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Ruth King

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Why A Country That Accepts All Comers Isn’t A Country At All Nations, not unlike families, need to have some sense of identity, even purpose. When a group of people is defined as everyone and anyone, that actually means that it is no one.By Mark Earley

By on October 31st, 2018

http://thefederalist.com/2018/10/31/country-accepts-comers-isnt-country/

A group 7,000 strong marches northward toward our southern border. I confess to mixed feelings. We should give asylum-seekers a fair shot, since our compassion toward those in tough spots is a bedrock American value. However, we should reject the idea of inclusivity at all costs. That’s not just about national security, it’s also about culture.

Exclusivity is necessary for meaning, identity, and accountability. A constant refrain during the 2016 election cycle, and again with the caravan, is some iteration of the following: without borders, we don’t have a nation. Despite the flawed vessel, this obviously resonated, and it’s fair to say that while simple, the concept is profound.

Perhaps this resonated precisely because we’re in a time where basic questions about immigration and nationhood are in question. Earlier this year, the Democratic National Committee deputy chairman was seen wearing a shirt that said “I don’t believe in borders” in Spanish. Taking it at face value, it would appear that he doesn’t get the possibility that exclusivity and borders could actually give meaning and hold some cultural benefits.

The principle of exclusivity is critical to properly understanding relationships and institutions, and it is what allows for meaning, community, accountability, and some sense of identity. These are the things that allow a culture to form and flourish. Relationships or communities of real meaning require commonality. It can be commonality of interests, beliefs, values, covenant, or even simply time. This is true for institutions — marriages, families, friend groups, and nations.

Marriages are perhaps the most obvious example. With exclusion, the marriage works. It flourishes. It facilitates depth, vulnerability, accountability, and reliance. It allows for healthy sex and child rearing. Without exclusion, it is broken. It loses its essence and its unique character that provides reliability for the community. For families, and to a lesser extent friend groups, their power is in their exclusivity.

The idea that a nation should be exclusive is currently being challenged in the public mind and square. Why would a nation need to be based, as least in part, on a principle of exclusivity? It is because nations, not unlike families, need to have some sense of identity, even purpose. When a group of people is defined as everyone and anyone, that actually means that it is no one. If everyone comes and goes as he pleases, there is a void of identity, collective belonging, commitment, responsibility, and accountability. Citizenship is a commitment.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

If You Want to Save the Planet, Drop the Campaign Against Capitalism by Andrew Glover

By on October 31st, 2018

https://quillette.com/2018/10/29/if-you-want-to

This month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report concluding that it is all but inevitable that overall global warming will exceed the 1.5 degree Celsius limit dictated in the 2015 Paris Agreement. The report also discusses the potentially catastrophic consequences of this warming, which include extreme weather events, an accelerated rise in sea levels, and shrinking Arctic sea ice.

In keeping with the well-established trend, political conservatives generally have exhibited skepticism of these newly published IPCC conclusions. That includes U.S. President Donald Trump, who told 60 Minutes, “We have scientists that disagree with [anthropogenic global warming]. You’d have to show me the [mainstream] scientists because they have a very big political agenda.” On Fox News, a commentator argued that “the planet has largely stopped warming over the past 15 years, data shows—and [the IPCC report] could not explain why the Mercury had stopped rising.” Conservative YouTuber Ian Miles Cheong declared flatly that:
Ian Miles Cheong

✔ @stillgray I’m gonna get shit for this, but here goes.Climate change is a hoax invented by neo-Marxists within the scientific community to destabilize the world economy and dismantle what they call “systems of oppression” and what the rest of us call capitalism.

This pattern of conservative skepticism on climate change is so well-established that many of us now take it for granted. But given conservatism’s natural impulse toward protecting our heritage, one might think that conservatives would be just as concerned with preserving order in the natural environment as they are with preserving order in our social and political environments. Ensuring that subsequent generations can live well is ordinarily a core concern for conservatives.

To this, conservatives might (and do) counter that they are merely pushing back against environmental extremists who seek to leverage the cause of global warming as a means to expand government, eliminate hierarchies of wealth, and reorganize society along social lines. And while most environmentally conscious citizens harbor no such ambitions, there is a substantial basis for this claim. Indeed, some environmentalists are forthright in seeking to implement the principles of “ecosocialism.” Meteorologist and self-described ecosocialist Eric Holthaus, for instance, responded to the IPCC report by declaring that:
Eric Holthaus ✔ @EricHolthaus
If you are wondering what you can do about climate change:The world’s top scientists just gave rigorous backing to systematically dismantle capitalism as a key requirement to maintaining civilization and a habitable planet.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Upholding the Jihadist’s Veto by Jacob Mchangama and Flemming Rose

By on October 31st, 2018

https://quillette.com/2018/10/30/upholding

In his provocative essay The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine didn’t mince words on Christianity. ”What is it the Bible teaches us?” he asked, and answered: ”rapine, cruelty and murder. What is it the New Testament teaches us?—to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.”

In 1819, the English deist Richard Carlile was convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to two years in prison for selling the Age of Reason.

Today Tom Paine is celebrated as one of the Enlightenment’s foremost champions of human rights. But even 200 years after his conviction Carlile might not have been vindicated had he been able to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights. In a recent ruling, the Court upheld the conviction of an Austrian citizen for an ”abusive attack on the Prophet of Islam which could stir up prejudice and threaten religious peace” for denouncing the Prophet Muhammad as a “pedophile.” The Court insisted that the comments could arouse “justified indignation” in religious believers who have a right to have their religious feelings protected. Moreover, states have wide discretion to prevent such “improper attacks on religious groups” in order to ensure social and religious peace. Paine would have been shocked and horrified by such logic. And it is deeply regrettable that the Court declined to revisit its long-held doctrine that the freedoms of religion and speech are conflicting rather than complementary rights.

Paine’s scathing attack on holy scripture was clearly offensive to many Christians—US President Theodore Roosevelt later called Paine “a filthy little Atheist.” But the harsh attacks on the authority of religion by Paine and other Enlightenment figures contributed to a broadening concept of tolerance encompassing both the right to express, critique and reject religious doctrines. So the Court’s insistence that the freedoms of religion and speech are in conflict when the latter is used to attack the former is regressive, however noble the purposes of securing “social peace” and “tolerance.” The Court’s reasoning is ultimately based on protecting the secular aim of peaceful co-existence rather than religious doctrine. But the underlying idea that expressions offensive to religious dogma constitute a threat to the social and religious peace of society has deep roots stretching back centuries.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China Has Landed By Christopher R. O’Dea

By on October 31st, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/china-global-maritime-commerce-ambitions-us-must-respond/

Beijing’s ambitious campaign to dominate global maritime commerce is in full swing. Here’s how the U.S. must respond.

In a speech at the Hudson Institute earlier this month, Vice President Mike Pence said that the American people deserve to know of the strategy behind China’s economic and political competition with the U.S. — and of what the Trump administration is doing to counter the Middle Kingdom’s challenge to U.S. security.

“Beijing is employing a whole-of-government approach, using political, economic, and military tools, as well as propaganda, to advance its influence and benefit its interests in the United States,” Pence said, and “applying this power in more proactive ways than ever before, to exert influence and interfere in the domestic policy and politics of our country.”

While the vice president was speaking of the U.S., the American people also deserve to know that China is employing the same playbook beyond our shores, with considerable success. In effect, China has landed, not only by militarizing artificial islands it built in the South China Sea, but by building or acquiring seaports, logistics terminals, and related transportation, communication, and energy assets in more than a dozen countries around the globe, including U.S. allies in the EU and Latin America.

Unlike the high-profile takeover of an American technology company by a Chinese one, the threat to U.S. security posed by China’s new maritime network is all too easy to overlook. Although 90 percent of the world’s energy, commodities, and manufactured goods are transported by ship, few consumers have any direct exposure to shipping or the logistical operations that comprise the “supply chain” of our globalized economy.

But maritime commerce is the operating system of that economy, running constantly in the background in much the same way the operating system of a smartphone powers apps. Control of the components of the system — ports, terminals, and the roads and railways that connect ships to stores — gives China significant leverage over the essential economic functions of the countries where those assets are located.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

It’s Not Unreasonable to Be Worried about Disease and the Caravan By Michelle Malkin

By on October 31st, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/its-not-unreasonable-to-be-worried-about-disease-and-the-caravan/

We shouldn’t turn a blind eye to this problem.

We live in bizarro times. Suddenly, it is controversial to state obvious, neon-bright truths. This week, it has become newsworthy to observe that illegal border-crossers who circumvent required medical screenings are a threat to America’s public health and safety.

Just look at these hyperventilating headlines and tweets.

From Newsweek, which is supposed to, you know, report actual news of the week: “‘We don’t know what people have’: Laura Ingraham calls migrant caravan a health issue.”

And from the Daily Beast: “Fox & Friends Host Brian Kilmeade Fears ‘Diseases’ Brought by Migrant Caravan.”

This is not “news.” It’s propaganda recycled and regurgitated by lazy political operatives masquerading as journalists. At least the Newsweek writer gave credit to his zealous hitmen sources: “Ingraham’s comments,” he dutifully wrote, “were first highlighted by Media Matters for America.”

MMfA is a militant left-wing oppo-research outfit funded by progressive billionaire George Soros. Somehow, not-really-Newsweek forgot to mention this fact. (Alas, mentioning Soros subsidies has also become a forbidden act this week, but that’s another story.) The determined intent of these “news” pieces is not to inform readers but to inflame them with the dog-whistle assumption that conservatives, Fox personalities, and ordinary Americans who worry about diseases from immigration are de facto racists.

On cue, tennis star and celebrity leftist Martina Navratilova barked at Fox News’s Kilmeade on Twitter: “YOU ARE THE DISEASE! the migrants are not the problem, trump and his sycophants, like you, are the problem. Stop spewing fear and prejudice.”

Comedian John Henson tweeted: “Brian Kilmeade is spreading the disease of intolerance every single day . . .”

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Would the American left suborn an invasion? By Robert Arvay

By on October 31st, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/10/would_the_american_left_suborn_an_invasion.html

Sometime in the 1960s, as I recall, a prominent person in the news made the sarcastic statement that if an enemy invasion army were to land on our shores, the ACLU would meet the soldiers on the beaches to protect their rights. The ACLU quickly protested, averring that, patriots all, they would do no such thing. Being a parody writer myself, I once wrote a fictional piece about the Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7, 1941) in which an ACLU lawyer sought an injunction against American armed resistance. He stated, “As soon as those Japanese aircraft entered American airspace, their pilots were entitled to the full protections of the United States Constitution, including the presumption of innocence until proven guilty in a court of law.”

Today, we are living parody. A massive parade of foreign nationals is marching toward our border, its members openly proclaiming that they intend to illegally enter our country. They have already stormed and breached the southern border of Mexico in a glaring preview of their defiance of law, so they are clearly to be believed.

And where is the American political left? Are leftists decrying the violation of our national sovereignty? Are they demanding that our government protect its citizens from encroachment? Of course not. They are the parody. They of the left are seeking ways in which to prevent the administration from doing any of that.

This is President Trump’s PATCO moment. Remember that? Soon after President Ronald Reagan took office, in 1981, members of the unionized left organized a strike of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization. They were adamant that their demands be met, or else PATCO would shut down all air traffic in the United States. Reagan gave the union members 48 hours in which to return to work or be irrevocably fired. You can’t do that, the striking controllers jeered. Twenty-four hours later, they were all fired, and not one of those who continued the illegal strike has been rehired. Shortly afterward, PATCO ceased to exist.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Don Lemon: ‘Biggest Terror Threat Is White Men on the Right’ By Tyler O’Neil

By on October 31st, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/video/don-lemon-we-have-to-stop-demonizing-people-but-biggest-terror-threat-is-white-men-on-the-right/

On Tuesday night, CNN’s Don Lemon urged people to stop demonizing “any one group or any one ethnicity” and, in the very same breath, stigmatized “white men … radicalized to the right” as “the biggest terror threat in this country.” So, conservative white men are not “any one group or any one ethnicity”? Oh, right, according to “intersectionality,” we’re not people!

CNN’s Chris Cuomo was discussing the horrific shooting of two black people at a Kroger in Kentucky. The suspect reportedly targeted a black church first, but could not get in, thank God. Ironically, the same CNN commentators who would avoid rushing to judgment if a shooter were a different race or Muslim immediately rushed to stigmatize white men.

“I keep trying to point out to people not to demonize any one group or any one ethnicity, but we keep thinking that the biggest terror threat is something else, some people who are marching towards the border like it’s imminent,” Lemon said.

“So, we have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right,” Lemon declared.

“And we have to start doing something about them,” he added. “There is no travel ban on them. There is no ban — they had the Muslim ban — there is no ‘white guy’ ban.”

What exactly is Don Lemon suggesting? Should government go after conservative white men?

Furthermore, forcing both of the most heinous terrorism attempts in recent weeks into this narrative proves quite a strain. The man who killed 11 people at the Pittsburgh synagogue hated Donald Trump — because Trump is a friend to Jews. The man who attempted to send bombs to Democrats was half-Filipino and self-identified as a Native American. If liberals want to stigmatize “whiteness,” they’re going to run into the same problem white supremacists do — defining “white” is far from easy.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Montage: Liberals Call for Dialed Down Rhetoric, Then Brand Trump Evil, Nazi, Worse Than ISIS By Tyler O’Neil

By on October 31st, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/video/montage-liberals-call-for-dialed-down-rhetoric-then-brand-trump-evil-nazi-worse-than-isis/

In the wake of the attempting bombing of various Democrats, liberal commentators have rightly called for the dialing down of divisive rhetoric. However, they have refused to lead by example, instead repeatedly demonizing President Donald Trump in the most radical terms.

Grabien put together a montage of the worst comments uttered by liberal commentators in recent days.

Among the highlights:

“This president has radicalized so many more people that ISIS ever did,” said Julia Ioffe (she later apologized, but went on to say “a silent majority” of Trump supporters think racism is okay).

“The biggest terror threat in this country is white men radicalized on the right,” said CNN’s Don Lemon.

“The same type of propaganda that you would have seen in Germany in 1938 [under Adolf Hitler], the dehumanization, turning people into infested vermin,” said former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt.

“Evil, nasty authoritarianism,” decried Howard Dean.

Steve Schmidt again: Trump’s “erratic behavior, his ignorance, could pose a profound danger to every single person in this country and literally every inhabitant of the planet earth.”

Yet more Schmidt: “This whole caravan in the last week of the election is a giant lie. This is Trump’s Reichstag fire,” a reference to Hitler’s disgusting tactic of blaming the Jews for setting the German parliament on fire when Nazis did it.

“We’re going to see if his reign lasts for 30 days or two years, or a thousand-year reich,” said legal analyst Elie Mystal, referencing Hitler’s propaganda that his would be a “thousand-year reich.”

“It’s not even a question of whether it’s presidential behavior or not, it’s not minimally human behavior,” said MSNBC analyst John Heilemann. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Why Did Media And Democrats Abandon Their Investigation Into Brett Kavanaugh? If Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is really a rapist and sexual assailant, as Democrats and media claimed, shouldn’t the story continue to be covered?By Mollie Hemingway

By on October 31st, 2018

http://thefederalist.com/2018/10/31/why-did-media-and-democrats-abandon-their-investigation-into-brett-kavanaugh/

What happened to the multiple allegations of sexual misconduct levied against Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation battle? The claims ranged from Christine Blasey Ford’s remotely plausible if unsubstantiated allegation of a violent attempted rape to Michael Avenatti’s completely outlandish and also unsubstantiated allegation of hosting serial gang rape parties.

From September 12 to October 6, the claims absolutely dominated all major media. They ran on the front pages of all major newspapers and filled the hours on cable and network news. Magazine journalists at The New Yorker ran with the claims, despite massive corroboration problems.

The claims were taken so seriously by the media and some U.S. senators it led to serious delays of the confirmation voting process. A hearing was held during and after which all the talking heads on cable asserted Blasey Ford was completely “credible.” Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, even maneuvered to reopen an FBI investigation to dig into the claims. Then they disappeared. Overnight.

The argument for delaying the confirmation process indefinitely was that everyone needed time to investigate the allegations. The argument underlying the media coverage was that these allegations were “credible” and needed to be investigated and reported on given the importance of the lifetime position for which Kavanaugh was nominated. The allegations were hitting in the midst of the Me Too movement, which claims to address sexual assault by powerful men. It should be noted that for a claim to be declared “credible,” it doesn’t need to be verified or have any substantiating evidence but merely that journalists and pundits “believe” it or find it possible.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Democrats Struggle to Confront Trump-Era Reality Jason L. Riley

By on October 31st, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-struggle-to-confront-trump-era-reality-1540937012

Come Tuesday, we’ll find out whether Democrats have learned anything from Hillary Clinton’s shocking defeat two Novembers ago. No, Donald Trump isn’t on the ballot this time, but that’s a technicality. There’s no doubt these midterm elections are about our current president.

Two years ago Mrs. Clinton focused to the max on her opponent’s character flaws and then famously extended those criticisms to his supporters, the “deplorables.” What the Clinton campaign missed is that voters in battleground states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were well aware of Mr. Trump’s shortcomings but had different priorities. While she was harping on his behavior, he was harping on the issues they cared about most. Mrs. Clinton lost because millions of people who had supported Barack Obama refused to back her and swung to Mr. Trump.

There’s no shortage of liberals who remain in denial about why Mrs. Clinton lost and who refuse to accept the outcome. Instead, they credit Mr. Trump’s triumph to James Comey or Russian interference or white nationalists. The question is whether Democratic candidates in the current cycle have accepted political reality, and the answer is that it depends. Last Friday found Mr. Obama campaigning for Democrats in Detroit and Milwaukee, two places Mrs. Clinton gave short shrift in 2016. He seems to understand that it was the Democratic nominee’s flawed campaign strategy, not the alt-right, that cost her the election.

Similarly, Democrats running for Senate seats in states Mr. Trump carried have used the final weeks of the campaign to focus on issues rather than the president’s Twitter feed. In Arizona, Florida and Missouri Democratic candidates have been talking nonstop about health care, a top concern for voters in both parties. Four years ago, ObamaCare’s unpopularity helped to defeat incumbent Democrats in red states like Arkansas and Louisiana and deliver control of the Senate to Republicans. But support for the law has risen steadily since Mr. Obama left office, and Democrats now see an opening. The upshot is that voters in some parts of the country are being treated to a substantive debate about the costs and merits of single-payer health care and how best to insure people with pre-existing conditions. This is progress.

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