KKK Then and Now

 

For those obsessed with identity politics, their ignorance or self-imposed amnesia of their own heritage is so profound that few honest historians dare correct the record, less they become ostracized from the towers of higher learning. The void created by this lack of integrity requires that those not attached or bound to the anti-intellectual centers of propaganda education must carry the message to others who have an open mind and a sincere desire to know the truth. While Democratic factions adopted during the reconstruction era may seem harsh to the culturally deprived, but compared to the ostentation of self-proclaimed champions for diversity, becomes pale by contrast. Their hypocrisy is not new, but the extent of their neurosis approaches clinical insanity.

The background of the Ku Klux Klan has been distorted to such a degree that the impact of Abraham Lincoln’s war is lost to most Americans. The myth that slavery was the cause of the conflict is amiss. The carpetbaggers were more egregious than the plantation landlords. Thus far the tale of separate societies neglects to face up to the reality of the era. Some aspects were a natural response to the oppression from the victor, while others were an overreach to maintain an economic system that ran its course.

Truth Wiki provides some seldom cited Historical facts most Americans don’t know about the KKK.

• The Democratic Party fought to maintain and expand slavery.


• The Democrats founded the KKK as an arm of the Southern Democratic Party


• Democrats invented the term “Radical Republicans” to describe people who wanted to end slavery and give those people citizenship and equal rights.


• The 14th Amendment that gave full citizenship to freed slaves was passed in 1868 with 94% Republican support but 0% Democratic support from Congress.


• The 15th Amendment that gave freed slaves the right to vote in 1870 was supported by 100% of the Republicans in Congress and 0% of the Democrats.


• The Democratic Party’s KKK mission was to terrorize freed slaves and any Republicans who sympathized with them.


• The Democratic Party has never switched stances on racism, but rather subverted the enslavement of blacks by promoting their absolute dependence on Big Government to secure their votes. Anyone who now opposes this subversion is labeled racist.

Now before one draws a false conclusion, the Republican Party was never the advocate of equality that many would like you to believe. By supporting Amendments to the Constitution the GOP intended to bury the South with the ballot box, while stripping the assets from the vanquished.

The diversion of race baiting has been a stable ever since.

The Democratic Party’s Long History of Racism that appeared in the American Thinker cites Charlie Martin of PJ Tatler, who factually exposes the Democrats as the real racists.

A few examples:

Woodrow Wilson segregated Federal Buildings and jobs after 50 years of integration under largely Republican administrations.

It was the Democrat Party in the South that instituted Jim Crow Laws.

It was the Democrat Party in the South that instituted “separate but equal”.

This background is off limits in the swamp of political warfare that is covered by a mass media and pushes the narrative that descendants of bondage are entitled to reparations for past enslavement. It would be even more horrendous to mention that Since White people are routinely condemned for 200 years of slavery in America, why are Jews not condemned for their leading role in slave trade over the last 2000 years? Add to the insult that David Duke presents the factual evidence to this sordid history and you are automatically labeled a hater.

The timid and phony “so called” conservatives are far too scared to mention this subject in their political discourse. Many of the next items need to become part of the dialogue.

Back in 2015 an article Why Not Just Ban Democratic Party For Its Links to Racism?, cites the following: “Founded in 1866 as a Tennessee social club, the Ku Klux Klan spread into nearly every Southern state, launching a ‘reign of terror‘ against Republican leaders black and white,” noted historian Eric Foner wrote in his book Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution.

The inference is that “The data is going to indicate sadly that when the Obama administration is over, black people will have lost ground in every single leading economic indicator category,” Tavis Smiley, a black radio host, said. “On that regard, the president ought to be held responsible.”

Even that proclaimed liberal enlightened publication, The Atlantic acknowledges How Barack Obama Failed Black Americans. Shocking that such a megastar boy of Frank Marshall Davis could neglect his race.

But before one forgets the rapid destruction of the black community, one needs to admit HOW THE LIBERAL WELFARE STATE DESTROYED BLACK AMERICA. LBJ shackled the gullible into believing that the Great Society was a step forward. More black lives were destroyed by liberal legislation than by any KKK lynching.

America needs to grow up and face reality.  Charles Hunt of the Washington Times has it correct when reporting on the ugly career of Nancy Pelosi, Democrats decry the KKK while forgetting legacy of one of their own.

“There is no room for celebrating the violent bigotry of the men of the Confederacy in the hallowed halls of the United States Capitol or in places of honor across the country,” Mrs. Pelosi said.

After, apparently, 30 years of herself celebrating “violent bigotry.”

In this land of dishonest race hucksters, it is always important to remember that small lies never win. They always go for the BIG LIE.

Remind me, again, who was behind all the “violent bigotry” of the Civil War? Oh, yeah, it was Democrats. And who was behind all the vestiges of it over the last century? Democrats.

Mrs. Pelosi knows this, of course, because she worked shoulder-to-shoulder for 23 years beside a retired member of the Ku Klux Klan. That would, of course, be the “great senator” from the “great state” of West Virginia, Robert C. Byrd, a lifelong Democrat.

As the “Exalted Cyclops” of the KKK, Mr. Byrd recruited more than 100 people to join his chapter and warned in a letter against America becoming “degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.”

Modern-day Democrats denounced Byrd in 1989 by naming the suite of offices in the U.S. Capitol that house Democrat leadership the “Robert C. Byrd Rooms.”

Since you were not shocked by the hidden family ties of Barry Soetoro, maybe the discriminating sentiments of Senator Byrd might strike a chord of horse sense for those who reject the “political correctness” of the multicultural asylum.

The current diversified egalitarian culture is based upon a foundation of rigid orthodoxy. By adopting the Abraham Lincoln illusion as The Great Emancipator, he was almost the Great Colonizer. This intention is conveniently ignored as the guilt ridden apologists sink into a state of delusion.

In the book, Lincoln sought to deport freed slaves the shocking account is discussed.

“Just after he issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Lincoln authorized plans to pursue a freedmen’s settlement in present-day Belize and another in Guyana, both colonial possessions of Great Britain at the time, said Phillip W. Magness, one of the researchers who uncovered the new documents.”

The legacy of the KKK must not be defined by the Southern Poverty Law Center. J D Heyes cites the Family Research Council in the article, The Southern Poverty Law Center Is A Dangerous, Demented Hate Group That Incites Murder Against Christians And Conservatives.

Media Research Center President Brent Bozell, published an open letter to the news media explaining why they should cease referencing the leftist SPLC’s biased propaganda in their reporting. 

“The SPLC is a discredited, left-wing, political activist organization that seeks to silence its political opponents with a ‘hate group’ label of its own invention and application that is not only false and defamatory, but that also endangers the lives of those targeted with it,” the letter stated.

In the toxic political environment of this new century, the role of the top haters is unquestionably achieved by the progressive extremists that seek to destroy all symbols and remnants of traditional heritage. The lunatic left project on the public continuous diatribes of slime, deception and literal hate.

Demanding the purity of censorship does not mean they wear white sheets or hoods. The radicals who captured the Democratic Party are the modern day mob of venom that can trace their roots to the Saul Alinsky School of chaos.

For the masses of the underclass, who are duped into believing that the Trump Nation patriots are their enemy; wake up and gaze into the eyes of the progressives who have been deceiving you for generations. The tech billionaires are committed to the suppression of the truth. Their claims that they favor your advancement are a sham. So just who are the real facilitators of a free society?

The post KKK Then and Now appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

What Went Wrong In Charlottesville: At All Levels, Government Is Still The Problem

Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

Corruption. Graft. Intolerance. Greed. Incompetence. Ineptitude. Militarism. Lawlessness. Ignorance. Brutality. Deceit. Collusion. Corpulence. Bureaucracy. Immorality. Depravity. Censorship. Cruelty. Violence. Mediocrity. Tyranny.

These are the hallmarks of an institution that is rotten through and through.

We have been saddled with the wreckage of a government at all levels that no longer represents the citizenry, serves the citizenry, or is accountable to the citizenry.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about the federal government, state governments, or local governing bodies: at all ends of the spectrum and every point in between, a shift has taken place.

“We the people” are not being seen or heard.

Everything happening at the national level is playing out at the local level, as well.

Take my own hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia, for instance.

In the summer of 2017, Charlottesville became ground zero for a heated war of words—and actions—over racism, “sanitizing history,” extremism (both right and left), political correctness, hate speech, partisan politics, and a growing fear that violent words will end in violent actions.

In Charlottesville, as in so many parts of the country right now, the conflict was over how to reconcile the nation’s checkered past, particularly as it relates to slavery, with the present need to sanitize the environment of anything—words and images—that might cause offense, especially if it’s a Confederate flag or monument.

That fear of offense prompted the Charlottesville City Council to get rid of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee that has graced one of its public parks for 82 years.

That’s when everything went haywire.

In attempting to pacify one particularly vocal and righteously offended group while railroading over the concerns of those with alternate viewpoints, Charlottesville attracted the unwanted attention of the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and the alt-Right, all of whom descended on the little college town with the intention of exercising their First Amendment right to be disagreeable, to assemble, and to protest.

When put to the test, Charlottesville did not handle things well at all.

No one—not the armed, violent, militant protesters nor the police—gave peace a chance on August 12 when what should have been an exercise in free speech quickly became a brawl that left one dead and dozens more injured.

The police, who were supposed to uphold the law and prevent violence, failed to do either.

Indeed, a 220-page post-mortem of the protests and the Charlottesville government’s response by former U.S. attorney Timothy J. Heaphy merely corroborates our worst fears about what drives the government at all levels: power, money, ego, politics and ambition.

When presented with a situation in which the government and its agents were tasked with protecting free speech and safety, Heaphy concluded that “the City of Charlottesville protected neither free expression nor public safety.”

Read Heaphy’s report for yourself.

It’s full of drama and intrigue, plots and dueling egos, petty tyrants and ambitious politicians. (There’s even mention of a personal email account and deleted text messages.)

Not much different from what is happening on the national scene.

Commissioned by the City of Charlottesville, this Heaphy report was intended to be an independent investigation of what went right and what went wrong in the government’s handling of the protests.

Here’s what went wrong, according to the report:

1. Police failed to get input from other law enforcement agencies experienced in handling large protests.

2. Police failed to adequately train their officers in advance of the protest.

3. City officials failed to request assistance from outside agencies.

4. The City Council unduly interfered by ignoring legal advice, attempting to move the protesters elsewhere, and ignoring the concerns of law enforcement.

5. The city government failed to inform the public about their plans.

6. City officials were misguided in allowing weapons at the protest.

7. The police implemented a flawed operational plan that failed to protect public safety.

8. While police were provided with riot gear, they were never trained in how to use it, nor were they provided with any meaningful field training in how to deal with or de-escalate anticipated violence on the part of protesters.

9. Despite the input and advice of outside counsel, including The Rutherford Institute, the police failed to employ de-escalation tactics or establish clear barriers between warring factions of protesters.

10. Government officials and police leadership opted to advance their own agendas at the expense of constitutional rights and public safety.

11. For all intents and purposes, police abided by a stand down order that endangered the community and paved the way for civil unrest.

12. In failing to protect public safety, police and government officials undermined public faith in the government.

The Heaphy report focused on the events that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, but it applies to almost every branch of government that fails to serve “we the people.”

As the Pew Research Center revealed, public trust in the government remains near historic lows and with good reason, too.

This isn’t America, land of the free, where the government is “of the people, by the people [and] for the people.”

Rather, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this is Amerika, where fascism, totalitarianism and militarism work hand in hand.

So what’s the answer?

As always, it must start with “we the people.”

I’ve always advised people to think nationally, but act locally. Yet as Charlottesville makes clear, it’s hard to make a difference locally when the local government is as deaf, dumb and blind to the needs of its constituents as the national government.

Still, it’s time to clean house at all levels of government.

You’ve got a better chance of making your displeasure seen and felt and heard within your own community. But it will take perseverance and unity and a commitment to finding common ground with your fellow citizens.

Stop tolerating corruption, graft, intolerance, greed, incompetence, ineptitude, militarism, lawlessness, ignorance, brutality, deceit, collusion, corpulence, bureaucracy, immorality, depravity, censorship, cruelty, violence, mediocrity, and tyranny.

Stop holding your nose in order to block out the stench of a rotting institution.

Stop letting the government and its agents treat you like a servant or a slave.

You’ve got rights. We’ve all got rights. This is our country. This is our government. No one can take it away from us unless we make it easy for them.

Right now, we’re making it way too easy for the police state to take over.

Stop being an accessory to the murder of the American republic.

Will The Deep State's War On Trump Lead To An Actual Civil War?

Authored by Andrew Karybko via Oriental Review,

Oriental Review is publishing the English original of Andrew Korybko’s interview with an Iranian newspaper from earlier this month.

After only eight months after entering into office, we have witnessed the resignation and dismissal of 15 high-ranked people from the White House. In view of this, do you think that Trump will be able to finish his first term? Some analysts suggest that he won’t, so how unstable do you think the political situation in the US, and how serious of a threat does it pose to Trump’s presidency?

There have been over a dozen high-level and much-publicized personnel shifts in the Trump Administration in the past 9 months, but they shouldn’t be interpreted as signaling that the President himself will be leaving anytime soon. These are all just casualties of Trump’s war with the “deep state” (permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies), whereby the vested power interests in the US are fighting to defeat the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement. Throughout the course of this conflict, Trump has clearly been thrown on the defensive as he’s had to compromise on his promised foreign policy platforms in order to retain a chance at succeeding on the domestic front, but even that looks uncertain right now in some respects as the “deep state”, aided by the RINOs (Republicans In Name Only), relentlessly continues to chip away at MAGA in order to retain their power and influence.

If they can force Trump into submission and turn him into their puppet, as they’re trying to do, then there would be no need to attempt to remove him from office; likewise, if he continues to resist in some capacities, as he’s doing on domestic issues, then this scenario because more possible. Even so, it’s unlikely to succeed except in the event that Trump’s enemies can pull off turning him into the “fascist dictator” that they’ve fear mongered he’d become even before he was elected.

The only conceivable way for this to happen is if the domestic unrest in the US between the Alt-Left and Alt-Right becomes so uncontrollable that Trump is forced to implement limited martial law, and if (or likely when) a racial minority or group thereof is killed during this time, regardless of the circumstances, this would be used to swiftly bring about attempted impeachment charges on whatever trumped-up pretext can be made. It’s not being implied that this will succeed, but just that if one talks about the impeachment scenario, then this is the only one out of the wide array that are being bandied about which has any realistic chance of succeeding, though the odds are nevertheless still slim.

“The New Yorker” recently published an article which said that racism and fascism have been on the rise after Trump’s election, pointing to the incident in Charlottesville as proof of that. In your view, what’s the risk that this will spark a war between the left and right in the US?

“The New Yorker”, given its liberal-progressive and endemic anti-Trump bias, shouldn’t be trusted as a reliable source of information, but the fact that it’s pushing the Mainstream Media narrative about Trump coming to power on the backs of racists and fascists deserves to be elaborated on. This is a false stereotype which suggests that “white” (Caucasian) people are racists simply because of their skin color, and therefore voted for Trump on that basis alone, which isn’t the case at all and is condescending to the tens of millions of people who supported him for his policies.

That being said, there are indeed some actual racists and fascists who openly support Trump, but they’re such a small minority of the population as to be statistically irrelevant. For instance, the notorious Ku Klux Klan only has several thousand members nationwide, which pales in comparison to the at least 100,000-200,000 members of the Alt-Left militant group “Antifa”, which has proven to be much more violent and dangerous than their Alt-Right counterparts.

The reason why the “deep state” is trying to link racists and fascists to Trump is to discredit his election victory, so their affiliated Mainstream Media proxies amplify the voices and numbers of a tiny minority of a minority of individuals in order to promote this perception. Nevertheless, they are dangerous and deserve to be condemned, though to be fair, so too should most of their Alt-Left counter-protesters, and for even more urgent reasons.

When “Antifa” is heralded as “heroes” despite their wanton destruction and actual fascist-like violent intolerance for any dissenting views, this lends “legitimacy” to their tactics and “normalizes” them, essentially turning Far-Left street destabilizations into an accepted part of life for the elite because of their weaponized instrumentalization in intimidating the vast majority of Trump’s non-racist non-fascist base.

In turn, this can only provoke a defensive reaction from these people which spikes the chances of Left-Right clashes becoming as common in the future in America’s cities as gangland shootings are today.

To tie all of this in with the previous question, the reason why the “deep state” and Soros-affiliated Alt-Left groups want to spark such pronounced disorder and chaos in the US is to fuel a Color Revolution which would then rapidly descend into an Unconventional War of urban terrorism and political killings, all with the intent of driving Trump to become the “fascist dictator” that they fear mongered he’d become so as to have a basis for pushing through impeachment proceedings against him should racial minorities be killed if he implements limited martial law in response.

To Combat "Hate" - Make Government Weaker

On 18 August 2017, the mayor of Boston Marty Walsh announced that the city should avoid the Commons on 19 August 2017 because of white supremacists and the chances of violence at a planned free speech rally. Predictably, thousands of people showed up to protest this group based on the words of the mayor. The mayor was rather unambiguous,

“The courts have made it abundantly clear. They have the right to gather, no matter how repugnant their views are. But they don’t have the right to create unsafe conditions. They have the right to free speech. In return, they have to respect our city.”

The mayor said that unpleasant white supremacists were going to show up and spout hateful rhetoric, so avoid it at all costs so you aren’t subject to these repugnant views.

The problem here?

To put it in the words of one very confused protester that was interviewed by the Boston Globe, “Excuse me sir, where are the white supremacists?”

As it turns out, this hate speech movement that Mayor Walsh was warning everyone about was a simple campaign stump speech by a Republican candidate for the Massachusetts State Senate.

Who was this despicable white supremacist? Indian-American Shiva Ayyadurai. While his profile does have some bizarre claims, mainly his claim that he invented e-mail, this isn’t any stranger than claims many other politicians make and nothing in his background seems to indicate any form of racial animosity or racial supremacist beliefs, white or otherwise. If anything, his views indicate the opposite as he accuses the US of operating a caste system where academics and politicians take the role of the Brahmin in India and is anti-GMO. These are hardly hallmarks of a right-wing belief structure and have far more in common with the American left.

Further, this is the speech he made. To cap it off, he was flanked by people holding Black Lives Do Matter signs and a woman protesting GMO food. This is a twist that was comical years ago when done on the Dave Chappelle Show, but it loses a bit of its comedy when we fast forward to 2017 and people are actually taking this as gospel, carving out time on a Saturday to yell down a few odd ducks — who dislike Monsanto — as racists.

And this mayoral behavior is expanding. San Francisco mayor Ed Lee has recently come on record denouncing a prayer group operated by Patriot Prayer on Saturday, 26 August 2017. Much like Boston mayor Walsh, Mayor Lee is rather unambiguous in his speech about the purpose of this gathering, “But as mayor of this city, I say: Any message of hate is not welcome.” And as predicted, thousands are going to show up to protest this gathering.

But, much like the problem Mayor Walsh incited, this particular rally is going to feature Hispanics, homosexuals and a transsexual speaker all of which will be be run by a person of Japanese descent.

His interview makes him sound like he hits most of the Progressive tropes, including ending wars and promoting gay rights.

So, what is going on here?

Why a Climate of Fear Exists 

Politicians are actively tapping into modern stress that is generated by the state itself. Emotion is a powerful political motivator. People are heavily motivated to believe things that hit their emotions strongly, as shown by the classic tests to ban water. People generally have no idea what they’re protesting, just that the person has a compelling emotional hook.

When a major villain like, say, Donald Trump, manages to get a hold of a very powerful political organization like, say, the US federal government, people are bound to become fearful for their way of life if they supported a different politician for the role.

As I noted previously in an open letter to Clinton supporters, this anxiety is entirely the fault of the anxious since they were the ones that insisted on building those powerful institutions that would inevitably be taken over by individuals that you may not support and used in ways that were not intended.

This is how politicians, who are angling to generate a much more powerful government, so long as you vote for them, are able to paint groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the National Socialist Movement, the two largest white supremacist groups in the country, as major threats to the safety of minorities.

And by largest, I mean that the KKK has around 3,000 members nationally (out of 320 million people) and the second largest, the NSM, has around 400.

Narratives don’t work without an enemy and the traditional enemy of the mayors actively inciting violence against in their cities is so trivial they can barely make up a decent crowd at a minor league baseball stadium, let alone constitute a threat to the Republic. And nothing stirs up the emotional ire more than some Nazi sympathizers that we’ve had drilled into our heads since elementary school history are, rightfully, right evil bastards.

To point out how trivial and powerless these groups are, bees are responsible for around 100 deaths per year, which is over double the combined amount of alleged right-wing hate groups are responsible for between 2002 and 2016, making the everyday bee 31 times more deadly than white supremacist groups. Yet we don’t see massive rallies of college age students stomping through apiaries demanding bees to be snuffed out, because it’s ridiculous to fear something so powerless.

Politicians are doing what they do from time immemorial, leveraging our fear into the growth of the state. We saw it in the wake of 9/11 with the passage of the Patriot Act, for justification to enter the First World War and even going back further to the dissolution of the Roman Republic into an Imperial power. Manufacture fear, either via an existing external threat or, in the case of Rome under Gaius Julius and the latest mayoral pronouncements that racists are going to run amok in the city, a fake one, stir up the fervor of the population then arrive with the solution, one that requires additional money and power for public office and then ride to the rescue. Stirring up riots and a few deaths perfectly plays to their narrative.

Simply asking people to get along isn’t going to work so long as there is a massive power structure in place that is driving the actual fear. If the people are afraid of the Trumps and KKKs of the world, they could demand their politicians dismantle the power structures at the federal level so it cannot be taken over by disfavored groups and reinstall them at a local level where it is far easier to control who hold the reins of power.

"Dangerously Vague" - New US Law Blurs The Line Between Hate Speech And Hate Crime

Authored by Michael Rozeff via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

Eleven years ago, this essay argued against hate-crime laws.

One argument read “People can eventually be accused of hate crimes when they use hateful speech. Hate crimes laws are a seed that can sprout in new directions.”

This has now come to pass, I am sorry to say. This week, the Congress passed S. J. Res. 49, and President Trump signed it, making it part of the U.S. legal code.

The law rejects “White nationalists, White supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and other hate groups…” But why? Because of their ideas? Because of their expression of these ideas?

No government that stands for freedom and free speech, whose charge is to protect rights, should be singling out specific groups by name and by law declaring them as outlaws or threats because of their philosophies. If they have committed a crime, such as defamation of character or incitement to riot or riot itself, then charge them and try them. But American government has no legitimate authority to single out some of its citizens in this way. This, furthermore, is an exceedingly bad precedent. Who’s next?

The resolution is too specific, but it’s also dangerously vague. The term “other hate groups” has no known definition. Suppose that this term is defined by a group like the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC currently names 917 groups as hate groups (see here for a list). Their criteria are not restricted to violent actions. They comprise SPEECH. They say “All hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.” They are very clear about this: “Hate group activities can include criminal acts, marches, rallies, speeches, meetings, leafleting or publishing.”

This Congressional resolution is a declaration that certain kinds of groups, some named but many, many others open to inclusion, are to be attacked by the U.S. government.

The law urges “the President and the President’s Cabinet to use all available resources to address the threats posed by those groups.” The term “threats” in the first paragraph is vague, dangerously vague. However, the very next paragraph singles outfree speech actions when “hundreds of torch-bearing White nationalists, White supremacists, Klansmen, and neo-Nazis chanted racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-immigrant slogans…” The same sentence joins this with violent actions “…and violently engaged with counter-demonstrators on and around the grounds of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville…”

This law regards free speech as a threat, linking it to violence, painting them with one brush. There can be no justice that can stem from such a completely sloppy and inexcusably amateurish legal treatment. This linkage is made clear in paragraph seven with this language: “…communities everywhere are concerned about the growing and open display of hate and violence being perpetrated by those groups…” There is no distinction made here between the “open display of hate” and “violence being perpetrated”. As I predicted 11 years ago in arguing against hate crime laws, hate speech is being identified with hate crime.

I am just as uncomfortable with the notion of defining and singling out “hate speech” as some sort of new danger or threat or harmful activity or crime, to be dealt with by government or courts of law as I was 11 years ago with the idea of “hate crime”. The standard categories of crime are quite enough without adding to them a government laundry list of prejudices and aversions that everyone is not supposed to express or feel, under penalty of government law.

Maxine Waters: "They're Trying To Kill Me!"

California Democrat Maxine Waters thinks white nationalists and the KKK are trying to kill her.

At least she suggested as much during a House subcommittee hearing on terrorism and illicit financing when she asked what she and others could do about white nationalists and KKK members who threaten them on the Internet.

“What can we do to deal with the KKK, the white nationalists, the extremists, the alt-right?” Waters, who serves as ranking member of the House Committee on Financial Services, asked during a Subcommittee on Terrorism and Illicit Finance hearing. ‘They’re on the internet, they’re Breitbart. If you look at the YouTube, you see how much they want to kill me and others. What can we do?’”

“Extremists radicalized by foreign terror groups are not the only terrorists with the capacity to target and kill American citizens,” Waters said. “Indeed, domestic terror attacks have become more frequent in recent years.”

The hearing was intended to discuss “lone-wolf” terrorist threats, with a focus on the financial aspects of terror plots, according to PJ Media.

Seamus Hughes, deputy director for George Washington University’s Program on Extremism and former senior counterterrorism advisor for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, told Waters that domestic terrorists are just as big a threat as foreign born terrorists.

“You should be worried about the Orlando shooters, the Omar Mateens of the world as much as you are the James Fields and the Dylann Roofs of the world,” Hughes said.

Waters responded by reeling off a long list of domestic attacks including the Ruby Ridge standoff in 1992, the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting in 2009, the Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting in 2012, the Los Angeles International Airport shooting in 2013, the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooting in 2015, the Portland train attack this year and, of course, Charlottesville.

“Extremists radicalized by foreign terror groups are not the only terrorists with the capacity to target and kill American citizens,” Waters said. “Indeed, domestic terror attacks have become more frequent in recent years.”

Hughes, who testified at the hearing, described the creative ways in which domestic terror groups like an offshoot of the Aryan Nation finance their activities. The group robbed several armored vehicles in the 1980s and successfully laundered more than $4 million to be used in financing and arming white nationalist groups. Hughes explained how Army Private Isaac Aguigui murdered his pregnant wife in 2011, collected about $500,000 in insurance money and then purchased $30,000 worth of guns and ammunition for his militia group Forever Enduring Always Ready, a group that had planned to assassinate President Barack Obama.

Watch the webcast of the hearing below

Christian Group Sues SPLC And Amazon After Being Labeled A "Hate Group"

Last week D. James Kennedy Ministries (DJKM), a Christian-based missionary ministry based in Florida, filed a lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Amazon after being added to the SPLC"s list of "hate groups" and excluded from Amazon"s charitable donation program, Amazon Smile.  Apparently, at least in the SPLC"s estimation, verbally expressing a religously-based opposition to same-sex marriage and transgenerism is enough to get yourself labeled an "Anti-LGBT hate group."  Per PJ Media:

"We embarked today on a journey to right a terrible wrong," Dr. Frank Wright, president and CEO at DJKM, said in a statement Tuesday. "Those who knowingly label Christian ministries as "hate" groups, solely for subscribing to the historic Christian faith, are either woefully uninformed or willfully deceitful. In the case of the Southern Poverty Law Center, our lawsuit alleges the latter."

The SPLC has labeled DJKM an "anti-LGBT hate group" for its opposition to same-sex marriage and transgenderism. "These false and illegal characterizations have a chilling effect on the free exercise of religion and on religious free speech for all people of faith," Wright declared.

"After having given the SPLC an opportunity to retract, we have undertaken this legal action, seeking a trial by a jury of our peers, to preserve our own rights under the law and to defend the religious free speech rights of all Americans," the DJKM president concluded.

The lawsuit laid out charges against the SPLC, GuideStar, and Amazon. "SPLC acted knowingly, intentionally, and with actual malice in publishing the Hate Map that included the Ministry and in publishing the SPLC Transmissions to GuideStar that included the ministry," the suit alleged. "SPLC"s conduct in making these publications was beyond the reckless disregard for the truth standard required by Alabama law for punitive damages."

Of course, given that "same-sex marriage and transgenderism" generally do not comport with the views of most religious entities, it"s unclear exactly how/why all churches, mosques and synagogues in the U.S. managed to avoid being added the SPLC"s list...maybe DJKM just got lucky?

In all, the SPLC says there are 917 "hate groups" in the United States which they divvy up into the following categories:

• Anti-Immigrant


• Anti-LGBT


• Anti-Muslim


• Black Separatist


• Christian Indentity


• General Hate


• Hate Music


• Holocaust Denial


• KKK


• Neo-Confederate


• Neo-Nazi


• Racist Skinhead


• Radical Traditional Catholocism


• White Nationalist

Only in the U.S. can a peaceful Christian group end up on a "hate" list with "Neo-Nazis" and the "KKK".  Be that as it may, here is where the SPLC says the "hate groups" of America are located (click here for an interactive version of the map).

Among other things, DJKM"s lawsuit alleges that SPLC"s "hate group" designation has prevented them from being added to Amazon"s charitable registry.

In early January of this year, a DJKM employee attempted to register the ministry with AmazonSmile, but was denied after multiple attempts. The program made clear, "We rely on the Southern Poverty Law Center to determine which charities are in ineligible categories," and explained that DJKM was listed as ineligible.

AmazonSmile support also noted that they "rely on GuideStar to send us information from the IRS," and that GuideStar"s automated feed included the "hate" designation from the SPLC.

AmazonSmile"s eligibility requirements exclude organizations that "engage in, support, encourage, or promote intolerance, hate, terrorism, violence, money laundering, or other illegal activities," none of which DJKM engages in, the lawsuit argued.

Meanwhile, not that it matters because it"s just a silly little fact, the 2015 Supreme court decision that legalized same-sex marriage specifically found that "religious based opposition to same-sex marriage and the homosexual agenda is not hate speech"...but what does SCOTUS know about laws anyway?

But the lawsuit quoted Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who in the 2015 case which legalized same-sex marriage wrote, "Many who deem same-sex marriage to be wrong reach that conclusion based on decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises, and neither they nor their beliefs are disparaged here."

"Therefore, as a matter of law, religious based opposition to same-sex marriage and the homosexual agenda is not hate speech, but rather is a position that the U.S. Supreme Court has labeled "decent and honorable,"" the suit explained.

"Because the Ministry"s position on "LGBT" issues is inextricably intertwined and connected to the Ministry"s religious theology, and because SPLC and GuideStar have declared the ministry to be a Hate Group due to the Ministry"s stand on LGBT issues, what occurred here is that SPLC and GuideStar have discriminated against the Ministry because of its ... religious beliefs."

Not surprisingly, the mainstream media has embraced, without question, the SPLC"s list of "hate groups" with CNN publishing their map earlier this month.  Meanwhile, Apple pledged to donate $2 million to the SPLC and Anti-Degamation League in the wake of the Charlottesville attack.

Here is DJKM"s President Dr. Frank Wright discussing the lawsuit on Fox News:

Oddly, we didn"t see any mention of AntiFa groups on SPLC"s map...

Kamala Harris Calls For Congressional Investigation Of "White Supremacist Terrorism"

Kamala Harris, the California senator and rumored 2020 candidate for the White House, is now apparently working with the Senate Homeland Security Committee to demand an immediate investigation on the "root causes" of "violent white supremacy" in the United States following the recent tragedy in Charlottesville.  

The Senate Homeland Security Committee Democrats & I are calling for a hearing on violent white supremacy to examine root causes.

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) August 22, 2017

Meanwhile, she also started an online petition to collect signatures for hearings on what she dubs "white supremacist terrorism."

"Demand Senate hearings on white supremacist terrorism"

"The federal government has a responsibility to address the rise of white supremacist violence and ensure that all our citizens are safe from domestic terrorism."

"Add your name to demand Republicans schedule hearings on violent white supremacy and other forms of hateful domestic extremism"

Of course, this is all part of the Left"s new propaganda initiative designed specifically to convince you that the "extreme right" (which we assume is now synonymous with "white supremacist") is "the number one domestic terror threat in the U.S."  In fact, here is nearly identical language from CNN"s Chris Cuomo used just last week (it"s almost as if the media coordinates with Democrats on the language and branding efforts):

“If you take anarchists at their worst, do you have malefactor? Do you have criminals in their ranks? Do you have people who do violent things? Yes, yes, yes, yes. That is not a moral equivalency to the KKK,” Cuomo said. “It’s certainly not an equivalent to what we see on the right. Just look at the stats. The number one domestic terror threat in the U.S. is the extreme right. There is not even a close second.”

“That’s all they’re about is hate. Two out of three people on this panel they don’t want to exist!”

All of which we guess is completely accurate if you simply ignore the 2,996 people killed in the 9/11 attacks, 49 people killed in the Orlando night club shooting, 14 people killed in San Bernadino, etc.

Meanwhile, we can only assume that violent antifa protests, like the ones conducted during Trump"s inauguration that included a bunch of folks running around with baseball bats and hammers, attacking cops and destroying private property, don"t fit Harris" definition of "domestic terrorism."

Perhaps Harris" time, and taxpayers" dollars, may be better used trying to figure out why Chicago residents are committing 800 murders every single year than why 1 psychopath committed 1 truly awful murder last week...just a thought.

Dilbert's Scott Adams Explains "How To Know You're In A Mass Hysteria Bubble"

Authored by Scott Adams via Dilbert blog,

History is full of examples of Mass Hysterias. They happen fairly often. The cool thing about mass hysterias is that you don’t know when you are in one. But sometimes the people who are not experiencing the mass hysteria can recognize when others are experiencing one, if they know what to look for.

I’ll teach you what to look for.

A mass hysteria happens when the public gets a wrong idea about something that has strong emotional content and it triggers cognitive dissonance that is often supported by confirmation bias. In other words, people spontaneously hallucinate a whole new (and usually crazy-sounding) reality and believe they see plenty of evidence for it. The Salem Witch Trials are the best-known example of mass hysteria. The McMartin Pre-School case and the Tulip Bulb hysteria are others. The dotcom bubble probably qualifies. We might soon learn that the Russian Collusion story was mass hysteria in hindsight. The curious lack of solid evidence for Russian collusion is a red flag. But we’ll see how that plays out.

The most visible Mass Hysteria of the moment involves the idea that the United States intentionally elected a racist President. If that statement just triggered you, it might mean you are in the Mass Hysteria bubble. The cool part is that you can’t fact-check my claim you are hallucinating if you are actually hallucinating. But you can read my description of the signs of mass hysteria and see if you check off the boxes.

If you’re in the mass hysteria, recognizing you have all the symptoms of hysteria won’t help you be aware you are in it. That’s not how hallucinations work. Instead, your hallucination will automatically rewrite itself to expel any new data that conflicts with its illusions.

But if you are not experiencing mass hysteria, you might be totally confused by the actions of the people who are. They appear to be irrational, but in ways that are hard to define. You can’t tell if they are stupid, unscrupulous, ignorant, mentally ill, emotionally unstable or what. It just looks frickin’ crazy.

The reason you can’t easily identify what-the-hell is going on in the country right now is that a powerful mass hysteria is in play.

If you see the signs after I point them out, you’re probably not in the hysteria bubble.

If you read this and do NOT see the signs, it probably means you’re trapped inside the mass hysteria bubble.

Here are some signs of mass hysteria. This is my own take on it, but I welcome you to fact-check it with experts on mass hysteria.

1. The trigger event for cognitive dissonance

On November 8th of 2016, half the country learned that everything they believed to be both true and obvious turned out to be wrong. The people who thought Trump had no chance of winning were under the impression they were smart people who understood their country, and politics, and how things work in general. When Trump won, they learned they were wrong. They were so very wrong that they reflexively (because this is how all brains work) rewrote the scripts they were seeing in their minds until it all made sense again. The wrong-about-everything crowd decided that the only way their world made sense, with their egos intact, is that either the Russians helped Trump win or there are far more racists in the country than they imagined, and he is their king. Those were the seeds of the two mass hysterias we witness today.

Trump supporters experienced no trigger event for cognitive dissonance when Trump won. Their worldview was confirmed by observed events.

2. The Ridiculousness of it 

One sign of a good mass hysteria is that it sounds bonkers to anyone who is not experiencing it. Imagine your neighbor telling you he thinks the other neighbor is a witch. Or imagine someone saying the local daycare provider is a satanic temple in disguise. Or imagine someone telling you tulip bulbs are more valuable than gold. Crazy stuff.

Compare that to the idea that our president is a Russian puppet. Or that the country accidentally elected a racist who thinks the KKK and Nazis are “fine people.” Crazy stuff.

If you think those examples don’t sound crazy – regardless of the reality – you are probably inside the mass hysteria bubble.

3. The Confirmation Bias

If you are inside the mass hysteria bubble, you probably interpreted President Trump’s initial statement on Charlottesville – which was politically imperfect to say the least – as proof-positive he is a damned racist.

If you are outside the mass hysteria bubble you might have noticed that President Trump never campaigned to be our moral leader. He presented himself as – in his own words “no angel” – with a set of skills he offered to use in the public’s interest. He was big on law and order, and equal justice under the law. But he never offered moral leadership. Voters elected him with that knowledge. Evidently, Republicans don’t depend on politicians for moral leadership. That’s probably a good call.

When the horror in Charlottesville shocked the country, citizens instinctively looked to their president for moral leadership. The president instead provided a generic law and order statement. Under pressure, he later named specific groups and disavowed the racists. He was clearly uncomfortable being our moral lighthouse. That’s probably why he never described his moral leadership as an asset when running for office. We observe that he has never been shy about any other skill he brings to the job, so it probably isn’t an accident when he avoids mentioning any ambitions for moral leadership. If he wanted us to know he would provide that service, I think he would have mentioned it by now.

If you already believed President Trump is a racist, his weak statement about Charlottesville seems like confirmation. But if you believe he never offered moral leadership, only equal treatment under the law, that’s what you saw instead. And you made up your own mind about the morality. 

The tricky part here is that any interpretation of what happened could be confirmation bias. But ask yourself which one of these versions sounds less crazy:

1. A sitting president, who is a branding expert, thought it would be a good idea to go easy on murderous Nazis as a way to improve his popularity.

or…

2. The country elected a racist leader who is winking to the KKK and White Supremacists that they have a free pass to start a race war now.

or…

3. A mentally unstable racist clown with conman skills (mostly just lying) eviscerated the Republican primary field and won the presidency. He keeps doing crazy, impulsive racist stuff. But for some reason, the economy is going well, jobs are looking good, North Korea blinked, ISIS is on the ropes, and the Supreme Court got a qualified judge. It was mostly luck.

or…

4. The guy who didn’t offer to be your moral leader didn’t offer any moral leadership, just law and order, applied equally. His critics cleverly and predictably framed it as being soft on Nazis.

One of those narratives is less crazy-sounding than the others. That doesn’t mean the less-crazy one has to be true. But normal stuff happens far more often than crazy stuff. And critics will frame normal stuff as crazy whenever they get a chance.

4. The Oversized Reaction

It would be hard to overreact to a Nazi murder, or to racists marching in the streets with torches. That stuff demands a strong reaction. But if a Republican agrees with you that Nazis are the worst, and you threaten to punch that Republican for not agreeing with you exactly the right way, that might be an oversized reaction. 

5. The Insult without supporting argument

When people have actual reasons for disagreeing with you, they offer those reasons without hesitation. Strangers on social media will cheerfully check your facts, your logic, and your assumptions. But when you start seeing ad hominem attacks that offer no reasons at all, that might be a sign that people in the mass hysteria bubble don’t understand what is wrong with your point of view except that it sounds more sensible than their own. 

For the past two days I have been disavowing Nazis on Twitter. The most common response from the people who agree with me is that my comic strip sucks and I am ugly.

*  *  *

The mass hysteria signals I described here are not settled science, or anything like it. This is only my take on the topic, based on personal observation and years of experience with hypnosis and other forms of persuasion.

I present this filter on the situation as the first step in dissolving the mass hysteria. It isn’t enough, but more persuasion is coming.

If you are outside the mass hysteria bubble, you might see what I am doing in this blog as a valuable public service.

If you are inside the mass hysteria bubble, I look like a Nazi collaborator.

How do I look to you?

*  *  *

Adams wrote a book about how to persuade yourself to success. Based on reader comments, it is working. His upcoming book, Win Bigly, tells you how to persuade others. (For good.) That comes out October 31st.

Privatize The Public Monuments

When I was a student at the University of Colorado, I regularly walked by the Dalton Trumbo memorial fountain which was named after the communist Stalin-sympathizing novelist and screenwriter. 

Once upon a time, the fountain had been simply known as "the fountain," but around 25 years ago, it was unnecessarily renamed after a controversial person. 

The reason for the renaming was the same as with any memorial or monument designed to honor a person or idea — to create an emotional connection and familiarity with the person or idea connected to the place; to communicate a certain view of history. 

The renaming of the fountain followed an earlier renaming controversy. One of the University"s dorms, Nichols Hall, was named after a participant in the infamous Sand Creek Massacre. Even in its own time, the massacre had been denounced, earning condemnation from Indian fighters like Kit Carson. Not surprisingly, the dorm that bore Nichols"s name was eventually renamed "Cheyenne Arapahoe" in honor of the Indian tribes whose members Nichols had helped attack.

As with the Trumbo fountain, the dorm"s name was changed in order to send subtle messages — messages about what is valued, what is good, and what is bad. 

There"s nothing inherently wrong with this, of course. The problem only arises when we begin to use taxpayer funded facilities and institutions to carry out these attempts at education. 

Thus, in a sense, when approaching the problem of government monuments and memorials, we  encounter the same problem we have with public schools. Whose values are going to be pushed, preserved, and exalted? And, who"s going to be forced to pay for it? 

Ideology Changes Over Time 

This problem is further complicated by the fact that these views change over time.

Over time, the "good guys" can change as majority views shift, as new groups take over the machinery of government institutions, and as ideologies change. 

In 1961, when Nichols Hall was named, few people apparently cared much about the Sand Creek Massacre. 25 years later, however, views had changed considerably among both students and administrators. 

For a very obvious illustration of how these changes takes place, we need look no further than the schools. 

In the early days of public schooling — an institution founded by Christian nationalists to push their message — students were forced to read the King James Bible. Catholics were forced to pay taxes so schools could instruct students on how awful and dangerous Catholicism was. Immigrant families from Southern and Eastern Europe were forced to pay for schools that instructed their children on the inferiority of their non-Anglo ethnic groups.

A century later, things have changed considerably. Today, Anglo-Saxons are taught to hate themselves, and while Catholics are still despised (but for different reasons), they now are joined in their pariah status by most other Christian groups as well. Italians and Eastern Europeans who were once treated in public schools as subhuman are now reviled as members of the white oppressor class. 

Similar changes have taken place in art and in public monuments and memorials. 

Public Memorials Serve the Same Function as Public Schools 

But the principle remains the same, whether we"re talking about public schools or public monuments: we"re using public funds and facilities to "educate" the public about what"s good and what"s not. 

This has long been known by both the people who first erected today"s aging monuments, and by the people who now want to tear them down. The leftist who support scrapping certain monuments actively seek to change public monuments and memorials to back up their own worldview because they recognize that it can make a difference in the public imagination. They"re fine with forcing the taxpayers to support their own worldview, of course, and actively seek to use public lands, public spaces, public roads, and public buildings to subsidize their efforts. They already succeeded in doing this with public schools decades ago. 

The Answer: Privatize the Monuments

In a way, the combined effect of public memorials, monuments, streets, and buildings function to turn public spaces into a type of large open-air social studies class, reinforcing some views, while ignoring others. 

Libertarians have long noted the problem of public education: it"s impossible to teach history in a value-neutral way, and thus public schools are likely to teach values that support the state and its agendas. Even some conservatives have finally caught on. 

To combat this problem, those who object to these elements within public schooling support homeschooling, private schooling, and private-sector alternatives that diminish the role of public institutions. 

Governmental public spaces offer the same problem as public schools. 

In both cases the answer is the same: minimize the role of government institutions in shaping public ideology, public attitudes, and the public"s view of history. 

Rather than using publicly funded thoroughfares, parks, and buildings as a means of reinforcing public "education" and "shared history" as we do now, these government facilities should be stripped down to their most basic functions. Providing office space for administrative offices, providing streets for transport, and providing parks for recreation. (The last thing we need is a history lesson from the semi-illiterates on a typical city council.)

Some might argue that all these properties and facilities should be privatized themselves. That"s fair enough, but as long as we"re forced to live with these facilities, we need not also use them to "honor" politicians or whatever persons the current ruling class happens to find worthy of praise. 

The nostalgia lobby will react with horror to this proposition. "Why, you can"t do that!" they"ll complain. "We"ll be robbed of our heritage and history." Even assuming these people could precisely define exactly who "we" is they still need to explain why public property is necessary to preserve this alleged heritage. 

After all, by this way of thinking, the preservation of one"s culture and heritage relies on a subsidy from the taxpayers, and a nod of assent from government agencies. 

Preserving and Promoting Culture Through Private Action 

Once upon a time, however, people who actually valued their heritage did not sit around begging the government to protect it for them. Many were willing to actually take action and spend their own money on preserving the heritage that many now rather unconvincingly claim is so important to them.

A good example of the key role of private property in cases such as this can be seen in the work of the Catholic Church in the US — which has never enjoyed majority support from the population or from government institutions. If Catholics were to get their symbols and memorials in front of the public, they were going to have to build them on private property, and that"s exactly what they did.

In Denver, for example, the Catholics of the early 20th century knew (correctly) that no public park or government building was going to erect any Catholic-themed art or memorials on their property. So, the Catholics proceeded to erect an enormous cathedral on a hilltop one block from the state capitol. The new cathedral was highly visible and provided easy access to religious ceremonies for the few Catholic politicians and officials who worked at the capitol. It provided meeting space. It contained stained-glass art created by German masters. Moreover, the new building served as a huge symbolic middle finger to the anti-Catholic Ku Klux Klan which was growing in importance in Denver at the time.

So, did Church officials sit around whining about how there was no crucifix on the front lawn of the State Capitol? Did they demand that the taxpayers pay to maintain a central town plaza featuring a statue of Saint Peter? Some probably did. Those who made a difference, though, took action and acquired real estate in prominent places throughout the city. They put universities on that land, and cemeteries, and convents, and friaries, and schools, and even some memorials and statues. Today, next to the cathedral, on a busy street corner, is a large statue of a Catholic pope: John Paul II. It"s on private property. It"s seen by thousands every day. 

Source. 

And why should the self-appointed protectors of American "traditional" values think they deserve anything different? Indeed, we"d all have been saved a lot of trouble if the organizations that demanded statues of Confederate generals everywhere had put them on private land instead of in public parks. We"d all be better off if the private owners of the Stone Mountain monument hadn"t sold it to the State of Georgia because they were too cheap to maintain it themselves. 

In the past, had the purveyors of publicly-funded culture instead taken a principled and successful stand against using public lands and funds to push a certain view of history, no one would have to now waste his time sitting through city council meetings where politicians decide who deserves a statue, and who is to be thrown in the dustbin of history. Were we to quit using public parks as showcases for public indoctrination, we wouldn"t have to worry about the Church of Satan erecting a monument in the "free speech area" of a public park — as they recently did near Minneapolis. 

The next time someone wants a statue of some politician, artist, or intellectual — whether they be communists, Confederates, or satanists — they ought to be told to buy a nice little plot of land somewhere — perhaps along a busy street or next to an important street corner in town — and put their statue there. 

How Can We Learn From The Past If We Erase History?

Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

Removing monuments from the Civil War to erase history is a mistake.

This won’t be a popular opinion, and I’m okay with that. Because for now, we still have freedom of speech.

While I can understand why some people would strongly disagree, I’d like to respectfully offer a different perspective. My opinion that those monuments should be left alone isn’t because I support the horrible things that have been done in our history. It’s exactly the opposite.

Every country’s history has a dark spot in it. More than one, if we’re being honest. But the fact that we aren’t still mired in those dark places means that we have made strides toward becoming better. Erasing history, though, is a dangerous path because it means that the truth becomes something malleable that has been created instead of recorded.

Rewriting history is positively Orwellian, and a terribly dangerous path.

After President Trump won the election, his opponents began snapping up copies of 1984 so quickly that Amazon sold out of the classic. At that point, I was hopeful that it meant people would find some common ground.

Amazon has sold out of copies of George Orwell’s authoritarian classic, 1984, and they won’t have more until Feb. 2nd. The book was the number one bestseller on Tuesday and Wednesday. The publishing company, Penguin, is rushing more copies to print.

This surge in sales came after Trump’s senior adviser Kellyanne Conway used the creepy term “alternative facts” to explain away some misleading statements in White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s statement to the press. (source)

Alas, my hope was short lived.

All sorts of breathless articles were penned, comparing President Trump to Big Brother. (This one, for example.) But then, something else happened. And it isn’t good.

1984 has become an instruction manual.

Despite the initial furor, now it seems like these folks have decided to instead use 1984 as a how-to manual. As you watch people destroying monuments of Southern Civil War generals, renaming streets, and planning to deface the side of a mountain with their faces on it, let this chilling quote ring in your ears.

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” (George Orwell, 1984)

Without our history, good or bad, who are we? If we don’t remember where we came from, how can we hope to continuously improve? If we can’t learn from the mistakes of the past, and if the truth is “created” by the vocal minority, then how does the truth even exist anymore?

History teaches us important lessons.

We’ve all heard that quote, “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” So what happens when we completely erase it?

When my daughter and I took a road trip to explore American history last year, we stopped and visited many of these historic markers that are now pending demolition. We discussed the hypocrisy of a man who was responsible for resounding words of freedom in the US Constitution keeping hundreds of slaves. Her curiosity was piqued by the old homesteads. Her heart was saddened by walking into old slave quarters and seeing the shocking difference of their cramped quarters to the huge mansions beside them. Nothing you can read about in a book could possibly compare to walking through those doors and seeing the real thing.

We looked up information about General Lee and General Jackson. We learned of the famous battles where thousands of Americans from the North and the South died. When in California, we visited Manzanar, the site of an internment camp for Americans of Japanese heritage. She learned so much about our country’s ugly past and about how our ideals as a nation were changed for the better.

We also spent a lot of time at various civil rights monuments, in particular, the Harriet Tubman Museum and the Underground Railroad Byway. (My daughter has been fascinated by Tubman since she read her biography in third grade.) After seeing the old plantations and the slave quarters, Tubman’s heroism was suddenly writ large. Would her heroic acts have made so great an impression if my daughter hadn’t learned the backstory? Heroism doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

Erasing the negative part of history doesn’t make it go away Sanitizing the facts doesn’t mean that they never happened. It just means no one can learn from them.

Our very language is being rewritten.

Everything has now become so politically correct that most of us have no idea what to say in certain situations, lest we be chastised as horrible bigots. The schools are systematically brainwashing children and the indoctrination is completed in our colleges and universities.

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” (George Orwell, 1984)

By manipulating language, opinions are manipulated, as is a sense of right and wrong.

Newspeak is real.

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.

By 2050, earlier, probably – all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron – they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like ‘freedom is slavery’ when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.” (George Orwell, 1984)

How can anyone not see this is happening right before our very eyes.

It isn’t Donald Trump who is bringing in an Orwellian future. It’s the rabid politically-correct thought police.

Where will it end?

It isn’t likely to end with the removal of icons related to the Civil War. Ajamu Baraka, the Green Party’s vice-presidential candidate in 2016 suggests that all memories of Trump, Washington, and Jefferson should also be erased.

If you want to remove symbols of white supremacy why are you limiting it to confederacy? Yes Trump, Jefferson & Washington must be next.

— Ajamu Baraka (@ajamubaraka) August 16, 2017

Good, bad, and ugly, this is part of our national story. Tearing down everything that was related to the sordid parts doesn’t mean that they never happened.

I strongly denounce these groups who are filled with hatred for their fellow Americans.

While I believe these historic monuments should not be destroyed, I certainly could never align myself with the neo-Nazis, the KKK, and the Alt-Right people who are protecting them, because they’re doing so out of hatred and a misplaced sense of glory. Nor would I ever align myself with the Antifa, the most ironic group ever in existence that proclaims to be against fascism but noisily and brutally stifles the First Amendment rights of those with whom they disagree.

These groups all represent what is worst about our country. Violence, vandalism, hatred, and terror are wrong, no matter who is perpetrating those acts.

In any argument, it’s always the loudest people who get heard, but that doesn’t mean they speak for everyone. We must be careful not to over-generalize when it comes to these groups.

The Alt-Right and the neo-Nazis cannot be confused with every conservative Republican out there any more than the Alt-Left and the Antifa can be confused with every liberal Democrat. All of these labels are divisive and painting everyone with a broad brush is a lazy generalization. But this isn’t what the media is telling us. Instead, the mainstream media is pouring gasoline on this fire on a daily basis and they’re polarizing our country even more.

Most of us are decent human beings who have no argument with our fellow Americans. We have a lot more in common than this noisy minority and if we could respectfully find those points of agreement, we could, perhaps, find peace amongst our neighbors once again.

I only hope that we haven’t gone so far down this road that there’s no way back.

AFL-CIO President Quits President's Mfg Council, Accuses Trump Of "Tolerating Domestic Terrorism"

Having previously lost Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier from the president’s manufacturing council, followed by Under Armour’s Kevin Plank and Intel Corp.’s Brian Krzanich, who both also said on Monday that they were also stepping down, and followed by the president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, Scott Paul, who said on Tuesday that he was quitting the group as it was “the right thing for me to do" moments ago the president of the AFL-CIO also resigned from the Presidential Council on Manufacturing, claiming that Trump "tolerates bigotry and domestic terrorism" and stating that "President Trump"s remarks today repudiate his forced remarks yesterday about the KKK and neo-Nazis. We must resign on behalf of America"s working people, who reject all notions of legitimacy of these bigoted groups."

I cannot sit on a council for a President that tolerates bigotry and domestic terrorism; I resign, effective immediately. pic.twitter.com/ip6F2nsoog

— Richard L. Trumka (@RichardTrumka) August 15, 2017

The full statement by Trumka is below:

Statement by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka on his and Thea Lee"s resignation from President Trump, council on manufacturing:

We cannot sit on a council for a president who tolerates bigotry and domestic terrorism. President Trump"s remarks today repudiate his forced remarks yesterday about the KKK and neo-Nazis. We must resign on behalf of America"s working people, who reject all notions of legitimacy of these bigoted groups.

It"s clear that President Trump"s Manufacturing Council was never an effective means for delivering real policy that lifts working families and his remarks today were the last straw. We joined this council with the intent to be a voice for working people and real hope that it would result in positive economic policy, but it has become yet another broken promise on the President"s record. From hollow councils to bad policy and embracing bigotry, the actions of this administration have consistently failed working people.

On Tuesday afternoon, Trump said the CEOs quitting his advisory council aren’t taking their jobs seriously, and said some are producing offshore: "They’re not taking their job seriously as it pertains to this country,” the president said of the executives at a press conference at Trump Tower in New York Tuesday afternoon. “If you look at some of those people that you’re talking about, they’re outside of the country, they’re having a lot of their product made outside, if you look at Merck as an example."

Earlier on Tuesday morning on Twitter Trump said "For every CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place. Grandstanders should not have gone on. JOBS!”

James Post, professor of management emeritus for the Questrom School of Business at Boston University told Bloomberg that “the value of the advisory council goes down when respected members leave over issues of principle. Whereas the president could have claimed to learn from the council, now it seems that he only listens when they agree with his opinion."

At the this rate, there will be no council left in just a few more hours.

Pat Buchanan Asks "If We Erase Our History, Who Are We?"

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

When the Dodge Charger of 20-year-old Nazi sympathizer James Alex Fields Jr., plunged into that crowd of protesters Saturday, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer, Fields put Charlottesville on the map of modernity alongside Ferguson.

Before Fields ran down the protesters, and then backed up, running down more, what was happening seemed but a bloody brawl between extremists on both sides of the issue of whether Robert E. Lee’s statue should be removed from Emancipation Park, formerly Lee Park.

With Heyer’s death, the brawl was elevated to a moral issue. And President Donald Trump’s initial failure to denounce the neo-Nazi and Klan presence was declared a moral failure.

How did we get here, and where are we going?

In June of 2015, 21-year-old Dylann Roof gunned down nine Christians at an evening Bible study in Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church. A review of Roof’s selfies and website showed him posing with the Confederate battle flag.

Gov. Nikki Haley, five years in office, instantly pivoted and called for removal of the battle flag from the Confederate war memorial on the State House grounds, as a “deeply offensive symbol of a brutally offensive past.”

This ignited a national clamor to purge all statues that lionize Confederate soldiers and statesmen.

In Maryland, demands have come for removing statues and busts of Chief Justice Roger Taney, the author of the Dred Scott decision. Statues of Gen. “Stonewall” Jackson, President Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee have been pulled down in New Orleans.

After Charlottesville, pressure is building for removal of the statues of Lee, Jackson, Davis and Gen. “Jeb” Stuart from historic Monument Avenue in Richmond, capital of the Confederacy.

Many Southern towns, including Alexandria, Virginia, have statues of Confederate soldiers looking to the South. Shall we pull them all down? And once all the Southern Civil War monuments are gone, should we go after the statues of the slave owners whom we Americans have heroized?

Gen. George Washington and his subordinate, “Light Horse Harry” Lee, father of Robert E. Lee, were slave owners, as was Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe and Andrew Jackson. Five of our first seven presidents owned slaves, as did James K. Polk, who invaded and annexed the northern half of Mexico, including California.

Jefferson, with his exploitation of Sally Hemings and neglect of their children, presents a particular problem. While he wrote in the Declaration of Independence of his belief that “all men are created equal,” his life and his depiction of Indians in that document belie this.

And Jefferson is both on the face of Mount Rushmore and has a memorial in the U.S. capital.

Another term applied to the “Unite the Right” gathering in Charlottesville is that they are “white supremacists,” a mortal sin to modernity. But here we encounter an even greater problem.

Looking back over the history of a Western Civilization, which we call great, were not the explorers who came out of Spain, Portugal, France, Holland and England all white supremacists?

They conquered in the name of the mother countries all the lands they discovered, imposed their rule upon the indigenous peoples, and vanquished and eradicated the native-born who stood in their way.

Who, during the centuries-long discovery and conquest of the New World, really believed that the lives of the indigenous peoples were of equal worth with those of the colonizers?

They believed European Man had the right to rule the world.

Beginning in the 16th century, Western imperialists ruled much of what was called the civilized world. Was not the British Empire, one of the great civilizing forces in human history, a manifestation of British racial superiority?

And if being a segregationist disqualifies one from being venerated in our brave new world, what do we do with Woodrow Wilson, who thought “Birth of a Nation” a splendid film and who re-segregated the U.S. government?

In 1955, Prime Minister Churchill, imperialist to the core, urged his Cabinet to consider the slogan, “Keep England White.”

Nor is a belief in the superiority of one’s race, religion, tribe and culture unique to the West. What is unique, what is an experiment without precedent, is what we are about today.

We have condemned and renounced the scarlet sins of the men who made America and embraced diversity, inclusivity and equality.

Our new America is to be a land where all races, tribes, creeds and cultures congregate, all are treated equally, and all move ever closer to an equality of results through the regular redistribution of opportunity, wealth and power.

We are going to become “the first universal nation.”

“All men are created equal” is an ideological statement. Where is the scientific or historic proof for it? Are we building our utopia on a sandpile of ideology and hope?

Nevertheless, on to Richmond!