Displaying posts published in

March 2019

BOOKS, EDUCATION Comments turned off

11 Lessons For Conservative Women On Campus Melissa Langsam Braunstein

By on March 8th, 2019

http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/08/11-lessons-for-conservative-women-on-campus/

In the book ‘She’s Conservative: Stories of Trials and Triumphs on America’s College Campuses,’ young conservative women offer in their own words lessons for how to survive—and thrive—at college and beyond.

It’s impossible to know the future, but we can do our best to prepare for it. That’s why if you’re a parent, especially of a high school senior heading off to college this fall, you’ll want to pick up a copy of She’s Conservative: Stories of Trials and Triumphs on America’s College Campuses. This collection of 22 essays by women affiliated with the Network of Enlightened Women—a book club for conservative college-age and young professional women—offers readers a window into what it’s like to be a Gen Z conservative woman on campus.

Every essay is different, as are the women and campuses they reflect. However, 11 lessons emerge over the course of the easy-to-read 100-plus pages.

1. Buckle Up. You already know this in theory, but the book offers many concrete examples of campus leftists making college life harder for anyone who rejects, or even questions, their orthodoxy. Margaret Reid writes of her time at Western Michigan University, “At one point, it got so bad that I lied to friends and professors about what I supported, so I would not lose friendships or see my grades suffer.”

2. Prepare for Condescension. Grace Bannister writes, “At Harvard, my independently formed political beliefs are challenged as backward and often blamed on my rural West Virginia upbringing . . . Making matters worse, many on campus believe there is something inherently wrong with conservative women. They think we are oppressed or uneducated.” Sarah George writes, “When I tell my liberal peers I am conservative, the few who don’t immediately recoil in horror determinedly start explaining to me how confused I am.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

35 Key People Involved In The Russia Hoax Who Need To Be Investigated By Willis L. Krumholz

By on March 8th, 2019

http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/08/35-key-people-involved-russia-hoax-need-investigated/

As their desperate search for collusion continues, Democrats want to interview 81 people. Try this list instead.

Funny how things change. The Washington Post couldn’t say a nice thing about congressional Republican efforts to investigate the Obama administration and FBI shenanigans that occurred before and after the 2016 election. That’s if they even covered these efforts at all.

But with Democrats controlling the House, and that legislative body’s subpoena power, the establishment media’s line has changed. Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have just sent letters to 81 people, all associated with President Trump or the Russia probe, demanding answers on Russian election interference.

This is part of Democrats’ effort to continue their hunt for proof of Russia collusion—although they are already sure that Trump is guilty—as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation appears to be winding down. To cover these events, the Post’s Philip Bump wrote an article titled: “The 81 people and organizations just looped into the Trump probe—and why they were included.” Of course, the article is totally unquestioning of the House Democrats’ desired narrative and motivations.
Investigated, But Not for the Reasons Dems Give

It isn’t worth it to go through Bump’s whole article, but even the commentary about the first name on the list—Rinat Akhmetshin—omits glaring and important facts. Bump says Akhmetshin “joined his colleague Natalia Veselnitskaya, a lawyer linked to the Kremlin, at the June 9, 2016, meeting in Trump Tower predicated on providing information that would undermine Hillary Clinton’s campaign.” But, Bump says, “the focus of the meeting instead reportedly focused on the Magnitsky Act—a law that resulted in sanctions on numerous prominent Russians.”

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Next Up: Democrats Want Children to Vote By J. Christian Adams

By on March 8th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/next-up-democrats-want-children-to-vote/

Oregon legislation to allow children to vote should bring to an end our first reaction to crazy ideas involving our elections — namely laughter. It’s dangerous to laugh at proposals like child-voting when the advocates are deadly serious.

Oregon Senator Shemia Fagan introduced legislation at a press conference to allow sixteen-year-olds to vote. She was flanked by teens wearing homemade T-shirts criticizing firearms. “Sixteen-year-olds are couch surfing with friends while their families are experiencing homelessness, and begging us to take action to protect their future and planet,” Fagan said.

As long as democracies have existed, and as long as this democratic republic has existed, voters must be adults.

This, the latest in a long march of transformational rules over our elections, is a loud alarm that these efforts to change election process rules are really an effort to change America.

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ISRAEL, POLITICS Comments turned off

The Pro-Palestinian Charade Too many activists who claim to support Palestinian rights only care about attacking Israel BY: Aaron Kliegman

By on March 8th, 2019

https://freebeacon.com/blog/the-pro-palestinian-charade/

Freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) has tried to couch her recent anti-Semitic comments as legitimate criticism of the Israeli government. Omar’s progressive colleagues in Congress have done the same, saying that charges of anti-Semitism are meant to stifle debate about Israel. This defense is of course absurd: accusing the world’s only Jewish state of cosmic evil and judging it by a standard different from that applied to all other countries are, historically, the two key features of anti-Semitism. But push aside the facts for a moment and assume their defense is serious. Why do Omar and like-minded progressives criticize Israel so often? Why do they oppose the Jewish state so reflexively, with such visceral hatred? Many of them justify their activism as support for the rights of the weak and oppressed Palestinians, who, they argue, suffer under Israel’s rule. In other words, Omar and her allies say they largely oppose Israel because they are pro-Palestinian. The truth, however, is that many of these progressive voices in the media and on college campuses—and increasingly in Congress—who claim to be pro-Palestinian do not actually care about Palestinian rights—unless of course they can attack Israel.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the collapse of the center-left Matthew Continetti

By on March 8th, 2019

https://freebeacon.com/columns/ilhan-communication/
I have a new hobby. It’s collecting the excuses Democrats make for Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota Democratic congresswoman who has an unhealthy fixation on Jewish influence, Jewish money, and Jewish loyalty. Omar has said that Israel “hypnotized the world,” attributing Jews with the power of mind control in the service of manipulating public opinion. She’s said the only reason Congress supports Israel is Jewish campaign donations. Most recently, using the classic anti-Semitic trope of dual loyalty, she criticized supporters of Israel for having “allegiance to a foreign power.” A real treasure, Omar is. A typical freshman congresswoman sees her mission as—forgive the expression—bringing home the bacon for her district. Not Ilhan. Her project is to mainstream anti-Semitic rhetoric within the Democratic Party. Once upon a time, you’d have to visit the invaluable website of the Middle East Media Research Institute to hear such tripe. Now you just need to flip on C-SPAN.

And Democrats are powerless to stop it. They’re tripping over themselves, making rationalizations, dodging reality, and trying to clean up this anti-Semitic mess.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Vote on hate resolution was ‘the moment the Democratic socialist wing took over the party’ by Susan Ferrechio

By on March 8th, 2019

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Friday that this week marked the takeover of the House Democrats by socialists in their party after they managed to avoid a vote on a resolution condemning anti-Semitism.

McCarthy told reporters that this week marked “the moment the Democratic socialist wing took over the party.”

House Democrats initially moved to vote on a resolution condemning anti-Semitism, after Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., rattled off a series of tweets that many saw as anti-Semitic. But instead, Democrats rewrote the resolution so it condemned most imaginable forms of hate speech and bigotry, including efforts by white supremacists to put down most racial groups.
The Trump White House in review: Week 109
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Omar was never named in the resolution, and McCarthy said Republicans are still considering whether to push for a vote that condemns her specifically.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Political Correctness Is Ruining Academic Journals The stupidity of these journals says a lot about what’s taught at colleges today.John Stossel

By on March 8th, 2019

https://reason.com/archives/2019/03/06/political-correctness-is-ruining-academi

If you are an American college professor, the way you get a raise or tenure is by getting papers published in “academic journals.”

The stupidity of these journals says a lot about what’s taught at colleges today.

Recently, three people sent in intentionally ridiculous “research” to prominent journals of women studies, gender studies, race studies, sexuality studies, obesity studies, and queer studies.

“The scholarship in these disciplines is utterly corrupted,” says Dr. Peter Boghossian of Portland State University. “They have placed an agenda before the truth.”

To show that, hoaxer and mathematician James Lindsay says, “We rewrote a section of Mein Kampf as intersectional feminism” and got it published in Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work.

For another paper, they claimed to have “closely” examined genitals of 10,000 dogs in dog parks to learn about “rape culture and queer performativity.”

Boghossian had assumed, “There’s no way they’re gonna believe that we did this!”

But the journal Gender, Place & Culture did, calling the paper “excellent scholarship.”

Seven journals accepted the absurd papers, as I show in my latest video.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

The Clarity Accompanying the Democrat Takeover of Congress By Julie Kelly

By on March 8th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/07/the-clarity-

Months before the midterm elections last fall, several self-described “conservatives” implored Americans to vote for Democrats. Still stung that Republicans ignored their advice to reject Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy and unmoved by Trump’s solid record of conservative accomplishments in office, these embittered outcasts claimed that a legislative branch controlled by Democrats would cauterize Trump’s alleged “authoritarian” tendencies.

The most notable of these windmill tilters, attacking an authoritarian impulse that wasn’t there, was George Will. For decades, Will occupied a vaunted perch in the hierarchy of the conservative commentariat. He also was deemed acceptable by media outlets hostile to the Right including the Washington Post, where he now is a contributor. Disgusted at the Trumpification of the Grand Old Party in 2016, Will officially renounced his party affiliation just weeks before the Republican National Convention.

Two years later, in a disorganized rant, Will instructed voters to oust Republicans from power. “In today’s GOP, which is the president’s plaything, he is the mainstream,” Will wrote in June 2018. “A Democratic-controlled Congress would be a basket of deplorables, but there would be enough Republicans to gum up the Senate’s machinery, keeping the institution as peripheral as it has been under their control and asphyxiating mischief from a Democratic House.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran: Child Executions, Amputations, Floggings by Majid Rafizadeh

By on March 8th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13841/iran-executions-amputations-floggings

Europe ravenously throw sanctions on a country that has been home to Jews for more than three thousand years, yet tries to find ways to keep on doing business with a country such as Iran that is not only trying to establish its hegemony throughout the Middle East, but is also the serial violator of just about every human right imaginable. The only conclusion one can come to is that Europe would evidently still like to kill the Jews and is happy to support those wishing to kill them.

“In February [2018], Canadian Iranian academic and environmental activist Kavous Seyyed Emami died in Evin prison following his arbitrary arrest two weeks earlier. Authorities claimed he committed suicide and refused to release his body unless his family agreed to an immediate burial without an independent autopsy.” — Amnesty International.

The list of unspeakable human rights violations committed by Iran’s regime is lengthy; however, by far the most disturbing seems the cruelty enacted against children.

Now is the time for the EU to halt its appeasement policy with a regime that does not hesitate to flog people — publicly, as a message to others — torture any citizen they choose to target, enact cruel punishments such as amputation without a fair trial, and execute children just starting their lives. These are acts that should be condemned — not condoned through the pursuit of appeasement policies, moral depravity and raw greed.

According to a report published by Amnesty International on February 26, the human rights situation in Iran has “severely deteriorated”. Why then does the European Union continue to pursue appeasement policies with a regime that has an excruciating human rights record? Sadly, Europe — in spite its endless moral preening and self-righteousness — seems to have become the world most immoral player — if it was not already. The European Union, for instance, unjustly singles out for bullying the only liberal, democratic, human-rights-abiding country in the Middle East: Israel. Not Turkey for occupying Northern Cyprus, China for obliterating Tibet, or Pakistan for occupying Kashmir. Europe and the corrupt United Nations do not lay a glove on the real perpetrators of crimes against humanity such as China, Cuba, Russia, Turkey, North Korea, Nigeria or Sudan, to name just a few.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Switzerland’s Foreign Policy Should Be a Model for America By Brandon J. Weichert

By on March 8th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/07/

As I have written previously, many elites think of the United States as being in a position similar to that of the vulnerable Hapsburg Empire: a large empire possessing indefensible frontiers. But, this comparison flawed. In fact, a more precise analogue to the United States is Switzerland.

A federal republic like the United States, Switzerland enjoys a natural barrier separating it from the rest of its neighbors in Europe. The United States has two massive oceans, whereas Switzerland has the beautiful Swiss Alps. From behind these natural barriers, the liberty-loving Swiss republic formed, and by European standards, so did a potent market economy. Switzerland hasn’t always been a peaceful state, but it has been able to maintain peaceful relations with all of its neighbors better than most other states. Its beneficial geography has afforded Swiss leaders the time to develop reasonable, low-cost methods for maintaining their country’s sovereignty without becoming too enmeshed in the chaotic world beyond its protective peaks.

Switzerland is not an isolationist country, however. Like the United States throughout most of its history, the Swiss simply prefer to rely on diplomacy and trade to handle the bulk of their interactions with most of the world. Switzerland has a robust international trading profile and is even an observing member in the flagging European Union. That said, it is not a full member of the EU. Such a membership would have threatened the Swiss freedom of action and they wisely avoided such a step. The Swiss interact with the surrounding world only when and how it benefits them.

Switzerland is also internationally respected. Today, America’s acceptance of an ever-increasing array of never-ending foreign entanglements has drained it of vital resources (and people) that could be put to better use making our Union more perfect.

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