal ethics, autocratic isolation, manifest greed, and habit of doing blatantly illegal things that endanger national security, then bald-face lying about them to the American people and Congress. So I’d say that the “character” problems of the two candidates at least cancel each other out. We’re better off comparing the parties and their platforms.

DOROTHY: Fine. Apart from abortion, the Democrats’ platform is much more closely in accord with Christian values of tolerance, inclusion, social justice, and respect for life.

JEREMIAH: The only way you could support that is by cherry-picking from the Gospels the verses that fit your ideology — ignoring context, Christian history, the examples of the saints, and the thinking of faithful Christians for almost 2,000 years. You’d have to assert that nobody understood Christianity correctly until the mid-nineteenth century, when people who were losing their faith in the church’s supernatural claims replaced them with the “social gospel.”

Whether or not Jesus really rose from the dead or is coming again, we can build an ersatz Kingdom of Heaven on earth by making the State really, really strong, and corralling people at gunpoint to follow our version of Christian ethics. That way the church remains relevant whatever becomes of its creed, because it’s close to the sources of money and levers of power. (See the mainline Protestant churches and too many American Catholic bishops.) But because you are moral superheroes, you will only use your powers for good, instead of evil. Of course you will.

DOROTHY: I challenge you to find in the Gospels any place where Jesus talks about the need to protect private property, maximize economic efficiency, guard national borders, or prepare for war. Those aren’t what he was interested in. He was speaking constantly about the poor and the marginalized — just like the Democrats.

JEREMIAH: Jesus didn’t comment on private property, economics, immigration or war. That’s why the Christian tradition has yielded many different answers on those issues. Yes, Jesus talked about our religious obligation to help the poor, enforcible on pain of hellfire. Even more than that, he talked about our duty to kneel down and worship Him as the Son of God, to avoid the same Gehenna. Both of those things are religious duties, not political programs. Neither one, if done at bayonet point to avoid going to prison, will do a thing to save your soul. So unless you want a theocratic state that will force everyone to be Christian, you can’t use Jesus’ words to advocate the redistribution of wealth by the government, either. Make other arguments, but leave Jesus out of it.

DOROTHY: Jesus was constantly telling people to give up their possessions and distribute them to the poor.

JEREMIAH: Those passages don’t mean what you think they mean. You’re confusing a call to Christian perfection — such as monks, nuns, and missionaries embrace willingly — with a crass political program to buy votes with confiscated money. Let me rewrite the Gospel to read as it would have to, if your program were truly Christian. Imagine if St. Mark had written:

And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have observed from my youth.” And Jesus looking upon him loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” At that saying his countenance fell, and he went away sorrowful; for he had great possessions.

And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “Go apprehend him.” Peter and John ran after the young man and bound him with ropes, bringing him back to Jesus. Jesus bade Judas to question him about his riches and where they were kept. Once Judas had fully accounted for all of his holdings, Jesus said to his disciples, “Go to his estate, seize all that he owns, sell it, and distribute it to the poor. Blow a trumpet and announce that it is I who have done this, and command them to follow me. Then let us find more rich men and do likewise, that our numbers may be complete before we march on Jerusalem.” [Mark. 10: 17-28, Revised Socialist Version]

I could go through the whole New Testament, rewriting Christ’s words and works to fit your political program. But I don’t have to bother. Leftist pastors across America effectively do that in their sermons every Sunday. (For more from the author of “Was Jesus a Social Justice Warrior?” please click HERE)

Watch a recent interview with the author below:

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Trump’s New Military Plan Will Gut One of the Tea Party’s Biggest Achievements

September 7, 2016/0 Comments/in Featured, Opinion /by Amanda Carpenter

Donald Trump isn’t done killing the Tea Party yet. Today, he’s scheduled to propose repealing one of its signature achievements.

Trump’s advisors says he will propose ending the “sequester” for the military — one of the rare budget reforms signed into law by President Obama, born out of the debate over the 2011 debt ceiling increase.

Meaning, Trump’s — the self-described “King of Debt” — big plan for the military is more debt for America.

A quick trip down memory lane reminds that sequestration was brought to fruition largely by Tea Party-fueled members of Congress elected in the 2010 midterm wave. Sent to Washington by voters who were angry over the skyrocketing debt, those new members demanded more responsible spending. And President Obama’s 2011 request to increase the debt ceiling — the legal spending limit for the government — gave them the perfect opportunity.

The Democrats, as always, were resistant to any reforms. They said anyone who opposed the debt increase, for any reason at all, was threatening the “full faith and credit” of the United States government. They said the president deserved a no-questions asked, no-strings attached debt increase. Then, they said they would only be willing to talk if large tax increases were included in the deal.

Ultimately, a package of spending cuts was agreed upon in exchange for the debt ceiling increase that did not include any tax increases. The deal stipulated that Washington accept a series of spending cuts over the next 10 years in exchange for giving President Obama a $400 billion debt increase in 2011.

It wasn’t perfect because it a typical DC deal: spending, save later. But it was something.

The Heritage Foundation’s Steve Moore — now an enthusiastic Trump supporter — said the sequester “shrunk the size of government more effectively than any budget took in a generation” and that it “put an electric fence around the Left’s grand spending ambitions.”

Since it was enacted, efforts have been underway to undo the defense cuts by hawkish Republicans such as Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. (F, 30%) and John McCain, R-Ariz. (F, 34%). And, Trump is offering to turn off the electric fence for them.

“I will ask Congress to eliminate the sequester and immediately re-invest in our military,” he told an audience in Greenville, North Carolina yesterday. Aides say he will offer more details today in an upcoming military-focused speech at the Union League in Philadelphia.

That’s a change for Trump, who once praised the sequester in 2013 and called for even deeper cuts. A change that makes him sound a lot more like Hillary Clinton than a conservative.

“We cannot impose arbitrary limits on something as important as our military,” Clinton said at the American Legion in Cincinnati last week. “That makes no sense at all. The sequester makes our country less secure.”

So consider a debate over defense spending off the table for presidential debates. Both of them are in favor of nixing that particular Tea Party victory. (For more from the author of “Trump’s New Military Plan Will Gut One of the Tea Party’s Biggest Achievements” please click HERE)

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The Clinton Conspiracy Against America

September 6, 2016/0 Comments/in Featured, Opinion /by Daniel Greenfield

The Clinton Presidential Center sits near Interstate 30. It is located at 1200 President Clinton Ave in Little Rock, Arkansas. A mere 1,200 miles from the posh digs of the Clintons in Chappaqua, New York.

Little Rock advertises a “Billgrimage” to visit Bill Clinton’s roots in Little Rock, but the Clintons have gotten what they wanted out of Arkansas and Little Rock. And the Clinton Presidential Center.

They’ve moved on to bigger things since.

There isn’t much to do at the Clinton Presidential Center, an awkward glass building shaped like a bus that looks like it’s about to fall into the Arkansas River, but like the equally precarious political fortunes of the Clintons, never quite does.

There are exhibits of Bill’s rise to power. And there’s a gift shop offering a copy of GQ autographed by him for a mere $350, a bronze bust of him for only $29.95 and a t-shirt with the words, “I Miss Bill.”

But how can you miss somebody who never goes away?

They might miss Bill in Little Rock, which he left behind for wealthier places where he can mingle with those who can do far more to advance his career than the locals. Instead they have to make do with Buffalo Blue Cheeseburger at Forty Two, the Clinton Presidential Center’s restaurant, which also offers catering services.

If there’s one thing you can be sure of when it comes to the Clintons, they never miss an angle.

The Clinton Presidential Center website is just a gateway to the network of Clinton Foundation sites. The white banner and menu of the Clinton Foundation is meant to lure visitors in first.
And that’s appropriate, since the Center began as a front for the Foundation.

It’s become a tradition for presidents to have their own libraries. Bill Clinton wanted to raise a modest $200 million for his glass shoebox on President Clinton Avenue. But he had to settle for $165 million.

A lot of the money came from abroad. The Saudis ponied up millions. Clinton’s former FBI director described him begging for a donation to his library from Prince Abdullah during a meeting asking the Saudis to give the FBI access to suspects in a terror attack which had killed 19 Americans.

“Bill Clinton raised the subject only to tell the crown prince that he understood the Saudi’s reluctance to cooperate, and then he hit Abdullah up for a contribution to the Clinton Presidential Library,” he wrote.

The Clintons always have their priorities.

Cash also came from Marc Rich’s wife who bought a presidential pardon for the international fugitive for $450,000.

But the library wasn’t really a library. Bill Clinton wasn’t about to spend the rest of his days walking down President Clinton Avenue and deciding if he wanted to have breakfast at Gus’ World Famous Fried Chicken or Damgoode Pies. Hillary certainly wasn’t. The Clintons hadn’t made their base in Arkansas, but in New York. And they were drawing on taxpayer money to set up operations.

The Clintons were not retiring. They were not looking to their legacy. They didn’t care about the glass box on the Arkansas River. What they wanted was money and a platform for their comeback.

In that order.

The Clintons didn’t just need cash to pay for their mansion and all the other good things in life. To make a comeback, they needed a staff. A big one. People willing to do anything for them. And they weren’t about to pay them out of their pockets. So, in an unprecedented turn of events, they turned to the Former President’s Act, meant to provide for the retirement of presidents, to begin the process of making the former president’s wife into a future president by maintaining their loyalist staff.

The Clintons are not idea people. They are crooked, but unimaginatively crooked. Bill is the sort of guy who will give a terror state a pass before asking for money. Hillary lies compulsively and badly.

The gargantuan octopus of the Clinton Foundation wasn’t the brainchild of two grifters who couldn’t convincingly lie about what they had for breakfast. It was the invention of those staffers around them.

On a Saudi jet to Davos, a Clinton aide who would later sell access to Bill through his own company, had a brilliant idea, why not sell access to Bill through a foundation. That aide later gave Huma Abedin a gig in his company. Huma Abedin solicited a favor for a Clinton Foundation donor who was also a client.

At its peak, the idea people around the Clintons had a non-profit, private consulting jobs and government salaries through the State Department and occasionally the GSA. They had the best of government, the private sector and the non-profit sector rolled into one. The Clinton Network.

And they’re counting on a lot more of the same.

The Clinton Foundation was a spectacular slush fund, a fake charity that took in fortunes, paid out pittances and kept the country’s unwanted royal family and those around them in business.

Bill and Hillary were no longer individuals. They were a corporation, a business and a brand. Forget the sad gift shop in the Arkansas River shoebox. The Clinton Foundation let them go back to doing what they had done in office, tap into the deep pockets of foreign donors and lobbyists looking for access.

But the Clinton Foundation was a temporary cure. The Clintons were paying their staffers by selling access to themselves and assorted celebrities, corporations and billionaires. It was okay as a party, but you can only hear Bill’s funny stories twice before you reconsider the $15K ticket price tag.

For $250K, a company got some good publicity. But for that money, they could have plastered Manhattan with billboards.

To have access to sell, there had to be power to access. Hillary Clinton had to run for the Senate. Senators have more to offer than former presidents telling stories about the good old days. But you don’t pay six figures for a senator. You do pay six figures for access to a future president.

The Clinton Foundation scam, the hundreds of millions of dollars rolling in, depended on maintaining the narrative that Hillary would become President Hillary. And when she lost, she picked the position that would be most tempting to foreign donors and certain domestic corporations, Secretary of State.

Somewhere along the way the Clinton White House had become a permanent institution. It could change shape, but it wouldn’t go away. It could morph into the Clinton Foundation and wear a number of disguises before it was ready to shed its chrysalis and become the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign.

And yet they’re all the same thing.

After leaving the White House, the Clintons became a government in exile. Like the warlords or former kings living in Brussels or London, they maintained the structure of the old government. They sought out supporters who would help finance their return to power in exchange for future favors.

The Clinton Foundation is something alien to Americans, but quite familiar in certain settings. The Clintons and those around them treated term limits as a temporary setback to be overcome. And then the restoration of the Clinton Empire could commence. At the center were two corrupt, but not particularly bright royals, surrounded by a bevy of courtiers with extremely dubious agendas.

Some only wanted money. Others, like Huma Abedin, had more complex loyalties.

What all this amounted to was a coup. The Clintons were determined to become a perverse monarchy. And they were willing to take money from anyone and promise them anything to make it happen.

Even in the White House, Bill Clinton was willing to sell out murdered Americans to the Saudis in exchange for a big check. The Clinton Foundation was set up with blood money. It was funded by criminals and terrorists. And the final bill will only come due if Hillary Clinton takes office.

The Clintons have perpetrated a plot against America. They schemed with foreign interests to return to power. They subverted every democratic and ethical norm. They are not only criminals, but traitors.

American presidents were meant to retire. They were never supposed to use taxpayer money to set up cabals. It was unthinkable for them to solicit foreign rulers in a bid to return to power.

There have been calls to shut down the Clinton Foundation. But the Clinton Foundation is not a building or a letterhead. It is the permanent Clinton regime. If Hillary wins, it becomes the government.

It can’t be dismantled without breaking up the Clinton Network. Criminal conspiracies aren’t shut down by closing a front group. The only way to end the Clinton Conspiracy is to indict and imprison the key players in this plot against America. As long as this rogue government exists, it is a threat to the republic. (For more from the author of “The Clinton Conspiracy Against America” please click HERE)

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Obama’s Greatest Achievement

September 6, 2016/0 Comments/in Featured, Opinion, Weekly /by Caroline Glick

The time for complaining about President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran has passed. The time has come to overcome the enormous damage his signature foreign policy accomplishment has caused.

To understand why this is the case, it is important to understand the breadth and depth of Obama’s failure.

On August 4, during the course of a press conference, Obama gave his interim assessment of his nuclear agreement with Iran.

“It worked,” he insisted.

A year after the deal was signed, Obama argued, events have proven that he was right and the deal’s critics were wrong.

“You’ll recall that there were all these horror stories about how Iran was going to cheat and this wasn’t going to work and Iran was going to get $150 billion to finance terrorism and all these kinds of scenarios, and none of them have come to pass,” he proclaimed.

Obama then snidely swiped at the deal’s opponents saying that it would be “impressive” if the people who criticized the deal would own up to their mistakes and admit that it worked.

As it works out, everything that Obama said about the deal with Iran during his press conference was a lie.

Some of his lies became apparent within hours.

For instance, Obama falsely claimed that Israel now “acknowledges this has been a game changer and Iran has abided by the deal and they no longer have the sort of short-term breakout capacity that would allow them to develop nuclear weapons.”

Hours later, the Defense Ministry issued a stinging rebuke of Obama’s claim, parroted more diplomatically by the Prime Minister’s Office.

Obama’s press conference took place the day after The Wall Street Journal reported that in January 2016, the US sent an unmarked plane to the Tehran airport filled with $400 million in cash, on the same day Iran released four US hostages.

Obama angrily rejected allegations that the cash payment was a ransom payment for the hostages’ release. He insisted that the US had made the payment as the first installment of a $1.7b. payment the administration made to settle an Iranian government lawsuit against America.

Obama claimed that the administration agreed to the settlement at the urging of the Justice Department.

He said his administration was able to settle the dispute only due to the nuclear deal which placed US officials in direct contact with their Iranian counterparts for the first time in decades.

Within a day, Obama’s claims were exposed as lies. It turns out that Justice Department lawyers opposed the cash payout to Iran.

One of the hostages released in January told the media that the Iranians refused to allow the hostages to leave Iran until the airplane with the cash landed in the airport.

The Iranians, for their part, contemptuously mocked Obama, and stated openly that the $400m.

was a ransom payment for the hostages.

Two weeks later, Obama’s State Department admitted that the $400m. was a payment for the hostages.

Obama’s principle claim is that due to his deal, Iran no longer has a short-term nuclear breakout capacity. He also says that in accordance with the deal, Iran has shipped its nuclear materials out of the country. These claims are both untrue and misleading.

On Thursday Reuters reported that Iran did not ship the quantities of low-enriched uranium out of the country in the quantities the deal required.

Last January, when the deadline arrived for Iran to comply with the deal’s clauses calling for it to move its uranium enriched to 3.5 percent and 20 percent out of the country and so enable the US and its European colleagues to cancel UN sanctions against it, it worked out that Iran had failed to comply.

Rather than acknowledge Iran’s failure and maintain the sanctions in accordance with their deal, the Americans and Europeans decided to move the goalpost closer to Iran.

They secretly decreased the amount of uranium the Iranians were required to part with. They then announced triumphantly that they were canceling UN sanctions because Iran had complied with the agreement.

Reuters reported that much of the low-enriched uranium Iran did remove from its territory wasn’t actually removed from its possession. Instead it was transferred to neighboring Oman, where it is held under Iranian guard and control.

Obama of course knows all of this. So his claims that the agreement “worked” are nothing more than a card trick meant to trick the American public.

Obama’s assertion that Iran’s breakout time to a nuclear arsenal has been slowed as a result of his deal is similarly a stretch of the imagination. The Iranians have suspended much of their prior centrifuge spinning. But that is only because they are now directing their efforts to developing and deploying more advanced centrifuges that will be able to enrich uranium to bomb grade material far more rapidly than the centrifuges they were required to retire.

Experts have already placed Iran’s post-deal nuclear breakout time at a mere six months. And Iran can leave the agreement – which it never actually signed or officially agreed to – anytime it wants.

While developing their next generation centrifuges, the Iranians are expanding the range and precision of their ballistic missiles, deploying them and increasing the size of their arsenals. Despite the fact that these actions are prohibited under US law and breach what was initially claimed about the ever-changing nuclear deal, the Obama administration has refused to impose sanctions against Iran, insisting that its actions merely breach the spirit, rather than substance, of the deal.

The administration has had a similar response to Iran’s recent deployment of Russia’s S-300 missile defense battery around its military nuclear site at Fordo. On Sunday Iranian television showed footage of the missiles being set up around the formerly secret site.

As Omri Ceren of the Israel Project noted this week, Iran’s deployment of the S-300 system places it in breach of three US sanctions laws. Despite this, the White House announced on Wednesday that it has no intention of enforcing US law and applying sanctions on Iran. The S-300 missiles can be used both as a defensive system and as an offensive one.

On Tuesday, Tehran announced that it will be launching three satellites in the coming months.

Satellite launches are widely viewed as a means through which Iran is covertly developing a longrange ballistic missile capability. Rather than censure Iran for its actions, the Obama administration insists that such actions, as well as Iran’s recent longrange rocket tests, do not violate the nuclear deal or warrant US action.

Taken separately and together, Iran’s actions since the nuclear deal was officially concluded make clear that it continues to pursue its nuclear program, and indeed, has become more brazen in its nuclear operations than it was before the agreement was announced last year.

In other words, not only has the deal not worked, contrary to Obama’s claims, it has been a colossal failure on every level. The deal’s opponents were entirely right about the dangers it posed and Obama was entirely wrong.

This is true as well in relation to the administration’s qualified promises that the deal would lead to better relations between the US and Iran. As Shoshana and Stephen Bryen noted last week following the Iranian naval assault on the USS Nitze in the Strait of Hormuz, with its repeated harassment of US naval ships traversing the Strait of Hormuz, Iran is clearly practicing its tactic of swarming US naval craft as a preparation for a real strike against them.

The main reason that Iran’s nuclear program is such a grave concern for Israel and for other Middle Eastern states is that the Iranian regime has hegemonic ambitions. It seeks to destroy Israel and dominate the entire region.

Since it concluded the deal with Washington, Iran has surged its forces and massively expanded its power projection throughout the region.

On Thursday the Daily Mail reported that the commonly held belief that Iran commands 16,000 troops in Syria is wrong. According to the National Council of Resistance in Iran, the regime actually commands 60,000 forces in Syria, deployed throughout the country. The entire Syrian army today numbers a mere 50,000 men.

On August 4, Obama mocked claims that Iran would spend its windfall profits of $100b.-$150b.

from the sanctions relief the nuclear deal offered to fund terrorism. Yet, according to the Daily Mail report, to date Iran has spent $100b. on the war in Syria.

The implications of the report are blood curdling.

They mean that despite Obama’s denials, the funds Iran has received as a result of the sanctions relief he brought about through his nuclear deal have paid for Iran’s war in Syria. That war has caused the death of nearly half a million people and forced more than 11 million people to flee their homes.

Obviously, it is important for Americans to know the truth about the Iran deal and its consequences as they consider their votes for Obama’s replacement.

One of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s top candidates for secretary of state is Wendy Sherman.

Sherman was the chief negotiator of Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

For Israel, the question of what to do about Iran now is far more urgent than it is for Americans.

Today more and more commentators are voicing concern over the prospect that Obama will support an anti-Israel resolution at the UN Security Council as a parting shot at Israel.

But any such resolution will be small potatoes in comparison to the strategic devastation his nuclear deal, which is his main foreign policy legacy, has caused.

The rapidity of Iran’s advance makes clear that there is no justification for waiting to act until Obama has left office. If it doesn’t act soon, Israel is on the fast track to waking up one morning and discovering it has no means of thwarting the threat.

Indeed, with each passing month, its options for action become more and more limited.

After Israel’s security leadership undermined Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to attack Iran’s nuclear installations in 2010 and 2012, Netanyahu settled on a strategy of blocking Obama’s moves to appease Tehran.

That strategy of course failed last summer. Since then, Netanyahu has worked to build an anti-Iranian alliance with the Sunni Arab states. His efforts in this area have clearly met with some measure of success, as witnessed by public statements from prominent Saudis and others.

Whatever that success may be, and whatever the status of that burgeoning alliance of spurned US allies, the fact is that it’s time Israel and its new allies do something more than send signals. Time is a-wasting.

Last spring Brig.-Gen. Hossein Salami, the deputy commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, said, “Today the grounds for the annihilation and collapse of the Zionist regime are more present than ever before.”

Thanks to Obama, he may be right.

It is time for Israel to make him eat his words. (For more from the author of “Obama’s Greatest Achievement” please click HERE)

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Fellow Millennials, Shrug off Special Snowflake Syndrome and Get to Work

September 6, 2016/0 Comments/in Featured, Opinion /by Nicole Russell

Millennials are a fun group to make fun of, rage at, and relish in their schadenfreude. There’s something ironic about group of kids who grew up being told they could be “anything” but are now living in Mom’s basement. Still, that’s not great for society, the economy, or them. Are millennials destined to be a complacent segment of society, or can they rise above their own questionable reputation?

Unemployed and Unemployable

Recently Forbes tweeted:

12.8% of millennials are unemployed—more than 2x the national average https://t.co/xSOjpHvcbz pic.twitter.com/zgMLpvjd1m

— Forbes (@Forbes) August 20, 2016

The first part should come as no surprise — their reputation precedes every news article, and they’re hardly known for being hard workers. Also, it seems like everybody is down on the economy so maybe that’s it.

But wait, twice the national average? Oops.

Sure enough, the unemployment rate has fallen to 4.9 percent, “the lowest in eight years,” according to CNN Money. So if millennials are unemployed at twice the rate of the national average, the problem lies with them. Forbes offered conjecture wrapped in advice and encouragement: “Millennials are doing lots right in the job hunt. We’re picky, purpose-driven and willing to take risks. But we also frequently make avoidable mistakes that waste our time and sabotage our career prospects.” “Picky” might be a larger part of the problem than it looks. Too picky, too perfect, and too precious.

The Pew Research Center reported in May that more 18- to 34-year-olds are living at home (with mom, dad, or both parents) than are “married or cohabiting and living in their own household.” According to Pew, the biggest reason for this was their inability to find jobs to support their independence. That is one sad, pathetic, and ultimately scary statistic, especially when you consider millennials have surpassed baby boomers as the nation’s largest living generation.

So why are these mostly able-bodied, agile-minded millennials — who grew up in one of the greatest, most industrialized, advanced countries in the history of the universe, with opportunities abounding — living with Mom and Dad instead of making their mark on the world and contributing to society?

It’s impossible to speak for all of them and any attempt is certainly an estimated guess, but this was the generation of participation ribbons, of mothers charging into school to talk to teachers at the first sign of discord, and of the false encouragement, “You can be anything.” Might these factors relate to a job-seeking generation who just can’t seem to “find” any work? Of course, the latter is a common phrase parents use when they’re trying to be encouraging. However, as children enter their teens and their strengths and weaknesses and proclivities toward particular subjects and activities become obvious, direction is useful. A student who can’t pass calculus should not be told he can get into medical school, unless he plans on really working hard on math.

Hard Life Lessons

Millennials who grew up with parents shielding them from any disagreements in school, constantly telling them they were the “best” or “special” have come to discover the world does not view them that way and have thrown up their hands and returned home to roost. This graph, showing how veteran human resources professionals really feel about millennial job seekers — and how millennials feel about themselves — demonstrates this well.

“Snowflake” children who grew up protected within a sheltered bubble (think snow globe) have now reached adulthood, and instead of starting at the bottom of the proverbial vocational chain, they consider themselves too good, too pretty, too special, for real work. They have abandoned the prospect completely, thus rendering themselves useless, living up to their already-soiled reputation. Dirty, uncomfortable work provides more life lessons than a parent’s basement.

I know because at 34, I am (barely) a millennial who started working at age 13 (over summer and winter breaks) and have never stopped. I’ve been the only woman on a construction site, hanging wallpaper in new homes. Even after earning a B.A., I worked at a coffee shop for a few months, because I couldn’t find work in my field of study and needed the income. Uncomfortable? Of course. Lessons learned? Absolutely.

It’s time millennials shrugged off their reputation and got to work, whatever that might be and however “beneath” them in might feel. It will teach them valuable lessons while they contribute to society at the same time. As George Bernard Shaw said,

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

(For more from the author of “Fellow Millennials, Shrug off Special Snowflake Syndrome and Get to Work” please click HERE)

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