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SENATOR BEN SASSE (R-NEBRASKA): THE CRISIS OF THE AMERICAN IDEA…..SEE NOTE PLEASE

Posted By on April 21st, 2016

Ben Sasse is a United States Senator representing Nebraska. Before his election to the Senate in 2014, he served as president of Midland University, where he turned around a failing institution and made it one of the fastest-growing colleges in America. Senator Sasse holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard, a master’s degree from St. John’s College in Annapolis, and a PhD from Yale. He and Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas are stars of the GOP….RSK http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2016/04/the-american-idea-a-crisis.html

“We face great challenges at this moment in history. We face cyber threats. We face a resurgent Russia under Vladimir Putin. We face a jihadi threat. We face the growing threat of nonstate actors, who now can carry out massive attacks and are as able to play on the global stage as state actors. We face the exploding costs of our entitlement programs.

All these challenges are acute, but another dangerous trend is attracting less notice: The crisis of confidence in, and the growing unawareness of, the American idea.

What is the American idea? The American Founding made the bold claim that most peoples and most governments in the history of the world had been wrong about the nature of power and the nature of freedom. Sure, there were moments in history when certain city-states advanced some conception of liberty, but most people in human history said that might makes right: If you have a monopoly on power, you can do what you want. Everyone else in those societies was not a citizen but a dependent subject. If you lived in such a society, you needed the king to give you rights. The passive assumption was prohibition. The passive assumption was that if I want to start a business, I need a charter because it is illegal to run that business unless the king has sanctioned it. Therefore, I go and supplicate before the king in his court, and he decides whether to give me the right to start that business.

Today we would say that is bizarre. The voluntary transaction between two people is the very nature of freedom. The American Founders saw that denying people their freedom is fundamentally wrong because it does not comport with the dignity of people who are created in the image of God. People have been endowed with certain inalienable rights. God gives us those rights; government does not.

Government is merely a tool. It provides a framework for ordered liberty so that free people can live fully flowering lives.

This is why Ronald Reagan said that the American Founders “brought about the only true revolution that has ever taken place in man’s history.” Previous revolutions “simply exchanged one set of rulers for another set of rulers,” Reagan said. But America’s Founders did something different: They developed and fought for “the idea that you and I have within ourselves the God-given right and the ability to determine our own destiny.”

Founding FathersThink about how the framers of the Constitution wrestled with whether to enumerate any rights. What’s the danger in enumerating rights? Your list will never be long enough. The Constitution does not define any rights because the Constitution is the way that we give the government limited authority. All the powers that we do not give to the government are rights that we still retain. Even when the framers came up with the first ten amendments to the Constitution as a Bill of Rights, they could not decide on any one individual right to list first. They had to list five things in the First Amendment: religious liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and the right to redress grievances. Those five freedoms are all listed as first freedoms because there is no way you can get the list complete.

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The FDA Is Turning Away from Science The ‘precautionary principle’ is anti-scientific and blocks the use of helpful and important products. By Sandy Szwarc

Posted By on April 21st, 2016

On April 8, the FDA announced it was launching legal action to remove Carbadox from the marketplace. Carbadox is an antibiotic that has been safely used by veterinarians and pig producers for more than 40 years and is very effective for controlling bacterial diseases, including salmonella and swine dysentery. By helping pigs stay healthier, Carbadox also helps improve feed efficiency and weight gain. In fact, according to a 2012 USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service report, this antibiotic is used by more than 40 percent of pig nurseries in the United States. It is one of the few antibiotics considered by swine veterinarians to be critically essential for the health and welfare of growing pigs.

Sadly, the FDA’s move is another example of a growing stream of executive actions by federal agencies succumbing to political and ideological agendas, including animal-rights activism, and turning against the longstanding tradition of sound, evidence-based science. Scientific and agricultural professionals are left to speak out and give the public factual information they can trust.

The FDA’s action is not about safety or protecting the health of people or pigs, and these growing attacks on the agricultural industry and food producers will have devastating costs to people and to our food supply.

The FDA press release revealed that the agency has been harassing the maker of Carbadox to prove that there is no potential risk to people who eat pork from pigs that have been given its antibiotic. The FDA says it is taking this latest action in response to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations/World Health Organization and its Codex Alimentarius Commission, which recently determined that “there is no safe level of residues of Carbadox in food that represents an acceptable risk to consumers.”

Those who understand science will immediately identify the fallacy at work here. The instant we hear that “there is no safe level of exposure” to something, it’s a baloney alert that we’re being given junk science. Virtually everything can cause tumors in laboratory rats when administered in toxic doses. In fact, everything in life — from salt to sunlight — can be harmful in excessive amounts. But, that doesn’t mean we cannot safely enjoy them; they might even be essential for our survival. There is no such thing as “no safe level of exposure.” Remember, the dose makes the poison. Even water is deadly in excessive amounts. Medicine and poisons are just opposite ends of the spectrum of the science of toxicology (the Greek word pharmakon means both “remedy” and “poison”).

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The Horrors of Hiroshima in Context By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on April 21st, 2016

The dropping of two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 remains the only wartime use of nuclear weapons in history.

No one knows exactly how many Japanese citizens were killed by the two American bombs. A macabre guess is around 140,000. The atomic attacks finally shocked Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese militarists into surrendering.

John Kerry recently visited Hiroshima. He became the first secretary of state to do so — purportedly as a precursor to a planned visit next month by President Obama, who is rumored to be considering an apology to Japan for America’s dropping of the bombs 71 years ago.

The horrific bombings are inexplicable without examining the context in which they occurred.

In 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill insisted on the unconditional surrender of Axis aggressors. The bomb was originally envisioned as a way to force the Axis leader, Nazi Germany, to cease fighting. But the Third Reich had already collapsed by July 1945 when the bomb was ready for use, leaving Imperial Japan as the sole surviving Axis target.

Japan had just demonstrated with its nihilistic defense of Okinawa — where more than 12,000 Americans died and more than 50,000 were wounded, along with perhaps 200,000 Japanese military and civilian casualties — that it could make the Americans pay so high a price for victory that they might negotiate an armistice rather than demand surrender.

Tens of thousands of Americans had already died in taking the Pacific islands as a way to get close enough to bomb Japan. On March 9-10, 1945, B-29 bombers dropped an estimated 1,665 tons of napalm on Tokyo, causing at least as many deaths as later at Hiroshima.

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Our Savonarolas On the ethos of “Burn it down!” By Kevin D. Williamson

Posted By on April 21st, 2016

Odd news that maybe isn’t so odd: A presidential straw poll conducted by a libertarian student group found that the most popular candidate among its members was Donald Trump. Second place: Bernie Sanders.

Young libertarians for elderly socialists: Not as strange as it sounds, or unprecedented.

Fifty years ago, the libertarian (he’d have said “anarcho-capitalist”) economist and political analyst Murray Rothbard dreamt of a grand coalition between far Left and far Right, whose members and interests, he believed, might be unified momentarily and perhaps more than momentarily by opposition to the Vietnam War. This was an error and led him to some ghastly places (thrilling to the stirrings of David Duke and culpable indulgence of Holocaust deniers) and into associations from which the liberty movement has never recovered.

What might drive a young libertarian into the “revolution” that Sanders proclaims? One thing is the ongoing Rothbardian bent in libertarian foreign-policy thinking, and Sanders is the only candidate in the race who isn’t entirely hostile to non-interventionism on the Ron Paul model. On lifestyle-libertarian issues — marijuana, stance toward religious traditionalists and their institutions — Sanders is the libertarians’ man, in practice. Sanders is energetically anti-libertarian on questions of trade and immigration, but a nontrivial number of self-professed libertarians have abandoned those issues or reversed themselves on them, “libertarian” now being used with unfortunate looseness to mean “right-wing populist who does not wish to be identified with Mitch McConnell’s party.”

We also are seeing the poison dividend of the bank bailouts.

Free-marketeers and free-traders must of course be realists about big business and its interests to the extent that we live in the real world, but for a generation, the working assumption was that the party of capitalism and the party of capitalists were if not the same party then largely on the same side, give or take an ethanol subsidy or in-house fight about intellectual property. The bailouts changed that.

The sort of libertarians who might have followed Rothbard into the sweaty precincts of David Duke’s political thinking have always had some uneasiness about the (Jewish) international bankers who terrified Henry Ford, and you’ll generally find them in possession of a copy of The Creature from Jekyll Island, the ur-text of Federal Reserve conspiracy theory. The spectacle of a small number of financial institutions throwing the world into an economic crisis through their fecklessness and rapacity and then demanding sweetheart loans amounting to trillions of dollars to see them through — a drama in which the banks were both the hostages and the hostage-takers — brought new life to the dry bones of 1930s conspiracy theories.

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Chinese Naval Base in Djibouti Poses Problem for U.S. Ryan Healy

Posted By on April 21st, 2016

On Monday April 18, 2016, China officially broke ground on its first naval base in Djibouti, Africa, a country which has also been the home of the United States (U.S.) African intelligence-gathering base for the past 15 years. The Chinese base will be encroaching upon a major U.S. military installation with 4,000 troops and has the largest drone installation base outside of Afghanistan.

Djibouti may be a proving ground for China’s foreign policy as the nation looks to further expand its influence in Africa. China has participated in anti-piracy missions off the coast of Somalia since 2008 and increased those missions in 2010. Chinese President Jinping donated $100 million to the African Union (AU) and said it was to help build a standby force as well as an emergency response and quick response force.

American Ambassador to Djibouti Tom Kelly warns that Djibouti is the forefront of U.S. national security policy in Africa and raised concerns of Chinese military efforts to intercept American intelligence.

The U.S. also has to deal with Djibouti president Ismali Omar Guelleh, viewed by many locals as a dictator, who curtails free speech and human rights, makes arbitrary arrests, and uses torture on opposition. Guelleh may be increasing his ties to China following the Chinese purchase of the Port de Djibouti for $185 million. Chinese investment has also establish a $4 billion dollar railway project from Djibouti to Ethiopia; and is expected to Djibouti $20 million per year for the Djibouti naval base over the next decade.

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Iran’s Nuclear Missiles in Our Future by Peter Huessy

Posted By on April 21st, 2016

Iran has not only failed to sign the agreement, it passed a parliamentary resolution reiterating Iran’s right to do the nuclear activities the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action (JCPOA) forbids.

Iran’s purpose seems obvious. By blocking transparency for its nuclear activities and evading enforcement of the terms of the JCPOA, Iran gets to move forward with its nuclear weapons development even as it pretends not to.

Most of the media have ignored satellites photos showing that Iran has hidden its Parchin military atomic complex by completely bulldozing the area and then building an underground nuclear facility off limits to any inspections.

A missile can be launched from the sea — as Iran has done at least twice — by a freighter, which leaves no return address. Even the threat of missile launch can have significant coercive political effect particularly if one does not know from where it will be fired.

As for accuracy, if a missile in the mode of an electro-magnetic pulse exploded anywhere in the atmosphere between Atlanta and Boston, it would knock out most of America’s electric grid.

In 2017, the next administration will face the choice of keeping the US-Iran 2015 nuclear deal – still unsigned by Iran — or of creating a new approach to eliminate Iran as an emerging nuclear power.

Supporters of the current deal, the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action (JCPOA), will continue to argue that Iran has implemented the important provisions of the deal; that current violations and uncertainties are not critical to fulfilling the agreement, and that troublesome activities by Iran’s leadership are just designed to appease some hardliners opposed to any concessions to the United States, “The Great Satan.”

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Veiling Women: Islamists’ Most Powerful Weapon by Giulio Meotti

Posted By on April 21st, 2016

The first victim of the Islamist war in Algeria was a girl who refused the veil, Katia Bengana, who defended her choice even as the executioners pointed a gun at her head. In 1994, Algiers literally awoke to walls plastered with posters announcing the execution of unveiled women.

In April 1947, Princess Lalla Aisha gave a speech in Tangiers and people listened astonished to that unveiled girl. In a few weeks, women throughout the country refused the scarf. Today Morocco is one of the freest countries in the Arab world.

In the mid-1980s, sharia law was implemented in many countries, women in the Middle East were placed in a portable prison and in Europe they resumed the veil to reclaim their “identity,” which meant the refusal of assimilation to Western values and the Islamization of many European cities.

First veils were imposed on women, then Islamists began their jihad against the West.

Laurence Rossignol, France’s Minister for the Family, Children and Women’s Rights, sparked a furor about the Islamic veil proliferating in her country, when she compared headscarved women to “American negroes who accepted slavery.” In addition, Elisabeth Badinter, one of France’s most famous feminists, even called for boycotting Europe’s fashion companies, such as Uniqlo and Dolce & Gabbana, which are developing Islamically correct clothes (in 2013, Muslims spent $266 billion dollars on clothing, and the figure could reach $484 billion by 2019).

A new trend is also emerging in Western popular culture, which was almost invisible in the media a decade ago: headscarved women are now also present in television programs such as MasterChef.

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ED CLINE: HOW NOT TO TALK ABOUT ISLAM

Posted By on April 21st, 2016

Language must conform to wishful thinking or delusions. It must never, never be anchored to reality. That would be “radicalization” and we want none of that.

Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, knows how to not talk about Islam. Across the sea, Daniel Greenfield, Stephen Coughlin, and a few others not detached from reality, also know how to not talk about Islam.

Boris Johnson wants to find a new term for linking Islamic terrorism without mentioning Islam or Muslims. Or even terrorists or terrorism.Daniel Greenfield et al. do not think you can discuss Islamic terrorism without mentioning Islam. If you talk about Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, you are talking about a cereal, and not about sushi or hummus. Finding a new term for Islamic terrorism isn’t necessary. The current term says it all.

Boris Johnson does not believe that Islamic “radicalization” has anything to do with Islam. “Radicalization” is a very real term to him, yet it has nothing to do with Islam. By what are British, American, and European Muslims being “radicalized”? The answer to this question is to Johnson as elusive as Peruvian guano dung. He tries several explanations but none of them rings true, for they all avoid “Islam” like the plague. It’s almost funny how finicky he is when trying to solve a problem by evading the simplest answers.

The title of this column lends itself, at Boris Johnson’s expense, to an old Monty Python skit, “How not to be seen.” Or, how not to be heard or seen speaking of Islam in any but praiseworthy and respective language. Language that deprecates or indicts Islam is out of the question. In Britain, it probably isn’t even legal.

Boris Johnson about a year ago, in a June 28th Telegraph article, “Islamic State? This death cult is not a state and it’s certainly not Islamic,” tackled the conundrum with a subheading, “We must settle on a name for our enemies that doesn’t smear all Muslims but does reflect reality.” To Johnson, ISIS, or ISIL, is merely a “death cult” and has no relation to Islam. It isn’t fair to Islam or to Muslims, he says, to characterize Islamic terrorism as something performed exclusively by hooded Muslims who usually quote Koranic verses while broadcasting their latest beheading, stoning, or hurling of a gay from a rooftop. Johnson writes:

If we are going to defeat our enemies we have to know who they are. We have to know what to call them. We must at least settle on a name – a terminology – with which we can all agree. And the trouble with the fight against Islamic terror is that we are increasingly grappling with language, and with what it is permissible or sensible to say.

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Kurdish official says ISIS executed 250 women in Mosul

Posted By on April 21st, 2016

As the operation to retake the city of Mosul from ISIS ramps up, anti-ISIS forces are detailing some of the atrocities committed by the terrorist group.

An official for the Kurdistan Democratic Party told Iranian news agency ABNA ISIS has been forcing women into arranged marriages with ISIS fighters — and executing women who refuse.

The official said “at least 250 girls have so far been executed … and sometimes the families of the girls were also executed.”

Mosul fell to ISIS in the summer of 2014. Since then, the group has been taking pains to portray their occupation of the city as benevolent.

But ISIS’ reign has been particularly oppressive to women; the group practices sex slavery and requires women to adhere to a strict set of rules.

The push to retake Mosul began last month, and President Obama says he expects the city to be ripe for the retaking by the end of the year.

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ESPN Fires Curt Schilling for Opposition to Transgender Restrooms By Stephen Kruiser

Posted By on April 21st, 2016

Via Variety:

ESPN has fired Curt Schilling over his recent anti-transgender comments on social media.

Schilling, a baseball analyst for ESPN and former Red Sox pitcher, posted a Facebook comment criticizing a transgender women.

“A man is a man no matter what they call themselves,” read Schilling’s comment, which he apparently posted in response to a photo about a recent North Carolina law that restricts transgender people’s access to bathrooms and locker rooms. “I don’t care what they are, who they sleep with, men’s room was designed for the penis, women’s not so much. Now you need laws telling us differently? Pathetic.”

ESPN issued a statement on Tuesday, saying “ESPN is an inclusive company. Curt Schilling has been advised that his conduct was unacceptable and his employment with ESPN has been terminated.”