Is America’s Cult of Death and Free Sex on the Verge of Dying?

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Perhaps nothing has so inspired Donald Trump’s detractors as the threat that he and his administration pose to the cult of what we might call “free sex.”

This cult’s god requires free sex for its faithful: free of restraint, free of cost, and free of consequences. It has rites: unrestricted promiscuity and sexual variety, the ready availability of all manner of contraceptive drugs (which must be included in all health plans, as well), and abortion. Abortion subsidized by government monies for those with limited financial resources. Because somebody else has to pay for the consequences of all this “free sex.”Abortion through the ninth month of pregnancy for any and every reason.

The cult has clerics, men and women in positions of power who guard the temple of free sex through law, academia and popular media. Gloria Steinem, Nancy Pelosi, Cecile Richards, new Democratic National Committee chairman Thomas Perez, Ashley Judd and Madonna to name a few.

The cult has a creed: “Abortion on demand and without apology.” Why should legal abortion be rare if it is morally neutral or even a good thing?

And the cult has an eschatology: A future made bright through a final victory over their adversaries, those who oppose elective abortion, abortifacient contraceptives, the victimization of women through a predatory abortion industry, any government funding of any kind for abortion, and so forth. This future will include the silence of all dissent from the cult’s orthodoxies.

The cult has a lectionary: In our country, the death cult’s advocates frame their arguments in terms of freedom, choice and faux-medical language. “Fetus” instead of unborn child, “dilation and extraction” instead of partial birth abortion, “reproductive rights” instead of abortion are among its most prominent and reassuring euphemisms.

The cult is demanding. It requires the full allegiance of its adherents. Any move toward legally protecting unborn children is viewed as heresy, false teaching whose heretics must readily be thrown from the fold of the cult’s enlightened ones.

Though human sexuality according to the divine design is a source of life, the cult of free sex is a cult of death. In this, it is not unique. The rush that comes from exercising the will to power is as old as Eden: Satan caused the first human deaths with his successful temptation of our first parents. One who had wanted to dethrone God could not create life, but could destroy it. From the beginning, as the Lord Jesus said, Satan was a murderer.

Cults of death have, throughout history, convinced themselves they were doing good by murdering others. They believed their killings brought prosperity and freedom, purity and the promise of blessed end. Is the American cult of death really different?

That Which Must Not Be Spoken

American advocates of free sex avoid certain topics. Life within the womb? Admitted freely. But “personhood?” Despite the massive scientific evidence, the unborn child is amorphous goo, not fully human.

And then there are STDs. In October 2016, the federal Centers for Disease Control issued a report on sexually transmitted diseases which stated that

nearly 20 million new sexually transmitted infections occur every year in this country, half among young people aged 15-24, and account for almost $16 billion in health care costs. Each of these infections is a potential threat to an individual’s immediate and long-term health and well-being. In addition to increasing a person’s risk for acquiring and transmitting HIV infection, STDs can lead to chronic pain and severe reproductive health complications, such as infertility and ectopic pregnancy.

Well, even the high priests and priestesses of the cult will admit that these are not altogether good things. But hey, that’s why there are condoms and “safe sex” practices and, of course, federally mandated health insurance provisions for treatment of STDs and even federal funding for such treatments as needs be. Again, someone must pay for the consequences of free sex.

Donald Trump, Unlikely Foe of Free Sex?

Enter a new pro-life Administration. Whether it were headed by Mr. Trump or anyone else, the cult’s public spokesmen, inside operators, and ready acolytes would marshal to stop any and all efforts to curtail abortion on demand. This is why Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, a jurist who takes the text of the Constitution seriously, a man of unimpeachable character and legal standing, is so horrifying to them.

Many women, misled by the lies of the cult of death, have been lulled into believing abortion is merely a surgical procedure or, at worst, an unpleasant necessity for the sake of their futures. As ultrasound technology continues to be refined, such farcical nonsense cannot be long sustained.

This is why the clerics of the cult are panicked, outraged, afraid. They dread seeing their god exposed to the harsh light of reality, its draperies of soothing rhetoric flung back to reveal a glaring, decaying creature of death.

If the Supreme Court corrects, even partially, Roe v. Wade, access to abortion will become much less easy. That will require, at least among many younger men and women, greater sexual restraint. As they consider the consequences of their one-night mutual objectifications — babies — they will become not just more careful but more judicious in their conduct.

Imagine an America with dramatically fewer abortions, STDs, broken lives and broken hearts. This will not usher in the Kingdom of God, but it will make America a much better place to live and thrive.

Death to the American cult of death. And all power and glory to the Prince of Life, Who will reign forever and ever. (For more from the author of “Is America’s Cult of Death and Free Sex on the Verge of Dying?” please click HERE)

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President Trump’s CPAC Speech Sounded Great … But Was a Total Disappointment. Sad!

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Friday morning, President Donald Trump addressed CPAC for the first time since becoming president of the United States. At a time when conservatives need leadership from the president, his speech was a disappointment.

“It’s great to be back at CPAC,” the president said to an adoring crowd. “I wouldn’t miss a chance to talk to my friends … and we’ll be doing this next year. And the year after that.”

The stakes were high for this address. Weeks of controversy have plagued the new administration and have given the appearance of a failure to launch.

How so? The president’s first major action, an executive order on immigration, was poorly executed. Despite the president’s clear statutory authority to issue the order, the administration was unable to defend its action in court. The president’s first choice for national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, was forced to resign amid controversy over his communications with the Russians.

Campaign promises also remain unfulfilled. The president abandoned social conservatives by giving up on an executive order meant to undo an Obama-era directive that harms religious liberty. The president’s repeated pledge to undo President Obama’s illegal amnesty executive order seems dead now. Obamacare is still in place. Tax reform is delayed.

On top of all that several members of the president’s Cabinet are still yet to be confirmed amid Democratic obstruction in the Senate.

Perception is everything in politics, and the missteps from these first few weeks have overshadowed the administration’s successes. For the first time most Americans disapprove of the president’s job performance.

Trump’s appearance at CPAC was a time for the president to reset the agenda. Using his bully pulpit, Trump had an opportunity to assure his conservative base that the administration is moving to keep the promises President Trump made on the campaign trail.

Here was a chance to explain how he will make his vision of governance a reality; to identify how the Democratic party is obstructing the policies the American people voted to implement last November; to outline, for Congress and for the people, the way forward on achieving the repeal of Obamacare, tax reform, the border wall, and the steps necessary to deconstruct the administrative state.

Instead, the president gave a vapid campaign speech, complete with allusions to action in the future and assurances that conservatives will win again.

He began by, rightfully, criticizing the “fake news” media for publishing inaccurate stories. The liberal media certainly deserves to be criticized, but the president already did so last week.

When the president finally addressed the policies his administration will pursue, he did so using oft-repeated phrases from the campaign trail. The gist of the entire speech was presented in one passage:

We will reduce your taxes. We will cut your regulations. We will support our police. We will defend our flag. We will rebuild our military. We will take care of our great, great veterans … we will fix our broken and embarrassing trade deals … we will cut wasteful spending. We will promote our values. We will rebuild our inner cities. We will bring back our jobs and our dreams. And by the way, we will protect our second amendment.

The priority facing Republicans is keeping six years of campaign promises and fully repealing Obamacare. There are good plans for doing so introduced in Congress, but Trump didn’t mention them. “Obamacare doesn’t work … we’re changing it,” he said. “We’re gonna make it much better. We’re gonna make it less expensive.”

Those are great promises, but the American people don’t need promises. They need promises kept. This government needs leadership to ensure that they are kept. And so far the president is acting more like a cheerleader than a leader.

In this respect, the president’s speech highlights a problem with CPAC itself. Just what is the Conservative Political Action Conference conserving? What plans of action are in development to achieve conservative victory?

To be sure, there are breakout sessions where those conversations are happening. But panel attendance is slim. For every conservative looking for an opportunity to advance conservatism, there is someone else looking to make a quick buck. There are times at CPAC when one even wonders if the people speaking are there to promote a legislative agenda, or just to sell a new book or land a new job.

Conservatism has enough cheerleaders. Our movement needs leadership. When the president of the United States tells conservatives “Our victory was a win for everyone who believes in conservative values,” he has the responsibility to demonstrate how that is the case.

How can he lead? Start by pressuring this hesitant Congress to take immediate action to repeal Obamacare and endorse a replacement plan. Instruct Congress to end the liberal judiciary’s interference with executive branch’s legal authority to restrict immigration.

“The era of empty talk is over,” President Trump said. “Now is the time for action”

Those are words the conservative movement needs to apply to itself. Those are words conservatives want the president to live by. But if President Trump’s speech is an indication of things to come, you can’t always get what you want. (For more from the author of “President Trump’s CPAC Speech Sounded Great … But Was a Total Disappointment. Sad!” please click HERE)

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Would You Rather Be Slandered as a Racist or a Rapist?

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Recently I was on the Alan Nathan Show, and the radio host asked me why the Left flings reckless and groundless charges of racism at anyone who stands in the way of its policies, such as President Trump. Alan had his own worthwhile answer, but for me the question sparked an epiphany. And I shared it on the air: “It’s a way of trying to destroy someone, like falsely accusing him of rape or looking at kiddie porn,” I said.

For very good reasons, our society now has a stigma against genuinely racist ideas and sentiments. We still bear the scars of 300 years of slavery, and another 100 years of un-Constitutional segregation and bias. Our black fellow citizens deserve our special efforts to show equal respect and solicitude. Given that our own government (in Dred Scott) specifically exempted black Americans from legal personhood, and until 1964 (the year I was born) allowed explicit and open racial discrimination, it seems reasonable that we bend over backwards for a while longer to root out the remnants of bias.

Racism is Real and Evil

For that reason, our government reaches past what should be its proper powers, and interferes with our freedom of contract and freedom of association to prevent us from abusing them to further racial discrimination. Given our government’s past collusion with racism, this seems right for now. But that doesn’t mean that the state should throw those principles in the garbage, as the Left is now demanding when it threatens to destroy Christian business owners for opting out of same-sex weddings, or tries to shut down all-male clubs.

Precisely because anti-black racism was the source of such appalling crimes, from the slave trade that shattered families to lynchings of black men with impunity right up through the Second World War, we ought not to trivialize the very word, by flinging it far and wide when it doesn’t apply. But that is precisely what leftists have learned to do, and it’s a winning tactic. That’s why they use it — not because they sincerely believe that it’s “racist” for English literature departments to offer plenty of courses on great authors from England, just as a French department would offer courses on authors from France. Or for Americans to want their country’s border to be controlled, just as Mexicans and Indians and Congolese want their countries’ borders controlled.

The Left Redefines Racism and Makes it Meaningless

Liberals aren’t sincerely mistaken about the extent of racism in America. Many are lying about it, cynically, to grab cultural power and terrorize their enemies. The abuse of the word “racism” is a nasty political smear, intended to tar people, especially those with conservative mores and a love for Western Civilization, with the blood that dripped from lynching trees in the unjust Jim Crow South. The left has even redefined the word “racism,” to suit its abuse as a weapon.

We now hear from campus authorities that only white people are capable of racism, because (as they have hijacked the word), it refers not to racial bias or hatred, but attitudes of privilege connected with long-standing social dominance. If that sounds like Marxist gobbledygook that’s because it is. By this standard, when genocidal Hutus in Rwanda broadcast calls for the extermination of Tutsis, what they were doing wasn’t racist. Nor is it racist when Syrian refugees torch a synagogue in Germany, or campus leftists jeer at Jewish students and shout down Israeli speakers.

This handy, repurposed word “racism” is pretty much the ultimate insult. Our government explicitly tries to stamp out racism, and with Ronald Reagan’s support denied a tax exemption to a Christian school (Bob Jones University) when that school’s past policies seemed motivated by racial bias. Not just elites but ordinary people want to avoid the taint of racism, in part because of the stigma, but more so because they know exactly how evil racism’s outcomes can be — from the extermination of Jews to the enslavement of Africans.

Fake Rape and Sex Abuse Charges

Abusing a word like racism is almost as malicious, and nearly as destructive, as falsely charging someone with other despicable, illegal activities, such as the sexual abuse of children, or forcible rape. Sadly, fake charges are used to discredit people all the time. Baseless accusations of child abuse are now a weapon in divorce custody battles, and campus feminists are demanding (and getting) kangaroo courts for sex disputes that trample the rights of the (often falsely) accused. Liberals tried to derail Betsy DeVos’s nomination for Secretary of Education, and smear a worthy free-speech group, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, for opposing those kangaroo courts. (And let’s not forget Rolling Stone’s fake gang-rape story, which nearly destroyed an innocent fraternity.)

Here’s a safe rule in such cases: The more serious the charge, the more destructive it is if true, the higher the standard of evidence you should insist upon. And no one should get away with abusing our proper disgust at genuine racism, real child abuse, or the crime of rape, in order to savage his political opponents. Those who lie on such serious subjects deserve contempt and consequences. (For more from the author of “Would You Rather Be Slandered as a Racist or a Rapist?” please click HERE)

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Yes, Childhood Sexual Abuse Often Does Contribute to Homosexuality

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What do Anderson Cooper, Don Lemon, George Takei and Milo Yiannopoulos have in common? They are all out and proud gay men, and they were all sexually abused as underage minors. Sadly, this is an extremely common occurrence, as there is frequently a connection between childhood sexual abuse and adult homosexuality.

To say such a thing, of course, is to invite a hailstorm of fierce criticism and ridicule: “You bigoted homophobe! These men were born gay, not made gay, and their sexuality is a gift from God, not the result of sexual abuse. Plus, there are plenty of gay men who were never abused and plenty of straight men who were abused as boys and never turned gay.”

Putting the name-calling aside, there is some truth to these statements.

Numbers Don’t Lie

Not all gay men were molested as boys (since there are multiple causes for homosexuality) and not all boys who are molested turn out gay (probably because they were less predisposed towards homosexuality). Still, it cannot be denied that a disproportionately high number of gay men were abused as boys, and that certainly contributed to their sexual and emotional development.

That’s why it was no surprise when Dr. Robert Epstein, the pro-gay editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, noted that gay readers who were upset with an ad that ran in his publication in 2002 sent him letters asserting “that gays have a right to be rude or abusive because they themselves have been abused” (this obviously included being sexually abused).

And that’s why it was no surprise when a 2009 report prepared for a bisexual health summit revealed that 74 percent of bisexuals had been sexually abused as children. (For other studies focusing specifically on the connection between childhood sexual abuse and homosexuality, see here.)

As for the notion that people are born gay, not only would that suggest that infants can relate to the concepts of sexual and romantic attraction (which they obviously cannot), but it would also ignore the fact that our upbringing and environment have profound effects on us. Why deny such an obvious reality?

It is well-known that the children of alcoholics have a much higher chance of becoming alcoholics than the general population, and this cannot be blamed on genetics alone. As stated by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, “Genes are not the only things children inherit from their parents. How parents act and how they treat each other and their children has an influence on children growing up in the family. These aspects of family life also affect the risk for alcoholism.”

In the same way, it is well-known that men who were abused as children are much more likely than the average population to abuse other children as adults. As summarized in a 2001 article in the British Journal of Psychology:

Among 747 males the risk of being a perpetrator was positively correlated with reported sexual abuse victim experiences … A high percentage of male subjects abused in childhood by a female relative became perpetrators. Having been a victim was a strong predictor of becoming a perpetrator, as was an index of parental loss in childhood.

But again, none of this should surprise us in the least, since the environment in which we are raised, especially if coupled with major, traumatic childhood experiences, has a profound effect on our ongoing mental and emotional and social development.

Society Ignores the Childhood Trauma of Many Gay Adults

Yet when it comes to homosexuality, it is taboo to connect childhood sexual abuse with subsequent gay identity since: 1) this would contradict the “born gay” myth; and 2) it would underscore the fact that homosexual attractions are not natural and positive.

As explained candidly by the lesbian feminist and academic Camille Paglia, “Every single gay person I know has some sort of drama going on, back in childhood. Something was happening that we’re not allowed to ask about anymore.” (She was speaking of bad relationships with parents as well as sexual abuse or other factors.)

In keeping with this, all the professional counselors I have spoken with (including trained pastors and psychologists or psychiatrists) have told me that the vast number of gays they have counseled were sexually abused as minors (some told me this was the case in every instance they encountered).

You might say, “But gays hardly have a monopoly on this. What about the problem of heterosexual schoolteachers having sex with their students, especially female teachers with male students?”

But you miss the point, since: 1) we all agree that this is terrible and abusive; and 2) most of us would agree that such relationships have the real potential of negatively affecting that child’s sexual and emotional development. Yet when it comes to gay men who were molested as boys, we’re told this did not contribute to their (homo)sexual development. More disturbingly, in gay circles, such relationships are often looked at as positive and nurturing, since, it is surmised, the boy was already aware of his same-sex attraction and the older man served as a mentor of sorts.

In Their Own Words

In the words of Harry Hay, the gay icon and founder of the American gay movement:

If the parents and friends of gays are truly friends of gays, they would know from their gay kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what thirteen-, fourteen-, and fifteen-year-old kids need more than anything else in the world.

You can be assured that such relationships would often become sexual, thereby providing the entry point into the larger homosexual “lifestyle.” (For other quotes from Hay, see here.)

Similarly, the renowned gay activist Larry Kramer opined,

In those cases where children do have sex with their homosexual elders … I submit that often, very often, the child desires the activity, and perhaps even solicits it, either because of a natural curiosity … or because he or she is homosexual and innately knows it. … And unlike girls or women forced into rape or traumatized, most gay men have warm memories of their earliest and early sexual encounters; when we share these stories with each other, they are invariably positive ones.

That’s why “man-boy love” has been celebrated in homosexual culture through the centuries, that’s why there’s a page listing “Historical pederastic couples” on a gay Wikipedia site, and that’s why George Takei could speak glowingly of his first sexual encounter at the age of 13 (with a 19-year-old male camp counselor), at a time when he admits he didn’t know he was gay.

In this light, the outrageous statement by philosopher Michael Foucalt, arguing for lowering the age of consent, doesn’t sound as outrageous: “It is quite difficult to lay down barriers [particularly since] it could be that the child, with his own sexuality, may have desired the adult.”

Ah yes, it was the child asking for it again. This too is sickening beyond words.

The reality is that children, especially pre-teens and young teens, are tremendously impressionable and malleable, as confirmed by this account shared by a Christian family activist (reflecting on his pre-Christian youth):

When I was about 14 or 15, I spent an afternoon smoking pot with a ‘gay’ guy in his 20’s who explained that young people during puberty have a very fluid sexual identity and how easy it had been for him to turn young teen boys into sex partners … A confirming study I later saw said 25% of young teens suffer same-sex confusion but most grow out of it naturally by the end of adolescence.

Ex-gay Robert Lopez, raised by his mother and her lesbian partner, had this to say:

In a society soaked in porn where sexual orientation is discussed openly in front of small children, there will certainly be 12- and 13-year-olds who think they want sex and think they are ready for it. When we discuss ‘gay identity’ with 6th graders, which is very common, what are we discussing? We are talking about sexual acts. Perhaps people need to stand up and resist the Human Rights Campaign’s recent push to force such curricula on elementary and middle schools.

It is truly distasteful to speak of such things, but speak about them we must, given the ever-increasing scope of gay activism, especially in our children’s schools. And with the terribly painful issue of childhood sexual abuse coming to the fore in recent days, let’s use this as a teachable moment.

We can do this by: 1) being on the lookout for signs that our own children may have been abused; 2) refusing to allow our kids to be experimental pawns in the culture wars, because of which we strongly oppose sex-based LGBT curricula in the schools; and 3) no longer denying the common connection between childhood sexual abuse and adult homosexuality, thereby providing a path for healing and wholeness.

By doing these things, we will not only make this a teachable moment, we will make it a redemptive one. (For more from the author of “Yes, Childhood Sexual Abuse Often Does Contribute to Homosexuality” please click HERE)

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Top 10 Signs the Conservative Movement May Be in Trouble

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10. The Republican president tweets about the loss of his daughter’s department store clothing line, but tweets nothing about a state Supreme Court unanimously declaring itself above the First Amendment to the Constitution.

9. Almost no big names in the conservative movement/media call upon that same Republican president to address the issue altogether. Despite the fact evangelicals like Barronelle Stutzman are one of the main reasons there’s a Republican president in the White House in the first place.

8. One of your movement’s signature events decides to make a self-admitted moral reprobate — human click bait — its keynote speaker. Then when video comes to light showing him advocating for the disgusting practice of pederasty, the event’s head honcho doubles down to defend his awful decision. And only after a public outrage is the decision finally reversed, which means it wasn’t reversed on moral grounds but in response to a PR backlash. Begging the question: Why did the people running an event that Reagan once urged its attendees to “serve selflessly a vision of man with God,” invite such a reprobate in the first place?

7. The self-appointed gatekeepers of your movement determine the credibility of a Supreme Court nominee via Chevron and not Roe v. Wade.

6. The same conservative leaders who issued multi-page white papers warning about the danger of Obama’s executive order promoting the Rainbow Jihad, say virtually nothing in public when his Republican successor leaves it in place.

5. Most of the biggest megaphones in the movement spent more time cheering an unhinged press conference then urging Republicans to repeal Obamacare.

4. Your moral outrage is dialed up to 11 at fake news, but then it’s nothing but crickets when fake news provocateurs and discredited conspiracists representing your side get White House press credentials.

3. A headline beginning with the words “This will make Nancy Pelosi mad” is trending every day that ends in y.

2. You actually believe Trump shill Roger Stone was poisoned by Trump’s political opponents.

1. Most of your day is spent pointing out the hypocrisy of the other side. That they’re now supporting and saying things they criticized when their guy was in the White House. All the while neglecting the reverse is also true, and now many of you are doing the exact same thing. (For more from the author of “Top 10 Signs the Conservative Movement May Be in Trouble” please click HERE)

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Levin Reminds Trump’s Media Critics Who the Real Anti-Semitic President Was

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Tuesday night on his radio show, Conservative Review Editor-in-Chief Mark Levin defended President Donald Trump against the media’s baseless allegations that he is promulgating anti-Semitism in America.

Levin reminded the audience of the anti-Israel, anti-Jewish policies put in place by the Obama administration, such as the Iran nuclear deal and massive immigration from Jew-hating countries.

“We’re told Trump is not only tolerating anti-Semitism taking place in this country, but is encouraging it through his supporters,” Levin said. “Encouraging it through his supporters? No, that would be Barack Obama.”

Levin continued, reminding the mainstream media about the Obama policies they ignored that have resulted in anti-Semitic activity.

“That would be the new immigrants in this country from parts of the Arab and Muslim world” and those “who have taken over college campuses and shut down speech, particularly any speech that supports Israel” Levin added. “That would be some of the leftists in this country who are trying to lead an economic boycott of Israel.”

“The Left is filled with bigotry. The Left is filled with poison. It is the Left that’s filled with violence,” he said. (For more from the author of “Levin Reminds Trump’s Media Critics Who the Real Anti-Semitic President Was” please click HERE)

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You Can’t Make America Great Again by Destroying Americans Like Barronelle Stutzman

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Donald Trump made his success in the building trade. One of the key reasons he speaks so plainly and bluntly to ordinary voters is the many years he spent jawboning with construction workers and foremen. So let’s hope he understands this metaphor: Just as you can’t put up a great building with shoddy materials and lazy workmanship, you can’t make America great again if the government you run is attacking that country’s building blocks. If the foremen and workers you’re paying are putting too much sand in the concrete, or using tin instead of structural steel, the building that you end up with is doomed to collapse.

If your appointees and agencies are hunting down and executing the “little platoons” that make ordered liberty possible, your country will fall apart. As founding father John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

America will not be rejuvenated but ruined if Trump doesn’t act to support the First Amendment Defense Act and protect the kind of people who made America great — people like Barronelle Stutzman, the Washington florist who faces destruction because she politely declined to take part in a same-sex wedding.

A small business owner, churchgoer, and faithful Christian, she pretty much defines the kind of citizen that keeps our country going. They give to charity at higher levels than other people. They are more likely to stay faithful to their spouses. Their kids join the military, police and fire department. They volunteer for civic-minded projects, and sign up for neighborhood watches. They believe in Christian mercy but also insist on justice — which is why so many of them voted for Donald Trump, in the hope that he would bring order to our country’s chaotic immigration process, and regain control of our borders. They love their country, their city, their neighborhood, their family, and God.

The ACLU Didn’t Build America. People of Faith Did.

These are the heirs of the Pilgrims, who sailed across an ocean and planted a colony in the howling wilderness, rather than live under a government where unaccountable bureaucrats could demand that they violate their conscience. They’re the heirs of the Abolitionists, who smuggled escaping slaves along the Underground Railroad, to flout an unjust law. They’re heirs of the suffragists, who didn’t expect five judges to pervert the Constitution, but who worked through the system and played by the rules to change the Constitution to offer women the vote.

They’re the kind of people who joined the Civil Rights movement and worked with fellow Christians from very different backgrounds, of another race, to demand that the Constitution keep its promise to every American. They’re the kind of people today who pray outside abortion clinics and run crisis pregnancy centers. Drive by some government-funded murder mill early on Saturday morning, and look at those people’s faces. Whom will you see? Dozens and dozens of people like Barronelle Stutzman.

Does President Trump really want to side with the narrow-eyed fanatics who defend partial-birth abortion, and open borders, and massive bureaucratic interference with every American’s life? Those are the kind of people who support the American Civil Liberties Union — the organization that stands to benefit from seizing Ms. Stutzman’s 401k, and auctioning off her home. They’re the people who put on those sickening hats and threw a national tantrum the day after Trump’s inauguration. They rioted in Berkeley, or cheered the rioters on as they skimmed the MSM headlines while sipping their pumpkin lattes. They regard Trump’s presidency as illegitimate, and will seize any excuse to claim that the election was hacked or stolen. They want to silence free speech on campus and impose their arrogant, secular agenda in every nook and cranny of American life.

Mr. President, You Must Pick a Side

And to do that, they must destroy all the Barronelle Stutzmans. They will use whatever power they can grab hold of, from perversions of federal law like the Obama administration’s gay hijack of the Civil Rights Act, to education bureaucrats’ perverted, transgendered reading of Title IX. They use corporate power to blackmail non-profit organizations like the Boy Scouts, and their dominance of the media to blacken the names of good, innocent people who happen to disagree with them — and get them fired.

These kind of arrogant cynics thought it would be clever to use Obamacare to bankrupt Catholic nuns, and close down Hobby Lobby. They tried to use Title IX in California to shutter Christian colleges. They will use force, fear, or fraud without compunction, because they believe that they serve the abstract demands of “justice” and “liberation,” and that the end justifies the means. It was lawyers like this who wrote the briefs that sank President Trump’s sensible executive order on immigration, and who serve on the Ninth Circuit Court that wrote that absurd decision. Reporters who think like this are spinning “fake news” about the president every single news cycle, distorting and mocking every word that comes out of his mouth.

Mr. President, you need to pick a side: The Barronelle Stutzmans of America, who voted for you and trusted you and just want to live in peace — or the arrogant, strutting elites who hate her and everyone like her, and who hate you even more. Will you stand up for your supporters, the people who made America great, and can make it great again? Or will you cave in to the bullies who oppress her, and reject you?

We are waiting for your answer. (For more from the author of “You Can’t Make America Great Again by Destroying Americans Like Barronelle Stutzman” please click HERE)

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There’s Nothing Free

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It was Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman who made famous the adage, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” Friedman could have added that there is a difference between something’s being free and something’s having a zero price.

For example, people say that there’s free public education and there are free libraries, but public education and libraries cost money.

Proof that they have costs is the fact that somebody has to have less of something by giving up tax money so that schools and libraries can be produced and operated. A much more accurate statement is that we have zero-price public education and libraries.

Costs can be concealed but not eliminated. If people ignore costs and look only to benefits, they will do darn near anything, because everything has a benefit. Politicians love the fact that costs can easily be concealed.

The call for import restrictions, in the name of saving jobs, is politically popular in some quarters. But few talk about the costs. We know there are costs because nothing is free.

Let’s start with a hypothetical example of tariff costs. Suppose a U.S. clothing manufacturer wants to sell a suit for $200. He is prevented from doing so because customers can purchase a nearly identical suit produced by a foreign manufacturer for $150.

But suppose the clothing manufacturer can get Congress to impose a $60 tariff on foreign suits in the name of leveling the playing field and fair trade.

What happens to his chances of being able to sell his suit for $200? If you answered that his chances increase, go to the head of the class.

Next question is: Who bears the burden of the tariff? If you answered that it’s customers who must pay $50 more for a suit, you’re right again.

In his 2012 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama boasted that “over 1,000 Americans are working today because we stopped a surge in Chinese tires.”

According to a study done by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, those trade restrictions forced Americans to pay $1.1 billion in higher prices for tires. So though 1,200 jobs were saved in the U.S. tire industry, the cost per job saved was at least $900,000 in that year. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average annual salary of tire builders in 2011 was $40,070.

Here’s a question for those of us who support trade restrictions in the name of saving jobs: In whose pockets did most of the $1.1 billion that Americans paid in higher prices go? It surely did not reach tire workers in the form of higher wages.

According to the Peterson Institute study, “most of the money extracted by protection from household budgets goes to corporate coffers, at home or abroad, not paychecks of American workers. In the case of tire protection, our estimates indicate that fewer than 5 percent of the consumer costs per job saved reached the pockets of American workers.”

There is another side to this. When households have to pay higher prices for tires, they have less money to spend on other items—such as food, clothing, and entertainment—thereby reducing employment in those industries.

Some people point out that other countries, such as Japan, impose heavy tariffs on American products. Indeed, Tokyo levies a 490 percent tariff on rice imports to allow Japanese rice growers to gain higher income by charging Japanese consumers four times the world price for rice.

Therefore, some suggest that Congress should even the playing field by imposing stiff tariffs on Japanese imports to the U.S. Such an argument differs little from one that says that because the Japanese government screws its citizens, the U.S. government should retaliate by screwing its own citizens.

Putting the issue in another context: If you and I are at sea in a rowboat and I commit the foolish act of shooting a hole in my end of the boat, would it be intelligent for you to retaliate by shooting a hole in your end of the boat? (For more from the author of “There’s Nothing Free” please click HERE)

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Will College Campuses Give Rioters a License to Firebomb?

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“I have been punched. I have been spit on. I have had my personal information posted online,” Naweed Tahmas, a Berkeley College Republican who helped invite Milo Yiannopoulos to speak on campus, told the media. He says that since the riots another student yelled in his face, accusing him of exercising “white privilege.”

Tahmas is actually a Persian-American, not a European-American, but that hardly matters for the purposes of racist shaming of conservatives.

Tahmas said that the Oakland police have received a death threat against the president of Berkeley College Republicans, warning “You can protect Milo, but you can’t protect [name of College Republican].”

Milo Yiannopoulis, in case you haven’t been paying attention, is a performance artist and a provocateur who’s become a folk hero to campus conservatives with his fearless (and incredibly vulgar) “Dangerous F****t” tour. What Milo says is sometimes repulsive, but it is protected by the Constitution. If only the authorities would enforce it.

In two of Milo’s recent appearances at taxpayer-supported public universities, violence broke out. The story in Seattle at the University of Washington has been weirdly underreported in national media. At a rally against Milo, a protester was shot. The student (or former student: it’s still not clear) who shot him turned himself into the police, yet has not been charged, strongly suggesting police have evidence that he was defending himself from physical attack by an anti-Milo, anti-Trump protester.

At Berkeley, home of the Free Speech movement in America, Milo’s appearance was cancelled when a riot broke out among the protesters. This was not just a case of feelings getting out of hand though: It was yet another appearance of “Black Bloc” protesting, a new technique encouraged by the socialist Left.

Masked, Hooded Democrats with a Racialist Agenda

As Inside Higher Education reported, amid 1000 or so peaceful demonstrators some 150

did come to start fires, break windows and hurl rocks at police officers. … They wore black and concealed their faces with masks. They brought — and used — bats, metal rods, fireworks and Molotov cocktails to get their message across. In the process they undermined “the First Amendment rights of the speaker as well as those who came to lawfully assemble and protest his presence,” said a spokesperson for Berkeley.

Yet afterwards the college newspaper published at least five commentaries from Berkeley students and alums condoning the violence on the grounds that letting Milo speak is an act of violence. “Violence helped ensure safety of students,” an essay by one Berkeley student was headlined.

Yvette Felarca, a public middle school teacher, defended the Berkeley violence both to the LA Times and on Fox News:

“It wasn’t just people dressed in black who were acting militantly and everyone else is peace-loving Berkeley hippies,” said Yvette Felarca, a political organizer of By Any Means Necessary, an immigration and affirmative action coalition that seeks to build a mass militant movement,” reports the LA Times. “Everyone cheered when those barricades were dismantled. … Everyone was there with us in political agreement of the necessity of shutting it down, whatever it was going to take. It shows we have the power.”

Jake Shields, a World Series of Fighting welterweight, was not so enthusiastic. Emerging from a nearby restaurant where he says he watched a group of black masked men chasing a lone citizen while police stood by and did nothing. “That’s when I had to intervene, because no one is helping the guy, including the police,” Shields said. “Dude, you guys have your faces covered, you’re attacking people, you’re being f***ing fascists,” Shields told one of the masked assailants.

Violent men in masks with a racialist agenda, who are defended by the powerful, while police stand by and refuse to defend the innocent … America has been down this ugly road before. I’ll go ahead and say it: The “Black Bloc” seems to have learned from the horrifying success of the Ku Klux Klan, which for decades silenced dissent in a dozen American states.

Fascism in Canada

Things are even worse in Canada. Law enforcement there is close to declaring open season on intellectual and political dissent. Conservative students organized a panel at the University of Toronto to discuss threats to free speech on a wide range of issues, ranging from politics to climate change. The event was disrupted by thuggish protestors with profane chants, threats and false fire alarms. As the campus newspaper reports:

According to the event organizer, what [protestors] tried to do was called “no-platforming”, which is “an anti-high-fascist tactic, aimed at, if someone is trying to spread hate speech or fascism or violent rhetoric, […] you deny them the platform to actually express those views,” said the protest organizer, who further explained that the protesters joined outside the conference room when Levant started his speech.

The chants included “F*** white supremacy,” “F*** Climate Change Denial,” as well as chants against Trump and a “fascist USA.”

One of the invited speakers silenced by the protestors was publisher Ezra Levant. He responded:

“None of those words apply to me — I’m not American, and I’m not a fascist,” wrote Levant… in reference to the chants. “But the people dressed in black, wearing handkerchiefs over their mouths, carrying sticks, flipping over tables, and threatening a peaceful meeting on campus — those are actually fascists by definition.”

Levant says the Stormtroopers called his reporter Jay Fayza (who is black) a “white supremacist.” The Canadian Broadcast Company then ran a whole segment calling his media company, The Rebel, hateful and racist. Nora Loreto, a journalism union boss (yes they have journalism unions in Canada) tweeted out, “I’m getting closer and closer to publicly advocating camera smashing when people see The Rebel goons out and about.”

Levant, who left the mainstream media to found his own company, says he must now hire bodyguards for his reporters: “I know, it’s insane. This is Canada, not Russia or Venezuela. But that’s what life is like under Justine Trudeau and Rachel Notley and Kathleen Wynne,” he said. He called the protestors “anti-Semitic cowards don’t want to go on the record as Jew-bashing, gay-bashing racists. They’re ashamed of themselves. Same reason they wear masks at their riots.”

The Nation Praises Thuggish Attacks While Cops Cower

Meanwhile back the U.S., the mainstreaming of violence by the Left continues apace. On January 22, The Nation published a piece praising Black Bloc violence: “The transcendental experience of watching Roger Federer play tennis, David Foster Wallace wrote, was one of ‘kinetic beauty’… what Foster Wallace saw in a Federer Moment, I see in a video of a neo-Nazi Richard Spencer getting punched in the face.”

Here is for me the most disturbing news from Berkeley: With a violent masked mob of 100 to 150 people creating as much as $600,000 in property damage, just one person was arrested. This was no accident. This was a deliberate police policy: “At Berkeley, the police officers felt that trying to get in the middle of the crowd would’ve sparked more violence and resulted in more severe injuries. They chose not to try to arrest the black bloc protesters, because they felt it would have compromised the safety of their students,” Inside Higher Education reported.

Other college law enforcement officials praised that approach: “It always could be worse,” University of Maryland College Park Police chief Mitchell said. “The property damage was disappointing and absolutely unlawful, but that certainly could’ve been worse as well. I applaud the way they handled the incident.”

I, on the other hand, applaud the way the NYPD handled Black Bloc protesters who tried to violently disrupt an NYU speech by libertarian Gavin McInnes the day after the Berkeley riots. Cops immediately moved in and arrested 11 people.

The Berkeley violence is clearly not a one-off — they are part of an increasingly organized and highly privileged Left’s plan to silence conservative dissent where it is most vulnerable: on college campuses.

Organized mobs are throwing firebombs to disrupt speech, destroy property, and endanger bystanders. When the authorities refuse to stop them they endanger us all. (For more from the author of “Will College Campuses Give Rioters a License to Firebomb?” please click HERE)

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Why Professors Object to Being Recorded

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After the election of Donald Trump as president, a professor at Orange Coast College in California, Olga Perez Stable Cox, went into an extended hate rant against the president-elect. Among other things, she described Trump’s election as an “act of terrorism,” labeled him a white supremacist and called Vice President-elect Mike Pence “one of the most anti-gay humans in this country.”

And this wasn’t even a political science class in which one might expect political talk, no matter how irresponsible. Cox is a professor of human sexuality.

When a student who recorded the diatribe posted the recording on social media, the professor’s union, the Coast Federation of Educators, AFT local chapter 1911, said on Facebook: “This is an illegal recording without the permission of the instructor. The student will be identified and may be facing legal action.”

According to the union, the recording “violated the professor’s course syllabus, the Coast Community College District Code of Student Conduct, and the California Educational Code (sic), section 78907, which (exists) to provide a robust, learning environment for all students irrespective of their opinions.”

The aforementioned California Education Code section states, “The use by any person, including a student, of any electronic listening or recording device in any classroom without the prior consent of the instructor is prohibited.”

The American Association of University Professors has long opposed unauthorized recording and public posting of what professors say in classrooms.

As it happens, I taught for two years at Brooklyn College. I recall students asking me whether they could record my lectures. And I remember thinking, “Why on Earth would I say no?”

I wanted whatever I said in a classroom to be heard by more than 50 people. “Who wouldn’t?” I wondered.

Here, then, is my theory as to why most professors who object to their class lectures being recorded do so: They fear having what they say exposed to the general public.

Our colleges and universities (and an increasing number of high schools and elementary schools) have been transformed from educational institutions into indoctrination institutions. With the left-wing takeover of universities, their primary aim has become graduating as many leftists as possible.

The vast majority of our colleges have become left-wing seminaries. Just as Christian seminaries exist to produce committed Christians, Western universities exist to produce committed leftists. Aside from the Christian-leftism difference, universities differ in only one respect from Christian seminaries: Christian seminaries admit their goal, whereas the universities deceive the public about theirs.

Thus, in the “social sciences” — disciplines outside the natural sciences and math — a large number of college teachers inject their politics into their classrooms. And if they are recorded, the general public will become aware of just how politicized their classroom lectures are.

But there is another reason.

Most professors objecting to being recorded know on some level that they are persuasive only when their audience is composed largely of very young people just out of high school. They know that if their ideas are exposed to adults, they may be revealed as intellectual lightweights.

Students therefore need to understand that when professors object to being recorded, it is a statement of contempt for them. The professors are, in effect, saying to their students: “Listen. I can get away with this intellectually shallow, emotion-based propaganda when you are the only people who actually hear it. You aren’t wise enough to perceive it as such. But if people over 21 years of age hear it, I’m toast.”

All rules governing the recording of conversations without permission should apply to a professor meeting privately with a student.

But when professors stand in front of a class, they are in the public domain. Moreover, the public pays at least part of these professors’ salary at virtually every university. We therefore have a right, and even a duty, to know what professors say publicly in classrooms.

In fact, I would encourage every student who cares about truth and intellectual honesty to record what their professors say in class. I would also encourage every parent to find out for what they are paying. And I would encourage professors to record themselves in order to protect themselves against doctored material.

Any professor who is not ashamed of what he or she is saying in class should welcome being recorded.

And any student taking a class with a professor who objects to being recorded should know that this objection is almost always equivalent to the professor saying: “I want you to hear what I say in class because I’m quite confident that you can’t differentiate between instruction and indoctrination. But if what I say goes public, people who do know the difference will expose me as a propagandist.” (For more from the author of “Why Professors Object to Being Recorded” please click HERE)

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