Despite repeatedly stating that the United Kingdom would fulfill the democratic decision of the British people and leave the European Union on October 31st, Prime Minister Boris Johnson seems to have become the latest victim of the combined weight of internal British political sabotage and a monolithic European bureaucracy.
When Parliament passed the EU Withdrawal (No. 2) Act, known as the “Benn Act,” Boris Johnson’s government was forced to work to stop a “no-deal Brexit” on October 31st. Earlier today, as the latest departure date loomed, European leaders agreed to yet another extension — this time to January 31st, 2020.
EU Council President Donald Tusk ironically dubbed this a “flextension” (because seemingly every Brexit-related failure deserves its own portmanteau), stating that the United Kingdom could leave before this ever-expanding deadline if the British Parliament were to approve a Brexit deal. However, the likelihood of reaching such agreement is absurdly small, given that Parliament has voted to reject every deal put forward by former Prime Minister Theresa May and her successor, Boris Johnson.
In an attempt to break this mind-numbing deadlock, Boris Johnson has been calling for a general election in a bid to consolidate more support in Parliament for some form of departure from the European Union. After calling for a general election for several years, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party has <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-50205603">scuppered every attempt to actually hold such an election</a>. This leaves the United Kingdom in a perpetual state of inaction and, more importantly, as a continued member of the European Union.
While Brexit might seem complicated, it is actually depressingly simple. The European Union and the British political class are now conspiring to ignore the voice of the British people and, as a result, are rejecting the fundamental premise of democracy itself. It should also be noted that, while they are intentionally failing in their governmental duties, the elite British political class is applying a careful combination of strategies in order to achieve its goal of remaining subjugant to the unchecked, faceless, and widely undemocratic web of European bureaucracy.
The European Union, like any other pseudo-authoritarian system, works along a different timeline than does the voting population. During any form of democratic process, voters are constantly presented with choices which are promised to result in immediate or short-term impact. The Brexit referendum of 2016 was no different. After waiting over three years for any progress, the British population is unsurprisingly frustrated with the continued failure of the political class.
As frustration grows, apathy will also grow regarding the type of Brexit that is achieved. Achieving any form of change becomes more attractive than the continued failure to deliver the original objective. As apathy grows, the voices of those calling for a so-called “people’s vote,” or even the open rejection of Brexit itself, become more legitimate. Such frustration and apathy is being leveraged with the goal of erasing Brexit from the pages of history.
The legacy of British democracy is languishing due to the crushing refusal to respect the voice of the British populace. Every delay to Brexit is another rejection of the foundational expectation of basic democracy, where the result of a vote is implemented as directed by the majority of the population. We should pray that neither apathy nor frustration, fueled by an elitist political class that holds little respect for its duty as elected representatives, results in an ultimate capitulation to the European Union.
If the British government fails to deliver Brexit — whether through a “no-deal” departure or a withdrawal agreement that achieves true sovereignty for the United Kingdom — then democracy will have died in the U.K. It won’t die with violence. It’ll die with an exhausted sigh, as the very spirit of Britain collapses between the determined claws of the European Union.

Boris Johnson

HAWORTH: Brexit Delay Signals The Death Of British Democracy

Brexit

Great Britain

United Kingdom

The ongoing saga that is Brexit may seem distant to some of us here in the United States. News of the latest British capitulation to the ever-expanding political monolith that is the European Union sporadically trickles across our airwaves, but soon crumbles beneath the weight of a frantic news cycle. However, what’s currently unfolding in the United Kingdom should require the attention of everyone who values freedom and fears the creeping threat of authoritarianism.
As the most recent departure date from the E.U. of October 31st fast approached, it seemed like the slog towards Brexit was almost complete. Unfortunately, there has been a continued attempt to undermine the referendum result at every stage by a class of globalist political elites, buoyed by a vocal and petulant minority that has refused to accept reality. Sound familiar?
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the most recent occupant of the seemingly cursed No. 10 Downing Street, was defeated twice by the House of Commons this week. The first defeat came after opposition members of Parliament (MPs) and Conservative Party rebels <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-49580185">voted 327 to </a><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-49580185">299</a> in favor of a bill that would block a no-deal Brexit. If passed, Boris Johnson would be forced to “ask” the European Union for yet another deal negotiation extension beyond October 31st. In response, Johnson attempted to push for a new general election, but <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49584907">MPs turned down his motion</a> — with Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn stating that his party would support Johnson’s call for a new general election once the bill blocking a no-deal Brexit passed.
Now, it is fair to argue that binary referenda aren’t the most effective or positive way of achieving policy changes in a representative democracy. They enable the political evasion of responsibility by punting impactful decisions to the populace, with politicians claiming credit for success and blaming the public for failure. They are also divisive by definition, with the societal impact of Brexit often compared to the vicious aftermath of the 2016 presidential election in the U.S. Regardless, the very foundation of a democratic system is that the decisions made by the voters are respected by those who have been elected as their representatives. The referendum result of June 23rd, 2016 was clear, with 17.4 million people voting to leave the European Union — a gargantuan bureaucracy that has grown far beyond the economic-centric “European Community” that Britons had supported in their last relevant referendum of 1975.
Despite it being a duty bestowed upon the British political class to act in accordance with the will of the people, every method of satisfactory departure from the European Union has been intentionally blockaded by those who have no respect for the referendum result — or for democracy itself. As a final insult, the refusal to hold a general election before officially preventing a no-deal Brexit is simply an attempt to delay Brexit indefinitely.
The reason for this is that “no-deal” is the only remaining way for Britain to leave the E.U. The only deal supported by the E.U. is the disastrous “Withdrawal Agreement” negotiated by former Prime Minister Theresa May, which has been rejected on multiple occasions by the House of Commons. With a no-deal Brexit taken off the table, we are left with two equally unacceptable outcomes.
<ol>
<li>Without facing the threat of crashing out of the E.U., the prime minister will be handed the impossible task of negotiating with the European Union without any meaningful leverage. This will mean that the E.U. can keep the U.K. trapped as the parties fail to negotiate, forcing Britain to beg for extension after extension. Result: U.K. stays in the E.U.</li>
<li>As the deadly combination of impatience and apathy grows among the British public, the government will finally adopt Theresa May’s absurd “Withdrawal Agreement” out of an exhausted desire to “do something” and escape the never-ending chaos of Brexit. Result: U.K. effectively stays in the E.U.</li>
</ol>
Because “no-deal” is the only way that the United Kingdom will ever achieve the result demanded by its 2016 national referendum, it is the final obstacle for hordes of “Remainers” who have decreed a “no-deal” Brexit an apocalyptic disaster that must be avoided at all costs. Combined with the refusal of many politicians who support “no-deal” to respect the intelligence and resilience of the British public by acknowledging the non-disastrous but realistically negative impact of “no-deal,” “no-deal” supporters are seemingly handing the reins of control to the minority. As a result, the only exit from the bureaucratic maze of perpetual servitude to the E.U. is being closed. When this door closes, these politicians may have achieved their desired result, but they will have failed to honor the fundamental principles of democracy.
There are multiple similarities between the societal impact of Brexit and the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As we approach another election in 2020, Brexit should stand as a warning to the threats of those in the U.S. who hope to undermine democracy. We must remember that politicians, at their core, are our servants.
If we allow ourselves to forget that elected officials work for us, then we will enable a growing class of opportunistic politicians who seek to tighten their authoritarian grip on our lives. Brexit is forcefully revealing the true nature of many such politicians. With that in mind, if you care about liberty, then you must care about Brexit.

BRITAIN-EU-POLITICS-BREXIT-DEMONSTRATION

HAWORTH: Americans Must See The Brexit Betrayal As A Warning

Democracy

Europe

European Union

Tisha B’Av — the ninth of Av — is the saddest day on the Jewish calendar. Traditionally, observant Jews fast and deprive themselves while they pray and remember various major catastrophes in Jewish history. Over time, other calamities have been mourned, including the Nazi Party’s formal approval of “The Final Solution” on Av 9, AM 5701, and the start of the mass deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka one year later. For many, Tisha B’Av is a time of mourning for the Holocaust as a whole.
On Tisha B’Av of all days, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/in-dc-new-york-and-beyond-jews-mark-annual-day-of-mourning-by-protesting-trump-immigration-policies/2019/08/11/16975ec2-bc70-11e9-b873-63ace636af08_story.html">thousands of leftist American Jews staged protests across the country</a> against ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
For some time, the Holocaust has been used as a comparative metric in order to condemn the implementation of existing immigration laws. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/48556/ocasio-cortez-says-concentration-camp-comments-not-ryan-saavedra">famously likened detention facilities to concentration camps</a> and referenced the phrase “Never Again” — synonymous with Holocaust remembrance. The same phrase adorned T-shirts and signs at the protests on Sunday, with the hashtag #JewsAgainstICE going viral.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s weaponization of Jewish tragedy is an example of the uninformed and offensive rhetoric that we have come to expect from the New York congresswoman. However, when the incomparable catastrophe that was the Holocaust is weaponized by leftist Jews in a bid to peddle Democratic talking points, we have moved beyond casual political ignorance and into the realm of deliberate historical destruction.
To compare the Holocaust, or even the preliminary events of the Holocaust, to the treatment of illegal immigrants in the United States is an act of supreme benightedness. The Holocaust began with the systematic dehumanization of Jews through broad and increasingly aggressive government policies. Synagogues were burnt, Jewish businesses looted, and Jews publicly beaten. Then came the summary executions, with Jews murdered like animals in the streets. Jewish citizens were forced to leave their homes and abandon their property. They were crowded into ghettos, where starvation and disease ran rampant.
In their ultimate desire for murderous efficiency, the Nazis then rounded Jews into death camps. Some Jews were worked to death as slave laborers. Those who didn’t serve an immediate economic purpose had their heads shaved, were stripped of their clothes, and were crowded into air-tight rooms. After poison gas was released, their final minutes were spent in agony, surrounded by petrifying darkness. After every person had perished, their bodies were collected. Any remaining valuable items (such as gold teeth) were removed before the bodies were burned to ash.
This is the raw truth of the Holocaust, the darkest moment in our people’s history.
It is more than reasonable to criticize the Trump administration’s immigration policies, abhor the alleged mistreatment of children, or present differences of opinion regarding border security. However, for anyone to compare any element of American immigration policy to that of the Holocaust is as despicable as it is ignorant. For leftist American Jews, it is an act of historical betrayal.
With each new viral hashtag, we are reminded of the increasingly ideological self-ghettoization of some secular American Jews who are willing to actively rewrite our history in a bid to support a leftist narrative. Jewish groups who parroted #IStandWithIlhan ignored the fact that Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) blatantly anti-Semitic rhetoric was taken straight from Joseph Goebbels’ playbook. Those who applaud #JewsForPalestine reject the fact that so-called “Palestine” is led by organizations who hope to emulate Nazi Germany in their attempt to destroy the Jewish people. Ultimately, #JewsAgainstICE is indicative of those who are willing to allow their own political party to build irrelevant ideological arguments on the graves of 6,000,000 murdered Jews.
With every absurd tweet, every bastardization of the phrase “Never Again,” and every false comparison of ICE to the Nazis, the memory of the Jews who were slaughtered during the Holocaust grows ever fainter. If such abject ignorance is allowed to spread, the dangers of virulent anti-Semitism will be forgotten, and no number of viral hashtags will protect Jews from the inevitable result.
Never Again.

Jerusalem

HAWORTH: Leftist Jews’ Weaponization Of The Holocaust On Tisha B’Av Is An Act Of Historical Betrayal

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Anti-Semitism

Ilhan Omar

Judaism

Leftism

Nazis

Progressivism

In the aftermath of several recent mass shootings, many Democrats have repeatedly labeled President Donald Trump as a “white nationalist” or a “white supremacist.” Beto O’Rourke <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/456158-orourke-compares-trump-administration-to-nazi-germany">likened his rhetoric to that of the Third Reich</a>, and this viewpoint is shared across much of the Democratic Party.
While the terms “white nationalist” and “white supremacist” are applied increasingly liberally, it seems important to remind ourselves of the definitions of these ideologies before making such accusations.
<ul>
<li>White nationalism is based upon the belief of a “white race” and the development of a white national identity.</li>
<li>White supremacy is the belief that white people are superior to other races.</li>
<li>Both ideologies have racism running at their very core — usually including unabashed hatred of Jews and racial minorities.</li>
</ul>
After some of Trump’s rhetoric was defined as racist or xenophobic by critics, his detractors on the Left saw one short goose-step between subjective criticism and invalid accusations of white supremacy or white nationalism. However, the fact that Trump is white and has been labeled as a racist is obviously insufficient evidence of “white nationalistic” ideology.
Those who blindly criticize Donald Trump as a white supremacist are doing so from a position of ignorance or cynicism. In both cases, they should be forced to provide justification beyond merely claiming that “Trump is racist.” After all, as children, we are taught basic logical principles. One example is that “all apples are fruits, but not all fruits are apples.” Even if Trump were racist (and there is no evidence that he is), we must still remember that “all white supremacists are racist, but not all racists are white supremacists.”
One clear counter-argument to the lazy accusations leveled against Trump is the fact that targeted hatred and subjugation of Jews and black people is a core underlying principle of white supremacist ideology. With this in mind, it seems that Trump would be appallingly bad at being a white supremacist. Trump’s daughter converted to Judaism, he has a town named after him in the Jewish state of Israel, and black unemployment is at its <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS14000006">lowest rate on record</a>. In addition, the claim that Trump reserves certain acerbic language — such as “infestation” — for racial minorities is a lie. For example, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/50012/selective-outrage-media-trump-also-called-new-ashe-schow">Trump called New Hampshire</a> a “drug-infested den.” New Hampshire is 93.9% white.
Instead of accepting these realities, the common response is to pivot to the claim that Trump is a white supremacist because he is supported by some fringe white supremacists. This is based upon yet another logical fallacy called “guilt by association,” whereby guilt is assigned based on some irrelevant association or shared attribute. For example: “You have black hair. Hitler had black hair. Therefore, you are Hitler.”
While criticisms of Trump’s presidential campaign can arguably be made regarding instances of pandering to the alt-right, neither Trump’s rhetoric nor his actions in office provide any substantive proof to suggest that he is a white supremacist. The fact that some white supremacists support Trump is evidence — at the very most — that they share some perceived or actual common viewpoints. However, this is only relevant if the shared policies are elements of the white supremacist ideology — and there is no evidence of this.
In addition, it is glaringly obvious that support alone does not indicate a completely shared ideology. After Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) anti-Semitic tweets implying that Israel had “hypnotized the world,” David Duke, a former “Grand Wizard” of the Klu Klux Klan, <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/mar/7/david-duke-praises-rep-ilhan-omar/">came out in support of Omar</a>.
Following the Left’s logic, Ilhan Omar is a white supremacist and supports the Klu Klux Klan. While much of Ilhan Omar’s ideology is utterly detestable, this is clearly an absurd assertion. Indeed, if the vocal support of one white supremacist were all that were needed to condemn a politician, all members of the Klu Klux Klan would come out in support of every one of their political enemies — leaving the electorate no choice but to vote the KKK into power.
Critics of Trump are more than welcome to voice their displeasure regarding Trump’s policies or character. However, if they are going to level such appalling allegations of “white supremacy” or “white nationalism,” they should be forced to provide evidence beyond “he’s white and I think he’s racist.” Refusing to do so shows a dismissive attitude towards the specificity of words, and a complete lack of acknowledgment for how despicable the ideologies of white nationalism and white supremacy truly are.

Donald Trump

HAWORTH: Trump Is Not A White Supremacist

David Duke

Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

Racism

White Supremacy

Megan Rapinoe, the captain of the World Cup-winning U.S. women’s soccer team, has become the latest ideological thorn lodged underneath the collective skin of conservatives. But Rapinoe kneeling during the national anthem or saying that she isn&#8217;t “going to the f***ing White House” seems downright inoffensive compared to her behavior over the course of the past few days.
Appearing on multiple news outlets, Megan Rapinoe appeared self-centered and divisive. She criticized President Donald Trump, as expected. She made accusations of homophobia, as expected. And an adoring Rachel Maddow called for Rapinoe to run for president, as expected. After famously scoffing at the very notion of interacting with people who hold different opinions, Megan Rapinoe took to the stage during the World Cup victory parade in New York City to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/10/sports/soccer/soccer-parade.html">call for unity</a>: “This is my charge to everyone: We have to be better, we have to love more and hate less. Listen more and talk less.”
Speaking with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Megan Rapinoe said that she would be willing to have a “substantive conversation” with &#8220;anyone&#8221; &#8230; who &#8220;believes the same things&#8221; as she does. Combine this with her now-infamous admonition to “Listen more and talk less,” and we are getting dangerously close to Animal Farm’s quip: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">Rapinoe, after saying she&#8217;ll never visit Trump, gives a &#8220;shoutout&#8221; to <a href="https://twitter.com/AOC?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AOC</a> and says she&#8217;ll go to D.C. to have a &#8220;substantive conversation&#8221; with &#8220;anyone&#8221; &#8230; who &#8220;believes the same things we believe in.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/vfhvlybEGT">pic.twitter.com/vfhvlybEGT</a>
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) <a href="https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1148763329269313536?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 10, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
The hypocrisy of those on the Left calling for diversity while actively rejecting diversity of thought is certainly nothing new. However, Megan Rapinoe is indicative of a far greater problem.
Rapinoe has been lauded by her supporters as the ultimate leader. The New York Times described her as a “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/29/sports/megan-rapinoe-world-cup.html">Leader for Her Team, and Her Time</a>.” Unwittingly, the specific language used is actually quite apt. During the parade in New York, Rapinoe looked into the camera, holding the World Cup trophy in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other, and belted out, “I deserve this.”
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">.<a href="https://twitter.com/mPinoe?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@mPinoe</a> holding a trophy and a bottle of champagne and yelling “I DESERVE THIS” is a mood, an inspiration, a battle cry for women nationwide <a href="https://t.co/1r9YUDNBxD">pic.twitter.com/1r9YUDNBxD</a>
— Emmy Bengtson (@EmmyA2) <a href="https://twitter.com/EmmyA2/status/1148961770301788160?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 10, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
“I,” not “we.” “Her,” not “our.” Those who are obsessively praising the leadership attributes of Megan Rapinoe prove that they have completely forgotten the virtues of leadership.
Leaders are not selfish. Leaders are selfless. Megan Rapinoe intentionally cast a shadow of controversy over the U.S. women’s World Cup campaign. She used the tournament as a platform to promote her own ideology, rather than pursuing patriotic unity to bridge ever-growing political divides. In return for the decision to promote herself as an activist, she willingly risked alienating potential supporters, thereby damaging her team and her sport.
Rapinoe has been compared to Colin Kaepernick, a similarly divisive figure who almost single-handedly divided NFL audiences by political ideology. While Rapinoe’s activism is built upon success, Kaepernick built his upon failure, timing his protests perfectly with his demotion to the bench. However, both Rapinoe and Kaepernick were leaders of their respective teams, and both were willing to sacrifice their responsibilities as leaders in favor of selfish and divisive objectives. Their actions represent the absolute antithesis of leadership.
Ronald Reagan, arguably the last true leader to have held the office of the presidency, described leadership as follows: “The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.”
When Reagan spoke of “the people.” he was not speaking solely of those “on his team.” He was speaking of every person in the country. For Megan Rapinoe to earn the title of leader for “her time,” she must be a leader for “the people” — and not just “some people.”
Megan Rapinoe has yet to encourage “the people” to “do the greatest things”. Until she focuses on healing and unity, rather than fueling division, she will never be a true leader. Anyone can bring people together who are the same. It takes someone special to bring people together who are different.

HAWORTH: Megan Rapinoe Is No Leader

Feminism

Megan Rapinoe

Soccer

Sports

Political commentators certainly had their work cut out for them in the aftermath of the two Democratic Party presidential debates last week. Many moments received public scrutiny, as the 20 candidates jostled for support. Kamala Harris&#8217; assault on Joe Biden dominated the headlines, with other areas of focus including heavy support for gun control, the effective removal of American borders, and the blatant attempt to pander to various voting groups with promises of duplicity and insincerity.
However, one statement from Pete Buttigieg crept by relatively unnoticed. The calmly delivered words of the unassuming Harvard- and Oxford-educated mayor of South Bend, Indiana received a moment of applause, but then slipped into obscurity beneath waves of absurd sound bites and radical promises. When analyzed in isolation, it’s clear that <a href="https://youtu.be/bMBqcOwY5Rk?t=1149">his words are dripping with the sort of virulent anti-Christian bigotry</a> that has permeated even the highest levels of the American Left:
<blockquote>The Republican Party likes to cloak itself in the language of religion. We should call hypocrisy, and for a party that associates with Christianity to say it is OK to suggest that God would smile on the division of families at the hands of federal agents, that God would condone putting children in cages has lost all claim to ever use religion language again.</blockquote>
Interestingly, Buttigieg doesn’t mention specific religious sects, organizations, or even individuals. The reason for this is that no such mainstream Christian sects, organizations, or individuals exist. It is willingly ignorant to argue that Christians believe that God endorses general child separation or detention, and lazily over-simplistic to claim that Christians who support various levels of immigration control are religious hypocrites who are in favor of such suffering.
Buttigieg’s attempt to slander Christian conservatives was a smoothly delivered example of a standard Democratic strategy. They present every societal issue as a false dilemma, where the only two choices are to either maintain the current situation or to fully accept and embrace their proposed solution. Then, if you dare to disagree with even the smallest element of their suggested policies, you are labeled as an uncaring, uncompassionate bigot who is solely motivated by a certain amount of schadenfreude.
The Democratic Party&#8217;s 2020 platform is rife with similar examples. If you don’t agree with Democrats&#8217; views on abortion-on-demand, it’s because you hate women and want to see them as sexual slaves. If you don’t agree with their views on universal public healthcare, it’s because you want the poor to die. If you don’t agree with their views on open borders and the removal of the very notion of &#8220;illegal immigration,&#8221; it’s because you want migrant children to suffer. Pete Buttigieg applied this strategy, adding the false, anti-Christian argument that conservative Christians believe that the suffering of migrants is sanctioned by God.
The Democrats claim to be the party of unity, inclusivity, and diversity, yet they regularly exclude others based on their religion, gender, or political ideology. From a position of theological ignorance, using the most derisive and divisive language, they often cite Scripture in an attempt to uncover hypocrisy and thereby undermine religion itself.
Pete Buttigieg, himself an Episcopalian, seems to be trying to split the religious baby as he openly demonizes the entire American religious Right. He must remain attractive to the religious or pseudo-religious American Left — who themselves attribute their leftist viewpoints to their faith — while pandering to the Democrats&#8217; anti-religious base. In this case, he failed in his attempt.
Unless Buttigieg is able to provide an actual example of a conservative Christian who celebrates the suffering of migrants as a religious good sanctioned by God, he has shown us that beneath his inoffensive, reasoned, and calm facade lies either an unabashed anti-religious bigot, or someone who is willing to politically profit from the betrayal of his supposed faith.

HAWORTH: Is Pete Buttigieg An Anti-Christian Bigot?

Christianity

Democratic Party

LGBT

Religion

Several 2020 Democratic presidential nomination contenders have announced plans to forgive $1.6 trillion in student loan debt. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and his ideological comrades claim that student debt is an unbearable weight placed unnecessarily upon the shoulders of younger generations, thus shackling them with debt they are unable to repay. 
The Left approaches each problem in our society with a one-size-fits-all solution. This solution is not to first identify the cause, but to instead throw money at the symptoms of the problem. By the time we discover that money wasn&#8217;t a solution, we&#8217;ll be arguing over proposed solutions to the next so-called social injustice on the radical Left&#8217;s radar.
Democrats see the $1.6 trillion as the entire problem. However, to claim that loan forgiveness is a solution to the problem beneath this debt is equivalent to presenting the victim of a gunshot wound with a tub of Vaseline. It might temporarily stop the bleeding, but it does nothing to combat the underlying issue.
The issue is that the Left continually fails to acknowledge that higher education is a service, and is therefore subject to the basic economic principle of supply and demand. As the educationally elitist Democrats push the concept of universal &#8220;free&#8221; higher education, the resulting rise in demand has two outcomes. The first is an increase in cost, and the second is a decrease in value.
The increase in cost is clear when we analyze college enrollment data. According to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/camilomaldonado/2018/07/24/price-of-college-increasing-almost-8-times-faster-than-wages/#22d92a9166c1">Forbes</a>, based on the 2015-2016 academic year, the average cost across all four-year institutions came to $26,120 per year, compared to $6,725.50 in 1989 &#8212; $13,223 in today&#8217;s dollars, when adjusted for inflation. According to the <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d99/d99t187.asp">National Center for Education Statistics</a>, 59.6% of high school graduates enrolled in college in 1989, compared to 69.2% in 2015, according to the <a href="https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2017/69-point-7-percent-of-2016-high-school-graduates-enrolled-in-college-in-october-2016.htm">U.S. Department of Labor</a>. While there has been a <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84">40% increase</a> in the number of four-year institutions between the 1990&#8211;1991 and 2015&#8211;2016 academic years, the new institutions are not uniformly distributed along the axis of college rankings.
The concomitant decrease in quality of graduate occurs for three reasons. The first is the result of differentiation, where the proportional increase in the number of bachelor degree graduates results in the reduction in value of a bachelor degree in the eyes of future employers. The second is the result of so-called &#8220;credentialism,&#8221; where higher-ranked institutions provide an advantage over lower-ranked colleges in the job market. Finally, there is the result of program differentiation, where those who graduate with a degree in computer science will often be a more attractive candidate than those who graduate with a degree in gender studies.
The common theme, in terms of the reduction in quality of median college graduate, is the perceived value placed upon the degree and institution by prospective employers. This should force Democrats to acknowledge that education is a service designed to prepare students to enter the workplace by providing them with marketable skills which will, in turn, increase their value in the eyes of future employers. With this in mind, the pursuit of education becomes an investment of time and effort, for which there is a measurable expectation of return. If the return does not justify the investment, then it is a bad investment. Knowingly making a bad investment is a bad life choice.
Student loans exist to provide equality of access to education, in order to ensure that no one is prevented from receiving a quality education based on their initial financial situation. However, equality of access should never be conflated with equality of outcome. If you make the decision to take out debt in order to receive your desired level of education, you should take responsibility for the outcome. Since we expect to reap the rewards of good decisions, it is not society&#8217;s responsibility to swallow the result of our bad decisions. 
Yes, some will be able to afford to make frivolous educational choices due to greater financial freedom. But this so-called &#8220;unfairness&#8221; does not justify the demand that those who made good decisions foot the bill for those who made bad decisions. 
The truth is simple. Only go to college if it&#8217;s worth the investment.

Harvard University Campus

HAWORTH: Can’t Justify Student Debt? Don’t Go To College.

2020 Election

Democratic Socialism

Economy

Education

Socialism

When you hear people criticize socialism, they will often provide arguments based upon pragmatism or practicality, using some mutation of &#8220;Socialism has never worked.&#8221; However, the true argument against socialism is based on morality, not pragmatism. Regardless of whether socialism could ever be successfully implemented, it is a wholly immoral ideology that wields the weight of the state in order to enact unethical policies, justified by a misplaced sense of assumed compassion.
The same logic holds true when it comes to the debate surrounding slavery reparations. In an attempt to argue against the apparent pursuit of retrospective racial justice through monetary redistribution, many questions of practicality are raised. &#8220;What about some African-Americans whose descendents were never held as slaves? What about mixed-race citizens? Should people whose descendents actively fought against slavery have to pay?&#8221;
While these are all important questions, they become completely irrelevant when we analyze slavery reparations from a moral perspective. Even if these impossible questions were answered, and we were presented with a cogent and practical implementation strategy, the overarching moral truth would remain unchanged &#8211; slavery reparations are built upon the immoral and racist premise that some individuals are responsible for the crimes of other individuals based solely on a shared racial trait.
Individuals are responsible for crimes, even crimes as utterly abhorrent as slavery. To blame one individual for the crime of another solely because they share a skin color is, by definition, racist. This remains true regardless of how many years lie between the guilty and the innocent.
Advocates for reparations make the implicit assumption that there exists some metric by which we can measure societal guilt for slavery by which we can impart judgement and punishment in the form of monetary compensation. If we set aside the temptation to focus on practicality and remain solely in the arena of moral debate, it is clearly wrong to claim that any person alive today should be assigned blame or guilt for the crimes of the past, thereby invalidating the entire argument in favor of slavery reparations.
We shouldn&#8217;t blame Germans born to Nazi parents for the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis, let alone Germans born years later. The same is true of those born to slaveholders who rejected the foul practice, and is certainly true of those who are generations removed from the appalling legacy of slavery.
Slavery is a detestable practice, and a stain on Western history. Nothing should ever be done to dismiss or deny the horrors of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. However, the scale of these horrors alone do not justify the illogical and immoral leaps made by some who call for slavery reparations under the guise of righting historical wrongs, or in an attempt to blame all modern societal disparities on the legacy of slavery.
When we are faced with issues as complex as societal development over centuries, it is crucial that we build logical arguments upon immutable fundamental principles. One of these principles must be that we cannot allow racism to dictate policy. When we cannot find individuals at fault, it is unacceptable to apply blame on a racial level as an alternative, regardless of the motivation.
To hold those who are alive today as guilty for the crimes of the past is immoral. To hold those who are alive today as guilty for the crimes of the past based solely on their skin color is racist.

HAWORTH: Slavery Reparations are Immoral and Racist

Reparations

The radical Left claimed its latest trophy this week, as Harvard University rescinded Kyle Kashuv&#8217;s admission to its undergraduate class of 2023. With yet another head thrust upon the outrage mob&#8217;s ideological spike, and another person&#8217;s life ruined by the clawing hands of the faceless masses, we must fight to protect three basic truths.
Children Are Humans, Not Weapons
Like all things in the eyes of the radical Left, children are seen as political tools. The Left truly adores children who are willing to become the flag-bearers of its agenda. Look to the adulation poured upon Swedish climate change advocate Greta Thunberg, or the endless media attention dedicated to the outspoken (and often controversial) gun control advocate David Hogg. Every child who is willing to become the Left&#8217;s voice-piece is immediately promoted as a mainstream authority figure, with supposed youthful innocence or sincerity acting as a convenient proxy for actual substantive knowledge.
As those who spend their time in the trenches of social media know full well, many on the Left blindly idolize their figures of allocated authority and often demonstrate complete and utter contempt for those who do not conform &#8212; especially when these nonconformists belong to an intersectional group under the &#8220;protection&#8221; of the Left. The result is the destruction of characters like Kashuv, with cheers of delight as the mob witnesses their downfall.
Kashuv made the mistake of swimming against the tide by refusing to allow himself to be used as a leftist pawn in the aftermath of the Parkland school shooting. Any such victim who is unwilling to allow his shoulders to become the foundation of leftist propaganda must eventually pay the price, and the Left&#8217;s macabre method of retrospective vengeance finally found its target in Kashuv.
Time Is Not Static
Time is a selectively malleable construct for those on the Left who hope to weaponize the past of their ideological enemies. It is uncontroversial to argue that most teenagers are emotionally and socially immature and, as a result, say or do immature (or even appalling) things. It is also uncontroversial to argue that we are not the same people at every stage of our lives. As our brains develop, our behavior develops, as does our opinion of our past selves. This is true year-on-year, if not day-by-day. It is certainly true if the child in question experiences a traumatic and life-flashing-before-your-eyes type of event, such as the Parkland school shooting, which may forever alter the individual and his perception of his past behavior.
Setting aside the undeniable fact that his language was despicable (Kashuv himself has admitted this publicly), his actions occurred months before the Parkland shooting &#8212; months before he became a public figure. We must acknowledge that his actions occurred as part of a timeline of human growth and progression, and that the 18-year-old Kyle Kashuv is not the 16-year-old Kyle Kashuv being condemned.
With our past becoming locked in an immortal electronic database, we must be forced to decide how we delineate human development. With many children holding some form of online identity at increasingly younger ages, there has to be some form of objective metric by which we measure behavior, and by which we can compare behavior across developmental stages.
Many will argue that Kyle Kashuv&#8217;s behavior was that of a stupid 16-year-old, but as an 18-year-old who has genuinely repented, he should be forgiven. However, we must also ask the broader question: What timeline should be used when it comes to rendering judgment? Would the Left have reacted with equal fury if Kyle Kashuv had used that same language as a 14-year-old? What about as a particularly vocal 1-year-old? If yes, can we ever escape our past?
Unless we can acknowledge the clear fact that we are forever developing, and that our past selves are often inferior versions of our current selves, we will be reduced to living as stagnant prisoners of our possibly immature and reckless childhood states.
Apologies Are Virtuous
The overwhelming reaction to Kyle Kashuv&#8217;s former actions demonstrates that the virtue of apology seems to be dying a slow and painful death. As discussed in <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2019/01/11/left-doesnt-want-public-apologies-wants-public-self-immolation/">The Federalist</a>, this problem has been developing for some time. Apologies are not sought after in the hope of repentance or remorse, but to enforce an act of servile capitulation to the radical Left.
It is undeniable that Kashuv faced this public wave of criticism honorably, and his apology was offered sincerely and without equivocation. But that did not stop the bloodthirsty mob from calling for him to be preemptively expelled from Harvard, or from cheering with joy when the elite American university gladly obliged. Time and time again, we find that the act of apology leads inevitably to complete and public self-immolation. This leads us to ask the terrifying question: &#8220;Why apologize?&#8221;
In this modern world where our pasts are torn to shreds in order to uncover former misdeeds, where these misdeeds are weaponized to destroy our lives or livelihoods, we are left with a clear choice. The first option is to continue to do the honorable thing and acknowledge our wrongdoings: Own your mistakes, apologize publicly, and attempt to learn and grow. This act, which sacrifices one&#8217;s ego in favor of what is right, used to be hailed as a sign of virtue. However, the second option has become the only option which does not result in utter self-destruction: Deny and deflect. When faced with legitimate criticism, respond with a shameless refusal to acknowledge any wrongdoing.
As a society, we are truly on the edge of a moral abyss. Either we return to the virtuous world where we encourage and value apologies, or we continue to spiral downwards by rewarding those who don&#8217;t apologize while screaming for the blood of those who do.
Regardless of how you feel about Kashuv, we should no longer allow mobs fueled by artificial outrage to destroy the lives of those who dare to oppose the mainstream Left. We should fight for a return to a world of virtue, instead of a world of moral destruction.
Kyle Kashuv is not alone. He is one of countless men and women who have moments in their past they regret &#8212; moments which define a person who no longer exists. Unfortunately for Kashuv, he entered the public fray and swam against the tide. When objectively criticized for his past behavior, Kashuv did the honorable thing and apologized. His reward was to have his academic future sacrificed in order to silence the hordes massing at the gates.
We&#8217;re in a battle for &#8220;sorry&#8221; over &#8220;not sorry.&#8221; Let&#8217;s pick the right side.

HAWORTH: Harvard Destroyed Kyle Kashuv’s Virtuous Apology

Harvard

Kyle Kashuv

Political Correctness

According to <a href="https://jewishinsider.com/2019/06/ilhan-omar-to-join-black-jewish-caucus/">Jewish Insider</a>, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has announced she will be joining the Congressional Black-Jewish Caucus. The Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota had previously offered support for this bipartisan partnership, stating on Twitter:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Last month, <a href="https://twitter.com/janschakowsky?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@janschakowsky</a> and I joined together to talk about the common threat of white nationalism faced by Muslim, black and Jewish-Americans. Glad to see colleagues follow through in working on the things that unite us and not divide us <a href="https://t.co/KxGV0lnnGI">https://t.co/KxGV0lnnGI</a> <a href="https://t.co/ylJTjmjnxk">https://t.co/ylJTjmjnxk</a>
&#8212; Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) <a href="https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1136385348190314496?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 5, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Reps. Brenda Lawrence (D-MI), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), and Lee Zeldin (R-NY) announced the launch of the Black-Jewish Caucus on June 3rd. The launch of the Caucus was facilitated by the American Jewish Committee.
As many are no doubt aware, Ilhan Omar has been accused on multiple occasions of trafficking in blatantly anti-Semitic rhetoric &#8212; whether it be claiming that Israel had &#8220;hypnotized the world&#8221; or that American support for Israel was based solely upon Jewish money.
Her supporters are certain to laud her announcement as final and incontrovertible proof that Ilhan Omar is not an anti-Semite. Not only that, they say, but she is now actively fighting against anti-Semitism!
The brutal fact is that Ilhan Omar does not care about fighting anti-Semitism. She simply wishes to profit politically from certain forms of anti-Semitism, while steadfastly ignoring others.
If we look at Ilhan Omar&#8217;s announcement in the context of her repeated attempt to focus on white supremacist violence, her motivations become clear. Just today, she tweeted:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
This is the type of hate/threats against our life we deal with on a regular basis.
White supremacists were responsible for almost every extremist murder last year. We must treat domestic terrorism with the same vigilance we treat international terrorism. <a href="https://t.co/j20PIkV11w">https://t.co/j20PIkV11w</a> <a href="https://t.co/4M2R0LKnYO">https://t.co/4M2R0LKnYO</a>
&#8212; Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) <a href="https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1136681273982967810?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 6, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
While her claim that most &#8220;extremist murders&#8221; were perpetrated by white supremacists may be true domestically, this is far from true internationally, where radical Islamic extremists are responsible for far more deaths than are white supremacists.
However, what must be noted is that Ilhan Omar is intentionally portraying the issue of extremism as a false choice, wherein we can only combat one form of extremist violence and must therefore decide which is more of a threat. In reality, we should be able to agree that all forms of extremist violence and discrimination should be rejected. After all, the Democrats themselves chose not to condemn Ilhan Omar&#8217;s anti-Semitism, and instead supported a broader condemnation of amorphous &#8220;hate.&#8221;
Given that Ilhan Omar is presenting a false binary choice, her motivations become clear when we look at one key sentence from her tweet: &#8220;We must treat domestic terrorism with the same vigilance we treat international terrorism.&#8221; The problem for Omar is that she has a demonstrated history of not taking international terrorism seriously. She lobbied for lighter sentences for ISIS recruits, she has publicly aligned herself with terrorist sympathizers and terror-related groups, and was even seen <a href="https://www.jpost.com/American-Politics/Ilhan-Omar-jokes-about-tone-of-voice-when-former-professor-said-Al-Qaeda-586716">giggling about Hezbollah and al-Qaeda</a> during a recently resurfaced 2013 interview.
Omar is trying to make the argument that we do not treat domestic terrorism with the same vigilance with which we treat international terrorism. Even if she were correct, her insouciant attitude towards international terrorism proves that she is either a hypocrite or is someone driven by a general strategy of deflection and distraction.
When we combine the two indisputable facts that Ilhan Omar is an outspoken anti-Semite and that she transparently does not take international (i.e., radical Islamic) terrorism seriously, we are left with only one conclusion.
Her support of the Black-Jewish Caucus is not rooted in a desire to fight anti-Semitism. If it were, then she would presumably speak out against terrorist groups &#8212; like Hamas &#8212; who have openly and repeatedly expressed a desire to see a Jewish genocide. Instead, she supports and fundraises for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has long had close organizational ties with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. In reality, her support is rooted in her disingenuous desire to redirect all criticism &#8212; as well as any criticism of her compatriots &#8212; by hiding behind a cherry-picked group of victimized Jews.
For Ilhan Omar, anti-Semitism is a convenient political vehicle. She has no intention to fight anti-Semitism. Instead, she is willingly ignoring radical Islamic anti-Semitism to advance her own goals.
Ilhan Omar claimed that &#8220;Israel has hypnotized the world.&#8221; The truth is that the only people being hypnotized are the people who believe Ilhan Omar&#8217;s support of the Black-Jewish Caucus is motivated by anything other than the goal of weaponizing anti-Semitism.

HAWORTH: Ilhan Omar’s Decision To Join The Congressional Black-Jewish Caucus Is A Hypocritical Stunt

CAIR

Hamas

Israel

Radical Islam

Radical Islamic Terror

When Republican Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed the Alabama Human Life Protection Act into law, there was an explosion of emotion on both sides of the abortion debate, pulling the pro-life and pro-choice movements even further apart.
This debate has been growing in viciousness in recent years, driven by the departure from the days of &#8220;safe, legal, and rare&#8221; to an almost dismissive and celebratory attitude toward abortion by the radical elements of the pro-choice movement, where abortion is viewed as nothing more meaningful than the removal of a polyp.
Between the so-called &#8220;extreme&#8221; advocates on both sides of the abortion debate, there are many who occupy the middle ground. Some who believe that abortion is a &#8220;private decision,&#8221; some who believe it&#8217;s a justifiable medical &#8220;women&#8217;s right,&#8221; and some who believe that it&#8217;s only acceptable in certain circumstances.
While it may seem inconceivable to those who seek some form of compromise, the fact is that the uncompromising pro-life and pro-choice positions are the only logically consistent views that exist. When it comes to abortion, we cannot split the baby. There is no compromise.
The reason for this is that the abortion debate has a fundamental question at its heart &#8212; the definition of life. Assuming that life holds inherent value and must be protected, the abortion debate is actually an ideological battle over when life (or &#8220;personhood&#8221;) begins. The pro-life movement draws the line between non-existence and existence of life at the moment of conception. The pro-choice movement attempts to draw the line elsewhere, and must ignore the fact that none of these lines are founded in logic or reason.
Identifying life by the existence of brainwaves or a heartbeat would surely deny the humanity of many in our midst. Would someone be considered &#8220;alive&#8221; if we knew that, after a predictable time period, their heartbeat or brain-functions would return?
Identifying life by viability is problematic, given that viability depends on the quality of available medical care. Can we justify assigning the status of personhood to a 24-week old unborn baby in Manhattan and not to a 24-week old unborn baby in the poorest areas of the Appalachian mountains?
Identifying the moment of birth as the confirmation of life is also impossible. Does travelling through the birth canal act as some form of personhood graduation ceremony? Are babies who are born via cesarean &#8220;drop-outs&#8221;? The only physical difference between a baby moments before and moments after birth is their location. If we cannot distinguish between pre-birth and post-birth babies, should location alone be sufficient in defining life?
Finally, identifying life based on &#8220;personal choice&#8221; is entirely subjective, and has been used to justify terrible crimes against humanity on multiple occasions. Of course, this is not to say that mothers who make the decision to abort their pregnancies are morally comparable to those who held slaves or perpetrated the Holocaust. The ideology which permits the subjective definition of life is, however, fundamentally the same.
For the &#8220;extreme&#8221; pro-choice movement, their only alternative is to disregard the logical fact that life begins at conception, which often bleeds into the subjective rejection of the value of life. If certain life has no value, then &#8220;safe, legal, and rare&#8221; is meaningless. If something is legal, why should it be rare? If certain life has no value, it no longer matters whether abortion occurs at the moment of conception or during the process of birth. If certain life has no value, then why shouldn&#8217;t an abortion be viewed as no different to the removal of a polyp, or parasite, or tumor?
The outcome of this reality is that there are only two logical sides to this debate &#8211; the side which values all life and the side which either values some life over others, or rejects the very definition of life. There may be many people who believe that they are somewhere in the middle, but the brutal fact is that there is no compromise that would satisfy both ideological camps. 
It&#8217;s important to note that this acknowledgement of human life does not prevent support or objective debate regarding abortions performed in order to protect the mother&#8217;s physical or mental health. However, if we accept the logical personhood of the unborn child, there is no objective justification for the vast majority of abortions which do not fall under this category.
The U.S. Declaration of Independence reads:
<blockquote>
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
</blockquote>
Unfortunately for those who hope to split the baby on abortion, we cannot reach a compromise without accepting the immoral premise that some life does not have value. This would effectively set the parchment of the Declaration of Independence aflame, and irredeemably reject the unalienable Right of all to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

HAWORTH: We Can’t Split the Baby on Abortion

Abortion

This week, South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg met with American civil rights activist and Baptist minister Al Sharpton for lunch in New York. They met to discuss &#8220;winning over the African-American community&#8221; and how to talk about Buttigieg&#8217;s sexuality with others.
Buttigieg is not the only Democratic candidate who has chosen to align himself closely to Sharpton. Beto O&#8217;Rourke, Andrew Yang, Julián Castro, John Delaney, Kamala Harris, John Hickenlooper, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, Chuck Schumer, and Eric Swalwell all appeared at the National Action Network (NAN) 2019 Convention. NAN is a non-profit organization founded by Sharpton.
Al Sharpton is one of the political personalities to whom any Democratic hopeful must bend the knee. Given that much of Sharpton&#8217;s past behavior seems to be at odds with the Democrat&#8217;s claim of moral superiority, a growing number of conservatives are asking why Sharpton holds such a significant influence over the American Left.
Sharpton&#8217;s first major controversy involved the infamous 1987 Tawana Brawley rape case. Despite &#8220;overwhelming evidence&#8221; leading the grand jury to determine that Brawley had fabricated her story, Sharpton accused Dutchess County prosecutor, Steven Pagones, of racism and being one of the perpetrators in the alleged abduction and rape. Even though he was successfully sued for defamation, Sharpton refused to pay his share of the damages.
He also faced heavy criticism for his role in the Crown Heights race riots of 1991. During the funeral of Gavin Cato, a seven-year-old boy who was accidentally killed by one of the cars in the motorcade of the leader of an Orthodox Jewish Hasidic movement, Sharpton said: &#8220;It&#8217;s an accident to allow an apartheid ambulance service in the middle of Crown Heights.&#8221; During the Crown Heights riots, Yankel Rosenbaum, a 29-year-old Jewish student, was surrounded, beaten and stabbed. He later died in the hospital. Many criticized Sharpton for his role in inflaming tensions, citing remarks such as &#8220;If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house&#8221;.
Sharpton&#8217;s finances have also come under severe scrutiny. In 2017, he sold the rights to his life story to the National Action Network (his own non-profit) for $531,000, adding to the $244,661 he took as compensation from NAN that year. According to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/nyregion/questions-about-al-sharptons-finances-accompany-his-rise-in-influence.html">The New York Times</a>, as of November of 2014, Sharpton and his for-profit businesses owe $4.5 million in federal and state taxes.
He has also made multiple racially-charged statements. During a speech in 1994 at Kean College, Sharpton stated: &#8220;Do some cracker come and tell you, &#8216;Well my mother and father blood go back to the Mayflower,&#8217; you better hold your pocket. That ain&#8217;t nothing to be proud of, that means their forefathers was crooks.&#8221; When speaking of Mitt Romney in 2007, Sharpton said: &#8220;As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyways, so don&#8217;t worry about that; that&#8217;s a temporary situation.&#8221;
Given these examples, many conservatives are understandably confused as to why Sharpton still seems to exercise power and influence over the Democratic Party. After all, how would the Left react if a conservative had behaved in this way?
However, when we understand who the Democrats have become, it becomes perfectly clear. They are the party of the baseless accusations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the Jussie Smollett hate-crime hoax, and the spread and legitimization of anti-Semitism.
Of course they would stand in line to bend the knee. Al Sharpton showed them the way.

HAWORTH: The Democrats’ Obsession With Al Sharpton

Al Sharpton

Like so many other elements of our culture and language, the radical Left have hijacked and redefined the word &#8220;phobia.&#8221; Phobias are a form of anxiety disorder, defined by a strong and irrational fear of something that poses little or no danger in reality. Some examples of well-known phobias are the irrational fear of spiders (arachnophobia), confined spaces (claustrophobia), or heights (acrophobia).
The radical Left have intentionally stretched this objective definition to apply to any dissenting opinion which relates to a minority group. The terms &#8220;transphobia,&#8221; &#8220;homophobia,&#8221; and &#8220;Islamophobia&#8221; appear often in political debate. While it is clearly true that some viewpoints may be motivated by fear or hatred, the radical Left ignore all content or context and apply the suffix &#8220;phobia&#8221; to all opposing viewpoints, rejecting any such opinion as &#8220;hateful.&#8221;
If we are intellectually honest, it is clear that there is a concrete division between the hatred of a group and a difference of opinion regarding policies which relate to that group. This fact is being willingly ignored by the increasingly radical American Left in order to avoid objective debate under the guise of &#8220;rejecting hate.&#8221; The net they have cast over language is growing ever wider.
The claim that any criticism is simply the result of a &#8220;phobia&#8221; appears in political debate time and time again. Religious Christians are defined as &#8220;homophobic&#8221; if they hold traditional views of marriage, without first determining whether their opinions are built upon fear or hate. Critics of Rep. Ilhan Omar&#8217;s language regarding Jews or Israel are dismissed as &#8220;Islamophobic,&#8221; without analyzing the content of their arguments. Parents who are concerned about government intervention regarding their child&#8217;s gender identity are demonized as &#8220;transphobic,&#8221; with the clear assumption that this opinion can only be held due to an underlying fear of the transgender community.
The intentional redefinition of &#8220;phobia&#8221; by the radical Left was exemplified this week by Sonalee Rashatwar. Known as &#8220;The Fat Sex Therapist&#8221; on Instagram, she gave a speech at St. Olaf College, during which she argued that it is &#8220;fatphobic&#8221; to describe obesity as unhealthy. This subtle phrase demonstrates the inevitable outcome of the far-Left&#8217;s domination of culture and language. Criticism of morbid obesity is clearly not rooted in an irrational fear of obese people, but based on the scientific fact that obesity can cause severe health problems. Instead of recognizing medical reality, Rashatwar is able to dismiss any criticism of her own obesity or the obesity of children by claiming (with no evidence) that the criticism is irrationally fearful or hateful.
The word &#8220;phobia&#8221; is yet another word that we have allowed to fall under the control of the radical Left. In a similar way to the conflation of &#8220;speech&#8221; and &#8220;violence,&#8221; the definition of any dissenting viewpoint as an inherently hateful &#8220;phobia&#8221; is one more step toward an inescapable linguistic tyranny, where the only ideas that are allowed to survive bear the radical Left&#8217;s seal of approval.
Let&#8217;s take our language back.

HAWORTH: The Weaponization Of Phobias

Free Speech

There is stark difference between how American society and the Democratic Party value past success when it comes to judging those who are campaigning for political office. 
Most people would agree that leadership objectives are achieved by building upon a foundation of consistent success. You may stumble along the way, but to address the next obstacle, you must either overcome the obstacle that came before it, or work to improve personally or professionally in order to leap forward. This is true for leadership positions in politics, industry, the military, and sport.
Now instead, there are some in the Democratic Party who are attempting to encourage their voters to judge the quality of candidates based on their claim of moral superiority and electoral victimhood. By framing every political campaign as a battle for the nation&#8217;s morality, the Democrats have carefully manipulated the narrative such that the actual result is irrelevant. If the Democrat loses the battle, it doesn&#8217;t matter because they won the moral war.
This has been applied in the wake of several high-profile political failures in recent years. For prospective Democratic candidates for 2020, those who experienced political failure at a lower level have simply defined their defeat as a necessary stepping stone on their path to success. They faced the evil Republicans in a battle for morality, and fought gallantly for &#8220;what is right.&#8221; They are now ready to embark on the Democrat&#8217;s quest for the ultimate prize &#8211; The White House.
One person who has fully embraced this strategy is Stacey Abrams. After serving as Minority Leader of the Georgia House of Representatives from 2011 to 2017, Abrams obtained national prominence after she failed to win the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial race. Since losing that election by 54,723 votes, she has repeatedly claimed that she was the true victor, and has hinted that she may run for president in 2020. CNN described her &#8220;<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2019/03/11/politics/stacey-abrams-2020-sxsw/index.html">rise to prominence</a>&#8221; by framing her political failure as an immoral act:
<blockquote>
Abrams rose to national prominence last year during a closely fought gubernatorial bid that would have seen her become the first African American woman ever elected governor. She conceded the race amid significant controversy over the way the election was conducted &#8212; a process overseen by her opponent, now-Gov. Brian Kemp, who was Georgia&#8217;s secretary of state at the time.
</blockquote>
Another example is Beto O&#8217;Rourke, who is gaining significant traction after announcing his candidacy for 2020. Unlike Abrams, O&#8217;Rourke does have some moderately high-level political experience, having served in the United States House of Representatives for Texas&#8217; 16th district between 2013 and 2019. However, like Abrams, O&#8217;Rourke gained nationwide notoriety after he was defeated by Republican incumbent Senator Ted Cruz in a close-fought 2018 U.S. Senate race.
When judging candidates, we should distinguish between those with limited experience, and those with limited experience and a recent history of failure at a lower level. Lack of experience alone is clearly not a barrier to the presidency, given that Barack Obama was on his first term as U.S. Senator and Donald Trump had no political experience whatsoever prior to their election victories. 
Unlike Abrams and O&#8217;Rourke, however, Obama and Trump built their campaigns on a foundation of demonstrated and consistent professional success, rather than defending recent political failures with claims of having achieved a &#8220;moral victory.&#8221;
If applied carefully, Democrats who lose can retire from the field of battle, free of the need to actually deliver on any of their campaign promises. While the Republican victor is burdened with their newfound responsibilities, the Democrat can move on from their political failure, clutching onto some form of &#8220;moral victory&#8221; (or, in Abrams&#8217; case, unsubstantiated claims of actual victory). They can quickly launch further campaigns for higher positions, where their assumption of moral superiority or election failures act as a valid proxy for demonstrated success.
There is no-one more ill-equipped for the highest office in the land, however, than someone whose value is determined by their electoral victimhood and recent failure to make the B team. America is not a country where you can lose a local pick-up game, and then show up in Boston expecting to replace Tom Brady.
Donald Trump famously said: &#8220;I don&#8217;t like losers.&#8221; Time will tell whether Americans agree.

HAWORTH: America Doesn’t Like Losers. Why Would They Vote For Them?

Beto O'Rourke

Stacey Abrams

With allegations of anti-Semitism swirling within the Democratic Party, many are comparing the increasingly radical American Left with the Labour Party of the United Kingdom. 
Led by Jeremy Corbyn, the Left-wing party have been embroiled with their own scandals, with many members of the party (including Corbyn) accused of being anti-Semitic, or enabling the spread of anti-Semitism.
There are multiple similarities between the anti-Semitism of the radical elements of the Democratic Party and the Labour Party. While vile &#8220;classic&#8221; examples of anti-Semitism exist, the majority of high-profile criticisms are related to anti-Semitic rhetoric thinly veiled as &#8220;anti-Israel.&#8221; Both Corbyn and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) have supported the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, spoken in support of terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, and used anti-Semitic tropes on multiple occasions.
Additionally, many supporters of anti-Semites within the Democratic Party or the Labour Party have refused to acknowledge that anti-Semitism exists within their ranks, preferring to focus on the claim that anti-Semitism is exclusive to the political Right. They willingly ignore that, while anti-Semitism clearly exists on the radical Right, it has yet to become part of the mainstream Right. The same cannot be said of the Left.
With these similarities in mind, alongside Europe&#8217;s dark history of anti-Semitism, it is understandable that many are using the spread of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party as a warning for the Democrats. Many political commentators are concerned that Corbyn&#8217;s brand of anti-Semitic Leftism will penetrate the American Left.
This concern, however, is actually the wrong way around. The spread of anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party is far more concerning than in the Labour Party. While both forms are undeniably despicable, and the Democratic Party&#8217;s form of anti-Semitism is younger than its counterpart across the Atlantic Ocean, the American Left&#8217;s anti-Semitism is being given the tools to thrive.
The reason for this is that the anti-Semitism from the likes of Ilhan Omar has been completely embraced by the mainstream elements of the Democratic Party, as well as by many among the mainstream media. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) effectively prostrated herself at the feet of anti-Semitism by making absurd excuses for Omar. Other high-profile members of the Democratic Party, including several presidential candidates, have rushed to the defense of their anti-Semitic &#8220;allies.&#8221; 
Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, the Labour Party is being torn apart by an internal struggle against systematic bigotry, alongside constant pressure from the mainstream media. Just recently, several Labour MPs resigned, forming their own Independent Party in protest of the widespread anti-Semitism which is being allowed to fester. Labour MPs and members have spent years condemning Corbyn and his anti-Semitic associates, supported by Jewish groups on both sides of the political aisle.
While Corbyn is publicly and vocally vilified for his revolting views by members of his own party, the Democrats are rushing to Omar&#8217;s side. Despite voicing clear views of hatred toward an ally of the United States (and the only democracy in the Middle East), she remains on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Despite her repeated use of anti-Semitic tropes, there have been no resignations, just disingenuous attempts at defense or deflection. The Democrats can&#8217;t even agree that anti-Semitism is worth condemnation, after playing their own &#8220;All Lives Matter&#8221; card by suggesting that we should <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/us/politics/ilhan-omar-anti-semitism-vote.html">condemn &#8220;all hate.&#8221;</a>
Those who see Corbyn&#8217;s Labour Party as a warning for the Democratic Party have it completely backwards. While a battle to overcome anti-Semitism rages in the United Kingdom, Nancy Pelosi and the spineless Democrats have openly legitimized mainstream anti-Semitism. Unless the courageous and moral members of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom continue to fight against the spread of systematic anti-Semitism, they risk turning into the Democratic Party, where outspoken and virulent anti-Semites are protected by their equally despicable peers.

HAWORTH: Corbyn Vs. Omar, And The Battle For Anti-Semitism

Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has faced heavy criticism in recent weeks, with several of her statements and actions deemed as anti-Semitic. Just this week, appearing at a &#8220;Progressive Town Hall&#8221; event in Washington D.C., Omar stated that &#8220;<a href="http://jewishinsider.com/15799/reps-omar-and-tlaib-anti-semitism-charges-shut-down-criticism-of-israel/">So for me, I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay to push for allegiance to a foreign country</a>.&#8221; The <a href="https://www.jpost.com/American-Politics/Tlaib-starts-term-in-Congress-accusing-Israel-advocates-of-dual-loyalty-576614">same accusation of &#8220;dual loyalty&#8221;</a> against Jews has been made by Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), who joined Omar at the town hall event.
Many in the Democrat Party and the mainstream media repeatedly rush to shield those in their ranks who are accused of being anti-Semitic. Controversial rhetoric from Omar and Tlaib is either defended as legitimate condemnation of Israeli policy, redirected by stating that they are a target of Islamophobic attacks, or deflected by referring to alleged bigotry in the Republican Party.
Omar has a demonstrated history of targeted and inconsistent criticism of Israel, support of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, association with other anti-Semites, and defense of terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. Similarly, Tlaib has faced condemnation from Jewish groups over ties to a radical pro-Hezbollah and anti-Israel activist, her continued use of anti-Semitic tropes, and her <a href="https://forward.com/news/national/408368/michigan-democratic-nominee-endorses-one-state-solution-cuts-to-israeli/">support for a one-state solution</a>. While such views are clearly despicable, and criticism of such words and actions are necessary, Omar and Tlaib are indicative of a deeper problem which must be addressed.
Anti-Semitism has existed for thousands of years, following a common pattern of explicit or implicit discrimination against Jews, aided by the majority, or permitted by onlookers who either shrugged their shoulders or turned away. The issue is that, like a virus, anti-Semitism mutates over time, becoming resistant to various forms of treatment. 
We can all agree that neo-Nazis chanting &#8220;Jews will not replace us,&#8221; Jews being massacred in a Pittsburgh synagogue, violent attacks on Jews in Europe, or Jewish graves being desecrated with swastikas in France <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43699/more-anti-semitism-france-80-graves-vandalized-josh-hammer">in recent weeks</a> are clear examples of anti-Semitism. However, they are older and more recognizable symptoms of a disease that has continued to evolve.
Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib epitomize contemporary anti-Semitism, allowing the same virus of anti-Semitism to spread. Modern, contemporary anti-Semitism is devious. The lessons of open and blatant anti-Semitism are still fresh in our minds after the atrocities of the Holocaust. However, subtle and underhanded anti-Semitism drifts through the consciousness of society, hiding behind the thin veil of &#8220;anti-Israel&#8221; or &#8220;anti-Zionist&#8221; rhetoric. Using Israel as a loophole to escape accusations of anti-Semitism, despicable characters like Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib can continue to use the image of the rich, powerful, blood-thirsty, conspiratorial Jew. All that is required for many to shrug their shoulders, or even rush to their defense, is to drape such disgusting rhetoric with an Israeli flag.
This dangerous strategy is allowed to continue by two additional factors. Firstly, many don&#8217;t understand the historical depth and breadth of anti-Semitism, and so fail to understand why some anti-Israel rhetoric is anti-Semitic. These people, somewhat understandably, then join the groups of shrugging shoulders or ardent defenders. 
Secondly, many in the political sphere use accusations of anti-Semitism as a tool to be wielded against their enemies, while dismissing similar accusations against their allies. This does nothing but undermine the fight against anti-Semitism, allowing others to dismiss criticism as a &#8220;smear.&#8221;
While it is obvious that Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are anti-Semitic, and Omar&#8217;s continued position on the Foreign Affairs Committee is laughably absurd, neither Omar nor Tlaib are the true problem. Omar tweeting that &#8220;Israel has hypnotized the world&#8221; or giggling about &#8220;Hezbollah&#8221; is clearly offensive, and Tlaib erasing Israel from a map with a post-it note marked &#8220;Palestine&#8221; is clearly objectionable. However, by focussing on such clear examples of bigotry, Omar and Tlaib also distract us from combating the deeper elements of anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism is kept alive by the many, not the few. Anti-Semitism is kept alive by the hoards of shrugging shoulders turning their backs. Anti-Semitism is kept alive by the continued legitimization of anti-Semitic rhetoric, masquerading as being &#8220;anti-Israel,&#8221; within political parties such as the Democrats in the United States, or the Labour Party in the United Kingdom. Anti-Semitism is kept alive by the mainstream media&#8217;s apologist attitude towards anti-Semites with whom they are generally politically aligned. Anti-Semitism is kept alive by those who use it is as a political weapon.
While we must continue to vocally condemn anti-Semitic rhetoric, it is crucial that we focus on the deeper problems which keep anti-Semitism alive. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are symptoms of anti-Semitism, but they are not a cause. Unless we treat both the cause and the symptom, the virus of anti-Semitism will continue to spread.

HAWORTH: Omar, Tlaib, and the Virus of Anti-Semitism

Rashida Tlaib

&#8220;Outrage&#8221; has become a common word in our modern vocabulary. It often dominates media coverage regarding public reaction to speech, actions, or events. Fueled by the pseudo-anonymous mob mentality of social media, targeted outrage can have a short-lived but damaging impact.
Since outrage is an entirely emotional reaction, it is by definition subjective and divisive. While some outrage can be universal, many instances form along societal, political, racial, or other such divides. As a result of the continued growth of intersectional ideologies, the reaction is often directed towards the determined group of which the alleged perpetrator of wrongdoing is a member. It is not just a Democrat or Republican, it is all Democrats or Republicans. It is not just a man or a woman, it is all men or women.
This mentality has allowed outrage to become a form of societal capital. Predictable divisions in society are capitalized upon for political or monetary gain by carefully sparked outrage.
Politicians constantly stoke the flames of division with borderline (at best) statements made through platforms which encourage impulsive and emotional reactions. This occurs on the Right, with President Trump&#8217;s Twitter feed causing almost daily fury among the political Left, and support among many on the political Right. A recent example would be his <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1094368870415110145">use of the word &#8220;trail&#8221;</a> when mocking Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) for her false claim of Native American heritage, making a clear but subtle reference to the &#8220;Trail of Tears.&#8221; Similarly on the Left, Ilhan Omar has faced support or condemnation for her history of Tweets regarding Israel, <a href="https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1094747501578633216">employing subtle and strategic use of anti-semitic tropes</a> to carefully tread the supposed line between &#8220;speaking truth to power&#8221; and outright bigotry.
In the same manner as politicians, companies and corporations use outrage as a marketing strategy to promote brand recognition. Given that their primary goal is profit, we should assume that successful companies are not foolish enough to make major and unintentional slips regarding the commercialization of controversial topics. 
Nike made a calculated decision to use Colin Kaepernick as part of their campaign. The phrase <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-grjIUWKoBA">&#8220;Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything&#8221;</a> was no doubt the result of deep and strategic discussion. Whether via support or boycott, Nike dominated conversations across the internet. Similarly, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koPmuEyP3a0">Gillette&#8217;s commercial</a> was an example of masterful social justice marketing. Regardless of personal opinions of &#8220;toxic masculinity&#8221; or Gillette&#8217;s self-assignment of masculine morality, they were able to cause emotional reactions through joy or outrage. Either way, #Gillette was trending on Twitter. Whether it be the backlash against Gucci for their <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/02/07/gucci-slammed-for-sweater-that-appears-to-resemble-blackface/">&#8220;blackface&#8221; sweater</a>, or Dove <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/08/business/dove-ad-racist.html">dropping a commercial</a> after accusations of racism, it is clear that large companies have identified the profitability of political outrage.
People on both sides of societal divisions must recognize that many sources of outrage are carefully constructed for that very purpose. The attempts to spark outrage are merely an attempt to create division for profit, and not a symptom of division which must be supported or condemned. 
With much of our society geared towards an immediate response to short-lived events, this seems like a gargantuan task. However, unless we unilaterally agree to resist the temptation to rally into divided and angry camps in response to every intentional controversy, those who wield the weapon of outrage will only continue to hone their skills, forcing the divides in our society ever wider. The American public are more than mere pawns in a macabre game of political or monetary profit.

HAWORTH: The Profitability of Outrage

Nike

Social Justice

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) became the latest in a string of Democratic presidential candidates to openly support the Left&#8217;s latest unifying policy, Medicare for All, which will supposedly provide all U.S. residents with medical care.
Their policy promises, however, are neither moral nor based in reality. The United States healthcare system is like a train with countless carriages providing a huge range of options, from basic economy seats to upper class suites. Some carriages might be expensive, but if you can get on the train, you are likely to arrive at your destination. The Democrat&#8217;s Medicare for All train will be late, the toilets won&#8217;t work, and even if you&#8217;re lucky enough to find a working seat, the train will derail long before you reach your destination.
The Train Tracks Aren&#8217;t Laid Straight
Democrats continually base political arguments on the assumption of moral superiority, and their support for Medicare for All is no different. They want their supporters to believe that healthcare is a right, owed to them by the federal government. However, this is another example of Leftist policy which sounds good, but exists only in an unethical fantasy. While there clearly should not be any legislative barriers to healthcare access, it is preposterous to believe that healthcare itself is a right.
Healthcare is a service, and the Democrats willingly ignore that you do not have a right to someone else&#8217;s labor. Medicare for All would give them power over the labor of all who work in the medical industry. The fundamental principle of individual freedom on which the United States is built is simply an inconvenient barrier, which Democrats will overcome using the promise of &#8220;free&#8221; healthcare.
The Train Tracks Are Built On Sand
Independent studies estimate that the cost of Medicare for All would be around $30 trillion over 10 years. This would bloat the federal budget, which already dedicates almost $2 trillion per year to entitlements, by approximately 40%. Ignoring that the top 20% of earners in the United States pay over 85% of income taxes, politicians glibly demand that the rich pay their &#8220;fair share&#8221; to foot the bill. Wealthy Americans already pay more than their fair share, and the radical obsession with increased taxes is nothing short of theft.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has also stated that Medicare for All would save Americans $2 trillion in 10 years. He bases this on the fact that, if implemented perfectly, Medicare for All would result in a decrease in the &#8220;national health expenditure,&#8221; which includes money spent on healthcare by individuals.
Sanders and the radical wing of the Democrat party see no difference between money spent voluntarily by individuals, and money spent by the federal government. This blatant and arrogant disrespect of the importance of free choice of enterprise and commerce highlights the fundamental immorality of Medicare for All.
The Train Will Have Broken Seats, Cracked Windows, And An Overflowing Toilet
The Iron Triangle of Healthcare, defined by William Kissick, posits that healthcare can prioritize at most two of three fundamental characteristics: access, quality, and cost. This means that healthcare policies can be:
<ul>
<li>
Highly-accessible and high-quality, but hugely expensive.
</li>
<li>
Highly-accessible and low-cost, but low quality.
</li>
<li>
High-quality and low-cost, but with low accessibility.
</li>
</ul>
The Democrat promise of high-quality, highly-accessible, and low-cost healthcare is impossible to achieve. Given that the goal of Medicare for All is to provide widespread medical coverage, they will have to sacrifice the quality of healthcare.
The high cost of American healthcare funds an astounding amount of medical research and development, providing American patients with access to cutting-edge medicine and technology. The United States healthcare system leads the world regarding preventative care, cancer survival, treatment of chronic diseases, and malpractice protection for patients. Medicare for All would not only eradicate these benefits, but also cause the world to suffer from the lack of American medical innovation.
If the Train&#8217;s Toilet Is Overflowing, We Shouldn&#8217;t Have To Get On
Finally, we return to another fundamental principle which underpins the concept of individual freedom: Choice. Currently, the quality of care received in the United States is limited only by your wallet. While this may seem unfair to some, your choice remains free from government interference. Medicare for All would signal the end of this fundamental freedom of choice. With the government controlling access to healthcare, they would also control the distribution of healthcare. In socialized healthcare systems, with supposedly universal access, it is not uncommon for patients to wait months (if not years) for treatment.
Sometimes, patients even die on these waiting lists. The government also has the final say regarding what treatment you can receive, as well as when and where. Many on the Left believe that the government should have power over every aspect of life. Medicare for All would effectively allow them to wield power over life and death.
The American healthcare system is far from perfect. There are many areas which require drastic improvement. We should approach these areas with specific and targeted policies, while maintaining what makes the United States a world-leader in medical quality and innovation. 
If you can buy a ticket, you can decide whether or not to board any train. If you can afford the upgrade, you can sit in any level of carriage you choose. If we allow the deception of Medicare for All to continue, especially with politicians like Kamala Harris insinuating that they want to get rid of all private insurance options, we will be left with only one train that we have to board.
Sure, everyone can get on, if it arrives. Your seat might be broken, the air conditioning won&#8217;t work, and you&#8217;ll need to be wary of the overflowing toilet. If the train doesn&#8217;t derail, it will continuously run out of fuel, and you&#8217;ll see Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez marching up and down the aisles demanding more gas money from coughing passengers. When we finally run out of rich people to tax, we&#8217;ll be left, staring out of a broken window, wondering how it all went so wrong.

HAWORTH: Medicare For All Is The Democrat’s Broken Train To Nowhere

Bernie Sanders

Health Care

Kamala Harris

Medicare

On Monday, January 21, we celebrated Martin Luther King Jr Day, an American federal holiday which marks the birthday of the legendary figure who stood at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement. News outlets and social media sites were incandescent with expressions of support for his inspirational words and actions, which condemned hate, racism, and bigotry in the United States.
Since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, many terrible elements of historical American racism have been banished to the dark corners of history. In countless, immeasurable ways, the fight against racism and bigotry has been successful. However, after such wonderful progress, society has allowed itself to slip off-course in the fight to end racism, and meander towards an online form of contemporary bigotry.
In Martin Luther King Jr&#8217;s famous dream of America&#8217;s future, his children were judged by the content of their character, and not the color of their skin. Despite the huge strides made by the Civil Rights Movement, in modern times it is still the case that people are often judged solely on non-individual characteristics. 
Partnered with the determination to drive the concept of intersectionality, character has become inextricably linked with race, religion, gender, class, or political viewpoint. This ideology has been cemented into modern American society by politicians who fuel shallow societal divisions for political gain, and the mainstream media who value broad intersectional narratives over the pursuit of evidence or context.
Many stories which dominate the media or political discourse continue to push society away from achieving Martin Luther King Jr&#8217;s dream. Discussions and debates surrounding illegal immigration, economic policies, abortion legislation, or gun control are driven by broad and sweeping generalizations. People are organized into two camps &#8212; the victimized and the victimizers &#8212; with factors such as race or gender used to measure character. The so-called victimized are inherently &#8220;good,&#8221; while the so-called victimizers are inherently &#8220;bad.&#8221;
The danger posed by this mentality has been demonstrated on multiple occasions in recent months. Without the desire to seek context or evidence, many have taken a macabre delight in their attempts to destroy the reputations of characters such as Brett Kavanaugh or Nick Sandmann, with the lack of evidence of individual wrongdoing ignored in favor of rushing toward a general conclusion based upon a broader hatred.
Despite the clear absence of evidence against Kavanaugh, he was held as a sacrificial lamb for the crimes of &#8220;white male patriarchy.&#8221; Similarly, the Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann was recently smeared as sharing the &#8220;look of white patriarchy&#8221; with Kavanaugh. In Sandmann&#8217;s case, the media enabled the aggressive online mobbing of the 16-year-old, without investigating any of the false claims made against him.
Despite the fact that further video evidence shows that Sandmann and his contemporaries were actually the victims of hateful, racist, and homophobic abuse, Sandmann&#8217;s &#8220;Make America Great Again&#8221; hat and his choice of facial expression was enough to elicit broad and violent hatred. Reza Aslan stated that Sandmann had a &#8220;punchable face,&#8221; and SNL writer Sarah Beattie even offered oral sex in exchange for the assault of the high school student. This sort of blind and gleeful outrage based on specific non-individualistic characteristics, partnered with the complete disregard for the importance of factual evidence, exhibits much of the same mentality that drove the abhorrent murderous lynch-mobs of the past.
The saga surrounding both Kavanaugh and Sandmann strongly refutes the notion that you can assume good or bad character based on race or gender alone. The incontrovertible fact which must be accepted is that there is no correlation between someone&#8217;s character and their race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or any other intersectional group. This must also be acknowledged and applied by both sides of the political aisle. Bigotry cannot end until it is unilaterally condemned, and we cannot allow discrimination against one group to be replaced by discrimination against another, especially not as some form of historical revenge for the wrongs of the past.
This week, many shared Martin Luther King Jr&#8217;s inspirational quotes, while gleefully jumping on the hateful bandwagon against Nick Sandmann. These people should remember his immortal words, and decide if they want to end bigotry, or simply redirect it:
<blockquote>
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
</blockquote>

HAWORTH: ‘I Have A Dream’ Or ‘Punchable Face.’ You Can’t Have Both.

Covington Catholic High School

Martin Luther King Jr.

With the political landscape becoming ever more chaotic, politicians have been in constant battle across a broad range of issues. One of their most effective, and illogical, weapons is the &#8220;emotional appeal&#8221; &#8211; an argument which aims to emotionally manipulate opponents rather than debate using factual evidence. 
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V88_q3hFd6g">Ben Shapiro famously lambasted Piers Morgan</a> for &#8220;standing on the graves&#8221; of Sandy Hook victims in order to bully those who opposed his views regarding gun control. Exactly the same emotional arguments are commonly used by gun control activists and politicians alike, often without any supporting factual evidence that their proposed policies would have any positive effect.
Manipulating someone&#8217;s emotions through sympathy or guilt does not require a factual foundation, however, it is highly effective when employed by ideological bullies. Especially in our current climate, people who are afraid of being labeled &#8220;sexist,&#8221; &#8220;racist,&#8221; &#8220;uncaring,&#8221; or &#8220;unsympathetic&#8221; are often pressured into submission by the Left, despite the lack of any objective evidence.
Democrats have been employing this strategy heavily in recent weeks during the government shutdown. Social media and news outlets are inundated with faux-outrage from Democrats, who use individuals affected by the shutdown as the reason President Donald Trump and the Republicans must end the shutdown. For them, the fact that Trump would have to abandon his promised &#8220;border wall&#8221; is presumably a delightful consequence. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has accused Trump of holding the federal workers hostage:
&#8220;[Donald Trump], stop holding the paychecks of 800,000 Americans hostage. There is no reason for them to be suffering right now. Re-open the government! #TrumpShutdown,&#8221; Pelosi tweeted.
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realDonaldTrump</a>, stop holding the paychecks of 800,000 Americans hostage. There is no reason for them to be suffering right now. Re-open the government! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TrumpShutdown?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TrumpShutdown</a> <a href="https://t.co/3yQ3B9fOOn">https://t.co/3yQ3B9fOOn</a>
&#8212; Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) <a href="https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1085185001795121152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 15, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Potential presidential candidate Kamala Harris has unsurprisingly jumped on the virtue-signalling bandwagon:
<blockquote>
There are 42,300 federal workers in CA currently affected by the government shutdown. They&#8217;re the TSA agents who protect our flights and air traffic controllers who help land our planes. They&#8217;re park rangers and Coast Guard members. They don&#8217;t need a wall &#8212; they need a paycheck.
</blockquote>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
There are 42,300 federal workers in CA currently affected by the government shutdown. They&#8217;re the TSA agents who protect our flights and air traffic controllers who help land our planes. They&#8217;re park rangers and Coast Guard members. They don&#8217;t need a wall &#8212; they need a paycheck.
&#8212; Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) <a href="https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris/status/1085948640823296001?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 17, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Finally, Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer tweeted:
<blockquote>
800,000 federal employees are without pay. I want President Trump to see these faces and hear these stories. President @realDonaldTrump: You are treating these fine men and women as pawns. Look at the pain and suffering you&#8217;re causing.
</blockquote>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
800,000 federal employees are without pay.
I want President Trump to see these faces and hear these stories.
President <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realDonaldTrump</a>: You are treating these fine men and women as pawns.
Look at the pain and suffering you&#8217;re causing. <a href="https://t.co/HVbrSSIg7l">https://t.co/HVbrSSIg7l</a>
&#8212; Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenSchumer/status/1085584055704403968?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 16, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Instead of debating the efficacy of the border wall, the Democrats criticize Trump for refusing to end the shutdown, while willingly ignoring the fact that they could end the shutdown immediately. It&#8217;s illogical for the Left to argue that the &#8220;victims&#8221; are worth enough for Trump to fold, but not worth enough for the Democrats to fold. It is also illogical for politicians like Nancy Pelosi to stand on the shoulders of victims who are politically-profitable, while also refusing to engage with victims who do not share her political view &#8211; <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/42253/watch-victims-illegal-immigration-storm-pelosis-ryan-saavedra">such as &#8220;angel moms.&#8221;</a>
This hypocrisy remains hidden by the absolute bias of mainstream media, who refuse to question the Democrats&#8217; subjective sympathy. Partnered with Rep. Alexandria Ocatio-Cortez&#8217;s (D-NY) viewpoint that being &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/41844/ocasio-cortez-people-too-concerned-being-factually-ryan-saavedra">morally right</a>&#8221; is more important than factual accuracy, the Democrats are left free to continue emotionally-hijacking political discourse.
We should have sympathy for the workers affected by the shutdown, however, we cannot let sympathy alone drive policy, or worse, blind us to reality. We cannot allow this monopolization of self-professed morality to continue, as the Democrats replace factual evidence with emotional manipulation in an attempt to hinder the progress of conservative policy. Pelosi and the Democrats must agree to face conservatives on an ideological battlefield using factual evidence. If they insist on hiding in the emotional arena, they must finally be willing to answer why some victims matter, and some do not.

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Ian Haworth

Articles by Ian Haworth