The Fatal Attraction Of Faction Gary M. Galles

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/08/28/the-fatal-attraction-of-faction/

So far, 2020 has been a dystopian nightmare from George Washington’s perspective. He was once “first in war, first in peace, and first in the minds of his countrymen,” as Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee eulogized him. But now statues of Washington are being toppled, damaged and defaced.

Our first president, who paid careful attention to setting precedents that might allow America not to only survive, but to “live long and prosper,” would find such acts nearly a mirror image of his hopes for what could make our experiment in liberty last. How do we know? Just look at his emphatic warnings to do everything possible to avoid the violence of faction in his 1796 farewell address in contrast to the violence of faction that has played out on our city streets.  

Washington offered “sentiments which are the result of much reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, and which appear to me all-important to the permanency of your felicity as a people.” In particular, he insisted that we keep “indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest.”

One of the expedients of party to acquire influence … is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other[s]. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection.

Is The Coronavirus Crisis Finally Over?

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/08/28/is-the-coronavirus-crisis-finally-over/

Much of America has been in some phase or another of a lockdown since the middle of March. Most of us want to know when we can return to normal. But the officials who have cooped us up, shut down businesses, ruined personal finances, outlawed gatherings, and created an environment of fear won’t tell us when we’ll be free of their grip. To call our situation discouraging is to understate the case.

Numbers from the Centers for Disease Control’s most recently posted data set are reason for optimism, though. The chart below shows the most current figures available, through the week of Aug. 15.

The blue bars that indicate overall weekly deaths, which have been inflated due to COVID-19 fatalities, have almost converged with the roughly horizontal line that shows the average expected number of deaths. The two are the closest they have been since March 21, right after the pandemic lockdowns. Based on the trend, we should expect the bars and the baseline to fully converge when the newest data set is released next week. In other words, back to normal.

An Open Letter to Julia Louis-Dreyfus Reconsider your stand if you consider yourself anything of an advocate for the people. Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/open-letter-julia-louis-dreyfus-bruce-bawer/

Dear Julia,

To begin with, though I found Watching Ellie stunningly bad, though The New Adventures of Old Christine left a bad taste in my mouth, and though I’ve never been able to get into Veep (which feels to me hopelessly derivative of better one-camera comedy series like Curb Your Enthusiasm), I still have a residual fondness of you based on your performance as Elaine in Seinfeld. So I was dismayed to learn that you were lending your talents to the fourth and final night of this year’s Democratic National Convention. And sure enough, even as the rioters and vandals and anarchists were destroying Portland, Oregon, and other cities under the twin banners of Black Lives Matter and Antifa – the former of which the Democratic Party openly celebrates and the latter of which they refuse to condemn – there you were on our screens, as big as life, flashing a bright smile and acting as if absolutely none of these horrors were taking place.

No, instead of acknowledging the madness in the streets, you stood there, describing yourself as “a loyal union member, a passionate climate activist, and a patriotic Democrat,” heaping hyperbolic praise on Michelle Obama (“joking” that her speech had been so spectacular that there’d be a fifth convention night on which it would be re-run “on a loop”) and Kamala “Lock-‘Em-Up” Harris (“She was fabulous!” you gushed), and implying, with a breathtakingly irresponsible gag about Putin, that the disgusting lies about Trump-Russia collusion, now known to have been concocted by crooked leaders of the Obama Administration in what may turn out to be the most scandalous top-down betrayal of the U.S. Constitution on record, were, in fact, true.

Then there was that special moment that you led up to with this ardent declamation:

Here’s the big question. How much of your time and energy are you willing to devote to elect Joe Biden?

Charles Jacobs Video: The Failure of Jewish Leadership Today The leadership of major Jewish organizations is failing to protect the community. Why?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/charles-jacobs-video-failure-jewish-leadership-frontpagemagcom/

This video is brought to you by a Freedom Center-Glazov Gang collaboration on a new exclusive webinar series, Teach-Ins for the Twenty-First Century. Join us as some of the leading thinkers and pundits on the scene today discuss key issues related to the coronavirus pandemic and its ongoing implications, confronting the Left, the jihad terror threat, and much, much more. And make sure to ask your own questions of our experts.

Hosted by Anni Cyrus, producer of The Glazov Gang and Founder of Live Up To Freedom.

This new webinar features Dr. Charles Jacobs, the president of Americans for Peace and Tolerance,

Charles discusses The Failure of Jewish Leadership Today, unveiling how the leadership of major Jewish organizations is failing to protect the community. And he answers the question: Why?

Don’t miss it!

Black-Only Student Housing on NYU Campus? Welcome to racial self-segregation in the age of post-oppression. Jason D. Hill

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/black-only-student-housing-nyu-campus-jason-d-hill/

In yet another gesture of shameful appeasement to racist demands by black students for yet more racial self-segregation in the Age of Post-Oppression, New York University recently opened negotiations with students to create black resident floors on campus next year. A “themed engagement floor” for black students is being advanced by a group called “Black Violets NYU.” The group has complained that the overwhelming presence of white students has made it difficult for black students “to connect.” Black Violets has also called for more black professors in its politics department, and for the creation of a black student lounge on campus.

In June of this year, students at Rice University had demanded that the University fund a “non-residential Black House” on campus. They also wanted a statue of the university’s founder removed. Other demands included that new students’ requests for black roommates be met during orientation weeks. This demand is clearly at odds with federal civil rights laws. Other demands included that course descriptions have tags indicating what race and ethnic groups are involved, since  several course titles did not make it clear if diverse perspectives were offered in their course materials. 

We must jog our memories and remember that in June, 2017 Harvard University held separate commencement ceremonies for black graduate students. One hundred and twenty students attended the third LatinX commencement ceremony replete with Latin music. Emory University and Henry College held diversity and inclusion year-end ceremonies. The University of Delaware joined a growing list with “Lavender” graduations.

There is no doubt that by the time this article is published there will be a multiplicity of schools meeting mostly new black students’ demands for special black student lounges, all-black dorms, black seating spaces in cafeterias, and more spaces such as we witnessed at Evergreen University — where white people are absent for days so black students can have a time on campus to feel special as black people. What next? All black libraries with only black authors, black gyms, black professors teaching only black students to avoid the racial trauma of being taught by a white instructor? If you think this is hyperbolic, observe that one of the demands made by the black students at Rice University is that the school hire more black counselors and therapists, and that they be trained in how to handle racial trauma.  

China’s ‘Debt-Trap’ Diplomacy with Third-World Nations by Lawrence A. Franklin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16396/china-debt-trap-diplomacy

Chinese Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping’s grand thoroughfares are now global in scope, extending as far as Djibouti, a strategic maritime chokepoint in Africa, just west of the Arabian Peninsula, or Ecuador, home to South America’s third-largest oil reserves.

The economic benefits, however, of some of these deals between China and poor “Third World” countries in Africa and Latin America are questionable. A few of these bilateral packages appear contrived to imprison already impoverished states into realms of permanent economic vassalage to China.

The objectives of China’s global BRI programs are clearly as much strategic and political as they are economic. BRI projects seem not designed so much to win new friends as to win new dependents, especially in areas either neglected by the West or in the Western sphere of influence.

The ultimate objective of the global dimension of China’s BRI enterprise appears to be geared toward replacing the existing political, military and economic dimension of the West’s liberal democratic order — again not surprisingly — with one dominated solely by the Communist Party of China.

Chinese Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping’s signature foreign policy proposal has been the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) commercial and strategic program. At first, the network was pitched as a restoration of the ancient overland trade route, the “Silk Road,” that linked China to Europe. This “New Silk Road,” like its predecessor, would traverse the vast steppes of Central Asia — but the contemporary BRI is allegedly meant to serve also as an economic boon for all the countries along the route.

Will Trump’s Long Courtship of Black Voters Work? By Julie Kelly • August 27, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/08/27/will-trumps-long-courtship-of-black-voters-work/

If so, it will mark Donald Trump’s greatest political achievement—at least equal to his stunning 2016 victory—potentially destabilizing the Democratic Party’s most faithful constituency in the future.

Democrats are panicking—and not just because their presidential candidate isn’t up to the task of running for president let alone running the country.

No, Democrats are fearful that Donald Trump’s four-year courtship of black voters will reap electoral dividends in November. “Both campaigns tell me that there is a chance that Donald Trump could overperform with African American men,” NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd admitted this week. “It’s a concern of the Biden campaign and it’s a focus of the Trump campaign.”

While Todd blamed Trump for “stoking racial tensions” in an attempt to win back suburban voters, the fact is that no other Republican president or candidate has worked harder to earn the long-elusive support of black Americans. “What have you got to lose?” Trump memorably asked black voters during a rally in August 2016. “You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?”

Trump’s gauntlet was both a backhanded slap at the country’s first black president and a promise that he would do better. Turns out, it wasn’t empty campaign sloganeering; from negotiating a rare moment of bipartisanship to pass the First Step Act in 2018 to hosting the first-ever Young Black Leadership Summit at the White House, President Trump and his family have had some success in dismantling the partisan barrier between blacks and the Republican Party.

President Trump Offers a Choice Between Loving and Destroying America The “People’s President” gives Americans back their country. Will they take it? Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/president-trump-offers-choice-between-loving-and-daniel-greenfield/

When President Trump walked down the staircase to the strains of Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA, followed by chants of, “USA, USA”, it was not only a callback to his famous escalator moment, no longer at Trump Tower, but at the White House, but a contrast between the parties.

“How can the Democratic party lead our country when they spend so much time tearing down our country?” President Trump asked.

Where the DNC had the feel of some long zoom session in a liberal suburb where everyone works from home and tries to keep up with the latest politically correct trends, the RNC was unapologetically physical and patriotic, its speakers embraced the great landmarks and trademarks of the nation, demonstrating that you can be diverse without destroying America.

The final night of the RNC wasn’t just a powerful antidote to the DNC, or even to the mainstream media alone, but to the hypocritical totalitarianism and the corporate buzzwords that we have been drowning in since the winter gave way to the spring, and to fear and violence.

President Trump and the array of speakers for the fourth night did not deny that we are a nation in crisis, instead they lit a torch to light the nation’s way out of the tyranny of terror and lies. 

Former NFL Star Jack Brewer Scores Touchdown in Stunning Defense of Trump and the GOP By Megan Fox

https://pjmedia.com/election/megan-fox/2020/08/27/jack-brewer-scores-touchdown-in-stunning-defense-of-president-trump-and-the-republican-party-at-rnc-n852998

Former NFL star Jack Brewer delivered one of the best speeches of the night on Wednesday. He absolutely destroyed the “Republicans are racist” lie that Democrats run on every election. He began by describing the racism he saw as a child and scolded people for comparing the KKK to Republicans.

I remember my dad’s bravery when he personally stood up against a KKK rally in my town. In my house, my father taught me to back down from no one. I know what racism looks like, I’ve seen it firsthand. In America, it has no resemblance to President Trump and I’m fed up with the way he’s portrayed in the media, who refuse to acknowledge what he’s actually done for the black community.

Then Brewer launched into the refusal of black people who vote for Democrats to wake up, even when faced with the fact that mass incarceration was a Democrat strategy. He also confronted the “Fine People Hoax” head-on and called the media liars.

5 Things to Know About Night 4 of the Republican National Convention: Trump’s Powerful Speech By Tyler O’Neil

https://pjmedia.com/election/tyler-o-neil/2020/08/27/5-things-to-know-about-night-4-of-the-republican-national-convention-trumps-powerful-speech-n856943

The Republican National Convention (RNC) was absolutely incredible, especially after the Democrats’ Gaslighting America Telethon. Each night had inspiring moments, but Thursday closed out the convention with Ann Dorn (widow of David Dorn), Alice Marie Johnson, and Stacia Brightmon, a formerly homeless mother who found her way to a career thanks to an apprenticeship program championed by President Donald Trump. Trump himself closed out the night with a mammoth speech on the gorgeous White House South Lawn.

The Republicans blew the Democrats out of the water. After the Democratic National Convention, Trump — not Democratic nominee Joe Biden — got a poll boost. The president’s numbers are only likely to rise even higher after this powerful convention. After all, since Democrats didn’t delve into their policies at their convention, Republicans got the chance to define Joe Biden as a candidate.

Here are 5 things to know about the final night.