ISIS: Here Are the Six Reasons We Hate YOU

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Islamic State wants you to know the top six reasons why it hates Western civilization in the latest issue of its propaganda magazine Dabiq.

The issue released Sunday is titled “Break the Cross,” and is focused around what the organization finds wrong about the West and its politicians. An article titled “Why we hate you & why we fight you” gives a thorough explanation for ISIS’s jihad.

1. Western society is full of “disbelievers.”

People “blaspheme” against Allah by simply rejecting the “oneness of Allah,” according to ISIS.

“We have rejected you, and there has arisen, between us and you, enmity and hatred forever until you believe in Allah alone,” the author writes.

The disbelief is also the primary reason for fighting the West, and ISIS will continue until everyone submits “to the authority of Islam.”

2. ISIS hates the freedom Western people enjoy.

The author lists the existence of alcohol, drugs, fornication and gambling, as well as the fact that people “tolerate and even support ‘gay rights,’” as some of the West’s flaws.

3. ISIS appears to be frustrated with the labeling of the June 13 attack against a gay nightclub in Orlando as “an act of senseless violence.”

“One would think that the average Westerner, by now, would have abandoned the tired claim that the actions of the mujahidin – who have repeatedly stated their goals, intentions, and motivations – don’t make sense,” the writer says.

4. The existence of atheism and the “disbelieve in the existence of your Lord and Creator.”

“You witness the extraordinarily complex makeup of created beings, and the astonishing and inexplicably precise physical laws that govern the entire universe, but insist that they all came about through randomness,” the author writes.

5. ISIS hates the West’s crimes against Islam and Muslims, including bombings of land and killings of people.

“As long as your subjects continue to mock our faith, insult the prophets of Allah – including Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad – burn the Quran, and openly vilify the laws of the Shari’ah, we will continue to retaliate,” ISIS lists as crimes against Islam.

Crimes against Muslims include “your drones and fighter jets bomb, kill, and maim our people around the world.”

6. ISIS hates the West for “invading our lands,” and it will continue to fight until everything has been reclaimed.

“As long as there is an inch of territory left for us to reclaim, jihad will continue to be a personal obligation on every single Muslim,” the article states. (For more from the author of “ISIS: Here Are the Six Reasons We Hate YOU” please click HERE)

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3 Ways to Talk About Conservatism With a Liberal

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As the mantra of “Don’t discuss politics or religion” repeats like a drumbeat in your head, you settle on “How about that game?”

Your desperate search for the safest question to ask a colleague as you wait for the morning coffee to brew is understandable. But you can find a way.

If conservatives refrain from engaging in the narrative, we let the media and politicians (ahem, President Barack Obama) paint us as crazy people who cling to “guns or religion.”

That’s where this column comes in—a place to help you talk to the people in your life (think neighbors, co-workers, family, friends) about conservative issues.

Trust me, it’s possible.

While I will explore a wide variety of relevant topics in the weeks to come, I’d like to start with something basic and broad: the term “conservative.”

Connecting

If you look at The Heritage Foundation’s definition, you find that conservatism is five pillars: free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.

So, there’s your answer, right? Just memorize and repeat when someone wants to know why you are conservative.

Wrong.

There is no faster way to kill a conversation than to categorize your perspective like it’s a to-do list.

When talking about any issue, you have to connect with the other person’s interests. And that starts by being a good listener.

If you find your colleague doesn’t give much insight into her ideology, ask questions. Find out what makes her tick by starting a conversation about her day at work or what’s going on in the news. It’s amazing how much you learn when you ask a question and then … stop talking.

Comment

Once you gain insight into what issues someone cares about, the real work begins. You now have a blueprint for how to approach the conversation in a way that resonates with him or her, not you.

For example, if you find that your colleague talks about how expensive it is to run her side business, the free enterprise pillar is a good area to explore. Now, you’re off to the races.

Here are a few strategies that work well:

1. Common Ground

Don’t underestimate the power of establishing common ground. Doing so makes you seem reasonable and can go a long way in diffusing any tension or unwillingness to hear you out. If you’re in agreement with someone on the goal, like his business succeeding, he is more likely to stick around and listen to your solution.

2. Examples

Don’t underestimate the power of relatable examples, which can help people visualize your point. Often, the conservative principles we talk about can seem very abstract. Examples put issues into context, especially when you can illustrate a point using a reference from their daily lives. For instance, if you want to promote free enterprise, talk about all the regulations their business currently faces and how there would be significantly fewer if free enterprise was more valued by our lawmakers.

3. Words

Finally, you have to use the right words. Don’t even think about using the term “free enterprise.” Instead, steal a page from the liberals’ playbook: use emotion to push an agenda. Own words like “fair” or “choice,” and statements like “you know better than a bureaucrat in D.C.” Using emotional language will set you up for success.

Before you think that attempting a conversation is hopeless because “you don’t know how liberal my co-workers are,” keep in mind that people will listen if you talk about issues that matter to them. If done well, it’s possible they won’t recognize that you are approaching the conversation from a conservative perspective.

Take millennials. You may think it’s hopeless to talk to that generation about free enterprise since so many view themselves as socialists. But when millennials are starting more businesses than the baby-boomer generation there’s reason to question their dedication to socialism (Do they really know what socialism is?) and an opportunity to use their entrepreneurism as a gateway to talking about free enterprise.

So, talk to a liberal today. Employ the strategies we just discussed and see if you can have a meaningful conversation about conservatism on her terms. Identify her interests, choose one of the five pillars that align with her interests, and use examples.

No pressure, but you may be the only conservative that tries to challenge her world view. And if we are going to preserve the American dream, it’s going to take all of us doing our part by first talking to the people we know. (For more from the author of “3 Ways to Talk About Conservatism With a Liberal” please click HERE)

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What If the Government Actually Banned Coal, Oil, and Natural Gas?

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Xiuhtezcatl Martinez is not your typical teenager.

The 16-year-old hip-hop artist and global warming activist with the nonprofit Earth Guardians has been dubbed the “anti-Bieber.” He “rallies supporters of every age and creed through school presentations, his unique brand of eco hip-hop, and heartfelt speeches,” according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Xiuhtezcatl, from Boulder, Colorado, also is petitioning the presidential candidates to implement policies eliminating the use of all fossil fuels in America by 2026. He challenges them to “be the leader [his] generation demands.”

But what would happen if politicians actually cut off all use of so-called fossil fuels—including coal, natural gas, and petroleum—in the next 10 years, as this idealistic teenager exhorts the next president to do?

What if the government implemented policies, mandates, and taxes to restrict Americans’ energy choices artificially?

Conventional fuels, in many respects, are the backbone of the American way of life. Artificially eliminating them would have an enormously negative impact.

It’s fairly common knowledge that Americans use coal and natural gas to power homes, vehicles, businesses, schools, and hospitals. In fact, the United States gets 81 percent of all its energy from oil, coal, and natural gas.

What’s less known is that conventional fuels go beyond providing energy for Americans. Petroleum and natural gas are used to make thousands of everyday items—aspirin, toothpaste, sunglasses, shoes, tires, shag rugs, and tennis balls, to name a few.

In fact, roughly 20 percent of oil refined in the U.S. is used for plastics, chemicals, and rubber products. Indeed, America relies on natural gas and oil for a vast variety of uses.

Ultimately, policies that prohibit the use of conventional fuels would impede these lesser known but no less valuable uses.

What’s more, the push to eliminate conventional fuels ignores the fact that these fuels, especially natural gas, are efficient, abundant, and environmentally sound sources of energy. There will be no shortage of these resources anytime soon, and more are being found all the time, thanks to advances in technology.

Even if these resources were to run out soon, prices would reflect that and markets would shift to finding innovative alternatives borne out of necessity rather than arbitrary restrictions that keep resources in the ground.

And as producers of electricity, both coal and natural gas have higher efficiency rates—the “capacity factor”—than other energy sources such as wind and solar. Oil-based gasoline is 33 percent more powerful than ethanol.

Policies to eliminate conventional fuels also would put a lot of folks out of work.

Roughly 538,000 Americans work in the oil and natural gas industry. Around 75,000 work in the coal industry. Millions more have jobs that are supported by these industries. Nearly every product and service made in America at some point relied on conventional energy sources.

Americans not only would face significant lifestyle changes, many would lose their entire livelihoods. It’s not just the American way of life that would be lost, either—fossil fuels have raised people around the world out of poverty and into healthier, safer lives.

The kicker is, while forgoing all of these benefits, policies forbidding the use of conventional energy wouldn’t have the impact on global warming that Xiuhtezcatl Martinez hopes for. If the U.S. eliminated all carbon dioxide emissions, only 0.137 degree Celsius would be averted by the year 2100.

Arbitrarily banning all conventional fuels isn’t the answer. Young or old, Americans should be wary as their government considers such drastic, harmful policies. (For more from the author of “What If the Government Actually Banned Coal, Oil, and Natural Gas?” please click HERE)

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How Putin Hoodwinked the Political Right

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It’s easy to see why Vladimir Putin has emerged as the lodestar of certain elements of the political right across the West. Russia’s president poses as the champion of nationalism vs. rampant transnationalism, of Christianity vs. secularism, and of European identity in general.

These are battles that set conservatives’ teeth on edge. The political left in the West has for decades been relentless in its support for global governance, for limiting Christianity’s moral imprint on policymaking, and for stigmatizing the West in general.

But conservatives can certainly find a better champion for these causes than the former KGB agent who publicly pines for the supranational Soviet Union, presides over a society replete with social ills, and does not miss an opportunity to promote Russia not as a Western power but as an Asian one.

It is an astonishing trifecta that Putin has worked very hard to accomplish.

On transnationalism, for example, Putin has posed as an enthusiastic supporter of the United Kingdom leaving that most dysfunctional of supranational organizations, the European Union. “No one likes to feed and subsidize weaker countries and be a caretaker all the time,” Interfax quoted Putin as saying.

On Christianity, when Metropolitan Hilarion of the Russian Orthodox Church pleaded with Putin to become the defender of the Christian faith around the world, Putin reassured him that “you needn’t have any doubt that that’s the way it will be,” according to Russia’s Interfax.

With religion, Putin is relying on more than his own propaganda. Since the 1500s, Russia has put forward the vague notion that it is the “Third Rome”—the rightful successor to Rome and Byzantium as the center of Christianity. The claim was supposedly first made by the monk Filofei of the Pskov-Eliazarov monastery in two epistles which, unsurprisingly for Russia, have gone missing.

Fast forward five centuries, and Putin’s vow to Hilarion was enthusiastically endorsed by Washington evangelical outlet Christian Post, which explained that “Putin has long been a supporter of Christianity and Christian values within Russia.”

When visiting Hungary’s Prime Minister Victor Orban this year, Putin praised his anti-immigrant positions by stating that what Orban was doing was “to defend European identity.” That, he said according to a translation by RT, “is likable to us.”

Small wonder perhaps that Europe’s right-wing leaders are smitten with Putin, seeing in him the leader who will defend Europe from the spiritual decadence they accuse the United States of spreading. The leader of France’s anti-immigrant National Front, Marine Le Pen, recently said of Putin that “we are defending common values … the Christian heritage of European civilization.”

Even Putin’s main protégé in the Mideast, the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, says piously that “Vladimir Putin is the sole defender of Christian civilization one can rely on.”

At home, Putin uses this international support to show his conservative bona fides. “We know that there are more and more people in the world who support our position on defending traditional values that have made up the spiritual and moral foundation of civilization in every nation for thousands of years: the values of traditional families, real human life, including religious life, not just material existence but also spirituality,” he told the federal assembly in 2013. “Of course, this is a conservative position.”

When it suits him.

As the Tory policy adviser Peter Franklin puts it, “If Putin wants to be seen as a defender of ‘traditional values’ and ‘spirituality,’ then why the diplomatic coziness with the likes of China, Cuba, and North Korea? There’s nothing spiritual about a communist dictatorship.” Or the butcher Assad, for that matter.

“The whole thing is a joke,” said David Kramer, a Russian expert who served as former assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor. “The only thing that matters to Putin is staying in power.”

Putin in fact seems more of the school of Kremlin leaders who feel more the gravitational pull of the other half of Russia’s identity—the Asian part, like Joe Stalin telling a Japanese diplomat once, “Russia is an Asiatic country, and I am myself an Asiatic.”

Thus Putin has pursued a “Eurasian Union” that brings together European former Soviet republics such as Belarus and Armenia with non-European ones such as Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. It’s been envisioned as a customs union, but Putin has more grandiose plans. “We suggest a powerful supranational association capable of becoming one of the poles in the modern world,” he wrote in 2011.

The union has foundered, but that has only made Putin reach further east. Last month he actually proposed to Beijing to expand the Eurasian Union by including China, India, Iran, and Pakistan.

Even the Putin-controlled RBTH observed five years ago that “he seems more comfortable at Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS meetings than he is at the G8. ‘The West treats us like we just came down from the trees,’ Putin once remarked.”

At home, Putin presides over a nation that is hardly puritanical. Russia has the world’s highest divorce rate, the highest rate of injecting drug users, and one of the highest rates of alcoholism in Europe, while abortions last year reached almost a million. Unsurprisingly, Russia population has declined under Putin.

Observers point out that the support Putin receives from some quarters may have less to do with policy than with the fact he finances many of these parties. In France, Le Pen’s Front National has received at least 40 million euros from Russian-controlled banks. According to a paper, far-right parties from Hungary to Bulgaria to Austria all receive funding from Putin-controlled entities.

Equally, it comes in handy that Russian disinformation campaigns have succeeded in spreading Moscow’s propaganda throughout the West, through such outlets as RT. (For more from the author of “How Putin Hoodwinked the Political Right” please click HERE)

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3 Things Reagan Said About Trade That Apply Today

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Ronald Reagan was an advocate of free trade throughout his presidency. But just like today, many Americans in the 1980s opposed free trade and pushed for measures that would keep the nation out of the global economy.

Fortunately, Reagan argued persuasively in support of trade, and his success led to rapid growth in the U.S. economy.

He knew that protectionist policies might benefit some industries, but they hurt others.

When the government gets involved in trade, special interests get a chance to game the system. These groups excel at making it hard to tell how their policies harm Americans.

In his 1987 economic report, Reagan explained how protectionism hurts consumers:

Whatever the motive, protection in any form redistributes income and wealth. And because the redistributive effects are usually not readily apparent, special interest groups sometimes favor and governments often choose these methods over other more visible and much less costly forms of subsidy. Protection raises the price of imports and domestically produced import-competing products.

Reagan realized that history provides many examples of the damage unfree trade policies can do.

Speaking to the nation in the summer of 1983, he reminded Americans that the United States has gone down the road of protectionism before—with disastrous results. He said:

One economic lesson of the 1930s is protectionism increases international tensions. We bought less from our trading partners, but then they bought less from us. Economic growth dried up. World trade contracted by over 60 percent, and we had the Great Depression. Young Americans soon followed the American flag into World War II.

Free trade has the opposite effect, which Reagan knew well. Speaking at a reception in Tokyo on Nov. 10, 1983, he succinctly summarized his philosophy on trade, stating:

The message I want to leave with everyone here tonight is simple. It’s a lesson history has taught us again and again. Protectionism hurts everyone, but free trade benefits all.

Ronald Reagan was right about trade, and the exceptional economic growth during his presidency provides proof.

Research conducted by The Heritage Foundation shows a clear correlation between low trade barriers and economic prosperity. Today, we must remember that free trade leads to more prosperity for all, while protectionism hurts American consumers and producers. (For more from the author of “3 Things Reagan Said About Trade That Apply Today” please click HERE)

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Minimum Wage Laws Don’t Work. Here’s Why

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A minimum wage seems to be a compassionate law requiring employers to pay low-income workers a wage necessary to meet a reasonable standard of living.

So should we have a minimum wage? And if so, what should it be?

The current minimum wage is $7.25, which merely acts as a floor price since most states have their own, higher minimum wages. The 2016 Democrat and Republican presidential nominees both support some sort of minimum wage. Hillary Clinton has advocated for a federal minimum wage of $12 per hour, while Donald Trump has been vague. In some instances, he has called on raising the minimum wage to $10, but in other cases, emphasizes that such policy should be left to the states.

A minimum wage is merely a price. That price is the cost of an hour of labor, a cost your employer must pay. This price can be viewed the same way as any other cost, such as an iPhone, computer, or new pair of shoes.

Like anything, price will be dictated by supply and demand. While you might pay $700 for the new iPhone, it is unlikely that you would pay $5,000 for the same phone. That’s the problem with minimum wage. The more something costs, the fewer people there are who will want to purchase that item (work). So when it comes to a minimum wage, the question becomes: at what cost will an employer decide not to “purchase” (i.e. hire) a new employee.

You may think then that an employer will only offer the lowest price (wages). But that’s certainly not true, either. In fact, if an employer has a high demand for workers in a certain industry, wages will rise. Conversely, when there is an abundance of workers, but too few jobs in another industry, then the wages will tend to fall.
The problem with minimum wages is that they act as a price control by setting a minimum price an employer can pay to hire a worker (hence, “minimum” wage).

This policy actually leads to more unemployment.

When minimum wage laws require a business to pay more than it can afford or is willing to pay, more people are out of work, and fewer businesses are willing to hire.

Even liberal California Governor Jerry Brown, who helped pass a $15 minimum wage, admits that minimum wages are economically harmful. In his own budget he wrote, “such an increase [in the minimum wage] would require deeper cuts to the budget and exacerbate the recession by raising businesses’ costs, resulting in more job losses.” Those are his words, not mine!

Liberals believe that those who oppose minimum wage laws are simply advocating for business. Yet, minimum wage laws are actually antithetical to the freedoms and rights of the workers!

Consider this. Minimum wage laws forbid workers – producers of goods or services – from working for less than what the government requires, or the minimum wage. That means that if the minimum wage was increased to $15, as California has proposed or Bernie Sanders wants nationally, you would be breaking the law if you were willing to be employed in the economy for less than $15 hour – or $31,000 a year.

Yes, that means it would be illegal for a worker to support themselves in a career that pays anything less, even $14 per hour. As I wrote in a previous post, this notion was perfectly summarized by the late economist Henry Hazlitt, when he wrote that limiting employment opportunities, “deprive[s] the man of the independence and self-respect that come from self-support.”

Minimum wages don’t hurt businesses nearly as much as they hurt the very people liberals want to support. Instead of allowing all people to engage in productivity, liberals want to make it illegal to do so unless you get paid a certain level of income. Most individuals would be willing to take a job that pays $14 an hour ($29,000 a year) rather than be unemployed. But unemployment is essentially what the law requires unless you get that extra $1 per hour.

Harvard economist Greg Mankiw ran the statistics on minimum wage and found that it most often impacts teenagers and low-income households. His analysis concluded that a 10 percent rise in the in minimum wage reduces teenage employment by one and three percent. Based on a $15 minimum wage, that would amount to more than 171,000 teenage jobs.

He also concludes that few adult workers have to worry about making minimum wage. His study shows that more than half of all minimum wage workers in the U.S. are under 25 years old – and about a quarter were between 16 and 19 years of age. Most important, only about 3 percent of those over the age of 25 years earn the minimum wage.

The minimum wage doesn’t work, and more often than not, leads to increased unemployment.

Really, it’s quite insane. (For more from the author of “Minimum Wage Laws Don’t Work. Here’s Why” please click HERE)

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3 Gun Myths That Could Destroy Hillary’s Chances in November

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Hillary Clinton is in trouble because she is an emotionless robot who the American people don’t like or trust.

Yet the many scandals and the fact that the out-of-touch Clintons act like American royalty are not the primary reasons why she may lose this fall. She might lose this fall because Democrats have made a huge miscalculation on the Second Amendment.

Last night, speaker after speaker at the Democratic National Convention called for more gun control.

Former NASA Astronaut, Captain Mark Kelly, argued “Hillary knows that we save lives by doing more to keep guns out of the wrong hands.” Senator Chris Murphy, D-Conn. (F, 8%) bellowed, “Outrage that the gun lobby fights to keep open glaring loopholes that 90 percent of Americans want closed. Outrage that a suspected terrorist can walk into a store and walk out with a military-style, semi-automatic rifle.” Former Philadelphia and D.C. Chief of Police Charles Ramsey said “Hillary Clinton is the strong leader to protect our cops and communities from gun violence.”

It was heartbreaking to see victims of gun violence, including former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, paraded out to discuss their personal tragedies. These emotional speeches invoke sorrow and passion from all of us, and they should. But anyone wishing to have an intellectual discussion about gun laws has to look at the underlying rhetoric pushing stricter gun laws. After the curtain is pulled back and the speeches are over, the Left’s ongoing effort to chip away at the Second Amendment is exposed in plain sight.

Last night exposed three myths that Democrats are trying to sell the public about gun control.

Myth 1: Gun Control is Good Politics

This couldn’t be further from the truth – gun control is bad politics.

The New York Times reports that “After Years of Setbacks, Democrats Again See Gun Control as a Winning Issue, July 27, 2016.

After treating gun control as political poison for two decades, Democrats led by Hillary Clinton are again vigorously championing new gun restrictions as a central element of their campaigns.

The Times cited what happened the last time Democrats ventured down this path.

It is a pronounced shift. Stung by the loss of the House in 1994 after they enacted an assault rifle ban, and wary of the proven influence of the National Rifle Association, many Democrats have shied away from gun control proposals for fear of provoking an electoral backlash with little to show for it. Democrats couldn’t race away from a discussion of gun laws fast enough.

Fast forward to Al Gore’s run for the presidency in 2000. A piece published by the New Republic on January 29, 2001, told a story that sounds remarkably familiar to the situation we see today. “If you were a gun-control supporter last spring, life was sweet. Al Gore and Bill Bradley were climbing over each other trying to prove their devotion to the issue.”

Then after the election …

Yet talk to Democratic politicians about gun control these days and what’s palpable is the silence. Not long after the election, The Washington Post reported that “several lawmakers suggested that party leaders may be better off playing down their support for gun-control legislation,” a sentiment echoed two days later in The New York Times. Conservative Democrats like Marion Berry of Arkansas confide that “[Dick] Gephardt has said [the leadership] is not going to whip us on [gun control] anymore.” And even a reliable liberal like Barney Frank advises that there’s not “going to be a major push on this [issue].”

America has not changed that much on gun issues.

Myth 2: Polling Indicates that Voters want Gun Control

Polling may indicate that Americans in general support gun control, but that is not necessarily true of Americans who vote, and that number masks the fact that pro-Second Amendment voters bring passion and activism that is missed in polling data.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll recently indicated that 51% of Americans support a ban on so-called assault weapons, and 48% oppose. When asked if people support the idea of individuals being able to carry guns for self-defense, the numbers were 54% support and 42% oppose. The poll numbers are overwhelming, the American people support individuals on the FBI watch list from being banned from getting guns, yet the Bill of Right forbids this.

While the American people may marginally favor gun control, time after time, voters have punished gun-grabbing politicians. What’s more, the voters motivated to protect the Second Amendment are far more likely to vote, make calls, knock on doors and work to get pro-gun candidates elected.

Myth 3: Violence in America is Caused by Access to Guns

“Guns don’t kill, people do.” It’s a phrase we’ve all heard before but it’s worth repeating because it’s true. And the truth is, it’s factually untrue to claim that guns are the source of all violence.

During his run for President, following the shooting of two Virginia TV news employees in 2015, Sen. Marco Rubio argued that society has so devalued life and this in itself is a bigger cause of death than the existence of guns. He’s right.

What law in the world could have prevented him (the perpetrator of the Virginia shooting of a TV news crew) from killing them, whether it was with a gun or a knife or a bomb. What has happened to us as a society that we now devalue life to such a level? What has happened in our society that people have become so violent? That’s the fundamental question we need to confront.

I have written about this culture of death in the past, arguing that violence in video games, movies and culture in general, has led to a devaluation of life. Society has devalued life and that devaluation makes it easier for some people to take life away.

The Left would never dare to speak of one potential cause. Movies glorifying mass murder, or video games where a kid can engage in serial murder, have proven to be motivating factors for mass murderers of the past. The Left would argue that these forms of entertainment are protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution, yet, a law abiding citizen who wants to own an automatic firearm or an individual who was falsely placed on a government list of prohibited persons, are not protected by those same Bill of Rights.

As history has proven, Americans aren’t ready to throw away any part of the Second Amendment any time soon. Even if she is successful at continues at perpetuating these myths, Hillary Clinton may be going down the path of Al Gore and the many House Democrats who lost jobs over the President Bill Clinton-passed gun ban in the mid-1990s. (For more from the author of “3 Gun Myths That Could Destroy Hillary’s Chances in November” please click HERE)

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PIC: Say, I Wonder If Joe Biden’s Had Any Work Done

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With no disrespect to the LGBTQ community intended, I must say that the dumbest Vice President in American history looks like a transgendered version of Nancy Pelosi.

160728-joe-biden

As an aside, I’ve been listening to bits and pieces of the Democrat convention and have yet to hear a single true statement uttered. They’re gonna protect our borders (right), destroy ISIS (sure), fix the economy (mmm hmmm), and serve as squeaky clean public servants (rimshot, please).

Everything these leftist kooks say is a lie — and that includes the words and, the and or. (For more from the author of “PIC: Say, I Wonder If Joe Biden’s Had Any Work Done” please click HERE)

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The History of the United States, as Told by Young Democrats

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Young Democrats appear to be part of the coalition championing that dictum from William Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

I expected the youth caucus meeting at the Democratic National Convention, which I attended Wednesday, to focus almost entirely on current liberal concerns such as student loans, jobs, LGBT issues, and climate change. (Given the near absolute lack of mentions of terrorism on the convention’s main stage, I wasn’t so naïve that I expected any talk about the Islamic State terrorists or national security.)

But this was no MSNBC event, and far from leaning forward, two of the three participants on a panel went on extended diatribes about the United States’ history to a room with enough empty chairs to satisfy an army of Clint Eastwoods.

Sitting about half a mile from Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were signed, I got a whirlwind course in Liberal History 101.

“We understand that we have never had a fully participatory democracy,” said Catalina Velasquez. “We understand that democracy, the way it’s defined in the United States, has been about contracting, disenfranchising. The more we disenfranchise, the better. And we are tired of it.”

Velasquez is the director of Young People For, a group that declares on its website that it is “taking a stand for progressive values.” Earlier in the event, Velasquez got enthusiastic applause after boasts of being “undocumented and unafraid” and “transgender and unashamed.”

Nor was the earlier statement the sum of Velasquez’s criticisms about the United States.

“We are really looking introspectively about how this country came about,” Velasquez said. “This country’s built off the backs of native, indigenous people, the genocide of such. This country’s built off the backs of black people … this country is built on the backs of immigrant labor.”

Velasquez added:

And we are tired, and we are tired because history continues to repeat itself over and over again. We are not seeing the change and we are being told to wait. And we don’t want to wait. We’re ready and we’re coming.

Velasquez then proceeded to tick off how long it had taken different groups to be able to vote in the United States.

“And some of us who are undocumented, let’s not forget, are still fighting for suffrage rights.”

Curiously—or perhaps not curiously, given that Eleanor Roosevelt is still enough in the good graces of the left to be given an enthusiastic shoutout by Meryl Streep on the convention’s main stage—there was no mention of the Japanese being thrown into internment camps by Franklin Roosevelt.

At any rate, I’m under no illusion that the history of the United States is free from injustice, immorality, and bad decisions.

But what was striking about the account Velasquez gave was, by my memory, the complete absence of any mention of the strikingly great parts of our country’s history. (And of course, the view that somebody who came to the United States illegally should not only be entitled to live here, but also to vote.)

It was unmentioned how the U.S. championed freedom, how our Founding Fathers created a government system that sought both to avoid mob rule and to push citizens to truly govern themselves, to have a government of, by, and for the people, and to have a founding document that recognized the equality of men.

There was no discussion of how the United States had promoted freedom abroad, and had helped other nations with both financial resources and our soldiers’ lives. There was no consideration of how many immigrants had fled lands where opportunity was limited and found the United States to be a place where they and their children and their children’s children could truly live the American dream.

While Velasquez focused on the more distant past, another panelist offered a narrative (equally depressing) about the past few decades.

Nelini Stamp, who describes herself as an “organizer,” “agitator,” and “believer in community centered liberation” in her Twitter bio, detailed her views on past presidents:

Our parents saw [Ronald] Reagan, saw what happened, and then when … [Bill] Clinton gets elected, and everybody’s like ‘Oh, we’re here, this is amazing.’ And then we had [George W.] Bush. Eight years of Bush. And we went to war. We started to prioritize Washington [over] … Main Street. In 2008, we bailed out the banks instead of breaking them apart and they stole 60 percent of the wealth of African-American communities.

But don’t think Stamp’s dislike of the banks bailout means she has any empathy for or interest in exploring the views of the tea party:

A lot of folks thought … Obama gets elected, we kind of packed up. We were like ‘Oh, black president, yes, like I’m so happy.’ And then the tea party came along. And a lot of people thought we were this post-racial society and the tea party came along, and … white supremacy starts to become on the rise.

“If we don’t have a black liberation, black movement in this country … we won’t get anything accomplished,” Stamp added.

Nor was it just young Democrats who championed a narrative obsessed with America’s imperfections.

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who is 47, appeared at the event. Booker quoted “the late, great Langston Hughes,” a poet who flirted with communism at one point, to discuss America. Booker focused on these lines from Hughes’ 1935 poem “Let America Be America Again”:

O, let America be America again—

The land that never has been yet—

And yet must be—the land where every man is free.

The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our might dream again. …

O, yes,

I say it plain

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath—

America will be!

“Let us swear that oath,” Booker concluded. “Let us stay strong in faith.”

Stamp also grounded her call to young adults in her historical perspective.

“We are the warriors and … the visionaries of the Great Society that people talked about in the past, of that New Deal that went unpromised for communities of color,” she said.

“So I think that the reason we’re going through this is because it’s just history leading up to this moment where we need to take it.” (For more from the author of “The History of the United States, as Told by Young Democrats” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

If an Unborn Child Could Speak at the Democrat National Convention

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The Dems are pulling out every possible stop to push their extreme pro-abortion agenda at the party’s national convention in Philadelphia.

A day after Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richard’s brazen speech against basic safety requirements for abortion clinics—which a vast majority of Americans actually agree with—NARAL Pro-Choice America president Ilyse Hogue took the stage to talk about just how wonderful it was that she was able to abort her first child.

“I wanted a family, but it was the wrong time. I made the decision that was best for me – to have an abortion – and was able to get compassionate care at a clinic in my own community,” said Hogue. “Now, years later, my husband and I are parents to two incredible children.”

However, one can be certain that if the child she aborted could actually speak for itself, his or her outlook wouldn’t be so inspired.

Here’s an excerpt from Hogue’s speech, right before she goes into her attack on the Trump-Pence GOP ticket. Below Hogue’s remarks in italics are the same sections, rewritten from the perspective of an unborn child facing an abortion:

To succeed in life, we have to have it first. I was unfortunate enough to be conceived after 1973, a time period wherein at least 58 million of my other unborn counterparts. I wanted to have a life outside the womb, but someone decided that it was the wrong time for them to even put me up for adoption. I may have siblings who can grow, play, learn and love now. Not so much for me, though.

My mother made the decision that was right for her. While she received compassionate care that could have just as easily been offered at a crisis pregnancy center, I was either subjected to a toxic saline solution, starved as a result of a hormone treatment, or dissected limb from limb before being pulled in pieces from her womb.

My story is not unique. According to 2012 statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, as recently as 2012, there were 210 of us aborted for every 1,000 that were born in the United States. It’s not just as simple as whether I we are in our first, second, or third trimester, or whether it’s the “right time” for us to exist, we are the same children at different stages of development—not able to make decisions that will determine our life or death.

If we want children to succeed, we start by letting all of them live. Provide biological accurate information about what we are, and respect our human right to life, even if it isn’t convenient. That’s what Hillary Clinton has spent decades fighting against.

(For more from the author of “If an Unborn Child Could Speak at the Democrat National Convention” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.