Introduction
This series is about factions within America's political parties. Pages 1a and 1b are about factions within the Republican Party. One of them is the Trump family and their sometimes very enthusiastic supporters.The Democrat Party has its' own set of factions. They are described on pages 2a through 2g. The first page in that series was about patriotic Democrats, but other pages described factions that include Blue-Dog Democrats, classic liberals, and Democrats who don't like capitalism because they prefer Socialism or even Communism.
An unfinished page will describe the factions of some of America's minor political parties.
Organizations that don't like Democracy
They prefer to manage a government that has very little input from the people who live in their city, town, or college campus.The City Council in a California city
These are the first two paragraphs of an April 13, 2013 blog page on a blog called Renew America. The map of Sonoma County, California and the italicized words were both included.On Wednesday, March 13th 2013, I witnessed the most arrogant, blatantly unfair act in which I have ever seen a local city council engage. Which local city council, you might ask? That would be the openly Liberal Progressive (I'm not name-calling – they describe themselves this way, proudly) Cotati City Council in Sonoma County, CA.These are the first five paragraphs of an article dated February 12, 2018, that mentions appointments by the Mayor of that city. This article is on a website that has news about the county.
The issue at hand? It was a vacant seat on their city council. For some reason, the very Liberal Sonoma County city councils refuse to honor voters and prefer to appoint new members rather than drawing from the candidates who had gleaned the next highest votes during the most recent elections. Instead of honoring the 1,274 Cotati citizens who voted for politically Moderate/Conservative George Barich in Cotati's most recent election, for example, the Cotati City Council decided to ignore all of those voters, effectively deciding their 4 votes trumped 1,274 Cotati residents' votes and choose a new member who represents their interests – the city council's interests.
The City of Sonoma completed its revised process of naming members and alternates to several city commissions last week, taking final action at its Feb. 5 City Council meeting.This is the first sentence in the fifth paragraph.
Final appointments were made to the Community Services & Environment Commission (CSEC), the Design Review and Historic Preservation Commission, the Cultural and Fine Arts Commission and the Traffic Safety Committee.
The seven-member, one alternate Planning Commission had earlier been approved, with members taking their seats in November.
It was turmoil in the Planning Commission selection process that led to a new system for appointing commission members. In years past, the mayor would nominate commissioners from a pool of applicants, with the rest of the council confirming the appointment, or not. But several disagreements over mayoral nominations in recent years led the council to revise the appointment model, taking it out of the mayor’s hands.
The new method was adopted in September, providing each council member the opportunity to name their own choice for each commission from the pool of applicants. But questions were raised at that time which led the council to clarify the appointment process, and the terms of appointments, questions that were discussed at the Jan. 29 meeting and resolved the following week.
"The new method was adopted in September, providing each council member the opportunity to name their own choice for each commission from the pool of applicants."
This process doesn't give the residents of the City of Sonoma any opportunity to make their own choice for the people who represent them on the City Council which has the ability to make and change the local laws.
Read the second definition of the word "democracy" on the Merriam-Webster website. This definition was also in Part 2e of this series.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
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"a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections"
This dictionary definition says that in a democracy, "power is vested in the people". None of the three dictionaries that I quoted in Part 2e of this series mention the form of a government that is used in this city council. The members of the Sonoma, California City Council were appointed by the Mayor, not elected by the people.
This is not a democracy.
Many colleges allow undemocratic practices
Many American colleges and universities will not report a student to the local police or even the campus police if this behavior is documented, as it is in the following tweet that includes a video. Many of them will not even enforce their academic rules on a student for violating another student's free speech if the following behavior is documented with a clear and convincing video like this.This college is not standing up for the principles of a democracy, but there are worse examples of undemocratic colleges and universities.WOW! CSU, Chico Student Assaults Man for Holding ‘All Lives Matter’ Sign! pic.twitter.com/fFMlxZBwTN— Campus Hate Watch (@CampusHateWatch) November 22, 2019
Middlebury College in Vermont
The news stories and articles in this section are arranged in chronological order, oldest first.These are the first five paragraphs of a March 4, 2017 Washington Post story titled "A conservative author tried to speak at a liberal arts college. He left fleeing an angry mob.".
As the co-author of one of the 1990s’ most controversial works of scholarship, Charles Murray is no stranger to angry protesters.
Over the years, at university lectures across the country, the influential conservative scholar and author of “The Bell Curve” says he’s come face-to-face with demonstrators dozens of times.
But none of those interactions prepared him for the chaotic confrontation he encountered Thursday night at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vt.
“When ‘The Bell Curve’ came out, I’d have lectures with lots of people chanting and picketing with signs, but it was always within the confines of the event and I was eventually able to speak,” Murray told The Washington Post. “But I’ve never experienced anything like this.”
The demonstrations began conventionally enough, with several hundred organized protesters packed into a lecture hall Thursday, chanting and holding signs. They ended with Murray being forced to move his lecture and later being surrounded by an unruly mob made up of students and “outside agitators” as he tried to leave campus, according to witnesses and school administrators.
| This almost four-minute video was uploaded by Fox News on March 6, 2017. This is a segment of "the O'Reilly factor", hosted by Bill O'Reilly. College students should live up to the same standards that they demand of others. If they don't want hate on their campus, they shouldn't hate others and they should never be violent towards others. A professor at this college wrote the words that I quoted below. |
The Atlantic Monthly published an article dated March 6, 2017 titled "A Violent Attack on Free Speech at Middlebury". The subtitle of this article is "Liberals must defend the right of conservative students to invite speakers of their choice, even if they find their views abhorrent.".These are the first two paragraphs of a March 13, 2017 opinion printed in the New York Times. The two links were in the published opinion.
MIDDLEBURY, Vt. — There’s nothing like a little violence to focus the mind. I am the Middlebury College professor who ended up with whiplash and a concussion for having the audacity to engage with the ideas of Charles Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.These are the last two sentences in the second paragraph, without the links.
Though he is someone with whom I disagree, I welcomed the opportunity to moderate a talk with him on campus on March 2 because several of my students asked me to do so. They know I am a Democrat, but the college courses I teach are nonpartisan. As I wrote on Facebook immediately after the incident, this was a chance to demonstrate publicly a commitment to a free and fair exchange of views in my classroom. But Dr. Murray was drowned out by students who never let him speak, and he and I were attacked and intimidated while trying to leave campus.
"As I wrote on Facebook immediately after the incident, this was a chance to demonstrate publicly a commitment to a free and fair exchange of views in my classroom. But Dr. Murray was drowned out by students who never let him speak, and he and I were attacked and intimidated while trying to leave campus."
... attacked and intimidated while trying to leave campus.
They were attacked by students whose signs, recorded by multiple videos, said that they didn't want hate on their campus.
| This six-minute video was uploaded by Fox News on 2017. Tucker Carlson interviewed Professor Charles Murray, who was badly injured by the people whose signs said they didn't want hate on their campus. |
If a democracy is defined as
a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.... according to Dictionary.com, which I quoted early on this page, then a democracy can easily become a system that gives political power (control of the process of governing an organization) to whatever faction has the worst weapons and the most people who are willing to use them.
| This is not a democratic principle, either. A democratically-elected United States government has enacted laws that make it a Federal crime to enter the United States without the permission of the United States government. |
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The Berkeley campus of the University of California
This section was added on February 22, 2019.These are the first five paragraphs of a December 3, 2018 Washington Examiner story. All of these links were in their story.
After more than a year of litigation, the University of California, Berkeley, has settled a lawsuit with the Young Americas Foundation and the UC Berkeley College Republicans.
Campus conservatives accused the university of bias in the process of bringing high-profile speakers to campus. The original lawsuit revolved around the cancellation of an event with Ann Coulter. An amended version of the lawsuit included road blocks initiated by the university for an event with Ben Shapiro.
The Department of Justice filed a statement of interest backing the campus conservatives. The crux of their argument revolved around two campus policies that they claim violate students’ First and 14th Amendment rights: an unspoken “High-Profile Speaker Policy” and an on-the-books “ Major Events Policy.”
“This Department of Justice will not stand by idly while public universities violate students’ constitutional rights,” Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand said at the time.
In the settlement, UC Berkeley agreed to the following terms set by YAF:
- Pay YAF $70,000.
- Rescind the unconstitutional “High-Profile Speaker Policy.”
- Rescind the viewpoint-discriminatory security fee policy.
- Abolish its heckler’s veto — protesters will no longer be able to shut down conservative expression.
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in the 1960s, students the Berkeley campus of the University of California fought hard for free speech, yet many students at this same campus of this same university are now fighting just as hard to suppress free speech. |
The following tweet was posted by a Twitter account that had 223,000 followers.
LEFTIST VIOLENCE ON CAMPUS!— Turning Point USA (@TPUSA) February 21, 2019
A Leftist Thug Violently Assaulted A Conservative Student That Was Recruiting For The @TPUSA Chapter At UC Berkeley!
This Is How Violent & Intolerant The Left Has Become On Campus! #TPUSA pic.twitter.com/H1Q89lXFR9
This tweet was added February 23, 2019. Benny's Twitter account has 129,000 followers as of the day that I added this tweet to this page.
BREAKING:— Benny (@bennyjohnson) February 21, 2019
UC Berkeley has released a statement on the political hate crime assault on one of our @TPUSA activists.
Berkeley condemns in the strongest language the violence and asks for any assistance in identifying the assailant for police.
PLEASE HELP IDENTIFY THIS ATTACKER pic.twitter.com/SjiDyga5MI
This is the complete text of a March 1, 2019 story by the San Francisco affiliate of CBS News. All of these links were in their story.
BERKELEY (CBS SF) — A man being sought for the assault of a conservative activist on the University of California, Berkeley campus last month has been arrested.These are similar stories, all published the same day.
A statement from UC Berkeley Public Affairs said a warrant was issued for suspect Zachary Greenberg and UC police arrested him Friday, booking him into jail at 1 p.m.
Greenberg was identified as one of two men who confronted a conservative activist who had set up a table in Sproul Plaza. Hayden Williams, volunteer with conservative group Turning Points USA was displaying signs that read, “Hate Crimes Hoaxes Hurt Real Victims” – a reference to the Jussie Smollett case – and another saying “This is MAGA Country.”
Greenberg was seen on video landing two punches on Williams – one a glancing blow and another much harder directly on his face.
The incident was recorded by two Cal students with cellphones and video of the encounter has since gone viral.
Police will formally present the case to the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office for consideration of the filing of criminal charges, the university said.
| Fox News | Campus Reform | The S.F. affiliate of NBC News | Citizen Free Press |
| PJ Media | Berkeley News | The S.F. affiliate of ABC News | Berkeleyside |
Rutgers University of New Jersey
This section was added on May 25, 2019. This is their website.Rutgers University promotes civility in 2010
These are the first five paragraphs of a September 21, 2010 story published by the New York Times affiliate of CBS News, which also uploaded one of the YouTube videos below. The link goes to a podcast.NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ (WCBS 880) – This might turn out to be one of the most basic, yet practical lessons taught at Rutgers University – civility, appropriate behavior, and how to talk with one another.“Some people can come off as arrogant and what not and we just need, I think, for people to be more polite to each other,” freshman Samantha Perreta said to WCBS 880 reporter Sean Adams.
LISTEN: WCBS 880’s Sean Adams reports
New Jersey’s state university has launched a two-year initiative called Project Civility.
“Some people can come off as arrogant and what not and we just need, I think, for people to be more polite to each other,” freshman Samantha Perreta said to WCBS 880 reporter Sean Adams.
Adams asked another student, “These are things we probably, maybe learned already. I mean, they probably taught them in kindergarten?”
The student said, “As a little kid, but as you grow up. I think they need to be, like, re-taught.”
This is the same program, which is now an established policy on their School of Arts and Sciences. |
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Rutgers University didn't follow its' own policy in 2014
These are the first four paragraphs of a May 3, 2014 New York Times story. The link in the first paragraph was in their story.Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who had been invited to give the commencement address at Rutgers University in New Jersey this month, said on Saturday that she would no longer give the speech. Her announcement came after weeks of protests by some students and faculty members over the university’s decision to invite her.
Protesters had argued that Ms. Rice should not have been selected as the speaker because of her involvement in the Iraq war during the Bush administration. Students staged a sit-in last week outside the office of the university’s president, Robert L. Barchi, to protest the speech, scheduled for May 18th.
On Saturday, Ms. Rice released a statement saying that she did not want to detract from the day’s festivities.
“Commencement should be a time of joyous celebration for the graduates and their families,” the statement said. “Rutgers’ invitation to me to speak has become a distraction for the university community at this very special time.”
"We just need for people to be more polite to each other."
Those words were spoken by freshman Samantha Perreta to a CBS-New York reporter.The first two of these videos last a bit less than two minutes. The first video shows a group of students not being polite to an invited graduation speaker.
Uploaded April 29, 2014 by New Brunswick Today
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Uploaded May 5, 2014 by the New York affiliate of CBS News
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This video lasts almost five and a half minutes. It was uploaded on 2014 by a leftist group called Democracy Now, which is now begging for donations.
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Rutgers University didn't enforce its' own policy on civility. It didn't even try to promote civility towards a graduation speaker who was invited by the university to speak to the students.
However, This video of news story about a protest at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont shows a much more civil way to handle a demonstration, as promoted (but not enforced) by Rutgers University. This video lasts almost two and a half minutes. It was uploaded on 2014 by a WPTZ, the NBC affiliate in Plattsburgh, New York.
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A reporter's voice, starting at 43 seconds: "Eight protesters in total were escorted away from the venue."
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Starting at 1:27 in the video, the reporter says:
The media was only allowed to record the first few minutes of Miss Rice's speech, and after it was disrupted by protesters, she went on to talk about the different factors that make up a successful democracy, some of those being: civic discourse, a variety of opinions, and of course, that a great democracy takes time and a lot of hard work.
The former Secretary of State told the Norwich graduates that "... civic discourse, a variety of opinions ... time and a lot of hard work ...." are factors in "a successful democracy". |
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Here's a link to the story, on the website of WPTZ in upstate New York.
The State University of New York, Binghamton campus
This campus is part of the statewide university system in the state of New York. This web page shows that there are 64 campuses in the system, including these. |
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The original news story
These are the first six paragraphs of a November 19, 2019 New York Post story. The link in the second paragraph was in their story.
SUNY Binghamton is the nation’s latest free-speech flashpoint, with far-left student mobs asserting the power to decide who gets to speak on campus — or even set up a table to hand out literature."They were asking for it!" is the New York Post's summary of the thought process of the violent demonstrators.
Last Thursday, a group of College Republicans and a new campus chapter of the righty group Turning Point USA were “tabling” on the campus square. The CRs were advertising a coming lecture by economist Art Laffer. Turning Point was offering some pamphlets, including one on gun rights.
Cue social-media chatter on “Trump supporters advocating for Trump and for gun violence” on campus. “Join us at 2pm” to confront them, ran one post; “It doesn’t matter how many are out there … f - - - ’em up anyways.”
And so the tables were soon surrounded by students brimming with rage. Video shows generalized shrieking on various issues, until one student pushes over one of the tables and tries to break it over her knee. The mob then tosses buttons, posters and pamphlets on the ground while chanting “Pack this up” and “Get out.”
Enter the campus police — who tell the victims of this assault to leave as the crowd chants, “You’ll never table here again.”
Brian Rose, the VP for student affairs, then announced the bullies would face no charges, lest it escalate “an already volatile situation” because the kids who got bullied “intended to be provocative.” They were asking for it!
| She must've been asking for it, too, because she got what was coming to her, just like Campus Reform got what was coming to them! This analogy shows the fallacy of leftist thought. |
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These videos confirm the New York Post story
Both of these videos were recorded at the same event that took place on November 15, 2019. They show that the people who set up the tables were not advocating violence and they were not personally violent. They were, in fact, exercising their First Amendment right to express a political opinion.
This 7-minute video was recorded by Young America's Foundation
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This 4-minute video was recorded by Campus Reform
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The Binghamton campus didn't prevent more student violence
These are the first five paragraphs of a November 19, 2019 Washington Times story. All of these links were in their story.A speech by former Reagan administration official Arthur Laffer was shut down by protesters at Binghamton University in New York on Monday, resulting in two arrests.The university failed to provide adequate security for Arthur Laffer's lecture.
The university issued a statement condemning the individuals who disrupted and ultimately shut down a lecture by Mr. Laffer, who served as an economic adviser to the late President Ronald Reagan and was recently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Trump.
“The University is incredibly disappointed with the events that happened tonight, particularly given that demonstrators were provided an adjacent lecture hall to engage in a counter discussion,” the statement read. “The protestors chose instead to infringe on the expressive activity of others and to prevent those who wished to hear the speaker from doing so.
“The investigation of student organizations and individual students who encouraged or participated in any activity that violated applicable law and University policies continues,” the statement continued. “The University reserves the right to pursue appropriate charges or disciplinary action against those organizations and individuals as relevant information is confirmed.”
Mr. Laffer’s lecture, sponsored by the school’s Young America’s Foundation chapter, was meant to teach students about free enterprise and limited government, the group said, but was cut short after “hundreds of leftists” surrounded the event venue in masks, “disrupted the lecture with a loudspeaker, and shouted down an educator who has worked his entire life to ensure all Americans achieve greater prosperity.”
| This 54-minute video, uploaded by the Binghamton Review, shows protesters disrupting a scheduled and university-approved event. Arthur's Wikipedia page his Encylopedia Britannica biography |
President Trump enforces free speech
This section was added March 21, 2019.These are the first five paragraphs of a March 21, 2019 Washington Examiner story. Both of the links were in the published opinion.
President Trump is preparing to sign an executive order that would increase the amount of information colleges divulge to prospective students, while adding pressure on schools not to discriminate against unpopular political views.The relationship between the costs of a college education and the number of students who attend college is very similar to the straightforward economics principle of supply and demand. There is a demand by employers and for some families for an education and a corresponding demand by colleges for students. Both demand levels will be affected by the quality of the education that the students receive, including the amount of academic freedom they have while they are enrolled in classes.
The order will be signed Thursday afternoon and follows Trump's pledge in a speech this month to sign an executive order on university free speech after incidents, including an alleged assault, targeting conservative students.
The executive order will require that, in order to receive federal grants, schools confirm to 12 federal agencies they are abiding by the First Amendment.
A senior administration official told reporters on a conference call that "agencies will enforce the order how they are already enforcing grant commissions" and that "the institutions will have to agree to all of these conditions to receive grants."
Schools already face lawsuits for allegedly violating student free speech rights, notably from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which combats censorship by college administrators. But the senior official did not describe the exact enforcement mechanisms for the order, saying implementation would come in a matter of weeks.
The "unpopular political views" mentioned in the first paragraph of the previous Washington Examiner story can include a student's support for conservative speakers like Ben Shapiro and Ann Coulter, both of whom have been unable to accept offers to speak on campus because of the threats of violence committed by other students that the colleges are unwilling to prevent and punish.
This 43-minute video was uploaded April 24, 2017 by the Fox News affilate in Phoenix.
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This 5½-minute video was uploaded May 2, 2017 by the Fox Business Network
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A Senator enforces free speech
This section was added April 4, 2019.These are the first five paragraphs of an April 4, 2019 Washington Examiner story. Both of the links were in the published opinion.
Sen. Ted Cruz is opening an investigation into Yale Law School for what he claims is discrimination against students with "traditional Christian views" and threatened legal action if they do not cooperate.
The Texas Republican sent a letter, dated Thursday, to Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerken notifying her that he will investigate a new law school policy which Cruz said stems from “unconstitutional animus and a specific discriminatory intent both to blacklist Christian organizations and to punish Yale students whose values or religious faith lead them to work there.” Cruz believes that Yale's policy change could deny financial assistance to students based on the religious affiliation of the organization for which they choose to work.
Cruz warned Yale “the investigation may include a subpoena… or a referral to the Department of Justice for action against the school" and said that the letter was “notice of [Yale’s] obligation to take reasonable steps to retain all … information relevant to this investigation and potential litigation.”
Earlier this year, a conservative group promoted a conservative speaker on campus, prompting a backlash from a number of liberal groups. One of those groups, an LGBT advocacy organization called the Outlaws, demanded to know why conservative students were eligible for school funding during the summer or after graduation to work for conservative organizations that the Outlaws believed discriminate against them.
In a two-page letter sent on behalf of the Senate Judiciary’s Constitution Subcommittee, of which he's chairman, Cruz described Yale's recent policy to "no longer provide any stipends or loan repayments for students serving in organizations professing traditional Christian views or adhering to traditional sexual ethics” as "transparently discriminatory."
The U.S. Department of Justice is enforcing free speech
These are the first four paragraphs of a six-paragraph December 9, 2019 press release from the U.S. Department of Justice.
WASHINGTON – The Justice Department today filed a Statement of Interest in a federal lawsuit in Mississippi, explaining that public colleges cannot trample on their students’ First Amendment rights to free speech. The lawsuit is brought by a student organization and J. Michael Brown, a former student at Jones County Junior College, a public institution of higher education in Mississippi. The college’s policies require campus administrators to preapprove all “meetings or gatherings,” and Mr. Brown alleges that college officials called the campus police on him when he sought to engage on campus with fellow students about topics such as free speech and civil liberties.
“The United States of America is not a police state,” said Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband for the Civil Rights Division. “Repressive speech codes are the indecent hallmark of despotic, totalitarian regimes. They have absolutely no place in our country, and the First Amendment outlaws all tyrannical policies, practices, and acts that abridge the freedom of speech.”
“Unconstitutional restrictions on our first freedoms to speak and assemble directly threaten our liberty as Americans,” said United States Attorney Mike Hurst for the Southern District of Mississippi. “While some may disagree with the content of one’s speech, we should all be fighting for everyone’s Constitutional right to speak. I pray JCJC will do the right thing, change its policies to comply with the U.S. Constitution, and encourage its students to speak and assemble throughout our free state.”
“This is yet another concerning example of students encountering limits on what, when, where, and how they learn,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. “This is happening far too often on our nation’s campuses. This Administration won’t let students be silenced. We stand with their right to speak and with their right to learn truth through the free exchange of ideas—particularly those with which they might disagree.”
The DOJ issued a Statement of Interest on Monday regarding Jones County Junior College in Ellisville, Mississippi, which is facing a lawsuit alleging that the public school threatened students with arrest for exercising their First Amendment rights on campus. “[The school’s] unconstitutional conduct cannot stand,” reads the DOJ’s Statement. “It should comply voluntarily with the First Amendment — and soon.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a non-profit organization that focuses on protecting free speech rights on college campuses, filed a lawsuit against Jones County Junior College (JCJC) after the school called the police on its students for exercising their First Amendment rights without the college’s permission.
“JCJC, as a public institution of higher education, has a freestanding obligation to comply with the First Amendment,” said the DOJ in a Statement of Interest on the case.
The DOJ added that the school’s “speech policies do not pass First Amendment muster in at least two major respects: they operate as a prior restraint on all student speech and contain no exception for individuals or small groups; and they further grant school officials unbridled discretion to determine which students may speak, and about what they might speak.”
According to FIRE, the student involved, Mike Brown, was taken to the police station, where Chief of Campus Police Stan Livingston told him that he is “smarter than that,” implying that Brown should have known better than to violate school policy by exercising his First Amendment rights without first asking for permission from the college.
The DOJ said, however, that “JCJC would be wise to revisit and revise its speech policies at the earliest possible opportunity.”
A similar story about Jones County Junior College was published the same day (December 10, 2019) on a website called All On Georgia.A similar story was also published on the same day by the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.
A newspaper called the Hattiesburg American, part of the U.S.A. Today family of newspapers, published a news story on 2019 titled DOJ, DeVos : Mississippi community college trampled student's free speech.
A Town Hall columnist wrote a piece, also dated 2019, titled DOJ: ‘College Campuses Should Not Be Mini Police States’.
These are the first three paragraphs of a December 13, 2019 Washington Times story. The link in the second paragraph was in their story.A Mississippi college student who was disciplined for bringing a “free speech” beach ball to campus has lined up a powerful ally: the Trump administration.
The Justice Department has weighed in on behalf of a lawsuit filed by J. Michael Brown alleging that Jones County Junior College violated his First Amendment rights by enforcing its policy requiring pre-approval of any student “meeting or gathering.”
After filing a 14-page “Statement of Interest,” Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said the administration “won’t let students be silenced,” while Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband declared that the “United States is not a police state.”
These are the first five paragraphs of a December 28, 2019 Washington Times editorial. The links in the third and fourth paragraphs were in the published opinion.
The assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice just issued a statement reminding that America is not a “police state,” and neither should be the college campuses that dot the landscape of this country.
The very fact the DOJ has to release this statement shows how very far America’s freedoms have fallen.
“College campuses should not be mini police states,” wrote Eric Dreiband, assistant attorney general, as well as several other attorneys, in a “Statement of Interest” filed in U.S. District Court on behalf of plaintiffs accusing Jones County Junior College in Mississippi of several egregious freedom of speech violations against students.
And in a statement on the DOJ website, Dreiband elaborated with this: “The United States of America is not a police state. Repressive speech codes are the indecent hallmark of despotic, totalitarian regimes. They have absolutely no place in our country, and the First Amendment outlaws all tyrannical policies, practices and acts that abridge the freedom of speech.”
A Governor enforces free speech
I just signed a law protecting free speech on college campuses. #txlege pic.twitter.com/jHIh8431SH— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) June 10, 2019
The American Civil Liberties Union
This section was added December 27, 2018.These are the first three paragraphs of a December 27, 2018 opinion printed in the Washington Examiner. All of the links were in the published opinion.
The American Civil Liberties Union’s recent statements on due-process should worry those liberals, conservatives, and libertarians concerned about due-process rights. It should also give pause to supporters of a so-called "Living Constitution" approach, which argues that the meaning of the Constitution can change to adapt to the times.
Recently, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and the Department of Education released new proposed rules on how colleges should handle sexual harassment and sexual assault claims, proposing a rollback of some Obama-era rules. In a series of tweets, the ACLU laid out its opposition to the proposed rules -- shocking for an organization which claims to be devoted to due-process, as they actively oppose the effort to balance the proceedings to give better due-process protection to accused students.
The ACLU claims the new proposed rules “promote an unfair process, inappropriately favoring the accused.” You see, politically, it is a very bad time to do anything that looks like you support giving people accused of crimes the right to due-process, since the #MeToo movement has set up the false binary that you either condemn the accused or support rapists. Though oddly, a few weeks later, the ACLU attacked so-called victims’ rights legislation for undermining due-process rights for the accused.
Alongside the major criminal justice reform headlines that came out of the midterm elections, a quieter trend also gained momentum through the ballot box: a budding, national threat to due process and the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.This is the last quoted sentence, without the link.
On Nov. 6, six states adopted, through ballot initiatives, what is known as “Marsy’s Law,” which enshrines a specific set of legal rights for victims of any crime — violent and non-violent — in state constitutions. Broadly speaking, providing rights to crime victims, such as notification if a defendant escapes custody, is a positive concept that we strongly support. But what the $71.8 million worth of ads and publicity for the six ballot measures didn’t mention is that Marsy’s Law directly targets defendants’ rights, including a bedrock of our criminal justice system – the presumption of innocence.
"But what the $71.8 million worth of ads and publicity for the six ballot measures didn’t mention is that Marsy’s Law directly targets defendants’ rights, including a bedrock of our criminal justice system – the presumption of innocence."
An obvious counter-example of the A.C.L.U.'s policy
A 2006 legal case demonstrates the need for a presumption of innocence and the failure of many groups of people to enforce it.The group of men who were accused of rape at Duke University in 2006 should've been presumed innocent, but instead, the media presumed that they were guilty. These are the first four paragraphs of a March 14, 2016 opinion printed in the Washington Examiner. The link in the fourth paragraph was in their article.
It's now been 10 years since members of the Duke University lacrosse team hired two strippers for a party and were then accused of rape. The three players who were arrested for the rape were deemed innocent, the district attorney who pursued the case despite evidence to the contrary was disbarred and those in the media that pushed the false narrative looked like fools.
Except, in the decade since the hoax, members of the media have not learned anything when it comes to stories that confirm their pre-existing narratives. That was proven in late 2014, when Rolling Stone published a now-retracted article claiming a woman was gang-raped at a different university. It has been just over a year since that story went to print, but it has been 10 years since the Duke Lacrosse scandal and yet neither hoax has led to the media searching their consciences when it comes to allegations of heinous crimes such as rape.
On Sunday, ESPN aired the latest in their "30 for 30" series, titled "Fantastic Lies." The documentary was about the Duke Lacrosse rape hoax and aired on the anniversary of the day the team members threw that fateful party. The documentary told the story of how the story exploded in the national media and was eventually proven false.
Yet some in the media don't seem to believe the Duke players were victims themselves. Take Slate's Christina Cauterucci, for example. She wrote that "it's a bizarre experience to watch a documentary that expects the viewer to root for a bunch of accused rapists." This highlights exactly the problem with false accusations: Even when someone is proven innocent, they are always somehow guilty of something, because they are "accused rapists."
The following video was uploaded in October 2006 by CBS.
| This video begins with part of an interview that Ed Bradley, a 60 Minutes reporter, did with the defendants. They were accused of rape, and feminists all over the country were outraged at the possibility that some handsome male college athletes might not get the justice they deserved. |
The justice they deserved in America was a presumption of their innocence in and out of a courtroom. The American Civil Liberties Union should've demanded it.
This is more than half of the second paragraph of the History Channel page about the initial suspension of the entire team in March 2006.
On April 10, defense attorneys revealed that DNA test results showed no match between the players and the accuser. Nevertheless, Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong, who labeled the players “hooligans,” vowed to continue investigating the case. On April 17, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann were charged with rape, sexual offense and kidnapping. On May 12, defense attorneys announced a second round of tests found no evidence of any player’s DNA on the accuser’s body or clothing on the night of the party. On May 15, a third lacrosse player, David Evans, the team captain, was indicted on charges of rape, sexual offense and kidnapping. All three players maintained their innocence and had cell phone records and time-stamped photographs to demonstrate they couldn’t have committed the crimes.This is the last sentence of that paragraph.
"All three players maintained their innocence and had cell phone records and time-stamped photographs to demonstrate they couldn’t have committed the crimes."
These are the first two paragraphs of a May 1, 2006 ABC News story.
Accused Duke lacrosse player Reade Seligmann's attorneys want Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong thrown off the case. Today, they filed a legal motion specifically asking for it.
"DA Mike Nifong neglected his duty as a prosecutor to seek the truth and a fair prosecution," the defense's motion reads.
These are the first three paragraphs of a January 24, 2007 Fox News story.
RALEIGH, N.C. – Former Duke lacrosse rape prosecutor Mike Nifong has been slapped with additional ethics charges by the state bar association, which has accused him of withholding DNA evidence and making misleading statements to the court.
The new charges by the North Carolina State Bar against Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong were announced Wednesday and could lead to his removal from the state bar, according to a copy of the updated complaint. Nifong last year indicted three men from the Duke lacrosse team on charges that they raped a stripper at an off-campus party in March of 2006.
Since the players were indicted, the rape charges have been dropped — although sexual assault and kidnapping charges still stand — the accuser has changed her story about what happened that night multiple times, and Nifong has come under heavy fire for his handling of the case, withholding evidence from defense attorneys and not coming forward with DNA evidence that may have exonerated the players.
This is most of the first sentence in the third paragraph of the previous news story.
"Since the players were indicted, the rape charges have been dropped — although sexual assault and kidnapping charges still stand ..."
This is one of many moments when a public statement by the A.C.L.U. of the presumption of the innocence of the three defendants would have been good news and a clear sign that the organization meant what they said about the need for this legal principle.
This is the fourth paragraph of the same article in the History Channel website.
In late December 2006, the accuser altered several key details of her story and Nifong dropped the rape charges but kept the kidnapping and sexual offense counts in place. On December 28, the North Carolina State Bar Association filed a prosecutorial misconduct complaint against Nifong. In January 2007, Nifong, facing growing criticism, asked North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper to take over the case. In April of that year, the attorney general announced Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann had been wrongly accused and dismissed all charges against them. Nifong was heavily criticized for his rush to judgment and his heavy reliance on the faulty testimony of the accuser. He was disbarred in June and later convicted of criminal contempt for making misleading statements to a judge. The three accused players received an undisclosed financial settlement from Duke University and later filed a lawsuit against Nifong, the city of Durham and the investigating police officers.This is the third sentence of the previous paragraph.
"In January 2007, Nifong, facing growing criticism, asked North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper to take over the case."
This is a link to a January 12, 2007 ABC News story titled EXCLUSIVE: DA in Duke Rape Case Asks to Be Taken off Case.
| This is prosecutor Mike Nifong publicly apologizing in a courtroom to the three players on the Duke Lacrosse team. Their rape case had already been dropped by the new prosecutor. |
These are the first five paragraphs of an April 11, 2007 New York Times story. The link in the first paragraph was in their story.
RALEIGH, N.C. April 11 — All remaining charges were dropped today against three former Duke University lacrosse players who had been accused of rape more than a year ago, North Carolina’s attorney general announced, concluding a three-month investigation of a racially charged case that polarized and outraged many in the state and nation.Contrary to what the New York Times reported, the ordeal isn't over for two of the three accused players because they were not allowed to graduate from Duke University.
An independent investigation “showed clearly that there is insufficient evidence to proceed,” Roy A. Cooper, the state attorney general, said at a televised news conference. “ We believe these individuals are innocent.”
He said the accounts of the events given by the woman who made the accusations were so inconsistent that they were not credible. “She contradicts herself,” Mr. Cooper said.
“In this case, the inconsistencies were so significant and so contrary to the evidence that we have no credible evidence that an attack occurred in that house on that night,” he said.
The decision brings to an end a 13-month ordeal for the young men, two of whom were dismissed from Duke because of the charges.
Until organizations like the A.C.L.U. begin to practice what they preach (the importance of the presumption of innocence for every person who is arrested for a crime, including men who are members of college sports teams), their words will not have any ability to convince others of their truth.
A.C.L.U. policy versus its' practice
The players were innocent, but the more important issue, according to the A.C.L.U, is that people who are accused of a crime should be presumed to be innocent unless a jury decides that they are guilty or unless the criminal defendants plead guilty in front of a judge.
Note: Roy Cooper, who was the North Carolina Attorney General at the time, was elected in November 2016 as the Governor of North Carolina. These are two sentences of the fourth paragraph of the page on the History Channel website.
"In January 2007, Nifong, facing growing criticism, asked North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper to take over the case. In April of that year, the attorney general announced Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann had been wrongly accused and dismissed all charges against them."
"In January 2007, Nifong, facing growing criticism, asked North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper to take over the case. In April of that year, the attorney general announced Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann had been wrongly accused and dismissed all charges against them."
This is the last quoted sentence of the A.C.L.U.'s November 30, 2018 article.
"But what the $71.8 million worth of ads and publicity for the six ballot measures didn’t mention is that Marsy’s Law directly targets defendants’ rights, including a bedrock of our criminal justice system – the presumption of innocence."
If the American Civil Liberties Union truly believed that the presumption of innocence was a bedrock principle, they would've argued in 2006 for the presumption of the innocence of the men who were on the Duke Lacrosse team and who had been arrested for rape.There is no evidence that they did so, despite the fact that the case was widely publicized by feminists and their friends in the so-called professional broadcasting industry.
 |
The A.C.L.U. should've spoken out in 2006 when three members of the Duke Lacrosse team were accused of rape.
|
They should've said, loudly and clearly, that every defendant should be considered innocent until proven guilty, because some defendants, including the three men who were accused of rape, were innocent.
The Democratic Socialists of America
This tweet was posted July 16, 2018 by Kris Paronto, one of the survivors of the murder of a U.S. Ambassador and three other Americans at Benghazi, Libya.Really?? This is your future @DNC ?? 🤦🏻♂️🤣🤣😂 ... yea, good luck with that 😏#stayclassy #imyourhuckleberry pic.twitter.com/jr9rQ4wedx— Kris Paronto (@KrisParonto) July 16, 2018
These are the first four paragraphs of a January 6, 2016 Fox News story.
After Kris Paronto finished watching a screening of “13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi,” he rushed out of the theater and into the bathroom to wipe away tears.
For Paronto, the film, based on the 2012 assault on the U.S. consulate compound in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the U.S. ambassador as well as three other Americans, the story was one he had lived through.
Paronto was one of six contract security employees with backgrounds as Army Rangers, Marines and Navy Seals who had been assigned to the high-security and dangerous job of keeping Americans in Benghazi safe.
They were in an annex building about a mile from the consulate when heavily armed militants attacked the U.S. mission, firing at it and setting it ablaze.
Antifa
The news stories and articles in this section are arranged in chronological order, oldest first.These are the first four paragraphs of a February 4, 2017 Wired Magazine article. The links in the second paragraph were in their article.
For every neo-Nazi meme, there is an equal but opposite Nazi punch. Think of it as the Third Law of the internet, if Newton was a subreddit.
OK, that’s a little absurdist, but increasingly, it does seem like every upwelling of far-right agitation—in real life or online—gets met with a reciprocal surge from an equally extreme niche on the far left. Somebody punches the white nationalist Richard Spencer in the face in a video that goes viral. Breitbart provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos tries to give a talk at UC Berkeley. Over 150 protestors break windows and throw fireworks at the police until administrators call off the event. And President Trump tweets about it.
The progression isn’t strict call-and-response, to be sure. But it does show that the white nationalist internet has a kind of counterpart. Some of these far-left activists are militant antifascists—“antifa” for short. And not to get all falsely equivalent on you, but many are young, angry, and know their way around a meme.
They may well indeed express more egalitarian ideals than neo-Nazis (who doesn’t, really?), but they’re also anarchists prone to property destruction and online abuse. Worse, by giving as good as they get, they double down on political polarization, driving the national narrative even further from center.
These are the first four paragraphs of an August 27, 2017 Washington Examiner story.
Antifa supporters protesting an alt-right rally in Berkeley, Calif., Sunday clashed violently with white nationalists, with one right-winger reportedly pummeled to the ground by a group of protesters clad in black and wearing masks.The video mentioned in the last paragraph of the previous Washington Examiner story is included in this tweet. Watch how peaceful the people dressed in black are.
Anti-Trump forces — which outnumbered Trump supporters — initially assembled peacefully at the "No to Marxism in America" event held near the Martin Luther King Civic Center, bearing "Avenge Charlottesville" banners. Tensions, bubbled over as the two groups faced-off, according to multiple reports.
At one point, well-known Orange County far-right figure Johnny Benitez was swarmed by a crowd chanting, "Black Lives Matter," the Los Angeles Times reported.
In another instance, a journalist captured video of antifa protesters beating a white nationalist with their fists and shields.
Antifa beat down apparent alt-righter. pic.twitter.com/WVdDJqLKmA— Shane Bauer (@shane_bauer) August 27, 2017
These are the first four paragraphs of an August 28, 2017 Los Angeles Times story. The links in the second paragraph were in their article.
Thousands of demonstrators carrying signs with slogans like "Stand Against Hate" descended on Berkeley's Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Park on Sunday for what many hoped would be a peaceful march against bigotry and President Trump.This is the first sentence in the Los Angeles Times story.
But it was soon punctuated by tear gas and a scattering of violent skirmishes. Some anti-fascist protesters, wearing black and with their faces covered, chased or beat Trump supporters and organizers who had scheduled and then canceled the "anti-Marxist" rally, citing concerns over safety.
Police, and in some cases other counter-protesters, stepped in to halt the violence or escort the victims away from the area. Officers reported 14 arrests, many of them for violations of the city's emergency rules banning masks, sticks and potential weapons inside the demonstration area.
The clashes came despite widespread calls from activists and elected officials across the Bay Area for peaceful civil disobedience and underscore Berkeley's growing reputation for violent reaction by the far left. Other protests earlier this year in the city turned ugly, with far-left and far-right forces fighting in the streets.
"Thousands of demonstrators carrying signs with slogans like "Stand Against Hate" descended on Berkeley's Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Park on Sunday for what many hoped would be a peaceful march against bigotry and President Trump."
The demonstrators weren't standing while they demonstrated. They were running at and attacking the people who they obviously hated, despite their own "anti-hate" signs.
CBS News published a similar story, titled Black-clad anarchists storm large Berkeley anti-hate rally on August 28, 2017. The New York Post published an opinion, titled Antifa reveals its true self: thuggish and tolitarian on August 29, 2017.
These are the first three paragraphs of an August 30, 2017 Washington Post column which was updated later. All of these links were in their story.
Last weekend in Berkeley, Calif., a group of neo-communist antifa — “anti-fascist” — thugs attacked peaceful protesters at a “No to Marxism in America” rally, wielding sticks and pepper spray, and beating people with homemade shields that read (I kid you not) “No Hate.” The Post reports how one peaceful protester “was attacked by five black-clad antifa members, each windmilling kicks and punches into a man desperately trying to protect himself.” Members of the Berkeley College Republicans were then stalked by antifa goons who followed them to a gas station and demanded they “get the [expletive] out” of their car, warning, “We are real hungry for supremacists and there is more of us.”These videos show the violent nature of this group. The first video was made by someone who disagrees with their values, but who attended their rally disguised as one of them.
The organizer of the anti-Marxism protest is not a white supremacist. Amber Cummings is a self-described “transsexual female who embraces diversity” and had announced on Facebook that “any racist groups like the KKK [and] Neo Nazis . . . are not welcome.” The protest was needed, Cummings said, because “Berkeley is a ground zero for the Marxist Movement.”
As if to prove Cummings’s point, the antifa movement responded with jackboots and clubs — because their definition of “fascist” includes not just neo-Nazis but also anyone who opposes their totalitarian worldview.
The Sunrise Movement, a new group
This section was added on December 11, 2018.These are the first three paragraphs of a December 10, 2018 Daily Caller story. The links in these paragraphs were in their story.
Several Dozen environmental protesters were arrested in the U.S. Capitol Monday afternoon, after refusing to obey multiple orders from law enforcement to stand down.Most of the legislation that is propsed by Democrats is controversial within their own party because the Democrat Party doesn't have a consistent set of principles. They are, in fact, best described as a loose collection of special-interest groups.
The protest comes just weeks after the group of young environmental activists, who call themselves “The Sunrise Movement,” occupied House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s office with a list of demands, refusing to leave, until they were arrested. The activists came back Monday for another “sit in” inside Pelosi’s office on Capitol Hill, causing police to forcibly remove the protesters out of her office.
The group wore matching t-shirts and chanted, which they prepared beforehand. They are fighting for the “Green New Deal” which is a petition that offers a plan to move “our country off fossil fuels over the designated 12 years that the [United Nations] has given us.”
Each individual group has legislation that they demand, sometimes using street demonstrations like the one mentioned above. Unfortunately for their party, legislation that one group demands loudly is often ignored by other Democrat-friendly groups.
The only unity that appears in the Democrat Party happens when the Republican Party has a large majority in Congress and when the President is a Republican. All other times, Democrats have very little unity.
News stories about anti-democratic Democrats
These stories are arranged in chronological order, oldest first. Please note that Communism, as used in these stories, is an economic policy. The corresponding political policy, strictly speaking, is called Marxism. Please also note that some political scientists use the term "Maoism" to describe the political conditions in China.Most of the people who describe themselves as Communist are more accurately referred to as Marxist because their long-term goal is, as Karl Marx described, a violent transformation into "a classless society", which is impossible to implement because there will always be two classes of people under Marxism - people who work for the government and people who don't. The people who do work for the government, even a truly Marxist government, will always have more power than those who don't.
The Los Angeles Times reports on the California Assembly
These are the first three paragraphs of a May 8, 2017 Los Angeles Times story. The link in the second paragraph was in their story.Being a member of the Communist Party would no longer be a fireable offense for state jobs under a measure narrowly approved by the California Assembly on Monday.
The measure by Assemblyman Rob Bonta (D-Oakland) would strike language in California law dating from 1953 that warns of "a clear and present danger, which the Legislature of the State of California finds is great and imminent, that in order to advance the program, policies and objectives of the world communism movement, communist organizations in the State of California and their members will engage in concerted effort to hamper, restrict, interfere with, impede, or nullify the efforts of the State...and their members will infiltrate and seek employment by the State and its public agencies."
In another section of statute, being a member of the Communist Party is sufficient cause for dismissal for public employees. Bonta's bill would eliminate the reference to communism. Under his proposal, it would still be a fireable offense to knowingly advocate the violent overthrow of government.
Newsweek reports on the rebirth of a Communist phrase
These are the first three paragraphs of an August 17, 2017 Newsweek story.Thirty Democrats disillusioned with their party’s struggles in Middle America have unveiled a new group aimed at expanding its base beyond just the two coasts. The initiative, which comprises current and former mayors, governors, cabinet members and lawmakers, comes complete with a catchy new title, “New Democracy.”
If that name sounds familiar, it’s because it was the same as that given by Mao Zedong to his theory of democracy in Communist China.
“In a word, new-democratic culture is the proletarian-led, anti-imperialist and anti-feudal culture of the broad masses,” Mao wrote on New Democracy in 1940, nine years before coming to power in China.
The Washington Times reports on radical Democrats in general
These are the first four paragraphs of an October 23, 2017 Washington Times story. The links in these paragraphs were in their article.A man who fled Cuba as a boy is warning Democrats against what he sees as ideological parallels between the communist regime and the American political party.
In a speech to the College Republicans at UCLA on Wednesday, Rafael Dagnesses said he doesn’t want “the Democrat Party to disappear.”
“Balance is good,” Mr. Dagnesses said, reported The College Fix, “but the Democrat Party no longer exists. Rational, middle-of-the-road Democrats have been hijacked by the leftist, socialist, communist movement.”
Mr. Dagnesses, a Marine veteran who twice made an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. House in California’s 26th Congressional District, said his family fled Cuba after Fidel Castro’s rise to power. He said his adopted grandfather, Huber Matos, was a high-ranking member of the revolutionary party, but quickly fell out of favor with the regime.
A private website also reports on radical Democrats in general
These are the first five paragraphs of an article on a website called Empower Texans. The graphic of the tweet and all of the links were included in the article.Gone are the days of so-called “moderate” Democrats. Now one Houston state representative is employing a self-avowed communist in her legislative office.
In a strange exchange on Twitter Wednesday evening, Jaime Puente, who serves as the Legislative Director for Houston Democrat representative Alma Allen, exposed himself as an unabashed communist.
The revelation came after State Rep. Briscoe Cain (R–Deer Park) questioned a tweet by the staffer in which he shared a video praising Karl Marx, the father of the oppressive political ideology which has claimed over 100 million lives since The Communist Manifesto was released in 1848. “This might be useful for some #txlege folks,” Puente commented in his tweet.
A simple web search reveals that Puente is currently employed as a Legislative Director in Allen’s state office, causing Cain to question whether Puente actually espoused the extremist views he broadcasted on the social media platform.
Rather than dismissing the question, Puente shockingly affirmed it, plainly declaring “I’m a communist.”
Reuters reports on the end of a lawsuit
These are the first five paragraphs of a December 3, 2018 Reuters story.(Reuters) - The University of California at Berkeley on Monday settled a free speech lawsuit accusing the school of discriminating against speakers with conservative views.Link to a similar story, published the same day, in a journal called the Daily Californian.
Under the settlement filed with the federal court in San Francisco, the university will modify its procedures for handling “major events,” which typically draw hundreds of people, and agreed not to charge “security” fees for a variety of activities, including lectures and speeches.
It will also pay $70,000 to cover legal costs of the Berkeley College Republicans and the Tennessee-based Young America’s Foundation, which filed the lawsuit in April 2017.
The settlement followed an April 27 decision by U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney letting the plaintiffs challenge what they called the university’s “secret” or unfairly restrictive policies toward conservative speakers.
She also let the plaintiffs pursue an equal protection claim over a security fee charged to host conservative commentator Ben Shapiro that was well above a fee for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, part of the court’s liberal wing.
Two people involved in an episode of school violence.
The violence was the mass-shooting at the Parkland School in Florida.A week and a half after it happened
This video was uploaded by ABC News on February 25, 2018. The host, George Stephanopoulos, the host of This Week on the ABC network, interviewed a student and a teacher at a Florida high school soon after some students and teachers were murdered there.| This is the first "question" from George.
You see what you're up against, N.R.A. against any change in the minimum wage, against universal background checks, against a ban on semi-automatic weapons.
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This was David's answer, starting at18 seconds:
Honestly, it's just disgusting. They act like they don't own these politicians. They still do. It's a Republican-controlled House, Senate,and Executive Branch. They can geet this stuff done. They've gotten gun legislation passed before.
Later, at 3 minutes, 11 seconds, George asks this question of the woman.
We were talking before we went on the air. You have many family members that have experience with weaponry, with things like semi-automatic weapons. You heard the N.R.A. rep saying absolutely no ban on semi-automatic weapons. What's your response to that?
The teacher has this answer:
I don't understand the need to have them. One of the things I've been thinking about a lot, this past week especially, is, you know, we have the officers who are on campus that are armed, and you know, if you had a person that didn't have this weapon that came onto campus and maybe they had a different type of weapon, would we need to fight same weapon with same weapon.This teacher should refresh her knowledge of history, especially American history. The colonists who fought against the British in the mid-1770s didn't have the same weapons. Very few of history's battles were between armies that had the same weapons. During World War 2, the German Navy used submarines very effectively against American merchant ships that tried to supply Allied armies with military hardware, including rifles, bullets, and shells for the cannons.
Two months after the shooting at the school
David Hogg published a tweet on April 29, 2018 asking that Vice-President Mike Pence cancel his trip to an N.R.A. convention. His tweet, and a few responses to it, were included in this April 30, 2018 article in the Conservative Tribune.Four months after the shooting at the school
David Hogg, who was outraged at the use of guns to kill people, now has guns that protect him. These are the first five paragraphs of a June 23, 2018 Daily Mail story. The links in these paragraphs and the photograph below the story were in their story.Parkland survivor David Hogg has been spotted in New York City with an entourage which is said to include armed bodyguards and publicists.
The teenager was seen in Manhattan on June 20 surrounded by a group of men and women.
He was on his way into a Barnes & Noble with his sister Lauren to promote their new book, #NeverAgain: A New Generation Draws the Line.
Eagle-eyed Twitter user Sean Di Somma shared photographs of the teenager and wrote: 'Here's David Hogg in NYC today with armed guards and bunch of publicists.'
He added the hashtag 'never again' and 'hypocrites', in reference to the apparent fact that the bodyguards had weapons on them.
The future of the Democrat Party
These stories and articles are arranged in chronological order, oldest first.These are the first two paragraphs of a March 13, 2017 opinion printed in the New York Times. The two links were in the published opinion.
MIDDLEBURY, Vt. — There’s nothing like a little violence to focus the mind. I am the Middlebury College professor who ended up with whiplash and a concussion for having the audacity to engage with the ideas of Charles Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
Though he is someone with whom I disagree, I welcomed the opportunity to moderate a talk with him on campus on March 2 because several of my students asked me to do so. They know I am a Democrat, but the college courses I teach are nonpartisan. As I wrote on Facebook immediately after the incident, this was a chance to demonstrate publicly a commitment to a free and fair exchange of views in my classroom. But Dr. Murray was drowned out by students who never let him speak, and he and I were attacked and intimidated while trying to leave campus.
These are the first four paragraphs of a July 21, 2017 Time Magazine story. The links in these paragraphs were in their story.
For some Americans, the summer of 1967 was the “Summer of Love.” To others, it was just the opposite: a “long, hot summer,” characterized by more than 150 separate riots responding to racial injustice in American cities.These are the last two sentences of the second paragraph. Remember, this story is a copy of a story that was published in Time Magazine in 1967.
The season arguably peaked when federal paratroopers were called in to put an end to the five days of looting and arson in Detroit, which started in the middle of the night precisely 50 years ago this coming Sunday, after police raided a popular but unlicensed African-American watering hole on Detroit’s 12th Street on July 23, 1967. “At week’s end, there were 41 known dead, 347 injured, 3,800 arrested. Some 5,000 people were homeless (the vast majority Negro), while 1,300 buildings had been reduced to mounds of ashes and bricks and 2,700 businesses sacked,” according to TIME’s cover story on the events.
Wally Terry of TIME’s Washington bureau, who had been sent to the Motor City shortly after returning from Vietnam, said that he felt “more danger in Detroit than I ever was over there” — and artist Robert Templeton, who would create TIME’s cover, was the target of thrown bricks as he drove around the city “using the steering wheel as an easel.” Detroit Mayor Jerome Cavanagh likened the city to Berlin in 1945.
“We have endured a week such as no nation should live through: a time of violence and tragedy,” President Lyndon B. Johnson declared in a special address to the nation. And the media agreed: America was facing “a national crisis,” the editorial leading off LIFE magazine‘s cover feature on the riot declared.
“'At week’s end, there were 41 known dead, 347 injured, 3,800 arrested. Some 5,000 people were homeless (the vast majority Negro), while 1,300 buildings had been reduced to mounds of ashes and bricks and 2,700 businesses sacked,' according to TIME’s cover story on the events."
There were similar events in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland within the past five years. If the leaders of the current Democrat Party allow violence against people and property to continue in 2018, they will show the independent voters that their centrist views are not heard. This will cause a chain reaction, similar to a series of dominoes falling.
- A majority of those centrist voters will vote for Republican candidates for election or reelection.
- Control of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate will remain in the Republican Party.
These are the first ten paragraphs of a November 6, 2017 opinion printed in the Wall Street Journal titled "100 Years of Communism—and 100 Million Dead". The last three quoted paragraphs verify the numbers in the headline of this opinion.
Armed Bolsheviks seized the Winter Palace in Petrograd—now St. Petersburg—100 years ago this week and arrested ministers of Russia’s provisional government. They set in motion a chain of events that would kill millions and inflict a near-fatal wound on Western civilization.
The revolutionaries’ capture of train stations, post offices and telegraphs took place as the city slept and resembled a changing of the guard. But when residents of the Russian capital awoke, they found they were living in a different universe.
Although the Bolsheviks called for the abolition of private property, their real goal was spiritual: to translate Marxist-Leninist ideology into reality. For the first time, a state was created that was based explicitly on atheism and claimed infallibility. This was totally incompatible with Western civilization, which presumes the existence of a higher power over and above society and the state.
The Bolshevik coup had two consequences. In countries where communism came to hold sway, it hollowed out society’s moral core, degrading the individual and turning him into a cog in the machinery of the state. Communists committed murder on such a scale as to all but eliminate the value of life and to destroy the individual conscience in survivors.
But the Bolsheviks’ influence was not limited to these countries. In the West, communism inverted society’s understanding of the source of its values, creating political confusion that persists to this day.
In a 1920 speech to the Komsomol, Lenin said that communists subordinate morality to the class struggle. Good was anything that destroyed “the old exploiting society” and helped to build a “new communist society.”
This approach separated guilt from responsibility. Martyn Latsis, an official of the Cheka, Lenin’s secret police, in a 1918 instruction to interrogators, wrote: “We are not waging war against individuals. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. . . . Do not look for evidence that the accused acted in word or deed against Soviet power. The first question should be to what class does he belong....It is this that should determine his fate.”
Such convictions set the stage for decades of murder on an industrial scale. In total, no fewer than 20 million Soviet citizens were put to death by the regime or died as a direct result of its repressive policies. This does not include the millions who died in the wars, epidemics and famines that were predictable consequences of Bolshevik policies, if not directly caused by them.
The victims include 200,000 killed during the Red Terror (1918-22); 11 million dead from famine and dekulakization; 700,000 executed during the Great Terror (1937-38); 400,000 more executed between 1929 and 1953; 1.6 million dead during forced population transfers; and a minimum 2.7 million dead in the Gulag, labor colonies and special settlements.
To this list should be added nearly a million Gulag prisoners released during World War II into Red Army penal battalions, where they faced almost certain death; the partisans and civilians killed in the postwar revolts against Soviet rule in Ukraine and the Baltics; and dying Gulag inmates freed so that their deaths would not count in official statistics.
This tweet was posted by the president and founder of Turning Point U.S.A.
If the Democrats were truly concerned about Russia why did:— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) July 15, 2018
Hillary sell them our Uranium for cash
Obama promise more “flexibility” after the election
Obama do nothing after DNC was hacked
Obama mock Romney for calling Russia an enemy
These are the first five paragraphs of a July 21, 2018 New York Times story. The two links were in the published opinion.
DETROIT — For Rachel Conner, the 2018 election season has been a moment of revelation.This is the last paragraph, which explicitly states the fact that these Democrats are a faction.
A 27-year-old social worker, Ms. Conner voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries, spurning the more liberal Bernie Sanders, whom many of her peers backed. But Ms. Conner changed course in this year’s campaign for governor, after concluding that Democrats could only win with more daring messages on issues like public health and immigration.
And so on a recent Wednesday, she enlisted two other young women to volunteer for Abdul El-Sayed, a 33-year-old advocate of single-payer health care running an uphill race in Michigan to become the country’s first Muslim governor.
“They need to wake up and pay attention to what people actually want,” Ms. Conner said of Democratic leaders. “There are so many progressive policies that have widespread support that mainstream Democrats are not picking up on, or putting that stuff down and saying, ‘That wouldn’t really work.’”
Voters like Ms. Conner may not represent a controlling faction in the Democratic Party, at least not yet. But they are increasingly rattling primary elections around the country, and they promise to grow as a disruptive force in national elections as younger voters reject the traditional boundary lines of Democratic politics.
"Voters like Ms. Conner may not represent a controlling faction in the Democratic Party, at least not yet. But they are increasingly rattling primary elections around the country, and they promise to grow as a disruptive force in national elections as younger voters reject the traditional boundary lines of Democratic politics."
These are the first three paragraphs of a July 10, 2018 Fortune magazine article. The links in the third paragraph were in their article.
The U.K.’s government-run healthcare system, the National Health Service, turns 70 this month. There’s not much to celebrate.
The NHS is collapsing. Patients routinely face treatment delays, overcrowded hospitals, and doctor shortages. Even its most ardent defenders admit that the NHS is in crisis.
Yet American progressives want to import this disastrous model. About one in three Democratic senators and more than half of Democratic representatives support single-payer health care.
These are the first five paragraphs of a March 16, 2019 Politico article.
I've ve lived through a Democratic Civil War before. In fact, I’ve been in the middle of two of them. The first was in 1968, when I was the research director for Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s presidential campaign. The second was in 1980, when I was Jimmy Carter’s policy director.I have several criticisms of the first part of his article. First, populists, by definition, are a group that shifts back and forth from the left to the right and back again. They don't have fixed political opinions on foreign policy, national security, or any domestic issue. Instead, their goal is to be part of the majority on every issue. Donald Trump's populism is part of the reason why I don't want him to be the 2020 Republican Party nominee. His populism means that he isn't a true Republican.
Both times, I watched pressure from the party’s liberal wing tear the party apart and bring down a Democratic presidential candidate. Both times, the Republicans took the White House. Both times, liberal dreams were shattered.
Today, I fear it could all be happening again.
As President Donald Trump moved the Republican Party sharply to the populist right, early entrants to the Democratic Party presidential contest have veered sharply to the left, along with several energetic new Democratic members of the House. The left’s new avant-garde has properly identified the need to confront serious national challenges, from rising income inequality and inadequate health care coverage to climate change.
But successfully dealing with these problems demands pragmatic solutions that can gain support from a majority of Americans and do not play into Trump’s false narrative that Democrats are socialists. Speaking from experience, by demanding the moon, their proposals will crash on the launching pad and lead to nowhere good.
| Second, if it's a false narrative that Democrats are Socialists, then please tell me what the difference is between them. This Fox News host shows the basic principles of Socialism and then asks Craig Shirley about them. |
Third, the biggest reason why there is so much confusion on this topic is because there aren't many Democrats who are willing to stand up and say, loudly, that they believe in the principles of Capitalism, the private ownership of houses, cars, and businesses with low tax rates on all of them and the ability of a business owner to make a wide variety of business decisions on his own with little regulation by any government agency so that the free market will decide whether he succeeds or fails in his business.
Mr. Shapiro's Twitter account has more than two million followers. In this tweet, he copies the tweet of a new member of the U.S. House of Representatives and then comments on her tweet.
The Democratic Party has embraced and publicized the anti-Semitism of Omar and Tlaib. Now would be the time for decent Democrats to speak out before they become the new Labour Party. https://t.co/MW5ttoGT6o— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) May 5, 2019
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