When Christians Turn Against Freedom

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Here’s a quick smell test that I use when someone presents me with what he considers a brave and “radical” interpretation of the Gospel: Are this theory’s implications so appalling — not just for me, but the whole human race — that they would make me hope from the depths of my very soul that Christianity isn’t true? Does this reading of the Christian message

So outrage our natural instincts that it makes God seem like a sadistic monster or a bumbling incompetent, who made men fundamentally wrong — and now expects us to torture ourselves to correct his initial mistake?

Suggest that the Fall obliterated from the human heart any inkling of the Good, effectively re-creating the race of man according to Satan’s specifications?

Cut Christianity off completely from Judaism by making nonsense of the Old Testament — suggesting that the Jews of Jesus’ time were justified in rejecting him?

Such theories stink of brimstone. Gnostic attempts to remake Christianity as a hatred of life on earth are not so much real intellectual options as temptations from the devil aimed at the virtue of Faith. And countless saints have warned us to “flee the occasion” of sin. Any version of Christianity that would send a reasonable person on a quest for the nearest synagogue is false.

Using the Brimstone Smell Test

Employing the Smell Test has saved me going down countless blind alleys over the years. It helped me to shrug off the fringe arguments of those who claim that all non-Catholics are doomed to hell, and that for this grim reason we Catholics should seek to reinstate the Inquisition — using totalitarian means if need be to save as many souls as possible from plummeting into the Fire.

The Test helped me quickly reject the idea — which bedeviled some in the early Church — that really every Christian ought to live as a monk or nun, leaving marriage as a quasi-pagan halfway house which the truly devout should reject. (As Lezscek Kolakowski reports, the great Pascal imbibed this idea — and used it to bully his sister into shunning the man whom she loved.)

The same Test helps me know right off the bat what to think of Christians who call for pacifism or open borders.

Today’s Anti-Freedom Christians

I used the Brimstone test again when I read a famous essay by Catholic historian Christopher Dawson, where Dawson (who was born into money and later handed an endowed chair at Harvard) argued that any kind of financial planning, any effort to turn a profit or provide for your children’s future, is profoundly unchristian.

All Christians, even fathers of families, should live as St. Francis did, existing from day to day on whatever tithes come over the transom. Hence business, the free market, banking, insurance, savings, inheritance, and even children’s college funds are all fundamentally evil. Soldiers, noblemen, artists, clergy, kings and even conquistadors make better Christians than businessmen, said Dawson. Since students of mine were using this essay’s argument to justify making irresponsible decisions about their lives, I felt compelled to analyze it and point-by-point refute it. I left not a single stone piled on another.

Dawson’s argument is false but it isn’t dead. In fact, his ideas have found new apostles, in a broad and influential movement among some Christians who reject business, the free market, and indeed freedom itself — as forbidden fruit that fell from the Enlightenment’s poison tree. In such Christian circles you will find sneering references to “Liberalism,” by which the authors don’t mean the ideology of the Democrats. Instead, what they’re rejecting is the worldwide movement for freedom — religious, political and economic — that might be better called “Classical Liberalism.”

It’s a movement America’s Founders imported from England, and its roots reach back through the Magna Carta to the Saxons. This Liberalism is the heritage of the Anglosphere, and its benevolent effects can be seen from India to Australia, from Texas to the Falkland Islands. Pope John Paul II, who had endured the only feasible modern alternative to Classical Liberalism — ideological tyranny — wrote in Memory and Identity that such Liberalism reflects in politics the Christian vision of the person, as a free, responsible being answerable finally only to God.

This broad-based movement of Liberalism was the force behind demands for religious, economic, and political freedom first in England, then in America, and then around the world. This freedom movement was what caught fire in Poland, which brought down the Soviet empire. Such freedom is what persecuted Christians seek in the Middle East, and dissidents call for in China. Our Constitution’s guarantees of this freedom serve in America as the last, fragile bulwark against government repression of Christianity, as we saw the Obama administration attempt against Hobby Lobby and the Little Sisters of the Poor.

And now there are Christians who reject such freedom as incompatible with the Gospel. Elsewhere I have laid out in depressing detail the claims of Catholics who crave a return of the old paternalistic order, which saw priests collude with governments to maintain a religious monopoly, suppressing non-Catholic speech, outlawing Protestant churches and censoring the press. The Church renounced this power, all too belatedly, at Vatican II — but there are Catholics out there who reject the Council’s teaching, or try to get around it by looking for loopholes in the text.

The Free Market Is the Enemy. So Poverty Is Our Friend

More common by far are Christians — and we are seeing them in various denominations now — who skip lightly over the question of whether the state should impose their religious ideas by force. Instead their attention turns, almost obsessively, to the economy. Classical Liberalism includes as its natural by-product a basically free economy, where citizens strive to maximize their economic benefit by adapting what they produce to what others wish to consume — letting the price system coordinate the vast and incomprehensibly complex neural net of human cooperation, instead of handing that power to bureaucrats and “scientific” managers, as the Soviets tried to do.

Most Christians (as I do) favor a safety net designed to protect those who cannot take care of themselves, one constructed with respect for subsidiarity — the principle of protecting the free institutions of civil society, favoring voluntary over coerced charity, and keeping power as decentralized as possible. But there other Christians out there who seem to oppose freedom in principle.

The Latest Attack on Freedom: David Bentley Hart

Most recently, Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart has used the pages of First Things — which was founded to further the alliance of faithful Christians and Classical Liberals — to preach the gospel of what we might call the “Illiberal Christians.”

Illiberal Christians resent the dynamism, unpredictability, and spontaneity of an economy driven by the free choices of billions of people, without the guidance of wiser souls with advanced humanities or theology degrees. But these thinkers are running out of cudgels with which to beat the free economy.

In past decades, it was perhaps plausible to blame the market economy for failing to serve the interests of the global poor. Cold hard statistics now show that in the past 20 years, economic globalization has lifted more than a billion human beings from the grinding misery of absolute poverty. India, China, South Korea and parts of Africa have moved or are quickly moving out of the grinding cycle of subsistence agriculture and periodic famines.

Of course, it was only the market economy that lifted the population of Western Europe and America from the perennial want and anxiety that characterized most of human existence, between the early 19th and mid-20th centuries — a fact that Deirdre McCloskey celebrates in her eloquent trilogy, written in defense of freedom and the class that historically demanded it: the constantly libeled bourgeoisie. (I have just discovered that trilogy, and am working my way through it — expect more on McCloskey’s fine work in months to come.)

Illiberal Christians know by now that the economic effect of Classical Liberalism and the free economy on the poor is overwhelmingly beneficial. They just don’t care. Since they cannot blame freedom for failures that permitted global poverty, now Illiberals damn it for its success at creating global wealth, which engenders “consumerism.” The market feeds people’s bodies, and thereby endangers their souls. As Hart writes in First Things, the market system cannot

coexist indefinitely with a culture informed by genuine Christian conviction. Even the fact of the system’s necessary reliance on immense private wealth makes it a moral problem from the vantage of the Gospel, for the simple reason that the New Testament treats such wealth not merely as a spiritual danger, and not merely as a blessing that should not be misused, but as an intrinsic evil.

Hart goes on to claim:

In the Sermon on the Plain’s list of beatitudes and woes, he not only tells the poor that the kingdom belongs to them, but explicitly tells the rich that, having had their pleasures in this world, they shall have none in the world to come. He condemns those who buy up properties and create large estates for themselves. You cannot serve both God and mammon.

Is the Old Testament Just … Evil?

The entirety of the Old Testament is predicated upon God promising blessedness, prosperity, happiness and freedom on earth to the Jewish people if they obeyed Him. Christianity teaches us that there is another and higher happiness to found in the next life. But God could never have promised worldly blessings to His people in the first place if they were “intrinsically evil,” as Hart pretends. His rejection of all the this-worldly good things — such as a better life for one’s children — which Jews craved from Abraham onward strikes me as frankly Marcionite, partaking of the heresy which starkly opposes the “wicked” and “unspiritual” Old Testament to the New. Theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar was the first to note the deeply Marcionite, and often frankly anti-Semitic, biases of modern radicals who also — not by accident — rejected the market economy as evil.

We learn from the Gospels and the church’s traditions that we must imitate Christ, Who healed the sick and sought to alleviate worldly suffering. Indeed, the extraordinary and Christ-like work of Christian doctors and nurses, teachers and abolitionists, are all devoted to alleviating suffering. If suffering is in fact spiritually preferable to decent comfort and freedom, then Christians have no business trying our best to stamp it out. We ought to be spreading it. Imagining the highly “spiritual” austerity which Hart prefers to modern prosperity, I cannot help thinking of the program favored by Ingsoc in Orwell’s 1984, which was organized around suppressing pleasure of any kind. If that really were Christianity, then (as Flannery O’Connor said of another heresy) “to hell with it.”

It’s “Consumerist” When Vulgar People Crave Tacky Things

I will yield the field of refuting Hart’s exegesis to the learned Samuel Gregg, who did so comprehensively last week, drawing on Gregg’s fascinating new history of Christian attitudes toward economics and banking, For God and For Profit, which I was privileged to edit for its publisher, Crossroad. There is not much left of Hart’s thesis when Gregg is finished, but don’t count on that to change any minds. Those who find freedom repulsive do so for very deep reasons, which won’t go away when you prove to them that they are misreading the Gospel, any more than the market’s success at uplifting the poor cured them of their resenting it.

What seems to motivate Illiberal thinkers is a visceral aesthetic, pseudo-spiritual disgust at the outcome of freedom, at the fact that given their druthers, ordinary people make vulgar choices — picking Nash-trash music over string quartets, pre-fab suburbs over quirky historic neighborhoods, and shallow spirituality over the Desert Fathers. Such choices distress me, too — as it bothers me when people adopt religious beliefs which I think are false and spiritually harmful.

Don’t Play God. Lucifer Tried It, and See How It Worked Out for Him

But respect for the dignity and autonomy of others, and the realization that God is at work in their consciences every bit as powerfully as in mine, teach me to reject the use of force to train other human beings like recalcitrant pets “for their own good.” As long as ago as 1850, the great Catholic Classical Liberal Frederic Bastiat diagnosed the Olympian pride involved in presuming to engineer human souls (a phrase I borrowed from that famous Illiberal, Stalin). As Bastiat wrote of socialists, so we must now say of Illiberal Christians:

Socialists look upon people as raw material to be formed into social combinations. This is so true that, if by chance, the socialists have any doubts about the success of these combinations, they will demand that a small portion of mankind be set aside to experiment upon….

In the same manner, an inventor makes a model before he constructs the full-sized machine; the chemist wastes some chemicals — the farmer wastes some seeds and land — to try out an idea.

But what a difference there is between the gardener and his trees, between the inventor and his machine, between the chemist and his elements, between the farmer and his seeds! And in all sincerity, the socialist thinks that there is the same difference between him and mankind! … To these intellectuals and writers, the relationship between persons and the legislator appears to be the same as the relationship between the clay and the potter.

One of the greatest works of 19th-century literature, Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, foresaw the eventual merging of socialist and religious Illiberals, into a single movement that used coercion to suppress the unruly desires of the vulgar, grasping masses, and herd them into orderly, predictable ghettos, walled in by coercion, poverty, superstition and ignorance. That is the “heavenly city” which would result if the Illiberals have their way. The gospel they are preaching belongs not to Jesus Christ, but the Grand Inquisitor. (For more from the author of “When Christians Turn Against Freedom” please click HERE)

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Houston’s ‘All Gender Bathrooms’ Discriminate Against Everyone

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A recent trip to a doctor’s office in Houston, Texas, presented a heterosexual female with a conundrum. She asked where the bathroom was, and the receptionist told her down the hall. There were two bathrooms on either side of the hall, with the same signs and interior. Her choice was to use an “All Gender Restroom” along with heterosexual, homosexual, transgender, intersex, bisexual, and lesbian users, transpecies, or none at all.

She entered when the bathroom was empty, but she exited her stall to run right into a man using the urinal. A non-transgender man.

Both of their right to privacy was violated. Both of their choices were eliminated.

What about her choice to protect her body? What about his?

She could have easily taken a picture of his penis. Just recently someone was caught running out of a Target after harassing a woman. There are over 24 recent examples of the transgender bathroom policy harming women and children.

And women and children are not alone. What about protecting little boys?

What’s to stop a predator from exposing himself or abusing a child or teenager in a stall?

What about this woman’s right to choose to express her own gender as a heterosexual female?

In essence, this ludicrous bathroom policy prevents all heterosexual men and women and children from exercising their right to privacy, which is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.

The 99.99 percent of heterosexuals who do not want to intermix with the opposite sex while they are sitting on the toilet are discriminated against– and not because of any transgender nonsense. Transgender people, which is a misnomer that actually hurts people suffering from gender dysphoria, represent less than half of one percent of the population in America. Less than half than one percent.

The 99.99 percent of men who would prefer for strangers to not see them using a urinal, or the parents who would like their minor children to not be exposed to a man’s private parts, are completely disregarded and discriminated against.

A woman’s right to privacy on the toilet is no longer allowed.

A man’s right to privacy at a urinal is no longer allowed.

Children, who can easily be abducted, kidnapped, or trafficked, are often targeted while alone– in bathrooms, in stores, in areas where there are no video cameras.

If bathrooms can be open to anyone at any time, then so also should there be security guards and cameras in every bathroom to prevent and hopefully minimize a crime being committed.

And, if everyone can express themselves however they want, does this mean that everyone is now disabled and can apply for disability benefits? Are all genders now handicapped? The signs seems to indicate that. But it also welcomes pedophiles who advocate that their expression is normal. And it also welcomes niblings and transpas.

Same with a man wearing a wig.

Or a woman who identifies as a cat.

Perhaps the next time she uses a bathroom in Houston she should bring her cat with her. And a camera. Or even a gun.

At least in Houston, open and concealed carry is legal.

As is insanity at every level. (For more from the author of “Houston’s ‘All Gender Bathrooms’ Discriminate Against Everyone” please click HERE)

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Why These 3 Senators Are Standing up to Obama on Internet Freedom

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Three senators are fighting to keep the internet free for rest of the world, according to a letter recently sent to the Department of Commerce.

Last week senators Mike Lee (R-UT), Ted Cruz (R-TX) and James Lankford (R-OK) wrote to the Secretary of Commerce expressing their “deep concerns with a proposal submitted to the Department of Commerce and NTIA for review by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).” The proposal would be the culmination of a more than two-year push by the Obama administration to relinquish United States oversight of the internet to an international body, somewhat analogous in structure to the United Nations. Opponents of the measure have cited several problems with its implementation.

What is ICANN?

Originally chartered in 1998, ICANN’s job essentially is to handle the nuts and bolts of the internet’s basic operations. It’s a nonprofit body responsible for the maintenance and procedures of a lot of databases tied to internet domain names like ‘.com,’ ‘org,’ or ‘.net,’ performing technical maintenance work and traffic direction — as it is also responsible for ensuring that data goes from the correct places to the correct places — on the things that make the internet work stably and securely.

What is the current role of the United States?

A lot of the United States’ role in the current debate revolves around a department of ICANN known as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). Under ICANN’s current structure, IANA is “responsible for coordinating some of the key elements that keep the Internet running smoothly,” according to its website. Currently, the department operates under a contract from the U.S. Department of Commerce, which means that the organization, and therefore the internet’s maintenance department, essentially answers to the American people, which makes some sense, seeing as the internet is an American invention. Simply put, IANA’s contract has historically functioned as a backstop and guarantee of oversight that would likely not otherwise be present.

Why does the administration want to turn it over?

Proponents, like the Obama administration, see the internet as a global engine of commerce in the administering of which more countries and corporations deserve a stake.

“All of us are stakeholders in a strong and vibrant, global Internet,” said Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker at an ICANN meeting in 2014.

The Internet has thrived precisely because citizens around the world have a voice in how the Internet is governed. That is why we — the United States government — support multistakeholder processes. This is our bedrock principle for Internet governance. Let me be clear about this. The United States will not allow the global Internet to be coopted by any person, entity, or nation seeking to substitute their parochial worldview for the collective wisdom of this community — you, the community of stakeholders represented so well here today.

We must make clear this approach is the best tool to secure the openness and the vibrancy of the Internet. We must ensure that ICANN can build on its efforts to strengthen the multistakeholder process and can become directly accountable to the customers of the IANA functions and to the broader Internet community.

Essentially, because the internet has become a global phenomenon, the administration contends, it requires more global oversight.

Why not turn it over?

As it turns out, there are lots of things problematic with the administration’s approach to doing this. Opponents find several problems with the specific implementation laid out by the Obama administration.

Since its development by researchers under United States contract, the Internet has become a fundamental important tool for connecting peoples and ideas across the globe. Secretary Pritzker was absolutely right when she argued that the preservation of a free and open Internet is far more important than any parochial or particular interests,” Sen. Lee said. “ICANN’s recent proposal endangers this freedom and transparency by paving the way for control by foreign governments to the detriment of all users, regardless of nation or ideology.

Foreign influence:

Among several other concerns, Lee, Lankford and Cruz mention international control, human rights, and the constitutional handling of United States property in the letter sent on May 19.

ICANN’s proposal significantly increases the power of foreign governments. Under the proposal, the foreign government body at ICANN known as the Government Advisory Committee (GAC), which consists of 162, will not only continue to have a special advisory power with ICANN’s Board of Directors, but the threshold for the board to reject GAC advice will increase from 50 percent to 60 percent. The inclusion of this provision directly contradicts an assurance ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade made to Senator Deb Fisher during a 2015 Senate Commerce Committee hearing in which he stated that increasing the margin that it would take to reject government-led proposals or advice would be “incongruent” with the stated goals of the IANA transition and that ‘[t]the board has looked at that matter and has pushed it back so that it’s off the table.’

Human rights:

Should regimes with terrible free speech records have a say in how information is made available? Not according to opponents of the administration’s proposal.

[T]he proposal insert into ICANN’s bylaws an undefined commitment to respect ‘internationally recognized human rights’ would open the door to the regulation of content. Inclusion of such a commitment would unquestionably be outside the historical mission of an organization whose functions are supposedly ‘very limited to the names and numbers and the protocol parameters which are way down in the plumbing of the internet.’

They are arguing that any addition to the bylaws implicitly also becomes part of the core mission of the organization, which becomes problematic for human rights/free speech/free press advocates when one takes a look at the track records of some of the “multistakeholders” involved, two of which mentioned by name are China and Iran.

“[W]e have uncovered that ICANN’s Beijing office is actually located within the same building as the Cyberspace Administration of China, which is the central agency within the Chinese government’s censorship regime,” reads the letter. According to the arguments made by the authors, allowing Beijing to house such a vital office so close to where it controls internet traffic for its own population would only serve to give the communist regime more leeway to contradict the above claims made by the Secretary of Commerce and further suppress free speech inside and about the Middle Kingdom.

“For the average Chinese citizen freedom of publication is actually nothing more than the freedom to submit,” reads a report from the United States Congressional-Executive Commission on China.

In meetings with Commission staff Chinese officials have stated that anyone wanting to publish their opinions may submit their article or book to a government-licensed publisher, but if they are unable to find a licensed publisher, then the only way they can legally exercise their constitutional right to freedom of publication is to ‘enjoy their works themselves, or give copies to friends and family.’
Currently, if an average person in China wants to publish their opinions to an audience broader than their voice can carry and they do not have a free speech elite patron or a willing government publishing house, the safest mechanism is via Internet bulletin board systems run by the government.
Iran has also made overtures against the United States’ current oversight of the world wide web.

During a recent CCWG-Accountability “Review of Draft Bylaws” meeting on April 11, 2016, a representative for Iran stated: “We should not take it granted that jurisdiction is already agreed to be totally based on U.S. law.” Iran was supported by representatives from Argentina and Brazil who suggested that jurisdiction should be a subject for work stream 2, which as previously discussed, will not be subjected to review by the administration or Congress.

Cue a report from the BBC last year, which claims that Islamist “hardliners” have turned up the heat on freedom of expression inside the Shia Regime.

“This year more than a dozen concerts, lectures and other cultural events have been called off after pressure from hardliners — despite being officially sanctioned by the authorities,” reads the story, published in May 2015. “It’s been happening across the country, at concert halls and on university campuses.”

Nor have such free speech violations been restricted to last year. Hila Sedighi, an Iranian poet who backed a reformist candidate in the country’s 2009 presidential election, was jailed in January of 2016 amidst an “apparent crackdown” on free speech and political dissent, according to Reuters.

Though not mentioned in the letter, Saudi Arabia also deserves an honorable mention in this section. Perhaps the most visible example of the Sunni Kingdom’s restriction of internet freedom is Raif Badawi, a blogger who was convicted of “insulting Islam” in 2014 and sentenced to jail time and no fewer than 1000 lashes. Two years prior, as Badawi sat in jail awaiting trial, the Sunni Kingdom, which currently ranks 165 out of 180 countries in press freedom, used its delegate status at ICANN to protest several domain names including ‘.gay’ and ‘.islam,’ mostly on cultural and religious grounds.

“Few tech media outlets are reporting the risks from the planned radical changes to Internet governance. Many tech reporters have simply accepted the Obama administration’s disingenuous claim that the U.S. role is merely ‘clerical,’” reads an op-ed by L. Gordon Crovitz in the Wall Street Journal. “It’s as clerical as the passage of the U.S. Navy in the South China Sea: The U.S. defends the open Internet by making sure no one else interferes, just as it dispatches ships to ensure that the sea lanes stay open.”

The Constitution:

Changing IANA’s contract without Congress’ authority could also create constitutional problems, depending on whether or not things created by the U.S. military actually belong to the U.S. government.

The argument works this way, the root zone file, which is essentially the internet’s roadmap and establishes where everything goes in the virtual world, was developed by the Department of Defense with taxpayer funds, and is therefore very limited to the names and numbers and the protocol parameters which are way down in the plumbing of the internet.” Legal experts surrounding the case are still fuzzy on whether this means that the file is property of the United States government, but if it is, then it will literally take an act of Congress to relinquish control of ICANN.

Article IV, section 3 of the United States Constitution states, “The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States.” This means that the administration’s plan to internationalize control of the internet through the Department of Commerce could be an unconstitutional move if the root zone file is indeed determined to be property of the U.S. government.

“[N]either Congress nor the administration knows with absolute certainty if the IANA transition would include the transfer of government property,” reads the Cruz-Lee-Lankford letter. “This is despite the fact that Assistant Secretary Strickling testified before the United States Senate that “there is no Government property that is the subject of this contract… I think the GAO agrees with us as well based on a study they did back in 2000 when they looked at this question.”

“The 2000 GAO report was actually indeterminate on the property question and concluded that it was ‘unclear whether such a transition would involve a transfer of government property to a private entity.’”

What happens now?

As it stands, the handover was originally supposed to happen in September 2015, but was delayed for a year. Now, whether or not the administration hands over the keys to the web depends on whether Congress takes action against the move in the next few months.

How can this be stopped?

Congress has blocked funding for the transition under the last three appropriations bills, which it could very well do again. They could also prohibit the Department of Commerce’s authority to relinquish the contract, but this again depends on whether the contract constitutes property of the federal government.

“He who controls all IP addresses controls the Internet,” stated former Network Solutions, Inc. CEO Mike Daniels in the late 1990s. Whether or not the United States cedes its oversight of this control now lies almost completely with the United States Congress. (For more from the author of “Why These 3 Senators Are Standing up to Obama on Internet Freedom” please click HERE)

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Who’s the Real Anti-Gun Radical Running for President?

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When Trump says “The Second Amendment is on the ballot in November,” he is right.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is not a fan of the Bill of Rights provision that protects Americans’ natural right of self-defense.

She has campaigned to the left of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and hammered him for protecting the rights of gun owners in his home state of Vermont. If elected, it is clear that she will claim to support the Second Amendment while will taking actions to roll back those rights as far as a president can.

Donald Trump hammered Hillary for her stance on gun control when he argued over the weekend that “Crooked Hillary Clinton is the most anti-gun anti-Second Amendment ever to run for office.” He is spot on.

Hillary gave a gun control speech last week in which she rolled out her anti-gun agenda. In the past, she has called for Supreme Court justices to overturn two Supreme Court cases that protect the right to keep and bear arms. She merely pretends to support the Second Amendment while her campaign promises betray an intent to make that provision of the Constitution a dead letter of law.

Here are the facts:

According to Politifacts.com, Hillary has argued for the overturning one of the most important Second Amendment protection cases in our history:

Clinton said she disagrees with the the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller. In a 5-4 decision, the Court struck down Washington’s handgun ban and recognized that the Second Amendment applies to the individual’s right to bear arms.

‘The Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment,’ she said in a leaked recording of a private fundraiser.

That case stands for the simple proposition that the Second Amendment is an individual right rather than a collective one. Although Politifacts.com ruled Donald Trump’s statement that “Hillary Clinton wants to abolish the Second Amendment” false, her position regarding Heller shows that she would effectively ignore the core meaning of the natural right of self-defense.

Hillary also endorsed a compulsory buyback program implemented in Australia. She said, “Australia is a good example.” That program would not pass constitutional scrutiny in the United States.

It is ironic that the fact checkers fall all over themselves to defend Hillary because she pays lip service to protecting the Second Amendment, yet she has never mapped out a plan to protect it. Hillary will follow President Obama’s lead in trying to pack the Supreme Court with nominees overtly hostile to gun rights while claiming that she supports the Second Amendment — don’t believe it.

According to her own website, Hillary has rolled out a number of proposals that will chip away at gun rights:

A proposal to shut down gun shows by forcing background checks to accompany sales between private citizens;

A proposal to allow trial lawyers to sue the gun industry into submission;

A reinstatement of the so called “assault weapons ban”;

Use of the error-filled terrorist watch list to disenfranchise law-abiding citizens who were put on the list by mistake and cannot get their names removed.

None of these proposals have a chance of passing if Congress stays in Republican hands. Democrats would be reluctant to go down the road of gun control if they take over for fear of being booted out of office in 2018. The Left rolls out polls that indicate support for some of these measures, yet voters have a say and they tend to vote against candidates who support gun control.

If Hillary is so supportive of the Second Amendment, where are her proposals to protect gun rights? She has none. In stark contrast, Donald Trump has a number of ideas to expand gun rights. Now some on the Right will look skeptically at Trump’s proposals, because he was a one-time supporter of some gun control ideas. Yet he is clearly superior on the issue to the overtly-hostile Hillary Clinton.

According to NBC News, Trump has proposed ideas to expand gun rights:

Throughout his campaign, Trump has called gun bans ‘a total failure,’ opposed an expansion of background checks and called for concealed carry permits to be valid across all 50 states.

Trump has voiced opposition to any weapons bans and has rolled out a list of Supreme Court nominees who are not hostile to the Second Amendment. Merrick Garland, President Obama’s pick, has a history of support for gun control. In 2000, Judge Garland supported the Clinton administration’s proposal to store gun-buyers’ records and tried to get the D.C. Circuit to reconsider the Heller case as it wound through the federal courts.

For those who treasure Second Amendment rights and don’t want to be playing defense for the next four years on Supreme Court nominees and gun control legislation, this fall’s election will have a significant impact on the government’s respect for the Bill of Rights. (For more from the author of “Who’s the Real Anti-Gun Radical Running for President?” please click HERE)

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Trump Needs a Contract With Conservatives

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Donald Trump’s impressive list of potential Supreme Court nominees was a very smart move at a pivotal time. It came amid news of the Little Sisters’ ongoing battle not to be compelled by Caesar to fund abortion drugs, and amid Barack Obama’s bathroom edict thrust upon every school in America—as our President of Fundamental Transformation stoically promises to slay the world’s new great scourge: “transphobia.” Our fearless commander-in-chief knows he cannot wage this just war alone. The crusade must be carried forth by left-wing nature-redefiners poised throughout the courts. A President Hillary Clinton would duly pick up the torch, inserting still more morally insane judicial activists to advance the cultural revolution. Trump’s list came the week following his meeting with Paul Ryan, which surely was an impetus.

So, kudos to Team Trump. But the judges list needs to be merely the start. I here suggest that The Donald go further. I recommend that he and his team create a literal Contract with Conservatives, taking a page from Newt Gingrich’s brilliant Contract with America in 1994. Then, Newt pledged a list of popular common-sense conservative initiatives that he vowed a Republican Congress would vote on during Bill Clinton’s presidency. My thinking of Newt right now is partly precipitated by suggestions—including by The Donald’s top male cheerleader, Sean Hannity—that the former House speaker join Trump as a running mate. Newt might want to talk with Trump about the potency of the contract concept. The idea should resonate with Trump, being a businessman whose business is contracts, and as the namesake of the Art of the Deal.

What would this contract include? It needs to underscore 10 or 12 defining issues by which conservatives need reassurance before doing the unpalatable if not unthinkable in pulling the lever for Donald Trump.

Topping the list must be the guarantee to nominate only conservative judges, which is the paramount concern to conservatives holding their nose to vote less for Donald Trump than against Hillary Clinton. I talk to these conservatives constantly. For many, the only reason they will vote for Trump is to try to save America from unchecked activists inventing Constitutional rights and redefining the country and culture from the bench.

Really, liberals, you have helped enable Donald Trump with eight awful years of Barack Obama and the prospect of eight more with Hillary Clinton. Barack’s bathroom edict, endorsed by longtime abortion-fanatic and newfound “LGBTQ” warrior-queen Hillary Clinton, merely serves to advance Trump’s presidential prospects. My word to Obama and gang: You people are not only ideologically ridiculous but politically oblivious. Barack’s public bathroom obsession repulses the electorate about as much as Donald Trump’s public behavior does. Obama’s toilet fiat is so politically idiotic that it makes me wonder if the current Democratic president is secretly working with The Donald to defeat Madame Hillary. Nice job, liberals. You don’t like the Trump monster you’ve helped build, but every day you enliven it more.

One “NeverTrump” conservative emailed me yesterday saying he might now vote for The Donald. What changed his mind? The left’s bathroom follies combined with Trump’s list of conservative judges.

I digress. My point is that point one of a Trump Contract with Conservatives needs to be about restoring sanity to a nation-culture gone mad by restoring rationally thinking human beings to the federal courts.

Beyond judges, we could easily come up with a dozen other issues for a Trump Contract with Conservatives, ranging from a direct pledge to repeal Obamacare to promises to cut federal income taxes (Trump is already reneging on this one), to defund Planned Parenthood, to eliminate the Department of Education and Common Core, to abolish the IRS, to increase military funding. Trump must also somehow vow not to aid and abet the left’s fanatical efforts to redefine human nature, from marriage to gender. This is key, because Donald Trump, despite all the hype about him being politically incorrect, has long been a cultural liberal of New York values, whose only “political incorrectness” is actually mere brashness and rudeness and crudeness. The New York cultural liberal needs to promise to resist the bathroom battlers and left’s lieutenants of gender madness. His comments on the North Carolina situation a few weeks ago were not reassuring.

The Contract with Conservatives might even go so far as to include actual names of people that a President Trump would place in crucial posts from the Department of Defense and State Department to the National Security Council and Treasury. That hasn’t been done before, but neither has (in my recollection) a pre-presidential list of potential Supreme Court nominees. It would be unprecedented, but The Donald himself is unprecedented.

Team Trump should start now behind the scenes quietly working with leading conservatives to devise a list to announce at the Cleveland convention. Tap Newt Gingrich. Newt does know conservatism, which is vital to a Republican presidential nominee who can’t spell conservatism. The value of releasing such a list in Cleveland would be immense. It would also give The Donald coherent talking points to corral him, rather than him bloviating with his usual litany of platitudes from a podium.

Key caveat: Would a President Donald Trump abide by this contract? That’s not certain. Trump is a man of (at best) new principles and (at worst) no principles. He boasts of how he can change on a dime. His ability to flip-flop could be unsurpassed in the annals of presidential history. Nonetheless, he is a businessman and deal-maker who has some devotion to the weight of contracts. Maybe a contract, done with great fanfare, could hold him accountable to a degree (it’s better than nothing).

To be sure, such a Contract with Conservatives will not mollify all conservatives. Many of us remain convinced that Donald Trump is fundamentally unfit and unsuited for the most significant office in the world — temperamentally, emotionally, intellectually, ideologically, even morally. I have seen enough over the past year. Watching Donald Trump’s astonishing antics and policy ignorance has told me everything I need to know. He has exhibited enormous character instability and psychological flaws. His childish behavior on the campaign trail does not merit the votes of serious adults. Whatever coaching he gets now on how to behave, and in devising whatever deals to better pretend to look conservative, none of it should convince us he’s something he’s not. Nonetheless, if Trump is looking for a way to appeal to a larger swath of conservatives who dread the radical left’s (i.e., today’s Democratic Party) further transformation of America into a cultural hellhole where nuns and bakers and photographers and florists and marriage clerks and wedding caterers and churches and companies and schools are forced, sued, fined, closed, threatened, picketed, boycotted, jailed, debased, demonized, dehumanized, and destroyed often simply for asking for conscience exemptions in a country that has a 220-year-old First Amendment enshrining religious freedom, then Trump should seek ways to attract them. To be sure, I still find it highly unlikely to impossible that Donald Trump can win in November. A man of such overwhelmingly historical negatives with vast segments of voters really doesn’t stand much of a chance, even as polls tighten and even as Barack Obama does his surest to have adult men share restrooms with our daughters. I am sympathetic to George Will’s plea that conservatives should work to defeat Donald Trump rather than help him because of the enormous brand damage he could cause to the party of Lincoln and Reagan. However, if Trump is looking for a way to try to reassure conservative voters in his bid to stop another post-modern Democrat from further torching our civil liberties, a Contract with Conservatives might be a good option. For the good of my country and culture, I would like some guarantee from Trump of some semblance of conservatism and resistance to the left-wing juggernaut should he seize the Oval Office for the next four years.

Now is the time, when The Donald needs conservatives because his goal is to win, win, win (i.e., when the goal is himself), for conservatives to try to hold him accountable to their movement that he’s hijacking for his own purposes. (For more from the author of “Trump Needs a Contract With Conservatives” please click HERE)

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What McConnell’s Surrender on Women’s Draft Shows About GOP Leadership

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has apparently given up on another battle front: Stopping America’s young women from being forced into military combat.

That isn’t exactly what he said this week when asked his views on whether women should be made to register for the draft, but it’s the logical outcome of his position. The question arose because the National Defense Authorization Act, likely to come to the Senate floor next week, contains language to draft women.

Here is what McConnell said, according to the New York Times:

First of all, I don’t anticipate going back to the draft. The professional voluntary Army has been very successful. We’re talking here about registration for Selective Service, should we ever go back to a draft. And given where we are today, with women in the military performing virtually all kinds of functions, I personally think it would be appropriate for them to register just like men do.

That is a very good example of a politician trying to have it both ways—kind of a “I’m for something because it won’t happen but if it does happen I support it.”

Welcome to what leadership looks like in Washington in the year 2016.

In reality, the debate over the draft is an outcome of a larger debate we never had—whether America’s daughters should be forced into military combat.

As McConnell himself admitted, it’s because all roles in the military, including combat, are now open to women that it only seems fair to force women to be part of any future draft.

The debate over whether women in combat is good for them, for the military, or for society at large never occurred because that would have meant taking on the Obama administration. And as anyone who has followed past political skirmishes between GOP congressional leadership and the Obama White House might predict, this was another hill the GOP just wasn’t willing to charge.

Late last year, the Obama administration handed down another “we know better than anyone else, including experts” mandate declaring all military combat positions must be open to women.

This was done despite studies conducted by branches of our own military that raised serious red flags about the performance of co-ed units. And oh, the American people had had no say, either.

Yet it was done with little to no objection by Republicans in Congress.

This is what happens when social experiments, political agendas, and being scared of your own shadow becomes more important than standing up and doing what is best for the country.

The mission of our armed forces must be the standard for determining who plays what roles in them.

And evidence evaluating the effectiveness of putting women in direct combat should not be ignored. A study conducted over 9 months in 2013 by the Marine Corps’ Gender Integration Force evaluated 134 ground combat tasks. The results? All-male units outperformed co-ed units in 69 percent of the tasks. Female training course completion rates lagged well behind men and the injury rate among women was much higher.

These realities drive up casualties and costs and they reduce our military’s effectiveness. That is not only a threat to women and men wearing our country’s uniform, but also a threat to all of us they are sworn to protect.

Congress should prohibit any measure that would force women to register for the draft and be forced into combat roles. You can’t be for one and not be for the other and lawmakers such as McConnell shouldn’t pretend otherwise. If you’re for women being drafted, you’re for women in combat. (For more from the author of “What McConnell’s Surrender on Women’s Draft Shows About GOP Leadership” please click HERE)

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A Former Transgender Person’s Take on Obama’s Bathroom Directive

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President Barack Obama, the titular head of the LGBT movement, has added to the firestorm of confusion, misunderstanding, and fury surrounding the transgender bathroom debate by threatening schools with loss of federal funding unless they allow students to join the sex-segregated restroom, locker room, and sports teams of their chosen gender, without regard to biological reality.

His action comes after weeks of protests against the state of North Carolina for its so-called anti-LGBT bathroom bill.

As someone who underwent surgery from male to female and lived as a female for eight years before returning to living as a man, I know firsthand what it’s like to be a transgender person—and how misguided it is to think one can change gender through hormones and surgery.

And I know that theNorth Carolina bill and others like it are not anti-LGBT.

“L” is for lesbian. The bill is not anti-lesbian because lesbians have no desire to enter a stinky men’s restroom. Lesbians will use the women’s room without a second thought. So the law is not anti-L.

“G” is for gay. Gay men have no interest in using women’s bathrooms. So the law is not anti-G.

“B” is for bi-sexual. The “B” in the LGBT have never been confused about their gender. Theirs is also a sexual preference only that doesn’t affect choice of restroom or locker room.

“T” is for transgender. The “T” identifies a person who has undergone hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery, and legally changes the gender marker on his or her birth certificate.

The North Carolina law is not anti-T because the law clearly states that the appropriate restroom is the one that corresponds to the gender stated on the birth certificate. Therefore, a transgender person with a birth certificate that reads “female” uses the female restroom, even if the gender noted at birth was male.

So, you see, the law is not anti-LGBT. What then is all the uproar about?

What has arisen is a new breed emerging among young people that falls outside the purview of the LGBT: the gender nonconformists.

Gender nonconformists, who constitute a miniscule fraction of society, want to be allowed to designate gender on a fluid basis, based on their feelings at the moment.

I call this group “gender defiant” because they protest against the definition of fixed gender identities of male and female. The gender defiant individuals are not like traditional transgender or transsexual persons who struggle with gender dysphoria and want hormone therapy, hormone blockers, and eventually, reassignment surgery. The gender defiant group doesn’t want to conform, comply, or identify with traditional gender norms of male and female. They want to have gender fluidity, flowing freely from one gender to another, by the hour or day, as they feel like it.

Under the cover of the LGBT, the anti-gender faction and its supporters are using the North Carolina bathroom bill to light a fuse to blow up factual gender definitions.

Obama is championing the insanity of eliminating the traditional definition of gender. He does not grasp the biological fact that genders are not fluid, but fixed: male and female.

Using the power of his position to influence the elimination of gender, overruling science, genetics, and biblical beliefs, is Obama’s display of political power.

One fact will remain, no matter how deep in the tank Obama goes for the gender nonconformists, genetics and God’s design of male and female, no matter how repugnant that is to some, cannot be changed. Biological gender remains fixed no matter how many cross-gender hormones are taken or cosmetic surgeries are performed. No law can change the genetic and biblical truth of God’s design. Using financial blackmail to achieve the elimination of gender will become Obama’s ugly legacy. (For more from the author of “A Former Transgender Person’s Take on Obama’s Bathroom Directive” please click HERE)

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Why This Man Is the Last of the Senate Conservatives

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During my time in Washington, I have seen well intentioned people arrive on the Hill ready to challenge the Establishment. Yet, too often I witness those same individuals lured into a system that promises power and prestige.

Conservatives know this all too well. A quick scroll through the Conservative Review score card shows that a majority of “conservative” politicians are hardly distinguishable from their Democratic counterparts.

Perhaps there is no better example of this than the recent Senate vote on the energy and water spending bill. It is a bill that funds the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps or USACE), the Department of Interior and the Department of Energy. I know, this sounds really boring. My intent is not to bore you with what seems to be a hippie’s bawdy dream (no pun intended); instead, liberty-minded voters must understand why this bill is so important to the conservative movement.

(Here’s a short clip on the bill’s chief sponsor, RINO Lisa Murkowski:)

First, it’s important to remember that the energy and water bill is a Republican bill. Yet, it out-liberal’d the liberals and it increased the size of (bad) government.

In total, the bill increased the size of government by $355 million. Most shocking, this is $261 million more than Obama requested! Let me repeat: The liberal, environmentalist loving bill provides nearly $300 million more than Obama wanted to spend.

In addition, the bill increased funding for the Corps, a big government regulator, engaged in economically and environmentally “dubious” projects, most of which are wasteful. Furthermore, the Corps enforces a dangerous, liberal regulation known as the Waters of the United States (WOTUS). Conservatives have long championed proposals to defund this regulation; yet, none of the funds in this bill were blocked from enforcing it.

WOTUS is a regulation is part of the Clean Water Act, passed in the 1970s. At the time, the bill mandated that agencies were to regulate “waters” on any property. There was just one problem: Congress never adequately defined the term “waters.” Instead, rogue agencies have been left to define it themselves.

Needless to say, its’ been a disaster. The regulation has been used to imprison Americans, destroy lands and seize homes. Republicans correctly offered amendments to reduce Corps funds from being used to enforce this regulation. The amendment failed, but not because of liberals. Instead, it failed because of Mitch McConnell. Republican leader Mitch McConnell used his powers to crush his own party.

An amendment of this nature would normally only require a simple majority to pass. Instead, McConnell used Senate rules to require the amendment to pass at 60 votes. Had the amendment proceeded under normal circumstances, the vote tally of 56 in favor; 42 against, would have been enough for it to pass!

Ready for the most devastating news? This bill actually rejected a proposal by Obama to reduce Corps spending by $1.4 billion. That’s right – the Corps is an agency that promotes a liberal, environmentalist agenda; it stands alone on the pedestal of government inefficiency and lawlessness, so much so that even Obama wants to defund the damn thing.

The Republicans thought otherwise.

But there’s more. The bill also provides new money to “green energy” projects, including energy loans that have been used as a personal piggy bank for Obama’s buddies. Do you remember the “green energy” loans to Solyndra, Abound Solar, Beacon Power or Ener1? They all received DOE loans and are now bankrupt.

Republicans at least cut funding for climate change research, right? Wrong. Republicans actually increased funding for climate change research by $40 million.

In the end, this Republican bill spends more money on liberal priorities, and provides funding for regulations that are devastating the American people and conservative states.

So, here is why it matters that we pay close attention:

The Last of the Senate Conservatives.

This bill passed the Senate with overwhelming support, 90 in favor and eight against. Each of the eight Senators who opposed the bill were Republicans including members you would expect like Ted Cruz, Jeff Sessions, Rand Paul and Mike Lee.

Sadly, that’s the narrative that will fill press releases and voting records. But it’s not the entire story. See in the Senate, a bill never receives just one vote as you might believe. Rather, a bill must go through a web of votes in order for that final, pass or fail, vote to take place. The one vote that matters most, perhaps, is a vote called the “cloture” vote.

A cloture vote is basically an inquiry from all Senators as to whether they are prepared to move forward on a bill – it’s a vote in favor of ending debate on the bill and proceeding to a final vote.

However, a cloture vote requires 60 votes to pass, which means it often takes every Republican and a handful of Democrats in order for the bill to move forward.

The failure to receive the required 60 votes simply stalls the bill. This is crucial, because a 60 vote threshold is the most powerful vote for conservative members. Do the math, and it becomes clear that a simple majority, as is needed on final passage, never needs conservative votes – either to pass or deny a bill. Yet, a cloture vote provides much greater weight.

This gamesmanship is twisted into a convenient narrative. Conservative members can let the Republican establishment pass their liberal bills and act innocent by pointing to the weaker and less relevant vote for final passage. They do this by knowing an affirmative vote on cloture is moving them into a position where their vote becomes mathematically irrelevant.

During my time on Capitol Hill I routinely heard conservative members argue that a vote on cloture was a vote to end debate, even as they emphasized that it was not an affirmative vote for the bill. It should be noted, however, that for conservative members the cloture vote is the most important vote they cast – and they know it.

On a more principled argument, lets assume for a moment a cloture vote didn’t carry as much clout. It still begs the question: why would a conservative member ever agree to cease a continued debate on a bill that increases spending, especially for new climate change funding and environmental regulations?

Should we not perpetuate the debate on these conservative issues? Should the debate not continue indefinitely on the unsustainability of a growing government? Since when do conservatives surrender the debate to bigger government, more regulations and climate change funding?

Here is the Bombshell: Nearly every single conservative senator voted to end debate on this bill; nearly every single conservative member gave a hat tip for this to proceed to a final vote – a vote those members know would end in the bill passing the Senate.

There is one important exception: Senator Mike Lee.

Senator Mike Lee is the only truly conservative member to vote against cloture. He did so not once, but three time – or each time Republican Mitch McConnell tried to force a cloture vote on this liberal garbage.

He is the only conservative member who refused to end debate on these important issues. He is the only conservative member who refused to accept that this bill was ready to pass the Senate.

The energy and water bill may be boring. But it reflects the true nature of the Republican Party. It reflects the façade that we face in a party that prides itself on small government. To think that standing with Obama would have reduced spending to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers by $1.4 billion, or standing against Mitch McConnell may have pushed us one step closer to defunding the worst, if not most anti-liberty, regulation that is WOTUS.

This bill is symbolic of what the Republican Party has become. More so, it truly reflects the one and final champion we have in the senate. He is the last of the conservative members, and his name is Senator Mike Lee. (For more from the author of “Why This Man Is the Last of the Senate Conservatives” please click HERE)

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A Battle Of “Uns” Between Clinton and Trump

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“Unpredictable” versus “unqualified” could be the choice between what are likely to be the two most unfavorable presidential candidates in American history.

As Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are within a tiptoe step of becoming their respective party’s nominees, abstract outlines of the themes of the general election are beginning to take shape.

Clinton, in recent interviews, has hammered Trump for being a “loose cannon” and “provocative.” Trump has delighted in repeating remarks from Clinton’s current primary rival Bernie Sanders, arguing that Clinton’s “judgment is clearly lacking.” And both candidates are taking an increasing focus on terrorism and national security as it relates to both of these character qualities.

“I am the only person that says we will not be led down the tubes by an incompetent person like Hillary Clinton,” Trump said as a New Jersey fundraiser with Chris Christie on Thursday evening. “You look at what she has done. Her deal with Libya. Just take a look at Libya. It is a catastrophe.”

(Note: In a little noticed story published earlier this week, it was revealed that the former chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Benghazi said in January that “nothing could have affected what occurred in Benghazi.” Meaning, he felt that military could not have done anything differently to save American lives in Benghazi the night of the attacks. Of course, the decision to place Americans assets there in the first place remains within Clinton’s area of responsibility as Secretary of State.)

Clinton, for her part, previewed her initial lines of attack in a rare interview on Thursday with CNN, seeking to mark Trump’s hot talk as a barrier to making the nation safer.

The former Secretary of State unveiled her barrage of attacks in one answer to CNN’s Chris Cuomo that began by calling Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States, “provocative and wrongheaded” that led to him “being used essentially as a recruiter for more people to join the cause of terrorism.”

Clinton also criticized Trump’s “unpredictable, dangerous rhetoric” and repeatedly stated his comments would have a negative effect on national security.

“Having watched presidents” she said, “having seen the incredibly difficult work that they do and the decisions that they have to make—the thinking that goes in sitting in the situation room, do we go after Bin Laden or not? I was part of that. Was it a clear, easy choice? Of course not. did it have to be carefully parsed and analyzed and then we gave our opinions and up to the president to decide.”

But Trump is certain to do all he can to turn Clinton’s experience in the Obama Administration into a negative. That’s why he’s not shying away from the “unqualified” label for her, first publicly raised by Sanders against Clinton.

It’s usually the very first thing Trump and his advisors bring up when it comes to Clinton.

On cue, Trump senior advisor Stephen Miller responded to Clinton’s interview in a dueling appearance on CNN thusly, “We obviously agree with Bernie Sanders that Hillary Clinton isn’t qualified to be president.”

“The Democratic party is on the verge of nominating the most pro-war, pro-wall street lawmaker in the modern history of the Democratic party,” he said. “That’s amazing. Think about it. You have a candidate in Hillary running on a pro-war platform about what she did in Libya, doing in Syria, about the toppling of the Egyptian regime and the military took back control, who’s running on a pro-wall street, pro-war agenda. That’s not the right fit.” (For more from the author of “A Battle Of “Uns” Between Clinton and Trump” please click HERE)

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Facebook, Your Friends, or You? Who Actually Is in Control of What You See on Facebook?

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A number of conservative news websites – including Restoring Liberty – contend that Facebook is censoring their stories. While difficult to prove, there have been several recent studies suggesting that Facebook is indeed biased through either its algorithm controlling users’ news feeds or through deliberate action. This is particularly disturbing as increasing numbers of Americans – and people across the world – now use Facebook as their primary news source.

In an astonishing smoking-gun-story earlier this month, Gizmodo uncovered reports that Facebook used journalists to help shape the “trending” section of their website to specifically prevent conservative stories from making it to that prominent location. Not only did Facebook prevent trending conservative stories from making the prominent list, but it also added non-trending leftist stories to the list!

Facebook misleadingly suggests that its trending section is based only on personal interest and what is currently popular on Facebook. What’s conveniently omitted is the subjective human influence on what ultimately makes the list. While Facebook contends it has strict policies in place to prevent bias, there’s little question that it has failed in avoiding human interference. It also raises the question whether other sections of Facebook have been shaped with “help” from human touch to prevent conservative stories from getting fair coverage.

Outside of the trending news section, there are many other examples of Facebook censoring information. In one recent example, Facebook was caught deleting and preventing posts about another social media website (tsu.co) which it alleged was spam. Facebook obviously saw a competitive threat from tsu.co, a platform that gives an astonishing 90% of ad profits back to users. In another example, Facebook blocked conservative Professor Carol Swain’s Facebook account for “abusive content” only to reinstate it once the censoring was made known by breitbart.com.

Another troubling example of Facebook’s political bias is the case of Syrians who had pages removed by Facebook from their account, causing them to lose many pictures and other documentation of war crimes. But sometimes the bias is more explicit. At a recent UN event, German Chancellor Merkel was overheard asking CEO Zuckerberg how Facebook was doing on suppressing “racist” posts against the recent influx of refugees.

Some victims of Facebook censoring are fighting back. For instance, an Israeli group (NGO Shurat HaDin, also known as the Israeli Law Center) created an experiment to test the theory that Facebook is prejudiced against Israel. The ingenious, simple experiment was done by creating two Facebook pages similar in so-called “hate content,” with one against Israel and the other against Palestine. Users then reported both pages to Facebook as violating the social media giant’s hate speech standards. Within one day of reporting the page against Palestine, it was removed from Facebook. However, the other page against Israel received a reply back that it was not in violation of Facebook’s standards. Only after the Israeli NGO had made a video exposing Facebook’s double standard was the page against Israel removed.

Perhaps even more troubling is the suppression of news articles based on Facebook’s algorithm for individual users. This algorithm relies on a number of factors including “silent lurking” on Facebook pages, other websites the user visits, and – disturbingly – text that a user types into Facebook but doesn’t actually post. Recently, Facebook also included 5 new reaction emojis to their like button for U.S. users. As expected, this change will supply even more data to Facebook for its news feed algorithm. Facebook claims it’s using these numerous data points to tailor posts to what individual users want to read. Unfortunately, such a tailored news feeds mean users may not be given the option to read stories that might challenge their belief system, like conservative articles that tend to conflict with the main stream media.

Ironically, one of Facebook’s internal studies, looking at the types of news an ideologically defined user viewed, reflected this. What was discovered was that Facebook’s algorithm suppressed fewer liberal news stories a conservative would see than conservative news stories a liberal would see. Moreover, Facebook’s analysis reflected that conservative users would click on a liberal news story in their news feed almost a third more often than liberals would click on conservative stories in their feeds.

Additionally, Facebook’s study found that liberal users were generally connected to fewer friends who shared conservative stories than conservatives were connected to liberal friends sharing liberal stories. This factor, uninfluenced by Facebook’s biased algorithm, is apparently caused by the fact that liberals block, unfriend, or hide users with posts they disagree with far more frequently than conservatives. Contrary to conventional wisdom, conservatives tend to be more open-minded than liberals – at least on Facebook.

Because liberal Facebook users are more close-minded than conservatives, they report conservative posts as offensive at a more frequent rate, thus suppressing those posts on Facebook. This is yet another factor creating an anti-conservative bias on Facebook.

So what’s the answer Facebook bias? The good news is that YOU have control. NEVER use your Facebook feed as your exclusive news source. Instead, either go directly to the Facebook page you are following, or visit the websites of conservative publishers themselves. Yes, this involves an extra step. But it’s imperative that we stay at least a step ahead of the leftists who are attempting to transform our nation and world.

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