President Eisenhower's Farewell Speech Warned about Federal Overreach

President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Farewell Address, January 17, 1961.

My fellow Americans:

This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.

Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.

We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle--with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence--economic, political, even spiritual---is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in labaratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present--and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system-ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we--you and I, and our government--must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war--as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years--I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.

So--in this my last good night to you as your President--I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.

You and I--my fellow citizens--need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nations' great goals.

To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:

We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.


http://www.carrothers.com/eisenhower_farewell_address.htm

Soros using COVID-19 to push far-left policies

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 5:45 PM PT — Wednesday, May 6, 2020

As part of a new initiative, billionaire globalist George Soros is seeking to use the COVID-19 outbreak to enforce radical left policies in the U.S. The new program, called the “People’s Bailout,” brings together 1,000 far-left groups and unions, as well as 100 members of Congress.

According to Soros, the next virus relief package must be based off of “five principles.” These include provisions of the Green New Deal, a $15 minimum wage and regular cash payments to each person.
He added government unions and far-left groups must increase control in all spheres of life as part of the so-called “new normal.”
Soros is also under fire for his latest attack on religious liberty in the U.S.
In a recent statement, the Catholic League announced Soros-backed groups are leading a coordinated attack on the State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights. The league has said he is working to elevate LGBTQ and abortion groups instead.
 The commission was established last year by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to defend the freedom of religion in the U.S. and beyond. The Catholic League claimed Soros is attacking the church to enforce his far-left agenda of submission and control.

https://www.oann.com/soros-using-covid-19-to-push-far-left-policies/

In Dealing with Flynn, Comey’s FBI Acted Like the KGB

What happened to Flynn is quite simply an atrocity. Everyone responsible should lose their jobs, if Flynn’s lawyers betrayed their client they should be disbarred, and the whole crew of plotters should be hauled off to jail. And Flynn deserves his job back.

Christopher Roach for American Greatness

Michael Flynn was vindicated last week. While conservatives tend to be pro-law enforcement, here they are reminded of how the government’s criminal justice apparatus can be abused. The Russian collusion hoax weaponized our intelligence agencies and the FBI to spy on a political campaign and ruin the lives of numerous patriots, including decorated American general, Michael Flynn. 

Worse, documents obtained by Flynn’s new defense team show the absence of a crime—he apparently forgot some details in an interview with FBI agents, which to their minds became “obstruction” and “perjury”—but also show that the FBI knew there was no crime and still planned to entrap him through an ambush interview in the early days of the Trump administration. 

The Logan Act offense that justified his interview was a pretext; that law has been sitting on a shelf since 1799 and was dusted off to trap Flynn. Every journalist and lobbyist in Washington, D.C. is probably guilty of a violation. The real goal was to get him to talk to the FBI without counsel present, a situation that inevitably leads to some mix-ups and forgetfulness, so that he could be fired. 

Once removed, he would not be positioned to discover how much the Obama Administration had weaponized intelligence against domestic political enemies. With the threat of a long prison sentence hanging over him and his family, Flynn would then be positioned to work against Donald Trump.

Obama Holdovers Wanted to Use Flynn to Get to Trump

Flynn was not popular with the Obama Administration. He was critical of Obama’s Iran policy and, after leaving the military, became a conservative activist. 

According to a long profile in Politico, “Flynn warned that the United States was actually less safe from the threat of terrorism in 2014 than it was prior to the 9/11 attacks. In remarkably blunt comments for a general still in uniform, Flynn admitted to feeling like a lone voice inside an Obama administration that seemed to believe that the 2011 death of Osama bin Laden had signaled the end of radical Islamist terrorism as a seminal threat.” Everyone hates you when you’re right. 

The interview and charges against Flynn were contrary to all ordinary procedures. Holdover apparatchiks in the FBI, including the infamous Peter Strzok, made up the small clique running the Crossfire Hurricane investigation during 2016. They circumvented normal procedures to interview Flynn at the White House, asking about conversations they had already recorded and failing to alert him as to their investigative intent.

Recently released memos detail a “discussion that took place about Flynn, writing: ‘Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute or get him fired.’ No constructional protections were afforded Flynn, who was even advised by the FBI not to bring a lawyer when he was questioned by agents.” This was approved by FBI Director James Comey after agents engaged in electronic and other surveillance had reported on January 4, 2017, that Flynn was not working for Russia.

As someone who embarrassed the Obama Administration, Flynn functioned as a sacrificial lamb for Trump haters in the deep state. The hope also was to use him as a snitch, the usual modus operandi for federal law enforcement. They played hardball games more typically reserved for drug kingpins—threatening to indict family members and otherwise ruin the accused—until he broke and pleaded guilty to a single count of obstruction. 

Worse, his own lawyers may have misled him because they had a conflict of interest. The FBI claimed that Flynn should have registered as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and the same law firm handled these FARA paperwork filings in connection with Flynn’s private lobbying work. 

The special counsel’s prosecutors and Flynn’s former team of lawyers also withheld information from the court related to details surrounding the plea, contrary to their duties as attorneys. The details are still forthcoming, though much can be learned in Flynn’s recently filed motion to set aside his guilty plea. 

Entrapment Used Against an American Hero

This was all, quite simply, entrapment. The FBI is supposed to investigate crimes, not create them. Unfortunately, entrapment by federal law enforcement is fairly common. We don’t usually notice it very much, because most often the entrapped are extremely unsavory characters and few can have pity on them. 

The last Supreme Court case on entrapment, for example, involved child pornography; there, postal inspectors solicited the defendant many times for over a year until he took the bait. More recently, many of the high profile terrorist plots that were thwarted during the Bush years involved egging on mentally disturbed people to participate in plots dreamed up by their FBI counterparts. 

The FBI gave money, weapons, and encouragement to the unemployed and mentally ill Sami Osmakac, before foiling his “plot.” Right-wing terrorist Jerry Varnell was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, who had earlier been found “mentally incompetent by an Oklahoma Court.” But the news and the public mostly breathed a sigh of relief that “a terrorist plot was foiled.”

While it’s not quite as robust as popular culture would suggest, entrapment is still a defense. If someone is not disposed to commit a crime, the police do not have a mandate to push him to commit one he never otherwise would have committed. For example, the police can’t give a homeless person a million dollars and ask him to steal a car. In the case of Flynn, you can’t ask a bunch of confusing questions of someone about random subjects, and then take the slightest discrepancy to announce, “Gotcha!” Not only is it entrapment, but it fails the materiality test of the federal obstruction statute. 

As the federal jury instructions on entrapment put the matter, “The government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was not entrapped. Thus, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt either (1) that, before contact with law enforcement, the defendant was ready and willing or had a predisposition or prior intent to commit the offense, or (2) that the defendant was not induced or persuaded to commit the offense by law enforcement officers or their agents.” 

Here, setting aside the numerous problems with the ambush interview of Flynn, there is little doubt that Flynn was guilty, at most, of having a faulty memory of this call. 

The Whole Investigation Was Fake

Flynn is one of the many victims of the Russian collusion hoax. The feds also pursued low-level campaign volunteer George Papadopolous, even when he denied any collusion to confidential sources. (The FBI, of course, left this tidbit out of their FISA warrant applications.) 

Similarly, the FBI used fraudulently obtained FISA warrants to listen to Carter Page’s phone calls, read his emails, and pry into his life for nearly a year. Theytrashed him in the press, even though they knew with certainty he had previously assisted the FBI in a counterintelligence investigation, had helped the CIA as source, and was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. 

Flynn had an even more distinguished career. At the height of the war on terror, he was the head of intelligence for both the Joint Special Operations Command and the U.S. Central Command. He concluded his career as the three-star general director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. In 2014, he ran afoul of the Obama Administration, which wanted to downplay Islamic terrorism after the killing of Osama bin Laden. He became a critic of the administration from the outside, particularly for its Iran policy. His partisan tone miffed his colleagues, some of whom went on to criticize Trump inpartisan and unhinged ways. 

When Trump was nominated, Flynn eagerly accepted a White House offer to be a national security advisor. He and Trump agreed on the need to change the direction and tone of our foreign policy. This goal was no secret; it was a key distinguishing feature between Hillary Clinton and Trump. Hillary was the voice of the establishment, committed to the Obama legacy on foreign policy and much else. 

This is what elections are supposed to be about: a choice of the American people between people and policies. Instead, Flynn was set up—not for a crime, but to get him fired and in a position to help prosecutors snare Trump. They had nothing. They knew they had nothing. They didn’t care. They put their ideological goals above individualized justice. In the Soviet Union, this indifference to individual rights was grandiloquently labeled “class justice.”

It is hard to overstate the damage this has done to the country and the FBI’s reputation. Serious people are flirting with the idea that the FBI should beabolished altogether. In 2016 and 2017, the FBI (along with the NSA and CIA) perpetrated KGB-style interference with an orderly, peaceful transition of power after an election. Contrary to their self-image, they are not the conscience of the nation. They have no role in the “checks and balances” scheme of our political institutions. They are public servants, and they serve the executive branch in spite of their protests of independence. 

What happened to Flynn is quite simply an atrocity. Everyone responsible should lose their jobs, if Flynn’s lawyers betrayed their client they should be disbarred, and the whole crew of plotters should be hauled off to jail. And Michael Flynn deserves his job back.

China and the Crisis We Can’t Waste

The CCP’s preferred future is one no American will enjoy.

Adam Lowther & Robert Spalding for American Greatness

As more than 70,000 Wuhan virus victims are laid to rest across America, the time will soon come to place the blame squarely where it belongs—on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The media has already chronicled the malign acts of Xi Jinping’s regime, which hid and then minimized the danger of the virus. 

Some authors are already discussing the possibility for legal recourse against the People’s Republic of China (PRC). President Trump, however, should consider implementing a much more robust strategy that punishes the CCP and slows or stops its rise to global preeminence and efforts to remake the world order.

Although criticized by Republicans, Rahm Emanuel’s 2008 observation about the financial crisis was prescient: “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” 

For President Trump, the opportunity exists to arrest the global political and economic shift toward China by using diplomatic, informational, military, and economic tools of state aggressively to turn global opinion and preference back toward the United States and American values. 

First, the president should marshal American diplomacy to convince friends and allies in Asia and around the globe that a passive response to the CCP’s misconduct will only reward the kind of deceit that left several hundred thousand dead and laid waste to national economies around the world. 

There is no better time to turn the suffering and loss of so many into a unified effort against Communist China. A strong diplomatic effort to push back Chinese inroads across the globe will take less effort today that was needed before the pandemic. 

For much of the past 20 years, many in the American foreign policy establishment believed that the United States should support “China’s peaceful rise.” This view was a pipe dream built on hope and butterflies, rather than on a sober understanding of the CCP’s plan for maintaining power. To make China policy, one needs an understanding that the PRC is governed by old school authoritarians who see the United States as a threat that must be dealt with when the time is right.   

Second, the United States should take a whole of government approach to waging information warfare against the Chinese Communist Party in particular. The CCP is taking every opportunity to engage in its own information campaign to undermine the United States and make itself look like both a victim and a savior to other nations struggling with the Wuhan virus. 

Communist China’s widespread effort to use information operations to undermine U.S. interests is not new to the current pandemic. The CCP’s blatant deceit, nevertheless, may finally provide the opportunity President Trump needs to convince his political foes that the CCP is the threat he has long railed against. Perhaps then, the media, government, business, and other players in any information campaign can collaborate long enough to engage in a sustained effort to undermine the positive public opinion the CCP has garnered through its economic outreach over the past decade.  

Third, President Trump aggressively should counter the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) attempt to exploit the pandemic to further exert military poweragainst a democratic Taiwan and in the South China Sea. If the United States allows the CCP to topple forcibly a democratic Taiwanese government, which China intends to do if all else fails, and bring the island nation under the control of an authoritarian communist party, the United States will lose its status as the defender of democracy. 

Finally, the United States must quickly move to open and repair the U.S. economy while using every economic and legal tool possible to prevent the CCP from taking advantage of the economic harm the pandemic has caused in the United States. Moving manufacturing back to the United States, developing new trade agreements with Asian nations, and a willful effort to undermine the CCP’s economic interests should all be considered.

Ronald Reagan used economic tools to undermine the Soviet economy during the Cold War. It is time the United States stop viewing China as a benign government that simply seeks to improve the lives of its people. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

A global order led by an authoritarian PRC undoubtedly will prove hostile to American interests—something China is already working toward. This leaves the United States little choice but to seize the current opportunity to push back the CCP’s efforts to reshape the global balance of power. 

China’s preferred future is one no American will enjoy.    

Media Attack Gov. Kristi Noem For Not Panicking And Destroying Her State

The South Dakota governor rejected the mandatory government-forced shutdown. Now, the media claim her decisions were made out of emotion and naked ambition, not courage.

Mollie Hemingway writing at The Federalist

As the Coronavirus spread from Wuhan, China, to the United States, most governors quickly acquiesced to the media’s demand that they force a governmental shutdown of their states in order to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. The media continue to be heavily invested in the shutdown model, even as the country realizes that hospitals are nowhere close to being overwhelmed and, in fact, many hospital systems are furloughing doctors and nurses due to the mandatory cessation on handling most non-COVID-19 cases.

With the predicted hospital demands being dramatically off, the media’s goalposts have shifted violently from demanding a shutdown to “flatten the curve” of exponential growth that would overwhelm hospitals to demanding a continued shutdown to lower the number of COVID-19 deaths, no matter the consequences, including long-term economic damage, serious harm to the food supply, or death from other causes. While the media generally praise “government shutdown” politicians such as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo — who kept unsanitary subways running, forced people into deadly nursing homes, and demanded tens of thousands of ventilators he never used — they condemn politicians such as South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who has strongly encouraged social distancing measures but not used government force to accomplish public health goals. The media predicted that Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ more measured approach would result in horrific disaster. It hasn’t. Unlike Cuomo, DeSantis focused on nursing homes more than the low likelihood of transmission on big, sunny beaches.

The media sense that they will face less scrutiny for their preferred policy position if they can remove sane alternative policy approaches from the table. To that end, Noem and others who reject the mandatory, long-term, government-forced shutdown model as the preferred option for their states must be condemned. The media aren’t uniform in condemning alternate policy approaches, it should be noted. Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp is one of the media’s enemies for encouraging phased reopening of his state while Colorado’s Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, who is following the same approach, has not received similar media hatred. 

Whether it relates to sexual harassment claims, or Coronavirus policies, the media play by two different sets of rules. To get good coverage as a Republican, in this and all other storylines, one must typically condemn conservatives or President Donald Trump. Just ask Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, or Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, or Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan for more details on how to secure friendlier media coverage.

MSNBC’s histrionic Rachel Maddow devoted nearly a week of programming to condemning Noem in mid-April, around the time the Washington Post ran a piece of panic pornography headlined, “South Dakota’s governor resisted ordering people to stay home. Now it has one of the nation’s largest coronavirus hot spots.”

The article, which was tweeted out by the New York Times’ Ken Vogel, CNN’s Jake Tapper, NBC News’ Sahil Kapur, the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and many others, was written at the time that South Dakota had 6 deaths. As of May 3, the number had risen to 21. The outbreak was at a Smithfield pork processing facility that even the most stringent of state lockdowns would have deemed an essential business to allow to keep open in preservation of the country’s food supply.

Modelers predicted South Dakota would need 10,000 beds if no government order were put in place and nothing were done to stop the spread of Coronavirus. While no government stay-at-home order has been put in place and Noem has simply encouraged citizens of the state to make good decisions, the latest prediction is that the state will need a peak total of 127 beds on June 20. Noem argues that this shows her state’s population is properly practicing social distancing. The state was one of the first to launch a contact tracing application as well.

The latest media attack on Noem comes from out-of-state reporter Thomas Beaumont, filing from Iowa, and his colleague Stephen Groves, both of the Associated Press. It’s a bizarre piece. The article begins with an unflattering photograph of Noem, a difficult feat given how attractive the governor is. (Noem was rated the most beautiful member of Congress when she served in the House.)

The two men who wrote the article purport to get into the governor’s mind and ascertain that her policy goals are driven not by her leadership or rational decision making but by emotion and naked ambition. It is unclear why they believe they’re qualified to perform this type of analysis, much less how these men developed their theories about this woman’s political path. Courageous leadership is certainly a way to stand out, but comes with extremely high risk in our media environment, as articles such as this attest. It would seem that a more ambitious politician would attempt to find safety in the herd. They admit that the media politically oppose the governor but suggest that they’re not alone, “It’s not just the media who have questioned her approach,” they write.

The two men cite the mayor of Sioux Falls as a prominent Noem critic. They repeatedly cite the talking point that Mayor Paul TenHaken called for “sweeping stay-at-home orders,” which was true a few weeks ago. They do not note that he has since declined to institute a stay-at-home order for his own city, even after saying he was going to do so in mid-April.

During a historically tough year for Republicans, Noem’s winning of the state most politically famous for having previously produced Democratic Majority Leader Tom Daschle is redefined as “She won the governor’s office with just 51 percent of the vote in 2018.” Her opponent, the reporters forget to mention, was an extremely popular state senate leader.

Nowhere in the article is it mentioned that a Tax Foundation analysis shows that South Dakota has the lowest percentage in the country of a state’s workforce filing unemployment claims. Nowhere in the article is last week’s parade in honor of the governor mentioned. The parade featured hundreds of cars, and one horse.

The article has a few other factual problems. Without evidence, and in the face of contrary evidence, it suggests Noem is following Trump’s lead on mandatory shutdowns. His comments have been inconsistent but his administration has strongly supported government shutdowns and he himself has condemned Kemp for attempting to restart his state’s economy. The article falsely claims that there is no evidence that the veteran malaria drug is effective for Coronavirus treatment. While the effectiveness is hotly debated by doctors and researchers, multiple perspectives have evidence in support of their claims.

For her part, Noem seems unlikely to be bullied by media. In a Coronavirus update at the end of April, she told citizens, “As governor, I did not dictate to the people of South Dakota, tell people which activities are officially approved or not, or begin arresting, ticketing, or fining people for exercising their rights. Nor am I doing that today. I will, however, continue to lead and help South Dakota navigate a path forward in this uniquely difficult and challenging time.” 

Noem praised the prudent decision making of the people of South Dakota in the face of a global pandemic, saying it was them that make the state great, not the government. “The people of South Dakota are the source of the power and legitimacy of our government – not the media, not politicians and not political parties. That’s a healthy perspective for any elected official to keep in mind.”

In Celebration of the Mayflower Compact

Article by davenji in "RedState":

Signed by 41 Pilgrims in 1620, the Mayflower Compact will celebrate its 400th anniversary this year.  It represents the first in a series of founding documents which celebrated deliberate self-government in the New World.  This concept of self-government is at the heart of the American experiment.  It is more important on a historical basis than other more recent and publicized efforts and I’m looking at the 1619 Project as a prime example.

The Greeks may have started the idea the self-government, but it was in America that it was perfected.  Self-government, coupled with freedom, have defined this country since its founding.  It continues to inspire and motivate people around the world.  Is it any wonder that protesters in Hong Kong recently proudly displayed the American flag?

To recap, the Mayflower Compact did two things.  It first set out common goals: “the Glory of God, the Christian faith, and the honor of King and country.”  Translation: they wanted to succeed.  Secondly, they agreed to “…combine ourselves together into a civil body politic … and … enact … such just and equal laws … as shall be thought most meet [appropriate] and convenient for the general good of the colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.”  In this second part, they agreed to establish laws by common consent, then obey the laws they consented to.

It is certainly true that things went off the rails somewhat and that they almost destroyed the success of the colony for the “just and equal laws” brought about an early form of socialism.  More than Squanto and the Indians, the realization that they were killing their own chances was brought to light when William Bradford suggested capitalism- men were allowed to plant corn for their own consumption, rather than the “common good.”  The “common good” bred intense resentment, bitterness, and a profound sense of injustice.

Over the ensuing century, more colonists came and experimented in self-government.  Most of this occurred in New England.  Outside New England, most of the law was written by the British, or the colony’s sponsor.  For example, in 1701 William Penn composed a Charter of Liberties and Privileges for Pennsylvania.  But it was the existence of popular governments in New England that attracted more colonists elsewhere.

There were British attempts to stifle the desire for freedom and self-government.  The sponsors of the Carolina colony adopted an aristocratic “constitution” that failed to attract any colonists.  North and South Carolina saw a rise in colonists only after it was scrapped for something more democratic.  In 1686, the British imposed the autocratic “Dominion of New England” that almost caused a revolution and had to be scrapped after only three years.

It was only after the Crown and Parliament became more systematic in their suppression of self-rule that it led to events culminating in the Declaration of Independence in 1776.  That document echoed the sentiments of the Mayflower Compact when it said, “…“to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”  Soon thereafter, each state replaced its colonial government through popular conventions followed by relatively democratic state constitutions.  After victory, the country, in perhaps the most democratic decision-making effort in human history, created a Federal Constitution.  Here, men of modest means and, in some states, women and freed slaves, could send delegates to ratifying conventions.

They included an Article V allowing the people to control their own government through amendments to the Constitution.  It even allowed the people to bypass elected officials by permitting state legislatures to trigger a convention for amending the Constitution.  The amendment process created the Bill of Rights, the emancipation of slaves, and citizenship rights for all Americans.

The tradition and the ghost of the Mayflower Compact extended beyond our founding and was carried into the West with the best example being the establishment of the Republic of Texas in 1836.   Long before federal officials took control over vast swaths of western territories, miners, prospectors and cattle ranchers had established effective control and democratic institutions on their own.

This is in no way an attempt to lessen the importance of slavery in American history.  However, making it and its aftermath the central focus of American history, as the 1619 Project attempts, is sheer history revisionism better left to the likes of Howard Zinn.  Slavery is nowhere near as important as the concept of self-government started by the Mayflower Compact.  Most of the American colonies were founded in states that partially or wholly rejected slavery.  And as time passed, those states became more populous and prosperous.  At the height of slavery- 1860- slaves composed 13% of the population and slaveowners a mere 8%.

That, my friends, is why freedom and self-government eventually overwhelmed servitude.  The Left can take the 1619 Project and stick it, proverbially, where the sun does not shine.

https://www.redstate.com/diary/davenj1/2020/05/06/in-celebration-of-the-mayflower-compact/

Poll: 78 Percent of College Students Want to Restrict ‘Threatening’ Ideas

 
Article written by Yuichiro Kakutani in "The Washington Free Beacon":

More than three-in-four college students want "safe spaces" on their campuses that are free of "threatening actions, ideas, or conversations," even as a majority support President Trump's threat to withhold taxpayer dollars from universities that restrict speech, according to a new poll.

While 97 percent of college students believe that free speech is an essential pillar of American democracy, a significant majority of students also support policies to restrict specific types of speech on campus. The poll, conducted by Gallup and the Knight Foundation, found that 78 percent of students support "safe spaces" where threatening ideas and conversations would be barred. More than 80 percent favor the establishment of a "free-speech zone" where preapproved protests and the distribution of literature are permitted.

In response to growing concerns about academic freedom on campuses, the Trump administration ordered all federally funded universities to protect free speech on campus. University administrators denounced the move, with the president of Columbia University calling it a "transparent exercise in politics." Most students support the Trump administration's decision, however, with 58 percent of pupils supporting a ban on federal funding for colleges that do not protect free-speech rights.

The survey—which polled 3,319 college students, aged 18 to 24, from 24 different schools—also found that 63 percent of students feel that their campus climates deter students from expressing themselves openly, up from 54 percent in 2016. The students say that conservative students experience greater barriers to openly expressing their opinion in public, with Democrats feeling more comfortable than Republicans about sharing dissenting views in class.

Evette Alexander, director of learning and impact at the Knight Foundation, said that survey respondents felt greater pressure from their peers, rather than their professors, about voicing their dissenting opinions.

"We understand that [pressure] mostly comes from peers," Alexander said. "The professors would be open to hearing different thoughts, but the people who feel uncomfortable usually have a point of view that doesn't align with the most vocal students in the room. And so they feel like by speaking up, they would expose themselves to retaliation."

The poll's findings are reflective of the climate of many American campuses where dissenters are finding it difficult to voice their opinions. Data compiled by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education have logged seven attempts to disinvite speakers from universities in 2020. The targeted speakers include a wide range of figures, from conservative commentator Ben Shapiro to Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong. Students have also occasionally mounted violent protests to shut down outside speakers, as Middlebury College students did when the school hosted Charles Murray, a libertarian social scientist, in 2017.

Conservative student groups see a direct link between the push for safe spaces and censorship on campus. Spencer Brown, a spokesman for Young America's Foundation, a conservative activism group, said that universities often create safe spaces explicitly to shut down viewpoints that break from liberal orthodoxy.

"In almost every case, safe spaces are set up in response to a conservative speaker visiting campus," he said. "The powers that be at a given school issue trigger warnings to spook students, offer them a safe space to hide from harmless words, and ensure that the coddled minds of impressionable youth don't hear a conservative idea that, God forbid, might make them reconsider the leftist ideas they're all too often force-fed in the classroom."

Students have an expansive understanding of speech that should be prohibited in a campus environment. While 88 percent of students support restrictions on the use of offensive racial slurs, 71 percent of students also want restrictions on "costumes that stereotype certain racial or ethnic groups." Slightly less than half of students also want to restrict the display of pornographic posters from dorm rooms and 17 percent of pupils would impose restrictions on the distribution of Christian pamphlets on campus.

While students support specific policies restricting free speech, most students say they support the principle of free speech and the right to express political views on campus. More than four-in-five students prefer a campus environment that exposes students to all types of speech while 19 percent want to prohibit "offensive or biased" speech.

https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/poll-78-percent-of-college-students-want-to-restrict-threatening-ideas/ 

The Senate Records Charade

Joe’s request for a review of the Senate records was never going to happen. And chances are good Team Biden knew that going in.

Patriot Retort

On the day of his disastrous interview with Mika Brzezinsky, Joe Biden’s Team tweeted out a copy of the letter to the Secretary of the Senate — purportedly written by their guy – requesting a search of Senate records for any complaint filed by Tara Reade.

Well, today, the Secretary of the Senate responded saying the office has “no discretion to disclose any such information.”  Laws passed by Congress prohibit any public dissemination of Senate records.

“Based on the law’s strict confidentiality requirements (Section 313) and the Senate’s own direction that disclosure of Senate Records is not authorized if prohibited by law [snip] Senate Legal Counsel advises that the Secretary has no discretion to disclose any such information as requested in Vice President Biden’s letter of May 1.”

What a shock.

Joe goes to the one place that, by law, can’t comply with his request.

I can’t be the only one thinking this was intentional.

You don’t think Team Biden knew that requesting Senate records was a legal non-starter? I’m thinking they knew going in that this was going to be the Secretary of the Senate’s response.

It’s easy for Joe Biden to claim that Tara Reade has a right to have her accusation investigated when he (or more likely his Team) knew there was no way to actually investigate her claim.

But they played along with the charade in order to A) feign transparency and B) try (once again) to put the story behind them.

Now Dirty Digit Joe can say, “Drat my luck that those Senate records are off limits.  But at least I tried.”

The news media can now say “Biden has been transparent. He requested the Senate records be searched. There’s nothing more he can do. It’s time to move on.”

Democrats can echo this claim and praise Biden for his transparency which will naturally reaffirm for them their belief in Biden’s denial.

Meanwhile, none of them will press Biden any further on his archives housed at the University of Delaware. Records he could, if he chose, make available for review. No law is barring that. Which is probably why he isn’t offering those archives up to show how transparent he is.

This Senate records dog and pony show was about obfuscation, not transparency.

Lucky for Biden, the Democrats and the news media are more than happy to play along.

Coral Sea, the forgotten battle that saved America

Article written by Robert Arvay in "The American Thinker":

Seventy-eight years ago this week, (May 4–8, 1942) the United States Navy, despite being outnumbered and outgunned, repelled a large Japanese invasion fleet in the Battle of the Coral Sea, just east and north of Australia.  It was the first naval battle in history in which the opposing fleets never came within sight of each other.  All of the fighting was done when aircraft from both opposing fleets attacked the other's ships and planes.

That distinction (of being first) is often credited to the later, and more famous, Battle of Midway, but it rightly belongs to the brave men who fought, many of whom died, in the Coral Sea.

Because of the courage and sacrifice of undaunted American warriors, two Japanese aircraft carriers were put out of action, with a third, smaller Japanese carrier sunk.  However, there was a great cost.  The United States lost the aircraft carrier USS Lexington and two other ships, with heavy loss of life.  At the time, the Allies regarded the battle as a disappointing defeat, but history was to reveal a brighter outcome.

Had the U.S. lost the battle, it likely might have lost the subsequent Battle of Midway, opening the path to a Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor and even the U.S. mainland.  Instead, the USS Yorktown, significantly damaged in the Coral Sea, managed to return to Pearl Harbor in time to be repaired and fight, and to sink two of the four carriers that the Japanese lost at Midway.

Why should we commemorate this battle this month?  Few, if any, of the men who fought there have survived the intervening years.  Twenty-year-old sailors in 1942 are ninety-eight this year.  With their passage, living memory of the event will have vanished, and the events of those few days of blood and fire will, as do all such events, vanish into the pages of history books.  We will have lost the last personal connection with it, and with them.

There is the proverbial poem, For Want of a Nail (the kingdom was lost), which also brings to mind a saying I am sure someone must have authored: "All wars are won or lost by a single soldier."  Many times, throughout history, one, or very few, warriors stood their ground, when others would have fled the battle; these few turned the tide from defeat to victory.  History was altered.  So it was at Coral Sea.

We may never know the full story.  At Coral Sea, pilots took off from their carriers, some never to return, never to be seen or heard from again.  It is known that they encountered the enemy, because enemy pilots also were lost at that time, in that area.  One American pilot, his dive bomber severely damaged, radioed in to report that his bomb had hit an enemy ship.  He wanted it to be known, before he died, not only to get personal credit, but more so that an enemy aircraft carrier had suffered significant damage and need not be feared.

Coral Sea represents the horseshoe nail that the Japanese Empire lost.  It led to a sequence of events that, despite enormous losses of life for the Allies, prevented the Japanese assault on Australia, severed its threat to Hawaii and California, and finally resulted in the Japanese surrender.

By commemorating such acts of heroism, we turn to the imminent, next pages of history, yet blank, that will be written in the future about our present-day warriors.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/05/coral_sea_the_forgotten_battle_that_saved_america.html 

Walls Closing In Around FBI Director Chris Wray as Documents Show His Enabling of Corrupt FBI Objectives

An interesting article from Fox News asks the question of whether Mueller’s special counsel attorney Brandon Van Grack misled Judge Sullivan in the Flynn case by not being forthcoming about the background documents under the DOJ Brady obligation.

Additionally, as a consequence of the Flynn evidence discoveries people are now asking why the FBI and DOJ did not produce these documents earlier.  Representative Jim Jordan is specifically asking these questions of current FBI Director Chris Wray.

In response to the Fox News article the FBI has released a statement which itself is very interesting.  Apparently the FBI Director is trying to dig himself and his institution out of a hole; but it is only getting worse.  First, here’s the follow-up from the FBI.

[FOX NEWS] – After this article was published, the FBI provided a statement to Fox News saying that under Wray’s leadership, the bureau had turned over relevant Flynn materials to the U.S. attorney probing possible FBI criminal misconduct during the Trump probe, John Durham — but the FBI didn’t say when exactly the handoff happened.

“Under Director Wray’s leadership, the FBI has fully cooperated and been transparent with the review being conducted by U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen, just as it has been with U.S. Attorney John Durham and was with Inspector General Michael Horowitz,” the statement read.

The FBI continued: “With regard to certain documents in the Michael Flynn matter from the 2016-2017 time period that are now the subject of reporting by the press, the FBI previously produced those materials to the Inspector General and U.S. Attorney Durham. The Flynn investigation was initiated and conducted during this time period, under prior FBI leadership.

Since taking office, Director Wray has stressed the importance of strictly abiding by established processes, without exception. Director Wray remains firmly committed to addressing the failures under prior FBI leadership while maintaining the foundational principles of rigor, objectivity, accountability, and ownership in fulfilling the Bureau’s mission to protect the American people and defend the Constitution.” (link)

The FBI statement is factually flawed on many levels and substantively false on the specifics.

“With regard to certain documents in the Michael Flynn matter from the 2016-2017 time period that are now the subject of reporting by the press, the FBI previously produced those materials to the Inspector General and U.S. Attorney Durham.

Notice how this part of the statement does not say the exculpatory documents were turned over to the Special Counsel (they were).  Also notice how Wray is attempting to deflect the timing by saying they were produced to the IG and Durham.

U.S. Attorney John Durham didn’t enter the picture until May 2019, as instructed by newly confirmed AG Bill Barr.  So what was the FBI doing with those documents prior to Durham in 2017 and 2018?

The prosecution of Flynn started mid-2017; and Chris Wray knew of the specific misconduct within the FBI at the same time.  Remember, Wray removed James Baker from official duty as FBI legal counsel in December 2017 [LINK] approximately three weeks after the corrupt and coerced Flynn guilty plea on November 30th.

FBI Director Wray allowed James Baker remained in the FBI, in some unknown capacity, through May 4, 2018, when Baker officially resigned [LINK]  By late December 2017 Wray clearly knew several FBI officials were participants in a multitude of corrupt schemes, including the prosecution of Michael Flynn.

The sheer volume of removals from the FBI outlines the extent of Chris Wray’s knowledge. Think about it….

FBI Agent Peter Strzok was removed; FBI lawyer Lisa Page was removed; FBI counsel James Baker was removed; FBI public relations officer Michael Kortan was removed; and eventually FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was removed.  All of these removals surrounded discovery of their corrupt and political activity in 2016, 2017 and early 2018….

…But the evidence was not provided to the Flynn defense until April 2020?

Let’s not forget in July 2018, a full year after FBI Director Chris Wray took over leadership, the FBI lied to the FISA court about the Carter Page FISA application; and the DOJ/FBI made the ridiculous claim the FISA application was still adequately predicated.

So it seems more than a little ridiculous for FBI Director Chris Wray to justify the hidden documents by saying the FBI did turn them over to John Durham (2019) and/or AUSO Jeff Jensen in 2020; when he held back the evidence in 2017, 2018, while the underlying activity was being discovered.

Also don’t forget the original purpose of U.S. Attorney John Lausch (Chicago), yeah, remember him?  In 2018 John Lausch’s entire function was to produce documents.

Additionally, if the FBI did factually turn over all of these documents to Inspector General Michael Horowitz while three distinct IG investigations were ongoing, then how did the IG claim they could find “no evidence of political bias”, when the explosive documents – specifically the Bill Priestap notes – show direct evidence of biased intent?  What does that say about the fidelity of the Inspector General?

Lastly, again the construct of the Mueller investigation being used as a shield surfaces.  Not only did the corrupt Mueller probe control various elements within the DOJ and FBI, but the Mueller probe as an “ongoing investigation”, shielded those documents from sunlight and discovery.

Again, Chris Wray pointing out how his institution turned over documents and evidence to Durham (2019/2020) and Horowitz doesn’t reconcile with how his FBI participated in the corrupt Mueller investigation; and it does not seem accidental in today’s defense Director Wray mysteriously omits outlining prior FBI document production to the special counsel team.