Making the Term ‘Illegal Aliens’ Disappear Meet the Castro brothers – the Democrats’ Matthew Vadum new Thought Police.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274755/making-term-illegal-aliens-disappear-matthew-vadum

Leftists are fond of summoning the magic of euphemism to make the social problems they create go away.

Like the editors of the Newspeak Dictionary in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, these social engineers define out of existence the atrocities that necessarily grow out of their ideology.

Take Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), who has introduced legislation that would strike “alien” and “illegal alien” from the federal law books and replace them with “foreign national” and “undocumented foreign national.” The lawmaker’s twin brother, Democrat presidential candidate Julian Castro, endorsed the measure.

Rep. Castro says his bill, the proposed “Correcting Alienating Names in Government Act,” or CHANGE Act, is “integral to creating a more welcoming and inclusive environment for incoming and current immigrants living in the United States.”

Castro wants “illegal alien” banished because it (quite properly) stigmatizes behavior –that is, being a foreigner present in the United States without authorization— that is unlawful.

There is a certain logic to this.

The Left has to make the hordes of illegal aliens their various so-called immigration law reforms have unleashed on their fellow Americans over the years seem normal and acceptable. This is also why the Left describes just about everyone touched by the nation’s immigration laws as an “immigrant” – whether they’re illegal aliens or legal permanent residents. Smearing anyone who believes in the rule of law as anti-immigrant over and over again makes people defensive and wears down the opposition. It’s a kind of brainwashing.

Radicals who carry “no human being is illegal” placards at protests and Associated Press reporters agree with Castro that lying to destigmatize unlawful behavior is morally virtuous. The thought police at the AP stylebook now declare that “illegal” should be used only to describe an action “such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.”

They also give a thumbs-down to “illegal alien” and “undocumented,” which itself is already a euphemism. USA Today and other media outlets followed suit. Then-California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) jumped on the bandwagon in 2015 by signing legislation excising “alien” from the state’s labor code.

“Words matter,” Castro said in a press release.

“It’s vital that we respect the dignity of immigrants fleeing violence and prosecution in our language. The words ‘alien’ and ‘illegal alien’ work to demonize and dehumanize the migrant community. They have no place in our government’s description of human beings. Immigrants come to our borders in good faith and work hard for the opportunity to achieve a better life for themselves and their family. Eliminating this language from government expression puts us one step closer to preserving their dignity and ensuring their safety.”

And it makes illegals and their enablers feel good about breaking the law, which is largely the point of the exercise.

Well, that, and it helps to create pressure to get “comprehensive immigration reform,” a euphemism for immigration amnesty, through Congress.

President Donald Trump uses the words and phrases the Left hates because they’re accurate, his base loves them, and leftists hate them. All conservatives and right-thinking patriots should do the same.

Although the likelihood of Rep. Castro’s legislation making it all the way across Pennsylvania Avenue to President Trump’s desk is somewhere between slim and none, federal lawmakers do occasionally banish unfashionable words from the statute books.

Congress banned the perfectly good word “lunatic” in federal legislation in 2012 because it was deemed mean. In 2010 our elected representatives banned “mental retardation,” replacing it with “intellectual disability” in federal laws. And they’ll do it again when other useful words are no longer fashionable.

The feces-covered leftist hell known as San Francisco is getting rid of its crime problem by introducing new vocabulary.

College Board Nixes Plan for SAT ‘Adversity Scores’ By Jack Crowe

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/college-board-abandons-plan-sat-adversity-scores/

The College Board has abandoned its plan to augment students’ SAT scores with an adversity score, a metric designed to control for privilege in the admissions process, after enduring months of criticism from educators and parents.

The College Board introduced a new metric in May that admissions officers refer to as an “adversity score.” The score, which falls between zero and 100, reflects 15 socioeconomic factors, such as the crime and poverty rates in a given students’ neighborhood. It’s being replaced by a policy known as Landscape that will measure various discrete socioeconomic factors without combining them into a single score.

“We listened to thoughtful criticism and made Landscape better and more transparent,” David Coleman, the CEO of College Board, said in a statement announcing the change. “Landscape provides admissions officers more consistent background information so they can fairly consider every student, no matter where they live and learn.”

The College Board, which administers the SAT, planned to incorporate adversity scores into 150 schools across the country after initially rolling out the pilot program with 50 schools this year.

Trump — or What, Exactly? By Victor Davis Hanson *****

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/comparison-trump-record-former-presidents-current-critics/

Let’s compare Trump’s policies and behavior to that of prior presidents — and to his 2020 opponents’.

I n traditional political terms, there is always an alternate agenda to an incumbent president’s that reasonable voters can debate.

In Trump’s case, two massive annual budget deficits — coming on top of the previous two administrations that doubled the national debt — seem fair game. No president for the past 19 years has sought to offer any remotely sane budget. And with still relatively low interest rates, massive federal spending, a $22 trillion national debt, and an annual deficit of nearly $1 trillion, it is hard to imagine, in extremis, that there remains any notion of “stimulus” or “pump-priming” left.

Yet we hear little about such financial profligacy.

Not a word comes from Trump’s critics about the need for Social Security or Medicare reform to ensure the long-term viability of each — other than the Democrats’ promises to extend such financially shaky programs to millions of new clients well beyond the current retiring Baby Boomer cohorts who are already taxing the limits of the system.

To counter every signature Trump issue, there is almost no rational alternative advanced. That void helps explain the bizarre, three-year litany of dreaming of impeachment, the emoluments clause, the Logan Act, the 25th Amendment, the Mueller special-counsel investigation, Stormy Daniels and Michael Avenatti, Trump’s tax returns, White Supremacy!, Recession! — and Lord knows what next.

The 1619 Project’s Potted History By Michael Brendan Dougherty

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/the-1619-projects-potted-history/

Here’s why conservatives reacted the way they did.

There is something almost antique about progressives in 2019, at least when they are defending the New York Times’ 1619 Project, a series of essays examining the legacy of slavery in America. Some of the essays deliver the goods, offering perspectives that are genuinely new and provocative. But the project’s packaging and the strident defenses of it make me feel like I’ve been transported back to the mid 1990s and an eager classmate is shoving James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me into my hands and telling me, “But you gotta give Howard Zinn props for People’s History of the United States. Prepare to have your mind blown!” 

Listen, I understand that when you’re gunning for a Pulitzer and trying to get news consumers to take in slightly more dense work, you’re liable to marketing gimcrack about how it’s “finally time to tell our story truthfully.” And some conservatives have responded trollishly. But there’s a pattern in the project and among its defenders of making an outlandish claim but defending only a modest one. The project presents a simplified and mythologized history, and rather than defend what the Times actually printed, the project’s supporters accuse its critics of simplifying and mythologizing history.

The cosmic combination of Hong Kong, Brexit and the trade war Events could align against Beijing Augustus Howard

https://spectator.us/trade-war-brexit-courage-hong-kong/

Over the past several months, we have witnessed remarkable courage in the streets of Hong Kong. What began as limited protest against a single act of pro-Beijing legislation now has the markings of existential struggle, if not revolution. As the people of Hong Kong understand, the city government’s proposed extradition bill — enabling removal of its citizens to mainland China for trial — was not an isolated event. It was, instead, a sign of things to come, the gradual encroachment of Beijing upon the rights and freedoms promised Hong Kong for 50 years in the 1997 Basic Law. These constitutional guarantees — negotiated with the United Kingdom before it transferred the city — have come steadily under attack as the clock ticks ineluctably towards midnight. When 2047 dawns, Beijing surely wants the ‘transition’ to be ‘seamless’, a mere legal technicality ratifying what would be, by then, a matter of practical fact: full control and dominance of Hong Kong by the Communist, mainland power.

President Trump has pulled his punches thus far. He has not taken a tough, public line against Beijing on human rights or fully acknowledged the protesters’ legitimate grievances. Interestingly, however, in a culture where rhetoric usually outpaces action — one recalls Michelle Obama holding a makeshift sign, asking Boko Haram terrorists to ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ — Trump has taken actions that place real pressure on Beijing. It may be that Trump’s main, or only, contention with China rests with its economic abuses — among other things, its currency manipulation and the pilfering of American intellectual property. Whatever his motivations, though, Trump’s actions in the current trade dispute have the potential to evolve beyond economic matters, important as they are.
It is likely already the case that Trump’s trade war has energized the protests in Hong Kong. Protesters rightly intuit that Beijing, for all its bluster, has been knocked off kilter. The rising Bully of Asia is finally receiving a reciprocal dose of strength; America has finally questioned China’s way of doing business. The people of Hong Kong are now questioning it, too. These are people who, of course — notwithstanding the spirit of the United Nations Charter and the postwar, international settlement in favor of self-determination — were never consulted about their own governance in the first place.

A Plague Of Col(e)itis In Academia… by Gerald A. Honigman

Please allow me to introduce this analysis with some important background excerpts from a widely-published piece a while back:

“…Decades ago, while engaged in undergraduate and graduate work in Middle Eastern Affairs and related studies, the only way I learned of struggles of scores of millions of non-Arab peoples in the region occurred solely via my own initiative. Of all the hundreds of books in my library, hardly a jot or tittle on such subjects. And even when, on rare occasion, you might find mention of some of these folks in a book, a discussion on the subject never made it into the classroom.

In just one of many examples, only by becoming a member of the London-based Anti-Slavery Society did I learn of problems black Africans faced regarding genocidal and 20th century slave trading Arab tormentors.

The struggles of the Anya Nya and other blacks in the south of the Sudan and elsewhere were in full bloom, yet one would never know anything about this stuff if the academic syllabus and classroom were the sources of information. If Israel was not the alleged villain, the problem was left untouched in far too many classrooms.

While frequently exposed to such things as alleged Zionist fascism, racism, colonialism, imperialism, and dozens of other Hebrew sins, barely a word was ever spoken about the subjugation (largely by Arabs, but also by others such as Turks and Iranians as well) and plight of folks like Kurds, Imazighen (“Berbers”), Copts, Assyrians, native Jews, and so forth. And when mention of such non-Arab people was made, it was about such things as Berber rugs or musicians.

To learn of Kurds back then, the Little Miss Muffet nursery rhyme provided more information than academia…and those were the wrong curds. Keep in mind that this was especially odd because the sixties and seventies were very socially conscious eras in history. But, I was young and naïve and so gave the situation the benefit of the doubt.

I know better now.

Trump Pushes Transformation; Biden Stresses Stability By Charles Lipson

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/08/27/trump_pushes_transformation_bhttps://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/08/27/trump_pushes_transformation_b

Normally, it’s a sitting president who urges the nation to “stay the course.” Voters prefer stability, so incumbents normally use it as a selling point while seeking reelection. But these are not normal times. In this campaign, the man in the Oval Office is selling transformation while his leading Democratic opponent is promising a return to the calmer days of “no-drama Obama.”

It’s a political oddity.

Although Trump’s slogan, “Promises Made, Promises Kept,” seems to stress continuity, he is really promising something quite different: to keep rolling back the Administrative State, recalibrating American foreign policy, and shaking up Washington. He is telling supporters that he has stuck with his major 2016 themes, especially fighting illegal immigration, lowering taxes, appointing conservative judges, cutting burdensome regulations, and reviving American manufacturing. Internationally, he is determined to wind down America’s long wars, avoid new ones, make America’s allies pay more for global security, and rework multilateral trade deals. Oh, and maybe purchase Greenland for the American people.

That’s an ambitious, transformative agenda, and Trump is running on it. Those policies, plus steady economic growth and an enthusiastic base, give him a decent chance of winning in November 2020, unless the economy falls into recession. His biggest liabilities are obvious: his grandiose personality and his erratic, thin-skinned behavior, which are on display daily.

Trump’s base loves his outsized persona, but it grates on prosperous, educated voters, many of them swing voters in the suburbs. Their switch to the Democrats in 2018 put Nancy Pelosi back in the speaker’s chair. To dislodge her, Trump is making no effort to tone down his personality or slow his tweets. Instead, he is painting the opposition as a Children’s Crusade of Crazed Socialists, led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib.

The clever fake rabbis who made millions off of Prohibition Alice Kassens

https://www.jta.org/2019/08/27/opinion/the-clever-fake-rabbis-who-made-millions-off-of-prohibition

SALEM, Va. (JTA) — The Roaring Twenties was a raging headache for Jewish leadership. 

The 18th Amendment, which prohibited the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors,” soared through state legislatures and into law in 1919 fueled by the efforts of groups like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League. It resulted in a period of angst, imposters and outrage — but not for the reasons you might imagine. 

Suspicion abounded in the 1920s, especially among Jews and Catholics, that Protestants were seeking to cleanse America of immigrants and racial religious minorities. Prohibitionists claimed that ridding the nation of “demon rum” and other intoxicating liquors would cure social ills such as domestic violence, but others suspected the temperance movement was another example of a Protestant establishment shackling American Jews and Catholics.

Regardless of intent, politicians did not foresee the incentives that would lead to all kinds of subterfuge — the growing class of “fake rabbis,” for one.

Because wine plays a role in both Catholic and Jewish rituals and customs, leaders of both faiths felt prohibition would violate their First Amendment rights. The Volstead Act provided the details of how the 18th Amendment would be enforced, including allowing an exemption for sacramental wine. 

This exemption allowed for the use of wine by permitted individuals in religious functions and likely was a concession for the Jewish and Catholic vote. Catholic priests were permitted to serve wine in the church. Given that Jews conduct some ceremonies in the home, rabbis served as middlemen for their congregations, submitting a list of their congregation membership to Prohibition officials in exchange for permits for their members to purchase 10 gallons of wine per year from authorized dealers.  

On Friday, They Buried Rina By Moshe Phillips

https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/135976/on-friday-they-buried-rina-opinion/

If ever there was a week that illustrated the dramatic difference between the lives of Israeli Jews and American Jews, this was it.

Over the course of the past week, Palestinian Arab terrorists stabbed and wounded an Israeli in the Old City of Jerusalem, drove a car into Israelis standing at a bus stop near Elazar, fired rockets into Sderot, set fields on fire in the western Negev, threw hand grenades at Israeli soldiers near the Gaza fence, and tried to stone Jews to death at the Tomb of Joseph.

And on Friday, they murdered 17 year-old Rina Shenrav, for the crime of hiking while Jewish. She had  just celebrated her 17th birthday the week before her murder.

That’s the reality for Israeli Jews. Surrounded by people who will use literally any weapon to try to murder them—a knife, a rock, a grenade, an incendiary balloon, a car.

It was a very different week for American Jews. It began with a lively debate over whether Israel should permit the entry of two indisputably anti-Semitic members of Congress.

The Hebron Riots of 1929: Consequences and Lessons By Douglas J. Feith & Sean Durns

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/hebron-riots-1929-consequences-lessons/

Arab anti-Zionism runs deeper than disputes over borders, water, and settlements.

In 1929, Arab clerics and politicians provoked riots across Palestine by accusing Jews of plotting to take control of Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque. This month marks the 90th anniversary of those riots — but they are not a bygone. Palestinian Authority and Hamas leaders incite violence today using similar falsehoods and ideology.

The 1929 riots destroyed the Jewish community in Hebron. They persuaded Labor Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion that socialist fraternity among Jewish and Arab workers and peasants would not ensure peace. They impelled Palestine’s Jews to bolster the Haganah, their underground self-defense group. And they vindicated Zionist warnings against relying on foreigners for security.

To investigate the riots, the British government, which controlled Palestine at the time, appointed an inquiry board known as the Shaw Commission.

The commission noted that Arab objections to Zionism were ideological, comprehensive, intense, and inflexible. In its report, it nonetheless devoted thousands of words to minute details of specific Arab grievances. It plumbed complaints that Jews, on one occasion, brought a chair to Jerusalem’s Western Wall and, on another, set up a screen there to divide male and female worshipers.

All this brings to mind the story of a man who thoroughly detests his wife but makes his case for divorce on the grounds that she doesn’t put the cap back on the toothpaste tube. Obviously, what he gripes about is not what accounts for his detestation. Confusion on this score was characteristic of Middle East policy officials in 1929, and it still is.