The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America Kindle Edition by Victor Davis Hanson

Human history is full of the stories of peasants, subjects, and tribes. Yet the concept of the “citizen” is historically rare—and was among America’s most valued ideals for over two centuries. But without shock treatment, warns historian Victor Davis Hanson, American citizenship as we have known it may soon vanish.

In The Dying Citizen, Hanson outlines the historical forces that led to this crisis. The evisceration of the middle class over the last fifty years has made many Americans dependent on the federal government. Open borders have undermined the idea of allegiance to a particular place. Identity politics have eradicated our collective civic sense of self. And a top-heavy administrative state has endangered personal liberty, along with formal efforts to weaken the Constitution.

As in the revolutionary years of 1848, 1917, and 1968, 2020 ripped away our complacency about the future. But in the aftermath, we as Americans can rebuild and recover what we have lost. The choice is ours.

The Sussmann Indictment Is A Window Into Establishment Corruption

https://thefederalist.com/2021/09/27/the-sussmann-indictment-is-a-window-into-establishment-corruption/

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky and Senior Editor Chris Bedford to discuss his book “A Republic Under Assault: The Left’s Ongoing Attack on American Freedom” and how the deep state used corruption to attack former President Donald Trump.

“It wasn’t even just reporting material that they should have known was bad,” Fitton said. “It was: they wanted to put people in jail that they had a political distaste for and, in the case of [Paul] Manafort, they wanted to kneecap the Trump campaign by going after his campaign manager,” Fitton said.

The corporate media, Fitton said, is one of the largest culprits in this scheme and shouldn’t get away with their malfeasance.

“This idea that journalists deserve special protection from the laws that govern the rest of us is as objectionable as the idea that, you know, Hillary Clinton shouldn’t be prosecuted because she lost the presidency and leave her alone,” Fitton said. “This is garbage. Garbage ethics.”

UK Court’s Dangerous Reversal on Puberty Blockers for Minors

http://dev.ruthinstitute.org/

A recent United Kingdom Appeals Court decision to allow puberty blockers for children was “ill-considered and dangerous,” said Ruth Institute President Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.

The court reversed a 2020 ruling that those under 16 lack the capacity to give informed consent to potentially life-changing drugs, which stop the onset of puberty.

The court, while acknowledging “the difficulties and complexities” of the issue, nevertheless held that “it is for the clinicians to exercise their judgement knowing how important it is that consent [from a minor] is properly obtained according to the individual circumstances.”

Morse called this absurd. “You’re going to rely on a ‘gender-identity’ clinic, which makes money from dispensing these drugs, to assure that consent is properly obtained from a child?”

Morse noted that Keira Bell, the original plaintiff, was given hormone blockers at age 16 after just three one-hour sessions at the Tavistock clinic. She was later prescribed testosterone and had a double mastectomy at 20. Now, at 23, she is in the process of de-transitioning.

Bell said that when she began trying to reverse the process, “it was heartbreaking to realize I’d gone down the wrong path.” The drugs she started taking at 16 “irreparably damaged” her body and likely left her sterile.

“This ruling doesn’t address the fact that the previous court described these so-called gender affirmation treatments as ‘experimental,’” Morse noted. “This court ignored the seriously under-studied, long-term consequences of puberty blockers. If adults don’t fully know what these powerful hormonal interventions do to a young person’s body, how do we expect someone under age 16 to know?

“You can’t drive, vote, or enlist in the military in the United Kingdom when you’re under 16. But, according to ‘trans’ activists, minors have the maturity and discernment to take drugs that could radically alter their body chemistry in preparation for chemical castration and surgical alteration in the future. Something is clearly wrong here.”

The Ruth Institute is a global non-profit organization, leading an international interfaith coalition to defend the family and build a civilization of love.

Arizona 2020 Vote Audit Finds Potentially Election-Shifting Numbers Of Illegal Ballots By Margot Cleveland

https://thefederalist.com/2021/09/27/arizona-2020-vote-audit-finds-potentially-election-shifting-numbers-of-illegal-ballots/

While the reports made several significant findings supporting former President Trump’s complaints about the 2020 election, the corporate media ignored those aspects of the audit.

On Friday, the Arizona State Senate released the final reports on the results of the Maricopa County Forensic Election Audit. While the reports made several significant findings supporting former President Trump’s complaints about the 2020 election, the corporate media ignored those aspects of the audit to focus instead only on the results of the hand recount.

As broadly reported, the audit established “there were no substantial differences between the hand count of the ballots provided and the official canvass results for the County.” Maricopa County, which represents Arizona’s most populous county thanks to its county seat of Phoenix, had provided Biden a 45,000-vote advantage in the state, propelling Biden to a victory by 10,457 votes. So the media presented the recount as confirming Biden’s victory in the state.

Left unmentioned, however, were the numerous findings of problems with the election and, most significantly, evidence indicating tens of thousands of ballots were illegally cast or counted. A report entitled “Compliance with Election Laws and Procedures,” issued by Senate Audit Liaison Ken Bennett, highlighted several issues, of which two were particularly significant because of the number of votes involved.

First, Bennett excerpted the Arizona statutory provisions governing early ballots. Those provisions require early ballots to be accompanied by a signed affidavit in which the voter declares he is registered in the appropriate county and has not already voted. The statute further mandates that a voter “make and sign the affidavit,” and directs the early election board to check the voter’s affidavit.

Significantly, “if the affidavit is insufficient, the vote shall not be allowed.” The secretary of state’s Election Procedures Manual reinforces this point, stating: “If the early ballot affidavit is not signed, the County Recorder shall not count the ballot.”

Report: Mexican Drug Cartels to Provoke More Clashes Between Migrants and Border Patrol So Biden Will Force More Agents Off the Line By Debra Heine

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/27/report-mexican-drug-cartels-to-provoke-more-clashes-between-migrants-and-border-patrol-so-biden-will-force-more-agents-off-the-line/

After the Biden regime scapegoated Border Patrol agents for doing their job protecting the Texas border last week, Mexican drug cartels have reportedly ordered their smugglers to provoke more confrontations with agents so Democrats and their allies in the media can misconstrue their actions as excessive force, and more agents can be “forced off the line.”

Last week, the entire Democrat-media complex falsely accused Border Patrol agents of whipping Haitian illegal immigrants who were attempting to cross the Rio Grande River into Del Rio, Texas.

These claims were quickly debunked by Border Patrol officials and the photographer who took the pictures. The agents on horseback were using long reins to control their horses,  twirling them to move their horses forward, not to whip migrants.

Photographer Paul Ratje said he and his colleagues never saw them whipping anyone, but nonetheless, activists and elected Democrats—including Joe Biden—eagerly fueled the racially charged lie to deflect blame for border crisis.

“To see people treated like they did, horses barely running over, people being strapped – it’s outrageous,” Biden said, making a whipping motion with his arm. “I promise you, those people will pay. There will be an investigation underway now and there will be consequences. There will be consequences,” he said on Friday.

FOX News correspondent Lara Logan reported on Twitter Monday that according to law enforcement sources in the Rio Grand Valley, two vicious drug trafficking syndicates—the Gulf Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG)—have determined that U.S. Border Patrol agents are “unprotected under the Biden administration.”

“Agents advised there will be no support from Chief Ortiz at the top, they are on their own & to expect things to get much worse,” Logan tweeted. Raul L. Ortiz became the 25th Chief of the United States Border Patrol on August 15, 2021.

Mainstream Democrats Introduce Bill Endangering Israel by Alan M. Dershowitz

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17802/democrats-bill-endangering-israel

This is not an “occupation.” It is legitimate and entirely lawful self-defense. It would be a lie — a blood libel — for the United States to declare Gaza to be occupied territory.

Under international law, a military occupation may continue as long as there is belligerence, as there certainly continues to be.

Had Israeli troops remained, Israel would be criticized. Now that they have left, there is still criticism. For some, Israel can do no right.

Jerusalem is more complicated… These are not occupied territories. Nor is the rest of East Jerusalem which is part of a united city.

Israel twice offered to end its presence in more than 90% of the West Bank in exchange for peace. The Palestinian leadership refused these offers and are thus responsible for the current situation.

The bill proposed by Levin and his fellow Democrats encourages the refusal of Palestinian leaders to negotiate painful compromises that are essential to achieving peace. It also rewards the pay-to-slay and terrorist policies… It sends a dangerous message to Palestinian naysayers: you do not have to negotiate or compromise; the United States will compel Israel to give in to your demands without requiring the Palestinians to negotiate, compromise or give up terrorism.

A far better bill would be one that conditioned reopening the Palestinian embassy on a willingness of the Palestinian leadership to return to the negotiating table and engage in genuine and honest discussions leading toward a peaceful two-state solution that assured security for Israel and autonomy for the West Bank Palestinians. (There can be no solution for Gaza except a military one as long as Hamas remains in charge, and persists in its terrorism and refuses to recognize Israel.)

Just when Congress overwhelmingly defeated an effort by eight radical Democrats and one Republican to defund Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, several “mainstream” Democrats proposed legislation that is equally dangerous and filled with half-truths, omissions and outright fabrications.

Congressman Andy Levin has introduced a bill that purports to further the “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although I favor two states for two peoples, I strongly oppose Levin’s perhaps well-intentioned but ill-conceived bill, because it would destroy any prospect for peace, would reward and encourage terrorism and disincentivize Palestinian leaders from negotiating with Israel.

RINO Studies What happened when California replaced a Dem governor with “girly man” Schwarzenegger. Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/rino-studies-lloyd-billingsley/

With aid from the postal service, illegal voters, and an audit-proof print-your-own-ballot scheme, Gavin Newsom remains at the helm in California. This outcome invites a look back at 2003, when Californians succeeded in replacing a Democrat governor, and what that might mean going forward.

Under Gray Davis, a former assemblyman and state controller, bands were adopting names such as “The Rolling Blackouts.” On October 7, 2003, 55.4 percent of Californians opted to remove Davis and replace him with actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. With 48.58 percent of the vote, he prevailed over more than 100 candidates, including actor Gary Coleman, Arianna Huffington, and pornographer Larry Flint.

The triumphant Schwarzenegger posed with a broom and promised to clean house. He declared war on government employee unions and promised to “blow up the boxes”—the maze of boards and commissions that serve as soft landing spots for washed-up politicians. For the “Governator,” it was just another acting job.

The star of Conan the Barbarian, The Terminator, and Kindergarten Cop quickly abandoned reform and became a strategic ally of left-wing Democrats. Like Harry Tasker’s terrorist foes in True Lies, they were “all bad.”

After Bay Area voters booted State Senator Carole Migden, known for verbally abusing her own staff, Schwarzenegger appointed the Democrat to the waste-management board at $132,000 a year. The Governator, a self-described fiscal conservative, was also a pal of Democrat insider Robert Klein, the wealthy real-estate developer who created the California Housing Finance Agency (CHFA) in 1973. Klein was the backer of the 2004 Proposition 71, which sought $3 billion for embryonic stem cell research.

Tragedy, Therapy, and the Challenge of Jihad The cost of our therapeutic delusions and cultural arrogance. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/tragedy-therapy-and-challenge-jihad-bruce-thornton/

After a year of righteous anger and renewed patriotism, post-9/11 America returned to many of the dysfunctional orthodoxies and bad received wisdom that had helped pave the way for al Qaeda’s success. Foreign policy in particular quickly shifted from punitive kinetic realism to enhance our prestige and create deterrence, to nation-building idealism and cringing “diplomatic outreach.” But this “rules-based international order” foreign-policy thinking itself was a consequence of a long shift in Western culture from tragic realism to therapeutic idealism that permeates our culture and accounts for many of its utopian fantasies.

Twenty years later, the debacle in Afghanistan shows that when it comes to Islam, we are still crippled by our therapeutic delusions.

The tragic view of human life derives from both our Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian roots. It can be summed up in a line from Euripides: “To suffer is necessity for mortals.” We are beings driven by destructive passions and impulses, yet possessing as well conscious minds and free will. We live in a hostile natural world indifferent to our pain and suffering. We are bound by time and vulnerable to change and the consequence of choices that we can’t foresee. Our world is defined by those limits, and no human effort, no philosophy, no social or political order we create can transcend them or our destructive passions.

Modernity is defined by its claims to correct this tragic world through human knowledge, technology, and the progressive improvement of humanity by eliminating those tragic constants that create our misery and suffering. Educate people to know their true best interests, remove or reform tyrannical governments, provide adequate nutrition and health-care, and create freedom and prosperity, then people will become peaceful, free, and tolerant. Pain, suffering, the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” injustice, bigotry, cruelty, hunger, and even emotional pain caused by our own bad choices––remove these tragic conditions of human existence and we can create heaven on earth.

Biden Administration Blocks Rescue of Persecuted Christians from Afghanistan Just as the Obama administration did to the Christians of Syria. Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/biden-administration-blocks-rescue-persecuted-raymond-ibrahim/

The Biden administration is preventing the rescue of persecuted Christian minorities from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, where they face certain and likely gruesome death.

This information surfaced on August 26, 2021, during an interview between Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson on Fox News.  Through his charity, the Nazarene Fund, Beck had managed to charter planes to airlift 5,100 Christians out of Afghanistan and into neighboring nations.  Before long, however, U.S. officials intervened and prevented the escape of a batch of 500 Christians, mostly women and children, who were ordered outside of the airport’s protection zone:  “I have pictures of them pleading to get back through the gate,” Beck continued:

And then I have pictures of blood and body parts and nothing but death in that same area [where they were confined].  We believe that our State Department is directly responsible…  I don’t know how many [of these 500 Christians] survived.  The State Department has blocked us every step of the way.  The State Department and the White House have been the biggest problem.  Everyone else, everyone else, has been working together, putting aside differences and trying to get these people to safety.  The State Department and the White House have blocked us every single step of the way.  In fact, an ambassador was called in Macedonia last night and told not to accept any of these people, as we were trying to get them off of the tarmac here, to keep the airport flowing, and getting these Christians out. We haven’t really been able to move anybody for about 12 hours.  Our mission is now changing greatly.  We have to send people into even greater danger to try to smuggle these Christians out, who are marked not just for death, but to be set on fire alive because they’re converted Christians.

Beck, it should be noted, is not exaggerating.  According to one recent report, “Taliban militants are even pulling people off public transport and killing them on the spot if they’re Christians.”  Similarly, any Afghan caught with a Bible app on their phone is executed.  “How we survive daily only God knows,” a Christian Afghani said earlier this year on condition of anonymity.  “But we are tired of all the death around us.”

Schadenfreude to start the week: Biden and the Dems’ plans are collapsing By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/schadenfreude_to_start_the_week_biden_and_the_dems_plans_are_collapsing.htmlTop Articles By

Only eight months into the Biden presidency, disaster looms for the Democrats, and boy, do they deserve every bit of humiliation and voter repudiation that looks to be in prospect.  Yes, it is almost fourteen months until the midterm election gives the public a chance to correct the electoral results that were proclaimed as genuine, and that’s an eternity in politics.  But two factors give me a fair degree of confidence that the trend we see now will continue and accelerate:

Biden is not going to get more coherent.  He is visibly declining, the victim of his pathologically status-seeking wife, who surely realized that his ongoing dementia made him unsuitable for office.  And his potential replacement is so repulsive that Vice President Harris is kept hidden from the pubic as much as possible.
With the slimmest of congressional vote margins, the Dems have committed themselves to a far-reaching transformation demanded by the far-left faction of the party that would spell doom for the few remaining non-extremists in the party.

Biden’s polls are collapsing.  Becket Adams in the WashEx:

Only 43% of respondents in a survey conducted between Sept. 13–19 believe the phrase “mentally sharp” describes Biden “well.”

This represents an 11-point drop from March, when Pew found 54% of respondents said “mentally sharp” was a fitting descriptor for the president.

On top of the border crisis, cratering approval numbers, infighting among congressional Democrats, incompetent federal health officials bumbling their way through the coronavirus pandemic, and the chaotic, disorderly withdrawal from Afghanistan, there’s also a growing consensus the president is not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Rasmussen finds Trump beating Biden by ten points in a hypothetical rematch.