Open Thread is very open – VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA / KAG! / KMAG world (KMAG being a bit of both MAGA and KAG!). Take the time to get outside, enjoy the fall colors and take in the beauty of a harvest moon.

You can say what you want, comment on what other people said, and so on. Free Speech is practiced here. ENJOY IT. Use it or lose it.

Keep it SOMEWHAT civil. They tried to FORCE fake Orwellian civility on us. In response, we CHOOSE true civility to defend our precious FREEDOM from THEM.

Our rules began with the civility of the Old Treehouse, later to become the Wolverinian Empire, and one might say that we have RESTORED THE OLD REPUBLIC – the early high-interaction model of the Treehouse – except of course that Q discussion is not only allowed but encouraged, and speech is considerably freer in other ways.

Please feel free to argue and disagree with the board owner, as nicely as possible. Please also consider the Important Guidelines, outlined here in the January 1st open thread. Let’s not give the odious Internet Censors a reason to shut down this precious haven.

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SPEAK THE FIVE WORDS BOLDLY TO OUR PRESIDENT! “I AM PRAYING FOR YOU!” I love this pic and I’ll ask of you all to remember Vice President Pence in your prayers!

So, as we head down the path to our branch in the Q Tree  (some showed up overnight) please be kind to each other.

Fellow tree dweller Wheatie gave us the basics, with a sound addition by TrumpIsMine:

• No food fights.
• No running with scissors.
• If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.

• So break out your FOUL weather gear.
• Brave the STORM
• For we fight for all that’s dear.
• Brave the STORM
• And remember in 2020 we get Four Moar Years!

When all else fails, we have to sing and dance. Here’s a song where we all know the words. Have a wonderful weekend!!!!!!!

The following interview was done on September 27th, 2019 but only recently made available to the public. While watching this interview, please remember, almost all of DC and Wall Street adores China and refers to Russia as the boogeyman. As a country, we would not be at this stage of confrontation with China if it had not been for President Donald Trump. If we could have moved the DC/NYC establishment to understand our bigger problem with China, it would have been easy to partner with Russia to confront the growing threat of China. Organizations like The Atlantic Council and our own “stuck in the mud” bureaucrats have harmed US Foreign Policy and cost us 3 years of progress in stopping China.

This interview is extraordinary because it combines Kyle Bass’ expertise on China finance/monetary supply with the expertise of Air Force General Robert Spalding, who was THE Advisor to the Joint Chiefs on China and accompanied Chinese Generals to Mar-A-Lago during the first meeting between Xi and Donald Trump.

The interview is 58:38 long, please bookmark and watch at your leisure.

Robert Spalding has written a book called “Stealth War” on “How China took over while American Elites Slept”.

Background on Spalding:

In 2001, the year China entered the WTO, Spalding was chosen as an Olmsted Scholar, one of three people from each branch of the military, to learn Mandarin and go live in China for two years, as the USA Department of Defense Attache to China. He attended the Defense Dept’s language school in Monterrey, and lived in eastern Shanghai for 2yrs (2002-2004), traveling the country and was exposed to top levels of Chinese government, and our government.

Spalding discusses his original impression of China; love for the people, food, industriousness, prosperity everywhere….. and how his impression of China has changed over the years.

By 2004, returning back to the USA, Spalding joined the Council on Foreign Relations (I know, I know), where he met business leaders and became alarmed by their attitude on China. Think about a man whose entire life was expertise in the military, suddenly exposed to the inner workings of Business School #101. It’s a completely different mindset and skill set. Spalding realized how naive he was, and how diplomats + the biz community had been fooled by China.

Robert Spalding has taken a massive “red pill” and is fully aware of China’s threat to the USA and the rest of the world. Chairman Xi talks about free trade and “globalism” on a public stage, with profit as a motive. As Americans, we think free trade is a good thing and along with trade comes personal responsibility, ethics, rule of law, contracts, etc. Since Nixon opened China, our leaders thought exposure to western democracy would “rub off ” on China and they would become more like us. The exact opposite has become true. China takes our money, hollows out America, and is exporting their censorship/communist values to the West. Keep in mind, this interview was done BEFORE the NBA incident.

What we are only becoming aware of is that the Chinese are still communists and will never change…… The Chinese did adopt our profit motive but cast aside everything else so prevalent in a democracy/republic. The CCP controls everything in China and their goal is to “control the narrative”, governing how one thinks and speaks. Sound familiar? No criticism of the party or established narrative is allowed. Again, sound familiar?

The interview includes eye-opening discussions of the PLA and the CCP within China and how the censorship and control over the people overrides everything in China, from the significant to the mundane. The stories will jolt one’s senses.

China’s Underlying Motives:

Privately, Chinese officials will admit their primary goal is to dominate the world. They believe they have endured a “Century of Humiliation” which is our fault, the fault of the USA, because they were the big player for thousands of years and they will be again. Their goal is to use our own greed against us, bankrupt us, and force us to submit. Americans who became billionaires working in China, are so entrapped by fear of losing their wealth, they now openly advocate for the Chinese System. They’re too far gone. Again, look at the NBA, Nike, the US Chamber of Commerce, or Michael Bloomberg. These billionaires run directly contrary to US national security interests and casually sell out to China.

Organ Harvesting: It’s real.

The UK recently had a tribunal, presided over by the same guy who did Slobodan Milosevic’s war crimes trial. They interviewed hundreds of people who escaped from the camps in Xinjiang as well as physicians who performed organ harvesting. The report and findings can be located on (ChinaTribunal . com) and……. be prepared. In fact,the CCP removes organs from people who are still alive, merely paralyzed…. and they have a nice new crematorium.

Organ Harvesting is so pervasive in China, one can now make an appointment for a heart transplant. Think about this for a minute. In the USA and other countries, to receive a heart transplant takes extensive testing/cross matching and the recipient goes on a waiting list. When the organ suddenly becomes available, the recipient must act quickly, fly to the location, or the heart is flown with all due speed. In China, wealthy Chinese and foreigners can make an appointment, a month in advance, because the CCP has cross-matched, the tissue, bloodwork, ultrasounds, the DNA, of all their prisoners…….. and they know exactly the person who has the necessary organs. It’s quite lucrative. Imagine that one.

It’s now suspected as many as 3 million Uighurs and other religious “undesirables” are held in internment camps in northwestern China. Many of them are Christian, “prisoners of conscience”, create a “buffet line of organs” for the PLA/CCP. Again, the Chinese regime adopted our profit motive, and cast aside everything else which goes along with it; human rights, civil liberty, rule of law, self determination, ethics.

The only country to BLOCK organ transplants from China or travel to China for organ transplants is Israel, because the heart surgeon in Israel who was counseling an ill patient learned his patient “had an appointment in China next month”….. which meant someone was going to die…. on a schedule. Israel blocked China organ transplants.

Fentanyl:

Wrap your head around the idea that there are no ethics or rule of law in China. Again, this is purely about profit. The generic drug supply in the USA is about 80-90% Chinese origin and is also tainted with carcinogens. The same factories which produce blood pressure meds also produce Chinese Fentanyl, and about 90% of the heroin and fentanyl in the USA is straight from these factories (southern border, US mail, or express scripts out of Canada). It accounts for about 40K deaths a year, on purpose, from China. In fact, the Chinese have genetically altered the poppy plant so now, they can grow it year round = more opioids.

AND —- Spalding notes, the 40K deaths a year came after China took 70,000 factories, 3.4 million manufacturing jobs, plus the accompanying service sector, about 13 million jobs in total, eviscerating employees healthcare and retirement funds, destroying those American communities…… and then shipped in the drugs to kill the people, our fellow Americans.

The DEA/FBI responds, “China has been most cooperative”, because one or two people go to jail, a DEA bureaucrat receives an award for his investigation, but the criminals in China are released in a few weeks. The chemical makeup of the drug is then slightly altered and thus, the Chinese factories are able to maintain a few steps ahead of the DEA in the USA. In the USA, because we hold people personally responsible, we are conditioned to charge, legally, the individual. That’s not the way China works. Robert Spalding posits, until we charge the country, the shipping line, seize Chinese assets in the USA, the problem of fentanyl will continue.

Lack of Transparency Helps the CCP Maintain Control:

Imagine for a moment, 1.4 billion people who only watched CNN, or for that matter, FOX News. Imagine only one source of state news, one narrative, being pushed, and if anyone searches for truth, begins to tip over the rocks, that person is penalized. Yeah, we’re beginning to see it here in the USA with our media and the persecution of Repubs/Trump Supporters, but imagine no other lines of communication in an entire country, and it’s been going on for a generation. The CCP has been very successful in stopping the ability of people to think for themselves, everything is locked down physically and electronically.

……… Which is why Hong Kong is such a nightmare for them. The videos, cameras, are everywhere and eventually smuggled out. The Chinese can’t control the rebellion in Hong Kong, whereas they CAN successfully hide 3 million prisoners in Xinjiang.

Why Don’t We Understand China? How Did Our Leaders Get It So Wrong?

Spalding tells an anecdote of his first meal in a Chinese restaurant and how he was disappointed by no fortune cookie. He didn’t realize the fortune cookie was an invention of a Japanese guy in San Francisco and not indicative to China, but it made a larger impression on him. HE was supposed to be an expert on China, and he had no idea about China. He was naive.

Expanding the idea of American Leadership naivety, Spalding looks back. When the Soviet Union fell apart, the Chinese Communists began to engage with American Republicans and Democrats. Our leaders went to China on junkets sponsored by the Communist Chinese…… and our leaders only saw what the Chinese wanted them to see. The rose-colored glasses were pervasive.

Spalding sums it up succinctly. American politicains and biz leaders had the 40yr idea that more American exposure in China would open China up, make them more like us, and that China wanted to be like us. Yet, no one ever went to the Chinese and said, “Hey, do you want to me more like the USA?”, because if anyone did that, the Chinese would surely reply, “Hell no, we don’t want to be like you at all……… we want to dominate you.”

Bass and Spalding tell the famous story of Bloomberg’s epic background piece on Xi’s family, how wealthy they were, when Xi first came to power. Bloomberg was warned, don’t talk about Xi or you will be penalized…… and they shut down Bloomberg’s terminals in China for a while. Now, Bloomberg is self-censored and frankly, attacks anyone who is anti-China. Easy peasy, eh? China cowed Bloomberg, and China didn’t fire a shot. Again, pure greed, the profit motive, won out, even though all other morals and ethics we know of went out the window.

How Do We Fix It?

Overall, we must be much more tough on China. We need to penalize the CCP, the party, and not individuals, as the CCP is the overlayer on anything Chinese. China will counter, as they always do, “How can you attack 1.4 billion people and think we’re all mean/bad/organ harvesting/hacking USA defense contractors?” This is how the CCP hides behind the population. In other words, we’re “racist” if we object. Sound familiar?

First example is fentanyl. When the huge shipment of fentanyl 31K metric tons, was found in Philadelphia, we should have taken action. Stop all Chinese ships, none can dock, will be turned away for a month, levy hundred million dollar penalties, against China, shipping lines, and seize assets owned by Chinese entities in the USA.

In other words, the USA needs to play hardball with the CCP, because the CCP runs everything in China. Forget about individual cases or charges. Charge Huawei, instead of the princess who is being kept in Vancouver.

How China Silences Dissent Within The USA:

Astonishing story. Spalding was with the Chinese delegation when Xi met with Trump at Mar-A-Lago. After the summit, Spalding was on the plane from south Florida back to NY, to catch another plane onward to China.

Spalding was on the plane. The Chinese Generals were up front. Spalding was in back with a bunch of Chinese nationals who were bandaged and kind of roughed up, etc. They were talking in Chinese and since he speaks the language, he struck up a conversation. Come to find out, when Xi or another notable travels overseas, a call goes out to Chinese students and nationals within the foreign country. Their duty is to line the path of Xi and suppress all dissent or protests along the way. They are trained/ordered/commanded to surround the protesters and quash all dissent…….. within another country……. in this case, within the USA. Thus, when a Chinese leader comes to the USA, he establishes a “zone” of China’s rules on OUR soil. Guess we now know why AOC and her greenies are not protesting at the Chinese Embassy.

Kyle Bass asks why we didn’t arrest anyone. Spalding responds, shockingly. Many of the wrongs of China could have been addressed over the decades, by prior administrations. Yet, our government excused ALL the wrongs of China because of other priorities —- We excused ZTE because the State Dept wanted help from China to suppress North Korea, on Climate Change, etc.

Hmmm, is that the reason President Trump went after Kim Jong Un so quickly? To remove the bargaining chip China held? And withdrew from the Paris Accord? Makes sense…….

Can We Coexist With China?

No, not as it stands currently. “Reformers” in the Chinese Communist Party only want to kill us more slowly than the hawks. Bass was mildly shocked. To drive home the point, Spalding comes around again to the CCP Constitution, thousands of pages, a little known document, called Document #9. It’s the exact opposite of America’s Bill of Rights. The Chinese think our Bill of Rights would destroy the Communist party (interesting) and therefore, their citizens intentionally do not have these Bill of Rights. Moreover, it is the job of the CCP to counteract those rights (our freedoms) overseas as well — within our country. In the USA, our Constitution/Bill of Rights ensures a system so perfect no one party has overall control, but if the citizens deem it necessary, we allow for overthrow and repositioning of our government.

And in a modern world, Spalding posits, whereas we rely on our second amendment for ultimate self defense, an equalizer, what the Chinese are doing is MORE dangerous because of 5G – because the Chinese could influence us to shoot our neighbor — or ultimately, we cannot protest or overthrow an entity who lurks behind a wall of the internet and a surveillance state.

The problem of China developing 5G is monumental. If China installs networks in the 90 countries who have already signed on, the Chinese will export THEIR values (no Bill of Rights at all) to 90 countries. In this way, citizens will voluntarily give up their free speech, their freedom of religion, for more money and a better social credit score. The ability to influence is also the ability to oppress.

On top of the 5G network, the Chinese will build business platforms dependent on communication flowing on their networks……… which will grow and quickly dwarf the likes of (FANG) Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google. To compound the problem, all the data will be owned by the Chinese……….. as well as the ability to bill all those people in 90 countries, which is access to a whole lot of money…….. and how China can possibly get out of their currency overvaluation. Companies like Alibaba (billing) and Tencent will emerge and own the platforms AND the pipe of delivery. See the problem?

Spalding also elaborates on how the USA used to spend 2% of GDP on Research and Development, to places like NASA and Bell Labs, which drove our economic prosperity. All the guys who took us to the moon, went to school and worked on projects, funded by the USA government. At some point, late 1960’s, after we started spending money on entitlements and welfare, the USA decided private sector should do the R&D. We also ignored our infrastructure. Unfortunately, the private sector built factories, cities, ports, roads, in China…….. and not in the USA, and they did it with OUR money, to the detriment of our citizens.

The Chinese easily stole the technology from Bell Labs, and other high tech or manufacturing firms within the USA. Don’t just think it’s CCP members hacking our data, either. Sometimes, the CEO’s willingly turn over the tech, because the Chinese adopted “profit motive” from the west.

Eventually, China bankrupts the USA, just like we did to the Soviets. It’s what China wants, absolute submission.

Will Our Moral Compass Emerge?

We wonder…. was the NBA confrontation the spark? At what point do we begin to put a price on free speech or all of our Rights? In fact, it has perplexed the Chinese with the current protests in Hong Kong. Seems like the Chinese thought the people of Hong Kong would naturally want to drift towards China, fold within China, become just another city of China. They don’t understand those in Hong Kong who refuse to give up their freedoms…… because the CCP thinks they are so cool, “Who wouldn’t want to be us, the great and omnipotent CCP?”

Spalding hesitates and cautions us. It would be so easy to not look under the rocks, to not question, to go along and get along. Look at what it’s like to live in Hollywood right now as an actor….. go along and get along. Look at our college campuses and imagine what it’s like to be a conservative humanities professor….. go along to get along. Look at our Thanksgiving table, as we voluntarily silence ourselves to not cause controversy, so we are not ostracized by our own families. It’s seductive, it’s easier………. go along to get along. We’re giving up everything we hold dear and everything for which our ancestors fought.

Like President Trump has noted, his administration would be so much easier without the need to confront China. He could have ignored the problem as past Presidents did. But it’s not the right thing to do.

President Trump is the perfect person, with extensive history as a businessman dealing in China, who rents commercial space to the Bank of China, to finally confront the Chinese and ensure prosperity of the USA.

The key is to control China’s access to US Dollars. No one else wants China’s currency because no one else trusts China. It’s true, China is about 15% of the world’s economy, but only 9/10th’s of 1% of the world’s international transactions settle in Chinese Yuan. It’s funny money. They have to have our dollars to import the goods they need. Without the USD, their economy comes to a standstill.

I’m going to let you guys hack at this in the overnight. I thought Nancy hired great lawyers. Guess not. What a pile of garbage it is. Here is the actual link for the Scribed Document: https://www.scribd.com/document/431368353/Trump-Shakedown-and-Coverup

We need to be ready to answer and counter each point with a clear message.

Justin Chaffetz has a good strategy he mentioned yesterday. Since the House has voted DOWN impeachment on three separate occasions, why is this process legal without a vote?

Remember, It’s a War!!

Don’t you wish some people would keep their mouths shut until they know all the facts? We’re only now beginning to get a glimpse of the reality of the situation on the ground.

Congress, last week, voted 360+, to slap the hand of the President on his Syria policy. They were wrong, again, because they believed the “Jumping Chihuahua” media instead of trusting the President. And again, the media was WRONG, and again, Trump was right.

I wish I had a transcript of this interview, so I could nail it to the forehead of every Republican when they even THINK about doubting President Trump.

Let’s take a look at Trump’s plan for the border area between Syria and the Kurds. “Historic solutions in Syria that have eluded us for years.”, says Graham, and “President Trump is thinking outside the box” and “I was so impressed with his thinking about the oil fields” —— Can you see my shocked face? Did Graham not listen to ANY Trump MAGA rallies? President Trump has been talking about it for YEARS!!!!!! We knew!

1. USA and Syria control the oil, “On the verge of a joint venture between us and the Syrian Democratic Forces” to modernize the oil fields with USA help, that way the oil revenue goes to the locals instead of Assad, ISIS, or Iran. And the shared revenue will pay for USA commitment to the region…… !!!!!!!!!!
2. Develop something like a DMZ between Syria and Turkey. Kurds have lost 10K fighters and the USA has lost eight soldiers (mostly Kurdish) fighters. DMZ will contain an international force, no Americans, supported by USA air power.
3. This keeps Turkey safe, from the “bad Kurds”, who are terrorists, because we now know there are at least two different sects.
4. This keeps Syria and the Kurds safe.
5. This ensures no Iranian involvement.
6. Protects Israel as a primary objective.

“I’m increasingly optimistic, this could turn out very well.“, says Graham.

Well, WTF? What did he think President Trump was going to do? I want to slap him, or shake him, like Cher did in Moonstruck, “Snap out of it!”, Lindsey.

Once again, the media, the think tanks, the GOPe and the Dems are stuck in a rut. Did they expect Trump, The People’s President, to harm the USA interests? Or THEIR interests? Act spontaneously? Did Graham expect Trump to be stupid and not listen to the Pentagon’s proposals….. and then morph several ideas to come up with a better idea? Of course, all of DC thinks Trump is either stupid, ……or they are stupid……. or…….. they are evil and want to maintain control at all costs.

The “Jumping Chihuahua/Dog” nature of Trump’s opposition, the people’s opposition, is very telling. Here they are, all in unison, performing for the media. They all jump on cue every time Trump tweets or holds a presser.

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Yes, Lindsey Graham in his tweet storm which started less than 30 minutes after Trump’s announcement, proved he was a jumping Chihuahua. Remember Lindsey’s “I will NOT be quiet…” beating chest like a Tarzan, yet he went on Fox and Friends, within 30 minutes, without knowing the details. He triggered all the usual NeoCons, Nikki Haley, Mitch McConnell, and began the drumbeat “I have spoken with Speaker Pelosi” and “Am working with Senator Van Hollen” (the Dem) for sanctions against Turkey (as if the Congress could do a better job on sanctions than Mnuchin – it’s laughable).

I don’t know all the details regarding President Trump’s decision in northern Syria. In process of setting up phone call with Secretary Pompeo.

If press reports are accurate this is a disaster in the making.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) October 7, 2019

We see through this farce. The people know. It’s why the media’s approval ratings are down. It’s why Congress’ approval ratings are lower than cockroaches. We voted for real change, on war/trade/immigration/healthcare/unruly agencies, and we aim to get it.

Yes, the Syrians have been fighting in this region for hundreds of years. It was THEIR problem before the USA was barely a country. Yet, DAMMIT, if we’re going to go over there, lose even one precious American soldier, then By GOD, we’re going to fix it, and impose a solution on the region whether they effing like it or not.

Of course, the people KNOW their President. We KNEW something was going on, and held back on comments. Sure enough, about three days later, at a rally in Dallas, he explained what we already knew….. “Sometimes, you have to let them fight, like kids in a school lot”. After a few days, the Kurds were ready to strike a peace deal with Assad, the one they resisted for two years. Surprised? Pence and Pompeo flew to Turkey, and after a strongly worded “letter” from the President, we had a “pause” or a “ceasefire”.

As Scott Adams so eloquently pointed out, what are the rules for ALL ceasefires in the Middle East. What should we immediately expect? Paraphrasing from Scott Adams snark:

1. Within 24 hours, one party allegedly bombs a “hospital”. Yes, of course, of all the targets Turkey could have allegedly chosen, it makes sense they would choose a hospital above anything else. Yeah, right…. snark.
2. Someone releases an alleged chemical attack. Lots of white phosphorus in the Middle East, apparently. Do they think we’re stupid?
3. The mother and dead baby (who has pink cheeks and is blinking), mourning perfectly, center of frame, for the media. And yet, the media tried it again.

And guess what happened in Syria……… the SAME playbook unfolded. We KNOW this is the playbook. And we also know any reports of “death” or “fighting” cannot be trusted because ground reports are impossible and unreliable in the fog of any war. Where are all the dead Kurds? Have you seen them? Confirmed? I mean, the media warned us of the massive ethic cleansing which COULD happen!! At this point, the media should be satisfied with a spoiled Cheese Curd.

For THIS reason we have 2 million immigrants in Europe, burning over 800 churches in France? Attacking Christmas markets in Germany? So many knife attacks in England the Mayor of London has tried banning KNIVES! Landing on the beaches in Spain? Economic burden for Germany? About to destroy the EU as Poland/Hungary and others are unwilling to take more migrants? What bozo thought THAT was a good idea? Oh yeah, it was Merkel, the one who loved Obama but loathes Trump. The whole thing is stupid. Yes, these are stupid people. Because if they’re not stupid, then they are intentionally malicious and evil, sowing the seeds of their own destruction.

Yet, along comes an American leader, Donald Trump, to step in, stop the foolishness/death/economic loss/decay, take the heat of the barking dogs, to save them all……… while they complain about being saved…… because it’s so much more fun to be miserable, destitute, or dead. Idiots!!

President Trump is going to win this one in Syria. Within 6 months, I’m betting, the barking dogs will claim it to be their idea. It’s the best possible solution for all parties concerned.

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On October 11th, Lindsey and other NeoCons raced to the print media and microphones to predict “the biggest mistake of his Presidency”, the “rebirth of ISIS”, “genocide and ethnic cleansing” and the wrath of hell unleashed.

Every concern I had about President Trump’s Syria decision is coming true in spades.

➡️ The reemergence of ISIS is on the way. And if you think only Europe is threatened — you are sadly mistaken.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) October 11, 2019

What a difference a few days makes. By October 17th, Lindsey was singing a different tune. Truth is, we have to give Lindsey credit for acknowledging his error in judgement, but it probably won’t stop his inner Chihuahua. Nonetheless, he is far ahead of the Dems and media……. who won’t admit the brilliant strategy of Trump.

Sounds like we may have made real progress regarding a cease-fire and hopefully a sustainable solution that will prevent the reemergence of ISIS and the abandonment of our ally, the Kurds.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) October 17, 2019

And by October 18th, looks like the peace is holding and the Kurdish General is happy.

I just spoke with General Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces in Syria. He appreciates the efforts of the Trump Administration to stop the violence. (1/4)

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) October 18, 2019

The media, the Dems, the think tanks, the Atlantic Council, and the NeoCon GOP are unbearable sad dogs.

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Not only has President Trump won this one with the voters, he exposed the inept governing style of Dems, GOPe and the media which lies to the people. The Atlantic Council fellows should be shriveling like vampires in bright sunlight. He’s bringing troops home, making a better deal in the Middle East, co opting the GCC on the ground as well. “Peace is the prize”, Donald Trump.

Recently, a Dem strategy talking point memo was secretly found and released. The #3 item on the list for Dems in 2020 was to criticize President Trump for NOT bringing home the troops. Imagine that one? So, they criticize President Trump for bringing home troops……. cuz Muh Politics…… but they were willing to criticize Trump for NOT bringing home troops ………. cuz Muh Politics.

Are you getting the impression they don’t give a damn about our soldiers…….. only ………. Muh Politics.

Genuine affection, love, admiration for our military members comes from within, and it can never be faked for “Muh Politics”.

God bless our men and women in the military, wherever they are.

Been a while since I’ve told a story, and this one popped into my head today. It’s a story about misunderstanding another person’s words or intentions. The confusion can happen quickly with …. let’s say…. lasting consequences. With everything going on in DC, I thought it might be time to bring it all back to a personal level and laugh a little bit. Cozy up with me. Here we go.

It was a regular day when Britt walked through the back door, sobbing, body shaking, full blown tears. It was a meltdown like no other. I was in the front of the house, heard someone come in the back door, came to look, and found her wailing away, sitting in the middle of my kitchen floor. She had collapsed in body and spirit. I sat down on the kitchen floor in front of her, “What is it?”

Between the sobs and catching her breath, she told me the story of her “once again, being-mean-and-wicked-for-no-good-reason” mother-in-law. Britt’s husband was out of town on business. The kids went to see “Grandma”, and now, the mother-in-law would not let them come home until Britt’s husband came home. Britt, was wounded to the core, “She thinks I’m a horrible mother and doesn’t trust me with my own children.” I growled… What a mean thing to do.

No, Britt was not a bad mother at all. Britt lived across the street, and I knew her schedule almost minute by minute. She was often up at 4:00am, doing laundry and getting kids ready for school. Our kids played together, daily. The idea Britt was a “bad mom” was as outlandish as me being a murderer. On the other hand, I knew Kate well, the mother-in-law. Kate and my grandmother tangled often, and Kate was a wealthy, smug, artist, control freak…. a temperamental B$tch.

I grabbed Britt by the hand and jerked her up off the kitchen floor. We rounded the corner to the small bathroom and I said, “Take off your clothes and get in the shower.” She wrinkled her nose as if to question, but I interrupted her thoughts, “You can’t do battle with the devil when you have puffy eyes.” and then, “Get yourself together….., we’re going to war.” Britt perked up immediately. I sat on the toilet and waited…. thinking.

Britt had this problem with her mother-in-law fairly often, but this was the worst episode yet. I loved Britt’s kids like they were my own and hated to see them torn and used as pawns. It was time to put an end to the drama, once and for all. I was ratcheting up my anger.

We hopped into the “bluebomb” minivan and took off for “Grandma’s” house. Britt was okay but chain smoking from three different packs of cigarettes, different brands, menthols and regulars. We have a kitchen drawer under the microwave where 13 different women kept their cigarettes because “their husbands didn’t know they smoked”. Thus, they would come to my house and smoke. Of course, they didn’t want to stink up my house, so they would lean way over, under the stove, and blow smoke up the exhaust fan….. while talking non-stop. It was fun, and I don’t judge. Britt had grabbed a handful of those packs and was practically eating cigarettes along the way.

We arrived at Kate’s house, unannounced. Miracle of miracles, everything was fine. Kate would never cross me. Status in our little town was unspoken but well known, and back then, I was a few rungs higher on the ladder than Kate. She was busted and knew it….. therefore, she decided to pretend nothing was wrong. Typical. Kate skillfully diverted the conversation to her garden. We obliged, awaiting the inevitable confrontation.

Britt went to help her daughter gather new clothes, new toys (showered with gifts in an attempt to buy affection), and Kate and I were alone in the music room. I fiddled with the keys on her gleaming baby grand Steinway. Kate remarked admirably about the times she heard me play (I was horrible, a false compliment). It made me mad and I shot her the “Medusa look”. I didn’t say anything but plunked out the first four notes of Beethoven’s 5th, as if circling for the kill. It made Kate skittish. I wanted to hurt her for hurting my friend, but in a flash, she wasn’t worth it anymore. The confrontation was over before it began. She was just…….. bitter.

Having backed out of the original planned speech, I took a softer tone. I said something like, “Don’t ever do it again…..shame on you for hurting people you’re supposed to love.” Words to that effect, I can’t remember. That part is a blur. Kate didn’t say a word, but her eyes spit at me. She spun around and left for the opposite wing of the house to hide. She didn’t even say goodbye to her granddaughter or the boys.

Britt was pleased the turnover of children went so well but still jumpy until we pulled out of the long driveway and were off the property. Tense. On the way home, we had a long talk with Katherine, the daughter, about family, loyalty, worldly goods, etc. Good conversation. Britt’s boys were too young, oblivious, and mostly ignored by Kate. It was the granddaughter over whom Kate obsessed.

When we got home, there were at least a dozen kids and various adults at our house. The kids jumped out and ran to play. Amazing how resilient kids can be. It was a little awkward for Britt to be thrust back into a social setting, like nothing was wrong, after all the drama. So, Britt and I decided we needed to make a run to the liquor store……… cuz, supplies.

Another 10-15 minutes in the opposite direction, we drove through farmland, big blue sky, and wide open fields to the liquor store. We turned the radio up and started singing. We rode with the windows open. She was calming down. Good. She was frustrated and beaten and hated that Kate could get to her so effectively. She felt foolish, and hey, we can all remember similar times in our own lives.

And then, it hit me. I turned and said to her, “You know, you will get to pick out her nursing home when she gets old.” Britt cocked her jaw and gave me the side-eye. I continued, “Better yet, when she dies, you get to pick out what she will wear in the casket……” And there it was, the corners of Britt’s mouth couldn’t hide the grin.

I was driving, but Britt shifted in her seat to turn toward me, 100% embracing the idea of Kate’s death, letting it roll through her mind. Britt said, “She has that God-awful Christmas green suit she wears……. it would be perfect.” Britt was nodding, wide-eyed, enjoying the moment.

Shaking my head, “No, no, no, that’s too good, we would need a lavender polyester from the 70’s, you know, a kiana blouse with a big bow at her neck” Britt howled with laughter and said, “Yeah, and her pearls…” Kate always wore opera length pearls, a beautiful strand. I shook my head again, “No, no, I have some Mardi Gras beads that are FAKE pearls.” Britt slapped her knee and laughed, “Dahuumm”, she said, “fake pearls would make Kate rise from HELL.” It was a delicious moment for Britt.

By the time we pulled into the liquor store parking lot, we were talking about the funeral itself, specifically the flowers, and the pall for Kate’s fictious casket. We decided on the cheapest possible greenery, with the florist foam still showing, and only 7 carnations, cheapest possible flowers, with long stems, hanging in the air…… like naked flowers….. maybe we could dye them lavender to make them match Kate’s polyester suit. We were laughing to where we couldn’t catch our breath, making the funeral worse and worse with every comment.

Inside the liquor store a few other people were in front of us, but Britt and I kept talking, chirping away. By then, we were onto Kate’s hair and makeup. Kate always prided herself in her looks but was cursed with a stocky German hausfrau body-type, whereas Britt was long and lean, a naturally beautiful blue-eyed blond, who looked like a ballerina from the Amazon tribe (…… probably why Kate was jealous….. ya’ think?) We decided “whore red” lipstick and nails, with her hands folded around a golden plastic cross, with big red paste gems, would be perfectly appropriate with lavender, bulletproof, double knit, polyester. On and on, we went. Finally, we placed our liquor order with Mark behind the counter. I was restocking so it took a few minutes as Mark gathered cases and bottles. We’ve both known Mark since we were kids.

With the bill paid, Mark helped us carry boxes and cases to the car. I opened the back of the minivan and helped. Britt was still talking. Mark stood up to hug us goodbye and said………

“If you really want to kill her, I know a guy,………. $500”

Britt stopped talking and her lips disappeared. Her eyes popped out of her head. I gasped so hard I must have sucked in a cubic yard of air. And on the exhale I said, “Noooooooooooo, we don’t really want to kill her.” Britt was flapping her forearms like she was trying to put out a forest fire, “Nooooo”. Mark said, “Oh, oh well.” He was confused. Whoops! We explained the mother-in-law problem and cued him in. He laughed along with us, but he didn’t really understand us. Crisis averted.

The whole way home, we snorted and giggled about the time we came close to ordering a hit on Britt’s mother-in-law. “He really thought I wanted to kill her?????!!!!”, Britt said. “I don’t know, Britt, but I think he did!”, I said. We rode in silence for a while, but would break into laughter. We imagined ourselves as the enforcers of the soccer league, the PTA at school, the grocery store lines, or riverboat gamblers. We didn’t want people to think we have a hit squad going on with a bunch of housewives, but I guess mild crimes were okay. We couldn’t get over it. Surreal.

It was hilarious.

All was calm for a few months between Kate and Britt, but as the holidays approached, Kate began to revert back to her old ways. Britt was telling me about it in the kitchen one day, but she wasn’t upset. I asked her what she did about it. Britt said, “It’s funny, every time Kate starts in, I just imagine her wearing lavender polyester.” Britt shrugged her shoulders, “It’s over with. She doesn’t get to me anymore.” She added, “And it’s the damnedest thing, Daughn, when she starts, I start smiling…. and she has no idea what I’m thinking.”

Problem solved, right?

Almost 10 years later, Kate died. We were good and gave her a terrific sendoff. I was standing by the casket talking to extended relatives, when I noticed……. beautiful and extravagant white rose pall, with a mound of air fern, smilax, and heather…. with one lavender tipped carnation. I narrowed my eyes and smirked. Britt and I were the only ones who knew about that day, besides Mark at the liquor store. I hadn’t thought about it in years.

It was Britt’s send off, and payback. A wink and a nod to the demon Kate who tormented her for years. Strangely, only a few people at the funeral noticed the oddly placed flower. Some thought it might have come from one of the grandchildren. Nope.

It was us.

Girlfriends are good to have. We get each other through the rough times.

Throughout history, there are speeches made by leaders or regular men, which stir our souls, make us laugh or weep, plant a seed, and alter human history. Lincoln’s “The Gettysburg Address”, Winston Churchill’s “The Finest Hour” and “We’ll Fight on the Beaches”, Kennedy’s Inauguration, Lou Gehrig’s “Farewell to Baseball”, we study these speeches as children in school, and we’re inspired by how great men can be when we all move together as a united force.

Sometimes, great speeches come at moments of unimaginable tragedy, when we all share the same grief, and one man, President Reagan, gathers our tears and puts them to words…. as it was with the Challenger Disaster, “slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God”.

When we start thinking about great speeches, the list grows. Our memories are long, our human frailty is infinite, but our natural desire to become better men knows no bounds. We think about our parents, teachers, mentors, and those who gave us courage when we needed it most as individuals, teammates, or as countrymen. We want to be honorable, to endure, and prevail. As ordinary men, it is uncanny, but we never lose faith. From William Faulkner’s Nobel Acceptance Speech:

I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.

William Faulkner

Other times, great speeches are intended to move us in a new direction, gather consensus to make men stand together, to achieve greatness. Donald Trump’s speech in Poland, or the “False Song of Globalism” were such speeches.

Bill Barr, Attorney General of the United States, recently gave such a speech on morality, ethics, and religion, at the University of Notre Dame. The speech has garnered much attention and is being passed from one person to another…. a key sign of a great speech. Bill Barr has touched our soul. Again, one man has gathered our tears, frustrations, and that nagging feeling in the pit of our gut. He put into words our common complaint, and again, we rise. We know we can be better men.

Barr starts by acknowledging the framers clear intent; “Religion was indispensable to sustaining our free system of government”, referring to the 1785 Pamphlet Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments by James Madison. Barr continues from there in an hour long speech. His words will echo in your head forevermore. The transcript is located below to make it easier to follow along.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JDARNSzVyE

I have here the transcript of the speech AG William Barr gave at Notre Dame re: Christianity and religious liberty in America today. Please do yourselves a favor and read how our AG feels about our faith and it’s role in America.

From FG&C who located the transcript (hat tip to him)

Enjoy.

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Today, I would like to share some thoughts with you about religious liberty in America. It’s an important priority in this Administration and for this Department of Justice.

We have set up a task force within the Department with different components that have equities in this area, including the Solicitor General’s Office, the Civil Division, the Office of Legal Counsel, and other offices. We have regular meetings. We keep an eye out for cases or events around the country where states are misapplying the Establishment Clause in a way that discriminates against people of faith, or cases where states adopt laws that impinge upon the free exercise of religion.

From the Founding Era onward, there was strong consensus about the centrality of religious liberty in the United States.

The imperative of protecting religious freedom was not just a nod in the direction of piety. It reflects the Framers’ belief that religion was indispensable to sustaining our free system of government.

In his renowned 1785 pamphlet, “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments,” James Madison described religious liberty as “a right towards men” but “a duty towards the Creator,” and a “duty….precedent both in order of time and degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society.”

It has been over 230 years since that small group of colonial lawyers led a revolution and launched what they viewed as a great experiment, establishing a society fundamentally different than those that had gone before.

They crafted a magnificent charter of freedom – the United States Constitution – which provides for limited government, while leaving “the People” broadly at liberty to pursue our lives both as individuals and through free associations.

This quantum leap in liberty has been the mainspring of unprecedented human progress, not only for Americans, but for people around the world.

In the 20th century, our form of free society faced a severe test.

There had always been the question whether a democracy so solicitous of individual freedom could stand up against a regimented totalitarian state.

That question was answered with a resounding “yes” as the United States stood up against and defeated, first fascism, and then communism.

But in the 21st century, we face an entirely different kind of challenge.

The challenge we face is precisely what the Founding Fathers foresaw would be our supreme test as a free society.

They never thought the main danger to the republic came from external foes. The central question was whether, over the long haul, we could handle freedom. The question was whether the citizens in such a free society could maintain the moral discipline and virtue necessary for the survival of free institutions.

By and large, the Founding generation’s view of human nature was drawn from the classical Christian tradition.

These practical statesmen understood that individuals, while having the potential for great good, also had the capacity for great evil.

Men are subject to powerful passions and appetites, and, if unrestrained, are capable of ruthlessly riding roughshod over their neighbors and the community at large.

No society can exist without some means for restraining individual rapacity.

But, if you rely on the coercive power of government to impose restraints, this will inevitably lead to a government that is too controlling, and you will end up with no liberty, just tyranny.

On the other hand, unless you have some effective restraint, you end up with something equally dangerous – licentiousness – the unbridled pursuit of personal appetites at the expense of the common good. This is just another form of tyranny – where the individual is enslaved by his appetites, and the possibility of any healthy community life crumbles.

Edmund Burke summed up this point in his typically colorful language:

“Men are qualified for civil liberty, in exact proportion to their disposition to put chains upon their appetites…. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

So the Founders decided to take a gamble. They called it a great experiment.

They would leave “the People” broad liberty, limit the coercive power of the government, and place their trust in self-discipline and the virtue of the American people.

In the words of Madison, “We have staked our future on the ability of each of us to govern ourselves…”

This is really what was meant by “self-government.” It did not mean primarily the mechanics by which we select a representative legislative body. It referred to the capacity of each individual to restrain and govern themselves.

But what was the source of this internal controlling power? In a free republic, those restraints could not be handed down from above by philosopher kings.

Instead, social order must flow up from the people themselves – freely obeying the dictates of inwardly-possessed and commonly-shared moral values. And to control willful human beings, with an infinite capacity to rationalize, those moral values must rest on authority independent of men’s will – they must flow from a transcendent Supreme Being.

In short, in the Framers’ view, free government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people – a people who recognized that there was a transcendent moral order antecedent to both the state and man-made law and who had the discipline to control themselves according to those enduring principles.

As John Adams put it, “We have no government armed with the power which is capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”

As Father John Courtney Murray observed, the American tenet was not that:

“Free government is inevitable, only that it is possible, and that its possibility can be realized only when the people as a whole are inwardly governed by the recognized imperatives of the universal moral order.”

How does religion promote the moral discipline and virtue needed to support free government?

First, it gives us the right rules to live by. The Founding generation were Christians. They believed that the Judeo-Christian moral system corresponds to the true nature of man. Those moral precepts start with the two great commandments – to Love God with your whole heart, soul, and mind; and to Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself.

But they also include the guidance of natural law – a real, transcendent moral order which flows from God’s eternal law – the divine wisdom by which the whole of creation is ordered. The eternal law is impressed upon, and reflected in, all created things.

From the nature of things we can, through reason, experience, discern standards of right and wrong that exist independent of human will.

Modern secularists dismiss this idea of morality as other-worldly superstition imposed by a kill-joy clergy. In fact, Judeo-Christian moral standards are the ultimate utilitarian rules for human conduct.

They reflect the rules that are best for man, not in the by and by, but in the here and now. They are like God’s instruction manual for the best running of man and human society.

By the same token, violations of these moral laws have bad, real-world consequences for man and society. We may not pay the price immediately, but over time the harm is real.

Religion helps promote moral discipline within society. Because man is fallen, we don’t automatically conform ourselves to moral rules even when we know they are good for us.

But religion helps teach, train, and habituate people to want what is good. It does not do this primarily by formal laws – that is, through coercion. It does this through moral education and by informing society’s informal rules – its customs and traditions which reflect the wisdom and experience of the ages.

In other words, religion helps frame moral culture within society that instills and reinforces moral discipline.

I think we all recognize that over the past 50 years religion has been under increasing attack.

On the one hand, we have seen the steady erosion of our traditional Judeo-Christian moral system and a comprehensive effort to drive it from the public square.

On the other hand, we see the growing ascendancy of secularism and the doctrine of moral relativism.

By any honest assessment, the consequences of this moral upheaval have been grim.

Virtually every measure of social pathology continues to gain ground.

In 1965, the illegitimacy rate was eight percent. In 1992, when I was last Attorney General, it was 25 percent. Today it is over 40 percent. In many of our large urban areas, it is around 70 percent.

Along with the wreckage of the family, we are seeing record levels of depression and mental illness, dispirited young people, soaring suicide rates, increasing numbers of angry and alienated young males, an increase in senseless violence, and a deadly drug epidemic.

As you all know, over 70,000 people die a year from drug overdoses. That is more casualities in a year than we experienced during the entire Vietnam War.

I will not dwell on all the bitter results of the new secular age. Suffice it to say that the campaign to destroy the traditional moral order has brought with it immense suffering, wreckage, and misery. And yet, the forces of secularism, ignoring these tragic results, press on with even greater militancy.

Among these militant secularists are many so-called “progressives.” But where is the progress?

We are told we are living in a post-Christian era. But what has replaced the Judeo-Christian moral system? What is it that can fill the spiritual void in the hearts of the individual person? And what is a system of values that can sustain human social life?

The fact is that no secular creed has emerged capable of performing the role of religion.

Scholarship suggests that religion has been integral to the development and thriving of Homo sapiens since we emerged roughly 50,000 years ago. It is just for the past few hundred years we have experimented in living without religion.

We hear much today about our humane values. But, in the final analysis, what undergirds these values? What commands our adherence to them?

What we call “values” today are really nothing more than mere sentimentality, still drawing on the vapor trails of Christianity.

Now, there have been times and places where the traditional moral order has been shaken.

In the past, societies – like the human body – seem to have a self-healing mechanism – a self-correcting mechanism that gets things back on course if things go too far.

The consequences of moral chaos become too pressing. The opinion of decent people rebels. They coalesce and rally against obvious excess. Periods of moral entrenchment follow periods of excess.

This is the idea of the pendulum. We have all thought that after a while the “pendulum will swing back.”

But today we face something different that may mean that we cannot count on the pendulum swinging back.

First is the force, fervor, and comprehensiveness of the assault on religion we are experiencing today. This is not decay; it is organized destruction. Secularists, and their allies among the “progressives,” have marshaled all the force of mass communications, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values.

These instruments are used not only to affirmatively promote secular orthodoxy, but also drown out and silence opposing voices, and to attack viciously and hold up to ridicule any dissenters.

One of the ironies, as some have observed, is that the secular project has itself become a religion, pursued with religious fervor. It is taking on all the trappings of a religion, including inquisitions and excommunication.

Those who defy the creed risk a figurative burning at the stake – social, educational, and professional ostracism and exclusion waged through lawsuits and savage social media campaigns.

The pervasiveness and power of our high-tech popular culture fuels apostasy in another way. It provides an unprecedented degree of distraction.

Part of the human condition is that there are big questions that should stare us in the face. Are we created or are we purely material accidents? Does our life have any meaning or purpose? But, as Blaise Pascal observed, instead of grappling with these questions, humans can be easily distracted from thinking about the “final things.”

Indeed, we now live in the age of distraction where we can envelop ourselves in a world of digital stimulation and universal connectivity. And we have almost limitless ways of indulging all our physical appetites.

There is another modern phenomenon that suppresses society’s self-corrective mechanisms – that makes it harder for society to restore itself.

In the past, when societies are threatened by moral chaos, the overall social costs of licentiousness and irresponsible personal conduct becomes so high that society ultimately recoils and reevaluates the path that it is on.

But today – in the face of all the increasing pathologies – instead of addressing the underlying cause, we have the State in the role of alleviator of bad fconsequences. We call on the State to mitigate the social costs of personal misconduct and irresponsibility.

So the reaction to growing illegitimacy is not sexual responsibility, but abortion.

The reaction to drug addiction is safe injection sites.

The solution to the breakdown of the family is for the State to set itself up as the ersatz husband for single mothers and the ersatz father to their children.

The call comes for more and more social programs to deal with the wreckage. While we think we are solving problems, we are underwriting them.

We start with an untrammeled freedom and we end up as dependents of a coercive state on which we depend.

Interestingly, this idea of the State as the alleviator of bad consequences has given rise to a new moral system that goes hand-in-hand with the secularization of society. It can be called the system of “macro-morality.” It is in some ways an inversion of Christian morality.

Christianity teaches a micro-morality. We transform the world by focusing on our own personal morality and transformation.

The new secular religion teaches macro-morality. One’s morality is not gauged by their private conduct, but rather on their commitment to political causes and collective action to address social problems.

This system allows us to not worry so much about the strictures on our private lives, while we find salvation on the picket-line. We can signal our finely-tuned moral sensibilities by demonstrating for this cause or that.

Something happened recently that crystalized the difference between these moral systems. I was attending Mass at a parish I did not usually go to in Washington, D.C. At the end of Mass, the Chairman of the Social Justice Committee got up to give his report to the parish. He pointed to the growing homeless problem in D.C. and explained that more mobile soup kitchens were needed to feed them. This being a Catholic church, I expected him to call for volunteers to go out and provide this need. Instead, he recounted all the visits that the Committee had made to the D.C. government to lobby for higher taxes and more spending to fund mobile soup kitchen.

A third phenomenon which makes it difficult for the pendulum to swing back is the way law is being used as a battering ram to break down traditional moral values and to establish moral relativism as a new orthodoxy.

Law is being used as weapon in a couple of ways.

First, either through legislation but more frequently through judicial interpretation, secularists have been continually seeking to eliminate laws that reflect traditional moral norms.

At first, this involved rolling back laws that prohibited certain kinds of conduct. Thus, the watershed decision legalizing abortion. And since then, the legalization of euthanasia. The list goes on.

More recently, we have seen the law used aggressively to force religious people and entities to subscribe to practices and policies that are antithetical to their faith.

The problem is not that religion is being forced on others. The problem is that irreligion and secular values are being forced on people of faith.

This reminds me of how some Roman emperors could not leave their loyal Christian subjects in peace but would mandate that they violate their conscience by offering religious sacrifice to the emperor as a god.

Similarly, militant secularists today do not have a live and let live spirit – they are not content to leave religious people alone to practice their faith. Instead, they seem to take a delight in compelling people to violate their conscience.

For example, the last Administration sought to force religious employers, including Catholic religious orders, to violate their sincerely held religious views by funding contraceptive and abortifacient coverage in their health plans. Similarly, California has sought to require pro-life pregnancy centers to provide notices of abortion rights.

This refusal to accommodate the free exercise of religion is relatively recent. Just 25 years ago, there was broad consensus in our society that our laws should accommodate religious belief.

In 1993, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act – RFRA. The purpose of the statute was to promote maximum accommodation to religion when the government adopted broad policies that could impinge on religious practice.

At the time, RFRA was not controversial. It was introduced by Chuck Schumer with 170 cosponsors in the House, and was introduced by Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch with 59 additional cosponsors in the Senate. It passed by voice vote in the House and by a vote of 97-3 in the Senate.

Recently, as the process of secularization has accelerated, RFRA has come under assault, and the idea of religious accommodation has fallen out of favor.

Because this Administration firmly supports accommodation of religion, the battleground has shifted to the states. Some state governments are now attempting to compel religious individuals and entities to subscribe to practices, or to espouse viewpoints, that are incompatible with their religion.

Ground zero for these attacks on religion are the schools. To me, this is the most serious challenge to religious liberty.

For anyone who has a religious faith, by far the most important part of exercising that faith is the teaching of that religion to our children. The passing on of the faith. There is no greater gift we can give our children and no greater expression of love.

For the government to interfere in that process is a monstrous invasion of religious liberty.

Yet here is where the battle is being joined, and I see the secularists are attacking on three fronts.

The first front relates to the content of public school curriculum. Many states are adopting curriculum that is incompatible with traditional religious principles according to which parents are attempting to raise their children. They often do so without any opt out for religious families.

Thus, for example, New Jersey recently passed a law requiring public schools to adopt an LGBT curriculum that many feel is inconsistent with traditional Christian teaching. Similar laws have been passed in California and Illinois. And the Orange County Board of Education in California issued an opinion that “parents who disagree with the instructional materials related to gender, gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation may not excuse their children from this instruction.”

Indeed, in some cases, the schools may not even warn parents about lessons they plan to teach on controversial subjects relating to sexual behavior and relationships.

This puts parents who dissent from the secular orthodoxy to a difficult choice: Try to scrape together the money for private school or home schooling, or allow their children to be inculcated with messages that they fundamentally reject.

A second axis of attack in the realm of education are state policies designed to starve religious schools of generally-available funds and encouraging students to choose secular options. Montana, for example, created a program that provided tax credits to those who donated to a scholarship program that underprivileged students could use to attend private school. The point of the program was to provide greater parental and student choice in education and to provide better educations to needy youth.

But Montana expressly excluded religiously-affiliated private schools from the program. And when that exclusion was challenged in court by parents who wanted to use the scholarships to attend a nondenominational Christian school, the Montana Supreme Court required the state to eliminate the program rather than allow parents to use scholarships for religious schools.

It justified this action by pointing to a provision in Montana’s State Constitution commonly referred to as a “Blaine Amendment.” Blaine Amendments were passed at a time of rampant anti-Catholic animus in this country, and typically disqualify religious institutions from receiving any direct or indirect payments from a state’s funds.

The case is now in the Supreme Court, and we filed a brief explaining why Montana’s Blaine Amendment violates the First Amendment.

A third kind of assault on religious freedom in education have been recent efforts to use state laws to force religious schools to adhere to secular orthodoxy. For example, right here in Indiana, a teacher sued the Catholic Archbishop of Indianapolis for directing the Catholic schools within his diocese that they could not employ teachers in same-sex marriages because the example of those same-sex marriages would undermine the schools’ teaching on the Catholic view of marriage and complementarity between the sexes.

This lawsuit clearly infringes the First Amendment rights of the Archdiocese by interfering both with its expressive association and with its church autonomy. The Department of Justice filed a statement of interest in the state court making these points, and we hope that the state court will soon dismiss the case.

Taken together, these cases paint a disturbing picture. We see the State requiring local public schools to insert themselves into contentious social debates, without regard for the religious views of their students or parents. In effect, these states are requiring local communities to make their public schools inhospitable to families with traditional religious values; those families are implicitly told that they should conform or leave.

At the same time, pressure is placed on religious schools to abandon their religious convictions. Simply because of their religious character, they are starved of funds – students who would otherwise choose to attend them are told they may only receive scholarships if they turn their sights elsewhere.

Simultaneously, they are threatened in tort and, eventually, will undoubtedly be threatened with denial of accreditation if they adhere to their religious character. If these measures are successful, those with religious convictions will become still more marginalized.

I do not mean to suggest that there is no hope for moral renewal in our country.

But we cannot sit back and just hope the pendulum is going to swing back toward sanity.

As Catholics, we are committed to the Judeo-Christian values that have made this country great.

And we know that the first thing we have to do to promote renewal is to ensure that we are putting our principles into practice in our own personal private lives.

We understand that only by transforming ourselves can we transform the world beyond ourselves.

This is tough work. It is hard to resist the constant seductions of our contemporary society. This is where we need grace, prayer, and the help of our church.

Beyond this, we must place greater emphasis on the moral education of our children.

Education is not vocational training. It is leading our children to the recognition that there is truth and helping them develop the faculties to discern and love the truth and the discipline to live by it.

We cannot have a moral renaissance unless we succeed in passing to the next generation our faith and values in full vigor.

The times are hostile to this. Public agencies, including public schools, are becoming secularized and increasingly are actively promoting moral relativism.

If ever there was a need for a resurgence of Catholic education – and more generally religiously-affiliated schools – it is today.

I think we should do all we can to promote and support authentic Catholic education at all levels.

Finally, as lawyers, we should be particularly active in the struggle that is being waged against religion on the legal plane.

We must be vigilant to resist efforts by the forces of secularization to drive religious viewpoints from the public square and to impinge upon the free exercise of our faith.

I can assure you that, as long as I am Attorney General, the Department of Justice will be at the forefront of this effort, ready to fight for the most cherished of our liberties: the freedom to live according to our faith.

Thank you for the opportunity to talk with you today. And God bless you and Notre Dame.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-william-p-barr-delivers-remarks-law-school-and-de-nicola-center-ethics

Welcome to the open thread! Wild times in Trumpland during Rocktober! At least we’re on that roller coaster together. We were SUPPOSED to get the OIG report today, but we have a little delay. No problem, President Trump is keeping us busy.

We never imagined he would be THIS GOOD, did we? He’s the President who makes grown men snicker from the payback he delivers. He’s the Boss. He’s in their head. They’re beaten. They’re confounded and don’t know what to do. It means….. we’re WINNING!! No pansies allowed, we have a President who fights back. He’s the President we prayed for, and he speaks for us.

#NervousNancy was the ONLY executive female in the room, and she rose to her feet and pointed her finger. HUGE loss. Horrible optics. She lost her composure, relapsed to a whiny and bitter woman. She stormed out of the room, for the SECOND time. She also left the room during Immigration discussions, remember? She’s no leader and she’s giving women a bad name….because Trump moved 28 soldiers in Syria?

She’s lost control of her caucus. The Squad endorsed Bernie, the Independent, which kills DCCC and DNC fundraising….. but they’re the radicals Nancy decided to sleep with… and she woke up with fleas. President Trump has turned over Nancy’s nest, and our honey badger doesn’t give a $hit.

https://media.giphy.com/media/yboglhGPhFi9y/giphy.gif

We’re in the Q Tree. You can say what you want, comment on what other people said, and so on. Free Speech is practiced here. ENJOY IT. Use it or lose it.

Keep it SOMEWHAT civil. Our rules began with the civility of the Old Treehouse, later to become the Wolverinian Empire, and one might say that we have RESTORED THE OLD REPUBLIC – the early high-interaction model of the Treehouse – except of course that Q discussion is not only allowed but encouraged, and speech is considerably freer in other ways. Please feel free to argue and disagree with the board owner, as nicely as possible.

Please also consider the Important Guidelines, outlined here in the January 1st open thread. Let’s not give the odious Internet Censors a reason to shut down this precious haven.

Yes, we are in perilous times. The Dems are trying to impeach our President for political reasons. We’re in an internal civil war, and we have a wartime President. We can’t let the swamp win. It’s time for the people to make a comeback.

When I met Big T, I was going through a John Lee Hooker phase, mandatory education for anyone living in the American south. He used to look at me kind of funny when I listened to this song, but “Bad, Like Jesse James” became his “going to trial court” theme song. Instant swagger. Yet there is another song, perfect for today, in honor of Nancy Pelosi called, “Mean, Mean Woman”

SPEAK THE FIVE WORDS BOLDLY TO OUR PRESIDENT! “I AM PRAYING FOR YOU!“ He needs out constant prayers.

We leave you with the landmark video of the week!

https://twitter.com/RepStevenSmith/status/1184451448228208640

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!