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February 2021

Citizen Trump by: Diana West

https://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/4181/Citizen-Trump.aspx

This engraving depicts the 1793 trial of Citizen Louis Capet. He had been stripped of his title, King Louis XVI, by those who presumed to judge him. The image, the event, seems relevant on contemplating the looming impeachment trial of Citizen Trump. After the failure of Congress to pause the counting of Electoral votes to permit due process in the contested states, we may see that President Trump was also stripped of his title by those who now presume to judge him.

Louis’ trial ended infamously in regicide by guillotine. However much baying there is for Trump’s head, such a remedy lies beyond Senate recourse. On conviction of impeachment, the sentence is removal from office. Donald Trump may have won re-election, but he has no office. Such a sentence, then, would seem to be an exercise in futility, only revolutionaries don’t have time for futlity. 

There are two forms of regicide, according to research by Meagan Montanari, author of an interesting essay titled “The Good King: Louis XVI as a Religious Figure and Martyr.”

She writes:

The first type is basically that of a usurper, only wanting to kill the current king so that he can take over the throne for himself. This first type leaves the monarchy in place, never thinking of the possibility of doing away with it.

North Carolina’s Lt. Governor shows how to fight back against a corrupt media By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/02/north_carolinas_lt_governor_shows_how_to_fight_back_against_a_corrupt_media.html

In 2018, Mark Robinson stood up before the city council in Greensboro, North Carolina, and gave an impassioned defense of the Second Amendment. That video went viral and led to him entering politics. Last year, Robinson became North Carolina’s Republican Lieutenant Governor. This year, when a local paper published a cartoon calling the entire North Carolina Republican party a KKK entity, Robinson (who is black) ferociously attacked the newspaper for its dishonesty and ignorance. He needs to give master classes in handling the media.

To get a sense of the man, I recommend that you take the four minutes to watch his defense of the Second Amendment in the face of the Greensboro city council’s plan to ban gun shows from coming to the city. It’s epic:

This man is not a shrinking violet. So, as I said, that speech was the springboard to a successful political career that saw Mark Robinson go from private citizen to North Carolina Lieutenant Governor in just two years.

On Tuesday, WRAL.com published a cartoon that showed the Republican party as the KKK party. The cartoon revolves around the North Carolina Board of Education’s plan to have “inclusive” social studies standards. In a word, the standards are “woke” – they are the usual anti-American stuff about America being a racist, imperialist, destructive, hate-filled, yadda, yadda, yadda country.

Polling and the Truth Partisan polls have become an instrument in the Left’s toolbox in the United States and in Europe. They’re used more to push action than to inform it. By Paul Gottfried

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/03/polling-and-the-truth/

The Berlin Tagesspiegel recently went after a young Protestant theologian whom naïve readers might have mistaken for a polite, unassuming scholar. This figure was outed by an academic colleague who discovered that he wrote for “new Right” publications, a term that in the German context should be understood quite broadly.

One of the venues of this putative extremist is Cato, which is a classical liberal magazine known for making fun of political correctness; his other preferred site is Blaue Narzisse, an educational website on which I, too, have discoursed on literary and philosophical topics. One would have to hang out for several years with the squad in order to be inclined to locate either of these literate publications somewhere on the far-Right. But then the German government and German media apply an expansive definition of the enemy—namely anyone not in line with Islamic, feminist, and LGBT activists or who fails to hate the German language and Western culture sufficiently.  

The Tagesspiegel also showcases a poll that, we are assured, deserves our full attention. Readers are asked whether the German government “is presently taking sufficient steps to deal with right-wing threats” or whether more drastic means are required to address this danger. About half of the respondents said they believe the government is doing enough to combat raging rightism; but the other half thinks there is a need for more governmental action.

Biden State Dept. Spox Calls Cops ‘Blue Klux Klan,’ and Largest Threat to U.S. National Security’ By Debra Heine !!!!????****

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/02/biden-state-dept-spox-calls-cops-blue-klux-klan-and-largest-threat-to-u-s-national-security/

Just a few short years ago, the newly appointed deputy spokesperson for the Biden State Department wrote that the police posed the largest national security threat in America—greater than that of ISIS or Russia—because they were committing “genocide” against Black Americans.

In a 2016 Facebook post, uncovered by the Washington Free Beacon, Jalina Porter wrote: “The largest threat to US national security are US cops. Not ISIS, not Russian hackers, not anyone or anything else. If ya’ll don’t wake up and rise up to this truth, the genocide against Blacks in America will continue until we are near extinct. That’s not the world I seek to live in or create for myself and those around me.”

When (or If) Comes the Pushback? Joe Biden is now unapologetically leading the most radical left-wing movement in the nation’s history.  By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/03/when-or-if-comes-the-pushback/

The corruption of the Renaissance Church prompted the Reformation, which in turn sparked a Counter Reformation of reformist and more zealous Catholics.  

The cultural excesses and economic recklessness of the Roaring 20s were followed by the bleak, dour, and impoverished years of the Great Depression. 

The 1960s counterculture led to Richard Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972, as “carefree hippies” turned into careerist “yuppies.” 

So social, cultural, economic, and political extremism prompt reactions—and sometimes counterreactions.   

The Bush-Clinton-Obama continuum of 24 years (from 1993 through 2015) cemented the bipartisan fusion administrative state. Trump and his “Make America Great Again” agenda were its pushback.  

The counterreaction to the populism of the Trump reset—or Trump himself—is as of yet unsure.  

Joe Biden’s tenure may mark a return to business as usual of the Bush-Clinton years. Or more likely, it will accelerate the current hard-left trajectory. 

Either way, it seems that Biden is intent on provoking just such a pushback by his record number of early and often radical executive orders—a tactic candidate Biden condemned. 

On almost every issue—open borders, blanket amnesties, canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, promoting the Green New Deal, and hard-left appointees—Biden is touting positions that likely do not earn 50 percent public support. 

When Biden made a Faustian bargain with his party’s hard-left wing of Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to win the election, he took on the commitment to absorb some of their agenda and to appoint their ideologues. 

Joe Biden’s Foreign Policy: A Preliminary Assessment By Dr. Alex Joffe

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/biden-foreign-policy-asssessment/

The Biden administration’s foreign policy is rapidly coming into view. Despite rhetoric designed to mollify Middle Eastern allies, the trajectory of decisions clearly favors a return to the Obama policy of elevating Iran at the expense of Israel and Sunni states. More broadly, key moves weaken the US stance against China while ensuring domestic turmoil. American allies will have to adjust to a period of American weakness and possibly even betrayal.

It is customary to give new US administrations a grace period before assessing their policies, but no administration in modern history has changed so much so fast. Literally dozens of executive orders signed by President Joe Biden have dramatically reversed the course of American foreign policy in a matter of days. The implications are potentially momentous, especially in the Middle East. 

Many predicted that a Biden administration would see a revival of Obama-era policies. This was more true than anyone could have imagined. With stunning speed, Biden has set about dismantling the legacy of the Trump administration across the board, including in foreign policy.

The manner in which this is occurring is classic Obama. On the one hand, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has stated repeatedly that the US is not in a rush to rejoin the JCPOA agreement with Iran, demanding that the latter first come into “full compliance.” But Iran has demanded the US do so first and provide compensation for sanctions, setting up a game of chicken where the party who desires the deal more will yield first.

At the same time, a series of US moves has signaled American desire to restore the status quo ante. The US has “temporarily paused” the sale of F-35s to the United Arab Emirates, describing the move as a “review,” which in Washington is usually code for quietly making a policy permanent. The sale of munitions to Saudi Arabia has also been suspended and comes after months of the Biden campaign criticizing Saudi human rights abuses, especially in Yemen. The ”reexamination” of the Trump administration’s designation of the Houthi movement as a terrorist organization also signals Biden’s re-acceptance of what Obama called Iran’s “equities.”

Chasing the Dragon by Peter Schweizer

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17026/chasing-the-dragon

[The Biden Executive Order] order reverses a previous directive by the Trump administration last May, which found that “foreign adversaries are increasingly creating and exploiting vulnerabilities in the United States bulk-power system, which provides the electricity that supports our national defense, vital emergency services, critical infrastructure, economy, and way of life.” [Emphasis added.]

These systems are, of course, highly computerized and the Trump administration’s goal was to prevent the Chinese, America’s greatest geo-political and economic rival, from having their hands in it. Biden’s order strips that protection with the stroke of a pen.

So, where was the constituency for allowing the Chinese access to the market for providing critical equipment to run and manage the US power grid? Who was clamoring to undo protections from cyber-warfare directed against America’s power system?

[B]y cancelling the pipeline, Biden is not preventing any energy production of fossil fuels in Canada. He is simply shifting that consumption to China.

Economically, all Biden’s order does is damage America’s energy production and give the US less control of energy markets, and give China greater leverage.

With this one order, on his first day of work, Biden has given the communist government of China… a more favorable market for buying the oil that makes it the top producer of carbon-dioxide in the world. It is difficult to see how such moves, done unilaterally and without negotiating anything at all in return, make sense to the security of the U.S.

The timing alone raises questions about exactly which supporters Joe Biden was making happy.

On his first full day in office, President Joe Biden signed a massive executive order that, among other things, killed the Keystone XL pipeline project. Buried in that same order were two short sentences that will allow the Chinese government to get into the American electrical grid.

Located at Section 7(c), the order reverses a previous directive by the Trump administration last May, which found that “foreign adversaries are increasingly creating and exploiting vulnerabilities in the United States bulk-power system, which provides the electricity that supports our national defense, vital emergency services, critical infrastructure, economy, and way of life.” [Emphasis added.]

Campus Hate Speech and its Use as a Tool Against Opposing Views The first victim in the corruption of academic free speech has been the truth. Richard L. Cravatts

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/campus-hate-speech-and-its-use-tool-against-richard-l-cravatts/

“Everyone is in favor of free speech,” Winston Churchill once wryly observed. “Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.”

Churchill’s prescience is obvious on college campuses today, especially concerning how students, on the one hand, support the general principle of free speech but, when pressed further to reveal their attitudes, admit that certain classes of expression should be suppressed and proscribed—sometimes even punished. On campuses where identity politics has manifested itself in a protected language of victimization and members of historically marginalized” groups seek (and most often receive) protection from criticism and judgment, who may say what about whom is carefully controlled.

Part of that process has involved categorizing speech and deciding what speech is acceptable, which views are not to be challenged, what parameters there are to major issues affecting race, sexuality, religion, and ethnicity, issues with which students grapple on a regular basis. In their zeal to purge from campus any dissenting views which question the prevailing orthodoxies, students quickly learn how to use the status as a member of a victim group to insulate themselves from critique and opprobrium.

In that process, a new tactic has emerged, namely, the designation of certain expression of being what is called “hate speech,” a contrived category of speech that has the effect of making some views beyond the moral pale, outside of acceptable standards for dialogue, thoughts that, by their very nature, are to be prohibited and labeled as not deserving of First Amendment protection.

Greenfield Video: Incitement, Insurrection, and the Fascist Crackdown on Conservatives Dems and media launch an unprecedented campaign to stifle dissent.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/greenfield-video-incitement-insurrection-and-frontpagemagcom/

This new webinar features Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow with the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He researches Islamic terrorism, left-wing radicalism, and the decline of the free world.

Daniel discusses Incitement, Insurrection, and the Fascist Crackdown on Conservatives, unveiling how The Democrats and the media are launching an unprecedented campaign to eliminate the political opposition. 

Don’t miss it!

New European Study Recommends a Punish-Israel Strategy And ignores Palestinian-Arab terror. Joseph Puder

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/lovatt-eu-and-israel-joseph-puder/

Hugh Lovatt, a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), wrote a study titled “The End of Oslo: A New European Strategy on Israel-Palestine.” A British Arabist, Lovett has deliberately ignored in his study Palestinian-Arab terror; not a word of it is mentioned in his lengthy December, 2020 report. Nor, for that matter, does he mention Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip that left Palestinians some valuable economic assets. Israel was repaid by its gesture of “de-occupation” with Palestinian (Hamas) terror, and rocket fire aimed at Israel’s population centers.

Lovatt praised the European Union (EU) for blocking Donald Trump’s peace plan, and for allegedly frustrating Israel’s de Jure “annexation of Palestinian territory.” The late Eugene Rostow, who served as the Dean of Yale Law School, and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs under President Lyndon Johnson, established that Israel has as much right to the West Bank as Palestinians do. Moreover, Israeli settlements, or more correctly, Israeli communities, are perfectly legal under international law.

Lovatt’s principal recommendations are “de-occupation and legal rights.” He pointed out that if Israel continues to block a two-state outcome, “A one state reality of open-ended occupation and unequal rights continue to take hold – bearing the hallmark of modern-day apartheid.” Lovatt must know that almost 95% of the Palestinians live in area A and B, which is controlled and ruled by the Palestinian Authority (PA). The PA, not Israel, is controlling the lives of these Palestinians. The question of equal rights should then be addressed to the PA. When it comes to life, limb, and property of Palestinians in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) or in East Jerusalem (non-Israeli citizens), Israel is protective of their civil and human rights, and the Israeli Supreme Court has adjudicated more often than not in favor of Palestinians. Dealing with Palestinian terrorists, is however another matter. Israel is committed to the protection of its people’s lives.