On September 14, 1814, Francis Scott Key penned &#8220;The Star-Spangled Banner.&#8221; Set to the British tune &#8220;To Anacreon in Heaven,&#8221; &#8220;The Star-Spangled Banner&#8221; is inarguably one of the most difficult national anthems to sing.
The backdrop of the song was the British attack on Baltimore during the War of 1812. Key had been sent to negotiate a prisoner release and boarded the British flagship HMS Tonnant. During the negotiations with British Vice Adm. Alexander Cochrane, Key overheard the war plans. Consequently, the British held Key captive until after the assault on Fort McHenry, forcing him to stay on the HMS Surprise until the attack had been completed on September 14.
Through the night, Key watched the British bombard Fort McHenry and, as the sun rose, he saw the American flag still flying over the fort. In fact, the Americans had replaced a smaller flag with a much larger one. As the smoke cleared overnight from the fort, there flying at sunrise was Old Glory — then 15 stars and 15 stripes.
Key was moved to pen his poem, which he first named &#8220;Defence of Fort M&#8217;Henry.&#8221; It was later called &#8220;The Star-Spangled Banner&#8221; and became immensely popular in the new republic. It began to be played regularly at Independence Day celebrations. In 1899, the U.S. Navy began playing it, and President Woodrow Wilson, in 1916, ordered it regularly played by the military. In 1918, during the first World Series, the anthem became a fixture of baseball. In 1930, the Veterans of Foreign Wars started a petition to recognize it as our national anthem. It became just that on March 4, 1931. In 1956, Congress embraced the fourth verse of Key&#8217;s poem and adopted &#8220;In God We Trust&#8221; as our national motto.
Only recently have revisionists began to claim &#8220;The Star-Spangled Banner&#8221; is racist. The third verse includes the lines, &#8220;No refuge could save the hireling and slave / From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave / And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave, / O&#8217;er the land of the free and the home of the brave.&#8221;
Gwen Berry, an American athlete and activist, turned her back last week when the anthem was played. She said in an interview that the national anthem has &#8220;a paragraph&#8221; that speaks to slavery. She means American chattel slavery. Her statement is born of revisionist ignorance.
Key&#8217;s poem is about the attack on Baltimore and the battle at Fort McHenry. He was not alluding to or mentioning African slaves in the United States. At the time, the American Navy and military prided itself on being a volunteer service. The founders of the country were fearful of a standing army and embraced the concept of a volunteer service. Key stood on the deck of the HMS Surprise, a captive of the British, and watched the volunteer Americans fight off the fiercest empire on the planet.
The British Navy, at the enlisted level, consisted of hired mercenaries and sailors impressed against their will and forced to fight in service of the British. Those impressed sailors are the slaves Key referenced. Modern progressive historians have twisted the truth. The fact and actual truth — not my truth or your truth, but the actual truth — is that Francis Scott Key&#8217;s entire third verse is about the British Navy.
It is common now to hear claims that Key referenced slaves and that the reference is about chattel slavery. It is foolish anti-American revisionism and ignorance to make that claim. It is devoid of both the historic context and actual truth. Key&#8217;s poem stands the test of time and concludes beautifully with a fourth verse.
&#8220;O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand / Between their loved homes and the war&#8217;s desolation. / Blest with vict&#8217;ry and peace, may the Heav&#8217;n rescued land / Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! / Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, / And this be our motto: &#8216;In God is our trust.&#8217; / And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave / O&#8217;er the land of the free and the home of the brave!&#8221;
Have a wonderful Independence Day.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Flag and sparklers

ERICKSON: Star-Spangled Facts

4th of July

National Anthem

H.R. 1, the For the People Act, was a messaging piece of legislation that was never meant to be passed. But Democrats are increasingly held hostage by the wing of the party that believes Twitter is real life. Now, the same forces seem intent on dismantling the Biden Administration.
First, the Twitter activists of the Left bought into the For the People Act rhetoric. The progressive base fully believes the GOP is dismantling democracy. News anchors roared that the GOP couldn&#8217;t even debate saving democracy or protecting the right to vote.
Most Americans do not care. They support needing a photo ID to vote, but the Democrats insisted that hurts Black people even though Black people support the use of photo ID. White Democrats in Washington and progressive enclaves do not.
The Democrats&#8217; hardcore base of Twitterati forgot or never knew that H.R. 1 was not supposed to get passed into law, but they made its passage a hill to die on. They died. Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, two Democrats, refused to kill the filibuster, saving other Democrats from a vote they did not want.
The base, demoralized by that defeat, then saw Republicans take over the infrastructure plan and, in so doing, gut its Green New Deal framework, which deemed that anything and everything could be infrastructure.
So, what&#8217;s the next step?
Apparently, it is gun control to solve the crime problem. Democrats have convinced themselves, again largely due to the Twitterati, that the solution to the crime wave is to call it &#8220;gun violence&#8221; and make it even harder to buy guns while they continue to defund the police.
A record number of Americans are buying guns. Non-white citizens and women are rushing to protect themselves because police are leaving their jobs. A crime wave is upon us, and Democrats keep gutting police budgets while saying they are not gutting those budgets.
Having President Biden declare gun violence the problem and propose a gun control solution that will die in the Senate like everything else may rally the progressive base, but it will demoralize that base, too, when it fails. Maybe it will get progressives enraged enough to overwhelm elections with sustained, angry momentum. But I doubt it. I doubt it because it signals a tone-deafness that will provoke a backlash from Americans who are not hyperpartisan.
In the last forty eight hours, news anchors have started talking about gun violence as the President rolls out his agenda to combat it. It is striking how quickly the press gravitated to the talking point. It is also striking they think anyone with half a brain will really believe guns are the problem right now instead of a crime wave that people like Keisha Lance Bottoms, Mayor of Atlanta, are blaming on Republican governors for reopening America too soon.
Only a party captured by Twitter could be so out of touch with reality. Americans are buying guns at record rates not to commit a crime, but to protect themselves from criminals. Saying there is a gun violence problem instead of a crime problem deflects from the sticky questions of which party&#8217;s policies sparked it. But it also is disconnected from reality.
It is destined to go nowhere in the Senate and mobilize a slew of new gun owners against the Democrats. After all, it is hard to still claim people buy guns without background checks when literally millions of voters just bought their first guns and were required to have gun background checks.
Oh, did I mention the whole plan will die in the Senate while the Democrat base, like they did with the For the People Act, goes hysterical about it on and offline, alienating more Americans? This is not a smart move. It is a move best explained by a Democratic Party that is captured by an out of touch elite that thinks Twitter is reality.
It also probably explains why Joe Biden finally wants Kamala Harris to go to the border. It&#8217;s better to have another Kamala Harris-fueled PR disaster than have people focus on the impotence of the Biden presidency.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Twitter

ERICKSON: Twitter Is Not Reality

H.R. 1

Voting Rights

If QAnon is a right-wing conspiracy theory, the Democrats&#8217; allegations that Republicans are killing democracy is the Left’s conspiracy. They have convinced themselves that the Jan. 6, 2021, incursion into the Capitol was the worst event since the Civil War.
We&#8217;ve recently gone through a week that included discussions about the Tulsa Race Massacre, which was arguably a far worse post-Civil War attack on our democracy. Likewise, more people died on United Airlines Flight 93 to keep terrorists from flying a plane into the Capitol. Two planes brought down the World Trade Center that same day, and another slammed into the Pentagon.
In 1954, Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire inside the United States House of Representatives. There were also various bombings by the domestic terrorist group Weather Underground, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert. Those are all arguably worse than what happened on Jan. 6.
But it has become dogma of the Left and many members of the press that the Jan. 6 incursion is the worst. I do think it was bad and in the top 10, but I would put it lower than the Tulsa Race Massacre, the terrorist attacks on 9/11, the gunfire in the House of Representatives, the Kennedy assassination, and the Weather Underground bombings. Congress very literally got back to work the afternoon of Jan. 6.
Coupled with the outrage over Jan. 6 is outrage over Sen. Joe Manchin preserving the filibuster. Democrats have turned on the one man keeping them in charge of the Senate. Now Machin has done something else. He has penned a new op-ed in which he declares his opposition to H.R.1/S.1: the massive progressive voting reform package. Various Democrats, members of the press, Hollywood stars, and progressive activists across the country have all declared our democracy would die if the legislation is not passed.
Unfortunately for the Democrats, Manchin makes one really good point that spectacularly discredits the Democrats&#8217; talking points. He asked: &#8220;Are the very Republican senators who voted to impeach Trump because of actions that led to an attack on our democracy unwilling to support actions to strengthen our democracy? Are these same senators, whom many in my party applauded for their courage, now threats to the very democracy we seek to protect?&#8221;
Manchin just killed the Democrats&#8217; voting reform package. Unfortunately for Democrats who have believed the GOP is dying, their party appears to have some serious problems beyond an inability to get anything done in Washington.
White people don&#8217;t see themselves as an identity group. Critical theorists on the Left say that is a form of privilege. But therein lies a problem for Democrats: The more white people vote as an identity group, the less they will vote for the party that tells them they are oppressors who must pay reparations.
Do you really think the rich, suburban, secular soccer mom is going to go along with punishing her family and, in particular, her kids because of the color of her skin or because someone she&#8217;s related to did something 200 years ago? Really?
Likewise, Hispanic voters and Asian voters do not see themselves as a racial group. To an extent, Hispanic voters do; they trend toward viewing themselves as white. Add them to the voter pool of white people, and Democrats lose even more.
Asian voters are from a plethora of countries. Korean voters tend to be Christian. Indian subcontinent voters are trending Republican because of people like Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley. Japanese and Chinese descendants lean Democrat. Hispanic or Latino voters are Cuban, Puerto Rican, Mexican, Columbian, Argentinian, etc. In Florida, they&#8217;ve all tended to vote with the GOP while Democrats double down on identity politics, and Republicans treat them as voters who want jobs and safety.
For years, Democrats and a great many political pundits in the press have told us demography is destiny and we&#8217;re going to wind up with a Republican Party marginalized like it is in California. The real world data suggests Texas and Florida are more likely the trajectory of the country&#8217;s politics than California, and that trend hurts Democrats. Democrats&#8217; constant hysteria on democracy and identity are undermining their ability to maintain a majority coalition.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

American flag

ERICKSON: The Death Of Democracy Is Overstated

Democrats

Leftism

&#8220;If you elect us, we will repeal Obamacare,&#8221; Republicans claimed in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. Each victory brought a goal post shift. Ultimately, the Republican Party never got rid of the Affordable Care Act. The same happened with Planned Parenthood. Despite Republican control, reconciliation processes that bypass the filibuster and Republican presidents, Planned Parenthood funding remained.
Republicans are used to the Kabuki theater that their politicians engage in. The stylized performance, boastfulness on the campaign stage, and campaign ads and mail pieces inevitably lead to impressive speeches and theater in Congress before the inevitable and foreordained failure to keep promises. The epilogue is excuse-making and blame.
Republican voters fell for it repeatedly and, ultimately, both caught on and empowered one man to burn it all down. Donald Trump, in 2016, got elected and did force through some changes to the Affordable Care Act and then, by executive order, finally took on Planned Parenthood. The enduring loyalty the Republican base has for Trump can best be understood because Trump kept his core promise — to fight back and gut the Republican establishment that both denied its own existence and perfected ritualistic Kabuki theater always designed to impress and always designed to fail.
Democrats are engaged in the Kabuki theater of foreordained defeat right now. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and President Joe Biden are promising to bring House Resolution 1, the Democrats&#8217; progressive largesse of a voting reform package, for a vote. The filibuster is in the way, so they are pledging to scrap that, too.
They will display their passion. They will display their rage. They will display their commitment. Behind closed doors, Democrats know both that H.R. 1 is a terrible idea and that the filibuster is a very good idea worth saving. They cannot say either publicly, lest they spark a civil war within their own party.
Ask yourself one question: Do Democrats want federal taxpayer dollars funding the campaign of QAnon sympathizer Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene? H.R. 1 would require federal dollars to subsidize political campaigns. Do you really think the Democrats who vilify Greene at every opportunity want to fund her campaign? H.R. 1, written largely by progressive activists, is a grab [bag] of many unworkable and publicly unpopular proposals. But progressive activists love them all.
Democrats in Washington, D.C., know better than to pass H.R. 1. In addition to the inevitable court fight, it would fund people like Greene. Democrats in Washington also know they&#8217;ve been so performative on the campaign trail about voting rights and voting reform that they cannot do anything other than emotively perform for their base.
Concurrently, the House of Representatives will flip to the GOP next year. Republicans do not even need redistricting. The party that does not control the White House almost always makes gains in the House in off-year elections. Redistricting will add to the Republican edge. The Senate may maintain a Democratic majority, but the GOP will kill any initiatives in the House.
In 2024, the GOP has massive odds of retaking the Senate. The Democrats will have to defend the most seats, and many of them are in states Trump won. Right now, the Democrats have a 50-50 Senate. Even without the filibuster, Democrats are having trouble passing key legislation. They have failed to repeal most of Trump&#8217;s last-minute regulations — a maneuver that bypasses the filibuster. The Senate parliamentarian gave Senate Democrats an additional reconciliation attempt, which also bypasses the filibuster. But Democrats have failed to use that, too.
With Republicans restored to the House next year and Sen. Mitch McConnell on the cusp of regaining power, why on earth would Democrats want to scrap the filibuster? They will need it against McConnell and House Republicans. Unfortunately, Democrats cannot be honest. They must instead, with help from friends in the press, go through the ritualistic and stylized dance of defeat that signals to the base they care and are fighters while privately knowing defeat was always the only outcome.
Democrats will inevitably have hell to pay from their base as Republicans did. The difference between them and Republicans is Trump was actually far closer to mainstream America than the far Left. That gives the GOP one more advantage moving forward, even if the press and Democrats cannot admit it.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

House of Representatives

ERICKSON: Democrat Kabuki

2022 Election

2024 Election

Democratic Party

Filibuster

Republican Party

Apoorva Mandavilli is The New York Times&#8217; COVID-19 reporter. &#8220;Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not yet here,&#8221; she tweeted — not last year, but just a couple of days ago. The &#8220;lab leak theory&#8221; has always been the most likely theory for the release of the virus into the world.
Ironically, the alternative theory that Mandavilli seems to think is less racist is Chinese citizens in wet markets eating bats or some such. When Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton raised the lab leak theory last year, he was roundly attacked for racism. Members of the press, helped by some fringe conspiracists on the right, claimed Cotton was claiming an intentional release of a bioweapon, which Cotton never claimed. A year later, it looks like Cotton and former President Donald Trump were right. Intelligence does suggest workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology got infected and accidentally began a global pandemic.
Two weeks ago, the Israelis bombed the Associated Press office in Gaza during the Hamas attacks. Journalists were furious. The AP demanded answers. But a little-noticed piece in The Atlantic from Matti Friedman in 2014 documented how the AP had, in fact, been using a building also used by Hamas. Friedman, a former AP reporter, documented how the AP would not cover certain Hamas-related activity because of Hamas harassment in their shared work environment. Concurrent to all of this, it took The New York Times a week to cover a wave of anti-Jewish attacks in New York City.
Recently, The Washington Post&#8217;s media writer, Margaret Sullivan, wrote a piece on her newspaper&#8217;s new female editor. She included a line from a correspondent who asked: &#8220;Does she understand — really understand — that &#8230; the United States is on track to become functionally an authoritarian white Christian nationalist state in the very near future? And if the answer is &#8216;Yes,&#8217; what is she prepared to do about it? Right now nothing else signifies.&#8221; Jay Rosen, a highly respected journalism professor at New York University, highlighted that reader&#8217;s concern and agreed with it. The Democrats control all of Washington. Joe Biden just won the election by several million votes. But Rosen is worried we are on the verge of “an authoritarian white Christian nationalist state in the very near future.”
Last summer, reporters at CNN and MSNBC stood in front of rioters burning buildings in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and characterized the protests as peaceful. One correspondent actually said on television that they were fiery &#8220;but mostly peaceful.&#8221; As video showed antifa activists beating up people in streets across America, CNN&#8217;s Chris Cuomo claimed the group is peaceful.
As the virus raged through America last year and the country shut down, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi engaged in a series of partisan maneuvers to hurt the GOP and expand her Democratic coalition. Her efforts, including blocking financial relief to small businesses and individual taxpayers, was greeted by the American political press corps as strategic brilliance. Her brilliance nearly cost the Democrats the House. Republicans gained seats at the state level, held state legislative bodies they were expected to lose and came within five seats of taking back the House of Representatives itself.
The press has given up the veneer of objectivity while still demanding it serve as gatekeepers to truth. News outlets that claim ownership of truth and fact have become narrative-based mouthpieces for progressive politics and policy. The press is detached from America, and Americans are increasingly seeing the world and then seeing the press coverage of the world — and realizing the two are not the same.
It gives the GOP a latent advantage because the press, now constantly pushing back against Republican claims, winds up pushing back against reality itself. That, in turn, gives Republicans inroads into the minds of Americans who recognize disconnect between their lives and the way the press covers their lives. Americans then become more open to Republican claims, which sound more like the reality those Americans are living. Democrats, who overwhelmingly believe their own fawning press coverage, will never realize what has happened until it is too late.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Newspaper

ERICKSON: The Republican Secret Weapon

Media Bias

In Scripture, Acts 19 recounts a series of miracles that led to mass conversions of residents of Ephesus. The conversions created an economic problem.
Ephesus was, at the time, world-renowned for a temple to the Greek goddess Artemis, one of the wonders of the ancient world. As people began converting en masse to Christianity with St. Paul&#8217;s preaching, temple visits declined, as did the purchase of idols. According to Luke, the writer of Acts, a silversmith named Demetrius who made silver replicas of Artemis began rallying other men of similar trades to fend off the Christians.
&#8220;Men, you know that from this business we have our wealth. And you see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in almost all of Asia this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods. And there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing, and that she may even be deposed from her magnificence, she whom all Asia and the world worship,&#8221; Demetrius said. (Acts 19:25-27)
&#8220;When they heard this, they were enraged and were crying out, &#8220;Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!'&#8221; (Acts 19:28). A riot broke out, and the Ephesians seized Paul&#8217;s companions. The rioters had to be calmed. For two hours, the crowd chanted, &#8220;Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!&#8221; before being calmed. In spreading the gospel, Paul had wiped out income and mythology, which brewed resentment. Today, the Temple of Artemis is a ruin.
Two thousand years later, as true religion recedes in America and secularism rises, the Ephesians are back now as the wokes. By any measure, the United States has continued to advance and heal the wounds of slavery and racial discord. Nonwhite Americans continue growing into the middle class and beyond. Contrary to what the Democrats would have us believe, nonwhite voter participation keeps rising, even with Republican election-reform measures in place. Younger Americans are far more open and tolerant of others, regardless of race, ethnicity, etc.
There are racists still because there is sin in the world, and racism is one. But as Americans move beyond the sins of the past, the cry of systemic racism gets louder. It is the new, &#8220;Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!&#8221; This time, instead of silver idols, it is Ibram X. Kendi&#8217;s and Robin DiAngelo&#8217;s books. Buy them to repent. Pay a speaker&#8217;s fee. Have a critical race theory advocate perform seminars. Hire a &#8220;diversity, equity and inclusion&#8221; czar for your company or school. &#8220;Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!&#8221;
It is not a coincidence that as Americans move beyond the soft bigotry of the baby boomer to that of those born after Jim Crow and the Civil Rights marches, the claims of bigotry, racism and division are getting louder. Those who have made comfortable livings spreading division have to push new grievances and hucksterism. A mostly white secular elite who are into idol worship, mostly of themselves, still feel a need to repent. So, they buy the books, attend the seminars, put Black Lives Matter signs in their yard, and impose their idol worship on everyone else as virtuous.
As Christ commanded his followers to spread his gospel message and preach, teach and baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, so the wokes spread their gospel of discord, which is both devoid of hope and deeply anchored in never-ending grievance. Heretics of Christianity added inconsistencies to a consistent Christian orthodoxy. Heretics of wokeism merely point out the consistent inconsistencies of critical race theory. How exactly can a race or gender that is socially constructed also be determinative? It is heretical to ask. Instead, buy a book, virtue-signal with a donation to a woke charity, and attend a class on equity. Whatever you do, do not let the wounds heal and love your neighbor. After all, the silversmiths have idols to sell. &#8220;Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!&#8221;
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Bible prayer

ERICKSON: Great Is Artemis Of The Ephesians!

Woke Culture

Republican Rep. Liz Cheney is out as Republican conference chair in the House of Representatives. The story has dominated American news outlets over the past week. Most Americans are probably hard-pressed to care about the story, but to the political press in the United States, the story has mattered deeply.
This past Tuesday night, as rockets rained down on Tel Aviv from Gaza, the press was focused on Cheney&#8217;s pending ouster, which happened Wednesday morning. On Wednesday afternoon, while President Joe Biden was holding a press conference about the Colonial Pipeline shutdown, MSNBC was holding a panel discussion about Cheney and the future of the Republican Party. Chris Cillizza, CNN&#8217;s regurgitator of convention hot takes, wrote, &#8220;The maneuvering to get Cheney out on Wednesday bodes very poorly for House Republicans.&#8221; One would think the House GOP conference chair was an important position. It is not. One would assume Americans care. They do not.
To understand the salacious, constant coverage of Cheney by the press, we must venture across the Atlantic to Great Britain and consider an essay by former Prime Minister Tony Blair on the collapse of the global progressive movement generally and his Labour Party in particular. Writing in the New Statesman, Blair notes that Biden won not because of some sweeping progressive agenda but because former President Donald Trump was &#8220;considered by centre-ground voters to be uniquely strange and unacceptable in his behaviour. &#8230; Without Biden, and his self-evident reasonableness and moderation, there might have been no victory.&#8221;
Blair noted the Republican Party could make a comeback while many American pundits are yet again predicting the end of the Republican Party — a prediction made biennially by the press. In doing so, Blair wrote, &#8220;It could be that the domination of the Republican Party by the continuing division over Donald Trump eclipses any opportunity for a revival, at least for the presidency; but should the Republicans resolve their leadership crisis and identify a viable leader, they could give the Democrats a run for their money.&#8221;
Therein lies the reason for the press&#8217;s obsession with Liz Cheney. In the absence of the press&#8217;s obsessive coverage, they might have to focus on the calamitous effects of the first five months of the Biden presidency. The border is overrun with illegal aliens. Inflation is on the rise above initial Federal Reserve estimates. The number of available jobs in the private sector grows as unemployment increases. The free market, it turns out, cannot compete against the government using taxpayer dollars to subsidize unemployment. There are gas lines and energy price increases. As the humor site The Babylon Bee headlines, &#8220;Biden Continues Rollback of Trump Policies Like Peace In The Middle East.&#8221; There is also a crime wave in major urban and suburban areas around the country.
Beyond those, the Left’s cancel culture and woke politics continue with reckless abandon. Journalist Christopher Rufo uncovered the Walt Disney Corporation sending employees into left-wing diversity training that claimed the United States had a &#8220;long history of systemic racism and transphobia.&#8221; The Biden administration is advancing abortion rules that would yet again force Christian organizations to pay for abortions. The Department of Education is advancing rules that embrace the revisionist and historically counterfactual &#8220;1619 Project&#8221; from The New York Times. Some Democrats continue to demand police departments be defunded. The federal government continues to undermine its message on vaccines, engages in lectures on mask mandates contrary to what the science suggests, and has let left-wing teachers unions hold school reopenings hostage, even as parents demand their kids return to school.
As Blair notes in his essay, &#8220;Today progressive politics has an old-fashioned economic message of Big State, tax and spend which, other than the spending part (which the right can do anyway), is not particularly attractive. This is combined with a new-fashioned social/cultural message around extreme identity and anti-police politics which, for large swathes of people, is voter-repellent.&#8221;
Given the current state of affairs, the press has concluded it is better to amplify supposed divisions in the GOP as a way to turn off voters than cover what filled the American power vacuum in the absence of Donald Trump.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Liz Cheney

ERICKSON: The Truth Behind The Cheney Story

Biden Administration

Joe Biden

Two thousand years ago on planet Earth, there were no civilizations, religions, or mythologies that had anything akin to an account of Jesus&#8217;s resurrection.
When atheists and skeptics argue it would have been easy to pull the wool over people&#8217;s eyes 2,000 years ago, they take a narrow and bigoted view of culture at the time. They believe something for which there is ample evidence to the contrary.
N.T. Wright showed in &#8220;The Resurrection of the Son of God&#8221; that, contrary to claims of today, literally no civilization had anything like what the early Christians claimed. It has all the hallmarks of recorded history, i.e. a recounted real event.
The Jews had only two beliefs in their entire culture. Either they did not believe in resurrection at all, or they believed we all were resurrected on the last day of history. They had no story of a single person&#8217;s resurrection.
The Roman, Greek, Indian subcontinent, East Asian, Norse, Egyptian, African, and Western Hemisphere cultures that existed lacked the language of the Christian resurrection. Overwhelmingly, the pagan religions globally rejected resurrection. The few stories that considered resurrection either did not exist or came in one of two very distinct forms.
First, a resurrection involved a human coming back to life as godlike with a shining appearance, in almost all cases too bright for humans to lay eyes on. More commonly, the human came back to life pale and cadaverous, looking like one who had withered in the tomb.
That is it. On planet Earth, 2,000 years ago, that was all there was and almost to a culture regardless of its place on the planet, they rejected the idea of a physical, bodily resurrection back to human form.
Then Jesus came from the tomb. The early Christians, speaking into a Jewish community, told a tale so incredible that deviated so substantially from anything known, it is impossible to think anyone would have believed Jesus&#8217;s followers. Their story simply did not fit an existing archetype, regardless of continent.
The apostles told the tale of the man Jesus coming from the tomb. His burial cloth had been removed and folded. Then he, neither shining brightly nor withered and cadaverous, was unrecognizable until he was recognizable. As Tim Keller notes in his new book, &#8220;Hope in Times of Fear,&#8221; it was like seeing a friend from 50 years ago and realizing it was the same person. Only it was the third day after his death.
Likewise, Jesus had the wounds of the crucifixion and possessed the ability to enter locked rooms. He could disappear and reappear. He ate — a lot. He appeared to multiple groups of people and to individuals. There were hundreds of witnesses still living by the time Paul wrote. But Christ&#8217;s form was neither of dazzling light nor pale and cadaverous.
The story would have been impossible in Jewish culture. It simply is not suggested in Old Testament Biblical literature that Jesus could be dead for multiple days and then rise again as he did. The resurrections of people in the Old Testament at the hands of prophets were not multiday affairs of withered corpses. Even in the New Testament, Jesus&#8217;s multiday resurrection of Lazarus required human help to get Lazarus out of his burial clothes. &#8220;The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, &#8216;Unbind him, and let him go.'&#8221; (John 11:44)
With Jesus, however, &#8220;Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus&#8217; head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself.&#8221; (John 20:6-7)
This event was like no other, and believing it happened by faith, unlike a belief in any other event in human history, has a regenerative effect that allows one a relationship with the living God. Happy Easter.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Jesus

ERICKSON: A Profound, Unique Event

Christianity

Easter

Jesus Christ

Readers Pass

In the fall of 1517, theologian Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation in part based on his critique of indulgences offered by the Catholic Church. At the time, a friar named Johann Tetzel had been encouraging the faithful to buy indulgences, which entitled the purchaser to forgiveness for sins. Tetzel had been selling the indulgences to raise money to build St. Peter&#8217;s Basilica.
On Oct. 31, 1517, in the formal tradition of proposing a debate, Luther nailed to the door of the cathedral in Wittenberg, Germany, his now-famous 95 theses. The act slowly began the Reformation. &#8220;Why does not the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers?&#8221; Luther asked in the 86th thesis.
The Catholic Church continued the practice, and Luther oversaw the rise of Protestantism and a clear division in faith teachings and practices. Fast-forward to the 20th century and the newest religion on the scene has picked up the practice of offering indulgences.
Secularism is, in fact, a religion. It has sacraments such as support for abortion rights. It has tithing in which secular adherents give money to various political and social causes. It has liturgies in the new speak of wokeness. It has theological tracts and church services as rally and protest and Episcopal Mass. It has even spurred the rise of terrorist zealots and the new censorious social justice warriors I have taken to calling Woke-O Haram.
Secularism has various denominations. The Rev. Jesse Jackson and The Rev. Al Sharpton, both purported religious pastors who have embraced secular causes, were famous in the 1980s and 1990s for pressuring corporate America to pay indulgences to their various social justice causes, most often aligned with race issues. If a corporation did not pay, it could expect calls for boycotts and protest from the secular religious adherents.
In secularism, there is no concept of grace, which remains a uniquely Christian concept of giving people that which they do not deserve. Likewise, secularism&#8217;s eschatology, or study of the end times, tends to be bleak. You die; the worms eat your body; and Simba sings about the circle of life until the sun explodes, everything incinerates and the universe goes dark.
The environmentalist denomination of secularism is one of the most militant. It has both the most violent terrorists and the bleakest eschatology. In it, the world is going to end as the planet heats up due to mankind&#8217;s behavior. Salvation is found by abandoning fossil fuels and rejecting many of the pleasures of life. Unfortunately, there is no escape from damnation, even for the saved, so long as the lost are still allowed to pollute. The only way for the environmentalist to save himself is to get rid of the polluters.
There is, however, one exception. Environmentalists have embraced indulgences, relabeled in some cases as &#8220;carbon offsets.&#8221; FedEx is the latest polluter to discover a path away from the woke mob is to pay up.
On March 3, 2020, FedEx unveiled its plan to become carbon neutral. FedEx, however, has a problem. It has a fleet of 679 fossil fuel-burning aircrafts, and carbon efficiency in aviation is a pipe dream. FedEx&#8217;s fleet generates roughly the same carbon emissions as three coal power plants. FedEx will get around the problem of jets through an indulgence.
The company will fork over $100 million to Yale University to fund a climate research facility it will call the Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture. It will pay salaries to priests of the environmental religion. Their theological studies will center around creating new ways to employ even more environmentalists and find ways to &#8220;offset greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to current airline emissions,&#8221; according to their press release.
FedEx, of course, has the money to buy the indulgence. The carbon-emitting family down the street does not. Therefore, they must be deprived of vehicles of reasonable size, plastics, cheap lightbulbs, etc. Their costs will go up. The wokes will sleep well at night while the poor, yet again, suffer the heaviest burdens of secularism.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Plane over forest

ERICKSON: Secular Indulgences

Environmentalism

Secularism

Critical theory is a Marxist idea developed in postmodernity in which absolutes, objectivity and absolute truth are no longer accepted. Critical theory purports to explain the world in terms of power, and its proponents believe those with the least power have the most moral authority to speak. Power is, therefore, mapped through intersectionality — race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc. The white male heterosexual Christian has the most power and therefore has the least moral authority to speak in society.
Critical theorists also believe reality is constructed by language. Change the language and reality changes. Power is exerted through language — including the power to shape reality through &#8220;dominant discourses.&#8221; The way to reshape reality is to reshape language. So, critical theorists oppose free speech, free enterprise, academic freedom, etc. The freedom of the privileged to engage in dominant discourses must be reduced for the nonprivileged and oppressed to rise.
Undoubtedly, some critical theorists will take issue with my descriptions, but therein lies part of the problem. The proponents of critical theory are hard to pin down on language and definitions because those shape power, and who am I, a white man, to tell them about their theory? It is, in their minds, no more appropriate for a critical theory critic to describe critical theory than it is for a capitalist to describe Marxism.
Though critical theorists deny it, the bottom line about critical theory is that it makes reconciliation between races and other groups impossible, as power is always shifting. The oppressed becomes the oppressor. The dominant discourse changes from the language of the white man to the language of whichever group feels most oppressed. There can be no forgiveness.
Critical theory — a postmodern Marxist theory that believes there are oppressors and oppressed and that reality is constructed through language, not objective reality — has invaded the church. It is trying to speak into and explain the world and theology to people who worship absolute, objective truth.
Critical theorists cannot truly understand, interpret, or follow the God of all Creation because that God calls Himself the way, the truth, and life. He is objective reality. Critical theorists will deny it, but a theory that cannot acknowledge absolute, objective truth is a theory that cannot explain or orbit around Christ.
I have friends who think critical theory can be used in church settings, and it is not just that I disagree with them; I think they are fundamentally wrong and playing with a fire that is about to burn through the church. But many of them are so disgusted by what they see as modern American evangelicalism&#8217;s turn to Trumpism that they&#8217;re actually OK with striking the match and letting God sort it all out in the flames.
But there is a flip side to all of this.
The American church, particularly in the South, often turned a blind eye to or collaborated in injustice against Black Americans. It is something that, to this day, many churches do not want to talk about.
Some in the church scream loudly that any conversation about racism in the church is somehow bringing critical theory into the conversation. In fact, a lot of well-meaning, reasonable, and grounded theologians think the church needs to account for the individual and corporate sin around issues of race. But those who simply refuse scream about critical theory and Marxism as if anyone who brings up the issue has bought into critical theory.
Churches in America need an honest conversation about race. Christians who scream about critical theory to avoid that conversation need to repent. But critical theory itself needs to be more widely denounced from pulpits and seminaries. Its embrace within American Christendom will do far, far more damage than an evangelical embrace of former President Donald Trump ever did. It will fully separate Christians from the truth of the gospel and drag them into a religion without grace, which makes any sort of racial reconciliation impossible.
The American church needs to deal with the sin of racism. The American church needs to reject critical theory as a means of interpreting Scripture or of administering justice.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Bible

ERICKSON: American Evangelicalism’s Critical Theory Problem

Critical Race Theory

Evangelicals

In December, I was sitting on my front porch when my phone lit up with a message from Rush Limbaugh.
He and my wife have variants of the same type of lung cancer, though hers was caught very early, and her treatment has thus far contained it. Rush knew she had an older iPhone with touch-ID, and he had been chiding me to upgrade her phone. He didn&#8217;t quite understand my wife&#8217;s resistance to technology and insisted I was neglecting my wife by failing to give her a state-of-the-art phone.
Undeterred, he now wanted me to know he was sending her a new iPhone 12 Pro Max because he was convinced her chemo would screw up her fingerprints and make unlocking her phone difficult, which it already had been. My wife now has a better iPhone than me, thanks to Rush.
That is the sort of guy Rush was. In the midst of his own far more serious battle with cancer, he was insistent my wife have a better phone.
I was not alone in benefiting from his generosity. He was generous with advice and with iPhones, and God help you if you offered to buy lunch at a restaurant. You&#8217;d inevitably wind up aggrieving the wait staff, who knew Rush was the best tipper in the restaurant. The Erickson household has had several generations of iPhones show up thanks to Rush. At one point, Rush and I would race each other to buy the phone and email to claim victory. Then he started letting other people order for him, and it wasn&#8217;t a fair fight anymore.
Back in 2010, as Herman Cain was preparing to run for President, Cox Media Group offered me Herman Cain&#8217;s job. I was running the website RedState and also on CNN and served as a city councilman in middle Georgia. I was not sure I should take the job, but Rush told me he would never speak to me again if I said no.
A decade later, having filled in as a guest host for Rush along the way, I&#8217;m now doing five hours of radio — my own syndicated show and local drive-time radio in Atlanta on one of the most listened to talk stations in the country.
I owe much of my career to Rush.
When I was a teenager making obligatory college visits with my dad, we stumbled on Rush&#8217;s program while driving through Alabama. My dad was searching for Paul Harvey. We developed a shared affection for Rush, and even when we couldn&#8217;t talk about other things, we could talk about things Rush had said on air. I&#8217;d stay up late at night and watch Rush&#8217;s TV show, which Fox News head Roger Ailes had produced.
The day my parents finally stopped suggesting I should probably hold onto my law license was the day I filled in for Rush the first time. Years before, Rush had referred to me on air as &#8220;my friend Erick Erickson,&#8221; and it was the first time I could remember my dad calling me to say how proud he was — not that it was the first time, but it was the first memorable time, because he just about ran off the road when he heard it and was out of breath when he called.
Rush Limbaugh pioneered a model of radio, and a lot of us would not be doing what we are doing but for Rush. He created an industry that did not exist before him. All of us in this business know none of us will ever be as good as him. Rush Limbaugh was the best and will perpetually be the gold standard by which everyone else in talk radio is measured.
There&#8217;s a public caricature of Rush Limbaugh that was formed by those jealous of his success and contemptuous of his views. Then there is the real Rush Limbaugh — a friend, a mentor and now the man who gets to personally deliver his talent back to the God of all creation from whom Rush got it and who Rush knew, loved and served.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Rush Limbaugh

ERICKSON: My Friend, Rush

Conservatism

Sixty-one Republicans in the House voted to oust Rep. Liz Cheney as Chair of the House Republican Conference this past Wednesday. Earlier in the day, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said that those opposed to Cheney had the votes to oust her. Earlier in the week, some House conservatives claimed they had over 107 votes and possibly 120 committed votes.
In public, the House GOP engages in performance art for former President Donald Trump and Trump voters. In private, they&#8217;re still more the Bush-Cheney party than the Trump party.
The problem for the GOP is they can&#8217;t govern behind closed doors. One thing they have going for them though is that the Trump wing of the party spends so much time performing for cameras that they don&#8217;t seem to be able to count votes.
It is worth paying attention to some history.
Dick Cheney served as the first White House Deputy Chief of Staff, a position created for him by President Gerald Ford. He went on to serve as the seventh White House Chief of Staff. From that position, he ran for the United States House of Representatives and served Wyoming from 1979 to 1989. He ended his tenure in the House as Chairman of the House Republican Conference. He left Congress to serve as Secretary of Defense before departing Washington and then returned as Vice President of the United States.
Fast-forward 30 years from his tenure as Chair of the House Republican Conference. His daughter, the current House Representative from Wyoming, took on that position in 2019.This is an ongoing problem for the backbench conservative fighters in the House. They can sometimes scuttle things, but they cannot necessarily advance their agenda without Trump.
The Cheney family knows politics and policy. They know how to count votes.
What the Trump wing of the party needs is Jim DeMint&#8217;s Conservative Partnership Institute. With word that Trump&#8217;s Chief of Staff and former North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows is joining DeMint, if Trump supporters want to invest in growing their movement, they should look there.
What DeMint understands is conservatives need congressional staff who know the rules, can maneuver and build coalitions, and can count votes. They need to understand that, often times, you can&#8217;t undo things, but you can stop things from happening. Occasionally, you can even advance sound policies.
The establishment dislikes DeMint. They hated him while he was in Congress, and they hated him at the Heritage Foundation. But DeMint has persisted in a commitment to finding and training not just good conservatives but also staff for conservative members. He understands it is not just about getting a right-of-center staff; it is about getting a committed conservative staff that is also competent.
As much as a lot of the GOP would like to be rid of that meddlesome Trump, just as they wanted to be rid of that meddlesome DeMint, Trump actually showed there is a path to Black and Hispanic voters that runs through cultural and economic issues. There is a place for an ideology that is less Wall Street and more Main Street. There is a place for cultural, pro-life conservatism that understands the plight of workers with big ideas against an elite who tilts the playing field toward their large donors.
DeMint has long understood this and that a congressman is only as effective as his staff. Couple him with Meadows in finding good candidates to run for office, and they have the potential to build out conservative operations that can count the votes and know when to advance and when to hold.
Last week, the Trump wing of the GOP tripped themselves up, and Liz Cheney called their bluff. I think the party needs both sides. I firmly believe the GOP needs more like DeMint, who long made sure his own party was held accountable. I firmly believe the Trump wing of the party, if it starts training staff and working with the with people like DeMint, will be able to ensure the party holds the line on public policy and will give life to what so many now call Trumpism.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Capitol

ERICKSON: A Moment For Jim DeMint

Trumpism

Menu

Erick Erickson