Sunday, June 14, 2020

MAGA boat parade to Downtown Detroit celebrates President Trump’s 74th birthday


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If Derek Chauvin Is Acquitted of Killing George Floyd, He Could Become a VERY Wealthy Man

 Wife of Derek Chauvin, officer charged with murder in George ...
Article by Clint Fargeau in "RedState":

In journalism classes, students are told again and again: “Never … EVER … refer to someone as a ‘murderer’ or say a suspect ‘killed’ or ‘murdered’ the victim until he is convicted of the crime. Always used qualifiers such as ‘accused of murder’ and the like.”

This is solid advice. If a journalist calls a defendant a “murderer” in front of the world, and then the defendant is *acquitted*, the journalist and his publication have a nasty problem. The erstwhile defendant can sue their butts into bankruptcy for libel. All he must do is hold up the “murderer” article in one hand–which is now a blatant lie and aspersion, legally speaking–and the certificate from a court and a jury of his peers saying that he is NOT a murderer in the other hand. Game over.

That’s when the (former) journalist and his (insolvent) newspaper give the guy all their dollars and beg his pardon. As it turns out, the argument ‘But we all know he really did it!’ carries surprisingly little weight in a civil libel suit.

It’s appalling how many publications are printing and broadcasting that former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin “murdered” George Floyd, when a trial hasn’t even begun–appalling both because of the risk to the publications and because of the utter disregard for the presumption of innocence. It’s one thing to hold a firm opinion in one’s heart about Chauvin or to convict him of a crime in casual conversation with a friend; but quite another to state it to thousands of readers or millions of viewers.

Here’s the cherry so far, from Spiked writer Moses Dube in his article entitled–I kid you not–‘Why did nobody stop George Floyd’s murder?‘:

There is a very troubling issue at the heart of the brutal murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin which has received very little mention. Numerous people filmed the killing, while half a dozen people stood by to watch Chauvin compress a black man’s neck and spine with his knee for minutes after he had lost consciousness, eventually killing him….

Yikes! Is Dube a Russian roulette player? Are he and his editor–who REALLY ought to know better–secretly hoping to commit financial harakiri? ‘Precarious’ doesn’t even begin to describe the legal limb Dube has crawled out on here. The oddest part is, Dube could have made his overall point quite easily without the potentially libelous rant. It’s sloppy thinking and sloppier journalism.
Pundits are so focused on signaling breathless, pious outrage about the death of Floyd–lest an anti-halo of racism descend upon them and provoke cancellation by the mob–that they have forgotten to keep their facts straight and their butts covered.

Dube and the parachute-less skydiving journalist brigade might not have heard, but trials don’t always end as one expects. New medical evidence sometimes comes to light, or new videos demonstrating hitherto-unknown circumstances crop up. Sometimes a jury simply decides they don’t like the prosecutor and acquits the defendant out of spite–a distinct possibility with the politically toxic and simpering Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison in charge. At other times, inspectors mishandle evidence or an arrest, and the defendant gets set free on a technicality before jury selection even begins.

To give just one example, few members of the press and public dreamed a jury would acquit the LAPD officers who used their batons to subdue Rodney King in 1991. But the jury did acquit them–because the jury saw video the public never got to see. Similar twists in the George Floyd case could see Derek Chauvin set free. His exoneration may not appear likely; but it is far from impossible. Remember: the public haven’t even seen the body camera footage from the four police officers yet.

If Chauvin should walk free unconvicted, he will probably spend the rest of his life selecting the wealthiest publications who branded him a “murderer” who “killed George Floyd” and suing them one by one until he decides he has nowhere left to stack the pallets of free money. (Dube and Spiked probably would get lucky: neither have obviously deep pockets, and nobody really pays attention to what Spiked or Dube have to say.)

Remember Nick Sandmann, the MAGA-hat kid who sued CNN, the Washington Post, and a bunch of other organizations for defamation after they falsely characterized him on the news and in print as a racist delinquent? Sandmann has made bank with several large settlements already; but nothing that was said about Sandmann draws even close to the media’s characterization of Chauvin as ‘sadistic, bigoted murderer of a civil-rights saint’. The damages Chauvin would be able to show to his life, livelihood, and reputation dwarf Sandmann’s by orders of magnitude.

If Sandmann can sue CNN for $250 million … what could an exonerated Derek Chauvin expect? The figures boggle the mind.

I’m not going to go into the weeds and dissect Chauvin’s case, or take odds on his acquittal. Others with more knowledge of legal minutiae than I are on that job:

I will only observe as I close that the journalists and opinionators who are treating Chauvin’s guilt as a fait accompli for brownie points and self-protection are gifting Chauvin’s defense team a strong argument for dismissal, and one they will almost certainly make soon.

After all, how can any court guarantee Chauvin a fair and impartial trial, when every potential juror in the United States already has been told by opinion makers in no uncertain terms that Chauvin is already guilty?

https://www.redstate.com/diary/clint-fargeau/2020/06/13/if-derek-chauvin-is-acquitted-of-killing-george-floyd-he-could-become-a-very-wealthy-man/
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CHAZ Is Like the Paris Commune, But With Less Voting and More Privilege

 
Article by Tyler O'Neil in "PJMedia":

When antifa militants and fellow-travelers took over six blocks of Seattle, Wash., and established a rogue state called the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), the Islamic State (ISIS) and the Paris Commune came to mind. Both involved seizing power and territory for largely ideological goals and both proved destructive of public property. ISIS has been far more bloodthirsty and more unified than either CHAZ or the Paris Commune, however.

Like the Paris Commune, CHAZ claims to represent the people and aspires to bring about a new anarcho-communist utopia. In fact, the Paris Commune’s proto-socialism later inspired Karl Marx, and Marx referred to the commune as an example of the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” The Paris Commune also consciously echoed the Jacobin Terror of the French Revolution, an era of expunging the old order by renaming even the days of the week and the months of the year. CHAZ oozes with this spirit.

Yet CHAZ is also far less serious and less organized than the Paris Commune. It appears Seattle’s antifa have erected a Paris Commune but without the pesky voting and with far more privilege and lenience from the authorities.

The Paris Commune

Before the Germans lost both World War I and World War II, they won an important but mostly forgotten war known as the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871). At the time, Germany was divided into different kingdoms. Prussia united most of the German kingdoms before and during the war with France, dethroning the French who had been the dominant European power in the 1700s and the Napoleonic Wars. After winning the Franco-Prussian War, the Prussians officially inaugurated the German Empire at the Palace of Versailles — a powerful symbol of their domination. The World War I Treaty of Versailles was in part a retribution for this historic slight.

The Paris Commune began in this context, spearheaded by the Paris National Guard. The National Guard dated back to the French Revolution of 1789, and French Emperor Napoleon III ordered the National Guard to defend Paris during the Seige of Paris in 1870. Working-class radicals in the National Guard helped defend the city but also pushed for reforms during the siege. The Germans defeated France in three different theaters, and it was clear France had lost the war. Even so, when negotiations for an armistice began at Versailles, the National Guard felt betrayed.

Emperor Napoleon III was deposed and France held national elections, leading to the Third Republic under Adolphe Thiers. The new government wanted a constitutional monarchy, while the National Guard very much did not.

The National Guard moved to seize power in Paris, setting up an alternate government to the Third Republic. At the same time, the 20 mayors of Paris attempted to take charge of the city, and they tried to negotiate with Thiers, who refused their less radical demands. The National Guard effectively brushed the mayors aside.

The guard held elections under the principle of universal male suffrage. Defenders of the social order chose not to vote, so the elections resulted in a very radical Paris government. Yet the radicals did not agree on what they wanted.

Two basic factions dominated the Paris Commune: anarchists inspired by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and followers of socialist Louis Blanc. The Proudhonists wanted an anti-state, where men were not coerced but freely governed themselves. The Blancists and their allies, the neo-Jacobins, looked to the Terror during the French Revolution as a model. They wanted a revolutionary dictatorship to use force to change society.

The anarchists only wanted to control Paris; they would let Theirs and the Third Republic govern the rest of France. The socialists knew that war with Thiers was inevitable and they wanted control in order to remake society.

The Paris Commune undertook many social reforms. It canceled debt from the siege, restored pay for the National Guard, restored the old Jacobin calendar, gave women more rights, abolished the death penalty, and rejected the 1789 Revolution’s Tricolor Flag, replacing it with the Red Flag of socialism. The Commune only took in half as much in taxes as it spent in expenses, and the government divided over whether or not to seize the bank in Versailles. Instead, they got a loan from Thiers, in a move that Marx would condemn.

The commune went through four different governments, ultimately dominated by a Committee of Public Safety, as in the Terror. The commune deposed General Gustave Cluseret following a false report that a major fort had fallen. Later, while the Third Republic army was conquering Paris, the commune spent its time prosecuting Cluseret rather than fighting back.

The Third Republic ultimately crushed the Paris Commune, and the commune leaders, knowing the end was near, torched as much of Paris as they could. They executed prisoners, including the Archbishop of Paris. They burned the Tuilleries Palace, which remained a smoldering ruin after Thiers restored order.

The Third Republic mercilessly quashed the Paris Commune, taking almost no prisoners but executing those who surrendered. Thiers’ inability to compromise led Georges Clémenceau, who led the Paris Mayors, to say he felt “caught between two madmen.” Yet Paris Mayor Jules Ferry celebrated the fall of the Commune, writing, “I may be a liberal, a lawyer and a republican, but to my eyes, watching these reprisals is like watching the sword of the archangel” of God restoring order.

CHAZ

The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone echoes some small part of this history, but it pales in comparison to the size and legitimacy of the Paris Commune. While the Paris Commune was always a rebellion against an elected national government, at least it had the decency to hold popular elections.

CHAZ is tiny, but the six Seattle blocks reportedly include about 500 homes. Residents have complained about the antifa militants seizing their property, blocking their freedom of movement, and claiming to represent them without ever taking a vote.

One resident feared to give more than his first name. “You can see for yourself, you can see that we don’t have the right to vote for stuff here anymore,” Brandon told the Daily Caller. “You can see the demands when they say that we want the pensions away from every police officer in Seattle. They took our rights away. That’s not okay. It’s not political. It’s just not okay.”

CHAZ has engaged in a form of taxation without representation. The rebels launched a shakedown racket in order to force local businesses to provide supplies. The rapper Raz Simone has reportedly installed himself as warlord because as one rebel of CHAZ put it, “he has all the guns.” Simone is reportedly attempting to enforce borders and prevent people from entering CHAZ without identification, although Simone himself disputes the “warlord” designation.

Whether or not he is a “warlord,” Simone may not hold any sort of power for long, due to some offensive tweets from 2010. If cancel culture is to be applied evenly, the warlord will find himself canceled.

In fact, it seems no one is quite sure who exactly is in charge of CHAZ. In a scuffle about removing the signs reading “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone,” one woman asked, “Is anyone in charge here?” A man appears to have responded with something like, “This ain’t a damn democracy here!”

While the divisions in the Paris Commune actually meant something — harsher state control in order to push socialism or less state control to achieve utopia; an aggressive military stance against Thiers or a strategy to pursue peace with the Republic while preserving the independence of Paris — the divisions in CHAZ seem to revolve around the question of whether or not this is just a protest.

CHAZ is, to some degree, a rebellion aspiring to be a protest. The rebels seem more intent on changing American society than they are on setting up an autonomous state that will exist in perpetuity, but by declaring themselves outside the purview of the United States they are legally rebels. In fact, Townhall’s Julio Rosas reported that a packet circulating in CHAZ presented suggestions about the way forward: “Permanently taking over the East Precinct, move the zone to another location, or to dissolve the zone completely.”

CHAZ can’t even decide whether or not it should exist.

While CHAZ has some of the same anarchy and confusion as the Paris Commune, it lacks a true sense of embattled bravery. In fact, the rebels in CHAZ enjoy immense privilege.

As President Donald Trump urged Gov. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) and Mayor Jenny Durkan (D-Seattle) to quash the rebellion and restore order, the Democrats defended the new nation of CHAZ as a “peaceful” protest and a sign of “patriotism.” In fact, Durkan insisted that it would be “illegal” and “unconstitutional” for the U.S. government to put down an open rebellion in Seattle. (She may want to tell that to Abraham Lincoln.) Durkan even compared the illegal attacks on Seattle citizens to the “Summer of Love.”

Durkan and Inslee have refused to take action despite the fact that police insist their “9-1-1 response time is triple what it was. We have people being assaulted, we have people who need an emergency response, and it’s taking us fifteen-plus minutes to get there.”

In fact, CHAZ is so privileged, residents called the Seattle Fire Department to come extinguish a dumpster fire just outside the “autonomous zone.”

CHAZ may seem a laughing matter — and some of its divisions and confusions are indeed quite humorous — but the “autonomous zone” is undermining law and order — and the normal functions of society — in a central part of a major American city.

If President Donald Trump invokes the Insurrection Act like George H.W. Bush did in the 1992 Los Angeles riots, he should direct the National Guard to clear the area and help local police restore law and order but with as few casualties as possible. Legally, CHAZ is a rebellion against the United States, but Trump needs to be careful not to turn these lawless rebels into martyrs.

Law and order must be restored, and those whose homes are besieged by an occupying force may see National Guard forces as “the sword of the archangel” like Jules Ferry did. But Trump should also be wary of the response of Clémenceau, who described both sides in the Paris Commune as “madmen.”

Trump is right to call for law and order, and he should act. But he should do so carefully.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/tyler-o-neil/2020/06/13/chaz-is-like-the-paris-commune-but-with-less-voting-and-more-privilege-n526365
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Biden renews gun control push on 4th anniversary of Pulse nightclub massacre

Joe Biden released a statement to mark the fourth year since the Pulse nightclub shooting in Florida. However, he’s now facing backlash for what he omitted from that statement. One America's Bobby Dupree explains.


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Happy Birthday to


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Happy...



"If one, then, asks me the meaning of our flag, I say to him, It means just what Concord and Lexington meant, what Bunker Hill meant; it means the whole glorious Revolutionary War, which was, in short, the rising up of a valiant young people against an old tyranny, to establish the most momentous doctrine that the world had ever known - the right of men to their own selves and to their liberties." 

~ Henry Ward Beecher

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President Trump Delivers Remarks to 2020 West Point Graduates


Yesterday President Trump delivered remarks at the 2020 United States Military Academy at West Point Graduation Ceremony. 


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WH Economic Advisor Kevin Hassett: No Correlation Between Economic Reopening and COVID Statistics


White House Chief Economic Advisor to President Trump, Kevin Hassett, discusses the status of the U.S. economy and the difference between Red State and Blue State economic growth.  As Hassett notes the Blue states have an intention to hold down the economy.

Always the happy warrior, Hassett walks through the data of tracking COVID-19 cases and notes there is no correlation between the level of economic activity in an area, region or state and the scale of positive test results for the virus.  This is a key point.

On the potential for a phase-4 economic relief package, Mr. Hassett notes any legislative action requested by the White House would be very detailed and targeted down to specific tax policy for specific industry. There is no spending package being considered by the White House; instead they are looking at targeted tax relief to assist.  WATCH:


On a completely unrelated note Kevin Hassett is the kind of common sense advisor that all presidents’ would be fortunate to work with.  He approaches the issues from a very pragmatic and reasonable direction, and is not prideful about saying a policy impact is unknown and should be monitored and adjusted in real time.  We’re lucky to have him.



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U.S. Embassy Seoul, Ambassador Harry Harris, Posts Banner In Support of Black Lives Matter


The U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea (ROK) is Harry Harris.  The U.S. Embassy in Seoul, South Korea, has posted a banner on the building in support of Black Lives Matter.  [Source]


At first blush it might seem a little disconcerting for the U.S. Department of State to be advocating on issues of political divisiveness around the BLM agenda; however, the BLM banner has simply replaced the rainbow banner (support of the LGBTQ community).  In essence, the U.S. embassy in Korea is always advocating for social justice causes.

Ambassador Harry Harris likes to draw attention to himself and insert himself in the conversation whenever possible.  Well known as an effeminate ambassador, Harry Harris enjoys parading around while politically twerking his social justice bona-fides to the global community as a way to engage in his own brand of U.S. diplomacy.

The diplomatic cocktail corps; unique ASEAN members who enjoy white wine spritzers & luncheons of crust-less triangle sandwiches; like Harry Harris very much.  Moon Jae-In is the South Korean version of President Obama.  President Moon Jae-in loves Harry Harris.





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Ideological Pentagon vs. A Pragmatic Commander in Chief


This is a little lengthy of a discussion, but it touches upon something very relevant to this election cycle.  Author Diana West discusses a network and pattern of ideology within the modern pentagon leadership, and how a worldview is threatened by President Trump. The interview and discussion is below.

The conversation necessarily gets in the weeds and is filled with unique insight into a very complex alignment. However, in the big picture it’s not difficult to figure out why the Pentagon would be opposed to Trump.  During the campaign and early administration President Trump’s expressed foreign policy was viewed by NATO alliance members as a threat.  The same type of perspective applies internally to the U.S. military.

President Trump’s preferred use of economic warfare makes the Pentagon’s role diminished. Instead of punching North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, President Trump hits the checkbook of Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping.  The primary has become the contingency. The value of James Mattis replaced by the effectiveness of Robert Lighthizer.  JC Milley isn’t in the planning room; Milley’s been replaced by Wilbur Ross (until he’s needed).

In the Trump era the President is telling the Pentagon where and when to position; and asks them for ‘contingency’ preparation.  Decades of Pentagon-centric foreign policy is lessened by an entirely new geopolitical approach based on economic strategy.


Take away power, or worse yet, stop using military power, and the leaders within the system start to sense their institution becoming functionally obsolescent.  Overlay this military view upon pre-existing ideological differences and the situation gets worse.

CTH touched on this last year when we noted how the Pentagon, specifically the joint chiefs, never took any action when Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman positioned himself as an opponent to President Trump’s policy perspective.  The pentagon left Vindman on assignment to the NSC even after Vindman attempted to take-down President Trump.

Another example was Joint Chief Chairman Milley, and the visit Pompeo and Milley took to Mar-a-Lago in December, where they were informing President Trump of military strikes in Syria and Iraq *after* they took place. [Background Here] [Background Here].



another related example was Navy Secretary Richard Spencer threatening President Trump and attempting to extort him into inaction over the disciplinary plans against the SEAL commando, Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher.


All of these examples paint a picture of a Pentagon operating outside the chain-of-command and civilian oversight.

Unfortunately, like all other issues in the era of hyper-polarization, normally democrats would be alarmed about military leadership going rogue with their own agenda; however, as long as their agenda is anti-Trump, the political-left is now okay with it.

Recently democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden was openly asking the U.S. military to initiate a coup against President Trump.  The media didn’t bat an eyelash…  The traditional checks-and-balances, things that keep us stable, are seriously getting sketchy.

Ms. West takes a deeper look at the internal ideology within the Pentagon and then notes the tentacles that extend beyond the military into the Brookings Institute and Lawfare agencies.   The larger assembly of the resistance movement becomes visible. WATCH:





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Antifa Faction Of Occupy Seattle Group Turns Violent


CHAZ Community Attacks and 

Chokes Christian Speaker

Things are slowly devolving into violent confrontation in the nation of CHAZ Seattle. However, the violence is not with law enforcement; the violence is internal as Antifa factions within the occupy movement begin doing what they are famous for, being violent.

An openly christian man walks into the occupied zone within Seattle, the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone or CHAZ, to share the message of Jesus Christ.  The Antifa elements immediately confronted the man, threw him to the ground and began choking him.


The Christian Preacher professed his own humanity and proclaimed he was a “free man”, but the rulers within the CHAZ community would not accept his cries for freedom.

The Chazukstan mob surround the preacher, shouting at him, berating him, and eventually trying to beat him into submission.  At one point they sat atop the preacher in the same choking position that killed George Floyd. No-one noticed the irony.

In the videos below the occupying CHAZ mob can be heard cheering for blood shortly before they stole the preachers possessions.  The preacher said “stealing is not right” but the crowd did not care.  This is the anarchist nation of CHAZ, where the mob rules.





One of the individuals involved in holding down the preacher has been identified as Rose City Antifa militant Luis Enrique Marquez.




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Cancelling ‘Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Lee’?



 Article by William Sullivan in "The American Thinker":

The most popular musical act of the 1940s was a trio of ladies named Patty, LaVerne, and Maxene, collectively known as the Andrews Sisters.  Their patriotic tunes are particularly nostalgic for me, a child of the Reagan era who had a special appreciation for the Abbott and Costello movies in which they sometimes appeared.

Bud and Lou’s first starring roles came in the comedy film Buck Privates, and it remains one of their most popular.  The movie released in early 1941, prior to America’s entry into World War II, and amidst the backdrop of the first peacetime conscription in American history, the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940.  The Andrews Sisters featured prominently in its musical interludes.  The most famous tune from the movie was probably “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B,” but in recent weeks, I’ve been reminded of another of their popular songs from the film, because the spirit of the song serves as a time capsule which could not exist in starker contrast to the spirit of the country today.

Consider the opening verses of a tune that they sing as a reminder to the American everyman, “You’re a Lucky Fellow, Mr. Smith”:

You’re a lucky fellow, Mr. Smith,
To be able to live as you do.
And to have that swell Miss Liberty gal
Carrying the torch for you.

You’re a lucky fellow, Mr. Smith,
Do you know just how highly you rate?
You should thank your lucky stars, and I mean
You should thank all 48.

Man, you’ve really got a family tree,
With Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Lee.
You’re lucky to have ancestors like that,
Don’t you know you were born with a feather in your hat?

You’re a very, very wealthy gent.
I don’t care if you haven’t a cent.
You’ve got your American way,
And, brother, that ain’t hay.

The song was clearly meant to stir America’s patriotic sap, including later references to our “freedom of speech” and our “great Constitution,” but perhaps you noticed that interesting line in the third verse referencing “Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Lee?”

There’s no mystery about the inclusion of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, but you might be surprised about the song’s inclusion of one Mr. Robert Edward Lee.  Though you might not know it in today’s American cultural landscape, Robert E. Lee was broadly revered as an example of an American hero until about five minutes ago, when ignorant adult children and their Marxist instructors reimagined him as an irredeemable villain and began tearing down his many monuments.  

Just one of many presidents to have spoken reverently about the man is Dwight D. Eisenhower, who explained why Lee’s portrait was among the four “great Americans” that hung in his office.  He said that Lee was:

…one of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation… selfless almost to a fault… noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history.  From deep conviction I simply say this: a nation of men of Lee’s caliber would be unconquerable in spirit and soul.


Indeed, for the vast majority of America’s history since 1865, Robert E. Lee has been known as one of the greatest Americans to have ever lived, which is quite a feat when one considers that the most famous aspect of his life occurred as a military leader in rebellion to the United States government.  But this son of a Revolutionary War hero, “Light-Horse” Harry Lee, had over three decades of valorous service to his country under his belt before being asked to lead the Union against his home state of Virginia in 1861.  He refused, which some might say was the honorable choice.

Anyone who can appreciate the contextual nuances of history should be able to understand that, in Lee’s time, there was an as yet unresolved question in America as to whether one’s final allegiance should be owed to one’s own state, or to the United States government.  James Buchanan’s Secretary of State, Lewis Cass, summed the conflict up thusly: “I speak to Cobb, and he tells me he is a Georgian; to Floyd, and he tells me he is a Virginian; to you, and you tell me you are a Carolinian.  I am not a Michigander; I am a citizen of the United States.”

Like Thomas Jefferson, whose gravestone refers to his Virginian heritage more prominently than his identity as an American, Lee believed his loyalty to Virginia as more central to his identity than his loyalty to the Federal Union of the states.  And rather than taking up arms against his home state, Lee reluctantly served the Confederacy to defend his family and neighbors with his considerable military prowess.  After the Civil War, he sought and was granted amnesty in order to lead other former Confederates to do the same, and thus unify the nation in the aftermath of their failed war for independence.

For those reasons and much, much more, Robert E. Lee has been viewed almost universally as a great man for much of our nation’s history.  But today, historical revisionists have reduced his storied legacy to one damning feature that can be fit in a protest sign -- he was a slaveowner.  Therefore, like the Soviet politburos and Taliban iconoclasts before them, they are working tirelessly to destroy or rename all streets, parks, schools, and monuments that bear his name and/or visage in order to expunge his legacy from the collective mind.

But there’s a problem with all of this, which President Trump wisely predicted.  If our culture commits to cancelling Lee because he did not subscribe to modern moral understanding about the questions of slavery and race relations, then we certainly have to cancel Washington and Jefferson, who both owned slaves, and fought to create a nation in which slavery would be legal.  All of the other gifts that these men have given to the world must be reduced to that one fact, progressives demand.  And as you should have expected, Jefferson and Washington are also having their monuments destroyed by ignorant vandals, and SJWs are winning Pulitzers for inventing fictional and nonsensical tales about how Washington and Jefferson were actually fighting to keep the British from taking their slaves away back in 1776.

So, Lee is cancelled, and we’re headlong into the process of permanently cancelling Washington and Jefferson.  Among those American ancestors that we were so lucky to have, as the Andrews Sisters’ ditty went, only Lincoln remains. 

But for how long?

You see, Lincoln was indeed an abolitionist, but you will find very little information that he was in favor of making equal citizens of the slaves that he wished to be free prior to 1863.  What you will find, however, is evidence that he was more than willing to sign a law making slavery “irrevocable” to avoid the prospect of civil war (see: 1861 Inaugural Address) and that he favored the “colonization option” for freed slaves, supporting a $600K Congressional expenditure to ship the freed slaves away from American shores, and openly suggested that blacks in America were “selfish” to not submit to being shipped off to a distant land.

So, Lincoln may not be canceled just yet, but is it really hard to believe that progressive revisionists won’t be tearing down his statues soon, too?  Especially when they hear that he told Stephen Douglas, while debating in favor of abolition, that he would never intend to make "voters or jurors of negroes" and that he, "as much as any man" among the populace he entreated, was "in favor of having the superior position" among the races "assigned to the white man?"  

This slippery slope in our current culture shouldn’t be too difficult to identify.  If this formula persists, all Americans throughout history who didn’t subscribe to the most modern and radical progressive doctrines will soon be cancelled, and their legacies destroyed like countless memorials to the great Robert E. Lee, in an effort to raze the very foundations of Western civilization, and to replace them with whatever might suit these Marxist reformers better.

All of humanity is flawed, but for most of our nation’s history, we’ve been able to understand that men like Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Lee were great men in spite of their flaws, and reason demands that we view their unique challenges in appropriate context.   As Thomas Sowell wrote in his 2002 column titled “Twisted History”:

In 1862, a ship carrying slaves from Africa to America, in violation of a ban on the international slave trade, was captured. The crew were imprisoned and the captain was hanged in the United States -- despite the fact that slavery itself was still legal in both Africa and the U.S. at the time.
What does this tell us? That enslaving people was considered an abomination but what to do with millions of people who were already enslaved was not equally clear.
That question was finally answered by a war in which one life was lost for every six people freed. Maybe that was the only answer. But don't pretend today that it was an easy answer -- or that those who grappled with the dilemma in the 18th century were some special villains, when most leaders and most people around the world at that time saw nothing wrong with slavery.

These American leaders represent America, and they are worthy of our reverence. And while we should recognize the flaws of our leaders (they are not exalted kings or Soviet Premiers, after all), we should certainly appreciate their considerable contributions in creating the freest nation the world has ever known -- one which we are now watching being burned to the ground in a violent tantrum by their ignorant, weak-minded, and petulant national descendants who’ve done nothing but selfishly reap its material fruits.
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We Didn’t Fight for a Marxist America

 
 Korean War Veterans Memorial, The Mall, Washington, DC (National Park Service photo) 

Article by Anthony J. DeBlasi in "The American Thinker":

When I returned from the war in Korea (1950-1953), fought to keep communist North Korea from taking over South Korea, our nation was a freer and better place to live in than today. But that would soon change despite the increasing benefits of technology. The following overview of the last seven decades, based on observation and study, will point to the role played in the decline of general wellbeing by domestic enemies of America that I and fellow brothers-in-arms took an oath to also defend against.

During the 1960s, Woodstock served as a launch pad for hippies and flower children to play out their fantasies of life. Their minds sacked by phony “liberalism” and utopian mythology, they reveled 24/7 in debauchery as thousands of their peers in Vietnam faced hell and death every moment of every day and every night. When they returned, these fighters would be reviled while the Woodstock crowd would be celebrated by phony “liberals” in the media.

By phony liberalism I mean pretending to appreciate differing points of view while rejecting all that don’t fit the party line.

By the 1970s, as former dropouts from society assumed responsible roles in life, their looseness in morals and thought spread through the fabric of American life. Key aspects of life were ignored in entertainment and literature. Beauty, originality, wonder – essential dimensions of human life – were fading from view and from consciousness. Factors of civilized society were being ignored that jarred the mindset of progressive liberals. Honesty, integrity, and other fundamentals of a healthy society were being pushed out of American life. They were “outdated” and therefore disposable, right?

What was happening was not clear to most people. But it was plain to me and to observant Americans who were not completely brainwashed by the “progressivism” launched by Marxist activists after World War I. The Marxian mission to prepare Americans for life in a world where people serve the State instead of the other way around – contradicting the Constitution – was from the beginning an act of treachery. 

In 1932 William Z. Foster, general secretary of the Communist Party USA, declared that our way of life was to be “cleansed of religious, patriotic and other features of bourgeois ideology. The students will be taught on the basis of Marxian... materialism, internationalism and the general ethics of the new Socialist society.” In other words, the freedoms that millions sacrificed their lives to ensure since the birth of this nation were to be denied and the Constitution of the United States was to be trashed.

The progressive education initiated by Marxists and their dupes evidently succeeded in brainwashing minds, including those of future leaders – many of whom even now display a profound ignorance of the country they inhabit and daily reveal minds bloated with Marxist propaganda.

Thankfully, and to their credit, not every young person fell for the BS and the slogans that flourished in Woodstock or got swept into the so-called “world peace/anti-war” movement funded by the Soviet Union in the 1960s. But those who would or could rally against this invasion of America by its internal enemies would soon find themselves cornered into a media-starved minority, thanks to what is now called the “deep state,” an inner circle of operatives who work to subvert our government. Twenty-sixth president Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) called this cabal “the invisible government.”  

Brainwashing from the old Marxists had done its job of replacing clear thinking with raw emotion and allowing “social justice” to mean “victims winning over oppressors,” an updated version of Marxist class warfare.  How we got to this point should not be hard to fathom, unless you believe that it is “natural” or “evolutionary” for a constitutional republic to morph into global autocracy. And if you don’t know that America is a constitutional republic, where have your teachers been all these years?

I recall some of the bumps along the road toward autocracy in America.

In New York City, the Civil Rights Movement had gone beyond block-busting neighborhoods to busing school children in order to advance “equality.” I was not the only one who wondered if jamming the races together and forcing them to live together was part of Martin Luther King’s “dream.” Was this course of action with little regard for its consequences a realistic, let alone Christian way to promote social harmony? And were those behind this mockery of justice following a Gospel that enjoins all to love their neighbors as themselves or were they following a leftist script that calls for “divide and conquer,” then take over?

King’s “dream” of blacks and whites living peaceably together had been turned by Marxists into a way to generate conflict between whites and blacks, intensifying racial division, often to explosive levels, ready for the heavy hand of government to manage. King surely turned in his grave when “the will of God” was replaced by the will of political bandits aiming to take charge of the country.

My wife and I faced raising our children where, instead of walking to the school at our corner, they would be required to ride a bus to a distant school because their skin was the wrong color. This racist departure from sanity joined other signs of increasing madness in New York City to convince us to leave New York in 1973, for the benefit of the children and for our peace of mind.

Perhaps the greatest morphing bump of all came with the washing of Christianity out of Christian churches. Since the Gospel is not “progressive” it became necessary to introduce Liberation Theology into the church services. Liberation Theology is a Marxist device to liberate Christians from their faith by “updating” it – that is, by altering the Gospel to make it agree with Marxist dogma. The deception would be carried out slowly and gently, as change agents worked to help churchgoers rid themselves of the evil of Christian orthodoxy and embrace a new orthodoxy, tainted with Marxism. This I witnessed during my years as organist in several churches.

Seminaries would become targets for “progressive” (read, Marxist) infiltration and centers for indoctrination, in much the way the public schools were used, decades earlier. Sadly, the majority of the Christian flock failed to heed Matthew 7:15: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”

It was difficult of course to see that “social justice” measures like ordaining women as priests in the Episcopalian Church or allowing girls to play in Little League baseball were in truth not the alleged righting of past wrongs but a leftist scheme to blur the actual differences between men and women and girls and boys, in order to turn “equality” into a political tool for pushing an agenda having precious little to do with actual justice.

It was plain to me early on that Americans were being bamboozled into compliance with a plan to take down America, a country founded on freedom and justice for all, with opportunity for all to prosper – a reality celebrated in the nation’s Bicentennial during the mid-seventies. Those who today celebrate the idea that America needs to be washed off the map for a “better world” – read, Godless, global dictatorship – are either totally misinformed or terribly deceived. And they who push for action in that direction mark themselves as traitors of America.

For the reader who may think that the foregoing is a conspiracy rant, consider this:

“I never thought that in America I’d experience what it was like for armed policemen to hand me an official government document, ordering our community of faithful to cease and desist worshiping on Easter Sunday and to depart the House of God.” [Jerry Waldrop, pastor of First Pentecostal Church of Holly Springs in Mississippi,]
This barely scratches the surface of what America has become since I came home from Korea. A share of the blame must go to a few “wolves in judicial clothing” and to all government officials who take oaths of office, then ignore them.

The current sorry state of America, highlighted in the mayhem sweeping the country, is clearly attributable to a politically enhanced hatred of America and hatred of a president who stands opposed to its foreign and domestic enemies. The cruelty and brutality across the land, not of police, but of mercenary thugs, should wake even the “woke” among us. 

The weight of sacrifice, blood and suffering endured by the countless many who have made and continue to make America the great country it is must give pause to those who would destroy it.

“It would be a devastating slap in the face to the brave men and women who died for our freedom to allow Democrats and fake news media to transform us into a socialist/communist nation,” wrote Lloyd Marcus recently.

Thank you, Lloyd, and thank all who have stood and continue to stand against America’s enemies, both external and internal.
It’s far past the time to vote all traitors out of office. 
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