Author: admin

Should Donald Trump, the most powerful man in the world, be banned from Twitter?
Kamala Harris thinks so. Last Tuesday she sent a letter to Twitter’s chief executive arguing that Trump has been violating the platform’s user agreement.
Harris pointed to recent tweets Trump had sent harassing the Ukraine whistleblower and the House intelligence committee chairman, Adam Schiff, as well as Trump’s tweet threatening civil war.
These, Harris said, constitute “blatant threats that put people at risk and our democracy in danger. No user, regardless of their job, wealth, or stature should be exempt from abiding by Twitter’s user agreement, not even the president of the United States,” Harris concluded.
There’s been a lot of outrage about the sanctity of the first amendment following Harris’s call to ban Trump from Twitter.
The Democratic presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard, for example, said: “We can’t just cancel or shut down or silence those who we disagree with or who hold different views or who say things even that we strongly disagree with. These freedoms and principles enshrined in our constitution are things we have to take very seriously.”
I completely agree with Gabbard.
Let’s face it folks, banning Trump from Twitter will not silence him.
If Trump was forced off Twitter he could just go on Fox News every day. He could hold more press conferences. Shoot, he could even start his own social network.
Twitter banning Trump would certainly send a message. The question is, which one? While some might see it as a win for accountability, the right would immediately interpret the move as censorship against conservatives and it would probably boost support for the president among his base. It might even help Trump win the election.
Regulators should think carefully about the fallout from well-intentioned new rules and avoid the mistakes of the past.
Censorship was rampant throughout Nazi Germany. Censorship ensured that Germans could only see what the Nazi hierarchy wanted people to see, hear what they wanted them to hear and read only what the Nazis deemed acceptable.
The Nazi police dealt with anyone who went outside of these boundaries. Censorship dominated the lives of the ordinary citizen in Nazi Germany.
The prime mover in censorship was the Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels.
It was his responsibility to see that the German people were fed with material acceptable to the Nazi state. Newspapers, radio and all forms of media were put under the control of the Nazis.
Even the film and Music industries were controlled by the Nazis.
Music by Gustav Mahler and Felix Mendelssohn was banned since they were both Jews. Jazz was also banned.
Even telling jokes about Hitler became a serious offence – one that could send you to the concentration camps and potentially death (think Saturday Night Live).
Censorship was enforced by a number of methods. First, the secret police or the local police ensured that the rules were kept to.
Secondly, anyone who wanted to go outside of the desired party norm faced the most serious of consequences.
Third, people in general were expected to report anything unacceptable to their local party chief. Those who knew something but did not report it were deemed as guilty as those who went against the system. This was key to enforcement.
Censorship ensured that the Nazis had the German public in their grip as they bombarded them on a daily basis on how their lives had been improved from the day Hitler became Germany’s leader.
The chief function of propaganda is to convince the masses, whose slowness of understanding needs to be given time in order that they may absorb information; and only constant repetition will finally succeed in imprinting an idea on their mind………the slogan must of course be illustrated in many ways and from several angles, but in the end one must always return to the assertion of the same formula. The one will be rewarded by the surprising and almost incredible results that such a personal policy secures.” Adolf Hitler from “Mein Kampf”

“Our way of taking power and using it would have been inconceivable without the radio and the airplane,” Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels claimed in August 1933.
Such statements are often cited—the head of Disney, Bob Iger, recently said that Adolf Hitler would have loved social media.
Goebbels was not saying that the Nazis had used both new technologies, the airplane and the radio, to come to power. Rather, the airplane helped the Nazis take power. Radio helped them keep it.
The history of radio, and in particular how it was regulated in interwar Germany, is more relevant than ever: Five years ago, the question was whether we would regulate social media. Now the questions are how and when we will regulate them.
As politicians and regulators in places as different as Berlin, Singapore, and Washington and even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg consider how best to do so, we should think carefully about the fallout from well-intentioned new rules and avoid the mistakes of the past.
Radio only became central to Nazi aims after Hitler was elected chancellor in January 1933, but Goebbels quickly exercised power over the medium, because the state already controlled its infrastructure and content.
State control over radio had been intended to defend democracy. It unintentionally laid the groundwork for the Nazi propaganda machine.
Radio emerged as a new technology in the early 1920s, and the bureaucrat tasked with developing regulations for it in the Weimar Republic, Hans Bredow, initially had high hopes.
He thought that radio could broadcast education and entertainment to bring the German population together after the divisive loss of World War I, and believed that radio should not broadcast political content, fearing it might exacerbate an already hostile environment.
Initially, Bredow allowed private companies to broadcast, and only from the mid-1920s on did stations start to air some news.
This seemed dangerous to Bredow and other officials, who worried that news could stoke uprisings or antidemocratic sentiment.
Weimar bureaucrats began exerting ever greater state supervision over radio content to try to depoliticize it. As the Weimar Republic became more and more politically unstable, Bredow and others pushed through reforms in 1926 and 1932 that mandated direct state supervision of radio content.
Bredow believed that increased state direction would prevent Weimar democracy from failing.
Ironically, this effort played right into the Nazis’ hands, and meant that the Nazis could seize immediate control over radio content when they came to power.
Bredow was imprisoned for trying to stand up for democratic values. (After World War II, he helped to reestablish radio in democratic West Germany. There is now even a media institute in Hamburg named after him.)
The Nazi example, though extreme, reminds us that well-intentioned laws can have tragic unintended consequences.
We need to be wary of the long-term consequences of state control over content.
Action is needed. But the actual history of Nazi Germany can help us think more critically about current policy suggestions and move beyond mud-slinging comparisons with the fascist past.
Now let’s turn to another great example of government controlled media. The Soviet Union.
Russian authorities are currently discussing blocking the Telegram messaging app, saying it can be used by terrorists. So let’s look at cases from the past when the Soviet elite banned different information sources.
The Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in 1917 while championing freedom, yet one of their first decisions was to limit free speech through harsh censorship.
In early November 1917, the Soviet government signed the Decree on Press which prohibited publishing any “bourgeois” (affluent, middle class) articles criticizing the Bolsheviks’ authority.
As the years passed political censorship grew stronger, reaching its peak under Joseph Stalin’s reign. After his death the state relaxed its stance but censorship remained until Mikhail Gorbachev declared glasnost in the late 1980s.
Lenin and Stalin claimed Soviet censorship had “a different character than the one existing in bourgeois states and aimed only at protecting the interests of the working class.”
This is a bold statement, especially given the fact the Soviet elite employed censorship for its own bloody gain, most notably during Stalin’s Great Purge.
“The physical eradication of Stalin’s political opponents was followed by their obliteration from all forms of pictorial existence,” British historian David King wrote in his book The Commissar Vanishes.
Retouchers worked hard erasing traces of fallen leaders from all photographs and images.
In 1921, the Soviet government created the Glavlit (General Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the Press) which for decades remained the main instrument of controlling literature. Glavlit’s censors decided if a book was published in the USSR, or if it was banned.
As a result, Soviet citizens could not read many books, some of which are now regarded as classics – including Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, not to mention most works by Alexander Solzhenitsyn that criticized the Soviet regime.
The circulation of books written by immigrant writers who had fled Soviet Russia were, of course, prohibited.
Nevertheless, the Soviet government wasn’t able to completely eradicate literature it deemed “dangerous.”
Through the ages, people opposing censorship have circulated handmade copies of banned literature. In the Soviet Union, this was called samizdat (self-published) and scores of illegal books were enjoyed by readers as a result.
Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the USSR from 1953 to 1964, was more liberal than Stalin, whose repressive policies he condemned in his secret speech in 1956. According to the Russian historian Leonid Katsva, Khrushchev even thought of abolishing ideological censorship in art, but changed his mind.
Under the rule of Leonid Brezhnev (1964 to 1982) the state continued to oppress artists working outside the realm of social realism. For example, in 1974 the government demolished an unofficial avant-garde exhibition in the suburbs of Moscow using bulldozers and water cannons. The event became known as the “Bulldozer Exhibition.”
Throughout the Cold War both the West and the USSR were trying to influence each other’s population by providing “alternative points of view.”
In 1946, the BBC started broadcasting radio services for Soviet citizens. Voice of America, Radio Liberty, and Deutsche Welle all followed suit a couple of years later.
Unsurprisingly, the Kremlin was not happy with Western media trying to meddle with Soviet citizens so it started blocking radio frequencies used by foreign stations.
According to Rimantas Pleikis, a radio journalist from Lithuania, the USSR possessed the most powerful and wide scale “anti-radio” system in the world.
But even that system had cracks. Those who wanted to continue tuning in to the “foreign voices” and alternative opinions – along with jazz and rock music – found a way. Finally, in 1988 Mikhail Gorbachev officially stopped blocking Western radio stations.
Now I know what a lot of you are thinking. “It will never happen here.”
You are dead wrong.
Old, querulous, bald, blind, crippled, toothless Adams,” one supporter of challenger Thomas Jefferson called the incumbent president. But Adams got the last laugh, signing a bill in 1798 that made it illegal to criticize a government official without backing up one’s criticisms in court. Twenty-five people were arrested under the law, though Jefferson pardoned its victims after he defeated Adams in the 1800 election.
How about this one.
The bawdy novel “Fanny Hill” (1748), written by John Cleland as an exercise in what he imagined a prostitute’s memoirs might sound like, was no doubt familiar to the Founding Fathers; we know that Benjamin Franklin, who himself wrote some fairly risque material, had a copy.
The book holds the record for being banned longer than any other literary work in the United States–prohibited in 1821, and not legally published until the US Supreme Court overturned the ban in Memoirs v. Massachusetts (1966). Of course, once it was legal it lost much of its appeal: by 1966 standards, nothing written in 1748 was liable to shock anybody.
And finally here is one more great example:
During the Civil War, the battle for public opinion was almost as important as the battles fought with bullets and bayonets. President Abraham Lincoln was a master tactician when it came to using public opinion as both a political weapon as well as a military aid.
He used the press not only to get his message out in an era before electronic mass communication, but also to prevent his opponents from having similar access to the hearts and minds of the people. He did this through the use of military censorship, control of the post office and telegraphs, and through the use of patronage (giving certain papers exclusive rights).
At that time, New York City was the media capital of the western world. The big three papers in New York City were the Tribune, the Herald, and the Times.
There were also many other influential newspapers in other parts of the country, including in Washington D.C., Philadelphia and in Lincoln’s home state of Illinois, where Lincoln purchased a newspaper printed in German to bolster his electoral chances in that state.

Lincoln used censorship of those journalists and newspapers whose views did not fit with the administration or its prosecution of the war, justifying the practice as being one which saved lives by shortening the war.
Many newspapers that were critical of the Union cause were censored or shut down.
Some editors were jailed for their anti-administration views. Freedom of the press was a casualty of the Civil War, and the real debate is whether or not this was justified under the circumstances of the time.

Lincoln also used the press as a means of getting his message to the people in a era before the ability to speak directly to the masses existed (i.e. at a time before radio and television.)
For example, when emancipation became an issue, Lincoln wrote his famous response to Horace Greeley’s “Prayer of Twenty Millions” editorial, which accused Lincoln of using his abolitionist leanings as the reason for the death of so many young men in the war.
In response, Lincoln famously wrote “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that”.
In mid-August 1861, four newspapers in New York City: the New York Daily News, the Journal of Commerce, Day Book, and Freeman’s Journal were all given indictments by a Grand Jury of the United States Circuit Court for “frequently encouraging the rebels by expressions of sympathy and agreement”.
A series of federal prosecutions of newspapers throughout the northern United States followed. The target was any newspaper that printed expressions of sympathy for Southern causes or criticisms of the Lincoln Administration.
Lincoln was able to effect control of press censorship because in those days, stories were filed by telegraph and Lincoln controlled telegraph usage.
Censorship of news dispatches filed in Washington began in April in 1861, a time when the government assumed control of the telegraph wires to & from from the city.

This type of censorship became necessary because Northern papers quickly found their way into hands of Confederate generals.
When Missouri Radicals complained about General John M. Schofield “muzzling the press” in September 1863, Lincoln responded: “I think when an office in any department finds that a newspaper is pursuing a course calculated to embarrass his operations and stir up sedition and tumult, he has the right to lay hands upon it and suppress it.
Drastic measures were sometimes taken where it was seen necessary for military purposes. There were repeated civil and military actions to shut down newspapers for supposedly seditious behavior. This was common early in the war in the border states of Maryland and Missouri.
So folks, don’t believe that it cannot happen here.
Let’s go back to our first question now that you have had a little history lesson.
Should President Trump’s Twitter account be shut down?

Let’s start with a little review.
Who are the Kurds?
Kurdish nationalism emerged after World War I with the fall of the Ottoman Empire (modern Turkey). Kurdish fighters joined with British and other Arab forces to defeat the Turks. (Lawrence of Arabia).
Western powers (particularly the United Kingdom) fighting the Turks also promised the Kurds they would guarantee Kurdish freedom after the war, a promise they subsequently broke. Just like they did with the Arabs over Palestine after WWI.
During the relatively open Turkish government of the 1950s, Kurds gained political office and started working within the framework of the Turkish Republic to further their interests but this move towards integration was halted by the Turks.
The Kurds eventually formed a militant separatist group of fighters who identified themselves as “local self-defense” units.
They are generally considered an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party _ known as the PKK, its Kurdish initials _ a group that’s been fighting for Kurdish independence in Turkey for three decades and that the United States and the European Union consider a terrorist organization.
This is the group we have been arming and supporting in Northern Syria.
After World War I
After WWI the Kurdish groups still sought independence and Kemal Atatürk, president of Turkey, prevented such a result.
Kurds backed by the United Kingdom declared independence in 1927 and established the so-called Republic of Ararat in Eastern Turkey.
Turkey put down Kurdist revolts in 1925, 1930, and 1937–1938, while Iran did the same in the 1920s.
From 1922–1924 in Iraq a Kingdom of Kurdistan existed. When Iraqi administrators stopped Kurdish nationalist ambitions in Iraq, war broke out in the 1960s.
In 1970 the Kurds rejected limited territorial self-rule within Iraq, demanding larger areas including the oil-rich Kirkuk region.
About half of all Kurds live in Turkey. According to the CIA they account for 18 percent of the Turkish population.
They are predominantly distributed in the southeastern corner of the country.
Kurds make up around 17% of Iraq’s population. They are the majority in at least three provinces in Northern Iraq which are known as Iraqi Kurdistan.
During the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s, the Iraqi government implemented anti-Kurdish policies and a civil war broke out.
Iraq was widely-condemned by the international community, but was never seriously punished for oppressive measures such as the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians, the wholesale destruction of thousands of villages and the deportation of thousands of Kurds, many of whom fled to Northern Syria and Southern Turkey.
To alleviate the situation, a “safe haven” was established by the UN Security Council.
It was at this point that the US sent troops in to arm and protect the Kurds in Northern Iraq and Syria.
Now to the current situation.
President Trump’s decision to withdraw our few troops from the Syria-Turkey border area earned him a lot of criticism from allies.
Senator Lindsey Graham said the decision is “a catastrophe in the making.” Representative Lin Cheney said it’s “a catastrophic mistake.” Former UN Secretary Nikki Haley said, “We must always have the backs of our allies.”
President Trump has answered these critics. His position is that the Kurds were engaged in a contractual relationship helping us fight ISIS.
They were well paid and equipped for their fighting, much like any mercenary group. Further, they were given three years to consolidate eastern Syria to achieve their long-held desire to form an independent Kurdistan with other Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. They failed.
The Kurds’ problem, and by association that of the U.S., is that regional powers like Turkey, Iran and Syria hate the Kurds.
Turkey considers all Syrian Kurds to be allies of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party or (PKK), who are the Turkish Kurds and terrorists who have been fighting for independence for the last 35 years.
Basically, the Kurds used our fight with ISIS to feed their regional civil war to earn independence from Turkey.
President Trump is aware of that agenda and getting out was the right move.
The Kurds did not sacrifice their fighters out of love for America; rather, they hoped to harness U.S. power to help protect Kurdish territory and guarantee autonomy in a future Syria.
Washington and the Kurds formed a marriage of convenience to defeat ISIS, but over the longer term there would have been a reckoning over separate goals.
The territory the Kurds controlled was roughly the size of West Virginia and it is sandwiched between a deeply suspicious Turkey and an Assad regime equally resolved to bring all of Syria under its control.
Consequently, survival of the Kurds would have depended on Washington’s willingness to help protect the Kurds from Turkey and likely a long-term U.S. presence and security guarantees as well as support for Syria’s stabilization and reconstruction.
Perhaps a future U.S. administration would have accepted these responsibilities in order to contain ISIS and gain leverage over the Assad regime.
But the Trump administration was not about to get drawn into the Syrian mess and it is an open question whether the next administration that follows Trump would be prepared to foot the bill of not just fighting jihadists but getting drawn into what would have been a nation-building exercise as well.
Since Trump’s decision to pull out of Syria, the foreign policy establishment has been complaining that his move benefits Russia more than thinking about its actual effect on U.S. interests.
Russian President Vladimir Putin did what the Obama and Trump administrations would not—intervene in the Syrian civil war.
Instead of fighting that war by proxy, Putin and his generals stepped in with air power, boots on the ground, and unexpected skill, determination—and yes, unspeakable brutality—and changed the course of the civil war.
Putin saved Assad and by doing so reemerged as a major power broker in the Middle East. Putin won the Syrian civil war and he deserves its spoils.
And what spoils they are—a war-torn society, a ruined economy, bombed-out cities, and millions of refugees. If Putin wants to take on the burden of rebuilding Syria, fixing what his air force destroyed, brokering peace among Syria’s many factions, and propping up Assad—in addition to balancing the interests of Russia’s regional partners Turkey, Iran and Israel—then we should let him.
If there’s a downside to letting Russia manage the Syrian mess, it has more to do with U.S. pride and the understandable hatred toward Putin that exists in Washington these days.
But the idea that Putin’s Syria gamble will allow him to take over the Middle East is just wrong.
Some will argue that giving Russia free rein in the region is an unacceptable risk. But at this point the United States is not giving anything to Russia.
Moscow is taking what it wants and the United States is not in a position to stop it unless it is prepared to escalate the confrontation with Russia, Iran, Turkey and the Assad regime, which even the most committed advocates of a more vigorous U.S. posture in Syria don’t want.
America’s opposition to dealing with Syrian President Bashar Assad is understandable.
He is a mass murderer and has committed war crimes, including using chemical weapons on his own people. But moral outrage, however justified and emotionally satisfying, is not a substitute for policy.
It has been apparent for some time, except for those in denial, that Assad isn’t going anywhere—Russia and Iran have assured that. His regime now controls over 60 percent of Syrian territory.
He is committed to seizing the rest and now stands to control, if he can manage, 75 percent of Syria’s oil resources and a good deal of fertile agricultural land.
Assad and his allies constitute the most powerful array of forces on the ground in Syria and even though the Syrian military is weak and stretched thin, it will likely extend regime control over additional territory committing war crimes and killing civilians in the process.
Whether Assad will be able to establish control over the entire country is not the point: He controls the capital, Syria’s major cities, airports and seaports.
Rather than chase unrealistic ambitions, the U.S. should remain focused on what its core interest in Syria has been since 2011: countering the threat from ISIS. That will be harder now with the end of the U.S. partnership with the Kurds but it is certainly not impossible. Coping effectively with this challenge requires accepting several propositions.
First, as long as Syria remains a broken country, ISIS cannot be destroyed or even defeated because the conditions that created ISIS are not going to go away. But the threat it poses can be contained.
Second, ISIS is not solely an American problem; it poses a more serious danger to most of our friends and allies in the region and beyond. As Trump has argued, these countries should pull their own weight in dealing with this common threat.
Third, Washington should assume that at some point Assad and his allies will act in their own self-interest—and they all want to prevent a resurgence of ISIS.
Finally, the ability of ISIS and its affiliates to wreak further havoc in Syria and Iraq and carry out terror attacks in the region and in Europe is unquestionable.
Indeed, the ISIS insurgency was gaining ground even before Trump’s retreat from Syria. ISIS fighters could take over some towns and villages and put pressure on others, but another caliphate is probably not in the cards if the U.S. and the other anti-ISIS actors in Syria take military action against it.
The U.S. has plenty of options to keep ISIS down. The military has substantial combat aircraft, drones, intelligence platforms and logistics support around Syria, and would face no serious air defenses from ISIS, and it is doubtful that the Russians would interfere to defend ISIS fighters from American attacks.
Remember that Trump frequently said during his 2016 campaign that he wants to escape from endless wars and bring our fighters home.
Also, we need to ask ourselves whether the withdrawal of 1000 American troops really matters in the conflict.
A key point to remember in all of this is the media’s total lack of knowledge about the Middle East, which is locked in a constant cycle of war in part because of the English and French fools that redrew the maps of the middle east after World War I.
Trump’s critics can learn about Middle Eastern culture by watching Lawrence of Arabia. Remember the first time that Lawrence goes into the desert and his guide stops at some oasis?
As the guide drinks from the well, a dark figure on a camel rides towards them and then shoots dead Lawrence’s guide. Lawrence is stunned and asks why the Arab killed the guide. The Arab responds, “He is Hazzami. He is nothing. He knew that he could not drink from our well.”
That scene says a lot. Most of the Middle East is locked in tribal wars and they don’t want democracy.
As President Trump stated, we need to get out and let the regional players fight it out and leave the larger security challenges like China and Russia to the United States.
Since the start of Turkey’s offensive in north-east Syria on October 9th, at least 20 civilians have died in the seemingly indiscriminate shelling in Turkish towns near the border, according to officials in Ankara.
Support for the invasion by Turkey was high from the outset.
For many Turks, and for their president, Recep Erdogan, the deaths will offer a chance to show that the invasion, seen as another chapter in the endless war against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), was a matter of necessity, not choice.
Turkey says it is acting in self-defense. Such claims, however, are not true.
Until the start of the fighting, the country had not suffered any cross-border attacks from the YPG, as the Kurdish armed groups in Syria are called.
As I stated earlier, the Kurdish fighters have been great partners, in our war against ISIS in Syria and parts of Iraq.
However, to most Turks, they are no more than a terrorist group responsible for dozens of deadly attacks, including several suicide-bombings, across Turkey since 2015.
America’s decision to team up with the group and to arm it has always been seen in Turkey as an act of betrayal.
Aside from Turkey’s biggest Kurdish party, known as the HDP, few people have opposed the offensive or expressed any sympathy with its victims.
Those who do so risk ending up behind bars. In the past week at least 121 people have been detained on terrorist charges for social-media posts critical of the invasion.
“People who classify this as a war”, as opposed to a counter-terrorism operation, Turkey’s interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, has said, “are committing treason.”
Turkey’s media, already squirming under Mr Erdogan’s thumb, have done their share to whip up support for the war.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at least 71 Syrian civilians have died in the fighting so far.
More than 160,000 have been displaced, says the UN.
Syrian mercenaries, mostly Arab Sunni fighters operating alongside Turkish troops, have been accused of executing 11 people, including a local politician, Hevrin Khalaf. Several of them were filmed shooting prisoners by the side of a road.
No main Turkish news channel has dared to report any of this, just as none could cover the army’s brutal suppression of the PKK insurgency in south-eastern Turkey a few years ago.
Mr Erdogan’s government insists that no civilians have been harmed in the fighting, and dismisses suggestions to the contrary as PKK propaganda.
Condemnation has been pouring in from all corners. Several European countries have suspended weapons exports to Turkey, the latest being Britain.
For almost a decade, Washington has not found a sustainable or effective policy in Syria and part of the reason is that we rightly don’t consider Syria a vital national interest.
Two administrations have now made that fact clear by the choices they have made to minimize if not end the U.S. role there.
Neither Congress nor the American public has the appetite to commit American blood and treasure in Syria.
Iran, Turkey, Russia and the Assad regime are prepared to make these sacrifices and Syria is a much higher priority for them than it is for the United States.
Syria is a complicated place that offers no one a complete win.
Instead, it is a land where the majority of Syrians pay a terrible price at the hands of external powers while ruled by a brutal government determined to survive at any price.
It will remain a money pit where plans for peace, good governance and stability go to die. And right now, there’s little Washington is willing or able to do about it.
I think President Trump made the right call.

In spring 2016, 22 local Republican conventions in Texas expressed their support for a statewide referendum on whether or not Texas should leave the union.
The powers-that-be in the party struck the resolution from the convention agenda, but it was still an impressive showing, and perhaps a harbinger of things to come.
After all, Texas seceded from Mexico in 1835 and formed an independent republic. It was poorly governed and had a struggling economy, and was annexed by the United States in 1845.
But the precedent was set and secession sentiment in Texas seems to be alive and well nearly 175 years later.
And then, of course, there’s the small matter of the Civil War, which was started by the North after 11 pro-slavery Southern states seceded and formed the Confederate States of America.
The North may have won the war, but its consequences continue to play out in our national politics, with the South being the most conservative region in the country, a hotbed of secessionist sentiment.
Indeed, threats to secede from the United States are woven into our country’s history. Partisans have long argued that secession should be a constitutional right.
The courts have disagreed and in 1869, in Texas v. White, the Supreme Court ruled unilateral secession unconstitutional. But that hasn’t stopped anyone.
Not surprisingly, the secession fervor in the nation has moved from the right to the left. Cascadia, a wished-for nation made up of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, has many thousands of supporters.
These are just the tip of the iceberg. President Trump’s ongoing political and legal challenges regarding the call to Ukraine’s President and the Democrat’s impeachment hearings are providing fuel for the fire.
Our nation is dangerously divided these days. Each side sits in its own stubborn corner.
We seem to have lost the ability to listen to each other, to understand that in politics no one gets everything he or she wants. Compromise has become a dirty word — and that’s a very dangerous development.
It seems to me the desire to secede, not Civil War is the logical next step in a country as deeply at odds with itself as today’s America.
What would happen if secessionist extremists took the next step and militarized their efforts? The premise is an intriguing, and perhaps not as far-fetched as it might seem. As red gets redder and blue bluer, are we headed toward the Divided States of America?
If you mention the word “secession” most people think of the South during the Civil War. But today, a new movement is gaining steam because of frustration over a growing, out-of-control federal government.
A number of conservative, rural Americans are taking about seceding and creating their own states, meaning a new map of the United States of America could include the following:
 A 51st state called Jefferson, made up of Northern California and Southern Oregon
 A new state called Western Maryland
 A new state called North Colorado
These are real movements gaining traction with voters across the country. Jeffrey Hare runs the 51st State Initiative in Colorado, an effort to fight an out-of-control legislature trying to ram big government liberal policies down the throats of voters.
“We’re at this point of irreconcilable differences,” Hare stated.
Secessionist talk has filled town hall meetings and the divide discussed is not just ideological.
“It’s predominately left versus right, but it’s urban versus rural because you typically find more typical conservative values in rural America,” Hare said.
That’s the crux of the issue. Rural Americans across many states feel they’re not being heard. Their laundry list is long and at the top of that list are stricter gun control laws.
According to Weld County, Colo., Sheriff John Cooke, the state legislature is out of control.
“They are out of touch with rural Colorado,” he said. “There is an attack on rural Colorado and it’s not just on gun control laws. It’s on several of the other bills that they passed.”
Government mandates on renewable energy, environmental policies restricting oil and gas drilling, and controversial social issues like gay marriage have also led to this divide and talk of secession.
Organizers want to create “North Colorado,” an idea that went to voters in 11 counties this past fall. But not everyone in Colorado thinks secession is a great idea.
The so-called secession movement in Colorado had mixed results this past November. Some counties approved it. Others didn’t.
But the organizers of the 51st State Initiative are undaunted, saying this type of movement takes time.
That desire for something different can also be felt in Arizona, Michigan, and in Western Maryland where thousands have signed secession petitions.
One website reads, “We intend to exercise our right of self-determination and self-governance to better secure our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Scott Strzelczyk, the leader of the Western Maryland movement, is ready to get going.
“If they are not going to listen or take our needs into consideration and govern in a way that’s more in accordance with the way we want to be governed we are seeking an amicable divorce,” he said.
Meanwhile, in Northern California and Southern Oregon, activists want to come together in the state of “Jefferson.”
Their proposed state flag includes two “Xs,” representing their feeling of being double-crossed by the state capitals of Sacramento, Calif., and Salem, Ore.
Creating a new state isn’t easy. The last time a state actually gave up territory was in 1820, when Maine split from Massachusetts. Since then, additional efforts have been unsuccessful.
The first step is getting it passed by the state legislature and then the U.S. Congress.
“This is a valid constitutional process that our founding fathers specifically wrote into the Constitution,” Hare said. “Well, if they didn’t write this into the Constitution to be used, then why did they write it in?”
But supporters have an uphill battle since the media will not be their friend.
“The danger is once the national media starts to grab hold of it, the attention is on the difficulty, the almost impossibility of it happening,” professor Derek Everett, with Metropolitan State University in Denver, explained.
State secession proponents, like Roni Bell Sylvester of Colorado, say they will keep fighting because the dismissive attitude of state legislative bodies must end.
Movements like the one in Colorado and other states could be just the beginning — at least that’s the talk at town hall meetings in places like Colorado and elsewhere.
It’s obvious that the central theme of the Democrat Party platform is now hatred and contempt for Normal Americans.
Taking their cue from the elites in Europe and Canada who are stripping dissenters of their free speech rights and religious freedoms, the leftist elite is moving to solidify its hold on power here.
In California, the leftist government is out of control. Nationally, these aspiring fascists and socialists are especially eager to disarm Normal Americans – doing so would be an object lesson in who’s the boss, as well as solving that frustrating problem of the Normals having the ability to resist.
Many people ask me whether I think this turmoil will all end in a Second Civil War. They are seriously concerned, and not without cause – the left’s hatred for Normal Americans and its dedication to totally stripping the people who are the backbone of this country of their ability to participate in their own governance is threatening to rip the country apart.
Do I think there will be a civil war? No, I think secession will be the next step. But, anything is possible – we could easily see the country split into red and blue.
As I said Civil War is unlikely, but never underestimate Democrat stupidity and hatred.
Democrats are 0-1 in Civil Wars, and if they went for another round, they would be 0-2. It’s a matter of terrain, numbers, and morale.
Democrats don’t understand the dangerous game they are playing when they talk about how they want to impose their brown shirt vision upon red America.
The keyboard commandos of the left think they can simply ignore the massive strategic challenge of imposing control by force upon a well-armed, decentralized citizenry occupying the vast majority of the country, so they babble about drones and tanks as counterinsurgency trump cards.
But there are no trump cards in war. There are men, with rifles, standing on patches of dirt, killing the people trying to push them off.
That’s the ugly reality of war. And multiply the usual brutality of war by ten when it’s a civil war.
There are two Civil War II scenarios, and the left is poorly positioned to win in either one.
The first scenario is that the Democrats take power and violate the Constitution in order to use the apparatus of the federal government to suppress and oppress Normal Americans.
In that scenario, red Americans are the rebels.
In the second scenario, which we can even now see the stirrings of in California’s campaign to nullify federal immigration law and pass gun confiscation laws, it is the blue states that are the rebels.
The Democrats lose both wars. Big time.
Let’s talk terrain and numbers. Remember the famous red v. blue voting map?
There is a lot of red, and in the interior the few blue splotches are all cities like Las Vegas or Denver.
That is a lot of territory for a counter-insurgent force to control, and this is critical.
Conservative territory is where the food is grown, the oil pumped, and through which everything is transported. And that red space is filled with millions of American citizens with small arms, a fairly large percentage of whom have military training.
Remember what two untrained idiots did in Boston with a couple of pistols? They shut a city down. Now multiply that by several million, with better weapons and training.
Let’s look at the counter-insurgent forces in the Democrat oppression scenario should they attempt to misuse our law enforcement and military in an unconstitutional manner to take the rights of American citizens.
There are a lot of civilian law enforcement officers, but the vast majority of the agencies are local – sheriffs, small town police departments.
They will not be reliable allies in supporting unlawful oppression of their friends and neighbors.
The major cities’ police departments are run by Democrat appointees, so the commands would be loyal. But the rank-and-file? A small percentage would be ideologically loyal.
However, others would be actively sympathetic to the conservative rebels. This is true of federal law enforcement agencies as well.
And the military? Well, wouldn’t the military just crush any resistance? Not so fast.
The military would have the combat power to win any major engagement, but rebels don’t get into major engagements with forces that have more combat power.
They instead use their decentralized ability to strike at the counter-insurgents’ weak points to eliminate the government’s firepower advantage. In other words, hit and run, and no stand-up fights.
It worked for Quantrill, the Younger brothers and the James boys in the Civil war, it would work again.
Let me give you an example. How do a bunch of hunters in Wisconsin defeat a company of M1A2 Abrams tanks?
They ambush the fuel and ammo trucks. Oh, and they wait until the gunner pops the hatch to take a leak and put a .30-06 round in his back from 300 yards. Then they disappear.
What do the tanks do then? Go level the nearest town? Great. Now they just moved the needle in favor of the rebels among the population.
That is exactly what happened in Missouri during the Civil War as Union forces raided and burned town after town in an effort to hunt the rebels and quell citizen support for the rebel cause.
Just like in the previous Civil War, pretty soon, military forces wouldn’t be able to be outside of their armored vehicles in public. Their forces would be spending 90% of their efforts not on actual counter-insurgency operations but on force protection.
Sure, they own their forward operating bases, and they own a few hundred meters around them wherever they happen to be standing at the moment, but the rest of the territory is bright red.
American guerillas with small arms are a deadly threat to the forces of a dictatorship.
But the military is so big it would overwhelm any rebels, right? Well, how big do you think the military is? And, more importantly, how many actual boots on the ground can it deploy?
Let’s put it in terms of brigade combat teams, which total about 4,500 troops each. There are about 60 brigades in the Army, active and reserve, here and abroad, and let’s give the Marines another 10 brigades, for about 70 brigades. Sounds impressive. But that’s deceptive.
Let’s put aside a big consideration – the existence of red states that would provide for a rebel government structure and possibly attract the loyalty of some National Guard and even federal brigades.
For example, if Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats signed a ban on privately owned guns, it’s not unreasonable to expect the governor of Texas to reject federal authority – after all, California just taught us that this is totally cool.
But in this case, look for several brigades located there to hoist the Lone Star flag.
So, now the blue states are facing unconventional and conventional forces.
Let’s ignore that problem and focus on a different challenge. Even a normal unit has about 10% non-deployable members. Now, if these troops were assigned to combat operations against other Americans, you would have significant additional losses through desertion.
Many of the senior leaders would participate and there is a certain type of junior officer only too happy to curry favor by sucking up in defiance of their oath (which is to the Constitution, not to some leftist president).
But a lot of key, capable officers and NCO leaders, and enlisted troops, would vanish. That is proper. It is a violation of their oath to unconstitutionally oppress fellow Americans; their duty would be to refuse such unlawful orders.
So, you have significantly understrength units going in. Now, how many of the troops in a brigade are actually even front line combat troops? About a third – the rest are support.
So a brigade is really about 1500 riflemen tops before you count losses. Cut those in half for sleep, training, and refitting at any one time (which is very generous) and your brigade is really 750 troops on your best day with everyone showing up.
That holds one mid-sized town. And there are hundreds of mid-sized towns. Plus there are millions of Normal Americans who would fight back. Nothing would move without their permission – a few guys shooting up big rigs along the interstate would shut down the entire trucking industry. (Bloody Bill Anderson and his men did this in the Civil War by firing on riverboats, shutting down all transportation on the Missouri River between St. Louis and Kansas City).
Bottom line: there simply are not enough military forces to clear and hold red America.
What about drones and bombers? Both are useful. But the minute a bombing strike kills some red civilians the families of counter-insurgent drone operators and pilots, they will desert and join the rebels.
Civil wars are harsh. That’s why you avoid them.
How about the blue rebel scenario? That goes even worse for the Democrats.
You have the federal government apparatus in the hands of conservative America, and the insurgents are the opposite of decentralized and armed.
They are conveniently centered in gun-free blue cities dependent on rural America for supplies. In other words, the blue civilian population is much less of a threat.
San Francisco is a hotbed of treason, but the populace is largely unarmed and is trapped in a confined area. You put a brigade on securing the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, then put a brigade on the San Francisco Peninsula to cut off the I-280 and US-101 corridors.
Next you go to the Crystal Springs Dam and cut off the water. Then you watch and wait as the tech hipsters run out of sushi, rice and kale.
After about a week, they surrender. LA is just bigger in scope – more corridors to cut off, but in the end the population concentrations in large liberal urban areas that are their strength also make them extremely vulnerable to logistical pressure.
Then there’s another factor, an intangible but a crucial one. It’s commitment. The Democrat threat to peace is based on its policies designed to deprive Normal Americans of their right to speak freely, to worship freely, and to defend themselves and their rights with firearms.
Make no mistake – millions of Normal Americans are willing to risk death to defend those rights. In fact, many swore to do so when they entered our military and law enforcement.
But is the leftist big talker willing to die to impose the fascist dream of socialism, censorship, religious oppression, and disarmament on Normal American citizens?
No. They would run to their safe space.

Jihadists have attacked a military base where US soldiers train commandos in Somalia.
Local residents reported heavy blasts and gunfire at Baledogle airport in the southern Lower Shabelle region this past Sunday.
The al-Shabaab militant group said it had carried out the attack, using a car bomb to blast through the gates before sending its fighters inside.
Military officials say the jihadists were repulsed without breaching the perimeter fence.
No casualties were reported among the Somali military.
In a statement, US Ambassador Donald Yamamoto praised the Somali military for their “alertness and swift response”.
“This attack yet again demonstrates al-Shabab violently opposes progress towards peace and prosperity in Somalia,” he said.
So who are these guys?
Once again, the national media has left us hanging. They reported the attack as if it was no big deal.
Much more important to talk about impeachment hearings.
This drives me crazy. We need to wake up people. Since when is it ok to attack a US military base?
While our government continues to drive us all crazy with their political accusations on both sides, the world around us continues to deal with real, extremely serious, problems.
The Syrian Civil War continues, rockets still fall on Israel, Iran bombs Saudi Arabian oil facilities, Hong Kong is in flames, and yet, we sit here in the dark, like some third world country.
So, here we go. My feeble attempt to bring you the real news as to who attacked our base.
Al-Shabaab means The Youth in Arabic.
It emerged as the radical youth wing of Somalia’s now-defunct Union of Islamic Courts, which controlled Mogadishu in 2006, before being forced out by Ethiopian forces.
There are numerous reports of foreign jihadists going to Somalia to help al-Shabaab, from neighboring countries, as well as the US and Europe.
It was banned as a terrorist group by both the US and the UK and is believed to have between 7,000 and 9,000 fighters.
It has imposed a strict version of Sharia law in areas under its control, including stoning to death women accused of adultery and amputating the hands of thieves.
What are its links to other jihadists?
In a joint video released in February 2012, then al-Shabaab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane said he “pledged obedience” to al-Qaeda head Ayman al-Zawahiri.
There have also been numerous reports that al-Shabaab may have formed some links with other militant groups in Africa, such as Boko Haram in Nigeria and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, based in the Sahara desert.
Al-Shabaab debated whether to switch allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS) group after it emerged in January 2014.
It eventually rejected the idea, resulting in a small faction breaking away.
Al-Shabaab is currently led by Ahmad Umar.
The US has issued a $6 milllion reward for information leading to his capture.
How dangerous is the group?
Somalia’s government blamed it for the killing of at least 500 people in a huge truck bombing in the capital Mogadishu in October 2017. It was East Africa’s deadliest bombing. Al-Shabaab, however, did not claim responsibility for it.
It did confirm carrying out a massive attack on a Kenyan military base in Somalia’s el-Ade town in January 2016, killing, according to Somalia’s then-President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, about 180 soldiers. The Kenyan military disputed the number, but refused to give a death toll.
It has also staged several attacks in Kenya, including the 2015 massacre at Kenya’s Garissa University, near the border with Somalia.
A total of 148 people died when gunmen stormed the university at dawn and targeted Christian students..
In 2013, its gunmen stormed the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, resulting in a siege which left at least 67 people dead.
During the 2010 football World Cup final between Spain and the Netherlands, it bombed a rugby club and a restaurant in Uganda’s capital Kampala, killing 74 people watching the match.
How much of Somalia does al-Shabab control?
Although it has lost control of most towns and cities, it still dominates in many rural areas.
It was forced out of the capital, Mogadishu, in August 2011 following an offensive spearheaded by about 22,000 African Union (AU) troops, and left the vital port of Kismayo in September 2012.
The loss of Kismayo has hit al-Shabaab’s finances, as it used to earn money by taking a cut of the city’s lucrative charcoal trade.
The US has also carried out a wave of air strikes, which led to the killing of the group’s leader, Aden Hashi Ayro (aye ee roh), in 2008 and his successor, Ahmed Abdi Godane (go don ay).
In March 2017, US President Donald Trump approved a Pentagon plan to escalate operations against al-Shabab.
The US has more than 500 troops in Somalia and conducted 30 airstrikes in 2017, more than four times the average number carried out in the previous seven years, according to The Washington Post.
Although the military operations are weakening al-Shabaab, the group is still able to carry out suicide attacks and has regained control of some towns.
The African Union is reducing its troop presence – about 1,000 have left and a further 1,000 are due to leave this year.
This follows a cut in funding by the European Union (EU), amid allegations of corruption within the AU force, made up of troops from Uganda, Burundi, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti.
So what exactly is happening in Somalia?
Somalia has not had an effective national government for more than 20 years, during which much of the country has been a war-zone.
Al-Shabab gained support by promising people security. But its credibility was knocked when it rejected Western food aid to combat a 2011 drought and famine.
With Mogadishu and other towns now under government control, there is a feeling of optimism and many Somalis have returned from exile, bringing their money and skills with them.
Basic services such as street lighting and rubbish collection have resumed in the capital.
But Somalia is still too dangerous and divided to hold democratic elections – the last one was in 1969.
So, its parliament and president are elected through a complex system, with clan elders playing an influential role in the process.
So now back to the recent attack on our air base.
What triggered all this?
In a speech in December outlining the US’ Africa policy, President Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton said “terrorists operating in Africa have… repeatedly targeted US citizens and interests”.
He gave the impression that there would be no let up in the struggle against militant Islamist groups, such as the Somalia-based al-Shabaab.
In March 2017, the Pentagon received White House approval to expand its fight against the militants in the Horn of Africa nation.
Commanders now no longer require high-level vetting to approve strikes on al-Shabab in “areas of active hostilities” in Somalia.
“It allows [us] to prosecute targets in a more rapid fashion,” said General Thomas Walhauser of US Africa Command (Africom).
The move has seen increased attacks by aircraft, as well as the first public deployment of US boots on the ground since 1993 to “advise and assist” Somali government troops.
Africom carried out at least 46 confirmed airstrikes in Somalia in 2018, following the previous record of 38 in 2017, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ).
Some single strikes have focused on large groups of militants. For example, about 60 were killed on October 12th around Harardere in the central Mudug region, in what was the largest airstrike of its kind in nearly a year.
Other strikes focused on individuals, such as the lone militant targeted and killed six days earlier in Kunyo Barrow in southern Somalia.
Compared to previous years, 2017 and 2018 marked a significant increase in US action against al-Shabaab.
In fact, at least 538 people have been killed in these airstrikes since the beginning of 2017 – far more than the previous 10 years combined – although not every strike was recorded to have killed someone.
Africom says the “airstrikes reduce al-Shabaab’s ability to plot future attacks, disrupt its leadership networks, and degrade its freedom of maneuver within the region”. This shows that every trace of the group is considered a threat.
Tthe strikes are part of a wider pattern that has ranged from targeting top commanders to the rank and file who make up the group’s visible presence on the ground.
But apart from one senior al-Shabaab commander, Ali Mohamed Hussein, killed in a joint US-Somalia military raid in the southern Lower Shabelle region in August 2017, few have been significant enough to be reported on by the US since President Trump approved the expansion of military operations in Somalia.
Al-Shabaab militants, like other jihadist groups, are well aware of the threat from the skies.
According to a senior regional security official, the fighters now avoid congregating in large groups. They move in units of three or four and only converge to carry out attacks, including on bases of African Union troops and Somali government forces.
Despite the increased strikes, al-Shabaab’s core capabilities remain solid.
The group has not lost control of territory in central and southern parts of Somalia, where it is trying to set up its own administration, including raising taxes from the local population.
These are vast areas – far larger than the urban centers that the federal government controls in the same regions.
Bill Roggio and Alexandra Gutowski of the Long War Journal conclude that this reflects al-Shabab’s primary goal, adopted from al-Qaeda, which is “to overthrow local governments and create emirates which will eventually form into an Islamic caliphate”.
The jihadist group has displayed its confidence through attacks such as the ambush last June on a combined force of Somali, Kenyan and American troops in Jamame town in southern Somalia, in which a US special forces soldier was killed.
Despite the insistence of the Somali government that the group has been eliminated from the capital, Mogadishu, one of its leaders, Ali Dhere, was recently photographed hosting a charity event near the city.
Al-Shabaab still mounts occasional forays into neighboring Kenya’s border regions carrying out ambushes and explosive attacks on security forces, and it often publishes videos documenting these incidents as part of its media operation.
The group sometimes responds to Ethiopian, Kenyan and US airstrikes by claiming that the casualties were innocent civilians, but from the US action over the past two years, there are no independent records of civilians killed.
In a statement to the BBC, Africom spokeswoman Becky Farmer noted that the US military command for Africa “has not discovered or assessed any civilian casualties resulting from our operations over the last two years”.
She added: “In fact, [we go] to extraordinary lengths to reduce the likelihood of civilian casualties, exercising restraint as a matter of policy that regularly exceeds the restrictions of the law of armed conflict.”
There are still vivid memories of America’s disastrous exit during its last major military action in Somalia in 1994.
You may remember this incident due to the release of the film, “Black Hawk Down”.
At the time, two US Black Hawk helicopters were shot down in Mogadishu.
In the ensuing battle, hundreds of Somalis were estimated to have died. Some 18 Americans and two UN soldiers were killed.
However, the Pentagon would consider the option of airstrikes today to be far less risky to US troops and possibly more effective in taking out targets.
As a result, the campaign is unlikely to be affected by the recent announcement of an impending reduction of US troops in Africa.
So far, the increased airstrikes have not given the US, the Somali government and AU troops the upper hand. Al-Shabaab will be content to retain its vast geographical control.
Even if its commanders are taken out in targeted strikes, the group has established a system to replace them and to continue the conflict for the foreseeable future.
Al-Shabab said in a statement it had launched the recent raid, adding: “After breaching the perimeters of the heavily fortified base, the mujahideen [holy warriors] stormed the military complex, engaging the crusaders in an intense firefight.”
The base, about 100km (60 miles) west of the capital Mogadishu, is said to house US special forces, Somali special forces and Ugandan peacekeepers. It is used as a launch site for US drones as well as being a training centre.
The fact that al-Shabaab managed to pull off this attack proves its enduring power, 13 years after it came into existence. It shows it is a well-coordinated force, with a sophisticated intelligence network.
The US military is also active on the ground in Somalia, training an elite group of Somali commandos known as The Shield and taking part in special operations, always shrouded in secrecy.
Al-Shabab seems impervious to the multitude of forces ranged against it, from thousands of African Union troops, to Western and other foreign special forces, to a large if fractured Somali army.
The group does far more than stage attacks on its enemies. It imposes fines and taxes, even in government-controlled areas. It provides effective – if brutal – judicial services, which are as popular with those living outside the areas it controls as those inside them.
It is essentially a governing force, and is likely to remain so until the Somali government and its allies form a credible, functioning alternative.
So hopefully, now you know who it was that attacked our air base and why.
The big question is, why do I have to be the one to tell you?
As I said earlier, the world continues on while we here in the US are led by a government and a national media that keep us in the dark and treats us like fools.
I guess I shouldn’t complain. It sure gives me plenty to talk about every week.

No more ‘convicts’ or ‘felons’ if San Francisco passes criminal justice language proposal
A proposal from San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors would strip pejorative language from anyone with a criminal record.
San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors wants to sanitize language in the criminal justice system.
In a proposal to the city and county of San Francisco, words like “felon,” “offender,”“convict” and “parolee” would be swapped for what’s described as people-first language — phrases that strip any objectification or pejorative descriptions for more neutral and positive descriptors.
Some examples include changing “felon” and “offender” to “returning resident” or “formerly incarcerated person.” A “parolee” could be described as a “person under supervision.” “Convict” could be referred to as a “currently incarcerated person,” while a “juvenile offender” or “delinquent” would be described as a “young person impacted by the justice system.”
The board noted that about 1 in every 5 Californians has a criminal record and the language that often accompanies those records can dehumanize and devalue the individual.
“Language shapes the ideas, perceptions, beliefs, attitudes and actions of individuals, societies and governments,” the proposal states. “People-first language places the individual before the criminal record by using neutral, objective, and non-pejorative language.”
The nonbinding resolution, sponsored by Supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer, passed last month in a near-unanimous vote. One supervisor was absent.
The San Francisco County district attorney’s Sentencing Commission, the Bay Area’s Reentry Council and San Francisco’s Youth Commission — a group of 17 young people ages 12 to 23 — passed resolutions supporting the changed language.
The proposal comes on the heels of Berkeley city leaders’ passage of an ordinance to replace more than two dozen terms with gender-neutral words. The City Council voted in July to replace “manhole” with “maintenance hole,” “craftsmen” with “artisans” and to stop identifying firefighters and police officers by gender.
A so-called “inclusive language guide” created at Colorado State University sparked a new kind of controversy when an early version suggested faculty and staff avoid the word “American” when referring to people from the United States.
While CSU has since deleted that draft of the guide , when that version made news this summer, it set off controversy in some circles.
On the heels of Colorado State University becoming the target of nationwide criticism and ridicule for its inclusive language guide, its top official is wrongly insisting the whole thing is one big misunderstanding and the result of click bait journalism.
Tony Frank, who recently became chancellor of the Colorado State University system after serving as CSU’s campus president since 2008, argued in a recent Denver Post op-ed that the university wholly champions free speech, notes it’s even allowed white supremacists to air their views on campus, and has also offered staff plenty of constitutional law training.
He states the controversy over the language guide has been blown out of proportion due to bad reporting, and offers his version of events: “A group of staff members mutually agreed to develop an internal resource for people who don’t want to unintentionally offend someone in the workplace.
These staff members work with people from many different backgrounds and nationalities, and they were simply asking for advice on how to be polite and respectful. Respect for others — hard to see that as such a sin.”
Frank repeatedly insisted in his op-ed the document was internal, by employees for employees, and never meant for students.
The vast majority of its suggestions are not only silly, they are absolutely ridiculous.
Consider the words and phrases the guide suggests avoiding: addicted, basket case, birth defect, eye for an eye, cake walk, colored, spaz, crazy, nuts, depressed, dumb, mute, dwarf, midget, eenie meenie miney moe, Mr. and Mrs., epileptic, Eskimo, freshman, lame, deformed, handicapped, he or she, ladies and gentlemen, hop hip hooray, Latino, hold down the fort, Indian, long time no see, male, female, policeman, paddy wagon, peanut gallery, pow wow, rule of thumb, straight, thug, uppity, and much more.
With or without the term America on it, this list is absolutely crazy. To think that a bunch of academics sat around and thought this up — with a straight face — is frightening.
Frank, in an official statement on the controversy released in mid-July, argued: “The bottom line is that no one is making anyone use this guide, and we have not seen any evidence that this brief guide has had a chilling effect on that climate on our learning environment.”
But this is incorrect.
Last fall, one student was already sounding the alarm over the guide in the pages of the campus newspaper. Writing in the Rocky Mountain Collegian, Katrina Leibee’s November 2018 op-ed was headlined “CSU has gone too far with inclusive language.”
Leibee writes she was told by campus authorities not to use certain words: “After getting involved in residential leadership, I was told not to use the word ‘dorms,’ and replace it with ‘residence halls.’ Apparently, dorm refers to only a place where one sleeps, and residence hall refers to a place where we sleep, eat, study and participate in social activities.”
“A countless amount of words and phrases have been marked with a big, red X and defined as non-inclusive. It has gotten to the point where students should carry around a dictionary of words they cannot say.
And Isabel Brown, a recent CSU alum, told the crowd in her speech at the Western Conservative Summit: “I almost lost my job on campus” for using the term “you guys.” She went on to address CSU’s inclusive language guide, clearly another student very much aware of it and sounding the alarm on its chilling effect.
“As a recent college graduate, I am here to attest that there has perhaps been no prior generation facing a more direct assault on our freedom of expression than young Americans are facing today,” Brown said.
“Just a few months ago I was living the leftist reality of indoctrination on Colorado State at Fort Collins, and it was a wild ride,” Brown said. “ … At Colorado State University, administrators recently released an inclusive language guide, which was aimed at guiding student speech towards creating a more inclusive environment on campus for everyone.”
“… Included in the nearly 10 page-document are offensive common words and phrases like ‘long time no see,’ which is now off limits because it’s supposedly racist towards those of Asian descent. Also on the list is handicapped parking, how dare you refer to it as such. To say ‘handicapped parking’ insinuates that people with disabilities are not fully human.”
“… My amusement quickly turned to grim shock upon reading a single word at the top of the list of offensive phrases: America. … For me, reading that word on the list of offensive words was the last straw. … I’m a proud patriot and I’ll stick to using the name of our beautiful nation, thank you very much CSU.”
So Chancellor Frank’s claims that this document was never meant for students is either ignorant or disingenuous, because these two students were very much aware of it, based on their statements — both of which were made before the recent media uproar.
As Brown points out, she almost lost her campus job for saying “you guys.” And as Leibee wrote, she was told what language to use and given the document by an administrator. So the claim that CSU is a champion of free speech and the guide was never meant for students and these two students’ stories do not align.
If Frank wants to champion free speech, he should rip the guide up and throw it in the garbage bin, where it belongs.
Let’s look at a few more of the words we shouldn’t be using.
(Refer to Inclusive Language Guide)

Click to access Inclusive-Language-Guide_10_30_18.pdf

On September 11, 2001, 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaida hijacked four airplanes and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States.
Two of the planes were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third plane hit the Pentagon just outside Washington, D.C., and the fourth plane crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Almost 3,000 people were killed during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which triggered major U.S. initiatives to combat terrorism and defined the presidency of George W. Bush.
On September 11, 2001, at 8:45 a.m. on a clear Tuesday morning, an American Airlines Boeing 767 loaded with 20,000 gallons of jet fuel crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.
The impact left a gaping, burning hole near the 80th floor of the 110-story skyscraper, instantly killing hundreds of people and trapping hundreds more in higher floors.
As the evacuation of the tower and its twin got underway, television cameras broadcasted live images of what initially appeared to be a freak accident.
Then, 18 minutes after the first plane hit, a second Boeing 767—United Airlines Flight 175—appeared out of the sky, turned sharply toward the World Trade Center and sliced into the south tower near the 60th floor.
The collision caused a massive explosion that showered burning debris over surrounding buildings and onto the streets below. It immediately became clear that America was under attack.
The hijackers were Islamic terrorists from Saudi Arabia and several other Arab nations. Reportedly financed by the al-Qaida terrorist organization of Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden, they were allegedly acting in retaliation for America’s support of Israel, its involvement in the Persian Gulf War and its continued military presence in the Middle East.
Some of the terrorists had lived in the United States for more than a year and had taken flying lessons at American commercial flight schools. Others had slipped into the country in the months before September 11 and acted as the “muscle” in the operation.
The 19 terrorists easily smuggled box-cutters and knives through security at three East Coast airports and boarded four early-morning flights bound for California, chosen because the planes were loaded with fuel for the long transcontinental journey.
Soon after takeoff, the terrorists commandeered the four planes and took the controls, transforming ordinary passenger jets into guided missiles.
As millions watched the events unfolding in New York, American Airlines Flight 77 circled over downtown Washington, D.C., before crashing into the west side of the Pentagon military headquarters at 9:45 a.m.
Jet fuel from the Boeing 757 caused a devastating inferno that led to the structural collapse of a portion of the giant concrete building, which is the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense.
All told, 125 military personnel and civilians were killed in the Pentagon, along with all 64 people aboard the airliner.
Less than 15 minutes after the terrorists struck the nerve center of the U.S. military, the horror in New York took a catastrophic turn when the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed in a massive cloud of dust and smoke.
The structural steel of the skyscraper, built to withstand winds in excess of 200 miles per hour and a large conventional fire, could not withstand the tremendous heat generated by the burning jet fuel.
At 10:30 a.m., the north building of the twin towers collapsed. Only six people in the World Trade Center towers at the time of their collapse survived. Almost 10,000 others were treated for injuries.

Meanwhile, a fourth California-bound plane—United Flight 93—was hijacked about 40 minutes after leaving Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey.
Because the plane had been delayed in taking off, passengers on board learned of events in New York and Washington via cell phone and Airfone calls to the ground.
Knowing that the aircraft was not returning to an airport as the hijackers claimed, a group of passengers and flight attendants planned an insurrection.
One of the passengers, Thomas Burnett, Jr., told his wife over the phone that “I know we’re all going to die. There’s three of us who are going to do something about it. I love you, honey.” Another passenger—Todd Beamer—was heard saying “Are you guys ready? Let’s roll” over an open line.
Sandy Bradshaw, a flight attendant, called her husband and explained that she had slipped into a galley and was filling pitchers with boiling water. Her last words to him were “Everyone’s running to first class. I’ve got to go. Bye.”
The passengers fought the four hijackers and are suspected to have attacked the cockpit with a fire extinguisher. The plane then flipped over and sped toward the ground at upwards of 500 miles per hour, crashing in a rural field near Shanksville in western Pennsylvania at 10:10 a.m.
All 44 people aboard were killed. Its intended target is not known, but theories include the White House, the U.S. Capitol, the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland or one of several nuclear power plants along the eastern seaboard.
A total of 2,996 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks, including the 19 terrorist hijackers aboard the four airplanes. Citizens of 78 countries died in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania.
At the World Trade Center, 2,763 died after the two planes slammed into the twin towers. That figure includes 343 firefighters and paramedics, 23 New York City police officers and 37 Port Authority police officers who were struggling to complete an evacuation of the buildings and save the office workers trapped on higher floors.
I will be traveling to New Orleans with my son on Sept. 21 where he is participating in a Memorial Stair Climb to honor the fallen firefighters of 911.
At the Pentagon, 189 people were killed, including 64 on American Airlines Flight 77, the airliner that struck the building. On Flight 93, 44 people died when the plane crash-landed in Pennsylvania.
At 7 p.m., President George W. Bush, who was in Florida at the time of the attacks and had spent the day being shuttled around the country because of security concerns, returned to the White House.
At 9 p.m., he delivered a televised address from the Oval Office, declaring, “Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.”
In a reference to the eventual U.S. military response he declared, “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”
Operation Enduring Freedom, the American-led international effort to oust the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and destroy Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network based there, began on October 7.
Within two months, U.S. forces had effectively removed the Taliban from operational power, but the war continued, as U.S. and coalition forces attempted to defeat a Taliban insurgency campaign based in neighboring Pakistan.
Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the September 11th attacks, remained at large until May 2, 2011, when he was finally tracked down and killed by U.S. forces at a hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
In June 2011, President Barack Obama announced the beginning of large-scale troop withdrawals from Afghanistan.
In the wake of security fears raised by 9/11 and the mailing of letters containing anthrax that killed two and infected 17, The Homeland Security Act of 2002 created the Department of Homeland Security.
It was signed into law by President George W. Bush on November 25, 2002. Today, the Department of Homeland Security is a cabinet responsible for preventing terror attacks, border security, immigrations and customs and disaster relief and prevention.
The act was followed two days later by the formation of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The bipartisan “9/11 Commission,” as it came to be known, was charged with investigating the events that lead up to September 11th. The 9/11 Commission Report was released on July 22, 2004. It named Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind behind 9/11, “the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks.”
Mohammed led propaganda operations for al-Qaida from 1999-2001. He was captured on March 1, 2003 by the Central Intelligence Agency and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence and interrogated before being imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay detention camp with four other accused terrorists charged with 9/11-related war crimes.
On December 18, 2001, Congress approved naming September 11 “Patriot Day” to commemorate the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. In 2009, Congress named September 11 a National Day of Service and Remembrance. If any good can be seen from this tragic event, it is the fact that I remember how our country, following the attacks, put aside our differences and joined together as one nation. It seemed as if very household displayed the American flag. Yes, I would like to see another September 12th. Why?
For a short time, patriotism ruled the land. I wish we could all get back to that mindset, without being driven by such a terrible tragedy.

 

Colorado
Marijuana remains illegal under federal law, where it’s still classified as a controlled substance. This difference between state and federal laws can lead to challenges in knowing how and where the different laws apply.
What this could mean to you.
Federal jobs:
• Federal employees are not allowed to use marijuana. If you already have or hope to apply for a federal job, you may want to avoid marijuana use.
Student financial aid:
• You could lose federal financial aid opportunities for any marijuana use or possession charges. This is especially important for underage youth.
o Federal financial aid includes Perkins Loans, Pell Grants, Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, PLUS Loans and Work-Study programs.
o Section 484 subsection R of the Higher Education Act of 1998 states that a student with a past conviction of any controlled-substance offense (which still includes marijuana) isn’t eligible for any of the above federal financial aid.
Firearms:
• If you apply to purchase a firearm, you must complete federal Form 4473, which asks about unlawful marijuana use.
o Since marijuana is still illegal federally, marijuana users may be rejected from purchasing a firearm.
o Lying on this form is a federal felony with a maximum prison sentence of five years.
Housing:
• If you live in federally subsidized housing, any marijuana use or possession charges may mean that you lose your federal housing benefits.
Federal land:
• Marijuana is still illegal on federal land, including national parks, ski slopes and military bases.
Federally funded property:
• Places that receive a significant amount of federal funding must adhere to the federal Drug-Free Workplaces Act of 1988, which would ban the use of marijuana on those properties.

In American government, states’ rights are the rights and powers reserved by the state governments rather than the national government according to the U.S. Constitution.
From the Constitutional Convention in 1787 to the Civil War in 1861 to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, to today’s marijuana legalization movement, the question of the rights of the states to govern themselves has been the focus of the American political landscape for well over two centuries.
Key Takeaways: States’ Rights
• States’ rights refer to the political rights and powers granted to the states of the United States by the U.S. Constitution.
• Under the doctrine of states’ rights, the federal government is not allowed to interfere with the powers of the states reserved or implied to them by the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

• In issues such as slavery, civil rights, gun control, and marijuana legalization, conflicts between states’ rights and the powers of the federal government have been a part of civic debate for over two centuries.
Again, the doctrine of states’ rights holds that the federal government is barred from interfering with certain rights “reserved” to the individual states by the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The 10th Amendment
The debate over states’ rights started with the writing of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
During the Constitutional Convention, the Federalists, led by John Adams, argued for a powerful federal government, while the Anti-federalists, led by Patrick Henry, opposed the Constitution unless it contained a set of amendments specifically listing and ensuring certain rights of the people and the states.
Fearing that the states would fail to ratify the Constitution without it, the Federalists agreed to include the Bill of Rights.
In establishing American government’s power-sharing system of federalism, the Bill of Rights’ 10th Amendment holds that all rights and powers not specifically reserved to Congress by Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution or to be shared concurrently by the federal and state governments are reserved by either the states or by the people.
In order to prevent the states from claiming too much power, the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2) holds that all laws enacted by the state governments must comply with the Constitution, and that whenever a law enacted by a state conflicts with a federal law, the federal law must be applied.
The Alien and Sedition Acts
The issue of states’ rights versus the Supremacy Clause was first tested in 1798 when the Federalist-controlled Congress enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Anti-federalists Thomas Jefferson and James Madison believed the Acts’ restrictions on freedom of speech and freedom of the press violated the Constitution.
Together, they secretly wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions supporting states’ rights and calling on the state legislatures to nullify federal laws they considered unconstitutional.
Madison, however, would later come to fear that such unchecked applications of states’ rights could weaken the union, and argued that in ratifying the Constitution, the states had yielded their sovereignty rights to the federal government.
The Issue of States’ Rights in the Civil War
While slavery and its abolition are the most visible, the question of states’ rights was the underlying cause of the Civil War.
Despite the overarching reach of the Supremacy Clause, proponents of states’ rights like Thomas Jefferson continued to believe the states should have the right to nullify federal acts within their boundaries.
In 1828 and again in 1832, Congress enacted protective trade tariffs, which while helping the industrial northern states, hurt the agricultural southern states.
Outraged by what it called the “Tariff of Abominations,” the South Carolina legislature, on November 24, 1832, enacted an Ordinance of Nullification declaring the federal tariffs of 1828 and 1832 “null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State, its officers or citizens.”

On December 10, 1832, President Andrew Jackson responded by issuing a “Proclamation to the People of South Carolina,” demanding that the state observe the Supremacy Clause and threatening to send federal troops to enforce the tariffs.
After Congress passed a compromise bill reducing the tariffs in the southern states, the South Carolina legislature rescinded its Ordinance of Nullification on March 15, 1832.
While it made President Jackson a hero to nationalists, the so-called Nullification Crisis of 1832 reinforced the growing feeling among Southerners that they would continue to be vulnerable to the Northern majority as long as their states remained a part of the union.
Over the next three decades, the main battle over states’ rights shifted from economics to slavery.
Did the southern states, whose largely agricultural economy depended on slave labor, have the right to maintain the slave trade in defiance of federal laws abolishing it?
By 1860, that question, along with the election of anti-slavery President Abraham Lincoln, drove 11 southern states to secede from the union.
Though secession was not intended to create an independent nation, Lincoln viewed it as an act of treason conducted in violation of both the Supremacy Clause and federal law.
Civil Rights Movement
From the day in 1866, when the U.S. Congress passed America’s first civil rights law, public and legal opinions have been divided on whether the federal government overrides states’ rights in attempting to ban racial discrimination nationwide.
Indeed, key provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment dealing with racial equality were largely ignored in the South until the 1950s.
During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, southern politicians who supported the continuation of racial segregation and enforcement of state-level “Jim Crow” laws denounced anti-discrimination laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as federal interference with states’ rights.
Even after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, several southern states passed “Interposition Resolutions” contending that the states retained the right to nullify the federal laws.
Current States Rights Issues
As an inherent byproduct of federalism, questions of states’ rights will undoubtedly continue to be a part of American civic debate for years to come.
Two highly visible examples of current states’ rights issues include marijuana legalization and gun control.
Marijuana Legalization
While at least 10 states have enacted laws allowing their residents to possess, grow, and sell marijuana for recreational and medical use, the possession, production, and sale of marijuana continues to be a violation of federal drug laws.
Despite previously rolling back an Obama-era hands-off approach to prosecuting violations of federal marijuana laws in pot-legal states, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions clarified on March 8, 2018 that federal law enforcement officers would go after dealers and drug gangs, rather than casual users.
Gun Control
Both the federal and state governments have been enacting gun control laws for over 180 years. Due to an increase in incidents of gun violence and mass shootings, state gun control laws are now often more restrictive than federal laws.
In these cases, gun rights advocates often argue that the states have actually exceeded their rights by ignoring both the Second Amendment and the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.
In the 2008 case of District of Columbia v. Heller, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a District of Columbia law completely banning its citizens from possessing handguns violated the Second Amendment. Two years later, the Supreme Court ruled that its Heller decision applied to all U.S. states and territories.
Other current states’ rights issues include same-sex marriage, the death penalty, and assisted suicide.
So when did it all change?
I contend that we lost control with the 16th Amendment. Once the feds had our money, they had the power to rule.
They now have the power to cut federal housing, education, farm subsidies, welfare, snap, student loans, the list goes on and on.
Money raised through income tax is used to pay for the programs, benefits, and services provided by the US government for the benefit of the people.
Essential services such as national defense, food safety inspections, and federal benefit programs including Social Security and Medicare could not exist without the money raised by the federal income tax.
While the federal income tax did not become permanent until 1913, taxes, in some form, have been a part of American history since our earliest days as a nation.
Evolution of Income Tax in America
While taxes paid by American colonists to Great Britain were one of the main reasons for the Declaration of Independence and ultimately the Revolutionary War, America’s Founding Fathers knew that our young country would need taxes for essential items such as roads and especially defense.
Providing the framework for taxation, they included procedures for the enactment of tax law legislation in the Constitution. Under Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution, all bills dealing with revenue and taxation must originate in the House of Representatives. Otherwise, they follow the same legislative process as other bills.
Before the Constitution
Before final ratification of the Constitution in 1788, the federal government lacked the direct power to raise revenue.
Under the Articles of Confederation, money to pay the national debt was paid by the states in proportions to their wealth and at their discretion.
One of the goals of the Constitutional Convention was to ensure that the federal government had the power to levy taxes.
Even after the ratification of the Constitution, most federal government revenues were generated through tariffs — taxes on imported products — and excise taxes — taxes on the sale or use of specific products or transactions.
Excise taxes were considered “regressive” taxes because people with lower incomes had to pay a higher percentage of their income than did people with higher incomes.
The most recognized federal excise taxes still in existence today include those added to the sales of motor fuels, tobacco, and alcohol.
There are also excise taxes on activities, such as gambling, tanning or the use of highways by commercial trucks.
As true with the modern income tax, those early taxes were far from popular among the people.
But with the spirit of the American Revolution and independence still running high, some of the people took their dislike of taxes to far higher level.
Between 1786 and 1799, three organized rebellions—all protesting various taxes—challenged the authority of the state and federal governments to generate needed revenue.
Shays’ Rebellion from 1786 to 1787 was raised by a group of farmers in objection to what they considered the unfair methods used by state and local tax collectors.
The Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 in western Pennsylvania came in protest to what President George Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton wrongly considered an innocuous excise tax “upon spirits distilled within the United States, and for appropriating the same.”
Finally, Fries’ Rebellion of 1799 was led by a group of Pennsylvania Dutch farmers opposed to a new federal government tax on houses, land, and slaves. While the farmers owned lots of land and houses, they were far from keen on paying taxes on slaves none of them owned.
During the Civil War from 1861 to 1865, the government realized that tariffs and excise taxes alone could not generate enough revenue to both run the government and conduct the war against the Confederacy.
In 1862, Congress established a limited income tax only on people who made more than $600 but abolished it in 1872 in favor of higher excise taxes on tobacco and alcohol.
Congress re-established an income tax in 1894, only to have the Supreme Court declare it unconstitutional in 1895.
16th Amendment Forward
In 1913, with the costs of World War I looming, ratification of the 16th Amendment permanently established the income tax. The 16th Amendment states:
“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”
The 16th Amendment gave Congress the power to tax the incomes of all individuals and the profits of all businesses.
The income tax enables the federal government to maintain the military, construct roads and bridges, enforce the laws and federal regulations, and carry out other duties and programs.
By 1918, government revenue generated from the income tax exceeded $1 billion for the first time and topped $5 billion by 1920.
The introduction of the mandatory withholding tax on employee wages in 1943 increased tax revenue to almost $45 billion by 1945.
In 2010, the IRS collected nearly $1.2 trillion through income tax on individuals and another $226 billion from corporations.
So there it is folks. We can all argue about states’ rights when it comes to gay marriage, marijuana, gun control, and any number of other issues.
However, as long as the federal government holds control of our tax dollars, there is really nothing we can do.
We either comply with what Washington says, or we risk losing federal funding.

 

Two radical groups — the so-called Proud Boys and antifa came together in conflict over the past weekend in Portland, Oregon.
While the media framed the battle in stark ideological terms, it was mostly about young men doing what they like to do: engage in street combat and boast of their exploits, in this case by posting them online.
It all started when the Proud Boys — who combine small-government libertarianism, men’s rights and what they call the “Spirit of Western Chauvinism” — announced that they would rally in Portland on Saturday to “end domestic terrorism,” the “terrorists” being the so-called anti-fascists of ¬antifa.
Antifa views anyone who isn’t on the hard left as a “fascist,” and once the movement affixes that label on you, you are fair game for the brutality of its black-masked followers.
Portland was ready. Flyers everywhere announced that “armed white nationalists have come to our city to . . . terrorize and assault our community,” especially racial and sexual ¬minorities.
“Organize community self-defense groups,” blared the flyer. “Travel with a buddy.”
When they arrived, in what looked like painted-over school buses, the Proud Boys were a motley army indeed. The many video clips from Saturday posted to ¬social media show a small gathering of paunchy men, on average at least 15 years older than the average wiry, young antifa supporter.
The first thing the Proud Boys did was hold a prayer circle led by a bearded black man, not exactly a white-nationalist image. Video clips show sparsely populated parks with Proud Boys milling around, mostly filming each other, with more media and police than actual participants.
They stood manfully holding their ground while masked antifa thugs circled, until the antifa A Team took turns darting in and whacking the Proud Boys, while everybody filmed and posted.
Antifa, for its part, is all about provocation — from blocking city streets when tired workers are just trying to get home to shutting down invited college lecturers whom they deem “fascists.”
Sometimes they are about worse stuff than provocation — as when they targeted the journalist Andy Ngo, and sent him to the hospital with a brain hemorrhage.
Yes, the Proud Boys have some truly toxic folks in their ranks, but antifa is even scarier, ¬because its violent methods enjoy barely disguised backing of the city’s liberal elites — so long as the violence is directed at the right villains.
Portland Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, for example, sounded like she was encouraging a “by-any-means-necessary” response to the Proud Boys, telling Portlanders on Wednesday that “the threat is real,” that “there are no two sides” and that “hate and ¬inaction against hate are unwelcome.”
Yes, it was provocative for the Proud Boys to pick a confrontation with antifa on its home turf, but it would be helpful if Portland’s progressive leaders would acknowledge that their antifa boys want to bust heads, too.
Perhaps this whole drama is better understood as a tribal confrontation, a young man thing, as old as humankind — think Bloods and Crips, Jets and Sharks, Gangs of New York. Being a “Street Fightin’ Man” is glamorous.
The ideological component is real, and let’s hope law enforcers are keeping an eye on what these groups are up to, given the history of far-left and far-right militancy in this country.
Still, the bulk of these groups are men (and some women) in search of a political ¬rationale for what violent types have loved to do since the beginning of time.
Just give these two groups of ¬idiots a field where they can have at each other and watch the fireworks.

Once again, the national media in its coverage, left us all scratching our heads.
Who are these antifa folks? What in the world are they protesting?
Let’s start with who they are.
Antifa: The antifa movement is composed of left-wing, autonomous, militant anti-fascist groups and individuals in the United States. The principal feature of antifa groups is their use of direct action, with conflicts occurring both online and in real life. They engage in various protest tactics, which include on-line activism, property damage, physical violence, and harassment against those whom they identify as fascist, racist, or on the far-right.
Now we all know what is meant by being far right. But what again is this term Fascist?
Fascism: Fascism is a form of radical right-wing, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy. The first fascist movements emerged in Italy during World War I, before spreading to other European countries.Benito Mussolini, Adolph Hitler, and Francisco Franco were all Fascist Dictators Opposed to liberalism, Marxism, and anarchism, fascism is on the far-right when speaking of left–right political positions.
Let’s add one more definition before we start.
Collectivism: Collectivism is a political theory associated with communism. More broadly, it is the idea that people should prioritize the good of society over the welfare of the individual.
Now there was a great article about all this in the recent issue of “The American Thinker” by writer Paul Krause.
He made an interesting point when he stated “Antifa storms in and out of the news, despite that fact, the Left is unable to denounce this militant band of thugs. The Left cannot denounce Antifa because Antifa embodies the very ethos of war and violence that collectivism needs to thrive on. To assail Antifa would be to attack the heart of the cancerous poison that is destroying liberty oriented societies”.
This concept was first presented by a fellow named Michael Oakeshott.
Michael Oakeshott is largely forgotten.
Even at the peak of his powers, as a professor of political science at the London School of Economics from 1951 to 1969, he was overshadowed by other political scientists of his time.
Yet Oakeshott has more to teach us about our current times than any of the others.
Oakeshott’s focus was on the conduct of politics itself, especially when it comes to governing.
Unconcerned with policy proposals or manifesto pledges, his work was to explain the workings of politics and government to serve a nation.
He was writing at a time when –isms dominated politics. Keynesianism (the promotion of monetary and fiscal programs by government to increase employment and spending) , socialism and central planning had captured the politics of the West, while varying degrees of collectivism and Communism prevailed behind the Iron Curtain.
In his most famous essay, “Rationalism in Politics”, published in 1962, he attacked the intellectual conceit that underpins all these –isms, namely the misplaced faith in “rationalism” that stemmed from the 18th-century enlightenment. “
By ignoring what he called “practical knowledge”—custom or tradition, as he meant it—the rationalist, armed merely with “technical knowledge”, created the illusion that bureaucrats and governments could solve all problems, whereas, of course, they cannot.
By contrast, Oakeshott proposed what he called a “conservative disposition”, and this is what makes him especially relevant today.
He did not articulate or argue for a particular set of policies to define Conservatism as a doctrine or creed; rather, in his essay “On being conservative”, he argued that conservatism was much more a habit of mind, a practice of politics.
Sadly, Oakeshott clearly described our current government crisis, and the divisions that it has created as an “encounter of mutual frustration.”
Governing is described by Oakeshott as a “specific and limited activity”, but one of those very specific activities is to mediate differences, not to widen them.
These virtues of government, as Oakeshott would have termed them, can also be described as the virtues of pragmatism (a straightforward way of dealing with problems, focused on results, not policies).
When people say the federal government has lost its mind, this is exactly what they mean, the government can no longer mediate differences and is in a state of mutual frustration.
It is time they went back and reviewed the teachings of Michael Oakeshott. And if Conservatives do not, others certainly will.
It bears repeating that the conservative position is not confined to a Conservative Party, or to any centre- right party. It can be used by others, and has been in the past.
“We tolerate monomaniacs, but why should we be ruled by them?” asked Oakeshott.
That is the question for conservatives, and indeed for anyone in democratic politics. “Is it not”, he continues, the “task for a government to protect its subjects against the nuisance of those who spend their energy and wealth in the service of some pet indignation.”
The aim of collectivists in free societies is not to wage a bloody revolution like the Jacobins (France) or the Bolsheviks (Russia). As Oakeshott said, “modern advocates of collectivism disintegrate the integral and wholesome reality of liberty.
We are instructed [by the enemies of freedom masquerading as advocates of freedom] to distinguish between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ freedom, between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ freedom, between ‘social,’ ‘political,’ ‘civil,’ ‘economic,’ and ‘personal’ freedom.” By focusing on only one or two freedoms, we are distracted as we lose our other freedoms.
How many times have we talked about America’s current lack of attention span? How the media now leads us by the nose from one story to the next?
According to Oakeshott, liberals pose as champions of one type of distinguished freedom, while eroding and destroying all the other types of freedom. Rather than see freedom as interconnected and wholesome, the new collectivists see institutions as oppressive and our present society as backward and tyrannical.
The new liberal, therefore presents himself/herself as a champion of engineered liberty; which is to say that he/she controls what freedoms the population will be allowed to have.
Collectivism thrives on war. In fact, it needs war. Liberalism demands the mobilization of people to advance its aims.
As such, it is necessary for liberals to always have an existential threat. As Oakeshott says, “The real spring of collectivism is not a love of liberty, but war. The anticipation of war is the great incentive, and the conduct of war is the great collectivizing process.”
Abraham Lincoln began to collectivize the Union during the Civil War. Roosevelt further collectivized the “new nation” through the “war” on the Great Depression which was superseded by the Second World War.
Roosevelt subjugated civil society to the bureaucratic state and thrust the American economy into its perpetual war economy existence — if there is no war for the post-Roosevelt economy, the economy will decentralize back into the hands of those it was taken from under the guise of national emergency.
Antifa claims to be for peace. Its purpose is war. Beyond the insurmountable evidence that this is the case, the mere fact that Antifa exists to counter an imaginary existential threat should also give away its true, bloodthirsty, and violent purpose of being.
There is nothing libertarian about Antifa. It is a socially engineered monster meant to act as shock troops of the final collectivist campaign for the domination of what used to be free American society.
Antifa exists, as it does in Portland, above the law. Without the law to keep the peace, we are in a state of war which allows for collectivism to present itself as the new agent of order.
Because the Democratic Party has been controlled by collectivists ever since FDR, and because the collectivist psyche and ideology needs war to sustain itself, the Democrats will never be able to condemn Antifa.
Why? Because that would entail condemning its own philosophy of warring domination to “fundamentally transform” the United States. This is not a recent phenomenon, it is a deeply rooted one, though Antifa is the most recent manifestation of this phenomenon of collectivism.
We are told that there is a war on women. We are told that there is a war against minorities. We are told that there is a war on gays, lesbians, and the rest of the imaginary rainbow. We are told that there is a war on poor people. We are told that there is a war on decency and civility.
There is a war on everything, according to the Left. And they use this prop of war to front themselves as champions of the “new freedom” which is, in reality, a front for further collectivist control.
Collectivism in America gives the illusion of continuity with the American past and make us believe that we’re growing in freedom instead of receding in freedom.

Liberals in America do not openly seek the revolutions that tear down in an uncontrollable rage like the Jacobins or Bolsheviks of old but corrode and rearrange from the inside. They sneak up on you. They wage a revolution behind the scenes, only for us to wake up and ask what happened?
Antifa may come and go. But what it represents and embodies is nothing short of the bloodthirsty and domineering schemes that possessed the Jacobins to kill hundreds of thousands to try to reorganize French society in 1789 and the Bolsheviks to slay millions in their own citizens in a bloodthirsty effort to reorganize Russian society.
As Oakeshott says, in free societies (i.e. Anglo-American) collectivists cannot openly embrace such revolutionary tactics as they do in societies without the same longstanding traditions of liberty.
Instead, they slip into the system and reorganize from the inside — slowly taking away our freedoms under the illusion of new freedoms and new progress.
Antifa’s manifesto calls for the reorganization of American society and the creation of a new man.
That’s precisely what collectivists past and present have always dreamed of achieving. And collectivists need war, or, in more palatable contemporary terms, an “emergency,” to usurp power for themselves for their domineering and hateful ends.
Collectivists need an imaginary enemy, to continue fighting their war for totalizing control over all people and society.
So there you have it folks. Was Michael Oakeshott correct? Have we lost our ability to govern?
If so, is it by accident or design?
Is Antifa simply a tool being wielded by the far left to gain political control?

Ok folks I need to clear something up.
Throughout the ongoing debates, the national media and the Democratic candidates have been referring to President Trump as a white nationalist.
That is flat out wrong.
At a rally in Houston back in October of 2018, Trump said, “A globalist is a person who wants the globe to do well, frankly not caring so much about our country. We can’t have that… I’m a nationalist.”
Well, here is the ugly truth.
Almost every American is a “nationalist” of one kind or another. So is almost every Russian, Chinese, or North Korean.
Don’t get mad. I am not accusing you of any sort of bias, racism, or other unpleasant views. I am merely trying to emphasize, again, how overly simplistic some labels can be.
Upon hearing Trump claim to be a Nationalist, the national media and the Democrats claimed he was a “white nationalist.” Others called him a “White Supremacist”. Those terms mean two different things, though they are in the same family.
A “supremacist” believes a particular race (or sex, or other genetic or cultural characteristic) is naturally superior to others.
Because you must know what the characteristic is that is believed to be “supreme,” an adjective has to be attached. Thus there are “white supremacists,” “Muslim supremacists,” “male supremacists” (also sometimes known as “misogynists”), etc.
Racial and cultural groups can also have their own internal divisions, as in Sunnis who believe themselves “supreme” in relation to Shiites, and vice versa.
A “nationalist,” though, is at heart merely someone who strongly believes in the interest of one’s own nation, however “nation” might be defined. President Trump is a “nationalist,” as are most liberals, populists, and everyone to the right and left.
But adding an adjective to indicate what “their” nation is, can turn “nationalism” into a polarizing term.
A “white nationalist” generally wants a nation of white people. Whether that means creating a separate nation of just white people or pushing those who are not white out of their current nation depends on which branch of “white nationalism” is talking.
While many “white nationalists” are also “white supremacists” because they believe white people are inherently superior to other races, the terms are really not interchangeable.
As Merriam-Webster explains, “white nationalist is defined as ‘one of a group of militant whites who espouse white supremacy and advocate enforced racial segregation,’ while white supremacist is ‘a person who believes that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races.’”
“White nationalists” first appeared around 1925, Merriam Webster says, though there were certainly “nationalist” movements focusing on “whites” long before them, including national policies restricting immigration as well as voting and other “nationalist” activities.
“Nationalism” shows up frequently in politics and ideology. “Nationalist China” was a common nickname for China before Mao, and later for Taiwan, and many nations have “nationalist” policies.
They all look to focus on specific policies or traits, and so are by their nature restrictive, but not all are seeking to restrict individuals based on racial or other characteristics.
Words and labels are often thrown about in emotional situations, but journalists need to take the high road and not fuel the rhetoric. It’s easy to resort to labels.
Now why is this clarification this morning so important?
Well, as the race for president heats up, both sides are now throwing these terms around and applying them to every issue on the table.
Immigration, mass shootings, foreign policy, you name it.
Now if you want to see a true example of white supremacy, let’s look at a little history.
Adolph Hitler and Nazism
It is hard to believe, but Hitler formulated most of his ideas on the writing of two men. Charles Darwin and Madison Grant.
Now we are familiar with Dawin’s survival of the fittest theories and it is easy to see how Hitler used Darwin’s thoughts to fit his agenda. But who in the world is Madison Grant?
What is judged extremist today was once the consensus of a powerful group of the American elite, well-connected men who eagerly seized on a false doctrine of “race suicide” during the immigration scare of the early 20th century.
They included wealthy tycoons, intellectuals, lawmakers, even several presidents.
Perhaps the most important among them was a blue blood named Madison Grant. He was the author of a 1916 book called The Passing of the Great Race, which spread the doctrine of race purity all over the globe.
Grant’s purportedly scientific argument that the exalted “Nordic” race that had founded America was in peril and helped push legislators in Congress to pass comprehensive restrictionist immigration policies in the early 1920s.
His book went on to become Adolf Hitler’s “bible,” as the führer wrote to tell him.
Most Americans, however, quickly forgot who Grant was—but not because the country had grappled with his vision’s dangerous appeal and implications.
When Nazism reflected back Grant’s vision in grotesque form, wartime denial set in. Jonathan Peter Spiro, a historian and the author of Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant (2009), described the backlash as: “Even though the Germans had been directly influenced by Madison Grant and the American eugenics movement, when we fought Germany, because Germany was racist, racism became unacceptable in America.
Madison Grant came from old money. Born in Manhattan seven months after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, he attended Yale and then Columbia Law School.
He was an outdoorsman and a conservationist, knowledgeable about wildlife and interested in the dangers of extinction, expertise that he soon became intent on applying to humanity.
When he opened a law practice on Wall Street in the early 1890s, the wave of immigration from southern and eastern Europe was nearing its height. “As he was jostled by Greek ragpickers, Armenian shoe shiners, and Jewish fish vendors, it was distressingly obvious to him that the new arrivals did not know this nation’s history or understand its republican form of government,” Spiro writes in his biography.
Jews troubled Grant the most. “The man of the old stock,” he later wrote in The Passing of the Great Race, is being “driven off the streets of New York City by the swarms of Polish Jews.” But as the title of his 1916 work indicated, Grant’s fear of dispossession ran wide and deep:
These immigrants adopt the language of the native American, they wear his clothes, they steal his name, and they are beginning to take his women, but they seldom adopt his religion or understand his ideals and while he is being elbowed out of his own home the American looks calmly abroad and urges on others the suicidal ethics which are exterminating his own race.
0Grant blended Nordic promotion with fearmongering, and supplied a scholarly cover for notions many white citizens already wanted to believe.
But it was Grant who synthesized these separate strands of thought into one pseudo-scholarly work that changed the course of the nation’s history.
He singled out Jews as a source of anxiety disproportionate to their numbers.
In The Passing of the Great Race, the eugenic focus on winnowing out unfit individuals made way for a more sweeping crusade to defend against contagion by inferior races. By Grant’s logic, infection meant obliteration:
“The cross between a white man and an Indian is an Indian; the cross between a white man and a Negro is a Negro; the cross between a white man and a Hindu is a Hindu; and the cross between any of the three European races and a Jew is a Jew”.
What Grant’s work lacked in scientific rigor, it made up for in packaging.
Americans’ idealism blinded them, he argued, to the reality that newcomers from the Mediterranean and eastern Europe—to say nothing of anyone from Asia or Africa—could never hope to possess the genetic potential innate in the nation’s original Nordic inhabitants, which was the source of the nation’s greatness.
His thesis found eager converts among the American elite, thanks in no small part to his extensive social connections. The New York Times and The Nation were among the many media outlets that echoed Grant’s reasoning.

Teddy Roosevelt, by then out of office, told Grant in 1916 that his book showed “fine fearlessness in assailing the popular and mischievous sentimentalities and attractive and corroding falsehoods which few men dare assail.”
President Calvin Coolidge, found Grant’s thesis equally compelling. “There are racial considerations too grave to be brushed aside for any sentimental reasons. Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend,” Coolidge wrote in a 1921 article in Good Housekeeping.
The Nordics propagate themselves successfully. With other races, the outcome shows deterioration on both sides. Quality of mind and body suggests that observance of ethnic law is as great a necessity to a nation as immigration law.
Endorsing Grant’s idea that true Americans are of Nordic stock, Coolidge also took up his idea that intermarriage between whites of different “races,” not just between whites and nonwhites, degrades that stock.
Perhaps the most important of Grant’s elite admirers were to be found among members of Congress.
Reconstruction struggles; U.S. expansion in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii; high levels of immigration—each had raised the specter of white people losing political power and influence to nonwhite people, or to the wrong kind of white people.
On Capitol Hill debate raged, yet Republicans and Democrats were converging on the idea that America was a white man’s country, and must stay that way.
The influx of foreigners diluted the nation with inferiors unfit for self-government, many politicians in both parties energetically concurred.
The Supreme Court chimed in with decisions in a series of cases, beginning in 1901, that assigned the status of “nationals” rather than “citizens” to colonial newcomers.
A popular myth of American history is that racism is the exclusive province of the South.
The truth is that much of the nativist energy in the U.S. came from old-money elites in the Northeast, and was also fueled by labor struggles in the Pacific Northwest, which had stirred a wave of bigotry that led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
Grant found a congressional ally and champion in Albert Johnson, a Republican representative from Washington. A nativist and union buster, he contacted Grant after reading The Passing of the Great Race. The duo embarked on an ambitious restrictionist agenda.
As the eugenics movement gathered force in the U.S., “experts” began dividing white people into distinct races.
In 1917, overriding President Woodrow Wilson’s veto, Congress passed a law that banned immigration not just from Asian but also from Middle Eastern countries and imposed a literacy test on new immigrants.
When the Republicans took control of the House in 1919, Johnson became chair of the committee on immigration, “thanks to some shrewd lobbying by the Immigration Restriction League,” Spiro wrote.
Grant introduced him to a preeminent eugenicist named Harry Laughlin, whom Johnson named the committee’s “expert eugenics agent.”
His appointment helped ensure that Grant’s concerns about “race suicide” would be a driving force in a quest that culminated, half a decade later, in the Immigration Act of 1924.
Johnson found an ally in Senator David Reed of Pennsylvania, who sponsored the 1924 bill in the Senate.
A Princeton-educated lawyer, he feared that America was going the way of Rome, where the “inpouring of captives and alien slaves” had caused the empire to sink “into an impotency which made her the prey of every barbarian invader.”
This was almost verbatim Grant, whose portrait of Rome’s fall culminated in the lowly immigrants “gradually occupying the country and literally breeding out their former masters.” (His plotline helped him preserve the notion that fair-haired and -skinned people are responsible for all the world’s great achievements: Rome’s original inhabitants were Nordic, but contemporary Italians were descendants of Roman slave races and therefore inferior.)
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court was struggling mightily to define whiteness in a consistent fashion, an endeavor complicated by the total flimsiness of race science.
In one case after another, the high court faced the task of essentially tailoring its definition to exclude those whom white elites considered unworthy of full citizenship.
In 1923, when an Indian veteran named Bhagat Singh Thind—who had fought for the U.S. in World War I—came before the justices with the claim of being Caucasian in the scientific sense of the term, and therefore entitled to the privileges of whiteness, they threw up their hands.
In a unanimous ruling against Thind (who was ultimately made a citizen in 1936), Justice George Sutherland wrote:
What we now hold is that the words “free white persons” are words of common speech to be interpreted in accordance with the understanding of the common man, synonymous with the word “Caucasian” only as that word is popularly understood.
The justices had unwittingly acknowledged a consistent truth about racism, which is that race is whatever those in power say it is.
As the Immigration Act of 1924 neared passage, some in the restrictionist camp played up Grant’s signature Nordic theme more stridently than others.
Addison Smith, a Republican congressman from Idaho, proudly invoked the Scandinavian, English, Irish, and other northern-European immigrants of his district, highlighting that among them were no “ ‘slackers’ of the type to be found in the cities of the East. We have ample room, but no space for such parasites.”
“A fundamental, eternal, inescapable difference” exists between the races, President Harding publicly declared. “Racial amalgamation there cannot be.”
Once passage of the act was assured, Grant felt his life’s work had come to fruition and, according to Spiro, he concluded, “We have closed the doors just in time to prevent our Nordic population being overrun by the lower races.”
Senator Reed announced in a New York Times op-ed, “The racial composition of America at the present time thus is made permanent.”
“It was America that taught us a nation should not open its doors equally to all nations,” Adolf Hitler told The New York Times half a decade later, just one year before his elevation to chancellor in January 1933.
Elsewhere he admiringly noted that the U.S. “simply excludes the immigration of certain races.
Hitler and his followers were eager to claim a foreign—American—lineage for the Nazi mission.
Some of the American eugenicists (scientists who proposed ways to improve human beings, especially by selective breeding) whose work helped pave the way for the racist immigration laws of the 1920s received recognition in Germany.
The Nazis gave Laughlin an honorary doctorate from Heidelberg University in 1936. Henry Fairfield Osborn, who had written the introduction to The Passing of the Great Race, received one from Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in 1934.
Leon Whitney, another of Grant’s fellow travelers, evidently received a personal thank-you letter from Hitler after sending the führer a copy of his 1934 book, The Case for Sterilization.
Grant’s final project, Spiro writes, was an effort to organize a hunting expedition with Hermann Goering, the commander in chief of the Nazi air force who went on to become Hitler’s chosen successor.
Grant died in May 1937, before the outing was to take place.
America has always grappled with, in the words of the immigration historian John Higham, two “rival principles of national unity.” According to one, the U.S. is the champion of the poor and the dispossessed, a nation that draws its strength from its pluralism.
According to the other, America’s greatness is the result of its white and Christian origins, the erosion of which spells doom for the national experiment.
People of both political persuasions like to tell a too-simple story about the course of this battle: World War II showed Americans the evil of racism, which was vanquished in the 1960s. The Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act brought nonwhites into the American Society for good.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 forever banished the racial definition of American identity embodied in the 1924 immigration bill, forged by Johnson and Reed in their crusade to save Nordic Americans from “race suicide.”
The truth is that the rivalry never ended, and Grantism, despite its swift wartime eclipse, did not become extinct. The Nazis, initially puzzled by U.S. hostility, underestimated the American commitment to democracy.
The Nazis failed to appreciate the significance of that ideological tension.
They saw allegiance to the American creed of “All men are created equal” as a weakness. But U.S. soldiers of all backgrounds and faiths fought to defend it, and demanded that their country live up to it.
Their valor helped defeat first the Nazis, and then the American laws that the Nazis had so admired. What the Nazis saw as a weakness turned out to be a strength, and it destroyed them.
So folks, there you have a little history. Hopefully, now that I have explained true white supremacy, and our ugly past history in dealing with it, you can see why I get so upset when the media and politicians throw that term around and then try to convince us it is the same thing as being a nationalist.
Is Trump a white supremacist? Absolutely not.
So let me ask you. Are you a Nationalist? If so, you as well should be terribly offended by those who would lump you in with the followers of white supremacy & white nationalism.

Medicare for All!
That is what we heard the Democratic Presidential Candidates screaming from the rooftops.
But what does that mean?
For that matter, where did Medicare come from?
The Social Security Act, signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935, created Social Security, a federal safety net for elderly, unemployed and disadvantaged Americans. The main stipulation of the original Social Security Act was to pay financial benefits to retirees over age 65 based on lifetime payroll tax contributions. The Act also established the Social Security Board, which later became the Social Security Administration, to structure the Social Security Act and figure out the logistics of implementing it.
Tens of millions of people have received financial assistance through the Social Security Act since its inception. Still, the program was wrought with challenges from the start and has been a political hot topic for years, its existence threatened time and again.
Economic security has always been a major issue in an unstable, unequal world with an aging population.
Societies throughout history have tackled the issue in various ways, but the disadvantaged relied mostly on charity from the wealthy or from family and friends.
In the early 17th century, England established “poor laws,” acknowledging the government’s responsibility to care for its less-fortunate citizens.
The Pilgrims brought these laws with them to the New World. Eventually, colonial governments created new laws to care for the poor and destitute, deeming which citizens were worthy or unworthy of different types of assistance. Poorhouses or outdoor relief (where people were given monetary or other assistance to keep them out of a poorhouse) were common means of public assistance.
By the mid-19th century, conditions in poorhouses were often deplorable. Yet due to deteriorating economic conditions they were also packed to the rafters, and local governments struggled to keep up with the overwhelming need.
A large segment of American citizens received an early form of social security decades before President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act.
Starting in 1862, hundreds of thousands of veterans disabled in the Civil War and their widows and orphans could apply for a government pension. In 1890, the law was amended to include any disabled Civil War veteran, regardless of how the disability occurred. In 1906, the law was amended again to include old age as a criterion.
Company pension plans came on the scene in 1882 when the Alfred Dolge Company (made felt shoes and slippers) created a pension fund for its employees. A handful of companies followed suit, but few employees received even a nickel. Most of the companies went out of business before the pensions could be distributed, or the pensions were never dispersed.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, many people were farmers and managed to support themselves during hard times, and extended family often lived together on family farms and cared for one another as they aged or struggled.
The Industrial Revolution, however, enticed people to flock to cities for jobs that were often threatened by layoffs and recession, leaving many without a way to support themselves if they lost their job. The urbanization of American also found many people leaving their extended family behind to fend for themselves.
As sanitary and general conditions in America improved, the life expectancy of its citizens did, too. When more and more people grew older, many were unable to work or became sick yet still required care.
The Great Depression left millions of people unemployed and struggling to put food on the table. It struck the elderly especially hard and many states passed legislation to protect their elder citizens.

But most elder-assistance programs of the time were a dismal failure. They were underfunded, poorly run and, in some cases, flat out ignored by officials. Those seniors who received assistance only got about 65 cents a day.
As the depression raged on, government officials and frustrated private citizens alike moved to find ways to help struggling Americans and introduced plans to increase economic security. Most ideas were basically federal or state financed pension plans. Some included all citizens while others included only the elderly.
None of the plans became law; however, many had huge followings and initiated nationwide talks about how to care for the disadvantaged and the elderly.
Until Franklin D. Roosevelt became president, most social assistance plans in America were dependent on the government, charities and private citizens doling out money to people in need.
Roosevelt, however, borrowed a page from Europe’s economic security handbook and took a different approach. He proposed a program in which people contributed to their own future economic security by contributing a portion of their work income through payroll tax deductions.
Basically, the current working generation would pay into the program and finance the retired generation’s monthly allowance.
In June 1934, President Roosevelt created the Committee on Economic Security (CES) and tasked them with creating an economic security bill. Led by the first woman to hold a U.S. cabinet post, Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, the CES drafted the Social Security Act aimed at giving people economic security throughout their lives.
The bill included:
• an old-age pension program
• unemployment insurance funded by employers
• health insurance for people in financial distress (Medicare)
• financial assistance for widows with children
• financial assistance for disabled individuals
After much debate, Congress passed the Social Security Act to provide benefits to retirees based on their earnings history and on August 14, 1935, Roosevelt signed it into law. This firmly placed the burden of economic security for American citizens on the federal government’s shoulders.
Social Security Cards
After signing the Social Security Act, President Roosevelt established a three-person board to administer the program with the goal of starting payroll tax deductions for enrollees by January 1, 1937.
To become eligible, workers completed an application at their local post office and received a national identity card with a unique, nine-digit identification number. Within eight days of rolling out the program, over one million workers had Social Security numbers.
Four months later, almost 26 million had enrolled despite most projected payouts being below poverty level. The Social Security card was—and still is—used to track workers earnings and benefits.
Medicare
On November 19, 1945, seven months into his presidency, Truman sent a message to Congress, calling for the creation of a national health insurance fund, open to all Americans. The plan Truman envisioned would provide health coverage to individuals, paying for such typical expenses as doctor visits, hospital visits, laboratory services, dental care and nursing services.
Although Truman fought to get a bill passed during his term, he was unsuccessful and it was another 20 years before some form of national health insurance – Medicare for Americans 65 and older, rather than earlier proposals to cover qualifying Americans of all ages – would become a reality.
In 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved legislation to allow Social Security benefits for disabled workers and their dependents.
President John F. Kennedy made his own unsuccessful push for a national health care program for seniors after a national study showed that 56 percent of Americans over the age of 65 were not covered by health insurance. But it wasn’t until after 1966 – after legislation was signed by President Lyndon B Johnson in 1965 – that Americans started receiving Medicare health coverage when Medicare’s hospital and medical insurance benefits first took effect.
On July 30, 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson made Medicare law by signing H.R. 6675, an amendment to the Social Security Act of 1935, in Independence, Missouri. Former President Truman was issued the very first Medicare card during the ceremony. In 1965, the budget for Medicare was around $10 billion
• In 1966, Medicare’s coverage took effect, as Americans age 65 and older were enrolled in Part A (in hospital) and millions of other seniors signed up for Part B (Outpatient). Nineteen million individuals signed up for Medicare during its first year.
• In 1972, President Richard M. Nixon signed into the law the first major change to Medicare. The legislation expanded coverage to include individuals under the age of 65 with long-term disabilities and individuals with end-stage renal disease (ERSD).

By early 2019, there were 60.6 million people receiving health coverage through Medicare. Medicare spending reached $705.9 billion in 2017, which was about 20 percent of total national health spending.
Back in1977, it was already clear Social Security was in financial peril.
President Ronald Reagan created a commission to examine how to keep Social Security in the black.
In 1983, he signed legislation which gradually increased the retirement age to 67, taxed Social Security benefits and provided Social Security benefits to federal workers.
After taking office in 2001, President George W. Bush appointed another Social Security Commission with its top priority being Social Security reform.
No revolutionary changes were made to keep the program solvent long-term. Still, the Bush administration extended disability benefits and food stamps to qualified immigrants and their children, eliminated wage credits for the military and expanded Medicare prescription drug coverage.
President Obama‘s administration temporarily reduced the Social Security tax rate from 6.2 to 4.2 percent in 2011 and 2012. The move helped ease financial strain on American workers but did little to stop the risk of Social Security going into future debt.
The Social Security Act has provided Americans with much-needed financial help when they need it most. For many of America’s most vulnerable, it’s the only source of income they have.
Still, despite attempts to keep it solvent, Social Security faces a major long-term shortfall. The retirement age to receive full benefits continues to increase and many beneficiaries are claiming benefits much later in life to receive maximum payouts, often at age 70.
Despite the program’s pitfalls, most Americans want Social Security to continue and consider it a retirement lifeline, according to a National Academy of Social Insurance survey.
So now let’s tackle some of the big myths about Social Security.
. . . participation in the Program would be completely voluntary
There was no provision in the Social Security Act of 1935 (nor has there ever been any provision) for the payment of Social Security payroll taxes (now commonly known as FICA, from an acronym for the Federal Insurance Contributions Act) to be voluntary.
Since the inception of the Social Security program, the law has required that payroll taxes for persons working at jobs covered by Social Security “shall be collected by the employer of the taxpayer by deducting the amount of the tax from the wages as and when paid.”
Next:
. . . participants would only have to pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their annual incomes into the Program
Social Security taxes were never limited to the first $1,400 of annual income, nor was there any provision in the Social Security Act of 1935 to permanently fix the tax rate at 1%. The Social Security Act of 1935 set the original rate at 1% of the first $3,000 of annual income, with provisions to gradually increase that rate to 3% over the next twelve years.
These figures have been adjusted many times over the years. Under the Federal Insurance Contributions Act, as of 2005 participants pay 6.2% of the first $90,000 of their income (with their employers contributing a like sum) into what is commonly known as OASDI (from an acronym for Old Age Survivors and Disability Insurance, the official name of the basic retirement benefits portion of the Social Security program).
Next:
. . . the money the participants elected to put into the Program would be deductible from their income for tax purposes each year
The original Social Security Act of 1935 specifically stated that Social Security payroll taxes were not to be allowed as income tax deductions.
Now folks, here is the big one:
. . the money the participants put in goes to the independent “Trust Fund” rather than into the General operating fund, and therefore, would only be used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program, and no other Government program.
The Social Security Trust Fund was established in 1939 to receive monies collected for Social Security through payroll taxes. The monies in this fund are managed by the Department of the Treasury; they are not, nor have they ever been, put into the “general operating fund.”
However, and this is a huge however, whether the Social Security Trust Fund can truly be said to be “independent” is problematic.
The Social Security Act specifies that the monies in the fund may only “be invested in securities backed by the full faith and credit of the Federal government,” such as treasury bills, treasury notes, and treasury bonds, as well as special issue bonds.
So, essentially, the government can “invest” Social Security funds by lending them to itself, then spending that money on programs not related to Social Security.
The government “pays back” this money when the Social Security program redeems the bonds, but critics of the program contend Social Security will eventually fall into deficit by 2018, and the Treasury won’t have the necessary cash on hand to redeem the bonds and pay back the fund.
So, the monies paid into the Social Security trust have never been “put into the general fund.” The requirements for how the Social Security Trust Fund is to be financed and invested have not changed since the fund’s inception in 1939.

Now folks, I hope our talk this morning has provided some answers. However, the only conclusion I can draw from the analysis of the past history of Social Security and Medicare, is that the last person I want running a Medicare for All program, is the federal Government.