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It’s Outright War on Conservatives By Janet Levy

Posted By on June 24th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/06/its_outright_war_on_conservatives.html

Last November, the now-defunct Trump Accountability Project, linked to former Democratic National Committee press secretary Hari Sevugan, bruited its plan to blacklist those who worked for the Trump administration.  Sevugan tweeted, “Employers considering them should know that there are consequences for hiring anyone who helped Trump attack American values.  Find out how at the Trump Accountability Project.” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Dem-NY) too called for devising lists of Trump supporters for punishment and ostracism. The rhetoric reeked of a witch-hunt to name and shame anyone linked to the former president.

Now that the Biden administration is securely ensconced in the White House, the blatant malice has been toned down with disingenuous calls for unity. But there’s persistent targeting of “unwoke” conservatives — in fact, of anyone not aligned with the hate America script of social justice warriors. In this the Biden administration has been active. There are several recent instances that highlight a hypocritical progressive agenda to enforce groupthink and extinguish critical and independent thinking.

In May, the IRS denied 501(c)(3) status to Christians Engaged, a Texas-based prayer group that encourages members to pray for the country and its elected officials, motivates citizens to vote for cultural impact, and campaigns for preserving our constitutional republic. The group endeavors to integrate civic involvement as part of religious practice but does not promote any party or candidate. However, in his official letter denying tax-exemption, Stephen A. Martin, the IRS’s director of exempt organizations, clearly implies that biblical values are exclusively Republican. He wrote: “While you educate voters on what the Bible says about issues, your educational activities are not neutral. The topics typically are affiliated with distinct candidates and specific political party [Republican] platforms.”

The First Liberty Institute, a Christian legal organization, is appealing the IRS decision as discriminatory. It argues that there is no requirement that organizations must be neutral on public policy issues, and that just because there is some overlap between the views of Christians Engaged and the Republican party, the IRS cannot conclude that the organization serves private interests. The IRS decision amounts to a violation of the free speech, free exercise, and free establishment clauses of the First Amendment. Declaring biblical teachings as exclusively Republican is the slippery slope that could lead to future discrimination against Christian organizations and even churches.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Suppressing and Punishing Speech to Fight ‘Racism’ in Public Schools Those who begin eliminating dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Richard L. Cravatts

Posted By on June 24th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/suppressing-and-punishing-speech-fight-racism-richard-l-cravatts/

Even before the death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, universities had demonstrated that they were in thrall with an obsession about racism and racial equity. Diversocrats in bloated fiefdoms of equity, diversity, and inclusion diligently indoctrinated so-called marginalized students on how to be victims and oppressed, and whole systems were set up to monitor the behavior of potential racists and punish them for their transgressions.

At the University of San Diego’s Law School, for example, members of the Black Law Students Association, in order to confront “the oppression that is inextricably linked to [their] Blackness,” demanded that the law school “develop a classroom diversity officer position tasked with observing classroom practices and reporting questionable conduct within the classroom to the administration” so that perpetrators could be censured and punished.

At Princeton, several hundred faculty members published a letter to the administration in which they asked that the University form “a committee composed entirely of faculty that would oversee the investigation and discipline of racist behaviors, incidents, research, and publication on the part of faculty . .  ,” overlooking the fact that what they were calling for was a veritable star chamber in which a handful of virtue-signaling, race-obsessed faculty would use their own bias and subjectivity to vet the research and teaching of fellow faculty and decide which viewpoints would be permitted and which, henceforth, would not (and would potentially even be punished)—a blatant violation of both the spirit and intent of academic freedom.

That same desire to ferret out any racist thought or bias which might injure or make uncomfortable a member of an identity group has seeped into public schools, as well, along with the impulse to censure and punish any staff or students who violate the overly-broad strictures of conversations about race, culture, and politics.

In Chicago, for example, where out of nearly 1,500 shooting victims so far in 2021, over fifty were 15 or younger, at least school-aged children will not be threatened by racism and bias on the part of their school peers now that they can identity and report bigotry in their schools. The formal program, “Transforming Bias-Based Harm,” promotes some of the insidious aspects of now-typical diversity and inclusion campaigns, including finding racism where it is almost imperceptible: implicit or unconscious bias and microaggressions. Students will be able to report the misbehavior of fellow students, including “everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional,” directly through the Chicago Public Schools website, and perpetrators are potentially subject to being punished for their unacceptable speech. 

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Chairman Milley Degrades, Divides and Politicizes the Military Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on June 24th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/06/chairman-milley-degrades-divides-and-politicizes-daniel-greenfield/

General Milley of the Joint Chiefs of Staff turned in a performance that was part gaslighting and part humiliating theater. 

It’s hard to imagine how his part in the hearing could have gone any worse than defending the imposition of critical race theory by arguing, “I’ve read Mao Zedong. I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist.”

The military does not, as of yet, conduct Communist indoctrination sessions. And while officers might have read Mao and Lenin, they weren’t being told to read it because it was “on the right side of history”.

As I said, yet. At the rate we’re going it may only be a matter of time.

Learning from the enemy is very different than becoming the enemy. Indoctrinating personnel with critical race theory is not studying the enemy. It’s trying to convince our men and women that America is the enemy.

Milley made that point quite well when he protested, “I want to understand white rage. And I’m white,”

Is Milley suffering from white rage? Does rage have a color? And is diving America around such cheap race-baiting tactics strengthening or weakening the military? Milley knows the answer, but he also knows, like so many other figures in this career space, that he has to parrot the party line if he wants to have a future. And national security is a small price to pay for his career.

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The Anti-Trump Verbal Preemptive Cringe Conservative pundits might do well not taking their cues from Democrat elites. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on June 24th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/anti-trump-verbal-preemptive-cringe-b

Even conservative commentators who are not afflicted with terminal Trump Derangement Syndrome are compelled to drag Trump into their writing and criticize him in order to preempt any suspicion that their comments critical of progressives show support for the hated ex-president.

This verbal preemptive cringe is a way for members of the bipartisan political guild to signal their virtue and assure progressives that they’re not one of those knuckle-dragging “deplorable” Trump supporters. In doing so, they remind Trump voters why they supported him in the first place: He cut through all the class-signaling politesse and specious “norms” the cognitive elite use to advertise their superiority.

A good example can be found in a commentary from Lance Morrow in the Wall Street Journal. Much of the piece is a spot-on dissection of the progressive class-hatred of conservatives in general and Donald Trump’s supporters in particular. His portrait of these plutocrat progressives is worth quoting:

In their voices, you hear a throb of opulent hysteria—an ostentatious despair, the boutique self-pity of the privileged. Hating Mr. Trump and his followers dramatizes one’s own virtue. It makes elites feel good about themselves in the way, classically, that poor whites in the South were able to feel better about their own lot by despising and discriminating against black people. Progressives think that hating not only Mr. Trump but all conservatives settles their debts and cleanses them of sin. It gives them a certain moral luster.

But immediately there follows the preemptive cringe, the reflexive criticism of Trump lest Morrow’s fellow cognitive elites interpret those prior remarks as support for him:

Mr. Trump is to blame for much of this. Character is destiny, and Mr. Trump was quite a character. He gave his enemies the gift of Jan. 6. He played peek-a-boo with forbidden thoughts. He tossed cherry bombs at the Constitution to see if he could give it a scare. Whatever else one may say about Jan. 6, it was one of the stupidest afternoons in American history.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Democrats Get an Anti-Leftist Wake-Up Call from New York By John Fund

Posted By on June 24th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/democrats-get-an-anti-leftist-wake-up-call-from-new-york/

President Biden gave a speech this afternoon on the rising crime rate. Even the White House admits that in recent months “homicides rose 30 percent and gun assaults rose 8 percent in large cities.”

The timing is politically significant given the results of Tuesday’s New York City mayor’s primary. Crime and the Loony Left’s agenda were dominant issues.

Brooklyn Borough president Eric Adams, who spent 22 years as a cop, currently has a ten-point lead in the Democratic primary. Outstanding absentee ballots and NYC’s bizarre ranked-choice voting system will delay a final count until mid July. But Adams is the prohibitive favorite to win. Nathaniel Rakich at FiveThirtyEight says that Adams can start “measuring the drapes” at City Hall.

If he wins, it will be because he ran full tilt against defunding the police.

Starting in 1994, smarter policing under Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg made New York the safest big city in America. Those gains eroded under Mayor Bill de Blasio and accelerated last year with his weak response to riots, the elimination of bail, and the demonizing of the NYPD.

Adams ran full tilt against the leftist agenda of Wiley, a de Blasio appointee who is now in second place in the vote count.  He attacked her for wanting to slash NYPD’s budget and being open to the idea of taking their guns away.

He also called for lifting the cap on charter schools so the half of New York City students who fail basic proficiency tests would have a chance at a better education. He vowed to make better use of a law to get the mentally ill homeless to take the medications they need. He clashed with Governor Andrew Cuomo over how fast to end the city’s lockdown and get people back to work.

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What Was Kamala Harris Thinking? By Jim Geraghty

Posted By on June 24th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/what-was-kamala-harris-thinking/

Vice President Kamala Harris “clearly thinks she’s ‘winning’ something by refusing to [visit the border],” I noted at the end of today’s Morning Jolt. “What she thinks she’s winning is anybody’s guess.”

This afternoon brings word that Harris will indeed travel to the border, 91 days after President Biden appointed Harris to “lead efforts to stem migration across the U.S.–Mexico border.” Many Democrats have disputed the characterization of Harris as the “border czar.” But Biden himself said this, referring to her role on this issue: “I’ve asked her, the VP, today — because she’s the most qualified person to do it — to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that help — are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border.”

Would Harris have gotten some bad press by visiting the border three months ago? Sure, but it would have been one bad news cycle. White Houses get those all the time, and they survive them all the time. By waiting, Harris ensured that Republicans could bring it up over and over again, while also ensuring she would get asked about it and have awkward moments like her giggling, “I haven’t been to Europe, either. I don’t know what you’re getting at,” in response to NBC News’s Lester Holt. Now, when Harris visits, Republicans will point out, accurately, that U.S. Customs and Border Protection have had three straight months of border captures that are the worst in 20 years. With four months to go, it’s already the worst year since 2006.

To avoid one bad news cycle, Harris accepted three months of bad press.

And we’re left wondering: Just why the heck was Harris so reluctant to visit the border? It certainly isn’t a blanket administration opposition to photo opportunities, or else the president wouldn’t visit an Alexandria rock-climbing facility and joke about scaling a 60-foot wall. It’s become almost cliché in conservative media to say that Harris has bad political instincts, but I think that understates just how much she chooses to make avoidable mistakes.

It’s possible that for three straight months, Harris assumed that the following week or month would bring better news and signs that the waves of migrants are abating. If that’s the case, it’s not encouraging, because it suggests the administration’s policies and messaging will work any day now, despite all the counter-evidence.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Suddenly, Democrats Express Support for Voter ID Laws By Rick Moran

Posted By on June 24th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/06/23/suddenly-democrats-express-support-for-voter-id-laws-n1456545

Democrats have used voter ID laws to hammer Republicans for their supposed racism in supporting this simple voting integrity measure. In some campaigns, such as the Georgia governor’s race of 2018, Democratic hysterical opposition to voter ID led to a media frenzy about the “suppression” of the black vote.

It was never anything of the sort, of course. And as proof, try this on for size: National Democrats who skewered the GOP for passing voter ID laws now say it’s fine. Some, like Georgia’s Stacey Abrams (who wept about “suppression” of the black vote), now claim it’s simple common sense.

Washington Examiner:

In 2018, Georgia’s wannabe governor, Stacey Abrams, said voter ID laws are intended to “scare people out of voting.” Now, she audaciously says, “No one has ever objected to having to prove who you are to vote. It’s been part of our nation’s history since the inception of voting.”

Recently elected Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock is even more brazen in lying about opposing voter ID laws.

For years, then-Pastor Raphael Warnock, now a senator from Georgia, claimed ID laws were a form of “voter suppression” so “unnecessary and unjustifiable” that they amount to “dismember[ing]” Martin Luther King Jr.

Now he lies, “I have never been opposed to voter ID. And in fact, I don’t know anybody who is.”

The sudden reversal is because swing Democrat Joe Manchin agreed to support a compromise in the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act that included voter ID.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

World Gone Upside Down: Buffalo Elects Socialist Mayor While NY City Could Very Well Elect a Law-And-Order Democrat By Rick Moran

Posted By on June 24th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/06/23/buffalo-elects-socialist-mayor-while-ny-city-could-very-well-elect-a-law-and-order-democrat-n1456483

Buffalo, the second-largest city in New York, elected a woman, a political novice, and a socialist as mayor on Tuesday night. India Walton defeated 4-term incumbent Mayor Byron Brown by 1500 votes.

It was a shocking result — if you hadn’t been paying attention the last 4 years. Brown, a former state Democratic Party chair and a charter member of the New York political establishment, lost to a socialist because the socialist wasn’t part of the establishment. If that’s too complicated for you, look at the mayoral results in New York City.

Eric Adams is holding a lead at the moment. In fact, no one knows what’s going on with this “ranked voting” that’s confusing everyone. Indeed, the purpose of rank voting appears to be designed to make the result of the election as muddled as possible.

Not a bug. A feature.

Adams leads by a small plurality. The race will almost certainly be decided by voters’ second, third, fourth, and fifth choices. Adams may be the first choice of a plurality of voters, but with so many candidates in the race, he may end up not winning anything.

But Adams, a former Republican, supports funding for more police. His campaign platform reads, “If we are for SAFETY — we NEED the NYPD!”

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Army Finally Defines ‘Extremism’ When It Comes to Screening Out ‘Hate Group’ Members By Stacey Lennox

Posted By on June 24th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stacey-lennox/2021/06/23/exclusive-army-recruiting-command-now-hunting-extremists-in-the-application-process-n1456597

The Army has decided to ask all applicants for enlistment a question about an association with “extremist/hate groups” in the screening process. This requirement might seem reasonable. However, according to the latest communication, extremism is defined in terms of individual belief and advocacy.

In a recent congressional hearing, Senator Tom Cotton questioned Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin regarding racially-charged exercises and training content presented during the 60-day stand-down to root out extremism. Austin disavowed the concepts that members of the military reported receiving training on. Representative Jim Banks (R-Ind.) also questioned Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael Gilday about placing How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi on a recommended book list for sailors. From Gilday’s answer, it is doubtful he ever read the book that some social justice warrior lackey probably placed on the list.

Yet social justice content is leaking its way into the military through some mechanism. Now, the Army Recruitment Command uses subjective and easy-to-politicize criteria to identify potential “extremists” who wish to enlist. This change comes amid the Pentagon considering ways to intensify social media scrutiny in background investigations.

Recommended: Whistleblowers Explain How Biden’s Woke ‘Extremism’ Training Is Tearing the Military Apart

On June 22, an Ops Flash instructed Army recruiters that the inclusion of a question regarding any association with “extremist/hate” organizations must be answered and uploaded for all applicants for commissioning in the Army before testing, before the physical exam, and before military entrance processing. The required form updated the gang participation question that has been asked since the 1990s:

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Sorry, But It’s Democrats – Not Republicans – Who Are The Radicals Worth Worrying About

Posted By on June 24th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/06/24/sorry-but-its-democrats-not-republicans-who-are-the-radicals-worth-worrying-about/

How many times have we read about the “extremist right” and how “radicalized” conservatives have become?

Wikipedia has a long entry on the “radical right,” but nothing on the “radical left.” Los Angeles Times reporter Jackie Calmes has a new book out subtitled “The Radicalization of the Republican Party.” CNN’s Brian Stelter says that “Experts warn about the radicalizing power of right-wing media networks.” The list is endless.

Enough! This is the mother of Big Lies!

Every day, it is the Democratic Party that is pushing an agenda more radical than yesterday. Its agenda is comprised of critical race theory, defunding police, open borders, socialism, nationalized health care, a federal takeover of elections, extremist environmentalism, packing the Supreme Court, killing the filibuster, the Green New Deal, cancel culture. None of these gets majority support in this country.

This isn’t just a small slice of the Democratic Party, either. Poll after poll shows that it is those who identify as Democrats who are way out of the mainstream. Let’s review some of the recent polling evidence to show who’s actually been radicalized in this country.

Critical Race Theory

The Biden administration is only the tip of the spear when it comes to attempts by the left to shove the Marxist-based “critical race theory” down everyone’s throat, particularly in the attempt to propagandize students. Team Biden is trying to bribe schools into teaching this race-baiting ideology to kids.

How mainstream is CRT? A new Economist/YouGov survey finds that 58% of Americans who know about CRT view it unfavorably, and 55% say it’s bad for America.

But among Democrats? Almost 90% view CRT favorably and 85% say it’s good for the country.

Casting the country as irredeemably racist and pitting races against each other in permanent battle: How much more radicalized can you get?

Related to this is the fact that nearly two-thirds of Democrats (64%) favor reparations, compared with just 29% of independents and 10% of Republicans, according to a UMass Amherst poll.