Biden's ‘America Last’ Policy at Work

posted by Warren Beatty at American Thinker 

While considering the bumbling joke that currently occupies the Bully Pulpit's "America Last" policy, ponder what he wrote in 2019: "By nearly every measure, the credibility and influence of the United States in the world have diminished since President Barack Obama and I left office on January 20, 2017. President Donald Trump has belittled, undermined, and in some cases abandoned U.S. allies and partners. He has turned on our own... troops. He has emboldened our adversaries and squandered our leverage to contend with national security challenges from North Korea to Iran, from Syria to Afghanistan to Venezuela..."

Ironic, isn't it? Biden outlined exactly what his "America Last" policy would accomplish as he belittled Donald Trump.

When Donald Trump spoke about Joe Biden at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, in February 2021, he said, "In one month we have gone from America first to America last."

This illustrates how bad U.S. conditions have become under Biden's "America Last" policy: "In one of President Trump's last weeks in office (Dec. 27--Jan. 2), the U.S. imported no crude oil from Saudi Arabia for the first time in 35 years, marking newfound American energy independence. Sadly, within days of taking office President Biden made it clear that he wants to abandon this independence and pursue an 'America Last' energy policy."

A National Review article in November 2021 reported that, "Biden's approach to energy represents in microcosm his approach to the presidency in general." There is absolutely nothing about Biden's contradictory approach to energy that makes any sense. He wants the United States to reduce the production of fossil fuels, reduce the number of new pipelines in America, limit oil and gas drilling on federal land, and abandon the Trump administration's mission to maximize fossil fuels production. He wants other countries, such as Venezuela, to produce more fossil fuels for American use. He even asked the Saudis to increase production, but got snubbed. He maintains that there actually isn't a supply issue at all, but that oil companies all got together to gouge customers, an issue that the FTC must immediately investigate. He opposed new fracking, promised to 'make sure it's eliminated.' He even appropriated Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's "Green New Deal."

Why did/does Biden behave in this manner? Because he was/is trying to please the whacko far-left base of his party which is opposed to oil production because it's not 'green.' For Biden, pleasing environmentalists means putting America Last.

As if that weren't enough, Biden sold off more than 40% of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in early 2022 to slow rising fuel prices after Russia invaded Ukraine. Biden has made the U.S. vulnerable to disruptions of global oil supplies; he has made the U.S. future unstable because of his energy policies at a time when Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel are creating fears of a wider war that will disrupt oil shipments from the Middle East. While not the first president to use the SPR, Biden sent nearly one million barrels of SPR oil to a CCP-owned company linked to his son Hunter.

His energy policy hasn't gotten any better. Biden invoked the Defense Production Act (a Cold War-era law) to pour taxpayer funds into manufacturing of electric heat pumps, an alternative to gas-powered residential furnaces. His administration has also issued extensive new regulations aimed at gas-powered home appliances such as water heaters, stoves, and furnaces, which will lead to higher prices for consumers.

While visiting NATO headquarters in 2021, Biden said, "It's overwhelmingly in the interest of the United States of America to have a great relationship with NATO and with the EU. I have a very different view than my predecessor did."

Biden's 'very different view,' unfortunately, was to place "America Last." Biden's botched 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan demonstrated his priorities, which were the result of his "America Last" policy in action. The tragedy in Afghanistan wasn't an anomaly though, because his "America Last" policy continues. The Biden administration has given over $2.35 billion in taxpayer dollars to Afghanistan since the Taliban retook control. John Sopko, head of Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), has said the Biden administration is blocking his investigatory efforts by refusing to provide documents that could show if the Taliban is being propped up by American dollars. Further, the Taliban takeover has made uncertain the fate for Afghan women and girls, casting doubt over Biden's repeated insistence that human rights are a cornerstone of his foreign policy.

Russia and Ukraine will, no matter where the front line is, have the capability to permanently pose a threat to each other. In other words, the war is unwinnable. Additionally, neither side has expressed a clear objective. But these facts haven't stopped Joe Biden, who has already sent more than $137.81 billion in taxpayer dollars and high-tech weaponry to Ukraine. He's now trying to strongarm Congress into approving another $61.4 billion.

To demonstrate Biden's "America Last" policy, in 2021 he proposed spending, in his $2 trillion Infrastructure Bill (which was passed by Congress in November 2021), $115 billion on roads and bridges over five years. Meanwhile Biden has given $89.1 billion in financial commitments of budgetary aid through the Economic Support Fund, loans, and other financial backing, as well as military assistance worth $48.71 billion to Ukraine, for a total of $137.81 billion. Add that to what he's now asking for ($61.4 billion) and it greatly exceeds the total amount he proposed to "invest" in infrastructure. He has put Ukraine citizens ahead of American citizens. Couple that with his putting Ukraine border sovereignty over U.S. border sovereignty and you have yet another example of Biden putting "America Last."

This has to be Biden's ultimate "America Last" act. The southern border is in such a mess that the Biden administration is using VA resources to provide healthcare for illegal aliens. As a result, veterans are forced to travel to VA facilities instead of seeing doctors in their communities. The Biden administration is prioritizing the healthcare of illegal immigrants over the healthcare of American veterans.

Don't overlook Barack Obama's part in this fiasco. According to Newt Gingrich, who spoke about the situation created by Joe Biden's "America Last" policies, the Biden-Obama plan to profoundly change America is 'working perfectly.' He contends "...this is a deliberate policy by people who want to undermine America, change it profoundly, and eliminate all of those crazy ideas like the Constitution, the rule of law, the work ethic, meritocracy..." While in the Obama White House, "Biden, over an eight--year period, became sort of a mini Barack..."

And we Know, and more- January 10

 

The Roots of Lawfare

posted by Dennis Lund at American Thinker 

Although the term “Lawfare” has origins going back to the 1950s, it remained relatively dormant and unknown until 1999 and 2001, where first Chinese military officers used the term in their book titled Unrestricted Warfare: China’s Master Plan to Destroy America. Two years later, the term was used in a paper by the highly respected, then-Air Force colonel (and later general) Charles Dunlap. In his several papers on the subject General Dunlap defined “Lawfare” as: “the strategy of using -- or misusing -- law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve an operational objective.”

The first nationally infamous use of “lawfare” was most likely the battle in 2005 to remove Tom Delay (R Texas) from his position as Speaker of the House. The vendetta against Tom Delay was led by one Ronnie Earle, the DA in Austin, Texas who had a strong dislike for Delay (One might call it TDDS). Ultimately the case was overturned on appeal, but the battle was won, as Delay was removed from office. Recognize that one of the purposes of Lawfare is to remove the person from the political scene.

Republicans have been slow to react to this strategy, as they seem to have an unwarranted trust in the goodness of Democrats to be fair and reasonable people. One person who did see the importance of the Judicial system to be used by Democrats was then candidate Donald Trump in 2016. His bold move in establishing a list of eleven (after the election, expanded to 21) potential nominees to the Supreme Court stood as a major reason to vote for him for many people. The move not only increased his likelihood for success but it served to place a focus on the need to shift the courts from a left-leaning entity towards the middle and potentially past the middle into the conservative zone.

During his four years in office, President Trump appointed 245 judgeships to various U.S. Courts. This rate of appointment (61 per year) had not been seen since Jimmy Carter’s rate of 65 per year during his term. This result also increased the need for Democrats to destroy Trump through alternative means.

The loss to Trump, followed by their failures to remove him from office, along with seeing their power slipping from them due to Republican victories in many states, caused the Democrats to up the ante through their increased use of lawfare to destroy or punish individuals. Those falling victim to this abuse of the judicial system have included, in addition to Tom Delay: Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia, Rick Perry (Gov. TX),  Ken Paxton (AG, TX), Trump associates Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, General Flynn, Roger Stone, Dinesh D'Souza, George Papadopoulos, Harrison Floyd, and of courseDonald Trump himself. Lesser known individuals, such as Rick Renzi (R-AZ), may not have garnered national attention, but have also fallen victim to these tactics. It is noteworthy that federal prosecutor and now Trump persecutor Jack Smith was the prosecutor of both Rick Renzi and Gov. McDonnell. Prosecutorial misconduct in the Renzi case was cited as one reason for Renzi’s pardon.

Lawfare tactics vary: People can be charged for crimes that a DA says were committed, when no such crime may have actually occurred, Delay and Trump for example. Or people are selectively punished, or charged for crimes that are not normally prosecuted or result in no jail time (Manafort, Papadopoulos, D’Souza). Additionally, SWAT teams may be used when not required (Mar-a-Lago, Roger Stone, Mark Houck).

Recently, former top lawyer for the DNC Marc Elias established a website called Democracy Docket. The website, in a carefully worded opening on its home page, declares:

“The courts are central to the fight for our democracy and we are dedicated to exposing what is happening and why it matters.”

Ignoring, other than this comment, the misuse of “Democracy,” what is apparent is that Marc Elias has taken up the reins to guide the Democrats through the legal system in their attacks against Trump, so as to keep him off the ballot as well as to control other aspects of our election processes, such as gerrymandering (bad when Republicans do it [North Carolina], ignored when Democrats do it [New York, Maryland, Illinois].

Elias has been instrumental in many of the legal filings involving changes in voting laws, redistricting, and, of course the Amendment 14 battles. We are to be encouraged, though, that the good guys are winning a few fights, such as the recent victory in Georgia by True the Vote.

But Elias is a fighter -- he was the lead attorney for Al Franken’s successful recount of 2008. He also was involved at Perkins Coie as the lead lawyer at the Democrat firm. Yes, that Perkins Coie of Steele Dossier fame.

Democracy Docket lays out the many cases Democrats are pursuing in their efforts to deprive, via the 14^th Amendment, Americans of their opportunity to vote for the candidates of their choice, as well as numerous other examples of their shenanigans.  Essentially, they are bringing a focus to the legal system, using desperate legal tactics, in the hopes that Democrat-friendly judges or officials, such as Judge Tanya Chutkan in D.C., Judge Arthur Engoron in N.Y., Shenna Bellows of Maine, and the four justices in Colorado, will see things their way. They have a very good chance of winning at selective lower-level courts. This serves to emphasize the importance of having fair and reasonable conservative justices at the higher levels of our judicial system.

These Democrat efforts, which are an affront to our system of governance, are well funded and organized. This needs to be fought at all levels. Electing Trump this November will be a great first step.

House Republicans: State Dept Hiding Its Funding For Censorship-Industrial Complex

Shawn Fleetwood reporting for The Federalist 

House Republicans are expanding their ongoing investigation into the federal government’s vast efforts to censor Americans’ ability to speak freely online.

“The federal government cannot circumvent constitutional protections by using private actors to accomplish what the State itself is prohibited from doing,” Texas GOP Reps. Roger Williams and Beth Van Duyne write in a letter to the Global Engagement Center’s (GEC) James Rubin. Williams and Van Duyne chair the Committee on Small Business and the Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Regulations, respectively.

As The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland reported, the GEC is a U.S. State Department subagency that “funded the development of censorship tools and used ‘government employees to act as sales reps pitching the censorship products to Big Tech.’”

Through GEC, State funded the Global Disinformation Index, a so-called “disinformation” tracking organization “working to blacklist and defund conservative news sites,” including The Federalist. Notably, Rubin and the GEC are named defendants in a lawsuit filed by The Federalist, The Daily Wire, and the state of Texas last month to stop the federal government’s censorship operations.

In their letter to Rubin, Williams and Van Duyne highlighted how the GEC subsidized third-party organizations that “discredit certain small businesses (and their owners) based on their political speech and viewpoints,” which sought to “pressure advertising and social media companies to remove certain businesses’ online advertisements, disallow ad placement on businesses’ websites, remove online speech, and ban accounts entirely.” As noted by the GOP representatives, this censorship apparatus “overwhelmingly” blocked conservative speech.

While Rubin and the GEC have claimed the agency does not target U.S. citizens or businesses, information unearthed in the “Twitter Files” shows that the GEC, as summarized by Williams and Van Duyne, “has sent lists of ‘foreign’ disinformation accounts to social media companies calling for their removal that, in fact, contained American profiles.” “While the GEC’s production to the Committee assigned a primary country for each award’s objective, evidence gives reason to believe that these awards may not have been used solely for foreign purposes,” the letter reads.

Despite the seriousness of the matter, the GEC doesn’t appear to be fully forthcoming in providing information the committee requested. Williams and Van Duyne say the agency’s initial production of sought-after records is “incomplete,” with the GEC appearing to omit “dozens of awards” from the “unredacted list of all GEC grant recipients and associated award numbers from FY 2019 – present.”

“Given some of these awards are publicly viewable on USASpending.gov, it is the Committee’s belief that these awards exist and were omitted without explanation and in violation of the Committee’s request,” the letter reads. “In addition, the GEC produced only cooperative agreements and failed to include any project grants, despite specific phrasing used by the Committee in its production request.”

Due to Rubin and the GEC’s failure to fully comply with the committee’s initial requests, Williams and Van Duyne are demanding the agency forfeit the remaining list of GEC-funded entities and awards by Jan. 22. The Texas Republicans also requested the agency disclose “Unredacted copies of all contracts and related documentation (including communications describing scope of work) for every GEC award, project grant, and cooperative agreement,” a list of all GEC contractors and subcontractors, and more from fiscal year 2018 to the present by the aforementioned deadline.

The Hubris of the Woke

posted by Brandon Morse at RedStateVIP 

While it may be considered hyperbolic to say, I truly believe a huge factor in the growth of our cultural rot lies in the woke infection of the entertainment industry. 

I've been sounding the alarm for years about the left's playbook of taking everything you love and repurposing it so that it's a message carrier for their cause. Like the Alien face-hugger, the social justice-obsessed latch on to any given work, implant their ideas inside it, then release it only to have these woke ideas explode out at you out of the blue and leave the work ruined and destroyed behind it. 

The examples are myriad. 

Disney, Marvel, "Star Wars," "The Wheel of Time," "Cowboy Beebop," DC, "He-Man," "Terminator," "Ghostbusters," "Charlie's Angels," and even "Men in Black" didn't escape the socio-political conquest of the left. 

Possibly the most egregious of them all, however, was the attempt to pervert and repurpose Tolkien. My constant articles about the ongoing attack on the author of "The Lord of the Rings" even got the attention of CNN, but it was something that I and many others in the critic community couldn't just stop talking about. This wasn't just an attack on Tolkien; it was an attack on the very fabric of our society.

Again, that might sound hyperbolic, but the people who go after these great works to commandeer and corrupt them are very open about what they're trying to do. 

As I wrote on Monday, localizers (the people who translate Japanese anime and manga to English) who adhere to social justice and woke culture openly said that they were "fixing" some of the problems that the original Japanese creators put in their work, and by "fixing" what they mean is that they're changing lines or altering the text to make it more palatable to a "modern audience." 

The "modern audience," mind you, is a giant lie created by leftists to justify injecting their politics into any given work. 

This was the same mentality people had when they were busy corrupting Tolkien's work as well. They claimed that Tolkien had too many problems in his writing, including the fact that it wasn't diverse and that it was sexist because there weren't enough strong women characters. Any true Tolkien fan would laugh this idea out of Lothlórien. 

But they believed that they could "fix" Tolkien, and herein lies the real core of the belief in social justice and woke culture. 

As the Critical Drinker likes to say, "Sheer f***ing hubris." 

I sum it up in my video here.

Such is the nature of proponents of social justice and woke culture that they believe themselves to be above and beyond everyone else. They see themselves as elevated. They've progressed beyond society, and they feel it's their duty to lead you to their belief system by tricking you through normalization. 

They believe in their soul that infecting the works of better men and women who came before them isn't just a good thing, but that they're doing you a favor while they do it. Look at the reaction of the localizers who learned they'll soon be replaced by AI because they couldn't stop corrupting the work of Japanese creators. They truly think they are doing the people a solid by perverting things. 

At what point do we start wondering where the mere belief in a political ideology ends, and the social contagion that results in delusions and mania begins? 

This behavior isn't normal. You don't even have to look at the deep-seated self-importance and extreme narcissism. Look at the way many of these people corrupt their own bodies. Bright and unnatural hair, excessive piercings, oftentimes overweight, bizarre clothing choices, and more. 

There is something about the adherence and belief in social justice that causes a very real mania. Not only do these people abuse themselves, they abuse others and believe they're righteous in the abuse. 

They say that pride is the most dangerous of all the sins, and perhaps these people are proof positive of this. These high thoughts about themselves have driven them to lunacy, and because of their hubris, they can't crawl out of it. 

Biden’s ‘War On Democracy’ Speech Previews Democrats’ Coming Insurrection If They Lose In 2024

Democrats won’t concede defeat in the 2024 election

by Jonathan S. Tobin for The Federalist

President Joe Biden’s Jan. 5 address at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, heralded the Democrats’ much-predicted decision to switch the focus of the president’s reelection campaign from “Bidenomics” to the one theme that has been a winner for them in the last two years. Democrats helped stave off disaster in the 2022 midterms (they lost the House but held the Senate) by declaring that the only way to save American “democracy” was to defeat former President Donald Trump and Republicans.

The speech was a predictable example of Biden’s hyperbole and bluster. He waved the proverbial “bloody shirt” of Jan. 6, 2021, and invoked the specter of a president and party that supported a so-called insurrection. He linked Trump not just to the Capitol rioters but to Russian President Vladimir Putin (a not-so-subtle invocation of the Russian-collusion conspiracy theory) and also to King George III. And he dropped George Washington’s name so often it seemed as if Biden was saying the choice was not so much between himself and Trump but between the 45th president and the first.

But one didn’t have to read between the lines of Biden’s speech to understand that — whatever one might think of Trump’s own brand of bluster and hyperbole — much of this argument was not just hypocritical but pure projection. As has been apparent ever since Democrats immediately began rebranding the Capitol riot as an “insurrection,” this is all a cover for their plans to ensure they can’t lose the 2024 election. It is also laying the groundwork for an insurrection — which they’d depict as a defense of “democracy” rather than an example of Jan. 6-like “treason” — if they do lose.

This goes beyond the dishonest manner in which former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s show-trial Jan. 6 Committee considered all efforts to question the 2020 presidential election results — something both parties always did when the results were close — as an extension of the actions of the mob that broke into the Capitol. That made most Republicans into insurrectionists. Even those who wanted to move on when Trump continued protesting the 2020 results understood that the normal election-integrity guardrails had been discarded amid the Covid drama of that year and that the national security establishment, the media, and the internet oligarchs who control the virtual public square had silenced news about Biden family corruption that might have affected the outcome.

They also knew that claiming that an event that was a disgrace — but hardly more so than many even more violent and deadly “mostly peaceful” riots during the Black Lives Matter summer of 2020 — was not an organized coup d’état attempt (a better description of the Russia-collusion hoax), let alone the moral equivalent of the Confederates firing on Fort Sumter.

The End of Democracy

The first anniversary of Jan. 6 in 2022 was marked by a torrent of punditry already looking ahead to the 2024 elections and fanciful predictions of Republican plots to steal it. A lot of that was focused on false arguments about the election-integrity laws put in place in some red states to ensure that the 2022 midterms would be conducted with the safeguards that were discarded in 2020. But as the 2024 election drew closer, the Democrats and their media cheering section switched tactics and instead concentrated on smearing Trump and his voters as incipient totalitarians who will end democracy if they win.

Part of this is mere distortion, as with their claims that the conservative Project 2025 is an authoritarian plot. The project is a much-needed effort to ensure that Republicans are ready to govern next year — as they were not in 2017 when the traditional GOP governing class refused to serve under Trump or to help him implement the changes his supporters had voted for. It’s also aimed at allowing a new GOP administration to be prepared to thwart the Democrat-dominated permanent federal bureaucracy’s attempts to prevent it from governing, as it largely did from 2017 to 2020.

But most of the talk about authoritarianism is a rehashing of Trump’s most outrageous quotes about his political foes into a handbook for authoritarian rule. Though none of those making such arguments can explain why Trump — who had trouble getting the government to do anything he wanted when he was in the White House — failed to actually govern like an authoritarian.

Democrats Trample the Constitution

Also missing from this discussion are the pieces of the puzzle that show us which party intends to trample the Constitution: That is Biden’s own voluminous record of authoritarianism in office as well as the signals coming from the corporate media that they intend to double down on their efforts to defeat Trump.

Since taking office, Biden has colluded with Big Tech to silence dissent against his policies and made moves to create his own Orwellian “Truth Ministry,” a more serious blow to self-government than anything Trump ever talked of doing, let alone actually did.

Biden also demonstrated a willingness to use his power to undermine the rule of law by effectively eliminating border security, bringing an invasion of several million illegal immigrants who either rushed the border or made bogus asylum claims.

He’s shown, as with his implementing a student loan forgiveness plan without the benefit of law, that he has no scruples about trashing the separation of powers and the Constitution while grabbing power. Indeed, that’s something that neither Trump nor George III ever did (Andrew Roberts’ biography teaches us that George III actually respected the British Constitution even if he was blind to the sensibilities of his American subjects).

More than that, Biden has, to the cheers of his base, presided over efforts to prosecute and jail his leading political opponent on a raft of flimsy and bogus charges. On top of that, the Democrats are now making active efforts — with Colorado and Maine in the lead — to take Trump entirely off the ballot, even though he is currently the choice of more than 60 percent of Republican voters and leading Biden head-to-head and in matchups that include third-party candidates.

On top of that, the Democrat Party fixed its presidential primaries in such a way as to ensure no opposition to Biden would be allowed.

Cheating in elections is as old as the republic itself, and we’ve had plenty of administrations that bent the rules to their advantage. But the targeting of Trump alone is arguably the most blatant effort to undermine self-government and steal an election in American political history.

Expect Media Bias and Mobs

If that weren’t enough, it’s an open secret that the corporate media plan to discard even the most flimsy attempts to feign objectivity in election coverage, as shown in recent columns from chattering class establishmentarians such as Margaret Sullivan and Maureen Dowd. Since Trump is now branded as anti-democratic, the claim is that Democrats will be right to do anything, no matter how illegal, to defeat him. And their accomplice media are prepared to declare all such efforts perfectly democratic no matter how despotic they actually are.

If Trump wins despite all of this, it’s not unreasonable to expect Democrats, along with their establishment and administrative-state minions, to do exactly what they claimed Trump plotted to do in 2020 by denying an election and illegally attempting to change the results. Such efforts will likely be backed up by the corporate media and the same mobs who poured into the streets of America’s cities in the summer of 2020. That sounds a lot more like an insurrection than anything attempted by the rioters of Jan. 6.

Biden is, however, right about one thing. There is a party that is a threat to democracy, and it will be fighting for power in November. But its leader is Joe Biden, not Donald Trump.

President Trump Holds 8 Point Lead Over Joe Biden in Michigan

Sundance reporting for Conservative Treehouse 

Michigan is going to be a tough contest, because Wayne County is one of the primary places where Democrat operatives manufacture ballots.  However, that said, President Trump is now leading Joe Biden by 8 points, slightly more than the estimated 5% fraudulent ballots the Democrats can create.

Additionally, according to the latest polling [SEE HERE], Joe Biden only holds a 17% approval rating in Michigan.

MICHIGAN – President Joe Biden’s support is on shaky ground in Michigan, and he trails Republican Donald Trump by 8 percentage points in a head-to-head matchup 10 months before the Nov. 5 election, according to a new statewide poll commissioned by The Detroit News and WDIV-TV (Channel 4).

[…] The survey of 600 likely general election voters in the battleground state found only 17% said Biden, the Democratic incumbent, deserved another term leading the country. That number marked a low for a major public officeholder in modern Michigan political history, said Richard Czuba, founder of Lansing-based Glengariff Group, which conducted the poll.

Likewise, in a potential contest between Biden and Trump, who is facing a historic onslaught of criminal charges, 47% of likely voters said they preferred the Republican, while 39% selected Biden, an 8-point advantage for Trump, according to the survey with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 points. In addition, 3% said they would vote for another candidate, and 11% said they were undecided.

Trump’s lead over Biden widened to 11 points when voters surveyed were given a list of third party candidates. (read more)

With a 17% approval rating in Michigan, it would appear Joe Biden’s war on cars is backfiring.

Democrats’ Statue Toppling Is A Dress Rehearsal For Going After Actual People

It’s time to stop debating history and facts with people 

who only care about the exercise of raw political power.

by John Daniel Davidson for The Federalist

The news that the Biden administration planned to remove a statue of William Penn in a federal park in Philadelphia that commemorates the founding of Pennsylvania, and that the purpose of the removal was to “provide a more welcoming, accurate, and inclusive experience for visitors,” should at this point not come as a surprise.

Once the removals and destruction of Confederate statues and memorials began a few years ago, it was inevitable that all historical figures from America’s past, even those with no connection to the Confederacy, would be subject to removal or destruction or erasure.

Why? Because the removal of statues and memorials by radical Democrats has never been about the past, it’s always been about the raw exercise of political power and the assertion of tyranny over a free people in the here and now. This has been true of commie revolutionaries for a long time now. Simply put, what they do to statues is what they plan to do to their political enemies. It starts with statues and books, and eventually ends with people.

It hardly matters that Monday evening, amid the public outrage that ensued when news of the Penn statue broke, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro announced that he had intervened and that the statue would remain where it is. Shapiro is a Democrat, so his effort to stop this is perhaps a sign that Dems are beginning to sense the radicals among them have gone too far in their cultural warfare against the rest of the country.

But I wouldn’t count on it. The fact that the National Park Service planned to do this as part of a “rehabilitation” of Philly’s Welcome Park (named for the ship, Welcome, which Penn took to Philadelphia in 1682) that envisioned an “expanded interpretation of the Native American history of Philadelphia” tells you the bureaucrats at NPS think the Penn statue’s presence in the park is a problem, somehow offensive because William Penn was a white man.

It doesn’t matter that the same year he arrived, Penn signed a treaty with the Lenape (or Delaware) people that lasted 75 years, or that he went to great lengths to ensure the native people were treated well and paid fairly for their land. It doesn’t matter that Penn’s entire purpose in coming to America was to establish a Quaker colony for religious freedom that also guaranteed things like free and fair trial by jury, free elections, and other fundamental rights that would later make their way into the U.S. Bill of Rights.

In the context of the debate about statues and memorials, talking about all that is a waste of time. None of this has anything to do with actual American history and everything to do with politics and power in the present. I have been defending Confederate monuments for nearly a decade, ever since a staffer at The New Republic decided the 150th anniversary of Appomattox was the perfect occasion to argue for the desecration of Confederate grave markers in national cemeteries. I have explained the history of Confederate statuary in great detail, gone through the historical debates and deliberations that led to their creation, and argued ad nauseam for the preservation of these physical markers of our shared past. 

A little over two years ago, I wrote a lengthy piece about the Confederate memorial in Arlington National Cemetery and why it should be left in peace. I went into some detail explaining how the memorial came to be there, how President William McKinley, a decorated Union veteran who saw combat at Antietam and in the Shenandoah Valley, first conceived of the idea and inspired other Union vets to join the effort. Last month, the Biden administration dismantled and removed it. 

So I’m not doing that anymore. From the moment the first essay was written calling for the toppling of Robert E. Lee’s likenesses, or the exhumation of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s bones, it was inevitable that these Democrat revolutionaries would soon move on to other historical figures — as indeed they did. And when we saw the first images of a Black Lives Matter mob in the summer of 2020 pulling down random statues and defacing them with a mixture of glee and rage, it was clear enough that they would eventually move on to actual people.

Arguing about history with these people is pointless because they don’t care about historical realities or subtleties or facts, they only care about power. So this is my simple argument from now on for the statue question: No statues should come down, ever, for any reason. I don’t care if it’s a statue of Jefferson Davis waving a Confederate flag, leave it where it stands.

Why do I say this? Because once you grant the premise that there’s a problem with these statues, that they are somehow offensive or harmful, the contest is over and the radicals have won. And anyway, the premise itself is totally disingenuous. The last thing Democrats want right now is unity and peace among the American people. The idea that they genuinely believe toppling statues of historical figures from our nation’s past will bring people together is laughable and doesn’t deserve the dignity of a response.

At a time when President Joe Biden is openly campaigning for reelection by vilifying his political opposition as terrorists and insurrectionists, and trying with all his might to jail his chief political rival, former President Donald Trump, don’t try to tell me he cares about creating more inclusive public spaces, and that that’s why his administration is so keen to topple statues.

It’s not complicated. For Democrats, tearing down statues is a kind of dress rehearsal, not much different than book burning was for the Nazis. They want to erase their opponents from American public life, and if they can’t do it in an orderly and official way, they’ll use a mob. 

Elise Stefanik Is Right. Congress Has No Business Certifying A Rigged Election.

Tristan Justice reporting for The Federalist 

Democrats have spent years lecturing Americans about the risks former President Donald Trump’s return would pose to “democracy.” Now, the Democrat Party is out to destroy democracy in the name of saving it by attempting to prevent Republicans from appearing on ballots across the country.

On Tuesday, the Democrats’ ad hoc spokeswoman on NBC, Kristen Welker, pressed House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik of New York over whether she would vote to certify the upcoming election. Stefanik refused to offer a blind commitment.

“We will see if this is a legal and valid election,” she said.

The comment came after the New York lawmaker defended her objections to electoral certification in 2020.

“I stood up for election integrity, and I challenged and objected to the certification of the state of Pennsylvania because of the unconstitutional overreach,” Stefanik said. “I absolutely stand by my floor speech. I am proud to support President Trump.”

Astonished that the Republican leader in the lower chamber would refuse to give Democrats a blanket pledge to certify a rigged election, the interview generated hysterical headlines across the corporate press.

“GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik won’t commit to certifying the 2024 election results,” headlined NBC.

“Stefanik pre-emptively declines to commit to accepting 2024 election results,” Politico reported.

“Elise Stefanik Refuses to Commit to Certifying 2024 Election Results in Stunning Exchange With NBC’s Kristen Welker,” said Mediaite.

But would Democrats be held to the same standard? Don’t count on it. Republicans will now be pressed on whether they will certify elections for decades. The same questions, meanwhile, have remained virtually non-existent for Democrats after objecting to election results in 2001, 2005, and 2017. In fact, Democrats haven’t lost an election that they haven’t protested certification of since 1988. Democrats even objected to more states in 2017 than Republicans did in 2021. And yet Stefanik is controversial for refusing to certify an election if it isn’t properly conducted. With a nationwide effort underway to block their top political opponent from even appearing on the ballot, Democrats will ensure the November election is anything but proper.

Last week, Stefanik’s predecessor in House leadership, ousted Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, gave a hyperbolic speech in New Hampshire wherein the former Republican conference chair warned electing Trump again “may well be the last real vote you ever get to cast.”

“It will be that bad,” Cheney said.

Americans, however, may not even be able to vote for Trump in the first place if other states follow Colorado and Maine to boot Trump off the ballot. The Supreme Court will now decide whether states can keep Trump’s name absent from the voting booth. Considering how the 2020 contest was rigged by manipulation of pandemic voting rules and Silicon Valley electioneering, voting for the former Republican president in 2016 may have been the last time Americans cast a vote in a genuinely free and fair presidential election. Democrats are following a similar playbook this fall with a federal crackdown on regime dissidents.

[10 Ways Democrats Are Already Rigging The 2024 Election] 

In December, Allysia Finley, a member of The Wall Street Journal editorial board, explained the far-left’s fascination with declaring Trump an authoritarian whose candidacy threatens democracy.

“Cynicism is one way to explain the left’s hysteria,” she wrote. “Another is that the portrayal of Mr. Trump as a would-be dictator is a textbook case of psychological projection, the process by which people avoid confronting their own unwanted thoughts, feelings or behaviors by subconsciously ascribing them to others. Psychologists refer to this as a defense mechanism.”

In her book out last month, Cheney, who led the Democrats’ Soviet-style inquisition into the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot two years ago, cast Trump as wannabee dictator prepared to singlehandedly overthrow the republic.

“As a nation, we can endure damaging policies for a four-year term,” Cheney wrote. “But we cannot survive a president willing to terminate our Constitution.”

Democrats, of course, know their latest effort to rig the 2024 contest with a ban on their chief political opponent from holding office is blatantly unconstitutional. In her interview with ABC News Sunday, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked about eliminating the Republican frontrunner as a legitimate candidate. Elections, Pelosi said, “are up to the states.”

“They have different laws from state to state. I don’t think he should ever have been president,” Pelosi said.

Even ABC’s “This Week” moderator, George Stephanopoulos, immediately corrected her.

“It’s the Constitution,” Stephanopoulos said.

The theory that Democrats are using to expel Trump, that the former president is an insurrectionist and therefore barred from public office, is a far-fetched legal theory George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley says “is the type of theory that can destroy a democracy.”

“The terrible thing is that this is the most successful and stable democracy in the history of the world,” Turley told Fox News. “And yet, after this long successful run, you have blind advocates today trying to introduce an instability in that system that could destroy it.”