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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Conservative</title>
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		<title>Rick Perry: Restore the 10th Amendment, Restore Freedom</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/rick-perry-restore-the-10th-amendment-restore-freedom/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=rick-perry-restore-the-10th-amendment-restore-freedom</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 19 Dec 2014 05:54:47 +0000</pubDate>
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				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[California]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Texas]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247758</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Former governor of the Lone Star State sheds light on the path to liberty at Restoration Weekend. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong style="color: #232323;">Below are the video and transcript to Gov. Rick Perry’s keynote speech at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s 20th Anniversary Restoration Weekend. The event took place Nov. 13th-16th at the Breakers Resort in Palm Beach, Florida. </strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/114532350" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>David, as we gather here for this 20th anniversary celebration of the Freedom Center, it was similar circumstances that this country found itself in when you had the first Restoration weekend in 1994. Two decades ago Republicans had swept into power in both of the Houses, a revolution that changed the balance of power for the first time, Cleta, in 40 years. Twenty years later, Republicans again have won historic victories in the midterm elections and once again we are controlling both houses of Congress. In addition to picking up eight seats in the U.S. Senate, we picked up at least a dozen House seats, three governorships, several state legislative chambers. Today, Republicans control 68 of the 98 partisan state legislative chambers. That is the most in the history of our party. And we stunned the pollsters. It was a beautiful thing. We stunned the pollsters even more than we stunned President Barack Obama, who apparently doesn&#8217;t realize that November 4 even happened. He&#8217;s too busy representing those who didn&#8217;t vote to listen to those who did vote. But even if he didn&#8217;t hear the message, the American people delivered one. They said enough of the slow growth tax policies, enough of the smothering debt, they said enough to this colossal bureaucracy that we&#8217;ve seen, and these agencies of government that all too often are unaccountable to the people. They rebelled against government-run healthcare schemes, against a President who refuses to secure the border, and against bureaucracies that are broken, arrogant and abusive of power. That&#8217;s what the American people said Tuesday. The American people made it clear. They want a clean break from the economic policies that have slowed our recovery at home, and the foreign policies that Jim did an incredible job of laying out that have weakened our standing abroad.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m here to say that a congressional majority is a terrible thing to waste. The power that has been newly granted by the people must be used wisely to serve the people, that it&#8217;s not good enough to state what we are against. We must articulate what we are for. The election results leave us with a truly once in a generation opportunity to usher in an era of renewal and reform. You are here tonight through your commitment to the Freedom Center, and you&#8217;re going to be on the front lines of this battle. One of the ideas that has returned to the fore of the conversation, to the forefront of people&#8217;s minds, if you will, is the proper place of states within our constitutional system. Indeed, we have spent the last six years challenging edicts out of Washington that amount to federal control of our classrooms, our healthcare, and our environment and our economy. Washington&#8217;s assault on state sovereignty and individual freedom is a well-documented assault on the Constitution and, in particular, the Tenth Amendment. Some have ridiculed the binding power of the Tenth Amendment, but, of course, Jay, without that amendment, the Bill of Rights would have been incomplete, and the Constitution would never have been ratified. The question is whether Republicans in Washington, now in control, will pursue Washington-centric solutions to the problems that plague us, or will they look to and empower the states.</p>
<p>It was the liberal Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis who called the states laboratories of democracy which &#8220;tried novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.&#8221; Yet Brandeis&#8217;s political descendants have forgotten that lesson. In fact, they flipped it around trying these grand experiments in federal power, ostensibly for the common good. I like that Tocqueville observed that in the American system the actions of the federal government would be rare, but the reality is the federal government is involved in all kinds of things the Constitution doesn&#8217;t empower it to do, while ignoring basic responsibilities like securing our border. And it&#8217;s the states that are pushing back against federal overreach and the courts are starting to take notice.</p>
<p>In the infamous Obamacare case of 2012, Chief Justice Roberts upheld the law, but the Supreme Court also struck down the mandatory Medicaid expansion as a violation of the Tenth Amendment. Now a new Obamacare case is about to be heard. It uses the letter of the law to challenge the federal government&#8217;s use of subsidies on many of these healthcare insurance exchanges. Now we know that the federal government overstepped its powers. We know that, partly because we know there is now a new smoking gun: One Jonathan Gruber, one of the architects of Obamacare. In less than a week&#8217;s period of time the Washington sin of prevarication has come to be known as &#8220;Gruber-ing.&#8221; He said repeatedly, I think, what is there now, six videos that we have, that the federal government had to lie to the voters because we are too stupid to know what&#8217;s good for us. That shows exactly why the states are so important to defending individual freedom; because the states have stood up to the abuses of federal power in Obamacare. The law, as a matter of fact, it may collapse upon its own weight.</p>
<p>So if the states are these laboratories of democracy, I would suggest to you that Texas has found the formula for success. You know, it&#8217;s interesting, some people call it the Texas miracle, and I tell them, I said it&#8217;s not a miracle. I can&#8217;t explain a miracle. This I can explain. This is really pretty simple. This is not rocket science. You don&#8217;t spend all the money. Keep the taxes low, a regulatory climate that is fair and predictable, a legal system that doesn&#8217;t allow for over-suing, and accountable public schools so you&#8217;ve got a skilled workforce. This will work. It&#8217;ll work anywhere. Jay, it&#8217;ll even work in California, I swear to God, I&#8217;m telling you it will. And the results have been rather stunning. When you look at job creation, one-third, one-third of all the jobs created in the United States in the last 13 plus years have been in the Lone Star State. Over the last ten years, we have created four times more jobs than the state of New York, we have created nine times more jobs than the state of California. And some would say well it&#8217;s because you have all of that energy, and I will suggest to you we are glad we have that energy. America is glad we have that energy. But it&#8217;s not singularly the energy boom, that&#8217;s only part of the reason for our success. We&#8217;ve added jobs across the spectrum – 228,000 workers in education and healthcare, 156,000 in professional services, 162,000 in hospitality services, 130,000 in trade and transportation, according to the Texas Public Policy Foundation. I am particularly proud of the fact that as of January of this year, Texas became the number one high-tech exporting state in the nation, passing up California and the famed Silicon Valley. And we&#8217;ve been continuing to reach out to give California companies the opportunity to relocate to the great state of Texas, companies like Toyota, who moved their North American headquarters to Plano this last year, companies like Space-X, and we&#8217;re going to keep doing it.</p>
<p>And my point is, I want the Golden State to succeed. We need California to be a powerful, successful country. That was a Freudian slip. We would really like to bring them into the United States and be a part of this country. You know, for ten consecutive years now, Chief Executive Officer magazine has chosen Texas as the number one state to do business, and, thanks to the governor of this state, Rick Scott, they are doing a good job to push us. Rick Scott is an extraordinary governor, and Floridians were really wise to put this man back into office again because he really understands what the future of our nation, the future of this state is all about, and the focus on creating that environment, where the citizens of this state will be free.</p>
<p>Freedom is what this is all about. It is in the pursuit of freedom, and, on average, there is a thousand people every day moving to the state of Texas because they are in pursuit of freedom. Freedom from over-taxation, freedom from over-litigation, freedom from over-regulation. That is what needs to be the powerful Republican message as we go forward inside the boundaries of this country. And here are some of the results of those policies. Our crime rate is now the lowest that it&#8217;s been since 1968. We&#8217;re shutting prisons down in the state of Texas, not building them.</p>
<p>What&#8217;s the result of good, thoughtful public policy? There are those that would stand up and say you cannot have a growing economy and take care of your environment. That is an absolute false lie. Nitrogen oxide levels are down 63 percent in the state of Texas in the last decade, ozone levels are down by 23 percent during that same period of time, our carbon footprint which, by the way, is not a pollutant, but is down by 11 percent during that period of time because we understand that, even if it is, we want to make sure that we&#8217;re doing everything that we can to make that environment as pleasing as it can be for the future generations, and that&#8217;s what we&#8217;ve done in the state of Texas. Part of that&#8217;s been because of policies that we&#8217;ve put into place to move old polluting types of engines, diesel engines, out of the fleets. Part of it&#8217;s been moving to that natural gas. That&#8217;s what can happen all across this country. This isn&#8217;t a miracle. It&#8217;s a model and it&#8217;s a model that will work anywhere. We are an increasingly diverse state. We got a little of something for everybody. We have Austin, Texas. As I told you, we are a diverse state. I refer to it as the blueberry in the tomato soup. And, David, I encourage you to visit from time to time. You can talk philosophy and tenure to the professors at the University of Texas. They would love to have you.</p>
<p>But, in all seriousness, can we do more? Yes. Should we try to do more? Absolutely. But what Texas shows is that with a rapidly growing economy all else becomes possible. Clearly Texas is a model that works, but we&#8217;re not alone. America has just experienced a great test of governing principles. In the days leading up to the 2014 mid-term elections, we were told that Republican governors were in trouble. You read it everywhere. You saw it on multiple outlets. Scott Walker&#8217;s public union reforms in Wisconsin, Sam Brownback&#8217;s tax-cutting in Kansas, Rick Scott&#8217;s pro-growth policies in Florida, all were going to be punished by the voters. For example, the campaign for America&#8217;s future said that seven Republican governors were now &#8220;being judged harshly by voters now that their right-wing policies had failed to deliver.&#8221; It went on to say that these states were laboratories for the kind of small government trickle-down economics that Senate candidates hoped to bring to Washington, impose on the nation, and there is a real danger that the failed experiments in these seven states will be brought to Washington by a Senate Republican majority. But the experiment wasn&#8217;t quite over, and the voters decided in a very powerful conclusion on November 4. Not only did six of those seven governors win re-election, but Republicans picked up governorships in solid states for Democrats like Massachusetts, Illinois, and even Maryland. And there were a lot of people, a lot of people that were responsible for those Republican victories including a number of you, if not all of you, in this audience tonight. Yet in the end it was the people who decided. They told fellow Americans that the experiment and conservative governance is a resounding success and they want more of it.</p>
<p>There were a few places that bucked the trend though. Jay, your California being one of them. See, I tell people, I say California, for example, is as liberal as Texas is conservative. But that is not an argument against federalism. In fact, California is an example of how the state&#8217;s Tenth Amendment powers work for liberals too. You think about this. California has some policies that no other state in the union have tried, and in most other states, don&#8217;t want to try. Take cap and trade, for instance. I mean, not even Barack Obama, in those heady early days of his first administration, could pass cap and trade, but California has it. And it&#8217;s making new companies like Tesla a lot of money, even as it is at the same time forcing a lot of companies out of that state.</p>
<p>Nearly 20 years ago, California also became the first state in the nation to legalize medical marijuana. In 2012, Washington and Colorado legalized marijuana entirely. This year Alaska, Oregon, and the District of Columbia followed suit. The governor of Colorado said that he regrets it. Most conservatives oppose it. The federal government&#8217;s still fighting it, and the United Nations said this week that legalizing marijuana violates international law. But that is the beauty of the Tenth Amendment. I&#8217;m telling you, that is the beauty of federalism. If states can make their own decisions on matters of general policy, then we can have the kind of political diversity among the states that gives meaning to the pursuit of happiness. People can vote with their feet, they can vote with their pocketbooks, they can invest their dollars where they want, and that gives states an incentive to attract them, and to innovate. The reason welfare reform became so popular nationwide was because it succeeded in Wisconsin. The reason state provided healthcare is unpopular nationwide is they proved that it was costly in Massachusetts.</p>
<p>Some states want to cling to policies for various reasons. California is addicted to spending. Therefore, it&#8217;s addicted to debt and taxes. So, there&#8217;s a result. It&#8217;s losing people, and entrepreneurs, and homeowners, and that is another benefit of federalism. You can do what you want in your state. But you are forced at some point to pay the costs.</p>
<p>So, how do we ensure that the states protect and, I might say, regain their Tenth Amendment rights? One way is by continuing to fight the encroachments of the federal government. Whether bad laws like Obamacare, bad spending like the stimulus of 2009, or bad faith in immigration policy, but beyond that we can take political action. We can show the American people concrete results, how states work better, how states compete against each other, and, I might add, better than the federal government could do. And that&#8217;s exactly how Governor-elect Larry Hogan over in Maryland, that was the point that he made. He laid out the data. He showed people in that state how many people had left the state, how many billions of dollars it was costing the state because of the bad policies. If we show people the difference between conservative policies and liberal policies, I happen to think they&#8217;re going to demand conservative policies almost every time just as they did last Tuesday. And when people understand, when people understand that they have the power to choose these policies, they&#8217;ll resist. They&#8217;ll resist any attempt by the federal government to take that power away. There is a reason that people and states are included together in that Tenth Amendment. Individual liberty has shone brightest when it&#8217;s been protected from big government. Only successful states are strong enough to protect our freedom from those in Washington who think they know better. States are the essence of our national motto e pluribus unum, from many one. That is the common creed of the David Horowitz Freedom Center that defends it every day. They defend it now and I will suggest to you they will defend it 20 years from now. And that is what each of us must fight for every day.</p>
<p>God bless you, and thank you all for coming and being a part of this.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
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		<title>Change the Game Takes On the New Year</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/change-the-game-takes-on-the-new-year/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=change-the-game-takes-on-the-new-year</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/change-the-game-takes-on-the-new-year/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Dec 2014 05:50:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Change the Game]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Conservative]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Javonni Brustow]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kevin Daniels]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kira Davis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lawrence Jones]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Race]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sonnie Johnson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tracy Connors:]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247445</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The team reveals what lies ahead for the new Freedom Center initiative.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong style="color: #232323;">Below are the video and transcript to a panel discussion on the new Freedom Center initiative &#8220;<a href="http://www.ctghq.org">Change the Game</a>,&#8221; which was featured at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s 20th Anniversary Restoration Weekend. The event was held Nov. 13th-16th at the Breakers Resort in Palm Beach, Florida. </strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/114210898" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Sonnie Johnson: </strong>About four years ago I met my political soulmate.  We were young.  We knew nothing.  We came straight from the ghetto, and we saw the problems in our community.  And we fell under our elders, as youths should do, and we listened to their advice, and we did what they said until we said, you know what?  Y’all don’t know what y’all doing.  It’s time for us to start doing something on our own.</p>
<p>For four years when I need prayer, when I need counsel, when I’m down, when I’m knocked out, when I have no breath left, when I feel like I can’t fight anymore, I call this man, and he prays with me, he counsels me, he gives me advice, and then in the end he says, it’s your job now and lays everything on my footsteps.  And because he did that, I feel strong enough to take it on.  Mr. Kevin Daniels.</p>
<p><strong>Kevin Daniels: </strong>When I met Sonnie four years ago, she was right, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, but it’s something, when you find someone that you believe in so much, that God gives you the foresight to see not what that person is but what that person could become, and I walk with her side by side with what she is trying to do.  She has a huge vision, and she’s going to share it, and everyone else is going to share their pieces in it.  But being able to walk with her through this journey has been great for me.  And she is a jewel.  She is a diamond in the rough.  And with the vision that she laid out for Change the Game, I’ll just give a brief overview of it, then I’ll step aside.</p>
<p>It’s an ambitious vision.  A lot of people said that it can’t be done.  A lot of people said that we shouldn’t do it.  And when you look at, from the right and from the conservatives and Republican movement, they talk a lot about not engaging this population of people because they’re not going to support us anyway. It’s a waste of time, it’s a waste of money.  Sonnie disagrees with that, as well as I, because in these communities that we’re going after, that we’re targeting, there’s a lot of people that are like Sonnie and I, that may not have gotten the right start, but the finish, the potential, the possibilities that they all have is something that we’re really going to push with Change the Game.</p>
<p>When we launched this project &#8212; we launched in September, September 2, right, Tracy?  September 2 we launched the web site.  Three months later when you go on the Internet and you look at the organizations that have similar structures that we do, we are ranked No. 2 in the nation in that, and we haven’t even gotten started yet.  So far our activities have been web site primarily.  We do radio interviews, well, they do radio interviews, and you won’t see me doing any of that stuff.  I’m a behind the scenes guy.  But when we leave here, we are going to implement a ground game where we are going into these historically black colleges and universities, we’re going into these inner city neighborhoods, and we’re going to push the twin pillars of freedom and liberty everywhere that we go.  And we’re going to be very strategic and deliberate in our actions.  I’m not a big fan of activity with no goals.  So we’re setting goals.  We’re going to be very targeted in our efforts.  But not only that, the umbrella of the Freedom Center, there’s a lot of projects that are up underneath it, and we want to make sure that we don’t operate independently of them.  So we’re going to connect with TruthRevolt, we’re going to work with FrontPage, we’re going to work with everyone that’s up underneath that umbrella to try to undergird them so we can all reach that same goal.  David is here now, and he has a great vision with the Freedom Center, and we’re going to connect with all those different organizations so we can move the needle forward.</p>
<p>Now when people say that this thing won’t work, they look at Sonnie, they see how she’s dressed, they look at Kevin, they see how he’s dressed, they look at the suits and the dresses, but someone had to engage us.  Someone had to empower us.  Someone had to give us the information that we needed in order for that light to be turn on in our lives, in our eyes, so that we can understand what conservative principles are and what they mean, and then how to apply it to our lives and live it.  My background is, I was born and raised in Westchester County, New York, lived in Section 8 housing for the first 17 years of my life, parents separated when I was six, my mother died of AIDS when I was 15 years old.  I attempted to go to college, didn’t work out that well.  I didn’t have a great foundation.  How many more people in these inner cities have a similar story?  How many people in these inner cities have a similar story to myself and Sonnie, as well as the other panelists that are up here?</p>
<p>So before we launched the web site September 2, a week prior we launched a Liberalville video.  We’re not going to call Chicago, Illinois &#8212; there’s too many cities out there to name.  But what Sonnie did four years ago, and it’s ironic that she mentioned four years ago when we met, because she created this video called Liberalville that we didn’t actually release until August of this year.  And so when we look at Liberalville, Sonnie says something very powerful in there.  She says I want to show you what I see when you remove the Democratic elite.  She goes on to talk about eight individuals, eight characters in the Liberalville video, and she doesn’t look at what they are and what they’re doing. She looks at the possibilities that this individual has, and that’s what we’re looking at doing when we look at people.  We have initiatives &#8212; taking people to street corners, to corner offices &#8212; that&#8217;s an initiative that we have where we’re going to push entrepreneurship, we’re going to push small business to these communities because these communities need an economic base.  We’re going to push education, school of choice, and I can run down a list of things that we’re going to do, but we’re going to have an aggressive, ambitious agenda.  So I encourage you all to go to the web site that Tracy’s going to talk about soon, but look at this video Liberalville.  It’s about three minutes long, and it’s a spoken word piece.  And look at the foresight that Sonnie had back then, and then look at what’s happening in these inner cities and these communities now.  There’s one that just came to mind.  She’s talked about the politician, and we all know what’s going on in Ferguson right now.  But she said back then, she said the politician has no desire until shots are fired and people need someone to blame.  Sonnie was talking about this years ago.  The vision that she is laying out for Change the Game, what we’re going to do when we leave this Restoration Weekend is going to be impactful, and we are No. 2 now, but we’re coming for that No. 1 spot.  So that organization that is there, they got to move to the side.  So thank you for your time.  I think you all for your support.  Appreciate what you’re doing, and thank you.</p>
<p><strong>Sonnie Johnson: </strong>Okay. About two years ago or three years ago I was in Providence, Rhode Island, just one of my kind of very first events that I went to, and I really didn’t know anyone so I was kind of always by myself, and I’m walking down this hall, and I hear, “Sonnie freaking Johnson!”  And it stopped me in my tracks.  I stopped in my tracks.  And I turn around, and this girl is standing there, and she said, “We’re going to be best effing friends,” but she used the word.  And I, oh my gosh, this big bubble of personality, this big bubble of light, and for the last three years she has helped to sharpen me mentally.  We talk about everything.  Hardly do we ever agree, but we are friends first and foremost before anything started with us working together.  Last year she had the chance to operate her panel, and she said I want you to come and be on my panel.  It took me less than two seconds to say of course, if you need it, you got it.  Now, we work together with Change the Game, and she is going to show you the awesomeness that is Ms. Tracy Connors.</p>
<p><strong>Tracy Connors: </strong>All right.  I wanted to give everybody a brief tour of the site. If you haven’t been there, I suggest going.  You might not like everything that you see, but that’s not the point.  David came to me and said, “Hey, I hear there’s a web site called Buzz Feed.  Could we get something like Buzz Feed going on?”  I still don’t think he’s ever visited Buzz Feed, but we said okay, we can do something like that.  I apologize about the dimensions on this right now, but this is our main page.  So you can see, hang on, this is unacceptable.  Yeah, it’s cutting off part of the page.  All right there we go.  Now you can see the page.  All right.  Now I’ll make it bigger.  There we go.  Okay.  So as you can see, you probably don’t think you’re on a political web site at all, right?  Anyway, so we’ve got stories about pop culture mixed in with stories about news and issues that we care about and we think we can reach our readers with and the audience that we’re bringing in.  So the people that care that the BET just cancelled one of their favorite shows, they’re going to go and read this story, and then over on the side they’re going to find commentary by Sonnie, which you can’t see over here, where it’s talking about Jimmy Fallon insulting Mia Love, but not in the way that you would think.  So it’s a way to get people into our world that would never come and visit to begin with.</p>
<p>When you get to go to the site &#8212; which is ctghq.org, or for those who struggle with initials, it’s changingthegame.org as well you can get there &#8212; you search around and you’ll see that on the sides, you can catch it kind of a little bit, you’ll be confronted with our issues section and our knowledge section of the site.  And this is where we’re really pushing the things that Kevin touched on and Sonnie talked about.  So we find stories that we can put an entertaining spin on but to deal with these kind of issues.  And then for people that aren’t totally familiar with everything we’re talking about we’ve started to build out a whole section where they can learn some history that they might not have known, understand basic economics, read speeches, read our founding documents, learn more about the progressive movement, and if they don’t understand the language we’re using, I put together an entire dictionary of political words and phrases, and it’s linked back in articles, and we use stuff that we think, hey, the average person might not know what that means.  So let’s never talk down to our audience.  Let’s make sure they have all the information we can possibly share with them.</p>
<p>And we’ve got a great selection of videos too so if you’re looking for that Liberalville video that Kevin talked about, you’ll find it in the videos section.  And now, speaking of videos, I’ve got one to show all of you guys to catch you up on what we’ve been doing.</p>
<p><b>[Video Recording]</b></p>
<p><strong>Sonnie Johnson: </strong>I have to share a moment of clarity with you real quick.</p>
<p>I’m guessing the moment should have came,<br />
When my brain was lit on fire with facts and names,<br />
I had never known.<br />
I’m guessing you will all question the lesson I learned,<br />
To turn me to the right side or the white side,<br />
Depending on who asks.<br />
I’m guessing that’s why you look surprised,<br />
That instead of pulling out a prerecorded line,<br />
From my talking points bag,<br />
I rhyme instead.<br />
I’m guessing some are saying, &#8220;She’s on a college campus.<br />
She should be serious.&#8221;<br />
I am.<br />
So serious in fact, to give you my moment of clarity,<br />
First I have to give you all of me.<br />
Poetry.<br />
I stopped one step short of asking for a beat.<br />
Now back to this moment of clarity of which I speak.<br />
I always get asked the same question.<br />
What made you a conservative?<br />
I hate that damn question.<br />
Apathy, indifference or frustration,<br />
Five years later God speaks, revelation,<br />
Time has been wasted on irrelevant procrastination,<br />
Because my moment didn’t come from man.<br />
My moment didn’t come from the church.<br />
My moment didn’t come from politics.<br />
My moment didn’t come from culture.<br />
My moment started with the people.<br />
How much death could we take?<br />
How much poverty could we embrace,<br />
Where hopes and dreams are at stake?<br />
How many God-given talents would we waste,<br />
And the only place that I can find,<br />
Voices that sound like mine,<br />
That cry the same tears,<br />
Experience the same fears,<br />
With the same goals and aspirations,<br />
The same drives and calculations,<br />
The same observations,<br />
That make hope and change negligible as an actual destination,<br />
Are in hip-hop.<br />
So I rhyme because I’m serious,<br />
I rhyme because I’m furious.<br />
I don’t care who doesn’t like it.<br />
I need young ones to hear this:<br />
We are dying.<br />
Whether we kill our babies in the womb,<br />
Or follow drugs to the tomb,<br />
Or lay unemployed in our mother’s living room,<br />
Whether we pull triggers and kill our own reflection,<br />
Or use the haves and have-nots in our selection,<br />
Or destroy the lives of others due to our own depression.<br />
If you want to talk police brutality,<br />
Then stop pushing gun laws that lessen citizens&#8217; protection,<br />
Because we are dying.<br />
And that’s my moment clarity.<br />
And if I had to say it without rhyme,<br />
There would be tears in my eyes and a frog in my throat,<br />
And I wouldn’t be able to cope,<br />
Because when I say that we’re dying,<br />
I don’t mean it as a political trope,<br />
We are dying,<br />
Leaving our streets blood soaked.<br />
Enough.</p>
<p>And that’s why I do what I do.  That’s why I created Change the Game.  To me this isn’t about politics.  This isn’t about garnering political favor.  I am tired of seeing people I love die.  I am tired of seeing people I love incarcerated.  I am tired of seeing people who look like me don’t feel like they’re a part of the America that I know blood has been split for them to be a part of.  That is why this is so important.  I don’t care if you like hip-hop.  It is not meant for you to like. It is meant for me to take a conservative message into the black community and show them there is a methodology to stopping the death in our communities.  And that’s what I will do until I have no more breath in my body.</p>
<p><strong>[End of video recording]</strong></p>
<p><strong>Sonnie Johnson: </strong>And so as you can see, I have my right hand and my left hand thoroughly taken care of.  Two of my favorite people in the entire world, Kevin Daniels and Tracy Conners.  So I’m going to take a few minutes to speak now, and then we’re going to go ahead and introduce the rest of the panel, and we’re going to have some fun.  But I want to take a few minutes to speak on some things before we go.</p>
<p>I guess we’re in a celebratory mood.  We got to see the Republicans take over the Senate, and we got to see a lot of House seats, state House seats, change over.  We got to see Republicans become governors in states we never thought we would never see a republican governor in.  Even though I’m sad that Maryland went red, and I live in Virginia and we’re still blue.  So I was a little upset and hurt by that.  If we are getting close to Maryland I’m scared, and I might be looking for a place to relocate.  West Palm Beach is very nice this time of year.</p>
<p>So we have a lot of things to celebrate, but I want to question how we celebrate.  So please indulge me for a moment, and I want to talk about Mia Love.  Let’s see if you’ll be clapping when I finish.  I love Mia Love.  I had the opportunity of meeting her and speaking with her and hearing her conservative principles, and last time when she ran she told me the struggle she was having with having conservatives come and back her, getting help for her race.  She lost.  So instead of giving up, she said I’ll do it, and I’ll do it my way.  I’m not going to wait until campaign season.  I’m going to keep going from where I finished and never stop.  So this year when she ran, we all cheered.  Until the next morning.  And I got up, and I scrolled through my Facebook page, and I scrolled through Twitter, and there was not a mention of her conservative principles.  There was no mention of what she had fought for and how hard she had fought to get where she was.  There was no mention of her story.  There was no mention of her fight.  There was no mention of her tactics.  The only mentioned about Mia Love was she was black, she was a woman, she was a Mormon, and she was a Republican.  And everybody cheered.  And then they say, I’m glad we’re not the party of identity politics.</p>
<p>I don’t believe we are the party of identity politics.  What we are is reactive.  Whatever progressives do, we react.  So they ignore Mia Love, so we take it upon ourselves to make sure that everyone knows her name.  And that’s cool because if we don’t do it, who is going to do it?  But we don’t talk about her principles. We don’t talk about any of those things.  No, we stay on the identity of it because we want them to know that we are not racist.  Guess what?  They’re still calling you racist.  It does not work.  It is a fallacy that I have watched for four years, time and time again.  And it’s very funny because we have their playbook.  We have Alinsky&#8217;s &#8220;Rules for Radicals.&#8221;  We know what they’re going to do before they do it.  So what have we done to Mia Love?  And that’s a serious question.  What have we, as conservatives, done to Mia Love.  We have painted a bull&#8217;s-eye on her back.  All they have to do now is destroy her because it’s not about her policies, it’s not about her principles, it’s not about her fight, it’s not about her struggle, it’s not about her tactics, it is about her.  What do they do?  They target, they ridicule, they separate, they demonize and they destroy, and we give them the targets.</p>
<p>I’ll give you an example of this from something that happened in the last two years with Cliven Bundy.  Instead of making it about government against the people, which was the issue, instead of making it about private property, which was the concept, instead of making it about liberty and justice and big government coming in and crushing the individual &#8212; no.  We didn’t make it about those things.  We made it about Cliven Bundy.  So as soon as Cliven Bundy opens his mouth and says something stupid, we lose everything.  Because it’s no longer about what we’re fighting for. Now they have someone to demonize.  Do you remember how many times they put his face everywhere?  And they took what we had as a perfectly good message, and they destroyed us with it.  And the funny part was yet again we gave them the target by making it about the individual.  In this we know what they’re going to do, and we must become the people that no longer play by their rules and their game, hence change the game.</p>
<p>See?  I told you all.  It’s a question of whether or not you’ll like it at the end.  Because it’s an uncomfortable truth.  You want to feel good.  You have this joy.  You want it expressed, but we have to understand how we’re expressing it.  We can’t be them and beat them.  We can’t do it.  So we know what happens next.  Everyone knows what happens next.  The road will be paved for Hillary, and we will have a war on women, and we will have a war on race, and there will once again be a war on poverty, and we’re going to have more separation.  They&#8217;re going to say again that you hate the rich.  As soon as a Republican dares decide that they want to cut something: &#8220;You will hate the rich! you hate them!&#8221; I mean the poor.  [Laughter.]  You hate the poor. But it turns into, &#8220;You hate the poor! You hate minorities! You hate women! You hate dogs!&#8221;  I’m guessing they’re going to tell you you hate whatever it is they want to throw at you at that moment. So we know what’s coming.  Do we wait and do we react to this?  Or do we say not this time?  Because I’m on the not this time bandwagon.  I can&#8217;t sit by and watch it anymore when I know what happens next.  So if no one else is going to say it, then I’ll be the one to say it.  If I say it alone, I’ve done it before.  It doesn’t bother me one bit.</p>
<p>They’re coming at us, and instead of this time us saying &#8212; anyone remember Andrew Breitbart?  Andrew &#8212; if you have ever seen Hating Breitbart, he has this excellent piece in Hating Breitbart, and he has all these progressives standing around him, and they’re yelling in his face, they’re calling him racist, they’re calling him this, they’re calling him that, and Andrew, cool as a cucumber, said, “And?”  One word had never been so powerful to me in my entire life because I knew what he meant.  I’m not wasting my time playing these games with you.  You still never answered my question about whatever it was he was asking at the time.  I’m not going to sit here and play your games.  You can call me all the names you want.  Still, would you like to answer my question anytime in that response?  What that does is it takes away their argument because you don’t care.  In order for them to be effective, you have to care.  So when they call you names, you have to get offended.  When they call you out of character, then you have to say, &#8220;But I’m not!&#8221;  &#8220;All Republicans are racist!&#8221;  &#8220;We have Mia Love!&#8221; The same point still applies.  We aren’t moving the needle.  We aren’t changing anything.  Didn’t we have Clarence Thomas before?  Didn’t we have Condoleezza Rice?  Did any of that change anything?  What makes you think mere Love is going to change something?  Not politically speaking.  Good gracious, I love the woman. Go to Congress, do what you do.  I’m talking from the progressive point of view.  It’s not going to change them.  So we know their tactics, we know where they’re coming at.  So this is what we’re going to do for next year.  Trust this little bit of this vision for you guys.  We love capitalism and we’re not running from it.  You say we love the rich, yes we do.  So those of us who are not rich yet, we’re on our way.</p>
<p>We have some stuff we got to make up, and we’re not there yet, but I tell you one thing, we’re hustling every day of the week to get there.  And you’re not going to make us feel bad about it.  You’re not going to make me feel sad about it.  You’re not going to make me cry about it.  People who want to live in the situation of poverty, people who want to live in public housing, people who want food stamps, people who want welfare, you are perfectly fit to be a Democrat.  We don’t want you.  You can stay all day long, and it’s fine with us.  What we want is the get up, get out and get something generation.  We want the ones who are not satisfied with what they have.  We want the ones who say, you know what?  This isn’t going to be my life.  One day, I’m going to be in the governor’s office like Kevin Daniels.  One day I am going to run The Blaze, and I’m going to do investigative work, and I’m going to shake up Texas.  One day I am going to start writing a blog that makes everyone stand up and take notice so when my Karen Davis piece comes out it’s 2,000 hits instantly.  Those are the people we want.  Those are the people we’re going after.  And this is how we’re doing it.  Come and eat at our table.</p>
<p>You say we’re the party of the rich.  Think about how good the food tastes over here.  And we’re not asking you to bring anything, just yourself.  We don’t care about your past.  We don’t care about your situation.  We don’t care about any of that.  We got a place open at our table for you to sit down and eat.  The only condition that we put on to you coming and eating at our table is that next time we’re coming to your house to eat at your table because that’s what we do.  You come eat with us, you become part of a family.  You get a network.  You get a backdrop.  You get not just politics, you get prayer.  You get acceptance.  You get people who care about what’s going on in your family life, not just what’s going on in the polls.  You get something that a lot of us in the black community definitely don’t get from Democrats, that’s why they didn’t show up in this last election.  We have the table, and we’re opening that table for you to come and eat with us.  Our table starts with Change the Game at the web site.  Come and eat from our politics.  Come and eat from our culture.  Come and eat from our history.  Come and eat from our economics.  Come and eat from our spoken word.  Come and eat until you are so full you have no choice but to say get up and let somebody else come and have a seat.  That’s how we want you to eat because then we know you walk away feeling inspired, feeling empowered.  So what do you do?  You go make your own table.  And then you start feeding the people around you.</p>
<p>Do you know the best way to cut welfare?  Make people not want to be in poverty.  That way there’s no congressional vote, there’s no demonization, it’s none of that because you have people who willingly leaving the system because they want something more.  They see the American dream, and now they know that they can be a part of it.  Where they saw no route before, they saw no way before, impossibility like they told me a thousand times it can’t be done &#8212; ha-ha.  We got our table.  It can be done.  Those doubts should not exist.  Come and eat with us.  The simplicity of it.  And that’s what we’re going to do next year as far as our overall mission and our overall focus.  We know they’re going to demonize us, we know they’re going to hate us, we know that some people like where they are and they’re going to want to stay where they are.  But we know that a lot of black people like money, a lot, especially when you didn’t have it growing up.  So that’s our message, an economic message, a platter full of food to eat, a family that you become a part of, an American dream realized.  And to me that encompasses what Change the Game is.</p>
<p>So that’s what we plan on doing going forward, and that’s my vision of how we’re going to do this, not distracted when they want to call us names.  We’re going to stand in their face and say, and you still haven’t answered my question about school choice, you’re just a show for the conservatives.  You still didn’t answer my question.  We’re not going there.  If that’s the conversation you want to have then you can go to your table and have that conversation.  Don’t come over here with that.  So that’s what we’re going to do.  I’m going to stop because you all know how I get if I don’t.</p>
<p>So what I want to do now is in addition to my right and my left hand, I started to build a tent.  And I love the idea of &#8212;  Tracy created this wonderful graphic for  me, and I absolutely adore it, so I wanted to make sure everyone got to see it.  That’s our Change the Game tent.  That’s our table.  It signifies to me, I loved it the moment I saw it, but I said I have to start filling this tent.  So I had to pick some of my favorite people, and I wanted people who were already active, I wanted people who had already been beaten down, I wanted people who had already took their strikes and were still fighting.  Those that didn’t give up, those that refuse to give up, come to eat at my table.  Those are the kind of people that I love.</p>
<p>So I’m going to introduce to you all them one by one.  I’m going to let each one of them talk, and then we’re going to have some fun.  First up, I want to, from Washington D.C., he is PopGlitz, he is DC Pundit, and he’s one of my favorite people because his favorite place to go is Democrat headquarters, Javonni Brustow.</p>
<p><strong>Javonni Brustow: </strong>Hello, everyone.  I wanted to go over the reason why I’m a Republican because I felt that I am the elephant in the room, and that needed to be addressed.  As we know, Sonnie Johnson’s project, Change the Game, is about minority outreach, and I felt who else would be better than the super minority in the room to go over there.  So I live in liberal Washington as we know.  I’m a writer and a conservative that is pretty visible in both conservative circles and in Democrat headquarters.  Why I put myself through that, sometimes I have no idea.  I get beat up on a daily basis, but such is life.  That’s what I chose.  For starters, I am a Republican based on my hard work.  It’s not something that’s taught by the left.  If I were to listen to Democrats, I feel that they would let me know that by myself being in DC and where I am, I wouldn’t be able to hang around there for long.</p>
<p>I was able to spend the last couple days with Ann Coulter, and for me to be around her as I took pictures and sent it back through social media over the last few days, the responses that I got were absolutely unbelievable.  If I were to listen to my liberal followers, they would let me know that Ann would have flown up here on the dais on her broom with her witch hat, and I probably would have been shot and wouldn’t make it out of Florida.  I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen.  I work out every day, I think I could take her, a couple pounds give or take, I don’t know.</p>
<p>I have beaten every Democrat stereotype.  I have to deal with the question of how did you end up in the Republican Party?  What went wrong?  I know so many liberal politicians, and it’s the same thing, and they’re like, okay, when that’s done, you can come over here.  It hasn’t happened yet.</p>
<p>My thing is that I have &#8212; when I was a teenager I worked three jobs in order to move into my first place, which was a luxury apartment building.  Again, that was not easy.  Hard work is just one of my things.  For anyone who’s ever questioned what type of work ethic that I have, I feel like that is the basis or the crux of the Republican Party.  It’s about hard work.  I had a very hard-ass family.  They were very tough, and if anyone were to question if I actually work, those are like fighting words for me.  Aside from Change the Game, I do have an entertainment site, a political site.  I just joined Hip-Hop Republican, I’m with the Examiner.</p>
<p>I’m working 24 hours a day, and as for any of the arguments about racism and discrimination, they’ve never played any part in life for me.  I’ve never accepted excuses.  They don’t make any sense because I’m always too busy working.  I don’t have time to go over statistics.  Thank you.  When I turn on MSNBC and I see Al Sharpton speaking and I’m hearing about how awful things are &#8212; number one, I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed if I listened to him.  It’s too depressing.  But with that being said, I don’t have the time to look at it.  I have things to do. I work with staff, I have staff, and again, 24 hours a day.  I don’t drink coffee until 1:00 in the morning for nothing every night.</p>
<p>So that’s that, hard work, and the other thing, I wanted to mention: gay marriage.  Now, I don’t want to be shot up here.  I know that’s a form of profanity, and be nice because I can hear gag reflexes.  What I wanted to mention is that, in case no one’s noticed, I don’t think that I have to go over that, but I think that I would like to have a long-term relationship, and one of the arguments that I tend to have is, they say, well, you’re in a party that doesn’t like you.  And I said well, what are we, 12?  I think that I last stopped caring about anyone’s opinion in high school.  And I just explained to someone earlier, I said I went to four schools.  One closed for money laundering.  I moved around a couple times.  And I have never seen any of these people since then, which means that I am pretty sure that I have come out successful.  I think that’s really all that matters, and I don’t think that the government has any type of say in the end result of my life or anyone else’s life, period.  So a sheet of paper for anything really does not make that much of a difference.  If you decide to do something, I can have an attorney and say at the end of the day this is my shit, this is yours, when it is over you don’t touch my shit over here, and I will not touch yours over there.  End of discussion.  No one’s opinion mattered, and, again, the government, it didn’t matter.  I didn’t care.  In fact, I was engaged before, and I don’t think I even ever looked up to find out if it were legal.  I didn’t care.  I said I guess whenever it happens, hey, I have an attorney on speed dial.  That will be it.  But I just wanted to explain myself and how I’ve become a Republican, and that there is a myriad of people in demographics that are within the party.  So wanted to thank you.</p>
<p><strong>Sonnie Johnson: </strong>The very first time I met with Javonni I didn’t know what to expect.  He had me laughing for three hours.  He is one of the funniest people that I have ever met in my entire life, and I am so proud to have him part of our team.</p>
<p>Now, our cowboy, because I told him, I said you kind of fit the stereotype, Billy.  Your name is Billy, dude, come on.  But if you don’t know this man, you might remember that some Obamacare people down in Texas got their money revoked. Obamacare &#8212; what are they called? &#8212; the navigators.  They got all of their financing snatched.  That’s my cowboy.  And now you can see him as a regular on Dana Loesch&#8217;s TV show on The Blaze, and he’s one of my favorite people in this entire world, Lawrence Billy Jones III.</p>
<p><strong>Lawrence Jones: </strong>Thank you for having me, and I want to thank my big sis for just inviting me to break bread with you guys and just talk about some issues.  I’m going to be very brief because we want to have some fun.  Years ago Frederick Douglass had given a speech, and he was really rallying the people in Washington DC to make a difference, and there were a lot of young people there.  And one of them, after the speech was over, Frederick Douglass, he was tired, and he was just ready to get back home, and that one child came up to him.  He said, Mr. Douglass, &#8220;Mr. Douglass, what can I do? How can I get involved? How can I make a difference?&#8221;  And Frederick Douglass gave him three words &#8211; agitate, agitate, agitate.</p>
<p>And when I joined my big sis’ organization I was pretty skeptical about joining any organization, but I knew that she knew what the real mission was, and she said, Lawrence, your name is going to be the community agitator.  And that’s exactly what I do.  I come from a background, my mom was 16 when she had me.  We had never had anything the easy way.  Everything was about working hard.  Ninth grade I was recruited by the Democratic Party to work for Obama.  They flew me out to DC.  We laid the groundwork to get him elected, working with Organizing for America, and they told me, sir, I don’t care what you believe, but you can never be a conservative because you are black.  Even though I agreed with the ideology, you could never be a conservative.</p>
<p>Well, we never had anything easy.  I had my first job when I was 15.  I was working at a leasing agency, and my godmother was white, and I said look, you’re different.  Well she said, I’m a Republican, and you see things just like me.  It was at that moment that I opened myself to what Republicans in the conservative movement were doing, and I figured out that I was lied to.  Oh, I was pissed.  I was mad as hell.  Y’all don’t understand, when I worked for the Democrats I did research.  I’m a private investigator by trade, and I dug up dirt.  I went after conservatives because I thought they were on the other side.  But when I got mad at liberals, they had something coming.</p>
<p>I spent two years traveling with organizations like Freedom Works trying to get the conservative message out there, and I was speaking from my investigative skills that we have to expose the left for what they really are.  We know what they’re about.  It’s about power, money and greed and whatever they need to do to deceive you to believe that Republicans and conservatives are against you, they will do it.</p>
<p>And I’m speaking this speech, and the crowd is like, what is he talking about?  And this man comes up to me, and he says, I need to really introduce you to somebody, and he introduces me to James O’Keefe.  I spent the next year undercover in the Democratic Party in Battleground Texas, and because of that we shut down the whole Navigator program in the state of Texas.  You can have Obamacare, but you can’t sign up in Texas.</p>
<p>And so back to my mission.  And been on cable news.  And that’s all fine and dandy.  Giving speeches is all fine and dandy, but if we cannot attract a different generation of leaders, if we cannot go to all communities across America, then we have done nothing.  And so what I do, I don’t come with my suit and tie on to those communities. I come with my Jordans, my Nikes, I come with sweats sometimes on, my cowboy boots and my hat, and I agitate the community because what is the problem today?  And we see this in Ferguson.  People are angry, but they’re mad at the wrong people.  And so it’s time for a new generation of leaders that aren’t afraid to go into different types of communities.  You know, I didn’t accept the RNC job because, like I told them, y’all trying to have a one night stand with black voters, and game recognize game.  You will never get them to vote for you if you just come during election time.  And so I go into these communities, and I agitate them.  You see what your congressman is doing?  Yeah, he’s black, too.  Do you realize he’s voting against your community?  What?  I got it on tape, you want to see it?  Do you see that when they sign you up for Obamacare they are storing your personal information then selling it out for political purposes?</p>
<p>What we have to realize is that we have a group of people that once they get sick and tired of being sick and tired, they will change the way they vote.  Once they get tired of being on food stamps, on housing, when they get tired of the government taking their money, when they get tired of staying in failing schools, they will change the way they vote.</p>
<p>It was when I realized that my parents worked for every single thing that we had and that my 16-year-old mother married my father and they built the family together, and nobody was going to rob me from that, that I changed the way I believed.  We got to get it, conservative, because we’re hooraying about this conservative victory that’s just taken place, but like I said on The Blaze the other day, we didn’t do anything.  We did absolutely nothing.  Candidates went around the country campaigning against Obama.  We didn’t really present our proposal.  That’s what we have to do conservatives.  The battle is not over yet.  We have to go into these communities, agitate, let them know who’s really against them, and once we expose the Democratic Party, the liberals and progressives for the frauds they are, it’s game over.  Time to change the game.</p>
<p><strong>Sonnie Johnson: </strong>And they keep trying to tell me I’m the only one.  All right, Ms. Kira. I bonded with her in a cornfield.  It’s true.  Look, everybody would laugh when they hear that.  No, we bonded in a cornfield, literally out in the middle of nowhere, and I found that just like me and Tracy, me and Kira don’t agree on everything.  But she is my favorite person on this earth to disagree with. Five minutes after our disagreement, we have a scotch in hand.  That’s my Kira Davis.</p>
<p><strong>Kira Davis: </strong>Yeah, you can clap for that.  Okay, thank you, Sonnie.  Yes, we did.  That’s a true story.  We did meet in the middle of a cornfield, and maybe I’ll tell that to you to you later if you want to hear it.  But one of the reasons that we don’t always agree on everything, my background’s a little different.  I’m actually an immigrant.  I immigrated from Canada at the age of 17.  I was born to a black American father and a white Canadian mother, and I was raised in eastern Canada for most of my life.  I didn’t meet my own father until I was ten years old.  He had left before my mother even knew she was pregnant.</p>
<p>But when I was ten, I had the opportunity to travel to the United States for the first time, a place I had only ever seen on TV.  I knew there were other black people, I just didn’t know where they were.  So I was really excited.  I flew by myself, and my dad’s family picked me up in Boston.  I got off the plane at Boston Logan Airport.  First time I ever set foot on American soil.  And I will never forgot how it smelled and felt and looked.  It was so different than where I had come from, a rural kind of fishing community, and it was vibrant.  There were so many different types of people I had never seen, black and brown and orange and yellow, and yeah, people with &#8212; and I was so amazed at how you could go anywhere and buy anything.  I know a lot of people are surprised to hear a Canadian say that, but Canadians don’t have the same kind of freedom that Americans have.  This brand of freedom we have in this country is very unique.  It’s unique to us.  It really does need to be protected.  I don’t think you realize that until you travel outside, but I remember that moment of all of those sights and sounds and smells coming down on me and thinking to myself, I’m going to be an American someday.</p>
<p>And from that moment on, it was my goal in life to become an American.  And I left home as soon as I could.  I came to school here in the U.S. and went to school in Iowa.  I met my husband there.  We married.  It still took ten years and thousands of dollars to get my citizenship, but I did it the right way.  It’s a privilege to be an American.  I can’t emphasize enough how honored I am to be American, and when I began serving in the black community, my husband and I had an after-school program, we would invite children to come and use computers, and we would tutor them and mentor them for free.  And I was, even though I was very passionate about America, I still was a socialist liberal because you’re in Canada you’re just by default hockey and socialism, they just go together.</p>
<p>And I realized, I’m serving this community, I’m realizing, all these policies that I have supported my whole life, I’m watching how they work, and they don’t.  And I just thought one day, I can’t do this anymore.  I’m not helping these kids, I’m distancing them from success with the politics of victimization and by telling them that white people don’t want you in their places.  I wasn’t incentivizing them, they were just becoming cogs in the machine.  And so it was during that time that I realized, no, I really am a conservative.  This is what I believe.  I started studying American history, and when I read the constitution for the first time, mind blown, like this is one of the most inspired documents on the face of the planet, the Bible, the Constitution of the United States of America.  Which is not an accident, which is not an accident.  They go hand in hand.</p>
<p>But I want to wrap up because we want to do some Q&amp;A. We want you guys to know how we view things as black Americans so that you might not be able to do what we do, but that you know what we want to do so you can at least support us, and that’s who we’re going to win this battle, that’s how we’re going to win back this country, by understanding we can’t all be on all fronts.  This is a war, but you have to know which battle you’re in.  Pick that battle, and do it.  So we’re in this battle, and so we want you to know a little bit about what we want to do. But before I go, this is what I want to say.  When I came here, even though as a teenager I was still pretty liberal, I still had the innate sense that there was something very special about the brand of freedom that is America, and now I tell my kids, look, just by being born in this country you are already five steps ahead of the game.  You’re already five steps ahead simply by accident of birth.  You need to nothing more than be born here to have more than almost everybody on this planet.  I don’t care if you live in the hood or the suburbs, it’s the same thing.  I say this all the time.  America doesn’t owe you an opportunity, America is the opportunity.</p>
<p><strong>Audience Member: </strong>One think I would ask is that you have a menu because in the beginning you said when you started this that we really need to know how to address the attacks, and you have given us some good examples today, and I appreciate that immensely.  So I would say at that table you need a menu for us, something that perhaps the Horowitz group can continue to share with us on how to handle some of these situations and issues.</p>
<p><strong>Sonnie Johnson: </strong>I will gather all my blog posts because basically that’s what I write about.  Continuously, personally, me, I have no choice but the two-pronged  approach because while I’m talking to the black community, I also have a conservative base, and my base doesn’t understand when I’m talking to the community, and my community doesn’t understand when I’m talking to the base.  So I always do a two-pronged approach.  I always will make sure that I have an argument that’s framed that fits the black community, and I have an argument that’s framed that conservatives can understand.  The problem is when people hear this they call it pandering.  No.  It’s knowing who your audience is.  It is the first step of owning any business or running any venture or anything else you do.  If you don’t know who your audience is, you will fail.  So I always take into account who it is I’m talking to.  It doesn’t matter, you’re going to get Sonnie Johnson either way.  That part of it isn’t going to change.  But I am aware and alert enough to understand that, and I will do that.  I will make that something that I do and make sure that, I guess I’ll work with David to see how we can make it available for everyone to be able to grab hold of it.</p>
<p><strong>Kira Davis: </strong>In the next few years it’s going to be really important, there’s going to be a lot of these young groups, these kids coming up, groups like us that will need your support.  So yeah, you might not be able to go into the hood and walk in and talk to people, and that’s fine, that’s okay.  But to find the people who are doing that and support them, that support is as valuable as a dynamic personality like a Sonnie Johnson.  So just keep that in mind as we move forward.  Find someone you like and can support and throw everything behind them.  It’s going to be more important than ever.  The field is ripe for the picking, and we’re on our way to a big win in 2016 if we can hold that.</p>
<p><strong>Lawrence Jones: </strong>Kira has been nice, but some conservatives just need to shut up when it comes to &#8212; seriously, and this is where Sonnie’s little bro comes into effect.  There are a lot of conservatives, some of them are black conservative, that are screwing it when it comes to race relations and going into these different communities because they do not know what to say.  If you don’t know what to say, shut up, it’s okay.  Get behind organizations that know exactly what they’re doing.  The RNC is not one.  They fail.  Okay.  So what we need is for people all across that are in Freedom Center to continue to support this movement.  It is proven, there’s a track record there where people are beginning to change their minds.  They’re listening in whether it’s a podcast, radio show or TV show because they want to know what these type of conservatives are talking about.  Thank you.</p>
<p><strong>Sonnie Johnson: </strong>As you can see, I am a lucky girl.  I am a happy girl, and David wasn’t here to hear this, but I am a sharp girl.  We look forward to 2015, and we’re going to show America how restoration starts with Change the Game.  Thank you all for coming.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Jamie Glazov</strong> interview <strong>Sonni Johnson</strong> on <strong>Change the Game</strong>:</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/vjidrVc4JQ0" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
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		<title>UK Independence Party Is Better &#8212;- But No Solution</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/enza-ferreri/uk-independence-party-is-better-but-is-no-solution/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=uk-independence-party-is-better-but-is-no-solution</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/enza-ferreri/uk-independence-party-is-better-but-is-no-solution/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 27 Nov 2014 05:00:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Enza Ferreri]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Conservative]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[eu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[labor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[liberal democrat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[UKIP]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246031</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Can the breakout political party deliver what Britain truly needs? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/ukip-2.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246165" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/ukip-2-450x337.jpg" alt="ukip-2" width="351" height="263" /></a>Last Thursday the UK Independence Party (UKIP) gained its <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/11244748/Mark-Reckless-of-Ukip-wins-Rochester-by-election-with-2900-majority.html">second seat</a> in Britain&#8217;s House of Commons, the lower House of Parliament, with Mark Reckless elected in the Rochester and Strood constituency, in Kent. The victory was obtained through a comfortable, though not dramatic, majority of 2,930 votes over the Conservative runner-up Kelly Tolhurst.  The majority, many say, may easily be lost again at the May 2015 general election for the UK Parliament.</p>
<p>This election, and especially the election of UKIP&#8217;s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29549414">first Member of Parliament</a>, Douglas Carswell, with a landslide 60% of the vote, are historical events.</p>
<p>Both seats were won in by-elections necessitated by the fact that Mr. Carswell and Mr. Reckless, already MPs for the Conservative Party, defected to UKIP and left their seats, which they later regained with their new party.</p>
<p>For good or for bad, UKIP, for all its limitations, is changing the British political landscape forever.</p>
<p>UKIP&#8217;s limitations are a lack of long-term clarity about the objectives the party wants to achieve. What needs to be answered is what the party stands for and who does the party represent?</p>
<p>The answer to the latter is obvious: The great number of British people of middle and working classes who have seen their country transformed beyond recognition in the relatively short time of a few decades by unrestricted immigration, multiculturalism and Islamization &#8212; in short, the socio-communist agenda tacitly or overtly accepted and promoted by the misnamed Conservative Party as well as the most obvious culprits, Labour and Liberal Democrats.</p>
<p>The people who are worried by all these recent phenomena and even more scared by the main political parties&#8217; inaction and collusion are absolutely right. What they don&#8217;t necessarily have, after many years of the media&#8217;s and education system&#8217;s propaganda, is a clear idea of what caused the UK&#8217;s problems and where to start if we want to stop, let alone reverse, these momentum-gathering trends.</p>
<p>To know that is the job of politicians. Hence, the question &#8220;what should UKIP stand for&#8221; needs to be answered. It&#8217;s not enough to be against the European Union (EU), mass immigration and the main-party triad &#8220;LibLabCon.&#8221;</p>
<p>Here UKIP represents vast numbers of the electorate even too well. Like them, UKIP senses the problems, but doesn&#8217;t grasp the solution.</p>
<p>Irish statesman and political thinker Edmund Burke (1729–1797), himself an MP in the House of Commons for many years, made an important distinction between representatives and delegates.</p>
<p>In his famous &#8220;Speech to the Electors at Bristol at the Conclusion of the Poll&#8221; of 1774, he explained that delegates exclusively carry out the instructions of those who elected them, therefore only reflecting the views and wishes of their constituents.</p>
<p>Representatives, on the other hand, are trustees. Voters have entrusted them to act in their best interests, which doesn&#8217;t necessarily coincide with what the majority of voters want. Moreover, representatives make choices on the basis of the common interest, and not just of those who elected them. Representatives consider constituents&#8217; views, but don&#8217;t have to abide by their wishes. They follow follows their consciences. The representative, thus, having knowledge and experience that his constituents generally lack, uses his judgement to form an opinion on what&#8217;s in the public interest, and acts accordingly.</p>
<p>MPs, Burke said, should be representatives and not delegates.</p>
<p>So, in Bristol he proclaimed (<em>The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke,</em> Volume I, London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854, pp. 446–8):</p>
<blockquote><p>[I]t ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. <strong>But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.</strong>&#8230;</p>
<p>You choose a member, indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament. [Emphasis added.]</p></blockquote>
<p>In these days of rampant populism it&#8217;s important to realize that the old clique of politicians, in Britain as elsewhere in the West, hasn&#8217;t acted wrongly so much because it&#8217;s gone against the people&#8217;s will, as because it&#8217;s gone against the people&#8217;s interests.</p>
<p>In fact, in many cases the political class has given people what they wanted &#8212; an unsustainable welfare state &#8212; in its own interest (which was to get elected), but has gone against the people’s interest by creating an unprecedented national debt of astronomic proportions that may bankrupt the state and will burden future generations.</p>
<p>UKIP doesn&#8217;t seem to be different from the other parties in this respect. It doesn&#8217;t like to tell people uncomfortable truths, as can be seen by the compromises it has already started making. For example UKIP has promised that millions of European immigrants can remain in Britain after an EU exit and taken a soft stance on Islam, and so on.</p>
<p>UKIP wants to appear politically correct.</p>
<p>Its policies are fluid, constantly changed. Its representatives are often caught saying things against party policy. When placed under scrutiny, they often don&#8217;t know what to say.</p>
<p>All this is not unique to UKIP, as it can be found in other parties. But that&#8217;s exactly the problem. Where is the difference? Where is a long-term plan for effective change? If UKIP knew the answer, it wouldn&#8217;t have gone so long without a manifesto, including during the 2014 European election campaign.</p>
<p>In the end, leaving the European Union is not the ultimate solution. What will UKIP change after that? What about the Third World immigrants, who are an immensely greater problem than Bulgarians and Romanians? What about Islamization of Britain? What about the erosion of Christian values? The ideological dominance of the Left?</p>
<p>UKIP is a breath of fresh air in the stagnant political situation of the UK, but air, though essential, is not the only necessity of life.</p>
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		<title>Bill Whittle: Selling Conservatism</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/bill-whittle-selling-conservatism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=bill-whittle-selling-conservatism</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/bill-whittle-selling-conservatism/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 21 Nov 2014 05:27:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Conservative]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Election]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Freedom]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hope and change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[meaning]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Republican]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=245729</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Firewall star explains how to pitch a pro-freedom message at Restoration Weekend. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Below are the video and transcript to Bill Whittle&#8217;s speech at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s 20th Anniversary Restoration Weekend. The event took place Nov. 13th-16th at the Breakers Resort in Palm Beach, Florida.</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/112280256" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p>Before I start things I&#8217;d like to just say one thing. This is my first time here. It&#8217;s my third time here but it&#8217;s my first time here actually working for the Freedom Center and working with David.  And being the person who&#8217;s always written his own videos and very proud of his own videos, I&#8217;ve had a chance to actually work with David on scripts and let me just explain to you briefly how that goes.  I&#8217;ll have a script idea for something I think is really profound, important and deep and I&#8217;ll send it to David and David will go, &#8220;Ah, mostly no, you really kind of missed the boat.  You should concentrate a little more over this and take some of this out and add this beat over here.&#8221;  And I say, &#8220;Well, yes sir, that&#8217;ll be great&#8221; and then I hang up the phone and go, &#8220;Oh, you&#8217;re going to get your beat over here.  You want a beat over here?  I&#8217;ll put a beat over here.  I&#8217;ll take this out of my video &#8230; tell me who&#8217;s going to write my own videos &#8230;&#8221;  And I say, &#8220;Yeah, no, no, no.  We&#8217;ll take this out, no problem.  We&#8217;ll take it out.  We&#8217;ll add this.  Sure.  Here ya go.  Take a look at it.  It&#8217;s fine.  You&#8217;re paying me here …&#8221;  It&#8217;s so much better, it&#8217;s just so much better.  It&#8217;s so much better.  Curse you Comrade Horowitz.  Curse you and your magnificent vision for how to make a message clear and on point.</p>
<p>So what are we going to talk about today? Well, two years ago I was on this very stage just a few days after we took a shellacking by the Democrats.  I was on this stage two years ago after we&#8217;d lost a big election and I was terrific.  And if there&#8217;s any correlation between those two things, this morning I am just gonna suck because we whipped those racist, anti-Semitic communists out of their boots.  We whipped them out of their boots.  Couldn&#8217;t have happen to a nicer bunch of venal criminals.  So I&#8217;m sure the question everybody&#8217;s asking is what now?  I mean, what now?</p>
<p>When Obama was elected it was the lightworker descending from heaven into the Roman columns and two years later the American people said enough of this guy.  We recaptured the House of Representatives.  That allowed him, allowed us to stop him from doing an awful lot of damage.  We had this incredible reverse in 2012 and now we have the Senate.  What does the Senate give us?  Well, this is not what I want to talk about today, but I think what we have with the House and the Senate is we have the ability to deliver legislation to the president&#8217;s desk and we should be delivering a lot of legislation to his desk and make that son of a gun veto it.  Make him own it.  Make him take personal responsibility for the first time in his life and say &#8220;Nope, nope.&#8221;  The 2015 Small Business Anti-Regulation Act.  Nope.  The 2016 IRS Restructuring Bill.  Nope.  Make him own it.  The Secure the Boarders for American Safety Act.  Nope.  Make him own his policies and failure by sending the kind of legislation the American people want to see and have him veto it.  And you put some markers down for 2016.</p>
<p>But that&#8217;s not really what I want to talk about today.  What I&#8217;d like to talk about today briefly is this.  What are we actually selling to the American people?  What&#8217;s our message?  For six years now we&#8217;ve been saying these guys are awful and their policies are awful and they&#8217;re damaging the country and here&#8217;s the evidence.  And they are.  And we keep doing this and that&#8217;s what the videos do, but we can&#8217;t just be a party or a movement that has a negative message.  Don&#8217;t do that &#8217;cause the American people have a perfect right to ask, &#8220;Well, if we don&#8217;t do that then what do we do?&#8221;  What do you think is a better idea?  That&#8217;s what I want to talk about today.  I&#8217;d like to talk about what I think the conservative message; I won&#8217;t say the Republican message, but I will say the conservative message.  What is the conservative message moving forward from this point especially starting in 2016?  And I think where we have to start from is we have to start from the progressive message &#8217;cause they had a message in 2008.  And that message was &#8220;Hope and Change.&#8221;  And that&#8217;s where we need to start.  Because hope and change appealed to a lot of people; appealed to a lot of stupid people, but it appealed to a lot of people.  Because hope and change, when you think about it, first of all, are unbelievably vague terms.  They&#8217;re extremely vague.  Hope.  Hope, hope, hope.  Hope for what?  Change.  Change to what?  Change to what?  Driving along the freeway and then going off a cliff is a change.  Well change to what?  Hope from what?  But if you think about their message, this is the point I&#8217;m trying to make today.</p>
<p>Hope and change, when you get right down to it, are extremely passive qualities.  They&#8217;re the qualities of herd animals.  They hope for change.  They hope for change.  There&#8217;s nothing, no ownership in it.  There&#8217;s no motion.  There&#8217;s no ability to control your destiny.  You hope for change.  You sit back and wait for something to happen.  You sit and wait for something to happen.  And that&#8217;s entirely their philosophy and that&#8217;s what they want.  They want a nation of people who sit and wait for them and the rest of the elitists to make something happen for them.  And the American people are getting a little tired of hoping for change.  They&#8217;re done with it.  We have to give them a better message.  So what&#8217;s better than hope and change?</p>
<p>Well, many of you may have heard of an author named Viktor Frankl.  He was a philosopher who survived the concentration camps and he did a lot of thinking about this in the camp and then in a series of years of clinical research afterwards.  And Frankl wrote a book called Man&#8217;s Search for Meaning.  And Frankl realized that it&#8217;s not money that people want.  Freud thought that mankind&#8217;s main motivation was the pursuit of pleasure.  But Frankl found out that wasn&#8217;t the case at all in the camps.  He found that the people that survived in the camps survived because they had some sense of meaning.  Something mattered to them.  It was never the same for any two people.  Some cases it might be a missing wife, maybe it&#8217;s a book that wasn&#8217;t finished, maybe it&#8217;s a desire to see Venice.  But the people that held on to some sense of meaning survived those awful conditions and Frankl wrote that in the concentration camps you could tell when a man was about to die because when he gave up his quest for meaning, he was gone in three days.  They just knew he was on his way out.  It&#8217;s meaning.  It&#8217;s not power.  It&#8217;s not money.  It&#8217;s meaning.</p>
<p>So, if we take that as granted &#8212; and I know that&#8217;s certainly true in my life and I&#8217;m sure it&#8217;s true in your life.  Successful people, you know, the left thinks that successful people &#8212; rich people, business people &#8212; go into business to make money.  That&#8217;s not why anybody starts a business.  People start a business because they have something they want to achieve.  They have a vision of something.  They&#8217;ve got a dream.  They can make a lot of money doing that but never say, &#8220;I&#8217;m going to go out and make a lot of money.&#8221;  No.  I want to start a dry-cleaning business.  I think we can do a better job with mortgages.  Whatever the case may be.  So I think Frankl&#8217;s right.  I think meaning is what people want.  And if we&#8217;re going to be a party that has a future and as a party that has a message, we need to incorporate this.  So if I was going to write the message for the conservatives going into the future, I would say no, forget hope and change.  Those are passive, weak, probably-never-gonna-happen, lottery-ticket philosophies for herd animals.</p>
<p>If I was leading the GOP I would say our message on every single program that we put out is &#8220;What is your individual plan for meaning in your life?&#8221; What&#8217;s your plan for meaning in your life?  If you raise that question, you start people thinking along the kind of lines that they should be thinking about in this country.  What&#8217;s your plan for meaning in your life?  That&#8217;s a specific question and it requires a specific kind of answer.  A very specific kind of answer.</p>
<p>What&#8217;s your plan for meaning?  Well, what&#8217;s required in the plan?  If you&#8217;re going to plan for something, what&#8217;s required in a plan?  You know, the difference between hope and plan is that a plan is hope on a timetable.  And I don&#8217;t mean to be particularly vulgar about this but the difference between hoping and planning is the difference between sitting in your parents&#8217; basement at 39 years old playing video games and watching online porn versus working your butt off with two jobs and taking out the high school homecoming queen on prom night.  That&#8217;s the difference between hoping and planning.  And I know which one I&#8217;d rather do &#8217;cause I&#8217;ve done them both.</p>
<p>So, you want to get people to be thinking along the lines of planning.  What does planning entail?  What does it take to make a plan for your individual meaning?  What do you have to do?  Well, if you&#8217;re going to plan something, you need probably five qualities.  Right?  You need ambition.  You need vision.  You need confidence, persistence and hard work.  You need those things.  And you can tell people that if you&#8217;re willing to do those things, you don&#8217;t have to hope anymore because it&#8217;s not something that may happen someday.  If you have a plan and you&#8217;re willing to execute the plan, you will get to whatever you define is the meaning in your life.  You will get there.  And then all of a sudden the American people realize what they used to realize a long time ago before these progressives came in here with their control over everything.  That their destinies are in their hands, not the government&#8217;s hands.  That their destinies are not dependent on somebody else&#8217;s welfare, nobody else&#8217;s opinion of you, not your personal influence.  It&#8217;s in your hands.  You own your own future.  It&#8217;s your future to do with what you want to.</p>
<p>Why do you think Thomas Jefferson shocked the world by saying, &#8220;Life, liberty and&#8221; &#8212; instead of property because that&#8217;s what everybody referred to, &#8220;life, liberty and property&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;the pursuit of happiness.&#8221;  What an astonishing idea that was.  What an astonishing insight into the human condition to understand that the three things that make this country work are life, the ability to be alive and to have your own soul and your own desires, liberty, the freedom to do whatever you damn well want to so long as you don&#8217;t interfere with somebody else&#8217;s liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  That&#8217;s built into a government?  That&#8217;s astonishing.  And that is the astonishing idea that we need to revive with the American people.  That you have the ability to pursue your own individual happiness and no one can stop you.  No one can stop you.  If you know what you want, you will get there if you follow these steps.  So what are the steps?</p>
<p>Well, the first step is ambition.  And the beautiful thing about ambition is ambition can be as big or as small as the individual person.  Some people may have an ambition to be a brain surgeon and that&#8217;s going to require a lot of hard work over a long period of time.  Some person&#8217;s ambition may be to go to every single home game of the Green Bay Packers.  And that person&#8217;s ambition and that person&#8217;s meaning is no more and no less meaningful than a brain surgeon because if going to every single home game of the Green Bay Packers makes that person happy and is what they care about, then they have a right to find a way to make that happen in their lives.  It&#8217;s no better and no worse.  It is an individual search for meaning.  So you have to have first of all the ambition to understand that there&#8217;s things out there that you want.</p>
<p>I think the second thing you need in order to execute a plan is you need a vision.  You need to see it.  You need to see it.  This where it comes closest to these progressives&#8217; ideas of hope.  I have a dream.  What&#8217;s your dream?  I have a dream that someday maybe I&#8217;ll own a really big boat.  Okay.  How you gonna get there?  I buy a lottery ticket once a week; I spend a dollar …  We know that&#8217;s not going to get you the boat and on some level you know it, too.  On some level that dollar is a narcotic that you&#8217;re injecting into your arm that allows you to think about having a boat, but you know you&#8217;re not going to get that boat with that lottery ticket and everybody in the American public knows it.  And that&#8217;s exactly what these people are selling the American people.  No.  That&#8217;s what these progressives are selling.  A shot in the arm with a narcotic saying don&#8217;t worry we&#8217;ll give you barely enough food, barely enough housing.  We&#8217;ll give you crappy phones, all this other stuff.  It&#8217;s a narcotic.  That hope is a narcotic in that sense.  If you go to the American people and say you want a boat?  You say, good, I can relate to that.  I&#8217;d like to have a boat, too.  How do you get to your boat?  What&#8217;s your plan?  Then you start to realize no one is in your way, but you&#8217;ve got to see it.  Everybody out here who&#8217;s run a business has had in their heads a vision of what that business could look like.  They have a vision of what their career would look like.  They have a vision of what their house lots would look like.  They may know what kind of car they want to drive.  Sometimes you&#8217;re touching these things.  Sometimes your touching them with your own hands.  That&#8217;s all it takes.  You want to drive a nice Mercedes convertible?  Rent one.  Feel it.  Touch it.  Now you know what you want.  It&#8217;s there.  It&#8217;s real.  See, you need the vision of it.</p>
<p>I think probably the most important part of this five-step plan is confidence.  You gotta believe it.  You gotta believe you can do it.  I think Henry Ford&#8217;s statement is as true a thing as I&#8217;ve ever heard: Whether you believe you&#8217;re going to succeed or believe you&#8217;re going to fail, you&#8217;re right.  Right?  It&#8217;s that simple.  Do you think you can do it?  Do you have the confidence to think that you can do it?  And of all the things that these progressives have done to this country, the thing that distressed me the most is how they have so insidiously destroyed each individual person&#8217;s sense of confidence in his own ability to lead his own life.  That is appalling.  It&#8217;s appalling.  Confidence is everything.  Confidence is everything and I&#8217;m a very confident person by and large.  But confidence isn&#8217;t a little fortress that we live in you know. There are days that I wake up and I&#8217;m just completely out of juice.  I just don&#8217;t have any confidence left; it&#8217;s gone.  I&#8217;m done. I don&#8217;t have any confidence left.  I don&#8217;t believe any of this stuff&#8217;s going to work.  I sit there.  I do awful things. I say awful things. I say things I regret. I hurt the people I like.  I&#8217;m miserable.  I&#8217;m embittered.  I&#8217;m jealous.  I&#8217;m petty.  I&#8217;m a Democrat for a couple of days.  I&#8217;m just a progressive for a couple of days wishing and hoping that things were different and angry that things didn&#8217;t turn out the way I wanted and thinking, ah, well, this person&#8217;s got the stuff that I want, and I&#8217;m a progressive for a day or two and then I slowly put the confidence back together and it takes a day or two or a week or whatever and then I&#8217;ll just kind of pick myself up and go back and try again.</p>
<p>Which leads us to our fourth point in this giant idea of a plan: persistence.  Persistence.  Are you going to do this until you fail, Bill?  No.  No, I&#8217;m not going to do this until I fail.  I have &#8212; the first time I stood on this podium I&#8217;d been failing for 40 years before I got up here.  I had been a failure for easily 35 years before anybody ever heard of me.  And I don&#8217;t mean like a one-time failure.  I mean, I&#8217;ve been a security guard, I&#8217;ve been a waiter, I&#8217;ve been a limousine driver.  I&#8217;ve done everything and I&#8217;ve probably ruined six businesses trying to get up here.  But the seventh one&#8217;s working out pretty well.  And so I&#8217;m going to continue to fail until I succeed.  And I&#8217;m not afraid of failure anymore.  Failure is my friend.  Failure teaches me lessons.  I was; the next video we&#8217;re doing for Firewall is about the crash in the Mojave.  Spaceship Two.  I got to be good friends with Burt Rutan.  We made; it looked like that spacecraft crash happened because the copilot reached out too early and pulled the knob to release the feather mechanism in the back of the spacecraft.  Why did he do that?  Well, as pilots we&#8217;re trained to touch the things that we&#8217;re supposed to see in a preflight and I think he just made a simple honest mistake that probably could be fixed by one line on a checklist.  I think it&#8217;s going to be just that simple.  One line on a checklist would have saved that mission.  Does that mean that we shouldn&#8217;t have flown the mission?  No.  We didn&#8217;t know that before.  Now we know.  We&#8217;re going to go; we&#8217;re going to make new mistakes now and we&#8217;re going to kill more people so we can find out what else we don&#8217;t know.  And we&#8217;ll keep going up there until we find out what we don&#8217;t know, and then when we find out what we don&#8217;t know, we&#8217;ll know what we know and then we&#8217;ll move on.  And then that vehicle will be safe.  And then we&#8217;ll go make some new failures and kill some more new people.  Courageous people who risk their lives to find out what we don&#8217;t know.  That&#8217;s persistence.  That&#8217;s what makes America.  It&#8217;s good to fail.  It should be easy to fail here.  I&#8217;ve failed here more times than I can count.  Failure&#8217;s your friend as long as it doesn&#8217;t get you down.  Persistence.  Persistence.  You just keep trying.  Keep trying until you get there.  And nothing in a plan should ever be single-pointed failure.  If you have a plan that depends on one individual sending money in to you or one thing happening; it&#8217;s not a plan.  That&#8217;s still hope.  It&#8217;s got to have pathways to get there.</p>
<p>And I think the final thing I&#8217;ll say after persistence of course &#8212; and this is the deal killer for the left.  Ultimately when it&#8217;s all said and done my friends, what it really comes down to for your individual plan for meaning is hard work.  And the left wants nothing to do with that.  It&#8217;s so much easier to tax a business than it is to run a business.  It&#8217;s so much easier to legislate other people&#8217;s money into your wallet than it is to go out and actually make your own.  It&#8217;s so much easier to just convince people to give you all the power than it is to go out and earn your own power. If anybody thinks that Barack Obama in the private sector could afford the smallest private jet, a Citation maybe, through the kind of brain and intellect that he has &#8230;  He condemns people to travel in private jets; he&#8217;s got the biggest private jet in the world.  He&#8217;s got a four-engine 747 and he&#8217;s got another one waiting right behind him.  Does anybody think that Barack Obama could earn that jet if he didn&#8217;t go around telling other people that they&#8217;re hopeless sheep hoping for change?  Of course not.  Joe Biden. It&#8217;s not that Joe Biden couldn&#8217;t run WalMart.  Joe Biden couldn&#8217;t run <em>a</em> Wal-Mart.  He couldn&#8217;t manage a Wal-Mart.  He travels in limousines by making people dependent on hope and change.  So it&#8217;s hard work.  It&#8217;s a lot of hard work.</p>
<p>And to close I want to tell you what that hard work means to me.  There&#8217;s two people especially in this crowd today who&#8217;ve been a big part of me doing this extra work for these Firewalls that have been so much fun and so rewarding for me.  One of them is Ben Shapiro.  You here Ben?  Here he is.  My friend Jeremy Boreing was telling me, I was trying to decide can I do this extra work &#8212; &#8217;cause I already was working pretty hard and this is going to be a lot of extra work, these Firewalls &#8212; can I do it?  Can I do it?  And Jeremy, said well Ben works like a rented mule and anytime more work comes along for Ben, he takes it.  And I thought this 12-year-old guy is making all this money?  He&#8217;s making this money because he works like an animal.  Like an animal.  He works all the time.  He writes so much and I remember thinking, well, jeez, if this cute little thing can do it &#8230; and then I figure I might be able to do a little more work myself, and if I have to get up earlier and stay up later then that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m going to do.  And the other person who had a big effect on me in the same way is Andrew Klavan.  You in here Andrew?  I know I saw him earlier.  He left when he saw me speaking.  He normally just leaves the room when I&#8217;m present because it&#8217;s too much for him to bear.  But Andrew Klavan said the same thing.  He said, &#8220;Take it, do it.  You can sleep when you&#8217;re dead, Bill.&#8221;  And Andrew was telling me he had some advice when he was going to start on his own and his psychologist or somebody  &#8211; because he&#8217;s in a massive amount of therapy needless to say if you&#8217;re Andrew Klavan.  And he basically said his therapist said to him, Klavan said I don&#8217;t work on weekends.  This guy said to him well then you&#8217;re going to fail.  Any questions?  No, I don&#8217;t want to work on the weekends.  Then you&#8217;re going to fail.  So I work on weekends and I stay up late and I get up early.  And I work really hard and I earn the things that I earn because I have a vision in my plan for meaning.</p>
<p>I don&#8217;t just have a dream.  When I was a kid I had a dream.  I wanted to walk on the moon.  I wanted to walk on the moon because that&#8217;s what people my age did.  We commanded space shuttle missions and then we commanded Mars missions and we planted the flag and we went out there a bunch of  steely-eye mission men and we broke new horizons because that&#8217;s what Americans do.  And for the middle part of my life I said well that&#8217;s not going to happen.  NASA&#8217;s a failure.  The space program&#8217;s a failure.  All they do is go around in circles.  The moon is further away now than it was in 1969.  The moon&#8217;s further away now than it was in 1959 when I was born.  Suddenly I realized it doesn&#8217;t matter, I want to walk on the moon.  I want to walk on the moon, and I have plan to walk on the moon, and I&#8217;m going to do it.  I&#8217;m going to do it.  I&#8217;m going to take a space program to the American people.  I&#8217;m going to sell them on it &#8212; $9.95 a month on their credit card.  It&#8217;s going to generate a couple of billion dollars a year, more than we can spend.  I&#8217;m going to sell it to them because I know how to do that and one of the prices of me coordinating this thing &#8212; I thought you&#8217;re all going to use a space engineer, no.  It needs a guy with vision, who can convince people that this is a good idea.  So I&#8217;m going to start a private space program two or three years from now. I&#8217;ve got it all laid out step by step.  No step is a cavern that&#8217;s a unjumpable,  It&#8217;s a routine, regular business plan and when I&#8217;m done 12 years from now, I&#8217;m walking on the moon. Or I&#8217;m going to die trying because that&#8217;s what I want to do.  I want to walk on the moon.  And I&#8217;m gonna.  I&#8217;m gonna.  Because I have a plan.  I have a plan.  And I&#8217;m going to do it &#8217;cause I&#8217;m going to do it.</p>
<p>And if you take that idea to the American people and say to them listen, it doesn&#8217;t have to be walking on the moon, it doesn&#8217;t have to be brain surgeon.  It really, truly can be &#8212; if what you want in life is a little boat to cruise the intercoastal waterway on, we can help you.  And by helping you what we really mean is we can get out of your way and show you how you can get that boat without depending on me or the lottery or any other thing that is some kind of cosmic ray that has to happen.  You want a boat?  Here&#8217;s how you get a boat.  What&#8217;s your plan for meaning in your life?  It changes people&#8217;s thinking and it gets them out of the herd mentality and takes us away from being a nation of sheep back to what we are, which is a pack of sheepdogs who protect the innocent, and when we run into villains and wolves and other creatures that go bump in the night, we tear their throats out.  We tear their throats out.</p>
<p>Thank you very much for having me.  It&#8217;s great to be here.</p>
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		<title>Ben Shapiro: Amnesty Won&#8217;t Create Conservative Victories</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/truthrevolt-org/ben-shapiro-amnesty-wont-create-conservative-victories/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=ben-shapiro-amnesty-wont-create-conservative-victories</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 06 Nov 2014 05:50:33 +0000</pubDate>
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				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244615</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A Truth Revolt video. ]]></description>
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<p><strong>The transcript and video of Ben Shapiro&#8217;s new production, &#8220;Amnesty Won&#8217;t Create Conservative Victories,&#8221; are below:</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"> <iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/tTXILmKdrjo" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p>After the last election cycle, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, wrote what has now become the conventional wisdom in conservative circles with regard to Hispanic immigrants:</p>
<blockquote><p>“They should be a natural Republican constituency: striving immigrant community, religious, Catholic, family-oriented and socially conservative (on abortion, for example). The principle reason they go Democratic is the issue of illegal immigrants.”</p></blockquote>
<p>This argument has driven many conservatives – including the entire upper echelon of the Republican Party – to push for legalization of millions upon millions of illegal immigrants. The solution Krauthammer suggests to the problem of shifting demographics is this, “Border fence plus amnesty. Yes, amnesty. Use the word.”</p>
<p>Reality Check: There are individual Hispanic immigrants who are conservative, but to suggest that conservatives are one piece of amnesty legislation away from victory across the broad swatch of Hispanic immigrants just ain&#8217;t true.</p>
<p>So, are Hispanics in America a Immigrants to the United States a striving immigrant community, religious, Catholic, family-oriented and socially conservative are no longer a natural conservative constituency?</p>
<p>Let’s look at the numbers.</p>
<p>According to the Center for Immigration Studies, 57% of new immigrant households with kids were using at least one welfare program in 2009. Over all, 37% of immigrant households are on a welfare program compared with just 22% of native-born Americans.</p>
<p>So yeah, immigrants are dependent on government by a far larger margin than native Americans. Which means they tend to lean left on the question of big government.</p>
<p>By the way, polls show that Hispanic immigrants lean left on the issue of big government. An April 2012 Pew Hispanic Poll showed 81% of Hispanics want bigger government with more services. Only 41% of Americans overall want bigger government with more services. Just 12% of Hispanic immigrants want smaller government with less services. Exit polls in 2012 showed that 61% of Hispanics wanted Obamacare expanded or left as is. Which makes sense. Virtually all of the countries from which Hispanic immigrants come are socialist in orientation. Many of them are socialist dictatorships, and America no longer bothers to push ideological integration into a small government philosophy.</p>
<p>How about the notion that Hispanics are a burgeoning religious class who agree with conservatives on social issues? Not so much. 53% of Hispanic children are now born out of wedlock. According to 2012 exit polls, 59% of Hispanics wanted same-sex marriage legalized, and 66% abortion should be legal in “most  or all cases.” And in their own lives, Hispanics are becoming less religious: one-in-four Hispanic adults, according to Pew, are now former Catholics. Rising numbers of Hispanics are non-religious. Overall, the Catholic share of Hispanics has dropped 12 percentage points over the last four years alone. And even so-called religious Catholic Hispanics tend toward leftism – the poll shows that 49% of Catholic Hispanics favor same-sex marriage. Overall, 58% of Catholic Hispanics identify as Democratic or leaning that way.</p>
<p>Does this sound a like a naturally conservative constituency just an amnesty away from voting for the right?</p>
<p>And yet that seems to be the conservative plan. Which is absolute lunacy. As Mark Steyn wrote after the 2012 election regarding amnesty notions, “So, if I follow correctly, instead of getting 27% of the 10% Hispanic vote, Republicans will get, oh, 38% of the 25% Hispanic vote, and sweep to victory.”</p>
<p>Amnesty is not the answer to wooing Hispanics voters to conservatism. Treating them as individuals with life stories and life experiences with deeply held principles, as opposed to broad stereotypes, is. Let&#8217;s teach both immigrants and native-born Americans why American values are important rather than pretending that a green card is going to buy conservatives love.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>Election Day: What&#8217;s at Stake</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/election-day-whats-at-stake/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=election-day-whats-at-stake</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 04 Nov 2014 05:58:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[2014]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244348</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Will Americans choose freedom or the continuing dominance of statism? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/votejpeg-42b1d7963e761260.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244349" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/votejpeg-42b1d7963e761260-450x288.jpg" alt="votejpeg-42b1d7963e761260" width="355" height="227" /></a>The election and reelection of Barack Obama have seemingly realized the progressive dream of transforming America from its traditional Constitutional order to one more similar to Europe’s––an activist rather than a limited federal government, one whose power and reach extend into the market economy, trump state sovereignty, and subject individuals to the ideological preferences and aims of the federal Leviathan and its managers. What is at stake today is the continuing dominance of these statist ideas.</p>
<p>Over the past six years Obama and progressives partially achieved some of these progressive goals. Through legislation, executive orders, like-minded judges, and the interpretations of law by anonymous, unelected federal functionaries, Obama’s government has intervened in the automobile, finance, health care, and housing industries; hampered the explosive growth of the energy industry by reducing development on federal lands and waging a war on carbon; encroached on the states’ sovereignty through the regulatory powers of the Environmental Protection Agency and the renegade Department Of Justice; and intruded into civil society and individual rights on issues such as contraception, traditional marriage, freedom of speech, and religious freedom.</p>
<p>Worse yet, the old progressive goal of redistributing property has accelerated over the last 6 years. Entitlement spending has exploded, increasing along the way the wider regulatory scope and intrusiveness of the federal agencies created to manage this transfer of wealth. Social welfare spending now approaches a trillion dollars a year, people claiming Social Security Disability insurance have increased from 3 million in 1980 to 11 million today, and the number of people getting food stamps has doubled to 46 million just over the last decade. These trillions in transfer payments represent a massive redistribution of property. According to the Tax Foundation, America’s highly progressive tax system in 2012 resulted in about $2 trillion being redistributed from the top 40% of taxpayers to the bottom 60%.</p>
<p>The increase in entitlement spending, however, has also required much higher budget deficits and an unprecedented peacetime increase in the national debt, which now stands at $17 trillion dollars, up from $10 trillion in 2008. From 2009-2012, Obama’s budgets averaged deficits of $1.25 trillion. This year’s deficit is projected to be around half a trillion dollars, but according to the CBO, deficits will return to the trillion-dollar mark from 2022-2024. And don’t forget, the costs of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the debt are projected to devour all tax revenues by 2030. This means that either taxes will have to be raised to ruinous levels, or even more money borrowed to finance the unfunded liabilities of those programs, which have been estimated at anywhere between $123 and $200 trillion. Ancient tyrants redistributed the property of just the living; the modern welfare state has managed to redistribute the property of the unborn citizens who will inherit this debt.</p>
<p>Both parties bear some responsibility for this mess, testimony to just how engrained the entitlement mentality and the acceptance of redistributing property are in today’s America. Yet the last 6 years have seen unprecedented expansions of this process, and demonization of those like Paul Ryan who propose even modest steps towards defusing this ticking fiscal bomb.</p>
<p>In foreign policy as well, Obama and the Democrats have shaped their actions according to the quasi-pacifist, “postmodern” ideology that distrusts using American power to protect Americans’ security and promote their interests. Instead, an America guilty of historical crimes, oppression, and exploitation must subordinate its power to transnational institutions like the U.N., and rely on diplomacy and multilateral coalitions that advance international interests, including those of our enemies and rivals, at the expense of America’s.</p>
<p>Thus Obama started his presidency with an apology tour, led from behind in Libya, and oversaw dangerous reductions in the military budget. He has abandoned Iraq, and left its fragile political order, purchased with the blood and money of Americans, stranded between the Iranian rock and the ISIS hard place. His feckless overthrow of Libya’s Gaddafi has left that country a petri dish of jihadist bacilli, leading to the murder of an American diplomat and 3 brave warriors, and flooding the Middle East with weapons plundered from Gaddafi’s arsenals. He has compromised and betrayed America’s allies like Egypt and Israel, and groveled before her enemies like Iran. His empty bluster on Syria and Ukraine has emboldened bloody tyrants like Assad and geopolitical rivals like Russia. All the while he and his foreign policy team have talked and talked and talked, a spectacle of gutless, futile diplomacy redolent of England’s in the 20’s and 30’s.</p>
<p>Yet all these actions and policies both domestic and foreign reflect a worn-out philosophy repeatedly repudiated by history. The progressive worldview of the Democrats is founded on the idea that increasing knowledge of the natural world, human nature and behavior, and social and political reality can drive human progress and improvement. Nature, people, and society thus can be directed towards the creation of an idealized world in which the tragic constants of human life––physical want, suffering, oppression, violence, brutality, inequality, and injustice––are eliminated. Just give power to the “technicians of the soul,” as Stalin called them, the “technocrats” who possess this knowledge, and they will rearrange society in a way that achieves utopia––once, of course, religion, custom, and traditional wisdom are swept away lest their irrational prejudices and superstitions like “sin” and “good and evil” block humanity’s march to the brave new world. All that is needed is to increase the coercive power of the state in order to institute reforms and remove any obstacles to the efforts of technical elites to achieve these utopian boons.</p>
<p>The progressives’ hostility to free-market capitalism and fondness for dirigiste economic polices, for example, illustrate these philosophical assumptions. To progressives, “income inequality” and economic winners and losers are intolerable injustices reflecting not the variations of talent, virtue, hard work, and luck among individuals, but capitalism’s rigged rules and privileging of profit over people. Use the power of the state to amend those rules and to intervene in the market through regulations, tax policy, and the redistribution of property, and you can eliminate those injustices. Thus Obama’s “You didn’t build that” and  “When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody” rhetoric, recently endorsed by Hillary Clinton’s similar claim, <span style="color: #272727;">“Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.” </span>Thus the relentless public demonization of the wealthy and corporations, and the attempt to use regulatory and taxing power to siphon off their capital and put it to achieving the progressive vision of “social justice.”</p>
<p>What is at stake this election day is whether or not Americans will reject this ideology and the policies it creates. It is about starting to restore to our politics prudence, humility, respect for traditional wisdom, and common sense. It is about recognizing that an irreducibly complex and quirky human nature and behavior are not infinitely plastic and so cannot be shaped according to the abstract visions of technical elites armed with an intrusive power that compromises our freedom. It is about accepting the tragic truth that the freedom to choose how to shape one’s life means that bad choices will create bad consequences, and so individual freedom cannot exist without individual responsibility for those bad choices. It is about accepting that suffering and failure are not unjust anomalies to be engineered from human existence, but non-negotiable givens of human life, and thus will never be eliminated, but only mitigated. And it is about remembering that every attempt to create heaven on earth has had to diminish the people’s freedom, and sometimes has demanded their lives.</p>
<p>In short, what is at stake is the return to the ideas about human nature and existence upon which the Founders built the American order and its guarantee of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Why Republicans Don&#8217;t Get It</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ben-shapiro/why-republicans-dont-get-it/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-republicans-dont-get-it</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 22 Oct 2014 04:47:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben Shapiro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The folly of sidelining the conservative base. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/aaavote-here.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-243546" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/aaavote-here-450x337.jpg" alt="Americans Go To The Polls To Elect The Next U.S. President" width="331" height="248" /></a>A new poll this week shows 2012 presidential nominee and 2008 primary candidate Mitt Romney leading the field of potential 2016 Republican candidates. According to ABC News/Washington Post, 21 percent of Republican voters would vote for Romney in the primaries; Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee tie at 10 percent, followed by Rand Paul, Chris Christie and Paul Ryan. Altogether, some 44 percent of Republican primary voters want an &#8220;establishment&#8221; candidate — by which we mean a candidate for whom social issues are secondary, immigration reform is primary and economics dominates.</p>
<p>The establishment donors on the coasts see this poll and believe that a consolidated funding effort mobilized behind the Chosen One (Romney, Bush, Christie or Ryan) could avoid a messy primary and keep the powder dry for a 2016 showdown with Hillary.</p>
<p>The conservative base knows this, and they groan.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s because the conservative base understands that what motivates them is not the marginal tax rate — nobody in the country knows, offhand, his or her effective tax rate — but values. And none of the top priorities for Republican donors match the fire-in-the-belly issues that motivate the folks who knock on doors, phone bank and provide the under-$50 donations that could power a Republican to victory.</p>
<p>The divide between the establishment and the base represents a divide between the wallet and the working man, the penthouse and the pews, the Ivy Leagues and the homeschools. Which is why Republican leadership quietly assures its top donors that should Republicans win the Senate, their first legislative push will encompass corporate tax reform and immigration reform.</p>
<p>They will not push primarily for border security, or for protection of religious freedom, or for repeal of Common Core. They will not use their opportunity to govern as an opportunity to draw contrast between conservatism and leftism. Instead, they will seek &#8220;common ground&#8221; in a vain attempt to show the American people that efficiency deserves re-election.</p>
<p>And the American people will go to sleep, conservatives will vomit in their mouths, and leftists will demonize Republicans all the same.</p>
<p>Conservatives understand that politics simply reflect underlying values. That&#8217;s why they are passionate. They don&#8217;t vote their pocketbooks. They vote their guts, and their guts tell them that leftism is immoral on the most basic level.</p>
<p>Republicans, on the other hand, believe that politics are just business by other means. That means that Republicans think Americans, left and right, share the same underlying values. That&#8217;s a lie, and it&#8217;s a self-defeating lie at that.</p>
<p>Until Republicans begin to appreciate the moral conflict between right and left, they will dishearten the right and provide easy targets for the left. The nominee won&#8217;t matter; elections won&#8217;t matter. And the alienation of the American conservative will deepen and broaden, until, one day, it bursts forth with a renewed fire that consumes the Republican Party whole.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Thank You, ISIS</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/david-horowitz/thank-you-isis/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=thank-you-isis</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 10 Oct 2014 04:31:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Horowitz]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The beheadings have achieved what all the warnings from conservatives never could. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/bn.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-242804" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/bn-450x262.jpg" alt="bn" width="283" height="165" /></a><strong>Reprinted from <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/">National Review Online</a>.</strong></p>
<p>Beheadings of innocent human beings are unspeakable acts reflecting the barbaric savagery of the Islamic “holy war” against the West — against us. Yet despite the intentions of their perpetrators, they have had an unexpected utility. Their gruesome images have entered the living rooms and consciousness of ordinary Americans and waked them up.</p>
<p>The barbarity of the Islamic movement for world domination has actually been evident for decades: in the suicide bombing of the Marine compound in Lebanon in 1982, in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, in the suicide attacks on Jews — men, women, and children — during the second Palestinian Intifada in 2000, in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, and in the beheadings perpetrated in Iraq by al-Qaeda’s Abu al-Zarqawi and the Salafist group known as Ansar al-Islam during the Iraq War.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the response to these barbarities on the part of the Democratic party and the liberal elites has been to condemn and marginalize anyone who called them barbarous. In their eyes, it is racist to use the word “barbarism” to describe the acts of any Third World people. To associate Islam with the Islamists was Islamophobic. President Obama is still trapped in this time warp, denying in so many words that the Islamic State is Islamic. For America’s commander-in-chief to make such an obviously moronic statement about his country’s enemy in wartime reflects how deeply settled is the ideology of protecting the Islamists (and jeopardizing the innocent). Even Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, could not bring himself to describe the enemy as Islamic. Settling on “War on Terror” as a descriptive term was a way of eliding the fact that the savagery was motivated by not by nihilism but by Islamic faith. The Obama Democrats have gone even deeper into denial, eliminating “War on Terror” from the government vocabulary and replacing it with “overseas contingency operations.”</p>
<p>For more than a decade, a handful of conservatives, of whom I was one, tried to sound the alarm about the Islamist threat. For our efforts, we were ridiculed, smeared as bigots, and marginalized as Islamophobes. In 2004 I published a book called Unholy Alliance about the Islamist movement and the support it was receiving from the American Left. For my concern, Harvard professor and Islam expert Noah Feldman dismissed me as a “relic” in the New York Times Book Review. It was the last time the Times mentioned one of my books.</p>
<p>In 2006 and 2007, I organized nearly 200 “teach-ins” on American campuses, which I called “Islamo-Fascism Awareness” weeks. The idea was to legitimize the term “Islamo-fascist” as a description of the enemy confronting us. These demonstrations were attacked by the Muslim Students Association, which is a recruiting organization for the Muslim Brotherhood, and by Students for Justice in Palestine, a front for the terrorist party Hamas. They also inspired the contempt of the liberal Left. Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points Memo devoted two YouTube videos to ridiculing me for holding the demonstrations. Campus leftists called the students who organized them racists, bigots, and Islamophobes.</p>
<p>Resolutions denouncing critics of Islamic misogyny and terror as “Islamophobes” were unanimously passed by leftist-run student councils at UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, and a dozen other elite schools. Lengthy reports on the menace of Islamophobia targeted me and other speakers at our campus demonstrations, including Robert Spencer and Daniel Pipes. These reports, costing tens of thousands of dollars to produce, were published by FAIR, CAIR, the egregious Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Center for American Progress — the brain trust of the Democratic party.</p>
<p>And then came ISIS. The horrific images of the beheadings, the reports of mass slaughters, and the threats to the American homeland have accomplished what our small contingent of beleaguered conservatives could never have achieved by ourselves. They brought images of these Islamic fanatics and savages into the living rooms of the American public, and suddenly the acceptable language for describing the enemy began to change. “Savages” and “barbarians” began to roll off the tongues of evening-news anchors and commentators who never would have dreamed of crossing that line before, for fear of offending the politically correct.</p>
<p>Virtually every major Muslim organization in America is an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, the fountainhead of Islamic terror. Huma Abedin, who was deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (and is still Clinton’s confidante and principal aide), comes from a family of Muslim Brotherhood leaders. Yet legislators who have the power to investigate these matters are still intimidated from even raising them. Representative Michele Bachmann, who did raise them, was excoriated as a racist not only by the Left but also by John Boehner and John McCain.</p>
<p>Language is a weapon in the battle against the threat we face. We cannot fight a war effectively when we cannot name the enemy or describe his methods or examine his influence on our own policy. The Islamic State has created an opportunity for common sense and realism to prevail. The tragedy is that it has taken the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Christians in the Middle East and the ongoing extermination of the Catholic presence in Iraq to begin to wake people up. And, unfortunately, the president is still asleep or, less charitably, is hostile to American purposes, is hostile to the military that defends us, and identifies more with the Islamic world that has produced these forces who would destroy us than with the country he is sworn to defend.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Conservative Comedian Michael Loftus Goes Gunning for Big Government</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/conservative-comedian-michael-loftus-goes-gunning-for-big-government/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=conservative-comedian-michael-loftus-goes-gunning-for-big-government</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 03 Oct 2014 04:42:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=242042</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A refreshing antidote to Jon Stewart.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/flipsidetvshow.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-242304" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/flipsidetvshow.jpg" alt="flipsidetvshow" width="336" height="185" /></a>Mixing news with a dose of comic commentary has paid off for <em>The Daily Show</em>’s Jon Stewart. A Brookings Institute survey recently noted that he is a news source more trusted by liberals and independents than MSNBC is. “The real power to influence the left resides on <em>Comedy Central</em> not MSNBC,” <a href="http://www.politicususa.com/2014/06/10/jon-stewart-daily-show-trusted-msnbc-news.html">says</a> Politics USA. But if you’re searching your television lineup for a conservative antidote to Stewart, the field is rather limited. There is late night <em>Red Eye</em>’s Greg Gutfeld, there is… actually, there’s just Gutfeld. Or there was until this month, when <a href="http://theflipsideshow.com/"><em>The Flipside with Michael Loftus</em></a> debuted on <a href="http://theflipsideshow.com/stations/">television stations</a> across the country.</p>
<p>A writer/​producer on the successful sitcom <em>Anger Management</em>, comedian Michael Loftus was also a co-​producer and executive story editor on the underappreciated NBC comedy <em>Outsourced</em> and a writer on <em>The George Lopez Show</em>. He has also been a regular on TruTV’s <em>The Smoking Gun Presents</em>…, and he created and starred in History Channel’s half-hour comedy<a href="http://www.mikeloftuscomedy.com/#watch-american-wiseass"><em>American Wiseass</em></a>, in which he presented a comic take on episodes from American history to a live studio audience. He also has his own comedy album and a one-hour Comedy Central special <em>You’ve Changed</em>.</p>
<p>Featuring some standup by Loftus, satirical segments, and interviews with lively, interesting personalities such as talk show host Larry Elder, openly conservative actress Janine Turner, and Michael Ramirez, Investor’s Business Daily political cartoonist (Loftus’ <a href="http://www.ozy.com/rising-stars-and-provocateurs/comedian-michael-loftus-loves-targeting-the-left-wing/30546.article">dream interview subjects</a> include Al Franken, Nancy Pelosi and the Clintons), <em>The Flipside with Michael Loftus</em> takes a right-leaning perspective on the news, commentary, and pop culture. Loftus hopes to <a href="http://www.ozy.com/rising-stars-and-provocateurs/comedian-michael-loftus-loves-targeting-the-left-wing/30546.article">turn</a> the weekly half-hour (there are <a href="http://theflipsideshow.com/video/flipside-92714-featuring-michael-ramirez-of-investors-business-daily/">four episodes</a> so far) into a nightly political satire event along the lines of Stewart’s massively successful <em>The Daily Show</em>. “My producers are going to get mad at me for saying this,” he <a href="http://www.ozy.com/rising-stars-and-provocateurs/comedian-michael-loftus-loves-targeting-the-left-wing/30546.article">says</a>, “but nobody is making fun of the insane liberals.”</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.ozy.com/rising-stars-and-provocateurs/comedian-michael-loftus-loves-targeting-the-left-wing/30546.article">youngest of five</a> from an Irish Catholic family in Columbus, Ohio, Loftus’ conservatism has been reinforced by his own parenthood. “It’s weird how when you have kids you start to think about bigger things. It’s definitely changed my comedy.” Now, Loftus <a href="http://www.ozy.com/rising-stars-and-provocateurs/comedian-michael-loftus-loves-targeting-the-left-wing/30546.article">say</a>s, “I’m living the American dream. I had a great-grandfather who came over to this country because he was starving to death in Ireland, and now I can be onstage talking about politics.”</p>
<p>Last week Loftus was game to answer a few questions for FrontPage:</p>
<p><strong>Mark Tapson</strong>: <em>Michael, it’s great to have you on FrontPage Mag, and great to have something like </em>The Flipside<em> out there for those of us hungry for an alternative to Jon Stewart. What are you trying to accomplish with the show, apart from fame and fortune?</em></p>
<p><strong>Michael Loftus:</strong> Great question. I think there are millions of people who&#8217;ve been waiting for a show like this; so I guess that is what I&#8217;m really trying to do, provide an alternative. Most times when you turn on the TV and a conservative is talking, he&#8217;s shaking his fist and freaking out. I thought it’d be a nice change if somebody would come on TV, talk about these issues and be funny.</p>
<p><strong>MT:</strong> The Flipside <em>isn’t so much about hammering progressives as it is poking fun at big government, which is pretty much a nonpartisan thing these days. You don’t shy away from sticking it to Republicans as well as Democrats. Would you call yourself a libertarian? Tea Partier? </em></p>
<p><strong>ML:</strong> Great question. I shy away from any of those labels. I used to think of myself as an Independent until they started an actual Party. I would have a hard time keeping a straight face at any “Independent” meeting; it’s like when that elf dentist meets Rudolf for the first time in that Christmas special: “Let&#8217;s be Independent together.”</p>
<p><strong>MT:</strong> <em>Have you always leaned right, or did you have a “Paul on the road to Damascus” moment? </em></p>
<p><strong>ML:</strong> Great question – wow, three in a row, dude, you’re on a roll! At the very least I’ve always considered myself financially conservative. I started working at a very young age and for the longest time I wanted to know who FICA was and why they were taking all my money. Now that I’m older, I know who FICA is, but I’m still wondering why they’re taking all my money.</p>
<p><strong>MT</strong>: <em>What’s it like in the comedy circuit and working in television as a right-leaning comedian, in terms of the reaction from both audiences and other comedians</em><em>?</em></p>
<p><strong>ML</strong>: The beauty of working in comedy clubs and television is that funny always wins. Whether you personally agree or disagree with what someone’s saying, it’s hard to argue when everyone is laughing. Because in the end, funny is funny. I can have serious discussions with other comics over a cup of coffee after the show, but during the show all I wanna do is make people laugh. And that&#8217;s the great balancing act of <em>The Flipside</em>, so it’s my hope that funny always wins the day.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>A Conservative Actor’s Activism</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/a-conservative-actors-activism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-conservative-actors-activism</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/a-conservative-actors-activism/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 02 Oct 2014 04:53:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Conservative]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hollywood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Death of Klinghoffer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Little Flower]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tony Lo Bianco]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=242034</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Progressives aren’t the only activists in showbiz.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/LoBianco.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-242204" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/LoBianco-231x350.jpg" alt="LoBianco" width="180" height="273" /></a>In the wake of the recent anti-capitalist, climate change march in New York City, featuring Hollywood notables Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo, it’s refreshing to be reminded that progressives aren’t the only activists in showbiz.</p>
<p>As a former Golden Gloves boxer, the Brooklyn-born, Italian-American actor Tony Lo Bianco is known for tough-guy, blue-collar roles on both sides of the law. Probably best-known as Sal Boca in <em>The French Connection</em> with Gene Hackman, Mr. Lo Bianco is an Obie-winning, Emmy-winning, and Tony-nominated actor who still performs onstage, currently in <em>The Little Flower</em> as legendary New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia. He has starred in such films as <em>City Heat</em> with Clint Eastwood, <em>Nixon</em> with Anthony Hopkins, <em>F.I.S.T.</em> with Sylvester Stallone, and more recently, 2011’s <em>Kill the Irishman</em> alongside Vincent D’Onfrio and Val Kilmer. Some of his many television credits include <em>The Rocky Marciano Story</em>, the miniseries <em>Marco Polo</em>, <em>Jesus of Nazareth</em>, <em>Law &amp; Order</em>, <em>Murder She Wrote</em>, <em>The Twilight Zone</em>, and <em>Get Smart</em>.</p>
<p>More importantly, his many humanitarian efforts have earned multiple awards including Man of the Year for Outstanding Contributions to the Italian-American Community from the Police Society of New Jersey; Man of the Year from the New Jersey State Senate; a Golden Lion Award; the Humanitarian Award of the Boys’ Town of Italy, and the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.</p>
<p>Mr. Lo Bianco recently took time to talk a bit with FrontPage Mag about his activism:</p>
<p><strong>Mark Tapson</strong>: <em>Tony, it’s an honor to have you on FrontPage. Let’s start by asking about your participation in the protest last week against the opera </em>The Death of Klinghoffer<em>. What was your message about it and why did you feel strongly enough about it to speak out?</em></p>
<p><strong>Tony Lo Bianco:</strong> With our country facing the biggest terrorist threat, it is not the time to be looking to justify the killing of a helpless, innocent man because he was a Jew. The decision to put this opera on is not only in the worst of taste, it is insensitive and irresponsible and lacks the understanding of who our enemy is.</p>
<p>Freedom to express your opinion is your right, but remember your enemy can hear you. It is your obligation as an American to make sure your country is safe. We are all warriors in this war. Israel and the Jewish people are our allies.</p>
<p><strong>MT:</strong> <em>Have you always been conservative? What’s it been like for you as a conservative during your many years in the acting game</em><em>?</em></p>
<p><strong>TLB:</strong> Following the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the laws of the land, caring about the human race, understanding history and learning the results of it, respecting your fellow man, trusting the American people to know how to spend their own money that they have earned, working hard to fulfill your dream, protecting your family, your friends and your country and to be allowed to practice whatever religion you choose and pledge allegiance to the United States of America under God. If what I just said labels me as a Conservative, then come and join the party.</p>
<p>I do not like labels. I think logic, common sense, facts and history make up my party. Putting labels on someone makes it easy to be a target to the less informed. If you see what has worked in the past, why not follow that example?</p>
<p><strong>MT:</strong> <em>You and I both know that there are more conservatives in left-leaning Hollywood than many people are aware of. Are you optimistic or not about Hollywood shifting toward more of a balance in the near future, about seeing more films and TV shows that reflect conservative values and sensibilities?</em></p>
<p><strong>TLB:</strong> The more despair and proof becomes evident to the people, the hope is that the light will shine and they will be able to see. Yes, there are more people not only in Hollywood, but elsewhere, that are seeing what is happening to our country, and know for sure that we are going in the wrong direction. Let us hope that results in their voting in this next election. And yes, there is a strong feeling in Hollywood of enlightenment.</p>
<p><strong>MT</strong>: <em>These days Hollywood activists seem to focus on big progressive issues like climate change or Wall Street, but you’ve done a great deal of award-winning humanitarian work for </em>actual people<em>, like veterans and law enforcement and kids. Why are those causes meaningful for you? </em></p>
<p><strong>TLB</strong>: I guess I&#8217;m a realist. Maybe being born in Brooklyn makes me so. I&#8217;m used to seeing things from the ground up and in dealing strongly with human issues. Our veterans deserve everything we can possibly do for them, given what they have done for us. And we must help our children, for they are our future. They must be cared for physically and mentally. They must be taught the history of our country and how to restore that history for their own future.</p>
<p><strong>MT:</strong> <em>You’ve done a lot of work in your career portraying former New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia, including, most recently, your one-man show </em>The Little Flower<em>. Tell us a bit about that show and why you think New York, and even America, needs him today.</em></p>
<p><strong>TLB:</strong> He was a dreamer, a doer, a fighter, and a man who was not afraid to ride the tiger. He was a man who cleaned up this city of gangsters, crooks and especially political corruption. He was an honest man who thought of others, gave of himself and was a friend of the people. Fiorello&#8217;s accomplishments in his twelve years as mayor of New York City were tremendous. What drives me to bring him to life is his vision that parallels everything that is going on in this country now. If we would only listen to history, we would be able to minimize our mistakes.</p>
<p>I have been able to do this show not only in America but in Russia where the American Ambassador said to me after a performance, “You have done more for our country in two hours than I have done in two years.” My goal is to perform <em>The Little Flower</em> in as many colleges as I can. It is extremely important to get to the young minds <em>now</em>.</p>
<p><strong>[For more information about Tony Lo Bianco and <em>The Little Flower</em>, please go to <a href="http://tonylobianco.com">tonylobianco.com</a>.]</strong></p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss Shillman Journalism Fellow <strong>Mark Tapson</strong> on this week&#8217;s <strong>Glazov Gang</strong> discussing<strong> Fighting the Culture War</strong>:</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/v5gR4E5UPB8" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>There Is No Conservative Case for Amnesty</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/there-is-no-conservative-case-for-amnesty/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=there-is-no-conservative-case-for-amnesty</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/there-is-no-conservative-case-for-amnesty/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 24 Jun 2014 04:58:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Amnesty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[border]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Conservative]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[crisis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Illegal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[liberal]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=234713</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The bipartisan effort to reshape America. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/BorderPatrolAgent2png.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-234716" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/BorderPatrolAgent2png-450x339.png" alt="BorderPatrolAgent2png" width="261" height="197" /></a>Under the hot sun, sweating Hondurans trudge across Mexico headed for the United States and khaki-wearing hacks in comfortable D.C. digs pound out defenses of amnesty on their iPads. The men in the desert call the thing that they want “<span style="color: #0433ff;"><i><a href="http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/weekly-updates/weekly-update-obama-causes-border-crisis/">amnistía</a>,</i></span>” but its domestic defenders refuse to use the “A-word.”</p>
<p>To them it’s always immigration reform. But it’s not immigration that is being reformed; a word that comes from the Latin “<i>reformare”</i> which means to reshape.</p>
<p>It’s the United States of America that is being reformed and reshaped.</p>
<p>The consequences of that reformation are not only linguistic, but political. Amnesty’s reshaping of America will make conservative political positions untenable.  That is why some establishment Republicans are pushing for amnesty. A political shift that will bury small government as thoroughly as the gold standard isn’t just to the advantage of the Democratic Party.</p>
<p>It’s also to their advantage.</p>
<p>Many assume that illegal alien amnesty means cheap votes for Democrats and cheap labor for Republicans. But that’s only partly true.</p>
<p>There are powerful men in both parties who believe that the United States must “reform” to be more like Europe. That it must have a stronger central government and more controlling social policies.</p>
<p>Amnesty is an opportunity to reshape national politics by eliminating opposition to everything from Common Core (<a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_25623951/californians-strongly-support-common-core"><span style="color: #0433ff;">support for Common Core</span></a> in California is at 77% among Latinos and 57% among whites) to Global Warming crackdowns (<a href="http://www.latinodecisions.com/blog/2014/01/23/latinos-want-strong-presidential-action-to-combat-climate-change/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">90% of Latinos want</span></a> government action) and nationalized health care (74% <a href="http://healthpolicy.unm.edu/NEW%2520SURVEY%2520LATINOS%2520HEALTH%2520CARE%2520REFORM"><span style="color: #0433ff;">support  “public option”</span></a> government health care).</p>
<p>Super-Amnesty, many times bigger than the last amnesty, will kill conservative politics. The Tea Party will become a historical footnote. Taxes will go on rising. Government will grow unstoppably bigger.</p>
<p>There will still be a Republican Party. It will support nationalizing health care and expanding the welfare state. Think of today’s Democratic Party. That will be tomorrow’s Republican Party. Pick a radical left-wing party that barely registers on the polls. That will be tomorrow’s Democratic Party.</p>
<p>Articles that claim to be making a conservative case for amnesty are taking a left turn down a dead end street. There can be no conservative case for amnesty because there is no such thing as a conservative case for a policy that will not have a conservative outcome.</p>
<p>It’s possible to make a conservative case for just about anything by breaking conservatism down to a handful of supposed principles such as “free enterprise” or “stronger families” and then overlaying those principles on a policy.</p>
<p>That same technique can be used to make a conservative case for nationalizing health care or child slavery. The piecemeal principles argument is fine for constructing talking points, but it’s also cheap sophistry. It can be used to prove anything which means that it also proves nothing.</p>
<p>The only meaningful argument for a policy is based on outcomes.</p>
<p>If the outcome of a conservative policy is more liberalism, it was never a conservative policy to begin with. That is the simplest and most reliable acid test of any “conservative” policy agenda.</p>
<p>Will Policy X put the country on a more liberal or conservative track? That is a question that Republican advocates of amnesty don’t like answering. Their conservative case for amnesty is all about stronger families and free enterprise; they don’t want to talk about what the United States will actually look like after a generation of majority support for every possible big government gimmick.</p>
<p><span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://publicreligion.org/research/2013/09/hispanic-values-survey-2013/">72% of Hispanics in the US</a></span> <a href="http://publicreligion.org/research/2013/09/hispanic-values-survey-2013/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">believe</span></a> that the system favors the wealthy and that the government should intervene to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor. 60% believe that hard work does not guarantee success. The majority want higher taxes over tax cuts and spending more while raising taxes to pay for it.</p>
<p>And for those holding out hope on the social conservative front, the majority supports gay marriage and opposes abortion by only a narrow margin.</p>
<p>These aren’t racial or ethnic differences. They are political culture differences. Immigrants from brutal totalitarian left-wing dictatorships, like Cuba or the USSR, often lean to the right. However immigrants from countries that lean to the left without being giant death camps, tend to also lean to the left.</p>
<p>The Swedish immigrants that I’ve met think that gun control is so common sense that only a complete maniac would oppose it. Mexico has universal health care and no matter how badly it works, Mexican immigrants think that it’s only natural that the government should have a public option. China spends vast sums of money on a public education system. Chinese immigrants expect the US to do the same.</p>
<p>Immigrants who don’t leave a home country with the understanding that it is completely broken and should only be mentioned as a cautionary tale will support repeating those same tragic errors here.</p>
<p>The Mexican Constitution specifies a minimum wage, unionization and low-cost housing. Those aren’t unusual things in Latin American constitutions. They may exist more in theory than in reality, but they are a baseline expectation.</p>
<p>Amnesty advocates claim that legalization will assimilate illegal aliens. It’s hard to tell if they’re kidding themselves or us. They will be “assimilated” by the same left-wing social system that they have already been living in. They will be assimilated by public schools and state universities, by community activist groups and media outlets and by all the other arms of the Democratic Party and its left-wing satellites.</p>
<p>Republican advocates of amnesty speak of this country as a beacon of freedom. And they’re right. That beacon of freedom has been offered to immigrants around the world. And it is in their interest and ours that the beacon remain lit by opposing a Super-Amnesty of illegal aliens that would drown out its light.</p>
<p>The American culture of freedom is already under siege. Immigration should serve America’s culture of freedom. Anything else would be unfair to Americans and to the generations of future immigrants.</p>
<p>There can be no conservative case for Super-Amnesty unless it can be argued that it will make the country more conservative, freer and less taxed than it is today. Instead the numbers show that Super-Amnesty will create overwhelming support for government power, less freedom and higher taxes.</p>
<p>America will become California.</p>
<p>Super-Amnesty is radical social change in a can. Conservatives don’t believe in radical social change. Amnesty supporters insist that conservatives should lay out a policy alternative to mass amnesty, but the very idea that massive social problems have easy solutions is an intellectual error of the left.</p>
<p>Conservatives accept that social problems arise from human frailty, rather than fundamental inequities. We do not believe in push-button solutions to social problems. Instead we affirm that in maintaining our ideals despite human frailties, we will become a better nation.</p>
<p>Illegal aliens will always exist because there will be people on both sides of the border who will selfishly break the law, harming themselves and others. The solution to this social problem is not to reject the law, abandon borders and citizenship, but to affirm these things in the face of their violation.</p>
<p>We do not fight theft by rejecting ownership. Instead we defend the value of human labor. We do not stop killing by making excuses for murderers, but by championing the value of human life. We do not protect marriage by redefining it so that it means nothing, but by recommitting to the family. And we do not end violations of the border by watering down American citizenship, but by strengthening it.</p>
<p>Making America more Socialist can never be a conservative policy. Authentic conservatism is not misled by talking points that speak of conservative principles.</p>
<p>It accepts nothing less than a conservative outcome.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>&#8216;Earthquake&#8217; in the U.K.</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/enza-ferreri/earthquake-in-the-u-k/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=earthquake-in-the-u-k</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 26 May 2014 04:28:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Enza Ferreri]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Conservative]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Elections]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[european union]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[labour]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[UKIP]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Anti-EU party upsets all current paradigms of British politics.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/635156-1bc4c180-e478-11e3-b327-fc34ef98ae31.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-226273 alignleft" alt="635156-1bc4c180-e478-11e3-b327-fc34ef98ae31" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/635156-1bc4c180-e478-11e3-b327-fc34ef98ae31-450x303.jpg" width="315" height="212" /></a>&#8220;An earthquake&#8221; is how the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) described what happened Thursday May 22 when all Britain voted to elect its share of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and various parts of the country voted to elect local councils.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">While the results of the Euro Elections were not announced until Sunday to wait for the results of the whole European Union, where some countries voted later, the local election results were known immediately, and were pretty much as Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader, described them: an earthquake.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In a country with a three-main-party system (Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats), the UKIP became firmly established as the fourth party. It didn&#8217;t gain overall control of any local council, but that doesn&#8217;t tell the whole story.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Labour won 338 more councillors than it previously had, the Conservatives were down 231 councillors, the Liberal Democrats took a bashing losing 307, as many as 40 percent of their councillors, and UKIP went from two to an astonishing 163 councillors, turning from a fringe, tiny party into a serious contender for government.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But it was last night, at the European Elections, that UKIP got a real triumph. Not only did it top the polls with more votes than all other parties for the first time in its history, but its victory also marked the first time in which a nationally-held election has not been won by either the Conservative Party or the Labour Party since 1906.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">This historical event upsets all the current paradigms of British politics. For a start, it makes it much more difficult to predict future election results, including the 2015 general elections for the British Parliament, the &#8220;real&#8221; polls that will decide who&#8217;s going to govern the UK.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">A three-party system is easier to understand and forecast than a four-party one. Without UKIP, Labour might have been cast as the next British government, benefiting from the dissatisfaction from the supposed &#8220;cuts&#8221; and &#8220;austerity&#8221; measures that the present coalition of Tories and Lib Dems in government had to enforce to heal at least in part the ruinously irresponsible economy and welfare policies of the past Labour administration.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Something similar happened in other parts of Europe, hence the BBC&#8217;s headline, &#8220;Eurosceptic &#8216;earthquake&#8217; rocks EU elections,&#8221; in reference to the parallel result of Marine Le Pen&#8217;s Front National which <a href="http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-27559714">won</a> a record victory in France. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Back in the UK, the Liberal Democrats were almost wiped out from the European Parliament, being left with just one MEP of the 11 they previously had. This is Catherine Zena Bearder, standing in the South East, the largest region in the UK, where my party, one-year-old Liberty GB, got 2494 votes.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">These results show a clear shift in public opinion towards a decidedly anti-immigration, anti-European-Union stance.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The reaction of the (previously) three main parties and of the liberal media is interesting because it shows that they simply don&#8217;t get it.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">They cling to justifications, rationalizations, excuses, pedantic nitpicking, like &#8220;it hasn&#8217;t been an earthquake because UKIP has no control of a single council&#8221; or &#8220;it&#8217;s just a temporary protest vote. They&#8217;ll come back to us.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Lib Dems project onto the UKIP&#8217;s future what happened to them. The Lib Dems, never genuinely contemplating the possibility of being in government, were ruined by their experience in power, where they didn&#8217;t keep their utopian promises to the electorate. In an act of wishful thinking the Lib Dems predict that the same will happen to UKIP.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">My favorite is the reaction of Labour. Faithful to their Marxist heritage, they explain everything away with the economy. People on the doorstep tell us that they are not concerned about immigration per se, Labour says, but only about its economic consequences for jobs, wages, housing and so on.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">We&#8217;ll sort these things out, they continue, the usual Labour way: by wasting more of public money and increasing taxes.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">They don&#8217;t realize that no people &#8220;on the doorstep&#8221; will tell any Labour representative that they don&#8217;t want immigration for reasons of culture and identity, not just economics, lest they be considered racist by the aforementioned Labour person.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">And UKIP took votes from all parties, including Labour, whose traditional base of working-class voters got progressively dissatisfied with it.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">People who until now voted for the mainstream establishment parties &#8212; and people who didn&#8217;t vote at all &#8212; have decided to stop being silent and take action by choosing a party that says many of the things they think but cannot express.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">We all take great hope and encouragement from this trend.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It took UKIP 20 years from its foundation to get to this point, and it struggled for recognition for a very long time.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">There was a time when a vote for UKIP was considered wasted, but it turned out to be instrumental in putting pressure on the Tories on the issue of leaving the European Union. There will be a time when voting for Liberty GB will put pressure on UKIP on the issue of the threat of Britain&#8217;s Islamization, on which Farage&#8217;s party has so far been persistently silent.</span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Judge Blocks Anti-Conservative Witch-Hunt in Wisconsin</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/judge-blocks-witch-hunt-against-wisconsin-conservatives/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=judge-blocks-witch-hunt-against-wisconsin-conservatives</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 08 May 2014 04:50:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=225036</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Conservative advocacy groups win key court battle -- but the Left vows to keep up the fight. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/scott-walker-cover-why-we-chose-620x395.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-225037" alt="scott-walker-cover-why-we-chose-620x395" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/scott-walker-cover-why-we-chose-620x395-450x341.jpg" width="315" height="239" /></a>The relentless efforts by Wisconsin leftists to undermine Gov. Scott Walker and his fellow conservatives—by any means necessary—has taken another hit. In a </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://media.jrn.com/documents/doeruling.pdf">26-page decision</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa granted a preliminary injunction </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/05/07/judge-halts-secret-probe-wisconsin-conservative-groups-in-win-for-walker/">halting</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> a politically-motivated John Doe investigation that probed campaign spending and fundraising by Gov. Scott Walker&#8217;s campaign, Eric O&#8217;Keefe, his Wisconsin Club for Growth (WCFG), and other conservative entities. &#8220;The Defendants must cease all activities related to the investigation, return all property seized in the investigation from any individual or organization, and permanently destroy all copies of information and other materials obtained through the investigation,” Randa wrote.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Randa illuminated his contempt for the investigation. &#8220;The defendants are pursuing criminal charges through a secret John Doe investigation against the plaintiffs for exercising issue advocacy speech rights that on their face are not subject to the regulations or statutes the defendants seek to enforce. This legitimate exercise of O‘Keefe‘s rights as an individual, and WCFG‘s rights as a 501(c)(4) corporation, to speak on the issues has been characterized by the defendants as political activity covered by Chapter 11 of the Wisconsin Statutes, rendering the plaintiffs a subcommittee of the Friends of Scott Walker (―FOSW‖) and requiring that money spent on such speech be reported as an in-kind campaign contribution. This interpretation is simply wrong.” </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">As a result, Randa </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://watchdog.org/143058/john-doe-judge-injunction/">ordered</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that the plaintiffs “and others” are “hereby relieved of any and every duty under Wisconsin law to cooperate further with Defendants‘ investigation. Any attempt to obtain compliance by any Defendant or John Doe Judge Gregory Peterson is grounds for a contempt finding by this Court.” </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The ruling completely undermines the efforts of Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, a Democrat, who launched the probe in mid-2012, shortly after Democrats’ failure to remove Walker in a recall election prompted by the passage of </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/business/wisconsins-legacy-for-unions.html?_r=0">Act 10</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. That piece of legislation limited the power of unions to collectively bargain, setting the stage for a ferocious pushback that included Democratic state legislators fleeing the state to prevent a vote on the issue, an </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/201358491.html">effort</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to effect a liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court for the purpose of overturning the law, and the attempt to remove Walker in the aforementioned recall vote that ultimately </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/guvrace06-ku5ld5b-157364555.html">failed</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The unseemly probe, led by special prosecutor Francis Schmitz, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://capitolcityproject.com/homes-raided-subpoenas-issued-targeting-conservative-groups-and-allies-of-scott-walker/">targeted</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> Walker and 29 conservative groups. Dozens of subpoenas </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304799404579155953286552832">were issued</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> demanding documents related to the 2011 and 2012 campaigns aimed at recalling Walker and several Republican state legislators. The probe itself expanded into a five-county investigation as a result of cooperation with the Government Accountability Board (GAB), that operates as Wisconsin’s election and campaign speech regulator. Besides Walker and the WCFG, other targeted groups included the League of American Voters, Wisconsin Family Action, Wisconsin Manufacturers &amp; Commerce, Americans for Prosperity—Wisconsin, American Crossroads, the Republican Governors Association, and the Republican Party of Wisconsin.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Because the investigation took place under the state’s John Doe law, prosecutors were empowered to issue subpoenas and conduct searches, even as gag orders prevented the targets of the probe from publicly defending themselves.While the investigation was ongoing, O’Keefe told the </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Wall Street Journal</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that he was aware of at least three of the investigation’s targets being subjected to dawn raids of their homes, with law-enforcement officers seizing computers and files.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In a testament to Democratic relentlessness, this was the second probe of Walker in the last four years. In 2010, Chisholm spearhead a Joe Doe effort to investigate whether staffers used their offices for political purposes when Walker was Milwaukee County Executive. After three years Walker </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/report-scott-walker-probe-closed-with-no-new-charges-qh8vsfb-194194091.html">emerged</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> unscathed when retired Appeals Court Judge Neal Nettesheim </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://media.jsonline.com/documents/DA+Press+Release+wAtt+2013-03-01.pdf">signed an order</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> shutting down that secret investigation.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Randa </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.humanevents.com/2014/05/07/federal-judge-shuts-down-wisconsin-witch-hunt/">described</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the heavy-handed tactics employed by law-enforcement officials in the second probe. “Sheriff deputy vehicles used bright floodlights to illuminate the targets’ homes,” he wrote. “Deputies executed the search warrants, seizing business papers, computer equipment, phones, and other devices, while their targets were restrained under police supervision and denied the ability to contact their attorneys. Among the materials seized were many of the Club’s records that were in the possession of Ms. Jordahl and Mr. Johnson,” Randa continued. “The warrants indicate that they were executed at the request of GAB investigator Dean Nickel.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The latest injunction was a response to the civil rights lawsuit </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://watchdog.org/128317/conservative-lawsuit-civil-rights/">filed</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> in February by O’Keefe and the WCFG against Chisholm, two of his assistant DAs, Schmitz, and an investigator contracted by the Government Accountability Board. That suit alleged that the John Doe investigation constituted a violation of the targeted groups&#8217; First Amendment rights in what amounted to a partisan witch-hunt aimed at punishing Walker, et al., for their recent political success. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The prosecutors-turned-defendants attempted to derail Randa’s ruling with an emergency stay </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://watchdog.org/143044/john-doe-federal-prosecutors/">filed</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> Monday with the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. It followed Randa’s </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://watchdog.org/128037/civil-rights-john-doe-speech/">rejection</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the previous week of a motion to stay his ruling that allowed the civil rights suit against these prosecutors to move forward. In that ruling, Randa contended the effort was nothing more than an attempt to “derail” his decision, and that he was “inclined to agree” with O’Keefe’s contention that efforts to obtain relief were frivolous. Prosecutors had contended that the federal court had no jurisdiction in the matter, citing the U.S. Constitution’s </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxi">Eleventh Amendment</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> limitation on federal judicial powers with regard to the states.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Randa didn’t buy it, asserting that “if the defendants are violating the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights, the Eleventh Amendment does not apply and the plaintiffs are entitled to injunctive relief.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In this latest ruling, Randa shot down the John Doe investigators’ assertion that, even though issue advocacy that rightfully omits direct advocacy for or against a candidate is permissible, it “does not create a free-speech safe harbor when expenditures are coordinated between a candidate and a third-party organization.” They sought to portray the WCFG and other targeted organizations as a &#8220;subcommittee of the Friends of Scott Walker,&#8221; and thus subject to </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/11">Chapter 11 of Wisconsin campaign finance statutes,</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> &#8220;requiring that money spent on such speech be reported as an in-kind campaign contribution.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">“This interpretation is simply wrong,” the judge wrote drawing on the recent Supreme Court decision in </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/mccutcheon-v-federal-election-commission/"><i>McCutcheon</i> v. FEC</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that invalidated </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/10/08/supreme-court-takes-up-the-sequel-to-citizens-united/">aggregate limits</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> on campaign donations. Describing that ruling as a “a ringing endorsement of the full protection afforded to political speech,” Randa explained that while issue advocacy may involve like-minded entities sharing the same political philosophies as a candidate, such advocacy does not constitute quid quo pro. </span></p>
<p>“O‘Keefe and the Club obviously agree with Governor Walker‘s policies, but coordinated ads in favor of those policies carry no risk of corruption because the Club‘s interests are already aligned with Walker and other conservative politicians,” the ruling states. “Such ads are meant to educate the electorate, not curry favor with corruptible candidates.”</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">He further characterized the prosecutors’ attempt to conflate issue advocacy and express advocacy as “interpretive legerdemain.” “If correct, this means that any individual or group engaging in any kind of coordination with a candidate or campaign would risk forfeiting their right to engage in political speech,” Randa wrote.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Schmitz said late Tuesday he expects to challenge the decision by appealing to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. &#8220;I&#8217;m virtually assured we will appeal this decision,” he declared. &#8220;I have to consult with the others and my attorney&#8221; before making a &#8220;final decision.” His attorney, Randall Crocker, issued a statement saying he &#8220;will carefully review the decision of Judge Randa and address with our client his responsibilities pursuant to his appointment and his options.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">University of Wisconsin professor Donald Downs, who was stunned by the decision, predicts a reversal of Randa’s ruling could prompt a move to the U.S. Supreme Court. &#8220;If the Seventh Circuit reverses, it&#8217;ll go to the Supreme Court, believe me. And they&#8217;ll take it because they&#8217;re hot to trot on these issues right now,” he said.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In the meantime, another effort to derail Gov. Scott Walker has crashed and burned. Moreover, he remains favored in the 2014 race against Democrat Gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke by an </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2014/governor/wi/wisconsin_governor_walker_vs_burke-4099.html">average margin</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> of 5.2 percentage points. It will be interesting to see what happens to that margin now that Judge Randa has unshackled conservative advocacy groups from their would-be oppressors—oppressors who have never put Democratic advocacy groups under the same prosecutorial microscope, or subjected them to the same paramilitary raids conducted here.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&#8220;The plaintiffs have been shut out of the political process merely by association with conservative politicians,” Randa wrote. &#8220;This cannot square with the First Amendment and what it was meant to protect.” Exactly.</span></p>
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		<title>Sonnie Johnson: How to Change the Game</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/sonnie-johnson-how-to-change-the-game/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=sonnie-johnson-how-to-change-the-game</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 02 Apr 2014 04:59:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[A fearless trailblazer demonstrates the power of hip-hop and why it belongs in the conservative tent. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Editor&#8217;s note: Below are the video and transcript of Sonnie Johnson&#8217;s address at the Freedom Center&#8217;s West Coast Retreat, held at the Terranea Resort in Palos Verdes, California from March 21-23, 2014:</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/89889904" height="281" width="500" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Sonnie Johnson:</strong> Hip-hop didn&#8217;t start &#8217;til late &#8217;70s, early &#8217;80s.  By then progressivism had already infiltrated our communities, and we have been going through birth pains in the hip-hop movement since then.  This year, this summer, three hip-hop artists came out with albums and I put these albums – they were my favorite albums of the summer – and I put them together into one coherent thought using the names.  And it tells you progressivism in black America and how we fight to get out of it.  The three albums were &#8220;A Good Kid in a Mad City Will Turn a Born Sinner into the Gifted.&#8221;  And that&#8217;s what happened.  We have good kids being raised in bad cities, and they take what they&#8217;ve been given, and they turn it into a gift, and they put it out as a product, and they sell it, and they become multi-millionaires.  And it is a beautiful thing.  It is capitalism.  It is the American dream.</p>
<p>So, I start off most of the time with a Sonnie-ism, so I want to give you guys a Sonnie-ism.  This is how I mix conservatism with hip-hop, and this is one of my favorites.  Created equal does not mean equal results.  Because I can&#8217;t flow like Jay-Z doesn&#8217;t make it Jay-Z&#8217;s fault.  And it&#8217;s a simple, basic concept that we all preach when we talk about the Constitution, when we talk about our founding principles.  That&#8217;s what we&#8217;re trying to get people to see.  But it goes straight over their head.  But if you put someone in that they listen to and they care about then they start to understand it a little bit better.  And that&#8217;s what we want to do. But we also have another thing, where we say we don&#8217;t talk about the game, we be the game.  So, we&#8217;re not gonna talk about it, we&#8217;re gonna show you how we change the game, so that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m up here to do that.  And I hope you like it.</p>
<p>This is how we plan on changing the game:</p>
<p>I&#8217;m a born sinner asking the Lord why me. He said it ain&#8217;t about you, so let it be.  And when I question my role, he didn&#8217;t send me a priest.  He sent another born sinner to sing to me.</p>
<p>J Cole cowrote me a love song.  Freedom of jail, a purchase or sale, daughter in the womb, momma angel raised from this hell.  It was the end before beginning.  How you gonna change the world, curled in all its traps and sinners.  Well as far as that go, it&#8217;s only natural.  I explain my plateau and what defines my name.</p>
<p>Short story.  No need to fit it all in.  I live a life of compromise.  Backsliding is sin.  It was expected.  See the hue of my skin.  This sickness in my body, I don&#8217;t want to go and party.  The devil claimed my soul wasn&#8217;t good for nobody.  My girl is out tricking, my dude&#8217;s out dying.  God bless me, would he see the doctors were denying.  Then he called my name, and I couldn&#8217;t stop crying. But I stood in defiance, see.</p>
<p>&#8216;Cause I&#8217;m gonna do me.  Not looking for no one&#8217;s goddess, not even from he. &#8216;Cause God wanted perfect. And in all honesty, I was not worth it.</p>
<p>Then 50 said God give me style. God give me grace.  God give me style and God give me grace.  And God used 50 to put a smile on my face.  And J said kneel before God and pray for a better cause, sometimes to no avail, and that made me wake up and stop feeling sorry for myself. &#8216;Cause if I went to heaven I had to escape hell.</p>
<p>And Kanye. Jesus walks and I thought I&#8217;ve been afraid of God for so long.  What can I do to right my wrongs?  And this is where the song switches. Because God said speak, so I let spoken word flow from me.  I&#8217;m not a rapper, so lyrics don&#8217;t flow from me, but I&#8217;m a thinker, so a thousand thoughts flow from me.  God said speaker louder.  What do you want from me?  Then he put a tea party in front of me.</p>
<p>Now I&#8217;m no longer black.  My fam turned on me. &#8216;Cause I try to paint a picture of the world I see.  That&#8217;s the meaning of hip-hop.  What it&#8217;s supposed to be.  How did I turn into the enemy?  And on the other side it&#8217;s few that believed in me.  I wear my ghetto on my sleeve.  Ain&#8217;t no change in me.  I&#8217;m the rough cut that God made of me.  Exposing my diamond now &#8217;cause Cole sang to me.  Hip-hop sung me a love song.</p>
<p>Politics are archaic, formulaic with the outcome.  They don&#8217;t know.  They just studied the charts.  Me I studied my black.  The people studied their hearts.  I had a feelin&#8217; I was killin&#8217; with the speeches I was spillin&#8217; out.  I could change lives forever.</p>
<p>Keynote, big speech, Jay-Z is what I talk about.  It would have been mixed tape Jay Cole, but I was like, nah, I was wonderin&#8217; why you were full, when two years ago I was sayin&#8217; who dat.  Praisin&#8217; hip-hop for its switch up in rap.  But as my speech is slow, I thought they must be insane.  But Bannen said play the game and change the game.  And then I heard my love song.</p>
<p>&#8216;Cause I always believed in a bigger picture.  If I can get my people to stop the names, feel my core, I could open up doors.  Reintroduce honesty, show them they deserve more.  The difference between black leaders, poverty pimps, and whores.  I wasn&#8217;t asked to fall.  I was demanded to stand.  MLK on a mountaintop with a cross in his heart.  In his hand was a cross.  Not that civil right that you bought, so his statue removes Christ, and they call it art.</p>
<p>If this be my last essay, know it comes to my heart.  No apologies for embracing hip-hop as a art.  &#8216;Cause I&#8217;m here for a purpose, though I doubted to start.  I&#8217;m just a woman of the people, not above, but equal.  And for the greater good, destroy both sides of evil, so don&#8217;t cry for me.  This is a life I choose myself.  Just pray along the way I never lose myself.  And for those who said black conservatism is dead, I&#8217;ll go to hell to resurrect it, and I will be respected &#8217;cause hip hop writes me love songs.</p>
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		<title>Glenn Beck at the West Coast Retreat</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/glenn-beck-at-the-west-coast-retreat/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=glenn-beck-at-the-west-coast-retreat</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Apr 2014 04:58:02 +0000</pubDate>
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				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Glenn Beck]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[A conservative titan finds hope for America's future in forgotten historical treasures. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Editor&#8217;s note: Below are the video and transcript of Glenn Beck&#8217;s speech at the Freedom Center&#8217;s West Coast Retreat, held at the Terranea Resort in Palos Verdes, California from March 21-23, 2014.</strong></p>
<p><strong>To see David Horowitz&#8217;s introduction of Glenn Beck, click <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/david-horowitz/glenn-beck-americas-defender/">here</a>. </strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/89838489" height="281" width="500" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>Glenn Beck:</strong> About half way through, I was thinking that&#8217;s the problem with Obama Care, everybody knows everything about your life.  David, that is, the last time I came to speak at your event was in Florida, and I asked you for a copy of your remarks of introduction, and I&#8217;d like to do the same.  As you know, it&#8217;s rare that people in our position have someone say nice things; especially in California.  So thank you.  It&#8217;s an honor to be here tonight.  I am actually speaking tomorrow; also tomorrow morning at a breakfast with some very brave people also in California, and I want to share some thoughts; some reasons why what you&#8217;re doing is so critical and so important.  Do you mind?  I don&#8217;t mean to be sacrilegious but I can see it.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">We are at a crossroads, and I believe in divine providence.  I don&#8217;t believe in divine destiny.  I believe in divine providence.  And there&#8217;s a difference.  If you are humble, if you are listening and you are willing to serve God, and you&#8217;re willing to stand alone no matter what the consequence, divine providence has a way of working things out.  And exactly what&#8217;s supposed to happen, will happen.  And it will all be for His good and His work.  That&#8217;s what started this country.  And we have forgotten.  Because there isn&#8217;t anybody who&#8217;s been essential.  We have all just said, &#8220;Well, that&#8217;s okay.&#8221;  We all on 9/12 &#8212; I really thought we really were; I really thought Nancy Pelosi was a lot like me.  I really thought some of these people were just like me.  I didn&#8217;t really understand the progressive movement.  It wasn&#8217;t until about 2000 maybe &#8217;5 or &#8217;6, I&#8217;m thinking to myself, &#8220;What is happening to us?  How did we go from this country that understood who it was to something I don&#8217;t even recognize?  What happened to us?&#8221;  What happened to us was we got fat and lazy.  We said it would never happen here.  It could never happen here.  We conquered Communism.  They just changed their outfits.  Progressives are nothing more than patient Communists.  And so we are now building a movement that is also patient; must be patient.  Must know that we have allowed over 100 years of damage to be done.  And there&#8217;s a lot to repair. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">This is the original prospectus of Disney Land.  This is; well David and I were on stage in the Cowboys Stadium, one of my teams was actually here in Los Angeles at an auction house trying to bid and win this, and we were very fortunate to get it.  I am trying to preserve important pieces of American history.  This is critical.  There was a weekend; it&#8217;s called the Weekend Prospectus and Walt Disney, nobody would invest.  It was 1953.  He couldn&#8217;t get anybody to see the vision.  They thought he was just going to make an amusement park and he said it&#8217;s a theme park. There&#8217;s a difference.  And nobody would listen to him, and so he got a secretary in and his artist; his main artist and said come on in, bring a pillow.  We&#8217;re working over the weekend and then on Sunday I&#8217;m flying to New York and I&#8217;m going to get us the money.  He brought this prospectus into the banks.  He brought it in three different banks.  They all turned him down.  He left this at the last bank and the banker he was talking to thought it was really neat and brought it home to his kids and said kids I want you to see what Walt Disney is thinking about doing.  Did you give him the money daddy?  No, he&#8217;s a crazy man. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Sometime in 1955 Walt Disney will present for the people of the world and children of all ages a new experience in entertainment.  And then he says the Disney Land story, and I want to read one paragraph.  As I read it after we won it in auction because it had never been printed before, it had never been seen before, it jumped out as my mission because I don&#8217;t think Walt did it.  Somehow or another, he got lost.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&#8220;Disney Land will be based upon and dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America.  It will be uniquely equipped to dramatize this dream and these facts and send them forth as a source of courage and inspiration to all the world.&#8221; </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">That&#8217;s not Disney Land.  That is what all of us must pick up and do.  We have a story to tell.  We have the greatest story the world has ever heard.  The story of real freedom and now with technology, now the ideas that our founders only dreamt of are right within our reach because I don&#8217;t need a middleman any more.  I don&#8217;t need anybody to communicate.  I don&#8217;t need a radio station or a radio company.  I can get and do a podcast.  I can be in my underpants in my mom&#8217;s basement and I can make a podcast on my phone and a million people can hear it.  It&#8217;s true freedom.  But we have to know the story and then live our lives in a way that we are worthy of it. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">This is a rare book printed by Thomas Edison on the invention of the connectal phonograph.  It is the movie projector.  This, he was so excited about, that he printed this book for investors, and the last page says:  &#8220;The line of thought might be indefinitely pursued with application to any given phase of outdoor and indoor live which is desired to reproduce.  Our methods point to ultimate success.  No scene however animated and extensive will eventually be within reproductive power.  Marshal evolutions, naval exercises, processions, countless kindred exhibitions will be recorded for the gratification of those who are debarred from attendance.  The invalid; the isolated country let loose.  They will all be able to see not only all our resources but those of the entire world now will be at our command.  The advantages to students and historians will be immeasurable,&#8221; he said about the movie projector and film.  &#8220;Instead of dry and misleading accounts tinged with exaggerations of the chroniclers&#8217; minds, our archives will be enriched by the vitalized pictures of great national scenes, instinct with all the glowing personalities which characterize them.&#8221;  He said, &#8220;Now that we have motion pictures, you&#8217;ll never be able to put a lie past anyone.&#8221;  Thomas wasn&#8217;t so bright. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">This is Tokyo Rose&#8217;s microphone.  This is the microphone that was taken by a naval officer as he arrived and he walked into the radio station.  He said, &#8220;I&#8217;m gonna kill that son of a bitch,&#8221; and she wasn&#8217;t there.  He took the microphone, put it in a box, brought it back to America, and there is sat in his closet.  It hasn&#8217;t been used until I repaired it just recently and plugged it in, and as I was going to say test into it, we were back in our shop in our movie studies, and I said, &#8220;Unplug it quickly.  I don&#8217;t think it should; I can&#8217;t say test into that,&#8221; and I wanted a day to think about what should be said.  The last time anyone spoke in this microphone it was Tokyo Rose.  What would you say?  What should be heard all across the nation and the world from this microphone?  I decided that what should be said was, &#8220;I&#8217;m Tokyo Rose.  I am innocent of what your government says I did.&#8221; </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Tokyo Rose is one of the most tragic stories I&#8217;ve ever read.  Tokyo Rose was actually pardoned by Gerald Ford.  But she went to prison.  She was an American who went over to Japan to visit her relatives.  She was born in America.  And she went over to Japan and the war kicked off and she was trapped.  And they tried to use her.  They tried to do everything they could to get Tokyo Rose; the one that we put in prison.  There were five of them.  The one we put in prison was a patriotic American that was actually risking her life for our soldiers.  Our soldiers later testified that they were in the islands, the Pacific, and Tokyo Rose&#8217;s voice would come on and she would say, &#8220;For those of you in these islands, you&#8217;d better go to sleep early because things might keep you awake tonight,&#8221; and our soldiers would say, &#8220;Wait a minute.  Wait a minute.  Is she saying that they&#8217;re going to bomb us?&#8221;  She actually smuggled medicine in.  But because our President at the time at the end of the war and our press wasn&#8217;t just lazy, they wanted a good story.  They wanted somebody to pay.  They went over, they got her story.  She was just trying to earn money to be able to come back to her home where she thought she would be a hero.  It was Time Magazine came, offered her money, sat down, she told her story.  They didn&#8217;t write that story.  It was one of the most expensive trials up to OJ Simpson in American history.  The lies and the corruption from our own government smearing an innocent woman that lasted until 1976.   Most people don&#8217;t know that story.  Why not?  Why don&#8217;t we know the truth about our own country?  It&#8217;s not just Tokyo Rose. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">These are the shoes of a woman that was also born here in America.  Her name was Risotto.  She was an artist.  Born here in America 1912.  She was actually she had some of her art in one of the art galleries in San Francisco when the war broke out and the Japanese were rounded up in the Pacific and sent to camp.  She was wearing these shoes when they sent her to one of the race tracks just outside of San Francisco.  She lived in a barn with her folks for about three months in a stall of a barn at a race track wearing these shoes.  Then she took these shoes and she went to Wyoming where she lived in the cold wearing these shoes.  And you know what she did?  She taught the little children of Asian descent, I have the art, how to draw little girls in kimonos; holding hands with little white American girls.  Even in a camp where she was put by her own country, she refused to turn.  She was bigger than the people that put her in. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">I&#8217;ve talked to her family.  They&#8217;ve given me her collection for care.  They had no idea this was their mother until she; just before passed away.  They said they were shocked because she was the most patriotic woman they had ever met.  They had no idea she had been betrayed by a country that had lost its moral compass. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">We don&#8217;t know American history at all because of films.  D.W. Griffith; anybody know the film that D.W. Griffith is famous for?  Birth of a Nation.  And the subject matter of Birth of a Nation?  Slavery.  It is the Klan.  It glorifies the Klan.  This is D.W. Griffith&#8217;s walking stick.  D.W. Griffith was a pretty evil dude.  Glorifying the Klan.  Anybody know where that actually premiered?</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>Audience Member: </strong> At the Whitehouse.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>Glenn Beck:</strong>  At the Whitehouse.  It premiered at the Whitehouse.  Because the writer was at that particular premiere, the writer was who?  Woodrow Wilson.  Woodrow Wilson.  I hate that guy.  This is the book.  Written by Woodrow Wilson.  You know that Woodrow Wilson actually resegregated?  We didn&#8217;t have segregation until the progressive Woodrow Wilson came in and resegregated the military.  And yet, somehow or another, we&#8217;re the bad guys.  Somehow or another, we are the racists.  Somehow or another, we&#8217;re the ones.  And because we don&#8217;t know our own history they get away with it.  Somehow or another we&#8217;re not just racists, we&#8217;re also the fascists.  We&#8217;re the ones that like the Nazis.  We&#8217;re the ones that want to starve and kill little children. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Look at the people of the progressive movement.  Look at the Margaret Sangers.  Tell me that we are the ones that hate children.  Tell me that we&#8217;re the ones that wan t to starve little children and even if I did want to starve them, it&#8217;s better than cutting them off.  But somehow or another we&#8217;re the bad guys.  Only because we don&#8217;t know our own history.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The President when he went to run for his second term, he put out a video, and it was on and then it was off, and it went away quickly because when I saw the title, I said, &#8220;Oh I know that title.&#8221;  And it was pulled within the first day.  The title was The Road We&#8217;re Traveling.  Do any of you remember that?  The Road We&#8217;re Traveling.  Forward.  The road we&#8217;re traveling forward is actually a Stalin campaign.  And the road we&#8217;re traveling comes from this book, and this book is when the war ends, the road we&#8217;re traveling by Stuart Chase.  Stuart Chase is the guy who coined the phrase &#8220;The New Deal.&#8221;  But in here, on Page 99, we can&#8217;t go back.  We can&#8217;t go back on what we&#8217;ve started on this road we&#8217;re traveling, but what is the road we&#8217;re traveling?  The road we&#8217;re traveling he says, &#8220;Soon we will have something I would like to call X.  It&#8217;s the first intelligent attempt to understand what we are doing; a managerial revolution.&#8221;  A managerial revolution.  So in other words, nobody&#8217;s actually going to be running the country.  We&#8217;ll just have a bunch of little middle managers; the EPA will be running.  He says, &#8220;We&#8217;re moving the road we&#8217;re traveling.&#8221;  He says, &#8220;This is a good thing,&#8221; and he says, &#8220;It&#8217;s too late to turn back.&#8221;  This is in 1945.  &#8220;We&#8217;re moving from free enterprise to X.&#8221;  Now he didn&#8217;t want to call it anything else &#8212; before they were calling it fascism.  They were calling it socialism.  They were calling it Communism.  But because those were all discredited, he then just called is System X.  And here&#8217;s what System X is:  A strong centralized government.  An executive arm growing at the expense of the legislative and judicial arms.  A control of banking and credit and security exchanges by the government.  The underwriting of employment by the government.  Either through armaments or public works.  The underwriting of Social Security by the government; of pensions, of unemployment insurance that never ends.  The underwriting of food, housing, medical care by the government.  The use of deficit spending technique to finance these underwritings.  The annually balanced budget has lost its old tininess.  The abandonment of gold in favor of management currencies.  The control of foreign trade, to control natural resources, to control energy sources.  The control of the railway, the highway, and the airwaves.  The control of agriculture.  The control of labor organization.  And heavy taxation.  The road we&#8217;re traveling.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It&#8217;s clear to see what we&#8217;re doing if you are a Communist with patience. It&#8217;s clear to see what they&#8217;re doing.  They&#8217;ve said it.  Go try to buy this book online.  It&#8217;s very hard to find especially with Page 99.  I&#8217;m not kidding you.  I can&#8217;t tell you how many…I&#8217;ve asked my listeners.  Could you go find this book?  Send it in.  I can&#8217;t tell you how many were sent in without Page 99.  They know. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">So who do we become?  At the same they&#8217;re doing that, remember we&#8217;re the Nazis.  There&#8217;s a guy named Father Coughlin, and Father Coughlin – this is who I first was accused of being; Father Coughlin, and here&#8217;s his series of lectures on social justice.  I&#8217;m against social justice.  I don&#8217;t think it exists.  Oh and he was for the Nazis.  But he was beloved for a long time.  See the left doesn&#8217;t mind Nazis.  They don&#8217;t mind the socialists.  They don&#8217;t mind any of these things until they get ugly and then they have to disavow and distance themselves from them.  But then they just change the name and move onto something else.  So, here they go.  They go in and try to take in our churches because they know the toke veil it&#8217;s the church.  It&#8217;s the people&#8217;s faith that makes the difference.  That&#8217;s what the glue is to America.  So we need somebody.  Oh man if we could just find somebody like Jim Wallace to get into the churches and tear the faith of the American people apart.  Then you win.  They don&#8217;t shy from monsters.  This book is the Intelligent Woman&#8217;s Guide to Socialism.  Notice that?  The Intelligent Woman&#8217;s Guide to Socialism.  If you&#8217;re a dummy you can read about capitalism.  This one is for intelligent women only.  This is George Bernard Shaw. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">George Bernard Shaw I never knew what an evil due that guy was.  George Bernard Shaw; we all must know a few people whose life isn&#8217;t worth living.  Just put them in front of us and we&#8217;ll ask them sir or madam.  Will you justify your life?  And if they can&#8217;t, well we have no use for you and we certainly can&#8217;t use our substance to keep you alive.  He went on to say there must be some sort of a gas that can be used.  That&#8217;s George Bernard Shaw, the beloved playwright.  They found the gas.  But first they put triangles on people.  This, if you were a Communist or a capitalist, this one meant you were pretty much in charge.  This one was you were a criminal.  And so they would give you the green diamond.  This one was you&#8217;re Jewish and criminal.  The most rare out of all of these, because nobody ever talks about this one, is this.  The purple triangle.  That meant you were a bible scholar.  You see, Hitler was not a Christian as everybody tries to say he is.  He wasn&#8217;t a Christian.  Christians don&#8217;t generally take the crucifix out of the churches and the pictures of Jesus off of the altar, and replace it with the fuhrer.  Destroy religion.  Destroy religion.  That&#8217;s what Coughlin was doing.  And then mix it with science.  Because if you can mix it with science, then we can tell you this is really good.  This is good.  This is good for all of us.  This is good for the collectives and we&#8217;re going to be compassionate about it.  This is the last thing Mengele assigned.  The last order Mengele assigned before he went to Auschwitz.  This is as his head of the hospital for children.  This is an order for a giant drum of Luminal.  He was killing children with Luminal.  But just for the good of all the Germans.  They didn&#8217;t have a quality of life anyhow.  We can&#8217;t afford it.  I mean that child is not really having any kind of life and we&#8217;ve got people on the front lines.  And we have socialized medicine.  We have to make choices.  Monsters.  The same kind of monsters that decided to stop talking about race cleansing and start talking, taught by the Germans, about family planning.  Planned Parenthood.  The mix between these two is phenomenal. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">One of my favorite letters of condemnation comes from the Germans themselves. The Germans are writing a progressive movement here in California.  And in the progressive movement in California, they were – this was the hot bed of international progressivism, and they were the real scientists and they went over and told the Germans exactly how all of this nice science can work, and this letter &#8212; I love this letter.  It says the last line from the Germans to the, I think it was the California Betterment of Society or something, and it said, &#8220;May you never forget, may you never forget the contribution you have made in exciting this nation and its industry in family planning and eugenics.&#8221;  I can guarantee you everybody that received that letter promptly forgot their contribution, but we must not or we will repeat it. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">If we forget our past, it repeats.  I was on the air in 1999 in New York, and I said, &#8220;Have you read Osama Bin Laden&#8217;s words?  He&#8217;s a crazy man.  I think he&#8217;s crazy enough to do it.&#8221;  They actually accused me of being a supporter of Bill Clinton of all people.  I was new to talk radio, and I was on WABC, and I said that, and they didn&#8217;t know who I was, and they&#8217;re like you&#8217;re just a Clinton apologist, and I said no, would you stop it?  Listen to him.  My quote was, &#8220;When there are blood and bodies in the streets of New York, when buildings are blocking the traffic, will you then wake up?&#8221;  We should have woken up a long time ago.  From this book.  This is the first Quran printed in America.  This was printed by Jefferson.  Everybody says well, oh, Jefferson he had a Quran. No, he just – no, no, no, no.  At 25 percent of budget when he gets in; 25 percent of our budget is going to pay off the Barbary pirates; 25 percent.  And he&#8217;s like this isn&#8217;t sustainable.  I&#8217;m pretty good at math.  This doesn&#8217;t work.  He says to somebody can&#8217;t we negotiate with them?  You don&#8217;t know them.  What do they want?  They don&#8217;t want anything.  They want to kill you because you&#8217;re an infidel.  What are you talking about?  It&#8217;s the Quran.  Well get me a copy of it.  It had just been printed in England.  He read it.  We went to war with the Barbary pirates because he knew there is no negotiation.  He then had this Quran printed.  This is from 1806.  Tell me how politically incorrect this is.  There&#8217;s a note to the reader in the front, and it says, &#8220;You will wonder that such absurdities that are found in this book have infected the better part of the world.&#8221;  It&#8217;s a warning.  They will be back.  See, our enemies have patience.  We don&#8217;t.  I want it now.  We must have patience.  We must look not to us but to our next generation and the generation after.  I am perfectly willing to lose, not happily, to lose the battle of the country if my children can put the flag back up somewhere along the line.  I&#8217;m willing to do the hard things.  I&#8217;m willing to lose right now.  But we have to teach our children history so they know.  Because the farther this infection, these absurdities go, the more desperate people become.  We&#8217;re pacifists.  Pacifists.  Who are talking to his own congregants and saying so if a man believed that war was wrong and if a man believed that killing was wrong, and you knew that, and he knew that, but he had the opportunity to stop a monster, would he be a bad man?  His students looked at him and said no.  No can you give us an example?  No I&#8217;m just wondering.  His name was Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  This is the napkin from the table when they tried to kill Adolf Hitler.  A pacifist.  A preacher.  Because he had tried everything else.  Gandhi, I&#8217;ve got to talk to Gandhi.  Gandhi has the answer.  Jesus had the answer.  Gandhi had the answer.  Martin Luther King has the answer.  Washington doesn&#8217;t have the answer.  You know what the answer is.  Standing for principles that are true and then having the courage before things get so crazy and out of hand. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The movie with Tom Cruise, the Vagary, the German Von Stoffenberg.  This is his copy of my account.  From the Von Stoffenberg library.  I just want you to look at the edges.  Not one dog-eared page.  Never been read.  You can dress like a Nazi, but unless you&#8217;ve read it, unless you&#8217;ve dog-eared it, unless you&#8217;re turning the page over and over and over again, you&#8217;re not a Nazi.  Unless you know our history.  Unless you know the sacred scripture that drives you and your faith and you&#8217;ve dog-eared every page, and you&#8217;ve read it over and over and over again, you&#8217;re not a Christian.  You&#8217;re not a Jew.  That&#8217;s just a title for you.  If you don&#8217;t know our history, you&#8217;re not an American.  You just happen to live here at this time.  We have to choose.  Each generation chooses, and it&#8217;s a tremendous time.  I don&#8217;t want to live in times where it&#8217;s not a challenge.  It sucks.  Standing up having to know what you believe in sucks.  You lose a lot of sleep.  You lose a lot of friends.  You lose a lot of hair.  You gain a lot of weight.  It sucks.  But you know exactly who you are. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">I can go into any room.  I can meet with anybody.  I can meet with presidents, prime ministers, kings.  I can meet with anybody on the street.  I know who I am.  Who are you?  I know what&#8217;s worth living for.  I know what&#8217;s worth dying for.  When you don&#8217;t care anymore, when you&#8217;re down on that shag green carpet, and its Christmas without your children and you can&#8217;t even afford to buy them a toy from a CVS drug store, you have a choice.  Check out or live.  Live.  Live is the choice.  For Christmas two years ago, my wife gave me this.  It&#8217;s one of – this is a passport signed by Raul Wallenberg; a man who saw what was happening and said, &#8220;You can&#8217;t do this.  You can&#8217;t make them aware of the stars.  You can&#8217;t just kills them.  Come with me.  You&#8217;re my Jew.&#8221;  His own government said you can&#8217;t do that.  Yes I can.  He made so many of these at the end he would stand up on the trains as they were going, and he&#8217;d stuff them through the cracks and then he&#8217;d say, &#8220;Stop, stop you have the wrong people.  These are all my people.  These are all citizens.  Show them your passports.  Open these trains back up.&#8221;  This particular passport was one of the last he gave.  One of the last women that received it said to him, begged him, please, please come with us.  The Russians are coming.  He said the Russians cannot be as bad.  He was last seen running for help to the Russians.  He stood.  He won.  No matter how dark things may get at any time, he won.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer won.  Martin Luther King won.  Gandhi won.  Jesus won. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">If I were talking to a group of people just like you and this was Europe 1943, and I&#8217;d say how are you?  You&#8217;d say really bad.  And look at what they&#8217;re doing to our Jewish friends.  And if I said you just keep standing, you just keep standing, you&#8217;d look at me as if I were insane.  But I give you the same message now.  Stand back and watch the awesome power of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  In the 1940s, if I would have said that to you, you would have said, &#8220;Look what&#8217;s happening?&#8221;  And if I would have said in just a couple of years the State of Israel will be refounded, you&#8217;d think I was a mad man.  We don&#8217;t know how this story ends.  I tell you this.  The good guys do win in the end no matter what Hollywood decides to say.  The good guys win in the end.  Because good is a much more powerful force.  But it requires people to stand and give it all.</span></p>
<p>One of the most amazing horrible stories from America, the only time a religious extermination order was ever given in America.  We don&#8217;t exterminate our own people.  We did the Indians.  But for religion.  We did it once.  In the State of Missouri.  The Mormons.  The Mormon prophet was Joseph Smith.  He bought one more day with this watch.  They had come to tar and feather him.  For a third time that week they had tried to arrest him; three times that day.  The last time he was in a buggy with Brigham Young in America and the sheriff pulled up on his horse with a goon squad and pulled him out and said, &#8220;I gotcha now old Joe.  You owe so and so some money on your stove.&#8221;  He said, &#8220;I don&#8217;t owe any man.&#8221;  He said, &#8220;Yes you do.  You owe him $20.00.&#8221;  Joseph Smith took this pocket watch out of his vest and put it into the hand of the sheriff and said, &#8220;Then I guess this would take care of it.  I owe no man any money.&#8221;  You may not believe in what he did, but he believed in something enough to risk and lose his life.  Do we?  Is there anything that motivates you that animates you that much?</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Be careful because a spellbinder can talk you into just about anything.  It is truly about principals. It&#8217;s about having exactness in all that you do.  George Washington all he wanted to be was a farmer.  He just wanted to go back to Mt. Vernon and farm.  When they came to him for the Constitutional Convention, he was tired and the country was falling apart again and they rode from Philadelphia to Mt. Vernon, and they said, &#8220;General you have to come or we&#8217;ll lose the republic.&#8221;  His response in the doorstep &#8212; and you never read about Washington losing his temper.  He did that day.  He stood in the doorway and he said, &#8220;Have I not yet done enough for my country?&#8221; and slammed the door.  In my mind&#8217;s eye I see him turning around and walking in and putting his hand on the banister by the key of the vastile and realizing, no.  No I haven&#8217;t.  He got onto his horse and he rode back.  He didn&#8217;t say anything.  He didn&#8217;t say a word at the convention.  It was his mere presence that held it together. He was truly the indispensable man because of the way he lived his life. If have one regret, it is that I screwed up my life up for far too long.  I discredited myself for far too long and we need to find men who are real decent honorable men, decent, honorable, honest people that will self-sacrifice who might say every day, &#8220;Have I not yet done enough?&#8221; and realize no.  This is George Washington&#8217;s compass.  It had to leave the Washington family this generation.  It&#8217;s been in the family since.  He had this everywhere he went.  He was a surveyor.  He had this.  This is the only compass he owned.  He got it when he was 13 years old.  He had it with him on the battlefield.  He had it with him in the farmlands. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">One day I was facing a really tough day and I had two ways to go.  I could let my political foes have it and I could smear them or I could let them continue to do what they were doing and I would let that fight be fought by someone far greater than me and believe in divine providence and not become everything I despised.  But it was very hard because it would have been a quick and easy win.  I took this out of its box; the case that I keep it in and I put it in my suit pocket, and if you would ever watch that episode on Fox, you would see that I had my hand in my pocket the whole time.  Just stay true.  Just stay true.  But the greatest thing happened.  As I held that all day, I held it like this and I found a thumbprint.  It&#8217;s a rub mark right here.  I have nothing to back this up but I think Washington from 13 had this in his hand and did the same thing and stayed true.  Just get through it.  Stay true. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">We win in the end if we are strong, if we are courageous, if we are decent, if we are honorable; if we don&#8217;t care what the world does or says about us.  I come whenever David asks me.  I am probably busier than I should be, but when David asks me to come and speak, I always do.  Because I believe David is a true American patriot.  David didn&#8217;t know I brought this with me because he was talking about Isaac Potts.  I wasn&#8217;t going to show this to you even.  I just happened to have it.  This is the deed to the land where Isaac Potts saw George Washington pray.  We know that story is true only because of Isaac Potts.  A guy who was not on our side and he saw him and he stood in those trees and Washington, the only thing about that painting is wrong is that Washington has his head down.  Washington never prayed with his head down.  He prayed out loud and he looked up.  Lord and he spoke it.  That&#8217;s how Isaac Potts heard him.  He said any man who speaks to the Almighty like that is not going to lose.  He saw Washington&#8217;s example and he switched sides.  May I humbly suggest that we each set our own example for the Isaac Potts that is watching us.  Set the example and others will follow.  Divine providence will assure our victory.  God bless you.  Thank you.</span></p>
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		<title>Lois Lerner&#8217;s Lies and Cover-Up Revealed</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/matthew-vadum/lois-lerners-lies-and-cover-up-revealed/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=lois-lerners-lies-and-cover-up-revealed</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Mar 2014 04:58:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Conservative]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[IRS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lois Lerner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[scandal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[target]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tea Party]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=220844</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A bombshell report pierces the veil of IRS persecution of conservatives. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/2013-05-22T154024Z_01_WAS905_RTRIDSP_3_USA-IRS-LERNER_image_982w-300x200.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-220868" alt="2013-05-22T154024Z_01_WAS905_RTRIDSP_3_USA-IRS-LERNER_image_982w-300x200" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/2013-05-22T154024Z_01_WAS905_RTRIDSP_3_USA-IRS-LERNER_image_982w-300x200.jpg" width="300" height="200" /></a>Former IRS mandarin Lois Lerner orchestrated an unprecedented crackdown on Tea Party and conservative groups and then attempted to scapegoat those nonprofits, blaming them for the harsh treatment they received at her instigation, according to a damning report released yesterday by congressional investigators.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The report came out six days after Lerner appeared before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee under subpoena and for a second time refused to testify about IRS targeting of right-of-center 501c4 nonprofit advocacy groups during the 2010 and 2012 election cycles. (The full report is available in PDF form at </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Lerner-Report1.pdf">the committee&#8217;s website</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">.) At the March 5 hearing, which was a continuation of a hearing started last year, Lerner again opted to invoke her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">President Obama has claimed that there was not even &#8220;a smidgen of corruption&#8221; in the IRS affair but anyone with eyes knows the Obama administration has been stonewalling and intimidating witnesses who know the ugly truth about these Third World banana republic-style tax abuses.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Democrats correctly view Tea Party groups, that is, right-wing populist groups, as an existential threat to the Left. These nonprofits tend to be Republican-leaning organizations and they have been successful so far in derailing, or at least slowing, parts of President Obama’s ongoing transformation of America. Many left-wingers don&#8217;t believe such groups are legitimate and don&#8217;t want them granted official recognition and tax-exempt status by the IRS.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The report also comes as lawmakers consider whether to cite Lerner for contempt of Congress.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&#8220;Many questions remain, including the identities of others at the IRS and elsewhere who may have known about key events and decisions she undertook. Americans, and particularly those Americans who faced mistreatment at the hands of the IRS, deserve the full documented truth that both Lois Lerner and the IRS have withheld from them,&#8221; the new report states. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But &#8220;[e]ven without her full testimony, and despite the fact that the IRS has still not turned over many of her e-mails, a political agenda to crack down on tax-exempt organizations comes into focus,&#8221; the report continues. &#8220;Lerner believed the political participation of tax-exempt organizations harmed Democratic candidates, she believed something needed to be done, and she directed action from her unit at the IRS.&#8221;</span></p>
<p>&#8220;Compounding the egregiousness of the inappropriate actions, Lerner’s own e-mails showed recognition that she would need to be &#8216;cautious&#8217; so it would not be a &#8216;<i>per se</i> political project,&#8217;&#8221; the report states. It continues:</p>
<blockquote><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">She was involved in an &#8220;off-plan&#8221; effort to write new regulations in a manner that intentionally sought to undermine an existing framework for transparency. Most damning of all, even when she found that the actions of subordinates had not adhered to a standard that could be defended as not &#8220;</span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">per se</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> political,&#8221; instead of immediately reporting this conduct to victims and appropriate authorities, Lerner engaged in efforts to cover it up. She falsely denied to Congress that criteria for scrutiny had changed and that disparate treatment had occurred.</span></p></blockquote>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Professor Paul L. Caron of Pepperdine University School of Law prepared </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/03/house-releases-.html">a summary</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> of the new 141-page report that contradicts Democrats in the House who have argued that Lerner was driven out of the tax collection agency by a May 2013 report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). The TIGTA report held that the Exempt Organizations division of the IRS that she headed &#8220;inappropriately targeted &#8216;Tea Party&#8217; and other conservative applicants for tax-exempt status and subjected them to heightened scrutiny.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Citing the congressional report, Caron notes that this extra scrutiny resulted &#8220;in extended delays that, in most cases, sidelined applicants during the 2012 election cycle, in spite of their Constitutional right to participate,&#8221; the new report states. At the same time, &#8220;the majority of liberal and left-leaning 501(c)(4) applicants won approval.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">New emails referenced in the report showed that, contrary to Democrats&#8217; claims, Lerner had planned to retire from the IRS long before the TIGTA report was made public. Lerner&#8217;s paid leave was, in effect, a paid vacation before her retirement. Apparently the IRS did not penalize her for her misbehavior.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The report discusses a March 2012 document that Lerner approved while at the IRS. It authorized an IRS response to Congress that blackened the names of the affected advocacy groups, blaming them for the heightened level of scrutiny to which their tax-exempt applications were subjected. Committee investigators believe that Lerner knew what she was doing was wrong.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Lerner ran afoul of IRS rules by mishandling taxpayer information. Although she told a congressional committee last year under oath that she had &#8220;not violated any IRS rules or regulations,” emails demonstrate that she did. The report states that Lerner handled protected taxpayer information in her nonofficial email account.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In correspondence dated November 2013, then-IRS chief Daniel Werfel wrote, “We do not permit IRS officials to send taxpayer information to their personal email addresses. An IRS employee should not send taxpayer information to his or her personal email address in any form, including redacted.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Lerner apparently believed the Obama administration needed to do something to undermine the Supreme Court decision in the </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Citizens United</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> case, that wonderful pro-First Amendment ruling that drives left-wingers into fits of apoplexy by opening the door to corporate campaign contributions. After one of her advisors sent her an article about how conservative donors&#8217; contributions were impacting U.S. Senate races and how outside money was making it hard for Democrats to retain their majority in that chamber, Lerner emailed back, “Perhaps the FEC will save the day.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Last week&#8217;s sitting of the panel </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/matthew-vadum/will-lois-lerner-be-held-in-contempt/">ended in chaos</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> when President Obama&#8217;s lead obfuscating lapdog on the committee, ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), pulled a well-publicized stunt calculated to make committee chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) look mean-spirited. After Lerner took the Fifth in response to a series of questions Issa put to her, Issa gaveled the proceedings to a close, saying it was obvious that Lerner would not testify at the hearing that was convoked specifically for her testimony.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">To direct public attention away from the IRS scandal and tamp down growing calls for the president&#8217;s impeachment, Cummings then exploded at Issa, demanding to speak and ranting about the supposed unfairness of it all in front of the television news cameras.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Predictably, media figures such as CNN&#8217;s Wolf Blitzer hammered Issa, accusing him of being rude to Cummings, a left-wing sacred cow because he is considered to have been a civil rights leader in the Sixties. House Democrats savaged Issa and even </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/government-oversight/200099-dems-want-house-to-condemn-issa-for-shutting-down">moved</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> a resolution that condemned him, but the resolution was easily voted down. Issa soon caved to media-manufactured pressure and apologized to Cummings, thereby vindicating the Democrat&#8217;s gimmicky bit of political theater.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">There is little doubt that Obama defenders will dream up still more distractions to keep the public&#8217;s eye off the IRS scandal in the lead-up to the November congressional elections.</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> </span></p>
<p>*</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Daniel Greenfield </strong>on this week&#8217;s <strong>Glazov Gang </strong>discussing <strong><em>Why Lois Lerner Pleaded the Fifth</em></strong>, and much, much more:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/6Se7vaS-INo" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
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		<title>Did I Move?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ann-coulter/did-i-move/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=did-i-move</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ann-coulter/did-i-move/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 13 Feb 2014 05:30:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ann Coulter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=218714</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Or did America become different through mass immigration? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/vote-aqui2.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-218732" alt="vote-aqui2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/vote-aqui2-450x337.jpg" width="315" height="236" /></a>With all the smirking on the left about their electoral victories, it&#8217;s important to remember that Democrats haven&#8217;t won the hearts and minds of the American people. They changed the people. If you pour vinegar into a bottle of wine, the wine didn&#8217;t turn, you poured vinegar into it. Similarly, liberals changed no minds. They added millions of new liberal voters through immigration.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">So why are Republicans like Trey Gowdy, Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and John Boehner making fools of themselves in order to spot the Democrats three more touchdowns?</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The House Republicans&#8217; &#8220;Standards for Immigration Reform,&#8221; for example, contains this fat, honking nonsense: &#8220;One of the great founding principles of our country was that children would not be punished for the mistakes of their parents.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">As the kids say: </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">WTF?</i></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">That may be a pleasant-sounding sentiment, but it has absolutely nothing to do with our country&#8217;s history. Not the first thing. Did Republicans really think they could pawn off the idea that our forefathers fought and died at Valley Forge so that illegal aliens wouldn&#8217;t have to live in the shadows?</span></p>
<p><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Yeah, it was a long shot. We didn&#8217;t know you guys had read the Constitution. We&#8217;ll be quiet now.</i></p>
<p>Apart from the fact that protecting children from the mistakes of their parents has not the slightest connection with the nation&#8217;s founding, it&#8217;s a ridiculous concept.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Yes, children suffer when their parents break the law. Also when their parents get divorced, become alcoholics, don&#8217;t read to them at night, feed them junk food and take them to Justin Bieber concerts. None of that is the child&#8217;s fault.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But it&#8217;s not the country&#8217;s fault either.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">If we have to excuse lawbreaking so as not to &#8220;punish the children,&#8221; there&#8217;s no end to the crimes that have to be forgiven &#8212; insider trading, theft, rape, murder and so on.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">How do you think kids feel when their father has to &#8220;live in the shadows&#8221; because he committed a rape? The kids did nothing wrong, but they have to go to bed every night wondering: </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Is tomorrow the day Dad is going to be caught?</i></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">How do you function like that? And how awful it must be when their dad is sent to prison! How do you think Jack Abramoff&#8217;s kids felt? What about Martha Stewart&#8217;s kid?</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Why not just forgive the crimes of all perpetrators who have kids? At a minimum, shouldn&#8217;t we allow criminals to defer their sentences until their kids turn 26 so they can stay on Dad&#8217;s health insurance? Or at least until their kids have gone to college? Chris Christie can give them in-state tuition!</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&#8220;It&#8217;s not the kids&#8217; fault&#8221; proves too much. People can get away with anything if they&#8217;re willing to use their children as trump cards to avoid the force of law.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The once-respected Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., compared illegal aliens brought here as kids to children who steal a grape or scream in a restaurant:</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&#8220;When children wander into neighborhood yards, we don&#8217;t call that trespassing. When children cry and yell and scream at restaurants or on airplanes, we don&#8217;t call that a violation of the noise ordinance. When children eat a grape at the grocery store or eat a piece of candy waiting in line before Mom or Dad pays for it, we don&#8217;t have them arrested for petty larceny.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Yes, but in those cases, both the child and his parents had a right to be where they were &#8212; the yard, restaurant or grocery store &#8212; when the child suddenly behaved like a child. With illegal aliens, the parents are more like gypsies teaching their kids to beg and pick pockets. The parents forced the kids into being lawbreakers.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Similarly, Palestinians use their children to commit acts of terrorism against Israel, so that when Israel responds, the parents can wail, &#8220;They&#8217;re bombing children!&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">(I thought only liberals couldn&#8217;t do analogies.)</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Americans are under no moral obligation to admit huge numbers of people who have no particular right to be here just because the Democrats need 30 million new voters.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Why shouldn&#8217;t Republicans oppose mass immigration on the grounds that immigrants will vote Democratic? The only reason the Democrats </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">want</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> mass immigration is because they know immigrants will vote Democratic. (Also for the cheap nannies and gardeners.)</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Immigration is the &#8220;single issue&#8221; that decides every other issue. If this country were the same demographically today as it was in 1980, Romney would have won a bigger victory in 2012 than Reagan did against Carter. And we wouldn&#8217;t have to hear about soccer all the time.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">We&#8217;re living in a different country now, and I can&#8217;t recall moving! Had I wanted to live in Japan, I could have moved there. Had I had wanted to live in Mexico, Pakistan or Chechnya &#8212; I could have moved to those places, too.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">(Although maybe not. They all have stricter immigration policies than we do.)</span></p>
<p>I&#8217;m sure they&#8217;re lovely, but I wanted to live in America. Now I can&#8217;t. At the current rate of immigration, it won&#8217;t exist anymore. The Democrats couldn&#8217;t win elections there, so they changed it.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">With the repeal of Obamacare in the balance, I have argued that it&#8217;s insane for Republicans to waste resources primarying their own guys in 2014. Even the most heinous Republican can usually argue, &#8220;Would you really rather have a Democrat in this seat?&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But any Republican who supports mass immigration &#8212; whether with Marco Rubio&#8217;s amnesty bill, or idiotic arguments about &#8220;not punishing the children&#8221; &#8212; has forfeited that claim. If the country is going to be ruined anyway, it could not matter less who wins any particular seat on this Titanic.</span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Crisis in the Arts</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/crisis-in-the-arts/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=crisis-in-the-arts</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 07 Feb 2014 05:55:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=217934</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Andrew Klavan's new pamphlet reveals why the Left owns the culture and how conservatives can take it back. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/klav.gif"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-218044" alt="klav" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/klav.gif" width="350" height="525" /></a><strong>Introduction:</strong> Conservatives tend to see our popular culture as a toxic waste site where traditional values—religion, family, patriotism,  initiative and personal responsibility&#8211; are ferociously mocked 24/7.  They see Hollywood as occupied by nihilistic leftists interested less in entertainment than in ideology and making films that ram radical ideas down our country’s  throat.  They see the arts generally as controlled by people who have contempt for the hopes and fears of ordinary middle class Americans, portraying them as a crass “booboisie.”</p>
<p>And in all these critiques, conservatives are right.  Popular culture is at war with America and with the idea that ours is a good country, let alone a great one.  The question is not whether this war is taking place, but whether we’re going to fight back.</p>
<p>That’s exactly the question Andrew Klavan, the best selling author of over a dozen works of fiction, addresses in <i>Crisis in the Arts: Why the Left Owns the Culture and How Conservatives can Begin to Take it Back.</i> Klavan shows that it is not enough for conservatives to bemoan the left’s hostile takeover of the culture or to withdraw from the culture because they see it as politically hostile and morally vulgar.  Conservatives can win the culture war, but only if they put an army of culture warriors in the field, people who understand that enduring art is not about propaganda but about human striving and the struggle between good and evil. As Klavan writes, “For those conservatives with artistic talent and ambition this is a spectacular moment to take to the barricades… But to take advantage of this moment, conservatives have to come to grips with a situation that they naturally find uncomfortable: to wit, we are now the counter culture.  We need to act like the rebels we now are and stop trying to win the favor of the big studios and publishers and mainstream reviewers.  We need to make stuff.  Good stuff. And get it out to the audience any way we can.”</p>
<p><i>Crisis in the Arts</i> is a battle plan for fighting the culture war by a leading conservative who has been behind enemy lines with several <em>New York Times</em> best sellers and who refuses to cede our cultural heritage to people hostile to America.</p>
<p><strong>To order the pamphlet, <a href="https://secure.donationreport.com/productlist.html?key=U0PFUHPBO0MV">click here</a>.</strong></p>
<p><strong>To read the pamphlet, see below:</strong></p>
<p>*</p>
<p><b>The Trouble With The Arts<br />
By Andrew Klavan<br />
</b></p>
<p>“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”  Percy Bysshe Shelley, <i>A Defence of Poetry</i>, written 1821, published 1840.</p>
<p>“I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.” <i> </i>James Joyce, <i>Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, </i>1916</p>
<p>“Politics is downstream of culture.”  Origin unknown, frequently quoted by Andrew Breitbart.</p>
<p>When conservative activist Andrew Breitbart died in 2012 at the shockingly young age of 43, those of us who believe in liberty lost a rare conservative advocate for the arts.</p>
<p>“The people who have money, every four years at the last possible second, are told, ‘You need to give millions of dollars, because these four counties in Ohio are going to determine the election,’” Breitbart once said in a speech to the National Policy Council.  “I am saying, why didn’t we invest 20 years ago in a movie studio in Hollywood, why didn’t we invest in creating television shows, why didn’t we create institutions that would reflect and affirm that which is good about America?”</p>
<p>Why indeed?  Breitbart understood — what Shelley and James Joyce knew — that the conscience of a race is forged in the soul of a nation’s artists, and it is from that conscience that legislation and politics arise.  By the time a fight becomes political — by the time its outcome depends on an election — it is often too late to win by means of rational argument.  The battle has already been decided in movies and on television, in novels and in popular songs that, over time, create a general sense — an atmosphere — of what is right and what is wrong, what is cool and what is not, what it takes to be, in Joseph Conrad’s phrase, “one of us.”</p>
<p>Conservatives thrill to the cogent popularization of political ideas by talented broadcasters like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, but Breitbart understood that, in the long run, all the good ideas in the world can’t combat the compelling narratives provided by the arts.  Bring out the charts that demonstrate a free market creates more and better jobs than do government programs, prove mathematically that the wealthy spread prosperity more effectively than socialism, write treatises explaining that conservatives give more money to charity than liberals, that many women yearn to leave the workforce to keep house and raise children, that capitalism helps minorities, that most veterans are perfectly sane — it will all count for nothing.  People already know that the rich are evil and the poor oppressed, all businessmen are corrupt, all conservatives greedy, all housewives are desperate, all soldiers go mad at the sight of war and so on.  They know these things because they saw them, again and again, at the movies</p>
<p>Breitbart’s passion for reforming the arts made him lamentably uncommon in a conservative movement that too often succumbs to the self-righteous pleasures of philistinism, that too often wallows in the easy satisfaction of condemning the artistic creations of the left while never daring to try to match them with original content of its own.  While right-wingers grump at onscreen sex and nudity, or decry the rise of the anti-hero, or lament sympathetic mainstream depictions of gays, or sniff at scenes of violence and blasphemy and triumphant wickedness, the left marshals these eternally popular and, in fact, legitimate tools for dramatizing the human condition and utilizes them to sell nihilism, statism and socialism to the impressionable young.</p>
<p>“I don’t go to the movies anymore!” I often hear conservatives say.  “They’re all garbage.  What do I need them for when I can stay home and watch the classics on my big screen TV?  John Wayne and Bette Davis — now there were movie stars for you!  And modern novels?  Why should I read all that foul language when I can go to my bookshelves and take down Dickens or Jane Austen any time I want?  That’s good enough for me!”</p>
<p>No one expects conservatives or anyone else to patronize works of art they don’t enjoy or that offend their sensibilities, but you can’t win a fight by ceding the field.  Conservative cultural ostriches are essentially abandoning those contemporary artists who might, at least in part, agree with them.   With no audience to support them, creators with conservative, patriotic, religious or libertarian views are left to the mercy of dishonest and calculated attacks by the powerful leftist reviewers in the so-called “mainstream” venues.  Their works are judged by the very people who have labored for the last sixty years to insure a virtual left wing monopoly over Hollywood, the publishing industry and other distributors of artistic content.</p>
<p>The simple fact is:  You can’t tell the arts to get off your lawn.  They aren’t going anywhere.  They will continue to create the attitudes of the future — the conscience of the American race — while you hide your eyes in a self-righteous huff.</p>
<p>And cultural philistinism is not just a problem among rank-and-file conservatives.  It is — even worse — endemic among our intellectuals.  Consider conservative think tanks.  As a vaccine against the virus of leftism that has been sweeping through our universities since the sixties, conservatives have created a network of research organizations where liberty-loving Big Brains can gather to study, write and speak.  David Horowitz’s Freedom Center, the Heritage Foundation, CATO Institute, American Enterprise Institute, Manhattan Institute, Hoover Institution are all justly famous centers of conservative thought.  Intellectuals at these places have done indispensable work on foreign policy, jurisprudence, municipal governance, constitutional law and more.  But none of them centers its work on the arts and popular culture, not one.  It was Breitbart’s dream to start such a cultural think tank; he told me so.  He wanted to build a place in Los Angeles where aspiring right-wing movie makers and novelists could gather for fellowship and support.  He didn’t live to see that dream through.</p>
<p>So as things are?  If you want to hear an interview with the hot new musician, or a discussion about a brilliant new novel or an assessment of which new cable TV series is really breaking ground, you have to turn on NPR and swallow some government-funded socialism with your culture.  <i>The Wall Street Journal’</i>s Saturday Review section, God bless it, is the only major review venue that will even give a fair shake to conservative-minded work.  There are no major awards for patriotic authors and filmmakers.  There are precious few grants that will support young or struggling artists of an openly conservative bent.  Even the rare right-wing or patriotic film festival that springs up now and again always ends up favoring non-fiction documentary work, which is cheaper and easier to produce than narrative film.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the left uses its considerable media power to shower politically sympathetic artists with praise and attention while doing its best to denigrate and blacklist the right.  Powerful review venues like <i>The New York Times</i> laud even bad films and novels for their pro-left views while ignoring or attacking any work with openly right-wing sympathies.  And while a brilliant leftist actor like Sean Penn can win the Oscars he deserves even though he’s a brain-dead supporter of Communist tyrants, outspoken conservative talents like actor Kelsey Grammer, TV producer Joel Surnow and writer/director Cyrus Nowrasteh have all been snubbed, hounded or even censored for their political positions.  Nicholson Baker can write a novel imagining the assassination of President George W. Bush and win praise but if even a rodeo clown makes a rude joke about Barack Obama, he is chased out of the business.  You can’t get barred from a project in Hollywood or New York for being a left-winger; you can be quietly, and even not so quietly, excluded from many projects for being on the right.  Any artist who cares about his career knows which political side his bread is buttered on.</p>
<p>As a result, politically outspoken art is preponderantly left wing.  Indeed, American history has been virtually rewritten at the movies.  The real-life assassination of cold warrior president John F. Kennedy by a Communist was transformed into a murder-by-right-wing-conspiracy in the Oscar-winning Oliver Stone film <i>JFK</i>.  Bill Clinton’s adulteries were fictionalized as an age-appropriate, non-adulterous romance attacked (for some reason!) by evil right wing zealots in <i>The American President </i>— a film whose late 1995 release was timed perfectly to aid Clinton’s re-election bid.  As I write this, the number one box office hit is<i> The Butler </i>which dishonestly denigrates the impressive civil rights achievements of Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon while neglecting to mention that almost all opposition to truly effective civil rights advances came from Democrats.</p>
<p>And, in what was surely one of the movie industry’s most shameful interludes, the George W. Bush-era American wars against our Islamist enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan were greeted by Hollywood with a parade of anti-war, anti-American propaganda. <i>The Valley of Elah</i> showed soldiers driven to homicidal insanity by participation in the Iraq conflict; <i>Green Zone </i>showed the war in Iraq to be the result of right wing lies; <i>Lions for Lambs</i> depicted the soldiers sent to Afghanistan as heroic fools misused by evil Republicans;<i> Rendition </i>showed an innocent American Muslim being kidnapped and tortured with the blessing of the CIA; the massively popular and equally idiotic <i>Avatar </i>was a thinly disguised tale of American troops wiping out native cultures, presumably like those in the middle east — and on and on.  Even films that depicted American heroism like <i>The Hurt Locker </i>and <i>The Kingdom</i> were morally ambiguous when it came to America’s role in the wars.  And <i>Taking Chance</i>, a beautiful and deeply moving HBO movie that took no position on the war but lauded our warriors as heroes, was roundly lambasted by so-called “mainstream” critics as jingoistic.</p>
<p>What made all this so very despicable was that, for the first time in Hollywood’s history, these powerful vehicles of anti-American propaganda were produced and released <i>while our soldiers were in the field in harm’s way, fighting and dying </i>at the hands of low, hateful, tyrannical Islamist enemies.  While Hollywood certainly did its best to disparage the Viet Nam War, almost all of the major anti-war films of that era came out <i>after</i> the American political left had helped engineer our defeat.  By the time <i>Apocalypse Now</i> or <i>Platoon </i>hit the screens, the war was over, our soldiers safely home.</p>
<p>I visited Afghanistan briefly during the war and happened to witness firsthand how Taliban propaganda undermined American efforts to win local hearts and minds toward democratic governance.  I found it heartbreaking to think that these murderous Islamist lowlifes were getting cinematic encouragement from left wing millionaires tut-tutting U.S. efforts at their cozy tables at the cafe in West Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont.  To be clear, there is nothing wrong with citizens opposing their government’s wars — that’s an important part of the democratic process.  But it is wrong — very wrong — to produce powerful propaganda that undermines our military’s efforts while a war is in progress.  The freedom to make art does not absolve you from the responsibility of using its power morally.  Hollywood’s unbroken leftist attacks on our war effort could not have gone unanswered if conservatives had had a more prominent and outspoken role in the movie industry and the cultural media.</p>
<p>Now, some moviegoers may point out that there were wonderful conservative films produced in this era too.  <i>The Dark Knight</i> trilogy, <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> trilogy and <i>Toy Story 3</i> come immediately to mind.  These movies showed both the necessity and moral complexity of battling evil and stood up for individual independence versus tyrannical statism.  And unlike the anti-war films, which were nearly all third-rate bombs, these were excellent and hugely successful pictures which might well endure as classics.</p>
<p>But note another obvious difference.  None of these films dealt with history head on.  The Dark Knight movies, about comic book hero Batman, came closest, referring to their fantasy villains as “terrorists,” and depicting a socialist movement very much like Occupy Wall Street.  In the immediate sense, however, it’s fair to say that conservative principles were generalized in these films and applied only in their thoroughly make-believe worlds.  As I once joked, Batman had to wear a mask in <i>The Dark Knight </i>because if anyone found out he was really George W. Bush, the picture would not have gotten made.</p>
<p>At the movies — in the arts — conservative reality almost always comes disguised as fantasy whereas leftist fantasy comes disguised as reality!  Conservative works put forward true principles.  Leftist creations rewrite specific history.  Conservatives are giddy with pleasure and relief when a popular novel or film doesn’t thoroughly trash capitalism or sexual morality or faith in God.  Meanwhile, the left wing writers of TV shows like <i>Law and Order</i> tear true stories from the headlines every single week and rewrite them to impose pro-left, anti-right values on their narratives.  To cite but one example of many:  in 2005, brain damaged Terri Schiavo was judicially starved to death at the request of her husband while evangelical Christian pro-life groups fought to save her.  That same year, <i>Law and Order </i>produced a fictional version of the case in which an evangelical Christian engineered the murder of a Schiavo-like character’s husband.</p>
<p>No matter how one feels about the issues of the case, the transformation of life-affirming evangelicals into murderers unfairly represents the right-wing Christian point of view.  After all, only one person was killed in the real-life case, and it was Christians who battled to save her.  A similar political transformation takes place on the show virtually every week, and always in one direction — leftward.</p>
<p>If you don’t think leftists know the importance of using popular art to rewrite history, consider that the very rare films that look at historic reality from an even slightly conservative point of view are hounded from pillar to post by powerful left wing interests.  Cyrus Nowrasteh’s massively popular TV mini-series<i> The Path to 911</i> — which accurately portrayed Bill Clinton’s politically-motivated failure to take out bin Laden before he struck so catastrophically on 9/11 — has, unprecedentedly, not been released on DVD because of pressure on the Disney Corporation by the Clinton gang.  Joel Surnow’s mini-series <i>The Kennedys</i> — only slightly critical of that sometimes criminal lefty political clan — was hounded off the popular History channel by Kennedy friends and relegated to a far more obscure cable station.  And, of course, when Mel Gibson’s beautiful <i>The Passion of the Christ </i>ignited a wave of faith-based excitement among evangelicals&#8230; well, what happened to Jesus in that movie was nothing compared to what left wing critics did to Mel!</p>
<p>Perhaps some will point out that left wing attempts to rewrite history are almost all commercial failures.  But that, I’m afraid, is to miss the point.  No one may have watched <i>Green Zone </i>or<i> Lions for Lambs</i> when they came out.  But those movies will be available for home viewing forever.  History grows old but art goes on living.  To this day, Oliver Stone’s completely wacky version of the Kennedy assassination is all the history of that era some young people know.</p>
<p>Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson got it just right.  The so-called “scandal” involving his wife Valerie Plame — a meaningless bagatelle ginned up to a headline by a left-wing media out to destroy President George W. Bush — was re-written as a heroic left wing fight against a corrupt Republican administration for the 2010 Sean Penn vehicle<i> Fair Game.</i>  When an interviewer pointed out that the film would probably die at the box office, Wilson responded, “For people who have short memories or don’t read, this is the only way they will remember the period.”  Exactly.</p>
<p>This freedom to rewrite history in novels, movies and television shows while critics aid and abet the distortion of the truth — this left wing monopoly over not only the arts but the critical infrastructure that supports the arts — this is not the left’s fault.  They are only doing what leftists traditionally do:  creating narratives to replace the facts and browbeating and blacklisting the opposition into silence.</p>
<p>No, this situation is the right’s fault, our fault.  We have allowed it to happen.  It is just as Andrew Breitbart said:  we focus our money and our intelligence and our attention on abstruse policies and last minute election number crunching while letting the longer game of conscience-creating culture go unattended.  For conservatives, the present political situation is always an emergency that has to be attended to right now.  If Obamacare passes, the Constitution is finished.  If illegal immigrants win amnesty, the nation is doomed.  If the military budget is cut, the world will spiral into chaos.  All these statements may well be true, but while we are rushing off to stick our fingers in the latest hole in the nearest dyke, the very ground beneath our feet is being steadily eroded by both popular and highbrow culture.  The left had our emergency attitude in the 1960’s and 70’s when they took to the streets — and they lost the White House to first Richard Nixon and finally Ronald Reagan.  They learned from that mistake and began the famous “long march through the institutions,” that transformed our culture even as we celebrated our political victories.</p>
<p>The right’s response to the left’s takeover of the arts has been panic, red-faced outrage, and stay-at-home philistinism.  We have taken on the roles of cultural censors and scolds, longing for an idealized 1950’s that wasn’t real in the first place and, in any case, will never return.  Such attitudes can, at best, inspire rearguard actions destined to failure.</p>
<p>Less obviously — but just as surely in my opinion — an active conservative art scene that strikes back with nothing but family-friendly entertainments containing good solid values and pro-American flag-waving will likewise ultimately result in conservative cultural irrelevance.  Don’t get me wrong; it would be great to have more of such content available.  But ideas, like money, trickle down from the top, and the best thinkers want and need art that represents life in all its moral ambiguity and complexity.  Sexuality, violence, darkness, perversion and evil are central aspects of the human condition and a culture that doesn’t represent them will finally cause a reaction and be rejected as hypocritical and dishonest.  Remember, the young Americans who so viciously attacked their country and its values in the 1960’s and 70’s grew up watching <i>Leave it to Beaver</i>, Doris Day and the later John Wayne!  When confronted with imperfect American reality, they threw a nationwide tantrum attacking the good with the bad.  The generations that <i>built</i> the fifties grew up in a much less saccharine artistic atmosphere.</p>
<p>How then can conservatives gain a greater voice in our culture and what would a more conservative culture look like?  It is easy to respond to such questions with red meat cant that wins the frowning, nodding approval of right wing audiences.  “Less nudity!  More family fare!  More patriotism!  More God!”  Such answers give conservatives a satisfying sense of righteous indignation, while guaranteeing long-run failure that will leave the arts in the hands of the left so they can do with them as they will.  I would like to propose an approach that is more counter-intuitive to a conservative sensibility but also more strategic and more likely to succeed.  Most importantly, it is more in sympathy with the endeavor of the arts themselves and therefore less likely to do damage to and impose restrictions on the free play of imagination, creation and appreciation that are the arts’ great gifts and among the true pleasures of being alive.</p>
<p><b>What is Art?</b></p>
<p>“Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them.”  Leo Tolstoy, <i>What is Art?</i></p>
<p>“If you want to send a message, use Western Union.”  Advice to storytellers, variously attributed.</p>
<p>One of the most frustrating and confusing experiences for conservatives is going to a work of art or pop culture and finding themselves enjoying as entertainment what, politically, is a slap in the face — or what Big Hollywood’s John Nolte calls “a sucker punch.”  The recent Oscar-winning film <i>Argo</i>, directed and starring the talented and appealing left-winger Ben Affleck, was a thrilling history-based tale of escape with an all-American hero.  It was also a dishonest rewrite of history that blamed U.S. and British meddling for the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979, carefully buried and sanitized Democrat president Jimmy Carter’s fatal incompetence during the crisis and eradicated the role of Ronald Reagan’s election in bringing the crisis to a conclusion.  For me, the fact that it was a good movie made its bad history all that much harder to swallow.</p>
<p>But in fact, it is silly and pinched to fight the allure of art for the sake of politics.  No one wants to resist the sentimental tale of love and sacrifice in the hit film <i>Titanic</i> simply because the movie’s historical inaccuracies are purposely crafted to convey a simplistic socialist message.  Likewise, even the most sane and responsible young person might find herself singing along with a Katy Perry song that glamorizes and sanitizes teenaged drunkenness and promiscuity.</p>
<p>It’s not wrong to want the art we enjoy to reflect our values — it’s simply ineffective to battle a catchy tune and clever lyrics with a moralizing frown of disapproval.  Da Smooth Baron MC had a point:  you actually <i>can’t</i> fight the rhythm.  The left has triumphed in the arts because they know how the arts work.  Before we can fight back, we have to understand what art is and what it’s attempting to do.</p>
<p>Too often, political and religious people approach the arts as a means rather than an end.  Art, they believe, exists to transmit messages — good messages rather than bad, their messages rather than the opposition’s.  They see storytelling, songwriting, picture painting and the like as “the spoonful of sugar,” that makes the medicine of wisdom go down.</p>
<p>This is a reductive approach and doesn’t explain the mysterious power of culture.  For one thing, many great and enduring works of art are, like life itself, open to several, sometimes contradictory, interpretations.  Indeed, the greater a work of art, the more it seems to foil any attempt to reduce it to a single “inner meaning.”  As a simple example, consider the enduring image of Big Brother from George Orwell’s <i>1984</i>.  Originally intended as the symbol of an oppressive Communist state, it is nowadays often used by Communist sympathizers to represent the overbearing incursions of right wing snooping.  As annoying as this may be to us conservatives, we all realize that any oppressive government on either side can justly be accused of acting like Big Brother.  Like all true art, <i>1984</i> is greater than its own intentions.</p>
<p>Consider too the eagerness with which people consume entertainment.  They line up around the block to see a popular movie.  They engage in intense, sometimes obsessive, speculation about the next episode of a cherished television show.  From time to time, a novel will spread through one or another segment of the population like a more or less benevolent flu.  Art and discussions about art are human universals, endemic to every society.   We take this for granted, yet it’s actually quite odd when you stop to think about it.  As someone who has worked in the arts and loved the arts my whole life, I often find myself asking:  why am I compelled to tell stories that aren’t true about people who don’t exist — and why should the audience listen to them?</p>
<p>The reductive notion of art as mere fable or parable does not account for the depth and power of our need for it.  Neither, in my view, does Tolstoy’s idea that art is a vehicle for transmitting feelings.  Or that is, Tolstoy doesn’t really address the question of why we want — why we<i> need</i> — to experience the feelings of some artist we have never met.   Nor does he explain why some trashy art can evoke all kinds of emotions while the greatest art is sometimes not full of feeling at all but rather has a certain cold quality about it, its power akin to the sternly perfect beauty of mathematics.</p>
<p>No, art’s power to convey wisdom and its ability to communicate feeling make up only a small part of its overall purpose.</p>
<p>Art is a method of recording the ineffable inner experience of being human.  There are no words that can directly describe what it is like to be self-consciously alive.  Only symbols, stories, pictures and music can do it.  The simplest person, when asked to convey the internal experience of an event, will either respond with something meaningless and emotionally incomprehensible (“It was the greatest thing ever!”) or will resort to figurative language and metaphor.  “It was like waking up on Christmas morning and seeing presents under the tree!”  “It was like getting lost in a dark wood!”  “It was like being called upon to avenge a murder and being paralyzed with indecision!”  This is where stories — and pictures and songs — begin.  They are the answers to the question:  What’s it <i>like</i> to be a human being?</p>
<p>The deeper, richer, and more complex the artist’s answer to that question, the more universal and enduring his work of art becomes.  The play <i>Hamlet</i> is a brilliant evocation of what it was like to be a thinking person at the historical moment when the once-universal moral truth of Catholicism was shattered by Reformation — but it is <i>so </i>brilliant, that it more or less predicts every emotional-philosophical dilemma that will arise from that intellectual cataclysm for the next five hundred years.  Its depiction of the internal human moment is so complete that it becomes a depiction of all the moments that led up to it and all the moments that will come after it as well.  It is the inner life of the modern West dramatized in a four hour play.</p>
<p>We need this.  We need to tell and to hear the story of man’s inner life — to write it down, paint it, film it, play it on the harpsichord or synthesizer — because it is our human nature and our human privilege to preserve what we learn and pass it on and build on top of it.  No other animal can do that.  It is possible no other animal has such a story to tell.  I do not think my dog knows what it’s like to be a dog.  But, whether she does or not, she does not seem to be able to explain it to the dog next door.  Animals seem to pass on only that information that travels through their genes and so animals can only grow and adapt through physical stimulus, through evolution.  People write things down and preserve them and can therefore build on the ideas and learning of their predecessors.  We write down how to make a wheel so our children won’t have to reinvent it.  We make art so that man’s vision of himself might deepen over the centuries.  A life without art is emotionally illiterate, an animal life that will, at best, be wasted reinventing the wheel of human wisdom.</p>
<p>So the purpose of art is not to edify or instruct, though it can instruct and often does edify.  The purpose of art is not even to delight, though, if it’s art, it will delight because that’s its nature, that’s the way it works.  The purpose of art is to record and transmit the internal human experience.  Great art does this greatly, bad art does it badly, pop art oftentimes does it sentimentally and superficially — but it is what all art is trying in its own way to do.</p>
<p>This may seem like distant philosophical speculation but, in fact, understanding art’s purpose has practical implications and applications.  It helps us to understand what a work of art is doing well and what it is doing badly, and how a work of art that is somehow “good” (has a catchy tune or an affecting story) can also be used for bad purposes (lying about history or romanticizing debauchery). It also helps clarify what conservatives should want from the culture, and what they can do to get it.</p>
<p><b>When is Art Conservative?</b></p>
<p>The single biggest mistake conservative cultural warriors make is this:  they expect a conservative culture to look conservative.  It will not.  If the purpose of culture is to record and convey the internal human experience in its entirety, it is going to record and convey a good many things of which we disapprove.  There is simply no getting around the wickedness, corruption, greed, lust and sheer troublemaking goofiness lodged in the hearts of the best of us — and therefore, there is no getting around their entertainment value or their legitimacy as subjects for art.</p>
<p>Conservatives should definitely fight back against an artistic establishment in Hollywood and New York that refuses to elevate good values.  There should be more TV shows and movies and novels that talk about happy families, decent businessmen, edifying religion, manly men and womanly women — all of which are currently being excised from the arts by left wing censorship and so-called political correctness.</p>
<p>But having said that, conservatives should have no problem with the art of darkness — if it is also the art of truth.  Conservatives should not be afraid to make and praise art that depicts the worst aspects of human nature as long as it does so honestly — that is, in the context of the moral universe in which every choice has its price and every action has its consequences whether internal or external or both.</p>
<p>Take the HBO television series <i>The Sopranos, </i>for an example.  It is a great show, revolutionary and brilliant.  It would be easy and understandable for a conservative to take umbrage at the characters’ ceaseless barrage of foul language, their gleeful violence and empty, even sometimes abusive sexuality.  But that would be to miss the exquisite complexity of the show’s moral vision.  <i>The Sopranos</i> captures the joy of power and the temptations of violence but it also shows the brutal soul-destroying effects of the mobster life.</p>
<p>In one installment, entitled “From Where to Eternity,” Jesus Christ actually responds to a prayer.  He grants a wounded gangster his life after first vouchsafing him a vision of the hell to which he’s undoubtedly bound.  Another gangster in the episode is haunted by the spirits of the men he killed.  The threat of eternal judgement hangs over everything.  And yet, despite the evidence all around them, the gangsters ignore the moral promptings of the spirit.  They go on killing and even celebrate the rewards they’ve won through their murderous and dishonest lifestyle:  “God has been good to us!”  It’s stunningly real, tragic and affecting.</p>
<p>Without moralizing, without bringing its bad characters to anything like justice, the writers present a vivid and true depiction of the way people behave and the consequences of that behavior.  Whether you believe in Christ or not, whether you see hell as real or metaphorical, the series gives us a double vision of how evil is, on the one hand, exhilarating and seductive, and how, on the other hand, it turns a person’s soul to ashes.  There is, undoubtedly, rollicking entertainment to be had in watching the characters do nasty things to one another, but the overall effect actually serves to deepen the viewers’ moral vision of this complex and often wicked existence.</p>
<p>Think of it this way:  a work of art is a world unto itself.  It is responsible to the real world not in its individual symbols and events but only in its overall effect.  Some evangelical Christians made the mistake of attacking the delightful Harry Potter novels because Potter is a wizard and wizardry and magic are against Christian teaching.  But Potter’s wizardry existed in a completely fantastical world that did not play by the same rules as the real world.  In the context of <i>that</i> world, his fictional wizardry not only exemplified excellent moral values, it also laid the foundations for faith.  The novels are deeply Christian when judged, not by their individual incidents, but by their overall effect.  By condemning them, the evangelicals lost a hugely popular teaching tool.</p>
<p>Again, no one is required to consume art that offends his sensibilities.  That isn’t the point at all.  People who are offended by cursing or violence or sex shouldn’t watch television shows like <i>The Sopranos</i>.  I like scary stories and I’m told<i> The Walking Dead</i> is a wonderful TV series about a zombie apocalypse.  But I mostly watch TV at night and I don’t particularly want to see animated corpses devouring human beings before I go to bed, so I take a pass.  But I don’t mistake my personal tastes for aesthetic or moral judgment.</p>
<p>Left to themselves, and without censorship from left or right, the arts in a free nation are naturally going to contain anything and everything that transmits the human experience.  There will be excellent family fare, works of high-minded nobility and soaring expressions of religious feeling — but there’ll also be plenty of rattling good stuff that’s wild, sexy, violent, crazy and culture-critical.  On first glance, these latter traits may seem to go against everything conservatives believe in — self-discipline, restraint, sanity and a respect for tradition — but they have to be judged in the context of the work of art’s created world.</p>
<p>To me, conservative art is any art that honestly acknowledges the moral universe.  There is such a thing as good and evil — if there were not there could be no action that was better or worse than any other.  Who has experienced the world that way?  No one.  Not even the relativist college professors who teach such garbage to the young can truly believe it in fact.  We all know that love is better than hate, freedom better than slavery, independence more essential to the soul than safety.  Relativism — the sine qua non of modern leftism — is simply a lie.</p>
<p>But while good and evil are real, the human heart is not in harmony with them and never has been.  To paraphrase Saint Paul, we do not always do the good we want to do, and the evil we don’t want to do, we keep on doing.  Because we are fallen creatures then, there is, in human life, a price for every choice we make and a consequence for every action.  Marriage may be moral, but it is attended by frustrations.  Adultery may be a thrill but it savages the people we love most.  Criminals are evil but good men sometimes envy their freedom.  Slavery destroys the soul but liberty is fraught with peril.  Art needs to explore these tensions and we shouldn’t be afraid when it does.  After all, the founders of America did not create the Constitution because western culture had given them a simplistic happy-face view of human nature.  They had read the classics.  They understood mankind.  The document they created is a machine for delivering freedom not to the cast of <i>The Donna Reed Show </i>but to us, self-interested, corrupt, often stupid and wicked citizens that we are.</p>
<p>It is an honest view of human beings at odds with the moral universe that creates the conservative dedication to moral discipline, firm limits on the powerful, care for tradition and, most importantly, reverence for the individual’s inner world and free choices.  We do not need to be afraid of art that depicts the world honestly.  It is only leftist lies we need to fear, because the truth — even the ugly, immoral, and thoroughly entertaining truth of human nature — is on our side.</p>
<p><b>Reclaiming the Culture</b></p>
<p>If we stop worrying about the unpleasant actions and events that take place in some art, if we stop fanning our faces over the evil characters who live in some imaginary worlds, if we stop bothering ourselves about the sex, the cursing and the violence on our movie and TV screens, we begin to see that the real trouble we face in the arts is two-fold:  blacklisting and lies.</p>
<p>First, blacklisting.</p>
<p>The left uses its grip on Big Media to attack conservative culture.  Even a well-loved production like <i>Downton Abbey</i> was called out by the press when its conservative leanings were descried.  Less high profile works don’t stand a chance against pre-emptive reviewer attacks.</p>
<p>The left uses its domination of the movie and book and art industries to keep conservatives out — ask any conservative who’s been interrogated, insulted or outright silenced for “Creating while Conservative.”  All three have happened to me personally.</p>
<p>The left even uses political clout to chill the freedom of conservative expression — as when California Senator Dianne Feinstein threatened investigations against <i>Zero Dark Thirty </i>for its political incorrectness and thus, very likely, ruined its chance to win an Oscar.</p>
<p>We need to fight back.</p>
<p>For those conservatives with artistic talent and ambition, this is a spectacular moment to take to the barricades.  Big Media is tottering under the assault of new technologies.  With electronic publishing and social media, books can be self-published and self-promoted.  With the new video cameras, professional-looking films can be produced on the cheap and distributed online.  YouTube, iTunes, smart phones, tablets, blogs — all provide opportunities for new kinds of work and new ways for that work to be dispensed.</p>
<p>But to take advantage of this moment, conservatives have to come to grips with a situation that they naturally find uncomfortable:  to wit, we are now the counter-culture.  When it comes to the arts, Radical Leftists are The Man.  We need to act like the rebels we now are and stop trying to win the favor of the big studios and publishers and mainstream reviewers.  We need to make stuff.  Good stuff.  And get it out to the audience any way we can.</p>
<p>And those in the audience need to support the stuff that gets made.  We don’t have to hold our noses and praise artistic garbage because we agree with its politics; but we might stop preening ourselves on our blessed integrity and stop looking for ways to shoot down good work in order to show just how fair-minded we are.  The film <i>300 </i>was a wonderful piece of conservative pop culture, a brilliant use of video game style storytelling that celebrated the defense of western values at the battle of Thermopylae.  I read conservatives criticizing the very over-the-top fantasy elements that made the movie a massive hit.  I even heard some conservatives complain about the bare chests of the Greek warriors as if that made the film homoerotic.  (Heaven forfend a film about ancient Greece should be homoerotic!)  Did these right wing critics want the left to love them for their objectivity?  To hell with the left.  We need many more successes like <i>300</i>.  Buy a ticket, applaud, go home.  That’s all you have to do.</p>
<p>Finally, for those conservatives with money, this is also a moment of opportunity, a moment when leftist censorship can be rolled back.  Breitbart was right:  we do need a movie studio.  We also need publishing houses that don’t just turn out right wing screeds but also produce literature.  Equally important, we need an infra-structure welcoming to the arts:  critical journals, culturzal podcasts, radio and TV to counter NPR and Public Television, awards, award ceremonies, grants, appreciation.  Artists work for love as much as money.  Conservatives give them exactly none.  We need to appreciate honest works that go beyond family fare and patriotic jingoism and Judeo-Christian piety.  Next time you wonder how our culture went so wrong that a corrupt mediocrity like Barack Obama could win a second term as president, remember:  it happened at the movies while you were giving your millions to political consultants.  Play the long game; support the arts.</p>
<p>That’s blacklisting.  Now, lies.</p>
<p>The best defense against lies is not censorship but the truth.  The best defense against dishonest art is honest art.</p>
<p>It’s wonderful when terrific films like <i>Toy Story 3 </i>and <i>The Dark Knight</i> express values conservatives can support.  But there’s simply no reason we can’t make art about real life as well.</p>
<p>One doesn’t have to be jingoistic or simplistic to tell a story wholeheartedly supporting war against Islamo-fascism.  Why are there so few?</p>
<p>As I write this, <i>Law and Order</i> is planning a rewrite of the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case.  I’m willing to bet it furthers the left wing narrative that this was a crime involving race when all the facts say otherwise.  What story is the right telling about the case?  Let me guess:  none.</p>
<p>Republicans have supported most civil rights legislation; Democrat policies have ravaged African-American communities:  tell good stories about that.   (I did in <i>The Identity Man</i> — and, in an otherwise positive review, the <i>Wall Street Journal </i>scolded me for sounding a political note in a thriller novel!  For shame.)</p>
<p>The left produces film after film, book after book, TV show after TV show demonizing conservative politicians, lying about conservative ideas, hagiographizing sleazy Democrats and rewriting history to edit out the terrible damage their policies have done.  We don’t need to answer propaganda with propaganda but there’s no reason our stories can’t include the historical truth — no reason except the fact that liberal venues will attack us and idiot conservatives will fret we’re getting “too political.”  Yet the alternative is to accept the spread of the left’s empire of lies.</p>
<p>We need to counteract another sort of lie in the arts as well:  let’s call it the lie of consequence.  Some works of art, especially popular art, are a record of our daydreams.  There’s nothing harmful in that per se.  Most men understand that if we really lived like James Bond, the broken bones and STD’s would render our medical expenses ruinous.  Most women know that an S&amp;M relationship like the one in <i>50 Shades of Gray</i> would be more degrading (and painful) than it was worth.  Yes, young boys need to be advised that fighting a Russian spy on top of a moving train can be hazardous to their health and young girls should be told that a relationship that begins with a beating is unlikely to end in a fairy tale romance.  But the fact is, we all have fantasies that are anti-social, improper, ridiculous and unkind and there’s nothing wrong with airing them out now and again.  They’re part of the human condition and I suspect that trying to suppress them only gives them more power over us.</p>
<p>But there are cultural works that use our fantasies to entice us into the worst of ourselves.  Rap music that glamorizes murder and the abuse of women; torture-happy horror movies that lovingly portray the vivisection of living people; sexual pornography that hypnotizes us out of our humanity and can actually be addictive and life-destroying.  While it has been one purpose of this essay to try to convince my fellow conservatives to eschew knee-jerk condemnation of artistic images that might at first offend them, I will not try to disguise the fact that I find these misuses of the arts I love to be pathetic and despicable.</p>
<p>As a matter of strategy if nothing else, however, I can only recommend that we respond to these emanations of original sin with criticism rather than censorship, and concern rather than outrage.  Rappers who make money bragging about “killin’ them bitches” and “dustin’ some cops off,” are cheap braggarts and liars, selling self-destruction as triumph.  We are told that they are expressing the rage of the black streets.  Who cares?  An inarticulate shriek would do the same.  Art — the honest record of the inner life — always operates truthfully in its context.  These songs don’t.  The fact is: middle-class white kids bop to this garbage — and then, if they’re lucky, they go home to see their law-abiding parents treat each other with respect and so learn better.  A poor kid, especially a black kid in a community where intact families have all but vanished, is in far more peril of being swept on the rhythm of this self-aggrandizing filth into the dustbin of a wasted life.  Nice going, soul-man.</p>
<p>The same charge of dishonesty can be brought against torture horror, that beguiles you into dehumanizing its victims, and porn, that beguiles you into dehumanizing yourself.  (Feminist author Erica Jong once said that after watching pornography for ten minutes, she wanted to have sex; after watching for twenty minutes, she never wanted to have sex again as long as she lived.  That’s a clever and accurate description of how pornography works.)  Lots of kids get a shrieky thrill from a bloody horror romp, and most men sneak a peek at naked lady pictures from time to time, so over-reaction is always a counter-productive danger.  I’m against censorship on principle and also because I think it’s generally useless in the internet age.  But thoughtful and passionate criticisms and dissections of the lies inherent in these genres can be powerful and can filter down to those who need to hear them.  In the arts, to paraphrase St. Paul again, everything is permissible but not everything is helpful.  When works of culture are anti-human, it’s important to say so and explain why.</p>
<p>And, of course, this is where the makers of wholesome entertainments play a role.  Depictions of men and women happy in relationship, depictions of families that are sources of strength rather than merely factories of neurosis, stories and songs that lift up the better angels of our nature may not appeal to the coastal critics and other self-proclaimed sophisticates, but they are important reinforcements of what we know to be true:  faith, family and industry may seem restrictive — they may <i>be </i>restrictive — but they are, in fact, the surest paths to freedom and happiness.</p>
<p>In the end, however, critical attacks and negative reactions, while sometimes necessary, will always be our least effective tools.  The arts can only be reclaimed by those who love them.  Because the job of the arts is to say as much as possible — to say everything — about what it’s like to be human, attempts to silence or curtail them will always be antithetical to the endeavor and likely to backfire.  The arts are a positive enterprise, and positive action — creation, appreciation, support and praise — are the most powerful weapons a culture warrior possesses, and the ones that conservatives tend to use the least.  The left censors and blacklists right wingers, but that’s because they’re in the wrong and can’t abide disagreement.  Conservatives should welcome all voices, because we’re in the right and will win most arguments — and where we lose arguments, we should be willing to reconsider and change our minds.</p>
<p>The vision that inspired the American experiment in liberty was a vision created and preserved and handed down through works of western art and culture.  It was a complex vision of man as a flawed creature in a moral universe striving toward the freedom for which he was made.  The voice of that creature speaks to us over centuries in works as dark and bloody as the Greek tragedies and as bright and delightful as the American musicals, in symphonies and bagatelles, in doggerel and epic verse.  Uncensored, that voice, intentionally or not, consciously or not, will always cry out for the very things conservatives most believe in:  personal independence and lasting love, a good life today and a better life tomorrow, faith in a God who is no stranger to our suffering and who will yet become the father of our joy.</p>
<p>The arts, even at their least, are one of humanity’s most noble enterprises.  They have been highjacked by adherents of a low and oppressive ideology.  We should take them back.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>A Witness</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jay-nordlinger/a-witness/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-witness</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 17 Jan 2014 05:19:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jay Nordlinger]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Black Book]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Communism]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[A conservative appreciation of David Horowitz.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><strong><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/lpk.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-216665" alt="lpk" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/lpk-450x293.jpg" width="284" height="185" /></a>Originally published by <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/368222/witness-part-i-jay-nordlinger">National Review Online.</a><br />
</strong></em></p>
<p>I’ll tell you what the “smart” view of David is: He was a radical of the Left who became a radical of the Right. He was an extremist then and is an extremist now, with the same nasty and flamboyant style. Express this view, and almost every liberal and conservative head will nod: “Yup, yup, that’s how it is.” It is nonsense. No one will contradict you if you say it — but you’ll be a fool.</p>
<p>I cherish a comment that Hendrik Hertzberg, the <em>New Yorker</em> writer, once made to Collier &amp; Horowitz. He said, “You were apologists for Communism then and you are apologists for anti-Communism now.” They are not merely apologists for anti-Communism; they are anti-Communists, as all decent people are (though they will not necessarily be published in <em>The New Yorker</em>).</p>
<p>If you want to classify David politically, you can call him a conservative — with a healthy dose of Hayek in him. “My life experience had led me to conclude that not only was changing the world an impossible dream, but the refusal to recognize it as such was the source of innumerable individual tragedies and of epic miseries that human beings had inflicted on each other in my lifetime through the failed utopias of Nazism and Communism.” Seldom will you read a more conservative sentence. And you will read many more like it, in David’s collected writings. He is constantly inveighing against ideologies, party lines, rigidities.</p>
<p>David is known as a hothead and flamethrower. A rhetorical goon. He can be that. He can also be coolly cerebral. And he can be elegiac, lyrical — as in personal memoirs such as the one about his late daughter, <em>A Cracking of the Heart</em>. He has many moods, many styles. And make no mistake: He can do style.</p>
<p>Christopher Hitchens was supposed to be the most stylish writer and polemicist of his time. But consider an exchange between him and David on the radio. David said something rude — i.e., something true — about Castro. And Hitchens, with his practiced sneer, said, “How dare you? How <em>dare</em> you?” David replied, “Christopher, aren’t we getting a little old for how-dare-yous?” The more stylish person in that exchange was not Hitchens (who, like Paul Berman, would do some political sobering up).</p>
<p>The question of David’s reputation, or standing, is interesting: He has legions of fans, and legions of detractors, some of whom occupy high places. The Left won’t deal with him, of course. He has their number, he has kept book on them — and they resent it. Writes David, “An ideological <em>omertà</em> is the Left’s response to its vindicated critics, especially those who emerged from its own ranks.” I’m reminded of something a liberal intellectual and policymaker once said to Abigail Thernstrom (who migrated from left to right). He said, “I don’t like debating you, Abby, because you always know what I’m thinking, and you know what I’m going to say before I say it.”</p>
<p>And the conservatives? Have they welcomed David with open arms, gratitude, and delight? Not really. They have often been snippy and scornful about David. Grudging about him. How to explain it? I’m sure I can’t, satisfactorily, but I will have a go:</p>
<p>David, they say, can be harsh, obnoxious, and generally impossible. I have no doubt he can. He can also be a peach. Furthermore, David is an activist — not just an intellectual, but an activist. And some conservatives are uncomfortable with activism. They would rather observe, opine, and sigh. David wants to take up cudgels and win. He says to lazy or defeatist conservatives, “Wake up! Fight back! The Left is eating your lunch, but it need not be so!” David is fearless in an environment marked by some fearfulness. He is an upsetter of the apple cart, and the upsetting of the apple cart is not very conservative. When David goes into a university and makes a fuss about the curriculum, some conservatives are embarrassed. They say, “Stop making a fuss. It may cause them to dislike us even more. Plus, aren’t we born to be an oppressed minority?” Some conservatives are content with dhimmitude. And, frankly, there are conservatives who have the sneaking hope that they will be approved by the <em>New York Times</em> et al. “Look, I may be on the right, but I’m not an extremist and nuisance like Horowitz, you know. You can bring me home to dinner.”</p>
<p>Willmoore Kendall once made a wicked remark about Cleanth Brooks, his colleague at Yale: “Cleanth is always the second-most-conservative person in the room.”</p>
<p>In a way, David is a man without a home — an independent, a republic unto himself. Speaking at his alma mater in 2009, he said, “Fifty years ago, my radical views caused me to feel like an outsider at Columbia. Returning as a conservative, I find myself an outsider still — and again it is because of my political views.”</p>
<p>As I was reading <em>My Life and Times</em>, I kept writing in the margins, “True, true!” And as I read about David’s thoughts and experiences, I couldn’t help thinking of my own. Other readers will find the same, I’m sure. I kept thinking, “Yes, that’s what I saw, that’s what I heard, that’s what I felt.” Take the matter of human rights: The people around me constantly yelled about Pinochet’s Chile, Marcos’s Philippines, and, above all, apartheid South Africa. And yell they should have. But what about the people behind the Iron Curtain? And in China, North Korea, and Vietnam? And in Cuba? If you prick or torture them, do they not bleed? Aren’t human rights for them, too?</p>
<p>Obviously, no one can agree with David on every point in the hundreds of pages of Volume 1, or in the thousands of pages of the volumes to come. That would be absurd. In all likelihood, David doesn’t agree with David on every point. (Do you agree with everything you’ve said for the past 25 or 30 years?) But I always want to know what David has to say. Early in that Columbia speech, he praised a professor, saying, “He was there . . . to teach us <em>how</em> to think and not to tell us <em>what</em> to think — therefore to respect the divergent opinions of others. I am afraid this is a vanishing ethos in our culture and a dying pedagogical art in our university classrooms today.” Oh, yes. Like everyone else, David will sometimes tell you what to think. But he is more interested in suggesting how you should think.</p>
<p>Once he was asked, “Do you ever feel that you are wasting your breath? Do you think that truth will ever matter? No matter what you prove or disprove, in the end the truth will remain in the shadows of what people want to hear and want to believe.” David answered, “I agree more than I care to with this observation.” For my part, I can say that David has not wasted his breath. He learned important things in the first stages of his life, and has learned important things since. He has wanted to impart what he knows, and he has many beneficiaries. Everyone? Of course not. Enough beneficiaries, though — more than most ever have.</p>
<p>What has driven him, I think, is what drove Whittaker Chambers and lots of others who left Communism and dedicated themselves to anti-Communism: a desire to tell the truth, and to have other people know the truth. A desire to be free of lies, and to counter them. “Live not by lies!” Solzhenitsyn implored, during the long years of the Soviet Union. Lies want to govern everything, and do, if you let them. David was sick of lies: about the Soviet Union, about the Panthers, about Vietnam, about everything. And he burns to know and tell the truth, insofar as that is possible.</p>
<p>This quality — a respect for the truth, an aversion to lies — has always existed in him, even if it has been suppressed or superseded at times. Age 14, he was walking across the Triborough Bridge to attend a rally for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the atomic spies for the Soviet Union. A political mentor was explaining to him that lying was justified, for revolutionary purposes. David knew this was wrong — felt in his stomach that it was. “The renegade Horowitz,” even then!</p>
<p>“Great is truth,” they say, “and will prevail.” It will, yes — but even if it didn’t, it would still be great.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>David Horowitz</strong> discussing <a href="https://secure.donationreport.com/productlist.html?key=DBERMFBVMXYH">The Black Book of the American Left</a> in <strong>The Glazov Gang&#8217;s</strong> two-part video series below:</em><br />
<b></b></p>
<p><strong>Part I:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/QL9WUvnJ_Cs" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Part II:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/eeN2K6romr8" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>To sign up for </strong><em><b>The Glazov Gang</b></em><strong>: </strong><a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><b>Click here</b></a><strong>.</strong></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>The Center of What?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/paul-gottfried/the-center-of-what/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-center-of-what</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/paul-gottfried/the-center-of-what/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 07 Jan 2014 05:05:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Paul Gottfried]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Center]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=214730</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The disturbing encroachment of leftism into the political center. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/political-moderates1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-214731" alt="political-moderates1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/political-moderates1-450x300.jpg" width="315" height="210" /></a>Lately I’ve become annoyed by the fumbling attempt of historically ignorant journalists to define the “center.” The way they do this is by assigning Republicans to the right and Democrats to the left. One of our two national parties supposedly monopolizes all conservative qualities and the other all liberal ones. Those who consider themselves “undecided” or “swing voters” apparently belong to some shifting center. But as I like to remind my younger readers, both parties are well to the left of where they stood even twenty years ago on social issues.  Supporting gay marriage, which now seems acceptable to everyone but traditional Christians, would have sounded like a weird, radical idea to Republicans and Democrats alike as late as the 1980s. The feminist revolution that I have witnessed in my lifetime would have once sent Democrats for their barf bags, that is, at a time when the Democratic Party still had a very traditional Southern Protestant and Northern Catholic working-class base.</p>
<p>I won’t bother affirming all the trendy social changes as “good things” since I’m not running for political office, and since I really don’t care what the national media think of me, or even if they’re aware of my existence. I’m simply noting the obvious here, which is that this country, like other Western societies, has moved decidedly to the left over the last fifty years on major social issues. This has happened under the influence of the media, public education, and expanding government bureaucracy dedicated to fighting “discrimination.”</p>
<p>Our political culture has also gone in the same direction because “conservative” parties here and elsewhere have tried to keep up with the other side. These increasingly non-descript other parties have focused on those differences that the media and the center-left still view as “discussable.”  Obamacare is one such issue, on which sensitive people are still allowed to differ. By directing all their fire on the Democrats’ health plan, the GOP has been able to abandon truly “divisive” issues, that is, social ones that the media, entertainment industry and public educators have already decided for us. This strategy of abandonment doesn’t always work, as we saw in the last presidential race when Romney, especially during the debates with Obama, tried slavishly to take the same social positions as his Democratic rival. But at least Romney lost “with dignity,” as I heard from more than one Republican.  The Dems of course won by fighting with bare knuckles under the black flag.</p>
<p>Curiously Republican commentators have no idea of how far to the left they’re drifting, partly because they’re historical illiterates. I was flabbergasted to find one self-described conservative critic in the New York Post characterize the predecessor of the current New York City mayor as a “right of center” executive. The former mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is a lifelong liberal Democrat, who endorsed Obama, but who agreed to run as a Republican for mayor because it was a useful launching pad for his campaign. Where exactly is this “center” located that former Mayor Bloomberg moved to the right of? I’m still looking for it in vain.  Certainly Bloomberg was not as reckless in adding to the pensions of public employees or dealing with the power of the police to apprehend criminals as the new mayor, Bill de Blasio, is likely to be. But I can’t imagine what sense there is in designating someone as a “right of center” politician who holds the same views as many liberal Democrats.</p>
<p>Similarly, I was astonished to hear Jonah Goldberg on TV describe de Blasio as “so leftwing he’s almost like a Jacobin, but not quite that bad.” Goldberg, who was straining for effect, compared the newly elected mayor, who seems radical even by the standards of the Obama administration, to the radical wing of the French Revolution. The Jacobins, who took over France in 1793, were hardly moderates by late eighteenth century standards. They fell in 1794, after having produced considerable chaos and a bloodbath internally. But the Jacobins were utterly reactionary in their social views as compared to the dominant ideas of the present age. They were unabashed sexists, ultranationalists, and expressed racial opinions that Goldberg would undoubtedly denounce as fascist.  Although I don’t begrudge Goldberg his views, it is foolish to belittle those who sound only slightly more progressive than the speaker by comparing them to people who did not even operate in the same political universe.</p>
<p>This may be partly an attempt to hide how far we’ve moved in a particular political direction over the last half century. Those who take for granted what have been radical changes understate their impact and try to fit them into their own spectrum of opinion. But I only wish that I never again have to encounter someone’s made-up parallels with the past and or someone’s invented political center. Enough is enough.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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