Constitutional Law, Criminal law, Free Speech, International, Media

“The Enemy of the People”: Trump Resumes His Attacks On American Media As China Bans The Washington Post
Flag of the Peoples Republic of China

I was been a long critic of President Donald Trump’s attacks on the media even though I have been critical of biased reporting by some outfits. Trump’s mantra of calling the media, and particularly the Washington Post and the New York Times, “the enemy of the people” was repeated on Twitter last weekend as China banned the Washington Post (and the Guardian) from access to its citizens. Both publications joined others behind the infamous “Great Firewall” of China’s massive censorship apparatus. While Trump has only called for greater liability for American media (rather than censorship), the confluence of these stories is concerning. China can cite our own president in declaring the Washington Post as an enemy and “fake news” to justify its censorship of one of the last remaining free press accessible to some Chinese.

President Trump attacked the New York Times this weekend after the paper wrote a story suggesting that the deal with Mexico was not the result of Trump’s recent threats of a tariff but actually sealed weeks ago.  The New York Times reported that the deal was pretty much completed and that the tariff drama was not material to the outcome.

Trump responded in a series of tweets that said:

Another false report in the Failing @nytimes. We have been trying to get some of these Border Actions for a long time, as have other administrations, but were not able to get them, or get them in full, until our signed agreement with Mexico. Additionally, and for many years,……Mexico was not being cooperative on the Border in things we had, or didn’t have, and now I have full confidence, especially after speaking to their President yesterday, that they will be very cooperative and want to get the job properly done. Importantly, some things……not mentioned in yesterday press release, one in particular, were agreed upon. That will be announced at the appropriate time. There is now going to be great cooperation between Mexico & the USA, something that didn’t exist for decades. However, if for some unknown reason…….there is not, we can always go back to our previous, very profitable, position of Tariffs – But I don’t believe that will be necessary. The Failing @nytimes, & ratings challenged @CNN, will do anything possible to see our Country fail! They are truly The Enemy of the People!

Clearly the “enemy of the people” line has become a standard campaign mantra but it not just unjustified but dangerous. It gives cover to countries like Russia and China in cracking down on the free press as purveyors of “fake news.” Indeed, China and other authoritarian countries have picked up this phrase. Previously, Trump not only called the New York Times “the enemy of the people” but said that the newspaper should
“beg his forgiveness.”

China has now added the Post to the Bloomberg, the New York Times, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal as blocked news sources. Of course, the reason is that the news is far too real for the taste of the Chinese government. While Trump has never called for such censorship, his rhetoric undermines the free press throughout the world as a time when journalists are being arrested and murdered at an alarming rate. Moreover, it is not just Trump. We are seeing Western Europe moving against the free press as it has done against free speech.

The United States has always been the bastion of protection for the free press. The President must be an advocate for this core freedom. He is perfectly free to criticize coverage (and there are ample examples of unfair coverage). However, presidents have long disagreed with coverage without adopting the rhetoric of authoritarian regime or denouncing media as an “enemy of the people.”

149 thoughts on ““The Enemy of the People”: Trump Resumes His Attacks On American Media As China Bans The Washington Post”

  1. There is a difference between defending free speech and free expression and defending a media that cannot be excused or defended.

    The British have a perfect saying to sum up the state of the media in 2019:

    Not fit to purpose.

    2. “There is a difference between defending free speech and free expression and defending a media that cannot be excused or defended.”

      Well, no.

      The second is a subset of the first. Your statement is essentially anti- free expression. The expression “a media that cannot be excused or defended” can be translated as “media that I dislike.” If you don’t believe in defending the right of expression that you dislike, then you don’t believe in free expression at all. The North Korean and Chinese governments grant their citizens precisely this level of freedom of expression. Youtube, Twitter, and other social media companies are steering all of us into the corporate censorship ditch. The British, to whom you ascribe some incomprehensible epigram regarding the state of the media, are in the process of criminalizing the expression of various thoughtcrimes in their their country.

  2. Trump criticizes (not attacks…but that’s a semantic argument for another time) the MSM for not telling the truth. He doesn’t criticize them for telling the truth. That’s a basic fact most lefties prefer to ignore and refuse to address.

    1. “Trump criticizes (not attacks…but that’s a semantic argument for another time) the MSM for not telling the truth.”

      This is very true (I disagree with the semantic distinction windbag draws, but agree that this particular thread is not the place to run into that rabbit hole.)

      The MSM whine about Trump referring to them as fake news, though they seem to be on a mission to prove him right at every turn.

  3. Well ya did again Turley, why do you have to feed your right-wing trolls and russian bots. Most of your readers could care less about a free press or democracy. Read their posts, they have a disdain and outright disregard for anything that can prove facts or truth. Alternative facts have replaced truth and facts, and they could care less. Rudy G. said it best for them….Truth isn’t truth.

    1. We read your posts and conclude your mother should take your computer away and tell you to go outside.

      1. We read your posts….

        Speak for yourself.

        Listening to NPR for 30 seconds (max) is preferable.

        😜

    2. “Rudy G. said it best for them….Truth isn’t truth.”

      Giuilani was speaking in the context of testifying before the Special Prosecutor, which was a perjury trap, a situation for which the expression “truth isn’t truth” is a perfect description. He was not speaking in the post-modernist sense of the contemporary left with its claims that there are many genders or “women can have penises” or “men can get pregnant” other such non-sense. Neither was he talking about the distinction between fake news and reality.

      Indeed, quoting Giuliani out of context like this is an maneuver that understands that the truth, well, sometimes maybe isn’t the truth.

  4. It all depends on the media and the understanding that Trump is one part of the dog and pony show we’re being “treated” to.

    First, most of the legacy media can rightfully be called an enemy of the people. As long as your wealthy, they may be your friends, but if you are poor and w/o many job opportunities, the constant screams for war that the legacy media put out are going to get poor people killed.

    I have never seen such an unbroken stream of lies about other nations. Syria, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, China–it doesn’t matter. If the crazed ruling cabal running the US wants a war, the legacy press is here to help them get one. Who typically fights these wars? Our poor people. Who typically dies? Our poor people, other nations people. I’d say that helping a small, insane elite to kill others definitely qualifies them as an enemy of the people.

    Now here is where one must become aware of whose side Trump is actually on. These are his wars (really the wars of his masters). He’s surrounded by war mongers which he put in place. They own him and he’s happy to create death and destruction anywhere his paymasters tell him.

    His paymasters and the paymasters of the legacy press are the same. Never forget that and never refuse to see how much the legacy press dovetails into Trump’s wars and regime changes. Pay attention to it!

    Then we see that Trump’s paymasters again agree w/legacy press paymasters when it comes to real reporters. Like Obamber, this group would prefer there not be anything other than their own propaganda. Trump wants Assange dead. He is mowing down whistle blowers just like his sainted predecessor the Obamber.

    To Trump supporters, please, I ask that you pay attention and do not get distracted by what your image of who Trump is. Look at what he is doing to those reporters/publications which are trying to get the facts out about this govt.’s war crimes. He wants them stopped, dead and/or off the net.

    This is freaking China. Don’t be fooled. Look at reality and fight for your rights to speak freely and to have a free press. They are slipping away as I write this.

    1. Jill’s also an enemy of the people. But she’s a completely inconsequential person who has scads of opinions on matters about which she knows nothing. We’d certainly benefit if she were exiled, but who’d want her?

  7. China also bans prostitutes as do we. It doesn’t make us the same although banning the press and hookers does have its own parallels.

    1. Mespo, please stop demeaning sex workers by comparing them to presstitutes.

    2. China also bans prostitutes as do we.

      Actually Darren attempted to ban them but alas they persist trolling up and down these blog avenues in gruesome fishnet stockings and scantily clad

  8. The mainstream media does not report straight news. It tries to shape voting behavior by specifically editing and changing the news. For instance, selective editing of Trump’s comments about Charlottesville cut out the part where he said, specifically, that he was not talking about the racists, who were very bad people, when he said there were good people on both sides. The media cut that part out, and then went on to blatantly lie and claim that Trump praised violent racists. There are gullible people who’ve commented on this blog that still believe that slanderous story.

    That’s not news, that’s dishonest propaganda.

    Congress is up in arms about Russia meddling in our elections. What about social media and the mainstream news outlets? They meddle in our election with far more results than a few Facebook memes.

    Until and unless Congress admits that silicon valley and the media have become weaponized against conservatives, and openly strive to use every tool at their disposal to make sure voters choose Democrats, then their hand wringing about election meddling is pure hypocrisy.

    1. Karen, so which of the neo-Nazis chanting “Jews will not replace us.” were very fine people?

      I’ve read the entire transcript of Trump’s remarks.

      1. The American citizens who attempted to march at Charlottesville, with a lawful permit, who were denied the opportunity due to the illegal actions of ANTIFA and their cohort, facilitated by the police who did not respect the law, which whole mess ended in tragedy, well, those marchers had a civil and constitutional right to free speech and assembly that was wrongfully denied.

        https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/12/01/flawed-law-enforcement-plan-failed-prevent-injury-death-violent-charlottesville-protests/912671001/

        that chant of the marchers has a certain theoretical background that I will be pleased to explain.

        It has its origins in its idea that white native born americans are being demographically replaced with third world migrants. this is a plausible notion for people to have based on verifiable long term facts.

        there is also a historically well grounded notion that there was a lot of support from the Jewish establishment for the 1965 immigration reform act, which facilitated migration into the US from non-European sources.

        There understanding that there is a lot of Jewish liberal establishment support for mass migration from problematic nations is not a secret. Here, Jewish Dennis Praeger discusses this.

        https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/03/jewish-muslim-relations-europe-america-worsening-due-immigration/

        The Naïveté of Jewish Support for Massive Muslim Immigration
        By DENNIS PRAGER
        March 7, 2017 5:00 AM

        Protesters march against the first travel-ban order in Portland, Ore., in January. (Reuters photo: Steve Dipaola)
        In Europe’s experience, high levels of immigration from the Middle East and North Africa have caused anti-Semitism to spike.
        Last week the Jerusalem Post and other news agencies reported that in a Paris suburb, two Jewish brothers wearing kippot (Jewish skullcaps) were attacked while driving their car — by Middle Easterners driving another car.

        According to the report, “While the vehicle was in motion, the driver and a passenger shouted anti-Semitic slogans at the brothers that included ‘Dirty Jews, you’re going to die!’

        “The vehicle forced the brothers to stop their car, and they were surrounded by several men [who] came out of a hookah café on to the side street. . . .

        “The alleged attackers surrounded the brothers, then kicked and punched them repeatedly while threatening that they would be murdered if they moved. One of the alleged attackers then sawed off the finger of one of the brothers.”

        Attacks on Jews in France and elsewhere in Europe by Muslim immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are so common that, for the first time since World War II, Jews in France fear to wear a kippah or a Star of David in public, and so many French Jews are leaving France that the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, gave an impassioned speech two years ago, pleading with French Jews to stay in France.

        It has gotten so bad for Jews in Europe that The Atlantic, a liberal magazine, recently featured an article titled, “Is It Time for the Jews to Leave Europe?”

        In Sweden, attacks on Jews in Malmo, the country’s third-largest city, are so common that Jews are leaving both Malmo and Sweden.

        Last year the Jerusalem Post published an article about a Jewish couple who had lived in Sweden since the middle of World War II. They were Danish Jews who, as children, were smuggled into Sweden. Their gratitude to Sweden has been immense.

        But they have now left their homeland — the country that saved their lives — to live in Spain. The city in which they lived, Malmo, has become so saturated with Jew-hatred that they can no longer live there. It was caused by, in the words of the husband, “the adverse effects of accepting half-a-million immigrants from the Middle East, who plainly weren’t interesting [sic] in adopting Sweden’s values and Swedish culture.”

        In the words of the husband, Dan, “The politicians, the media, the intellectuals . . . they all played their parts in pandering to this dangerous ideology and, sadly, it’s changing the fabric of Swedish society irreversibly.”

        The Jerusalem Post continued: “Karla [the wife], who’d sat passively . . . then interrupted, saying, ‘If you disagree with the establishment, you’re immediately called a racist or fascist.’” (Sound familiar?)

        “Jewish people in Malmo,” the British newspaper the Telegraph recently reported, “have long complained of growing harassment in the city, where 43 percent of the population have a non-Swedish background, with Iraqis, Lebanese, and stateless Palestinians some of the largest groups. The Jewish community centre in the city is heavily fortified, with security doors and bollards on the outside pavement to prevent car bombs.”

        An article in the left-wing Huffington Post reaches a now-familiar conclusion:

        Migrants streaming into Europe from the Middle East are bringing with them virulent anti-Semitism which is erupting from Scandinavia to France to Germany . . .

        While all of the incoming refugees and migrants, fleeing Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other Muslim lands, may not hold anti-Jewish views, an extremely large number do — simply as a result of being raised in places where anti-Jewish vitriol is poured out in TV, newspapers, schools, and mosques . . .

        “There is no future for Jews in Europe,” said the chief Rabbi of Brussels . . .

        Yet, despite all this Muslim-immigrant Jew-hatred, more than a thousand rabbis signed a petition to bring large numbers of MENA Muslims into America, and virtually all Jewish organizations outside of Orthodoxy and the Zionist Organization of America have condemned the Trump administration for enacting even a temporary halt (and one due entirely to security concerns) in accepting travelers and refugees from seven (of the world’s more than 50) Muslim-majority countries.

        How is one to explain the widespread American Jewish support for bringing in a massive number of people, many of whom will bring in values that are anti-Jew, anti-Israel, and anti-West?

        First, they are staggeringly naïve, believing, for example, that marching with signs at airports that read “We love Muslims” will change those Muslims who hate Jews into Muslims who love Jews.

        Second, never underestimate the power of feeling good about yourself on the left (the self-esteem movement originated on the left). And it feels very good for these Jews to say, “Look, world — you abandoned us in the 1930s, but we’re better than you.”

        COMMENTS
        And third, when American Jews abandoned traditional liberal and traditional Jewish values for leftist values, they became less Jewish, less American, and more foolish.

        Just ask the Jews of Europe.

        __________________________________________

        1. now, one can understand the social and political forces in play, or one can play relentless polemical advocate and just say whatever you like as part of a never ending propaganda exercise. you are free to chose what you prefer. people will take their own conclusions.

        2. Kurtz, since you mention Charlottesville where the facts have been discarded I think I will post something that just came in on the Central Park 5 under a new posting. It reveals a lot of the proof of guilt that will not be shown in the upcoming movie that will be a revision of what actually happened.

          1. they say that those convicted were wrongfully imprisoned due to the fact that someone else confessed 7 years later. If so that’s unfortunate and wrong. But…… I am not sure it is always “racist” when sometimes it is just WRONG.

            i will wait and learn more about those specifics as they emerge

            1. The Central Park 5 were awful people and the testimony about them included their own video, other people and police. Their actions were animalistic. There were many other reports about them but what was created instead was a myth. Only the semen of one was found at the cervix but all others were involved in that brutality and other brutality.

              I tried posting a report that recounts the details that turn ones stomach but for some reason it didn’t come through twice so I will try again later. If not here then on another thread.

        3. Shockingly, when you import a non differentiated swath of people from violently anti-semitic regions of the world, they retain those views upon setting foot here. These difficulties are the most apparent when migration is in large numbers. Smaller numbers can get folded into society, and have the best chance of adjusting and assimilating. Large-scale migration Balkanizes the host country, until you get areas where, as stated above, it is unsafe for a Jewish person to tread.

          On the other hand, if you extend merit based immigration to those who want Western values – those risking their lives to speak out for freedom and tolerance, then you receive the best people the region has to offer.

          I think there are many reasons why American Jewish people are so predominantly Democrat and pro-unlimited immigration. For one, the generation that survived the Holocaust is dying out. Too many are gone to identify Leftism as a danger to individual rights, and the dangers of the 1% language, turning a large group of Americans against a smaller group.

          For another, there is a strong remembrance of the doomed ship which could not find a safe harbor anywhere, in the days when the entire world, it seemed, was anti-semitic. These were real refugees who were a danger to no one. They were turned away and many died. The horror of that near deliverance, snatched away, may make Jewish people wish to err on the side of compassion, and let everyone in who wants to come. All they have to do is listen to the anti-semitic rhetoric in some of the prospective migrant pools, and they might realize it will make the country more dangerous for them. There is a chasm of difference from the home-grown anti-semitism of BDS, and the imported anti-semitism where Jews are physically assaulted. Finally, I believe that modern American Jewish people believe that it was traditionalism or conservatism or nationalism that raised Hitler, and killed so many of their beloved relatives. It could not be further from the truth. Ghandi and Nelson Mandela were nationalists, which means being patriotic to a particular nation, and wanting what is best for it. Nazism was the German Socialist Party, that eradicated individual rights, and imposed government will to change the country. That’s what the Left wants to do – reduce individual rights and strengthen the government to change the country. Hitler didn’t start out his campaign saying he was going to gass the Jews. Rather, he said he would create a utopia in Germany – free childcare, employment, The Jews were the 1% scapegoat blamed for all Germany’s problems, like the 1% or white males are today. He used the method of blaming one segment of the population for the majority’s problems. Everyone had to work for the “general good.”

          Much of the Nazi platform would be embraced by Leftists today. Replace “Germanic Race” with “Progressive” and it would fit right in. Notice the emphasis on the State controlling the media propaganda, much like today’s mainstream media is little more than propaganda for the Democrat Party, purposely changing the message to voters. There was also a lot of rhetoric against materialism and profit.

          (https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/platform-of-the-national-socialist-german-workers-rsquo-party)

          Breaking the Servitude of Interest.

          12. In view of the tremendous sacrifices in property and blood demanded of the nation by every war, personal gain from the war must be termed a crime against the nation. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.

          13. We demand the nationalization of all enterprises (already) converted into corporations (trusts).

          14. We demand profit-sharing in large enterprises.

          15. We demand the large-scale development of old-age pension schemes.

          16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle class; the immediate communalization of the large department stores, which are to be leased at low rates to small tradesmen. We demand the most careful consideration for the owners of small businesses in orders placed by national, state, or community authorities.

          17. We demand land reform in accordance with our national needs and a law for expropriation without compensation of land for public purposes. Abolition of ground rent and prevention of all speculation in land.

          18. We demand ruthless battle against those who harm the common good by their activities. Persons committing base crimes against the People, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished by death without regard to religion or race.

          19. We demand the replacement of Roman Law, which serves a materialistic World Order, by German Law.

          20. In order to make higher education – and thereby entry into leading positions – available to every able and industrious German, the State must provide a thorough restructuring of our entire public educational system. The courses of study at all educational institutions are to be adjusted to meet the requirements of practical life. Understanding of the concept of the State must be achieved through the schools (teaching of civics) at the earliest age at which it can be grasped. We demand the education at the public expense of specially gifted children of poor parents, without regard to the latters’ position or occupation.

          21. The State must raise the level of national health by means of mother-and-child care, the banning of juvenile labor, achievements of physical fitness through legislation for compulsory gymnastics and sports, and maximum support for all organizations providing physical training for young people.

          22. We demand the abolition of hireling troops and the creation of a national army.

          23. We demand laws to fight against deliberate political lies and their dissemination by the press. In order to make it possible to create a German press, we demand:

          a) all editors and editorial employees of newspapers appearing in the German language must be German by race;

          b) non-German newspapers require express permission from the State for their publication. They may not be printed in the German language;

          c) any financial participation in a German newspaper or influence on such a paper is to be forbidden by law to non-Germans and the penalty for any breach of this law will be the closing of the newspaper in question, as well as the immediate expulsion from the Reich of the non-Germans involved.

          Newspapers which violate the public interest are to be banned. We demand laws against trends in art and literature which have a destructive effect on our national life, and the suppression of performances that offend against the above requirements.

          24. We demand freedom for all religious denominations, provided that they do not endanger the existence of the State or offend the concepts of decency and morality of the Germanic race.

          The Party as such stands for positive Christianity, without associating itself with any particular denomination. It fights against the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and around us, and is convinced that a permanent revival of our nation can be achieved only from within, on the basis of: Public Interest before Private Interest.

          25. To carry out all the above we demand: the creation of a strong central authority in the Reich. Unquestioned authority by the political central Parliament over the entire Reich and over its organizations in general. The establishment of trade and professional organizations to enforce the Reich basic laws in the individual states.

          The Party leadership promises to take an uncompromising stand, at the cost of their own lives if need be, on the enforcement of the above points.

          Munich, Germany

          February 24, 1920.

          1. the anti-usury part of the NSDAP 1923 platform had some merit and should be dusted off in contemporary western nations if you ask me. people get credit cards too easily especially younger people and they simply can’t do the math. before the 1970s the situation was different and better when it came to consumer credit. one day the SCOTUS just decided that “the constitution” suddenly meant something different than it had meant for a century or more before. that 70s SCOTUS sucked!

            a lot of the rest of it was just popular nonsense. such as replacing Roman law with German law. Total bunk.

      2. Anon, notice how Karen spreads her comments wide?

        This one references Charlottsville, Russia, Silicon Valley, The Media and Democrats. There’s no particular focus, just a smattering of hot button issues with the conclusion that concern for election meddling is ‘pure hypocrisy’.

        1. Actually, Peter, I presented various examples of how the media has lost journalistic integrity over a variety of subjects.

        2. Karen’s an obvious over consumer of right wing media, which explains her repeatedly spouting falsehoods.

        3. IMHO, Karen is probably being paid to post. She has a little “telecommunity” job that she’s mentioned. She denies it, but one has to wonder.

      3. Anon:

        I have explained this to you. You know this. Why are you claiming ignorance. You are using false logic to imply that 100% of the people there were Neo-Nazis chanting anti-semitic garbage. Do you know 100% of the people who were there? No, you don’t. Locals were just protesting the removal of a statue, like they always do.

        There were 4 groups in Charlottesville:

        (1) – locals who were peacefully protesting the removal of the Confederate Statue in their own local park (fine people)
        (2) – out of towners who were peacefully protesting Group 1’s peaceful protest (fine people)
        (3) – out of town racists who came there prepared to commit violence (bad people)
        (4) – out of town groups like Antifa who came there prepared to commit violence (bad people)

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMQWJDVg8PA

        https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2019/apr/26/context-trumps-very-fine-people-both-sides-remarks/

        “So you know what, it’s fine. You’re changing history. You’re changing culture. And you had people — and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists — because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.”

        The above was referencing Groups 1 and 2.

        Here’s the thing. Free Speech laws protect all speech, good or bad. If the bad guys had a permit, then they were allowed to be there. They are allowed to say whatever lunatic thing comes into their heads. Antifa did not have the right to attack them with bats because they hated what they said. If they did, then the jails would have to empty of wife beaters whose victims legitimately pissed them off. That said, even though Group 4 was video taped with bats starting violence, Group 3 came prepared to fight, as well. That is why Group 3 and 4 were both bad people.

        And yes, being a Leftist does not protect you from moral criticism when you take a baseball bat to someone because you hate what they say. Or if you take over a street in Seattle and start redirecting traffic, or chasing down an elderly man because he had a Southern license plate. What, do you think being a Leftist conveys some sort of moral superiority? Antifa is a domestic terrorist group.

        You know what should have happened? Peaceful protestors should have abandoned the bad guys, and had a fun picnic and event somewhere else, so the bad guys had no audience. How embarrassing would that have been for them?

        1. Now go do a GOOGLE search on Trump’s “fine people in Charlottesville” and see how many hits you get from mainstream media that he praised white nationalists. His comments very clearly did not, and he spoke in English. He actually said “they should be condemned totally.”

          That is why the mainstream media is viewed by conservatives as hostile to the American public. This is blatant voter manipulation and fraud.

          If a journalist summarized a statement that badly in a journalist class, he or she would have been given an F.

        2. Karen ,you can’t explain something you are so totally ignorant about. Let me explain it to you:

          The Charlottesville was a well publicized – in their own venues – neo-Nazi, racist rally. There were no public minded grandmothers and kids there.

          Here’s a poster for it:

          https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/JNYLvF4ihbIy4IEtxLJlbp3cD-I=/0x0:802×852/920×0/filters:focal(0x0:802×852):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/16194132/Screen_Shot_2019_04_26_at_11.47.41_AM.png

          Another:

          https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dIgiEHEEwWAVIV-1A6udK5CChXk=/0x0:520×681/920×0/filters:focal(0x0:520×681):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/16194207/791.jpg

          1. Karen, here’s the police summary of who they expected:

            Police affidavit on tomorrow’s “Unite the Right” attendees:
            • 150+ Alt Knights
            • 250-500 Klu Klux Klan
            • 500 “3% Risen”
            • 200-300 Militia

            Here’s the marchers chanting “Jews will not replace us”

            https://youtu.be/8KYifYzjKlc?t=205

            1. Karen, read a good newspaper and quit wallowing in right wing propaganda. It’s killing your brain cells.

    2. “Both of these Democratic leaders were praised by the media for their response to the violence that unfolded. But, interestingly enough, few reporters are asking them about their responsibility in letting Charlottesville turn into a battlefield between political extremists.

      Law enforcement was on hand at the dueling demonstrations on Saturday, decked out in riot gear and looking prepared for the worst. Except they weren’t allowed to do their job. Police on the scene were reported to have been ordered to “not intervene until given command to do so,” according to the ACLU. That kept them from suppressing the numerous scuffles that broke out.

      When police were ordered to disperse the alt-right rally, that act directed the white nationalists into the antifa demonstrators, leading to further street brawls. Police didn’t seem to try to get in between the two groups or suppress the fights.

      As ProPublica reported, state police and National Guardsmen mostly stood aside and watched as the violence grew worse.

      This appears to be a direct result of what appears to be a stand down order from higher-ups.

      When the alt-right rally was mostly dispersed, police still seemed a missing presence in the city as the leftists kept demonstrating, some armed with aluminum bats and other weapons. This is the scene where the white nationalist drove his car through pedestrians, with police seemingly far away from the action.

      That absence allowed for a female reporter who was an eyewitness to the intentional crash to be allegedly punched in the face by antifa. The reason: because she was press.

      Curiously, this attack on a journalist hasn’t netted much attention.

      The chaos seems like it could have been contained and fewer people hurt if police were a more active presence in Charlottesville.

      Both sides of the rally have been critical of police inaction in the rally, putting blame on them for the out-of-control violence that occurred on Sunday.

      “There was no police presence,” Brittany Caine-Conley, a minister-in-training who protested the alt-right rally, told The New York Times. “We were watching people punch each other; people were bleeding all the while police were inside of barricades at the park, watching. It was essentially just brawling on the street and community members trying to protect each other.”

      McAuliffe was asked about the criticism of law enforcement’s inaction Sunday, to which he offered an odd response — he blamed the presence of armed militia for why police didn’t do more. “They had better equipment than our State Police had,” the governor said of why police stayed put and watched the violence unfold.

      But, according to ProPublica, the militia members seemed to be the only ones breaking up fights and trying to keep the peace in the tumult.

      It would have probably been more effective in suppressing the violence if the men and women paid to keep the peace for a living were out in the mix.

      These street battles have become more common in our country following Trump’s inauguration, and they have gotten out of hand when police are ordered to stand down. Prior to Charlottesville, Berkeley was the locale synonymous with political violence.

      In the two events most associated with the California college town, police were nowhere to be found. During the riot that shut down Milo Yiannopoulos’ planned speech at UC-Berkeley, antifa were able to attack anyone they thought may be an attendee and wreak havoc on town stores. All thanks to a muted police presence.

      At the “Battle of Berkeley” in April, Trump supporters and antifa were able to brawl for a whole Saturday with nary a cop in sight.

      It doesn’t look like the violence will dissipate following Saturday’s chaos, as the clashes between Trump supporters and antifa the following day in Seattle prove.

      But there is a surefire way to prevent further deaths and serious injury: let the police do their job to enforce law and order.

      Both McAuliffe and Signer should be taken to task for police inaction in Charlottesville — and blaming militiamen isn’t going to cut it as an excuse.”

      1. racist march? sure they were racists., who had a lawful permit to assemble and the right to free speech.

        they were threatened with violence by the ANTIFA and the police colluded in suppressing their free speech by directing the would be protestors into a trap where they would be surrounded by those with violent intent. there, they were attacked. they never got to freely assemble and speak

        https://www.charlottesvilleindependentreview.com/

        not surprisingly, violence begat more violence by the end of the day

        but all the mass media could do was blame the racists for daring to exercise free speech, and blame trump for failing to condemn racism

        the rights of people to assemble and speak freely? nobody cared
        collusion between police and the crimnal plans of antifa? acknowledged by independent fact finders but nobody cared

        and all they can say today is mockery of Trump. which was the least consequential part of the story, whatever he said or failed to say.

        let me be the first to say to stupid liberals– not all are stupid– but stupid liberals think you can get rid of free speech for racists and not affect others. lol. nope, don’t work that way

        you will see it unfold, if you arent seeing it already. just watch

        1. The two of you, and most of those that post on this blog, are insanely ignorant, and I can prove it!

          Define the following words and what the following sentence means:

          Union, Faction, Insurrection; “The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection”.

        2. Kurtz you are essentially correct from what I heard from one of the participants being attacked by antifa. She said she had no sympathies with the small group of Nazi’s that were there and was legally protesting at a protest with a permit. Corroborating what you said the antifa crowd attacked them and the police under a Democratic mayor did not keep antifa away from the permitted site. She was essentially surrounded without any protection of her own or from the police so that she was blocked from her car. This is how the left acts and probably how Anon acts as well though he probably spurs it on staying away from harm.

          I have seen things like this happen where Democrats are in control. I remember when Breitbart was alive his bus and people were travelling. Road signs were altered and when the bus stopped in one area a crowd developed with eggs being thrown along with some violence. Immediately the police told them to leave or they would be charged with the violence. Fortunately for Breitbart his cameras were running and it was documented that leftists some identified that came from outside the area. The one throwing the eggs was identified as the head of the Democratic Party in a neighboring city.

          This type of violence occurs from the left all the time.

            1. Interesting. The picture of the leftist using a flamethrower shows the violence on the left. Some stupid people can’t understand that there were two groups on the right and mostly one violent group on the left. The right had the permit and the left came to start a fight. The non Nazi’s on the right protesting stupid actions from the left were caught in the middle of a violent spree started by the left which was supported by the Democratic Party leaders.

              1. I heard about this thing in advance. It promised to get more attention than the usual sorry racist demonstration with ten or eleven bozos surrounded by a cordon of police.

                But success at promotion of public events, in general, whatever their nature, is often aided by one sort of vaudeville drama or another.

                Suspiciously, the organizer Jason Kessler was a parvenu to his racist audience. The racists, ever foolish and ready to follow a new pied piper, did not seem wary of following an obvious narcissist who loved attention however negative, and moreover, had insanely invited an outlaw motorcycle club to act as his “security detail” at a press conference.

                Well, this obvious miscreant yet got the permit and ginned up a lot of invitees, foolishly eager to attend. And didn’t fail to deliver on the dramatic sort of mischief that implied. to this day i wonder if he wasnt in league with the antifa somehow or not. but, I’ll admit I’m a little paranoid.

                Why say such a suspiciojn? Well it’s admittedly just a hypothesis. And we know from history that outfits like the SPLC have often had scores of racist informants and collaborators on their payroll, feeding them information like so many criminal snitches going to police squealing on other crooks, looking for advantage. This goes way back to the infamous Carol Howe, the lady who warned Morris Dees and the ATF in advance that crooks were plotting to bomb the OKC buidling, yes, warned them, in advance. google jesse trentadue. get ready to go down a nasty dark hole if you do. the point is, a lot of these awful incidents do not just emerge by accident. A lot of crazy plans go a lot farther than they normally would into action, because some people thought they had an inside angle with the police, and were acting as provocateurs and grassers and snitches in the first place. of course, often those are the “leaders” … what did lenin say? the best way to control the opposition is to lead it?

                but, nonetheless, racists or not, the protesters have rights of free speech and assembly, and they had a lawful permit, and their civil rights were denied by criminal hooligans and an incompetent police force under orders of city leadership that colluded with the antifa gang.

                then after the fact all the various leftist factions milked it for all it was worth. the big soundbite that they keep milking here, long after, is that Trump said something wrong. That we are reminded all the time. Not that a counterprotestor named heather heyer was killed; not that the perpetrator was a confused, scared young man with mental illness exhausted from a long day of being attacked; not that protestors were initially the ones attacked; not that police failed to maintain order; not that police collaborated with a criminal gang of antifa hooligans in denying citizens their rights of free speech and assembly; but just again and again we hear that evil Trump said the wrong thing about it.

                Puke!

          2. I just repeat what the former federal prosecutor and independent investigator from distinguished law firm concluded after reviewing lots of evidence and eyewitnesses and hearing lots of testimony. i linked it. it’s a credible analysis

            https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/12/04/charlottesville-report-tells-us-what-happens-when-police-fail-do-their-job-glenn-reynolds-column/917521001/

            the antifa were out for blood, and they got it

            the feds actually warned the local police about this in advance, it’s also come out

            but the local police were under unlawful orders to suppress the civil rights of the protestors, whether neonazis or confederate history types or whomever. no sympathy for “free speech” rights whatsoever.

            but all we here about is what trump said, oh, that’s such a horrible thing what trump said, blah blah blah

            __________
            it doesnt matter too much whether the protestors were good folks or not., in the old days bad people had the rights of free speech too. that’s what free speech means. oh, except for those who are politically incorrect

            say, that reminds me. youtube banned this video about human smuggling into europe and NGOs aiding and abetting the violation of law

            youtube sees that as hate speech i guess

            1. It doesn’t matter what the protest is about as long as it is legal and peaceful. The Mayor is supposed to uphold the law and the right to free speech by those he may not like. But, the Mayor was a Democrat so free speech goes out the window and the storm troopers are called in while the police hold back.

          3. The one person deliberately murdered in Charlottesville was killed by some “very fine people” from the right, not the left.

            1. killed not by “people” but by one young man, yes a racist, but one who had schizophrenia, and was exhausted and scared from being violently attacked all day.

              I’m just stating a few mitigating factors like any lawyer would, kind of a habit we have, however annoying, to look at more than one side of things.

              and social things don’t happen in a vacuum. we have shared karma. that’s the cosmos

            2. Wrong. Heyer was killed by one person not a bunch of people on the right as you indicate. Take note how you can’t help yourself and feel it necessary to enhance the story by lying.

              If you wish to blame a group you can blame the antifa folk that came to a legally permited demonstration with violent intent. The demostrators, whether we approve of them or not, had a legal right to be there and antifa had no right to approach them threateningly which led to the fighting where members of antifa used things like makeshift flame throwers.

              If you want to place more blame, blame the Democratic mayor and I think the Democratic police cheif that permitted two dangerous groups to be placed in positions that other police organizations said should never had happened. One can also blame the mayor and police for standing down when they saw things were getting out of control. Some have stated that was intentional and political.

              In the end though it was only one person that directly killed the woman. You lied about the rest.

              1. You’re expecting Anon / JanF to maintain a set of procedural principles which are applied impartially. You’re also expecting that he won’t lie and distort. Ha ha.

                1. This is doofus, find a “lie” by me and I’ll prove it’s not or recant it. I have done both, unlike any of you small, weak a.s righties.

                  Just yesterday, kurtz was presented with irrefutable evidence that an attacking rant he went on and on about was completely and irrefutably false. Did he recant? No, not big enough a man, which in all seriousnees I did not expect from him. You or Allan? What jokes.

                  1. “Just yesterday, kurtz was presented with irrefutable evidence that an attacking rant he went on and on about was completely and irrefutably false. Did he recant? No, not big enough a man, which in all seriousnees I did not expect from him. You or Allan? What jokes.”

                    I can’t follow that discussion on whether or not the NYTimes reported on that singular issue or how long the delay was before the NYTimes wrote amount the incident in Hong Kong which should have been top news immediately. I know my newsfeed from the NYTImes didn’t include that major event, but I don’t want that fact to add to the confusion. What is known is the NYTImes frequently uses editorial for fact in the news section and is very biased using anonymous sources as daily news contributors breaking the rules of journalism. The NYTimes had to be corrected on the Russia hoax all too frequently and has been used as a vehicle to promote ideas rather than news.

                    You Anon are perhaps the biggest liar on the blog. You are reprehensible. As a tiny example you accused Karen of not posting a response when she posted many as she showed you tie and time again. It seems you believe lying is the way to manage your deficiencies or running away.. I haven’t met many people on blogs such as this that are as malignant as you are.

  9. of course the totalitarian Chinese government will place more and more behind its bamboo curtain. They are a nationalist regime that intends to silence voices that undermine their rule, whether those voices are chirping out creditable information or not.

    Nonetheless, banning the Wapo was an easy choice for them, and the malice towards Jeff Bezos behind it seems clear to me.

    Nobody said the Chicoms were stupid. Bad, yes, stupid, no

  10. Steve R

    What exactly do you mean by “leftist” — the progressive programs that the majority of the population supports?

    1. Thanks for another ass-pull. Less colorful than the 9-11 truther rubbish.

      1. Maybe this was directed at me? I didn’t pull it out of my backside. I learned about it back in 2001.
        I remember reading this at the time. A powerful and informative essay, I will share the first part, even though it’s long.

        https://cis.org/Report/Jewish-Stake-Americas-Changing-Demography

        The Jewish Stake in America’s Changing Demography

        By Stephen Steinlight on October 1, 2001

        Preface: Challenging A Crumbling Consensus
        This piece is the fruit of an authentic and deeply felt conversion experience, but much as one hankers to grab the reader’s attention with a dramatic retelling of a great and sudden epiphany, it didn’t happen that way. My change of heart, of thought, came gradually, even reluctantly. It was the product of a long evolution, one that occurred incrementally and unevenly over the years I spent as an advocate in the immigration debate who came increasingly to doubt and now, finally, to disown his own case and cause. The conversion is also the result of the consumption of many books and monographs on many aspects of the issue, as well as my own reflections on the innumerable (and often interminable) coalition meetings and conferences I attended on the subject. Writing in the immediate wake of the nightmare America has experienced (I live in Manhattan and watched the second plane strike the World Trade Center), it must be added that the enormities committed by Islamist terrorists in my city, Washington, and Pennsylvania have given these thoughts greatly increased emotional urgency. But they developed unremarkably, slowly, steadily.

        Most of all, my conversion is the consequence of my contact over the years with Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies, and the Center’s work. We dialogued and formally debated on several occasions, and I moderated public forums in which Mark took part. If dialogue has any meaning, if speakers actually listen to each other rather than close their ears and merely wait impatiently to say their say, then the possibility that one can change as a result of what one hears must be acknowledged. The Socratic method was alive and well in our exchanges, and I did. But, as I’ve noted, the change came slowly, the process recalling not St. Paul on the road to Damascus but the Latin proverb Stillicidi casus lapidem cavat, “constant dripping hollows out a stone.” My thought was also significantly influenced by a superb conference on immigration, “Thy People Shall Be My People: Immigration and Citizenship in America,” sponsored by the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation in July of 2000. Perhaps its principal contribution to challenging my point of view was having the opportunity to listen to my own side’s thesis articulated by those willing to take it to its extreme, and their reductio ad absurdum made plain the very great dangers within it.

        In a rare experiment in candid public discourse about America’s changing demography, American Jewry needs to toss reticence and evasion to the winds, stop censoring ourselves for fear of offending the entirely imaginary arbiters of civic virtue, and bluntly and publicly pose the same questions we anxiously ponder in private. The community should stop letting the thought police of the more extreme incarnations of multiculturalism squelch it, feel compelled to genuflect in their direction, or unconsciously internalize or be guilt-tripped into validating their identity politics that masquerade as pluralism. By liberating themselves from these inhibitions we will unavoidably profane the altars of some of our own politically correct household gods, including the present liberal/ethnic/corporate orthodoxy on immigration. We will also risk upsetting not a few old friends and allies, and some of the newer ones we’re already cultivating.

        To whom, one and all, we will need to explain our concerns with patience and empathy. But we should ask the hard questions no matter what, recognizing that only straight talk will get us anywhere. We cannot consider the inevitable consequences of current trends — not least among them diminished Jewish political power — with detachment. Our present privilege, success, and power do not inure us from the effect of historical processes, and history has not come to an end, even in America. We have an enormous stake in the outcome of this process, and we should start acting as if we understood that we do. A people that lost one-third of its world population within living memory due to its powerlessness cannot contemplate the loss of power with complacency. We rightly ask, “If I am not for myself who will be for me?”

        It must be acknowledged from the start that for many decent, progressive Jewish folk merely asking such fundamental questions is tantamount to heresy, and meddling with them is to conjure the devil. But if we hope to persuade the organized Jewish community to adopt a new stance of enlightened self-interest with regard to the immigration debate, a debate that will surely become increasingly bitter, fractious, and politicized in the crudest partisan ways in the days ahead we have little choice. Of equal urgency, and inextricably linked to that debate, is the mission of finding ways to strengthen national unity and social cohesion in America by resuscitating patriotic assimilation under demanding, historically unprecedented circumstances.

        This is emphatically not a time for expending much energy worrying about political good manners and seeking to anticipate each and every qualm of our hypersensitive current political allies (I hope soon-to-be former allies), not to mention the reactions of some of our own flock. And we can’t afford to continue putting our heads in the sand, appealing as that is. The problem — and there is a problem — is not going to go away. Unlike the case with earlier eras of immigration, there appears to be no hiatus in the offing. According to figures just pre-leased from the recent Census, the number of Mexicans who have come to the United States legally and/or illegally has doubled in one decade.

        Leaving Inviolate the Historical Holy of Holies
        It is critically important to state at the outset that this is neither to wax nostalgic (a culturally inconceivable stance) nor — Heaven forbid — to find redeeming features in the evil, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, and Red Menace-based Great Pause in the 1920s that trapped hundreds of thousands of Jews in Europe. My then-teenage father and his brothers, escaping the widespread bloody pogroms taking place throughout the Russian Empire during the civil war that followed the Revolution, were very nearly stranded by it and left to the tender mercies of General “Pogromchik” Petlyura’s Russian and Ukrainian Nationalist army. They managed to ship out of Danzig, walking to that Baltic port all the way from a small village outside Kiev, and get in just under the wire before the door slammed shut. Anyone familiar with the national/ethnic quotas that formed the basis for U.S. immigration policy in the years that followed will note not only their vilely discriminatory attitude toward Eastern and Southern Europeans (Jews most prominently), but also that even the tiny quotas allotted these undesirables were rarely met. So extreme was the anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic restrictionist attitude.

        America’s vast moral failure to offer refuge to Jews fleeing Nazi persecution, a story told so powerfully by David S. Wyman in his two books and that of many subsequent historians, can never be forgotten. The story is told in the permanent exhibition of the United States Holocaust Museum, but with less prominence than it deserves, no doubt out of concern for appearing overly critical of the nation on whose national mall the museum stands. While the U.S. administration was fully informed how and where millions were being murdered in Europe, only a handful were grudgingly granted safety here. The story of the ship the St. Louis is perhaps the most poignant and widely known instance of this monstrous policy, but scores of Jews seeking refuge could tell equally appalling tales of grotesque treatment. Along with the trade in African slaves and the institution of slavery and the treatment of Native Americans, America’s abandonment of the Jews to Nazi annihilation is arguably the greatest moral failure in its history. This shameful, frightening history has formed, as it were, the sacred moral basis for mainstream Jewish support for generous legal immigration.

        But Jewish memories of the failure of U.S. refugee policy and a national-origins immigration policy abandoned some 36 years ago should no longer, can no longer, serve as the basis for communal thinking on this issue. We are, in the first instance, not speaking here of refugees from tyranny or oppressed minorities, but of vast numbers of immigrants seeking economic betterment, and, secondly, we are not advocating an anti-immigration position — far from it — but rather a sensible one that is consonant with the American dream. Put simply, what we are advocating is a pro-immigrant policy of lower immigration.

        Also, let’s confess it: It would be ridiculous to mistake the organized Jewish community’s hesitancy to address the subject of the great cultural transformation of America for genuine equanimity. We are, after all, standing on the edge of what is arguably the most profound social transformation in the nation’s history. It is a demographic transformation that, most experts believe, will result in a majority non-white population sometime before the end of the new century. A new American nation is coming into being before our very eyes, and many in the Jewish world are worried about it; some are even terrified.

        For the most part we continue to mouth the traditional policy line affirming generous — really, unlimited — immigration and open borders, though our own constituency is deeply divided on the policy, supports it with diminished enthusiasm, and even our legislative advocates seem to do so without conviction. Doubt has been growing for some years now. For those familiar with the behavior of mainstream Jewish organizations within the landscape of Washington-based coalitions, or for anyone with any mother wit, it is a commonplace that Jews find themselves on the political right with regard to almost any issue one might name on cold days in hell. But this has been regularly the case for at least nearly a decade at meetings of the National Immigration Forum, the key lobbying group for large-scale immigration, a group in which the Jewish organizations present are often alone in opposing what is, in essence, a policy of open borders.

        Yet, for the time being, as if on automatic pilot, Jewish organizations repeat the familiar mantras and continue with their uncritical “celebration” of diversity. (Diversity meaning, of course, diversity of race and ethnicity but not opinion.) Like sleepwalkers, we instinctively plod along the corridors in the familiar patterns and pursue old-fashioned attempts at “dialogue” with the new constellation of groups while we attempt to get our arms around the New America. (Dialogue frequently being a one-way street where we strive to please our partners at any price, often reinforce stereotypes of Jewish money-grubbing and privilege by promising entrepreneurs of color entrée to business insiders and frequently ask for little in the way of concrete support for our own agenda in return.) Sometimes it also seems as if we’re trying to look like value-free sociologists and not give the slightest outward signs of the intense vertigo we’re experiencing or the least hint that we may be prepared to reconsider policy. Though we undoubtedly appear green around the gills to those who know us well. For a community that has long advanced an ambitious and unapologetic public agenda, and not infrequently in a rambunctious, in-your-face style, this hesitancy is striking and does not go unnoticed. If unchanged, in the long run it may also prove dangerous.

        Of course research and reflection are always necessary prerequisites to policy formation or revision, but does anyone seriously doubt that we also assume this meditative posture because it carries no immediate political risks? And this despite the fact that like Americans of all backgrounds, including a high proportion of fairly recently arrived immigrants, much now going on makes us profoundly uneasy, and we can’t remain quiet for much longer. Our concern with not giving offense, for not getting precisely the press we want, should not be allowed to strangle our willingness to speak. There are questions of great moment to which we do not have answers, and we shall never find them if we are afraid even to pose them.

        Also, so long as we remain frozen in an attitude of unwise wise passivity, we treat the new realities as if they were inevitable. We fall into the trap of seeing the reconfiguration of the American sociological, cultural and, perhaps most important for us, political landscape as if it were being carved out by a glacial force of nature before which we were powerless.

        The Anti-Democratic Nature of the Determinists
        This tacit surrender to determinism — the belief that economically motivated, unceasing immigration on a vast scale is unstoppable because it is due to inexorable global market forces — makes us complicit in a self-fulfilling prophecy. Such surrender also means, ominously, that we have, in effect, accepted the notion that something as momentous as immigration policy — and no public policy arena carries wider implications for the whole of American society — need not, indeed can not, be subject to the democratic will of the American people. Given the rising unpopularity of current policy on immigration and even reports of isolated violence against immigrants nationwide, cutting off democratic channels of redress raises the specter of serious social unrest.

        Surrender to the alleged inevitable also makes a mockery of the rule of law, as evidenced by President Bush’s recent ill-conceived, transparently political, and ethnically divisive initiative to grant legal status to some or all of the three to four million Mexican illegal immigrants in the United States.

        Predictably enough, now comes word the president may compound the error and extend a policy of sanctuary for lawbreakers to illegal immigrants of all backgrounds to satisfy disgruntled new arrivals from other ethnic groups who feel aggrieved. We have come to live within a culture in which illegal immigrants have joined the roster of victims demanding rights, recognition, and recompense; in effect they wish to join the ranks of the only just ethnic recipients of affirmative action: African Americans. Many of the traditional “people of good will” not only find this astounding act of collective social gall appropriate, but also view the satisfaction of the demands of illegal aliens as if they constituted moral imperatives. To make matters even worse, not to be outdone by the president’s deft pandering to Mexican-Americans, leading Democrats have proposed a significant extension “on humanitarian grounds” of family-reunification policy, a highly questionable approach to the selection of immigrants in the first place.

        Where, pray, will all this end? Astonishing data drawn from the 2000 Census indicates that there may be something like nine million illegal residents in the United States. Most people on earth have nothing; if they manage to make it to America they will have something. But do we really wish to construct immigration policy on the catastrophe of global poverty and chaos, and the breakdown of nation-states around the world that threatens to overwhelm all notions of separate nationhood and erode all borders? An appeal based on global misery can know no boundaries and can make no distinctions. And we must continually bear in mind that the Republicans and Democrats pushing these agendas do not do so out of genuine compassion (where were they during the Rwandan genocide?) but in a shabby public relations battle for the Latino, especially Mexican, vote. And no one imagines that we could afford such compassion economically, or that the American people would stand for such a policy if one were explicitly presented.

        Abandoning the Field to Nativism and Xenophobia
        Not far down the list of awful consequences, our unspoken acquiescence leaves the anti-determinist camp, with some notable exceptions (such as the thoughtful and moderate Center for Immigration Studies), largely in the hands of classic anti-immigrant, xenophobic, and racist nativist forces. The white “Christian” supremacists who have historically opposed either all immigration or all non-European immigration (Europeans being defined as Nordic or Anglo-Saxon), a position re-asserted by Peter Brimelow, must not be permitted to play a prominent role in the debate over the way America responds to unprecedented demographic change. Nor should the anti-immigrant demagoguery of some black leadership be permitted to go unchallenged. To allow this opens the door to inter-ethnic conflict and a potential white ethnic (and black) backlash of unimaginable proportions, including a potentially large, violent component, especially if the economy continues to sour, joblessness rises sharply, and anti-immigrant attitudes harden.

        In good conscience and out of self-interest we must not abandon immigration reform to those who would have kept our forebears out of America, including those sent away to be annihilated in the Holocaust. But our failure to adjust policy to radically changed and changing realities, our continued failure to distinguish refugee policy from immigration policy, and our continued support (at least on paper) of anachronistic and irrelevant positions cedes them center stage and a wide opportunity to do great mischief. We must be willing to revise our positions and re-enter and reinvigorate the debate.

        We need to rescue it from the influence of those who understand America not in terms of its abstract constitutional principles, not as embodied in the Bill of Rights, but rather in some Buchananite version of blut un boden. It was recently reported in the Tennessean that Buchanan’s Reform Party has, unsurprisingly enough, made all-out anti-immigration a central plank of its platform, calling for a 10-year moratorium on all immigration. It must be admitted that this attitude clearly resonates with a majority of Americans. Every time representative samples of Americans are presented this option on opinion surveys of all sorts they support it, though usually it is couched in the context of a five-year moratorium. We are not advocating surrender to the thoughtless mob, but we are advocating the design of policy closer to where the American people actually are with regard to the issue, at the same time that we morally educate them to extend the parameters of their sense of community. Here is a good role for the church.

        Equally, and more politically awkward for many Jews, we must save the pro-immigration argument from its own most extreme and uncritical proponents. Especially from those who see unchecked illegal immigration from Mexico (in the 1990s the source of one-third of all immigration to the United States and fully 50 percent of illegal immigration) as a brilliant strategy in an undeclared, low-intensity, and thus far remarkably successful war of Reconquista. With over 8 percent of Mexico’s population already here, and who knows what additional percentage on the way, the notion of a de facto Reconquista, especially in the Southwest where the Mexican share of immigration is astronomical, sounds less and less like nativist hyperbole.

        It should be added that immigration from the rest of Central and South America and the Caribbean accounts for an additional 23 percent, for a total Hispanic/Caribbean share of 1990s immigration of about 55 percent.

        Posing the Sphinx Questions
        What are some of those large vexing questions we would prefer not to speak aloud? Let’s throw out a few and see how many sleepers we can awaken. The big one for starters: is the emerging new multicultural American nation good for the Jews? Will a country in which enormous demographic and cultural change, fueled by unceasing large-scale non-European immigration, remain one in which Jewish life will continue to flourish as nowhere else in the history of the Diaspora? In an America in which people of color form the plurality, as has already happened in California, most with little or no historical experience with or knowledge of Jews, will Jewish sensitivities continue to enjoy extraordinarily high levels of deference and will Jewish interests continue to receive special protection? Does it matter that the majority non-European immigrants have no historical experience of the Holocaust or knowledge of the persecution of Jews over the ages and see Jews only as the most privileged and powerful of white Americans? Is it important that Latinos, who know us almost entirely as employers for the menial low-wage cash services they perform for us (such a blowing the leaves from our lawns in Beverly Hills or doing our laundry in Short Hills), will soon form one quarter of the nation’s population? Does it matter that most Latino immigrants have encountered Jews in their formative years principally or only as Christ killers in the context of a religious education in which the changed teachings of Vatican II penetrated barely or not at all? Does it matter that the politics of ethnic succession — colorblind, I recognize — has already resulted in the loss of key Jewish legislators (the brilliant Stephen Solarz of Brooklyn was one of the first of these) and that once Jewish “safe seats” in Congress now are held by Latino representatives?

        Far more potentially perilous, does it matter to Jews — and for American support for Israel when the Jewish State arguably faces existential peril — that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the United States? That undoubtedly at some point in the next 20 years Muslims will outnumber Jews, and that Muslims with an “Islamic agenda” are growing active politically through a widespread network of national organizations? That this is occurring at a time when the religion of Islam is being supplanted in many of the Islamic immigrant sending countries by the totalitarian ideology of Islamism of which vehement anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism form central tenets? Will our status suffer when the Judeo-Christian cultural construct yields, first, to a Judeo-Christian-Muslim one, and then to an even more expansive sense of national religious identity?

        It must be added that reliable data on the precise number of Muslims currently living in the United States is extremely difficult to come by. For reasons that appear simultaneously self-evident and self-serving, spokespersons from the organized Muslim community regularly cite the figure of six million Muslims. The number is chosen because it constitutes both a form of demographic riposte to the hated figure of the six million Jewish victims of Nazism that Muslims believe confers vast moral and political advantages on Jews and, secondly, it allows Muslims to claim they have already achieved numerical parity with American Jews. But many demographers and public opinion survey specialists find this figure specious, and place the number far lower. Lower estimates range from three and a half million to as few as two and a half million, with the bulk of the Muslim population being African-American converts to Islam, not immigrant Muslims. We will not chose among these radically differing figures, but only point out that even the lower estimates suggest that given high Muslim immigration Combined with low Jewish fertility and high levels of intermarriage, the rising Muslim population already represents a serious threat to the interests of the American Jewish community, and the danger will only increase with time.

        Does it matter that in a period of unprecedented immigration combined with modern technology (e-mails, phones, and fax) and cheap airfare reinforcing the link between immigrant communities and their homelands in ways inconceivable to previous generations of immigrants, little or nothing is being done in a conscious way to respond? That little or nothing is being actively undertaken to foster loyalty to the United States or a thoughtful adhesion to American values?

        Perhaps most important of all, will American constitutional principles and the culture of democratic pluralism — correctly understood by the organized Jewish community as the chief historic bulwarks protecting America’s Jews – weather the ethnic and racial reshuffling and continue to guide the nation and maintain its social cohesion?

        The current answers to these earthshaking questions are a profound and resounding “maybe,” and an equally penetrating and reassuring “Who knows?” We can no longer persist in constructing our policy on sheer ignorance, groundless optimism, upbeat mantras, and sentimental and largely mythological accounts of the acculturation of previous generations of Americans.

        These questions would be of enormous consequence at any given historical moment, but how much more than at present when the American Jewish community is arguably enjoying the high noon of its political power and influence, a high noon inevitably followed by a slow western decline. While other ethnic/religious groups grow by leaps and bounds, Jewish fertility is flat, its growth rate zero, and we continue to decrease both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of the general population. We have a rapidly aging population; rates of intermarriage that run to nearly 50 percent; no effective strategies to harvest intermarried; a religious tradition that eschews the seeking of converts; and triumphant large-scale, full-throttle assimilation into the American cultural landscape is vitiating whatever remains of our separate sense of identity.

        Surveys also indicate that younger secular Jews are less and less enamored of or identify with Israel, and that Jewish affiliation with Jewish institutions, including synagogues and religious schools, continues to decline steadily. For many, even gastronomic Judaism is only a memory (sushi, burritos, and curry overwhelm deli). The Jewish content in the lives of most U.S. Jews consists of cheaply exploitative cinematic treatments of the Holocaust, gaudy, lavish and meaningless bar and bat mitzvahs that resemble sweet-16 parties, and television sitcoms in which ostensibly “Jewish” characters are universalized as if they were in witness protection programs.

        There is undeniably something of a renaissance among the growing Modern Orthodox community, especially young adults (and, yes, Jewish history has often worked through the “remnant of Israel”), but it is statistically insignificant in terms of the American Jewish future broadly considered. An intensification of Jewish religious identity and observance among an active but small subset does not offset the overall trend, especially within a community that according to every public opinion survey is the least “religious” in the United States. There is also no telling whether this spiritual renewal — which also affects other branches of Judaism and is part of a general religious revival across the spectrum in America — will prove to be enduring or ephemeral. Religious revivals in America frequently turn into short-lived fads. In his brilliant novel American Pastoral, Philip Roth plots the trajectory of Jewish acculturation through the transformation of Jewish male names over the generations: Sid fathered Stephen who fathered Sean. Roth forgot the next stage, however; a fair number named Sean have sons named Shlomo, but it is not so clear what Shlomo, son of Sean, will name his kaddish.

        Facing Up to the Gradual Demise of Jewish Political Power
        Not that it is the case that our disproportionate political power (pound for pound the greatest of any ethnic/cultural group in America) will erode all at once, or even quickly. We will be able to hang on to it for perhaps a decade or two longer. Unless and until the triumph of campaign finance reform is complete, an extremely unlikely scenario, the great material wealth of the Jewish community will continue to give it significant advantages. We will continue to court and be courted by key figures in Congress. That power is exerted within the political system from the local to national levels through soft money, and especially the provision of out-of-state funds to candidates sympathetic to Israel, a high wall of church/state separation, and social liberalism combined with selective conservatism on criminal justice and welfare issues.

        Jewish voter participation also remains legendary; it is among the highest in the nation. Incredible as it sounds, in the recent presidential election more Jews voted in Los Angeles than Latinos. But should the naturalization of resident aliens begin to move more quickly in the next few years, a virtual certainty — and it should — then it is only a matter of time before the electoral power of Latinos, as well as that of others, overwhelms us.

        All of this notwithstanding, in the short term, a number of factors will continue to play into our hands, even amid the unprecedented wave of continuous immigration. The very scale of the current immigration and its great diversity paradoxically constitutes at least a temporary political asset. While we remain comparatively coherent as a voting bloc, the new mostly non-European immigrants are fractured into a great many distinct, often competing groups, many with no love for each other. This is also true of the many new immigrants from rival sides in the ongoing Balkan wars, as it is for the growing south Asian population from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. They have miles and miles to go before they overcome historical hatreds, put aside current enmities and forgive recent enormities, especially Pakistani brutality in the nascent Bangladesh. Queens is no melting pot!

        Currently struggling to find a foothold in America, to learn English and to master an advanced technological and pluralistic culture that is largely alien to them, they are predictably preoccupied with issues of simple economic survival at the low end of the spectrum. In terms of public affairs, they are, at most, presently competing for neighborhood political dominance, government subsidies, and local municipal services.

        Moreover, the widespread poverty of a high percentage of recent immigrants, an especially strong characteristic of by far the largest group, Mexican Americans, also makes bread and butter issues a far greater priority than a multifaceted public affairs agenda into the foreseeable future. No small consideration, it also arguably makes them a greater drain on the economy than a benefit, a subject of unending dispute between advocates of large-scale immigration and reduced immigration.

        While the Mexicans in particular have huge numbers on their side — we sometimes forget that the U.S.-Mexican border is the longest in the world between a first-world and a third-world country — they have little in the way of the economic resources to give them commensurate political clout. And communal wealth formation will be a long time in coming, considering that most Mexican immigrants are peasant class. Also, compared to previous generations of European immigrants, they have been slow to naturalize, largely because so many have illegal status, thus effectively barring themselves from becoming a force in electoral politics. But the sleeping giant will surely awaken, and the sort of amnesty contemplated by the Bush administration will make that happen all the sooner. And it is a giant. Advance Census data indicate that upwards of 8 percent of Mexico’s population already resides in the United States, and the growth of that community shows no sign of abating; the opposite is true. It is simply astounding to contemplate the recent historical rise in Mexican immigration. In 1970, there were fewer than 800,000 Mexican immigrants; 30 years later the number is approaching 9 million, a 10-fold increase in one generation.

        For perhaps another generation, an optimistic forecast, the Jewish community is thus in a position where it will be able to divide and conquer and enter into selective coalitions that support our agendas. But the day will surely come when an effective Asian-American alliance will actually bring Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Koreans, Vietnamese, and the rest closer together. And the enormously complex and as yet significantly divided Latinos will also eventually achieve a more effective political federation. The fact is that the term “Asian American” has only recently come into common parlance among younger Asians (it is still rejected by older folks), while “Latinos” or “Hispanics” often do not think of themselves as part of a multinational ethnic bloc but primarily as Mexicans, Cubans, or Puerto Ricans.

        Even with these caveats, an era of astoundingly disproportionate Jewish legislative representation may already have peaked. It is unlikely we will ever see many more U.S. Senates with 10 Jewish members. And although had Al Gore been allowed by the Supreme Court to assume office, a Jew would have been one heartbeat away from the presidency, it may be we’ll never get that close again. With the changes in view, how long do we actually believe that nearly 80 percent of the entire foreign aid budget of the United States will go to Israel?

        It is also true that Jewish economic influence and power are disproportionately concentrated in Hollywood, television, and in the news industry, theoretically a boon in terms of the formation of favorable public images of Jews and sensitizing the American people to issues of concern to Jews. But ethnic dominance in an industry does not by itself mean that these centers of opinion and attitude formation in the national culture are sources of Jewish political power. They are not noticeably “Jewish” in the sense of advancing a Jewish agenda, Jewish communal interests, or the cause of Israel. And television, the Jewish industry par excellence, with its shallow values, grotesque materialism, celebration of violence, utter superficiality, anti-intellectualism, and sexploitation certainly does not advance anything that might be confused with Jewish values. It is probably true, however, that the situation would be worse in terms of the treatment of Jewish themes and issues in the media without this presence.

        Supporting Immigration by Reducing Its Scale
        Before offering specific recommendations about immigration policy, we should immediately anticipate the predictable opposition and state emphatically what we are not advocating. We are not advocating an anti-immigration position. It would be the height of ingratitude, moral amnesia, and gracelessness for a group that has historically benefited enormously from liberal immigration — as well as suffered enormously from illiberal immigration policies — to be, or to be seen to be, suggesting that we cruelly yank the rope ladder up behind us. It is also, frankly, in our own best interest to continue to support generous immigration. The day may come when the forces of anti-Semitic persecution will arise once more in the lands of the former Soviet Union or in countries of Eastern Europe and Jews will once again need a safe haven in the United States. The Jewish community requires this fail-safe. We will always be in support of immigration; the question is whether it should be open-ended or not? The question is what constitutes the smartest approach to supporting immigration?

        We also believe that generous immigration has been and remains one of the greatest strengths of American life for a multitude of reasons, perhaps the chief source of the remarkable social, cultural, and intellectual vitality and continual revitalization that is the byproduct of the periodic reinvention of American society. Along with our constitutional principles, democratic values, ideal of equal opportunity, and free market economy, immigration and the cultural variety it produces is one of the principal engines of our creativity, genius for invention, impatience with outworn ideas, anachronistic social arrangements, and stifling cultural conformity. It is also main source of a deep-seated historic tolerance for diversity.

        Which is not to say that Americans are ever well inclined toward the present crop of immigrants. We tend to dislike them in present time and only appreciate their virtues in retrospect — usually primarily as foils to compare to the even more repulsive characteristics of the newly unwashed arrivals in a curiously insincere but useful form of social nostalgia. American history is replete with outbreaks of political xenophobia (from the anti-Catholic Know Nothing Party to the America First movement to Buchanan’s Reform Party), and racism, in particular, has been our Achilles heel. But all in all, and especially in comparison to the more ethnocentric European and Asian societies, we have a comparatively excellent record with regard to welcoming strangers to our shores over time. Time is the key factor. We are, to use the well-worn cliché, a nation of immigrants, but acceptance only comes when a critical mass of what are perceived by ordinary Americans as characteristically American cultural norms and attitudes are imbibed and displayed by immigrants in their daily lives.

        Also, U.S. world leadership in virtually every area of science, high technology, in the learned professions, and in every sphere of artistic endeavor is the direct result of the vast range of sources of creativity that immigration provides. We are able to draw on distinctive modes of creativity and inspiration from across the entire earth and then liberate it in the free air of America to accomplish all it is capable of achieving. Immigration gives America intellectual, social, and artistic vitality unknown in equal measure anywhere else in the history of the world.

        Having made this sincere genuflection to the great good that has come of immigration, in light of unprecedented, ascending challenges, what changes might we contemplate with regard to Jewish advocacy on immigration and immigration-related issues? How should we think about acculturation, assimilation, and an old term we should not be ashamed to resuscitate — Americanization?

        For starters, we should give serious, immediate consideration to terminating our alliance with the advocates of open borders — we do not belong in their coalitions — and ally ourselves, instead, with pro-immigration advocates who favor immigration reform that includes moderate reductions in immigration, such as the Center for Immigration Studies. With them, and others, we should support an approach to immigration that restores its good name and helps immigrants make a successful, well-planned transition to American life. These goals are realistic only if the present stratospheric numbers are reduced, criteria for entry are rationalized, and legal and cultural processes of naturalization and acculturation are more efficient and deliberate. Successful immigration is defined in this context first of all as naturalization — acquiring citizenship — and, second, as striking a proper balance between ethnic/cultural group loyalty and a larger sense of national belonging.

        Immigration Policy and Identity Politics
        Our current policies encourage the balkanization that results from identity politics and the politics of grievance. The high percentage of new immigrants who are poor and uneducated, suffer linguistic handicaps, dizzying cultural disorientation, and possess no competitive skills for a postindustrial labor market remain effectively trapped within the underclass and/or the suffocating and meager support systems offered by their tight tribal enclaves. The numbers simply overwhelm available resources at the state and federal level. The new faith-based initiatives, so questionable from a First Amendment standpoint, potentially troubling in terms of generating sectarian strife over the pursuit of federal dollars, and capable of providing federal government sanction to discrimination, would also be utterly incapable of laying a glove on the problem. That is if — and it is a big if — the program survives the Senate and is found to be constitutional.

        Now, none of this would be a problem if we were willing to adopt the Chamber of Commerce/Wall Street Journal mentality. That worldview applauds an endless supply of immigrants as desirable in order to fill the bottomless demand for the wretched of the earth to occupy the bowels of the service sector, to suppress U.S. wages overall, and to further weaken the already marginalized American labor movement. But if we are interested in sustaining the American dream of upward mobility and social integration, that vision is both cynical and hopelessly inadequate. According to social analysts from the political left to the political right, the Alan Wolfe thesis tends to find substantial if not solid agreement. American social cohesion and the integrity of its democratic process are faring pretty well but the nation faces one paramount challenge: the growing chasm between the very rich and everyone else. With this large anxiety in mind, and with concerns about creating a workable pluralism in the face of an exploding and increasingly transient immigrant population, does it make sense for America to follow the European model and create a massive underclass of impoverished, alienated, and socially disconnected guest workers? It is hard to imagine that anyone who values social democracy could favor such a solution — but it is becoming a reality on the ground for three reasons: the misery of the world’s desperately poor, employer greed, and the loss of control of America’s borders.

        The inability of government to begin to cope with the scale of the problem (whether on the side of policing borders or providing adequate social services) also strengthens the role of the ethnic enclave in addressing it. And the resultant dependence on the religious and cultural institutions within the ethnic communities for sustenance often slows or blocks acculturation, and worse. Within those tight ethnic enclaves, home country allegiances and social patterns endure, old prejudices and hatreds are reinforced, and home-country politics continue to inordinately shape, even control, the immigrant’s worldview. In many cases, ethnic communal support for new immigrants or patronage of their business establishments are subject to the blessings of atavistic, unassimilated, and anti-pluralistic communal and religious leadership that frequently has a political agenda fundamentally at odds with American values. This is certainly the case within the Pakistani immigrant community. In many cases, the Old World political party structures, replete with their targeted, self-serving meager handouts, remain powerful.

        Breaking these patterns of control exerted by the sending country and promoting acculturation that honors the immigrant’s culture and origins but principally foregrounds and nurtures American values can be achieved only by reducing the present overwhelming scale of immigration that thwarts any effort to develop practicable solutions to these problems. As noted earlier, cheap air fares and overseas telephone rates, and the internet permits the home country to exert a strong continuing influence on immigrants that is substantially different from what was the case with previous generations of newcomers. Many new immigrants are and remain, in effect, primarily citizens of their home countries and resident aliens in America, here merely to benefit from American resources and return income to the home country before returning themselves. (There are even cases of immigrants to the United States that hold political office in their home countries!) The present tidal wave of immigration swamps all efforts to promote an active sense of civic partnership, dramatically slows the process of naturalization by taxing the INS and other institutions beyond their capacity to respond, and sustains a meaningless approach to naturalization and citizenship tests. (The citizenship tests with their intellectually lame content constitute a particular disgrace.) It also allows no time and space for one group to begin assimilating before the next wave comes crashing ashore.

        Though there has been some progress in recent times, the number of resident aliens not seeking naturalization is enormous. Contrary to popular mythology, it was not unusual for many immigrant European national groups in the great wave of immigration in the nineteenth century and at the turn of that century for large numbers to return home after only a brief sojourn in America. Something like half of the Italians who immigrated to the United States at the turn of the 19th century returned to Italy. Now we have large groups remaining but not naturalizing.

        The time may have arrived to advocate a policy that determines that a legal prerequisite for immigration, in the first instance, is a sworn affidavit that the prospective immigrant will seek citizenship at the earliest practicable date, with timeframes rigorously enforced by deporting violators. The bottom line should be up or out. Needless to say, adequate funding must be provided to the INS to handle this process in an orderly and efficient manner. The goal of immigration should be citizenship, an acceptance of the rights and obligations of full participation in the national life, accompanied by an embrace of American political and social values; its goal should not be access to opportunities for better-paying jobs and public benefits, and nothing more.

        Trendy Postmodernism Skews the Debate
        There are, of course, within the opinion-making set, increasing numbers of trendy philosophical internationalists, mostly privileged academicians protected from real world pressures by tenure, who strenuously object to the notion that one must select and emphasize one aspect of the multiple cultural and national identities human beings possess. Though still a relatively small fraternity, one bumps into them more and more at foundation-sponsored conferences on immigration policy. According to their worldview, such hoary notions as citizenship or whole-hearted assimilation — God forbid patriotism — are historically outmoded, embarrassing concepts. In a shrinking, porous world with huge populations on the move, we are told, they have little to recommend them, and we should feel greater and greater comfort with multiple simultaneous identities, juggling conflicting national and cultural allegiances, and the attenuation of specific national loyalties. Such thinkers not only have no problem with multiple citizenship, but they see it as an ideal, the embodiment of a higher form of global consciousness, the ultimate expression of New Age cosmopolitanism.

        The great masses of ordinary humanity across the world have no such perspective: tragically for themselves and for those who are often victimized by them, they continue to be driven by various forms of tribalism, including the most violent and extreme sort. This is true from lethal interethnic clashes in soccer arenas in every continent, and from the mass killing fields of Africa, to the killing fields of the Balkans. Ethnocentrism and has proven remarkably enduring into the new millennium; those who counted it out, who thought humanity was ready for some higher notion of fraternity, have been shown to have been utterly mistaken in their predictions. Ethnocentrism is the undisputed world champion……

        1. tl: dr

          What does this have to do with what Bill McWilliams said?

        2. Btw, your comment is 7,400 words long, i.e. 12 single-spaced typed pages.

    2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlIjMJBSnRE

      Race:

      Liberal – the color of someone’s skin is insignificant. Those who believe race is significant are racist.
      Left – The Liberal attitude towards race being unimportant is racist. Value is judged by race. The Left still believes in segregating by race – black dorms, black graduations, black safe spaces, etc.

      Capitalism:

      Liberals – support Capitalism, due to free enterprise and because it lifts the most people out of poverty. They just want the government to control it more.
      Left – opposes Capitalism, and supports Socialism

      Nationalism:

      Liberals- believe in the nation state, regardless of country. They believe in American sovereignty and border security.
      Left – only cares about class. Supports open borders, globalism, anti-American, i.e. ashamed of the country and its freedoms.

      View of America:

      Liberals – patriotic
      Left – despises America. Holds it guilty for the crimes of its past, judged by the attitudes of today, but they do this to zero other countries or civilizations. America is racist, xenophobic, etc.

      Free Speech:

      Liberals – support the First Amendment, regardless of content.
      Left – suppresses free speech. Ex – universities and Silicon Valley censoring conservatives online. Anything contrary to Leftism is considered hate speech.

      Western Civilization:

      Liberals – celebrate Western Civilization and its accomplishments, and share its inventions with the world, such as medical advances.
      Left – hates Western Civilization as somehow worse than any other civilization. Considers it white supremacy, although “Western” is not a race. Believes in cultural equivalence.

      https://www.dennisprager.com/explaining-the-left-part-iii-leftism-as-secular-religion/

      Judaism and Christianity hold that utopia on Earth is impossible — it will only come in God’s good time as a Messianic age or in the afterlife. Leftism holds that utopia is to be created here on Earth — and as soon as possible. That is why leftists find America so contemptible. They do not compare it to other nations but to a utopian ideal — a society with no inequality, no racism, no differences between the sexes (indeed, no sexes) and no greed in which everything important is obtained free.
      Judaism and Christianity believe God and the Bible are to instruct us on how to live a good life and how the heart is the last place to look for moral guidance. Leftists have contempt for anyone who is guided by the Bible and its God, and substitute the heart and feelings for divine instruction.
      There may be a clash of civilizations between the West and Islam, but the biggest clash of civilizations is between the West and the left.

  11. Trump’s mantra of calling the media, and particularly the Washington Post and the New York Times, “the enemy of the people”

    Trump is saying what all Americans of honest minds think. The liberal media is the enemy of American values

    China banned the Washington Post….from access to its citizens.

    Great news to start the week

  12. I’m still waiting for Pres. Trump to learn how to give the press constructive criticism. He lacks such basic managerial skills. And, he doesn’t seem to want to self-improve.

    1. and your net worth is…..?
      your CV lists such accomplishments as…..?
      Trolling doesnt count

    2. The man who ‘lacks basic managerial skills’ has spent decades running a company with 22,000 employees and, as we speak, $9.5 bn in revenue. How’s your life going?

    3. but unfortunately on purpose you failed to back up the statement. REJECTED

  13. While Trump has never called for such censorship, his rhetoric undermines the free press throughout the world as a time when journalists are being arrested and murdered at an alarming rate.

    That’s correct. He’s identified what he calls fake news and not arresting or murdering anyone for it. President Trump is not responsible for the actions of others throughout the world. The root problem is the media themselves. Report the truth or reap what you sow.

    2. What journalists? What rate? What is alarming? Lack of proof is an automatic reject of comment.

  14. The Sulzbergers and Jeff Bezos are enemies of this country, as are much of our professional-managerial stratum and most academics in particular. You don’t want the truth uttered, but that’s the truth.

    1. Absurb,
      Somewhere in that 500+ comment thread that was initially about China, we discussed Trump’s reclassification from 1-Y to 4-F in 1972.
      That same year, the 1-Y classification was done away with, so apparently all who had a 1-Y status “became” 4F, virtually overnight.
      I’ll try to post the link to the article where I found that. Also, that same article mentions “record retention schedules” in noting that much of the info in SS files was purged in 1978.
      Basically, only bare-bones classification status changes remained. That makes it even more remarkable that some “know” that Trump’s I-Y was not legit. They can tell that without even having access to his medical records from c. 50 years ago.

      1. https://www.archives.gov/st-louis/selective-service
        Absurb, I found it. I had forgotten that there was talk c.40 years ago about downsizing/ thinning down Selective Service document load.
        The 1-Y to 4F change was something I was never aware of. I had to drop out of college toward the start of spring quarter….I was hospitalized for 8 days, and had no hope of catching up under that circumstances.
        I was not yet 19, but they IMMEDIATELY changed my status from 2-S to 1A. I told them I would catch up on the needed quarter credit hours (45), and requested that my 2-S status be restored.
        They said that was no problem, and there was no need to change my status back to 2-S….that would be done as I got the extra hours needed.
        I talked to the draft board “appeals agent”. He was a local lawyer who was retained by the SS to consider appeals.
        He reassured me that it was “no problem”, that there was no need to appeal.
        I had over 35 credit hours already, so picking up the extra 8 or so in a short summer sessions was easy.
        So I “knew” my 2-S status would be restored, based in the assurances at the local SS office, and those of the so-called “appeals agent”.
        When they figured out what was causing the medical problems that caused me to drop out in the spring, I underwent two major surgeries after completing summer school.
        That required 28 days of hospitalization. I had just turned 19, and I found out that I got my “draft notice” to report for my physical in between surgeries.
        My uncle was an MD who had served as a Navy officer; he said there’s no way the military would take me at any point do to the continuing medical issues lost- surgery.
        I suppose that he and/or the other MDs he knew that were involved in the surgeries, etc. notified the SS that he wouldn’t be appearing for my physical.
        I later got a follow-up letter telling me to let them know when I could report.
        At that point, I’d return to my hometown and was convalescing.I had a stack of copies of my medical records and went downtown to the SS office.
        They could actually see that I wasn’t going anywhere very soon. They said that I was to let them know when I could travel 150+ miles to report for my physical.
        I thought it was pretty stupid under the circumstances to insist on reporting for a draft physical when there was no way I could ever serve in the military, but I got a free trip to Spokane out of it, and was able to re- connect with an old girlfriend.
        One veteran I know very well had enlisted once it was inevitable that he’d be drafted. I had forgotten the conversation we had in the late 1970s, but he mentioned that he thought one of the reasons for purging a lot of the Selective Service records was because of all of the crap that they pulled.
        I mentioned my own go-around with Selective Service because I had some first hand experience with how underhanded they can be.
        In addition to everything else, the so-called “appeals agent” was moonlighting for and in bed with the draft board.
        Preservation of entire draft board/ Selective Service records might have made a lot of people involved in that “industry” very nervous.
        ( As an aside, the group of about 15 guys I went with for the physical was not in the best mood. A few years earlier, draftees were more willing to accept that they had to go. By the time I was “called up”, that mood had definitely changes).

        1. As an observer being an RA for 24 years I must admit the draft has been made far easier. If you want to tap the college loan funding or if you want to have a chance at a government job you must sign up at age 18 for the draft unless you are female for sure.

          Upon doing so your draft status changes from potential to Volunteered.

          All that’s left is a reporting date.

          (wHaT I thought the drft was abolished?

          Tough tin said the kitty … and not only that if if you don’t sign up at 18, if a male, there are fines and jail time to consider……

          You can thank BarneyFrancks and company for that. )

          SSS.gov for selective service system

          Women are excluded and get a free ride for the goodies.

          So serious question. Are those whose loans were forgiven but didn’t pay them off themselves still considered volunteers?

          But if it’s voluntary how can it be mandatory?

          Have to ask Barney Franks

          Aren’t you glad you voted for the left now?)

          As a 24 year regular army veteran I am against the draft and do not consider the requirements of the involuntary voluntary oath nor the fact that it’s sexist etc. to be Constitutional but then I didn’t vote for FDR,LBJ,etc and the DNC either.

      2. It’s much harder to make sure one is telling the truth than it is to lie. Anon is lazy and that is why he choses the later.

  15. “China can cite our own president in declaring the Washington Post as an enemy and “fake news” to justify its censorship of one of the last remaining free press accessible to some Chinese. …”

    Does the Professor Turley really want to excuse China and blame it on the US based on his dislike for Trump?

    “China has now added the Post to the Bloomberg, the New York Times, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal as blocked news sources.”

    Shall we blame Obama and the former Presidents for the blockage of those newspapers Professor Turley? Does the Professor blame China’s hardening attitude towards Hong Kong on Trump as well or does he recognize that would be foolish.

    1. Jon Turley likes turn churn up the Shiite sometimes. He links Trump to China in this article and infers Trump trying to be some dictator – even though Turley don’t believe that. Maybe new nickname for Turley = Jon Churnley?

      1. “Jon Turley likes turn churn up the Shiite sometimes. ”

        Bill, It must be awfully hard in today’s world to be a Liberal and remain unaffected by all the crazyness that surrounds him especially in academia. Turley’s been ‘churned’.

  16. When the media fails to report news objectively by using tactics of omission and editorializing they are by definition the “enemy of the people”. We depend on the media to give us the information needed to make decisions and not doing so makes them the “enemy of the people”.

    1. Problem being that the ordinary citizen’s determination as to whether news is reported “objectively” is nothing more than their own subjective opinion. Truly objective reporting is a pipe dream. Whether slight or significant, reporting, from any outlet, is always going to have some sort of subjective influence, which will inevitably be used as fodder for attack by those that disagree. The media has and always will be imperfect, but their information-providing role is crucial and necessary, and it is the citizen’s [challenging] responsibility to recognize this and weigh information accordingly. Claiming the media is the “enemy of the people” is a lazy trope used to justify one’s distaste for a particular outlet or MSM in general. Whether we like a particular purveyor or not, we the people depend on the press. Otherwise, what’s the solution? Government regulation? Come on.

      1. Haven’t heard anyone to any great extent diss the MSM since the former occupants moved to become the LLSM Lame Left Stream about two years plus ago and left a vacuum.

        Unfortunately the free press is not required to take an oath of citizenship or an oath of office so one has to judge them as a free, independent, thinking, reasoning objectivist and self governing citizen. Nothing more than what the founders intended.

  17. I realize, and I have been told on many occasions, that I’m too stupid and ignorant to understand anything in the Constitution! So, would someone please tell me where in Article 2 of the Constitution, or the Constitution at large, does it describe the process of the newly elected President, selected by a Majority of the Electors voting, forming an administration and Governing the United States of America?

    Please refrain from quoting or referencing Congressional Statutes, they are not the Constitution and must adhere to the Constitution to be valid, that was intentional to prevent poorly constituted Congresses from usurping and circumventing the Principles of republican Government our Government are established upon.

    1. lay off the caps. we don’t write in german here. it adds very little to overcapitalize things in english.

      1. You write like you want, and I’ll write like I want, and I don’t care if you like the way I write or if you read and understand what I write.

        Suit yourself, I could care less about your critiques!

        1. you’re an example of how not to write, if the intention is to engage others and share information

          your arrogance is annoying as hell. you are sure of your own ignorance. feel free to buzz off

              1. L4D says– ^^^ Above, the Anonymous who refuses to use the shift key to capitalize the first letter of any sentence is Mr. Kurtz.

                1. yeah those two were me. it was too short to bother attribution.
                  caps are over rated. But perhaps the Federal Constitution of the United States requires Attention to Matters of Importance and Concern which demand Capitalization of all Nouns!

  18. “Fake” news is the enemy of the people, not free press. The hysteria surrounding Trump’s media comments usually omit the word “fake” in order to stir up the Shiite.

    1. The Bulk of the Media is free to be fake.

      If you want facts etc. go somewhere else

  20. If the media did not conduct itself as a paid arm of the DNC, or worse, leftist globalists, then I would share your concern about Trump’s tweets.

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