A recent survey conducted by the Victims of Communism and polled by YouGov, a research and data firm, found that 70% of millennials are likely to vote socialist and that one in three millennials saw communism as &#8220;favorable.&#8221;
Let examine this tragic vision in light of the Fraser Institute&#8217;s recently released annual study &#8220;Economic Freedom of the World,&#8221; prepared by Professors James Gwartney, Florida State University; Robert A. Lawson and Ryan Murphy of Southern Methodist University; and Joshua Hall, West Virginia University, in cooperation with the Economic Freedom Network.
Hong Kong and Singapore maintained their lead as the world&#8217;s most economically free countries — although China&#8217;s heavy hand threatens Hong Kong&#8217;s top ranking. Rounding out the top 10 are New Zealand, Switzerland, the United States, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Mauritius. By the way, after having fallen to 16th in 2016, the U.S. has staged a comeback to being in the top five economically free countries in the world.
What statistics go into the Fraser Institute&#8217;s calculation of economic freedom? The report measures the ability of individuals to make their own economic decisions by analyzing the policies and institutions of 162 countries and territories. These include regulation, freedom to trade internationally, size of government, sound legal system, private property rights and government spending and taxation.
Fraser Institute scholar Fred McMahon says, &#8220;Where people are free to pursue their own opportunities and make their own choices, they lead more prosperous, happier and healthier lives.&#8221; The evidence for his assessment is: Countries in the top quartile of economic freedom had an average per-capita GDP of $36,770 in 2017 compared with $6,140 for bottom quartile countries. Poverty rates are lower. In the top quartile, 1.8% of the population experienced extreme poverty ($1.90 a day) compared with 27.2% in the lowest quartile. Life expectancy is 79.5 years in the top quartile of economically free countries compared with 64.4 years in the bottom quartile.
The Fraser Institute&#8217;s rankings of other major countries include Japan (17th), Germany (20th), Italy (46th), France (50th), Mexico (76th), India (79th), Russia (85th), China (113th) and Brazil (120th). The least free countries are Venezuela, Argentina, Ukraine and nearly every African country with the most notable exception of Mauritius. By the way, Argentina and Venezuela used to be rich until they bought into socialism.
During the Cold War, leftists made a moral equivalency between communist totalitarianism and democracy. W. E. B. Du Bois, writing in the National Guardian (1953) said, &#8220;Joseph Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature.&#8221; Walter Duranty called Stalin &#8220;the greatest living statesman &#8230; a quiet, unobtrusive man.&#8221; George Bernard Shaw expressed admiration for Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin. Economist John Kenneth Galbraith visited Mao&#8217;s China and praised Mao Zedong and the Chinese economic system. Gunther Stein of the Christian Science Monitor also admired Mao and declared ecstatically that &#8220;the men and women pioneers of Yenan are truly new humans in spirit, thought and action.&#8221; Michel Oksenberg, President Jimmy Carter&#8217;s China expert, complained that &#8220;America (is) doomed to decay until radical, even revolutionary, change fundamentally alters the institutions and values,&#8221; and urged us to &#8220;borrow ideas and solutions&#8221; from China.
Leftists exempted communist leaders from the harsh criticism directed toward Adolf Hitler, even though communist crimes against humanity made Hitler&#8217;s slaughter of 11 million noncombatants appear almost amateurish. According to Professor R.J. Rummel&#8217;s research in &#8220;Death by Government,&#8221; from 1917 until its collapse, the Soviet Union murdered or caused the death of 61 million people, mostly its own citizens. From 1949 to 1976, Mao&#8217;s Communist regime was responsible for the death of as many as 76 million Chinese citizens.
Today&#8217;s leftists, socialists and progressives would bristle at the suggestion that their agenda differs little from that of past tyrants. They should keep in mind that the origins of the unspeakable horrors of Nazism, Stalinism and Maoism did not begin in the &#8217;20s, &#8217;30s and &#8217;40s. Those horrors were simply the result of a long evolution of ideas leading to a consolidation of power in the central government in the quest for &#8220;social justice.&#8221;
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Hammer and Sickel.

WILLIAMS: Young People Ignorant Of History

Communism

Josef Stalin

Socialism

The City of Denver is targeting a business owner with fines for refusing to clean up feces from homeless people who defecate in front of his business on a near daily basis, and now the business owner is taking the city to court.
When Jawaid Bazyar, CEO of an internet service provider in Colorado, describes downtown Denver it sounds like San Francisco. The city, he says, is turning into a &#8220;bathroom stall&#8221; filled with crime, feces, and used syringes from drug addicts.
&#8220;The wall is a bathroom stall. They lean up against it and let it rip,&#8221; Bazyar <a href="https://kdvr.com/2019/11/08/five-points-business-owner-battling-human-feces-problem/">told</a> FOX31 KDVR. &#8220;In downtown Denver, that&#8217;s nonstop now, just piles of poop.&#8221;
“There’s food, trash, drug deals,&#8221; Bazyar <a href="https://denver.cbslocal.com/2019/11/08/feces-prostitutes-needles-jawaid-bazyar-curtis-street-business/">told</a> CBS Denver. &#8220;In the alley, we get the defecation, drug needles.”
Tamara Chapman, a financial controller with the company, told KDVR that she has been chased and attacked by violent criminals in the area.
&#8220;I&#8217;ve been chased with a 2-by-4, a knife, a pipe,&#8221; Chapman said. &#8220;A man bashed in my windshield with a rock.&#8221;
Bazyar says that he has had to repeatedly call law enforcement, sometimes up to several times a day, to get some of these people off of his business property and now he is refusing to continue cleaning up their mess, citing the obvious safety concerns that come with bio-hazardous material.
&#8220;Because it&#8217;s a bio-hazard. It could be infectious. I didn&#8217;t hire these people to clean poop off the ground. I can&#8217;t, as an employer, just say, &#8216;Go and clean up the feces&#8217;,&#8221; Bazyar said. &#8220;I&#8217;m not the one doing this, and they won&#8217;t do anything about the people committing the crimes, but I&#8217;m the one who&#8217;s easy to find and easy to punish.&#8221;
Bazyar says that the police rarely respond to calls and a spokesperson for the Denver Public Health Department had issued multiple warnings to Bazyar before they started fining him.
Bazyar told CBS Denver that he is going to take the City of Denver to court over the situation, saying, “&#8221;If the city’s not going to enforce laws against trespassing, or camping, or public defecation and just make me bare the cost of these problems that’s just not right.&#8221;
&#8220;I don&#8217;t even know what I&#8217;m supposed to do,&#8221; Bazyar  told KDVR. &#8220;The government&#8217;s primary job is public safety. I think it&#8217;s a lot of politicians don&#8217;t want to be seen as anti-homeless or heartless.&#8221;
Denver has been moving further and further to the political left in recent years, including in 2017, when Democrats fought against the Trump administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement by lessening penalties for certain crimes, including <a href="https://www.9news.com/article/news/crime/certain-crimes-will-now-have-lighter-sentences-in-denver/442367895">public urination and defecation</a>, as a way of trying to protect illegal aliens from being deported.
The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/05/24/denver-fights-back-against-trumps-deportation-crackdown-with-surprisingly-simple-change-in-law/?wpisrc=nl_mix&amp;wpmm=1">reported</a>:
<blockquote>Tens of thousands of legal residents have been deported for relatively minor offenses in recent decades. But under previous administrations, immigration authorities have often let low-level offenders off the hook. Now, under Trump, immigrants feel the threat of deportation more than ever, advocates say, whether they are residing here legally or not.
The proposal passed Denver’s city council Monday night. In making the change, Denver is sending a clear message to the federal government that it will not “bend to a broken immigration system,” said the city’s mayor, Michael Hancock, who proposed the sentencing revisions. They will help “keep families together by ensuring low level offenses, like park curfew, are not a deportation tool,” he said.</blockquote>
Over the summer, Denver elected so-called &#8220;democratic socialist&#8221; Candi CdeBaca, who <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/new-denver-city-council-member-i-will-usher-ryan-saavedra">admitted</a> earlier this year that she wanted to implement communism, to city council.
In late March, CdeBaca said during a political debate (emphasis added):
<blockquote>I don’t believe our current economic system actually works. Capitalism by design is extractive and in order to generate profit in a capitalist system, something has to be exploited, that’s land, labor or resources.
And I think that we’re in late phase capitalism and we know it doesn’t work and we have to move into something new. And I believe in community ownership of land, labor, resources, and distribution of those resources.
And so, whatever that morphs into I think is what will serve community the best and I’m excited to usher it in by any means necessary. </blockquote>
Encyclopedia Britannica <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/communism">defines</a> communism as a “political and economic doctrine that aims to replace private property and a profit-based economy with public ownership and communal control of at least the major means of production (e.g., mines, mills, and factories) and the natural resources of a society.”
<div id="div-gpt-ad-DW_Body2" class="advertisment" data-google-query-id="CL2Jn73O5uUCFURgAQodPmsJNQ">
<div id="google_ads_iframe_/61914415/DW_Body2_0__container__">
<div id="div_20b8d2c005e311ea8ae3e316105bd2a8_2" class="sprkflw_main sprkflw_default"></div>
</div>
</div>

Colorado Democrats

Denver Fines Business For Refusing To Pick Up Homeless People’s Poop

Denver

Homelessness

On Monday’s episode of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” the Daily Wire editor-in-chief talks about a New York Times column claiming that “multibillion-dollar fortunes” are “anti-democratic.” Video and partial transcript below: 
The Bernie Sanders attack on billionaires, and the Elizabeth Warren attack on billionaires, is cynical and just disgusting. &#8230;
Elizabeth Warren is worth $12 million, and there she is [paraphrasing]: “These rich people, these rich people, they must be stopped.” And you got Bernie Sanders, who&#8217;s basically a giant welfare queen living off the government for the last 30 years — what is he now, he&#8217;s 78-years-old — living off the government for 50 years of his life. He&#8217;s like [paraphrasing]: “Oh, well, you know, we can&#8217;t let any of these people who actually earned their wealth run anything. They shouldn&#8217;t run for office. Only I should! I&#8217;ve been useless my entire life, so useless I was kicked off a commune.” 
So you got Bernie ripping into billionaires, and then [you’ve] got Michael Tomasky over at <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/opinion/billionaires-warren-wealth-tax.html">The New York Times</a> saying, “Bill Gates, I implore you to connect some dots.”
“The billionaire class has begun unloading on Elizabeth Warren.” 
You see, it&#8217;s a class now. Now, just to recognize a fact: Bill Gates is basically a lifelong Democrat. Warren Buffett is a lifelong Democrat. A lot of these, quote unquote “billionaire class members” are lifelong Democrats, people who&#8217;ve given tons of money to left-leaning causes. But they’re a class now, you see. 
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Z6oi-dHemkc?start=1584" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
This is pure Marxist speak where you are judged by the basis of your income — on the basis of your wealth — not by what you think, or what you do, or how you vote, or any of that sort of stuff. George Soros is a billionaire, [and he] gives a lot of money to exactly the kinds of people that Jamie Dimon doesn&#8217;t like, so treating everybody as a class based on their income is really stupid, in any case. This dumb columnist for The New York Times says: “A few days ago, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase — at just $1.6 billion in net worth, a comparative piker — said Senator Warren &#8216;vilifies successful people.&#8217;” 
[This] is true. 
“Then Bill Gates ($107 billion), in an onstage interview with The Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin, mused about what his tax bill might be in a Warren presidency and left the door open to voting for Trump should Democrats nominate Ms. Warren.”
Which makes sense, because her wealth tax proposal is baloney. 
“And then Michael Bloomberg ($52 billion), who had previously criticized Ms. Warren as anti-corporate, signaled his intention to jump into the race, obviously out of concern at her rise.”
“I&#8217;m not expert enough to judge the wisdom of Senator Warren&#8217;s proposed wealth tax.” 
Well then, what are you writing about? Like this entire thing is about her wealth tax. 
“I know, there are questions about its constitutionality and that several European nations tried a similar approach and found it unworkable (though four countries still have it). I don&#8217;t get why the candidates aren&#8217;t simply proposing to increase marginal income tax rates on dollars earned above some very high figure. That seems a lot more straightforward to me.”
The reason — the stunning ignorance of The New York Times columnist. The reason, not to justify Elizabeth Warren, [but] the reason she&#8217;s proposing a wealth tax is there isn&#8217;t enough money at the upper end of the income bracket, in terms of income earned every year, to pay for her proposals. The wealth tax is a confiscatory, nasty tax designed to pay for her garbage proposals that amount to $52 trillion dollars in spending over the next 10 years. That&#8217;s why she&#8217;s going for the wealth tax. You can increase the marginal tax rate, [but] it ain’t going to pay for this stuff. It isn&#8217;t. But this guy says:
“So this column is not a brief for Ms. Warren&#8217;s wealth tax and for her candidacy — I don&#8217;t have a preferred candidate. Instead, I want to make a simple plea to the country&#8217;s billionaires: Multibillion-dollar fortunes are often called excessive and decadent. But here&#8217;s something they’re rarely called but ought to be: Anti-democratic. These fortunes will destroy our democracy.”
Let me get this straight. You earn a billion dollars because you have a bunch of consensual economic transactions of people, and that&#8217;s anti-democratic? What is democratic is for the government to come and seize the results of those voluntary transactions? Jeff Bezos has not seized wealth from anyone, but you want the government to do that — who&#8217;s more anti-democratic? Bill Gates has not seized wealth from anyone. In fact, he&#8217;s provided jobs to hundreds of thousands of people and indirectly, probably millions of people. You want to seize the wealth he has earned on the basis of those voluntary economic transactions — who&#8217;s more anti-democratic?
<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ben-shapiro-show/id1047335260">Listen to full episodes of “The Ben Shapiro Show” on iTunes. </a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-ben-shapiro-show">Watch “The Ben Shapiro Show” on-demand!</a>

Elizabeth Warren

SHAPIRO: The Left Plans To Eat The Rich

Bernie Sanders

Democratic Socialism

Leftism

Progressivism

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) sided with the embattled socialist leaders of Venezuela and Cuba, calling the resignation of Bolivia&#8217;s Evo Morales a &#8220;military coup.&#8221;
The controversial Minnesota Democrat made the statement on Sunday night, hours after Morales announced that he was stepping down as Bolivia&#8217;s president amid national unrest over an allegedly fixed election. Morales, who was swept to power in 2006 in the &#8220;pink wave&#8221; that saw communists and socialists take over control of several South and Central American nations, held an iron grip on power in Bolivia for 14 years.
Omar called the resignation a coup, and, ironically, claimed that the Bolivians deserve &#8220;free and fair elections&#8221; &#8212; something Morales&#8217; opponents said was impossible while Morales was still in power.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
There&#39;s a word for the President of a country being pushed out by the military. It’s called a coup.
We must unequivocally oppose political violence in Bolivia. Bolivians deserve free and fair elections.
&mdash; Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) <a href="https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1193729915075661824?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 11, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Morales left office (and, presumably, Bolivia) on Sunday after weeks of violent unrest following a contentious election that the Organization of American States now says suffered from fatal irregularities. Morales, who was vying for a fourth term, called off counting votes just 24 hours after most Bolivians cast their ballots, apparently concerned that he would not win.
An investigation into the election is ongoing, but the OAS pointed to significant errors, major corruption, and clear signs that Morales was attempting to fix the outcome to hold on to power.
The Bolivian military pushed Morales to resign after demonstrations grew dangerous and took the lives of at least three protesters. Police and military ultimately refused to quell the popular uprising and protect Morales.
Currently, the military is instituting martial law, but Morales&#8217; opposition has strong leadership, and a decision is reportedly being made as to who among their leadership should assume power pending another election. The situation is fluid and the U.S. State Department is keeping a close eye on developments.
Omar&#8217;s response, of course, fails to take into account the popular aspect of Bolivia&#8217;s political situation, preferring instead to assume that the change in power came up suddenly and inorganically, rather than as a result of longstanding frustration with Morales&#8217; government &#8212; or even a sudden, recent shift in economic prosperity for those Bolivians not connected to positions of power.
Unsurprisingly, Omar echoed Morales, as well as the governments of Venezuela and Cuba &#8212; the two socialist governments left, aside from Bolivia &#8212; in calling what took place a &#8220;coup.&#8221;
&#8220;The world and our Bolivian patriots repudiate the coup,&#8221; Morales tweeted. &#8216;They moved me to tears. They never abandoned me. I will never abandon them.&#8221;
&#8220;The world must be mobilized for the life and freedom of Evo,&#8221; Cuba&#8217;s president said in a statement Monday. Venzuelan president Nicolas Maduro, who faced a similar uprising over the summer yet held on to power, also called the transition of power a &#8220;coup.&#8221;
Omar is also likely echoing her own previous statements about regime change in South America. During the violent uprisings in Venzuela, which took place after the socialist government there allowed the electric grid to collapse, plugning millions into darkness and abject poverty, <a href="https://thehill.com/latino/441768-omar-us-policy-helped-lead-the-devastation-in-venezuela">Omar blamed the United States</a> for Venezuela&#8217;s difficulties, claiming that American &#8220;bullying&#8221; and &#8220;sanctions&#8221; were responsible for the socialist nation&#8217;s collapse, not a brutal dictator.
She also told a foreign journalist, during the uprising in Venezuela, that the United States was providing humanitarian aid as cover for intervention and even invasion.
&#8220;What we should be involved in is having diplomatic conversations and bringing people to the table and being a partner in facilitating that. But we are threatening, we are threatening intervention. We’re sending humanitarian aid that is in the guise of, you know, eventually invading this country and the people of the country don’t want us there,&#8221; <a href="https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Congresswoman-Ilhan-Omar-Denounces-US-Intervention-in-Venezuela-20190228-0033.html">she told Rolling Stone</a>.

Ilhan Omar

Ilhan Omar Calls Evo Morales Resignation A &#8216;Coup,&#8217; Sides With Cuba, Venezuela

The following is satirical.
This weekend, Germans celebrated the thirty year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The wall divided the German capital between a thriving, free, capitalist West Berlin and an East Berlin so mired in poverty, lack of services and government oppression that it was almost as bad as living in California.
The wall was built in 1961 when the Soviet socialists who ruled East Germany realized that if they taxed people at the levels proposed by Elizabeth Warren, those people would leave and take their wealth and productivity elsewhere. But the socialists had a plan for that, namely anyone who tried to leave would be shot dead.
This policy continued through 1988, when Bernie Sanders honeymooned among the Soviets. So as Berliners celebrate the fall of the wall, perhaps they should also remember the good times, like when Bernie sat bare-chested with their Soviet oppressors and sang, “This land is your land, and so is Po-land, and so is Czechoslovakia and so is Hungary and so is East Germany and &#8230;” Well, you know, the rest of the lyrics.
On a side note, Bernie returned from his visit to the Soviets and said of the USSR and the U.S. &#8212; and this is a real quote: “Let’s take the strengths of both systems. Let’s learn from each other.”
Which would’ve made for an interesting country seeing as the strengths of the U.S. are freedom and capitalism, and the strengths of the Soviet Union were socialism and its necessary results: poverty, oppression, slavery and mass murder.
The Berlin Wall finally collapsed when the Soviets were confronted by Ronald Reagan, a freedom-loving president the American press hated so much they attacked him constantly and even tried to organize his impeachment. Thank heavens, that couldn’t happen today.
In fact, as we celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall, it’s nice to know that we have learned so much about the evils of socialism, it has been relegated to the dustbin of history — and the Democrat Party platform.

Berlin Wall Monument

Germans Celebrate 30-Year Anniversary of End of Democrat Party Policies [Satire]

Democratic Party

Russia

Soviet Union

Bolivia&#8217;s socialist president Evo Morales resigned over the weekend, ending his nearly 15-year iron grip on power in the South American country.
Protesters have been demanding Morales step down for weeks following a disputed election, where Morales claimed victory even though the outcome wasn&#8217;t clear, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/world/bolivia-president-evo-morales-resigns-election-fraud-allegations">according to Fox News</a>. Disputes over the election and subseqeuent violent demonstrations triggered an international inquiry into whether Morales fixed Bolivia&#8217;s vote to keep himself in power.
In a letter issued on Sunday, Morales claimed he was removing himself from his position, though he has yet to actually follow through with vacating the presidency.
“I am sending my resignation letter to the Legislative Assembly of Bolivia,” he said over the weekend.
Morales likely had no choice; as of last week, the country&#8217;s military and police force suddenly refused to put down anti-Morales protests, and sided with demonstrations calling on Morales to leave the presidential palace. Police officers guarding Morales also refused to take their posts, leaving the Bolivian leader unprotected, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/world/police-join-protesters-abandon-their-posts-outside-bolivias-presidential-palace">Fox News reported</a>.
As in Venezuela, the socialist leader&#8217;s iron grip on power eventually stopped benefiting the people, who revolted — though as in Venezuela, the revolt seems to have ushered in just a slightly less-socialist government, in this case led by Bolivia&#8217;s former president, Carlos Mesa.
Mesa charged over the weekend that Morales had committed “monstrous fraud&#8221; in elections held last month, which Morales claims handed him a fourth term in office. Mesa cited an Organization of American States report that found a number of electoral problems, to put it mildly.
Morales, of course, called the situation a &#8220;coup.&#8221;
“Mindful of the heap of observed irregularities, it’s not possible to guarantee the integrity of the numbers and give certainty of the results,” OAS said in their report. They called out Morales and his allies specifically, questioning why Morales stopped counting votes after a 24-hour period even though he was only slightly ahead of his opponent.
As recently as October, just ahead of the Bolivian elections, global socialists — and even American mainstream media <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/socialism-doesnt-work-an-emerging-middle-class-of-bolivians-would-beg-to-differ/2019/10/08/3b1cb3ae-e6f6-11e9-b0a6-3d03721b85ef_story.html">outlets like the Washington Post</a> — were hailing Bolivia as a shining example of how socialism &#8220;worked&#8221; in the Central and South American countries which welcomed open socialist and communist leaders in a &#8220;pink tide&#8221; in 2006. Morales was, until Sunday, the last leftist leader left standing from that wave.
But Bolivia&#8217;s wealth was concentrated in the upper and middle classes, leaving the poorest Bolivians often without enough to meet their basic needs. Critics of Morales&#8217; regime also point out that Morales rode a commodities boom that recently has come to an end, limiting the Bolivian economy&#8217;s ability to grow. The largesse, too, seems to have affected Morales in the same way it affected other socialist leaders; his government, like Venezuela&#8217;s, Cuba&#8217;s, and Argentina&#8217;s, stands accused of widespread corruption.
It&#8217;s not clear who will assume power in Bolivia now that Morales is technically out of office. All of the officials aligned with Moraels&#8217; party resigned alongside their leader. The next person in line to take the reins, &#8220;the second vice president of Bolivia&#8217;s senate, Jeanine Añez,&#8221; <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/11/americas/bolivia-morales-resignation-q-and-a-intl/index.html">according to CNN</a>, has said she will gladly take power, but Bolivia&#8217;s people — and the Organization of American States — want a new election as soon as possible.

Evo Morales Bolivia

Bolivia&#8217;s Socialist President Evo Morales Resigns Amid Uprising

A college conservative group erected an anti-socialism display at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, only to have someone remove it. When the students brought the matter before the university, the university reportedly declined to investigate the matter.
As Emma Schambach,  the founding chairwoman of Young Americans for Freedom at UNC Charlotte, wrote for the <a href="https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2019/11/students-tear-down-anti-socialism-display-but-unc-charlotte-wont-investigate/">James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal</a>, her group discussed the pros and cons of socialism and capitalism in October; when they decided they opposed socialism and noted that their perspective was opposed in class and around the campus. They “created a display of 21 cardboard tombstones, each representing a country with the number of lives lost in that country due to socialist ideologies.”
Schambach continued that on October 14, she contacted various university offices that might have removed the display. She adds, “The student organizations office said they had not been involved in the removal, but pointed us to the reservations office to ensure that the space we used had not been reserved for another organization.” They were informed that they had not acquired a reservation required for the display.
Schambach pointed out that in September, the group had attempted to acquire a reservation for a 9/11 display, but because the appropriate office had not responded, the group erected the display anyway, and not only had no one protested, it had remained there for a week and college officials praised it.
Next stop after having visited the reservations office was facility management, which said it had not removed the anti-socialist display. After discovering that the school had no cameras that covered the area where the anti-socialism display had been mounted, the assistant vice chancellor contacted the group and informed them, according to Schambach, that very little would be offered to assist the group in reclaiming the display or identifying who removed it. The group was informed they could attempt to get a reservation, rebuild the display and present it.
Schambach concluded:
<blockquote>Our club is concerned, though, that the students who trampled on our right to free speech will go unpunished. The goal is not to ruin a student’s life who trashed a political display they opposed. Rather, the goal is to ensure all students’ political views receive the same protections on UNC Charlotte’s campus … This failure to identify or reprimand the vandal sets a dangerous precedent: It may indicate that the university, though not officially stifling free speech, will allow students to compromise the free speech of others. Our display can be replaced, but a weak response to protecting free speech can have a chilling effect on unpopular opinions — whether of the political left or the political right.</blockquote>
In September, the UNC Charlotte held a “white privilege” workshop in which its organizers wrote, “Understanding the meaning and implications of whiteness and engaging in anti-racist practice is crucial in creating racial equity. This space is for all undergraduate and graduate students at UNC Charlotte who are interested in engaging in conversations to assist in their understanding of how racism is perpetuated individually, culturally, and systemically.” The <a href="https://www.thecollegefix.com/on-campus-of-30000-students-less-than-10-attend-universitys-white-privilege-workshop/">College Fix</a> reported, “The total number of students in the audience for the first ‘White Consciousness Conversation,’ held Sept. 10, was nine — but two were students there not as participants but as journalists mainly to observe. One was from The College Fix and another from the Niner Times campus newspaper.”
UPDATE: UNC Charlotte offered a statement with more information about the incident, as below:
<blockquote>
UNC Charlotte did not remove the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) display on campus and University administration connected with the organization multiple times based on their concerns.
The University repeatedly inquired with numerous departments in efforts to determine who may have removed the display. UNC Charlotte Police examined video from various security cameras in the area. The video did not reveal individuals in view and officers were unable to discern who may have removed the display. YAF did not file a report with UNC Charlotte Police claiming theft of a display or damage to property.
YAF reinstalled their display several weeks later and UNC Charlotte Police went above and beyond standard practice to provide additional security support to ensure that the display remained in place and unharmed.
UNC Charlotte wholeheartedly supports free speech and expression protected by the First Amendment and is committed to cultivating an environment in which our students, faculty, and staff are empowered to express competing ideas. The University’s <a href="https://chancellor.uncc.edu/institutional-planning/mission-statement" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://chancellor.uncc.edu/institutional-planning/mission-statement&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1573771094223000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHivO504-kwiyi-TBLelEhzQk9JfA">vision and values</a> promise a robust intellectual environment that values social and cultural diversity and free expression.
</blockquote>

UNC Campus Rock the Vote

Report: University Students Erect Anti-Socialism Display. The University Won’t Investigate To See Who Removed It.

University of North Carolina Charlotte

Today, news broke that former New York City mayor and prominent billionaire philanthropist Michael Bloomberg is considering tossing his hat into the dystopian ring that is the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primary. The Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/michael-bloomberg-preparing-to-enter-2020-democratic-race-11573167459?mod=hp_lead_pos3">quotes</a> a Bloomberg adviser named Howard Wolfson, who suggests that the main reason Bloomberg might jump in is his fear that none of the current 2020 Democrats can defeat President Donald Trump at the ballot box.
<blockquote>
&#8220;Mike believes that Donald Trump represents an unprecedented threat to our nation,&#8221; Mr. Wolfson said.
&#8220;Mike is increasingly concerned that the current field of candidates is not well positioned to [defeat Trump],&#8221; Mr. Wolfson said. &#8220;If Mike runs he would offer a new choice to Democrats built on a unique record running America’s biggest city, building a business from scratch and taking on some of America’s toughest challenges as a high-impact philanthropist.&#8221;
</blockquote>
By all means, Bloomberg should enter the fray if he feels called to do so. But we should not mince words here: There is no chance whatsoever that Bloomberg would successfully win the Democratic presidential nomination if he were to enter the field. And the chief reason for that is very simple. Bloomberg would have no shot because he is a somewhat sane person who would be seeking the presidential nomination of a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-democratic-party-has-become-parody-itself-josh-hammer">fully insane</a> political party.
Bloomberg, who has made a veritable fortune over the course of a lifetime working in the financial services industry, is an ex-Republican who openly identifies as a <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/01/30/bloomberg_we_shouldnt_be_embarrassed_about_capitalism_non-capitalistic_venezuela_is_collapsing.html">capitalist</a>. But he would be seeking the presidential nomination of a political party whose grassroots <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/240725/democrats-positive-socialism-capitalism.aspx">increasingly identify</a> as more socialistic than capitalistic. He would be seeking the presidential nomination of a political party in which the leading sources of disagreement over the course of the past few televised primary debates have been whether the harebrained &#8220;Medicare for All&#8221; nostrums has a bankrupting price tag best estimated at $40 trillion or $50 trillion, and whether it is appropriate to literally eliminate private health insurance for over a hundred million American citizens while implementing that quixotic socialized medicine scheme.
Bloomberg, furthermore, is nothing if not a lifelong friend of the Jewish state of Israel. In 2014, when anti-Israel President Barack Obama oversaw a temporary <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/213288-obama-defends-israel-flight-ban">U.S. flight ban</a> to Israel amidst the jihadist rocket fire that rained down on the Jewish state that summer from the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-israel-must-destroy-hamas-once-and-all-josh-hammer">Hamas</a>-controlled Gaza Strip, Bloomberg personally <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2014-07-23/why-i-flew-to-israel">flew to Israel</a> solely to demonstrate to his fellow Americans that it was safe to do so. Bloomberg may not be a hardcore <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-the-pro-israel-case-against-u-s-military-aid-to-israel">Caroline Glick-style Zionist</a>, but he is, at minimum, an AIPAC-style pro-Israel advocate. But the modern Democratic Party is no longer an AIPAC-style pro-Israel political party. On the contrary, the 2020 Democrats now shirk AIPAC en masse in favor of obeisance at the sycophantically pro-Palestinian altar of the vehemently anti-Israel group <a href="https://www.creators.com/read/ben-shapiro/10/19/the-j-street-democrats">J Street</a>.
Additionally, it must be noted that Bloomberg, while hardly Orthodox in identification, is nonetheless proudly and publicly Jewish. This too is a problem for the modern Democratic Party, which extols the virtues of Holocaust deniers like Palestinian Authority chieftain Mahmoud Abbas, glorifies Jew-haters like Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and is being rapidly Corbynized into an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-stark-choice-facing-jewish-democrats-josh-hammer">overtly anti-Semitic</a> political vehicle. It is difficult to see how Bloomberg&#8217;s proud Jewishness counts, in the eyes of today&#8217;s Democratic Party, as anything other than a net negative.
Bloomberg would have no chance for the Democratic presidential nomination were he to formally enter the fray. He is a sane Jew who would be seeking the presidential nomination in a fully insane, socialist, increasingly Jew-hating political party.

Michael Bloomberg.

HAMMER: Michael Bloomberg Would Have No Chance At The Democratic Presidential Nomination

2020 Election

American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)

Anti-Semitism

Capitalism

Israel

Judaism

Michael Bloomberg

People seem shocked that recent polls show millennials are enamored of socialism — an economic system that reasonable and educated Americans have long known is disastrous. They shouldn&#8217;t be; this has been a long time coming.
The latest survey by Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation shows that 70% of millennials are likely to vote socialist. Adding insult to injury, only 57% believe the Declaration of Independence &#8220;better guarantees freedom and equality&#8221; over &#8220;The Communist Manifesto.&#8221; The worst part of this is that it is real, not a parody piece in &#8220;The Onion.&#8221;
Now do you finally believe that our schools and universities, Hollywood and the liberal media are brainwashing our kids? Are you taking this seriously?
I&#8217;m taking it very seriously, which is why I devoted three of the 16 chapters of my just-released book, &#8220;Guilty by Reason of Insanity: Why the Democrats Must Not Win,&#8221; to discussing socialism and capitalism. I cite earlier polls showing this same disturbing trend concerning young people&#8217;s attitudes toward socialism.
A 2015 YouGov poll showed that 43% of Americans between 18 and 29 years of age had a favorable opinion of socialism and preferred it to capitalism. Then, in 2015, a Pew poll found that 69% of those under age 30 would be willing to vote for a socialist for president. Further, a Gallup poll revealed that only 45% of Americans ages 18 to 29 have a positive view of capitalism, while 51% have a positive view of socialism. No offense, but it&#8217;s like a wave of stupid has washed ashore.
Significantly, these kids are not only drawn to socialism but also repelled by capitalism — two distinct but related points. Their attraction to socialism partially stems from their aversion to capitalism. The leftist establishment has bombarded us for decades with socialist propaganda. Former Hillsdale College professor Burton Folsom notes that while America was founded on the idea of preserving individual liberties through limited government, many prominent American history textbook writers are strongly biased against America&#8217;s free market tradition and believe that America must be liberated from predatory capitalists. These teachings have now yielded an abundance of poisonous fruit.
A 2018 study by the National Association of Scholars showed that some 40% of colleges in the United States have no Republican professors. &#8220;The political registration of full-time, Ph.D.-holding professors in top-tier liberal arts colleges is overwhelmingly Democratic,&#8221; writes Mitchell Langbert. &#8220;Indeed, faculty political affiliations at 39 percent of the colleges in my sample are Republican free — having zero Republicans.&#8221; In the other 61% of schools, the ratio is &#8220;absurdly skewed against Republican affiliation and in favor of Democratic affiliation.&#8221;
It is astonishing that an economic system that has enslaved and impoverished nation after nation and was responsible for more than 100 million murders in the 20th century is portrayed as utopian, and that capitalism, which has liberated hundreds of millions from poverty, is depicted as evil.
The left works 24/7 to disseminate its destructive ideas. Chrissy Clark writes for The Federalist that Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, two prominent economics professors from the University of California, Berkeley, have been instrumental in designing economic policy for Democratic presidential hopefuls Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Despite their dubious calculations on such socialistic proposals as &#8220;Medicare for All,&#8221; the liberal media is working hand in hand with them to spread their propaganda — including the oft-repeated canard that the wealthiest Americans have the lowest tax rates. This type of coordinated effort, argues Clark, could &#8220;affect the way young people view economics for the rest of their lives.&#8221;
Here&#8217;s the point: Leftists have to lie to persuade people that socialism works and capitalism is evil. At some point, we must successfully make the case that the left must be judged by its policy failures rather than its supposedly good intentions. Here&#8217;s the other point: Leftists are seemingly more committed to their goals of fundamentally transforming America than conservatives are to preserving it.
One of the purposes of my book is to alert our side as to how urgent our situation has become and how critical the 2020 presidential and congressional elections are for us. Evidence abounds that many Americans are losing sight of the unique gloriousness of America&#8217;s founding ideas. I try to give patriots abundant ammunition to make our case for preserving these ideas and rejecting the insane ideas coming from the left, from socialism, to gender, to race, to abortion, to immigration, to the Constitution and much more.
If we are concerned, as we claim to be, about bequeathing to our children the free and prosperous America we have enjoyed, we better get to work.
David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book is &#8220;Guilty by Reason of Insanity: Why the Democrats Must Not Win.&#8221; Follow him on Twitter @davidlimbaugh and his website at www.davidlimbaugh.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Bernie Sanders.

LIMBAUGH: Exposing The Fraud Of Socialism

Hollywood

One of the strangest things about liberals is how they think getting arrested is some kind of achievement. Take Jane Fonda, who, at the tender age of 81, is still ranting about capitalist America ruining the world. Only this time, the issue is &#8220;climate change&#8221; instead of the Cold War.
&#8220;Hanoi Jane&#8221; infamously sat behind a communist antiaircraft gun in Vietnam in 1972, and today, one could imagine her aiming her big gun at commercial aircraft ruining the planet with their notorious carbon emissions.
Naturally, liberal journalists are delighted. On Oct. 25, the Hollywood Reporter gushed over her third arrest on Capitol Hill. This time, actor Ted Danson was arrested alongside her. The Reporter included a pile of happy play-by-play tweets (including video tweets) by Hannah Jewell of The Washington Post. She seemed to be on a first-name basis with the socialist actress.
— &#8220;Jane just asked a group of very buttoned up college kids on a capitol visit if they wanted to join her,&#8221; she tweeted. &#8220;Ted Danson added that getting arrested &#8216;sharpens the mind.'&#8221; (Insert laugh track here.)
— &#8220;&#8216;When I turned 70 I thought ok, time to rest on my laurels&#8217; says Ted &#8230; &#8216;and then I met Jane Fonda&#8217;. He calls her his mentor. &#8216;Here I am about to get arrested.'&#8221;
— &#8220;Ted Danson just shared a little handcuffed high five (high ten?) with Jane Fonda.&#8221;
— &#8220;Jane gets patted down and shouts &#8216;Ted, are ya having fun yet?!'&#8221;
This is nothing but an exercise in political vanity. Getting arrested sounds all naughty and risky — but there are no risks. The Capitol Police does not allow demonstrations on the Capitol grounds without a permit, so these leftists come unauthorized and play Martin Luther King for a day — unauthorized but not unannounced. Press attention (and adulation) is everything, so they make sure everyone knows they&#8217;re coming. Protesters are put in single-use plastic handcuffs and usually taken to the Capitol Police garage. Fonda isn&#8217;t sitting in jail over the weekend. No one&#8217;s fining her $1,000 for the trouble.
When Fonda was first arrested, on Oct. 14, the network morning shows were predictable stenographers to leftist protest.
On NBC&#8217;s &#8220;Today&#8221; show, Dylan Dreyer oozed: &#8220;Fonda, who has a long history of political activism, has dubbed this &#8216;Fire Drill Fridays.&#8217; &#8230; She&#8217;s still keeping busy, 81 years old.&#8221; NBC White House reporter Peter Alexander chimed in: &#8220;Yeah, lending her celebrity to the cause. That&#8217;s great.&#8221;
On &#8220;CBS This Morning,&#8221; Saturday co-host Michelle Miller proclaimed: &#8220;Oscar-winning actress and long-time activist Jane Fonda is hoping her latest role will make a lasting impression. Fonda was one of 16 people arrested outside the U.S. Capitol Friday while peacefully protesting climate change.&#8221; She quoted Fonda as calling the state of the warming planet &#8220;a collective crisis that demands collective action.&#8221;
This is not an actual demonstration of science.
Jewell also quoted Fonda: &#8220;&#8216;There was a time when there was no plastic&#8217; says Jane, &#8216;and we did just fine.&#8217; (Plastic was invented before she was born but popularized in the 1960s I believe).&#8221;
ScienceHistory.org says the first fully synthetic plastic was invented in 1907 and became widely utilized in World War II. The left began protesting plastics in the &#8217;60s, so that&#8217;s how liberal millennials at The Washington Post guess it all started.
Science isn&#8217;t really the point. Passing a Green New Deal that takes over what remains of American capitalism is the point. Left-wing radicals haven&#8217;t changed their authoritarian agenda one bit since their glory days of rooting against America in Vietnam. Jane Fonda is the same self-absorbed dilettante that she was in 1972 &#8230; and she&#8217;s still celebrated for it.
But here&#8217;s a red brick of reality: It ain&#8217;t working. The purpose of this form of political activism is to create a national movement that supports it and emulates it. All the media adulation aside, the public doesn&#8217;t care what these two old people, with all their expensive plastic surgery, are doing. Jane got arrested. Nothing. She got herself re-arrested. Nothing. She brought in Ted. Double nothing.
What a waste of good plastic.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Jane Fonda.

BOZELL &#038; GRAHAM: Jane Fonda&#8217;s New Socialist Stunts

Jane Fonda

The following is satirical.
Hurrah! Here in the socialist state of California, Kommissar Gavin Newsom has gifted us with rolling electrical blackouts that glorify the great progress we have made under Marxist rule.
The blackouts will prevent high capitalist winds from blowing over PG&amp;E’s rotting equipment and causing even more of the glorious forest fires which are all part of the genius of the wonderful socialist programs which have lifted our state to greatness over the past 30 years.
Under our socialist rule, the state’s Public Utilities Commission has forced PG&amp;E to spend as much as $500 million a year to meet our glorious five year plan of reducing the cost of wind and solar energy to low income households.
Thus, our socialist overlords have guided the electric company to join the heroic workers’ fight against evil capitalist climate change which, as our infallible socialist computer models have predicted, will surely destroy the world by seven years ago.
Of course, spending all that money on green energy means PG&amp;E has no money for repairing the rotten electrical equipment with which billionaires indulge themselves in useless luxuries like electric lights and cooked food. And since PG&amp;E can’t repair its equipment, it often blows over and starts the beautiful forest fires which, in turn, serve our glorious socialist aims by forcing capitalist running dogs to abandon their energy-inefficient single-family homes.
Under our brilliant socialist plan, the fires also spread to our cities so that they can chase away the rats that have been gathering there due to our deep socialist charity to the poor who would have no place to sleep or even go to the bathroom if we did not let them sleep and go to the bathroom on our streets. And of course fire is a wonderful way to purge our air of the evil capitalist bubonic plague that the rats carry.
And so, comrades, under socialism, California is eliminating plague, rats, homelessness, houses and electricity by burning the entire state to the ground.
Once again: Hurrah! Now on to Texas!
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/new-fire-ravages-wealthy-la-area-lebron-james-forced-to-evacuate">New Fire Ravages Wealthy LA Area: LeBron James Forced To Evacuate</a>

Gavin Newsom

Glorious Socialist Plan Saves California By Burning It To The Ground [Satire]

California

Climate Change

Global Warming

Satire

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) recently appeared on C-SPAN’s “After Words” program to promote his new book, “The Case Against Socialism.”
During the approximately 45 minute interview with Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) acting as host, Paul spoke about the dangers of people like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) promoting socialist ideology unchallenged.
When Gaetz asked Paul about the way in which certain politicians and media figures “champion Venezuela,” the senator replied:
<blockquote>Venezuela is just such a disaster. I mean, people literally eating their pets. We tell the story of a young lady who was a teenage girl, and she has a gang, but her gang is to defend the turf of trash. So, there’s certain garbage receptacles and she keeps people out of them because those are her garbage receptacles to look for food. How sad. People killing rats in the street to try to eat them, pigeons, and it just, it really is a sad thing.
Kind of going back to the world economy thing, we have to understand why the world economy got better, and we have to understand why Venezuela’s deteriorating into, you know, chaos – and that&#8217;s, I think, part of what the book is doing – it’s part of also the debate we should be having up here, and we don&#8217;t seem to have it in Congress, is that we don&#8217;t develop, we aren’t really talking about which economically system is better.
And nobody in the media seems to care that what AOC is supporting or what Bernie is supporting is Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot, and all these terrible ideas, and they get away with it because they aren&#8217;t challenged.</blockquote>
The pertinent portion of the video begins at the 16:21 mark:
<iframe src="https://www.c-span.org/video/standalone/?464457-1/after-words-senator-rand-paul" width="720" height="385" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
Later in the interview, Gaetz brings up Sanders’ <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2019/02/19/bernie-sanders-well-actually-bread-lines-arent-quite-bad/">remark</a> from the 1980’s about breadlines.
“It’s funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is, that people are lining up for food. That is a good thing!” Sanders stated. “In other countries people don’t line up for food. The rich get the food and the poor starve to death.”
To this, Paul replied: “Yeah, well, we suggest that he actually go down and see what the lines are like in Venezuela. I don’t think people are too excited about lines.”
On the subject of politicians and media personalities defending socialism, during his October 11 appearance on ABC’s “The View,” Paul received pushback from guest-host Ana Navarro, who <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-ana-navarro-claims-venezuelas-maduro-is-not-a-socialist">suggested</a> that Venezuela was not a representation of socialism.
<blockquote>NAVARRO: Let me ask you this because I live in Miami, there’s tens of thousands of Venezuelan exiles living there. You talk a lot about Venezuela in your new book. I get a lot of political ads from the Republican Party – Donald Trump has tweeted this, many have tweeted this – “If you vote for Democrats, they will turn the United States into Venezuela.” Do you think that’s a fair statement to make?
PAUL: Well, if you vote for a socialist, you might get socialism.
NAVARRO: Come on. Don’t do that. Maduro is not a socialist; he’s a corrupt, murderous thug who is starving his people.
PAUL: That’s not true.
NAVARRO: That’s not true? Maduro’s not a thug and a murderer who’s starving his people?
PAUL: Let’s have a conversation here. Chavez was a socialist, and socialism was the economic system Venezuela –
NAVARRO: And they stole. [It’s a] kleptocracy. It’s not socialism.
PAUL: But here’s the question … they voted for socialism.</blockquote>
Paul attempted to finish his thought, but Navarro cut him of, falsely implying that Paul wouldn’t condemn Maduro as a “murderous thug.” 
The Daily Wire reached out to Venezuelan expat Daniel Di Martino for a response to Navarro’s claim that Maduro isn’t a socialist, and he stated:
<blockquote>Ana Navarro is wrong to say Maduro isn’t socialist. Nicolás Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, nationalized thousands of companies and greatly expanded welfare programs and government employment. It was as a result of these socialist policies that our economy was destroyed and that today 9 out of every 10 Venezuelans live in poverty and more than four million Venezuelans like myself have been forced to leave our homeland. Corrupt and evil people govern many countries around the world, but these countries don’t see the terrible humanitarian crises that socialist countries like Venezuela and Cuba experience.</blockquote>
“It is insulting that media personalities continue to try to defend the socialist system that has killed so many people throughout history just to protect the radical Democrats that promote those same policies in America,” Di Martino added.

Rand Paul.

Rand Paul: ‘Nobody In The Media Seems To Care’ That Bernie And AOC ‘Supporting’ Ideas Of ‘Stalin And Mao’

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Rand Paul

Stalin

Last week, U.S. Attorney General William Barr told a University of Notre Dame Law School audience that attacks on religious liberty have contributed to a moral decline that&#8217;s in part manifested by increases in suicides, mental illness and drug addiction. Barr said that our moral decline is not random but &#8220;organized destruction.&#8221; Namely that &#8220;Secularists and their allies have marshaled all the forces of mass communication, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values.&#8221;
The attorney general is absolutely correct. Whether we have the stomach to own up to it or not, we have become an immoral people left with little more than the pretense of morality. The left&#8217;s attack on religion is just the tiny tip of the iceberg in our nation&#8217;s moral decline. You say: &#8220;That&#8217;s a pretty heavy charge, Williams. You&#8217;d better be prepared to back it up with evidence!&#8221; I&#8217;ll try with a few questions for you to answer.
Do you believe that it is moral and just for one person to be forcibly used to serve the purposes of another? And, if that person does not peaceably submit to such use, do you believe that there should be the initiation of force against him? Neither question is complex and can be answered by either a yes or no. For me the answer is no to both questions. I bet that nearly every college professor, politician or even minister could not give a simple yes or no response.
A no answer, translated to public policy, would slash the federal budget by no less than two-thirds to three-quarters. After all most federal spending consist of taking the earnings of one American to give to another American in the form of farm subsidies, business bailouts, aid to higher education, welfare and food stamps. Keep in mind that Congress has no resources of its own. Plus there&#8217;s no Santa Claus or tooth fairy that gives Congress resources. Thus, the only way that Congress can give one American a dollar is to first, through intimidation and coercion, confiscate that dollar from some other American.
Such actions by the U.S. Congress should offend any sense of moral decency. If you&#8217;re a Christian or a Jew, you should be against the notion of one American living at the expense of some other American. When God gave Moses the Eighth Commandment — &#8220;Thou shalt not steal&#8221; — I am sure that He did not mean thou shalt not steal unless there is a majority vote in the U.S. Congress. By the way, I do not take this position because I don&#8217;t believe in helping our fellow man. I believe that helping those in need by reaching into one&#8217;s own pocket to do is praiseworthy and laudable. But helping one&#8217;s fellow man in need by reaching into somebody else&#8217;s pockets to do so is worthy of condemnation.
We must own up to the fact that laws and regulations alone cannot produce a civilized society. Morality is society&#8217;s first line of defense against uncivilized behavior. Religious teachings, one way of inculcating morality, have been under siege in our country for well over a half a century. In the name of not being judgmental and the vision that one lifestyle or set of values is just as good as another, traditional moral absolutes have been abandoned as guiding principles. We no longer hold people accountable for their behavior and we accept excuses. The moral problems Attorney General William Barr mentioned in his speech, plus murder, mayhem and other forms of anti-social behavior, will continue until we regain our moral footing.
In 1798, John Adams, a leading Founding Father and our second president said: &#8220;Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.&#8221; I am all too afraid that a historian, writing a few hundred years from now, will note that the liberty American enjoyed was simply a historical curiosity. Then it all returned to mankind&#8217;s normal state of affairs — arbitrary abuse and control by the powerful elite.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

American flag, U.S. Capitol.

WILLIAMS: U.S. In Moral Decline

Charity

Morality

Religion

William Barr

Alabama Congressional candidate Jessica Taylor made waves on Monday by kicking off her 2020 campaign with an advertisement vowing to take on socialist Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and her so-called &#8220;Squad.&#8221;
&#8220;Like you, I&#8217;m tired of arrogant socialists like [Ocasio-Cortez] &#8212; who has never even run a lemonade stand &#8212; telling us how we should live in Alabama, and more government is the answer,&#8221; Taylor said in the campaign video.
&#8220;I&#8217;m a steadfast conservative, a mom, a patriot, a business owner, and job creator, and even though it might trigger a few liberals, I&#8217;ll fight to protect life, the Second Amendment, our borders, our military, our families, and President Trump from socialists in the swamp,&#8221; she continued. &#8220;And I won&#8217;t apologize for it.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
As an Alabama conservative, I’m sick of arrogant socialists like <a href="https://twitter.com/AOC?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AOC</a> who’ve never even run a lemonade stand trying to tell us how to live in Alabama. Are you? <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AL02?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#AL02</a> <a href="https://t.co/IIsqDQLcTt">pic.twitter.com/IIsqDQLcTt</a>
&mdash; Jessica Taylor (@JessicaTaylorAL) <a href="https://twitter.com/JessicaTaylorAL/status/1186268834988253185?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 21, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Taylor, an entrepreneur and wife of a former Alabama state senator, is running for Alabama&#8217;s 2nd Congressional District. Rep. Martha Roby (R-AL), who has held the seat since 2010, announced in July that she was resigning at the end of her term.
Roby was first elected to serve after narrowly edging out incumbent Bobby Bright and flipping the district red. She went on to win re-election for a fifth term in 2018, receiving more than 60% of the vote. Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District is considered a Republican stronghold, and Taylor joins an already crowded primary field.
Taylor&#8217;s campaign video went viral shortly after it was posted on social media, and the Alabama congressional candidate subsequently appeared on &#8220;Fox &amp; Friends&#8221; on Tuesday morning to discuss her platform.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
On <a href="https://twitter.com/foxandfriends?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@foxandfriends</a> this morning I highlighted my conservative campaign platform. We need to take socialism head-on with conservative squad of our own! I&#39;m pro-life, pro-<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/2A?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#2A</a>, pro-wall, &amp; pro-TRUMP and I won&#39;t apologize for it!
Join the new squad: <a href="https://t.co/Xrpw8ioCjm">https://t.co/Xrpw8ioCjm</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AL02?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#AL02</a> <a href="https://t.co/9MRoYt9XB4">pic.twitter.com/9MRoYt9XB4</a>
&mdash; Jessica Taylor (@JessicaTaylorAL) <a href="https://twitter.com/JessicaTaylorAL/status/1186664906059386886?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 22, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;I think now is the right time for me to fill this slot because we need a new generation of conservatives, folks who can go toe-to-toe with people like AOC and her squad who believe socialism is a legitimate ideology that our nation should embrace,&#8221; Taylor told Fox News host Brian Kilmeade. &#8220;I&#8217;m pro-life, pro-second amendment, pro-wall, and pro-Trump.&#8221;
The &#8220;Squad&#8221; refers to Ocasio-Cortez, a self-proclaimed &#8220;radical,&#8221; and three of her progressive House colleagues, Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA). The freshmen quartet are considered among the most far-left members in the House of Representatives and have largely voted as a bloc. The Squad, however, has been embroiled in allegations of anti-Semitism and anti-American sentiments since even prior to taking office.
&#8220;We need somebody who can convince my generation and others that more government is not the answer, more government is the problem,&#8221; Taylor said. &#8220;This country was founded on small business and private citizens who can make a difference. More government is not what we need.&#8221;
Taylor introduced herself to constituents as the candidate that will create her own &#8220;Squad&#8221; that will promote conservative values, and further noted that she initially decided to run for Congress due to her concern over the spread of socialism in America.
&#8220;We have got to get back to our fundamental values – our freedom is at stake here,&#8221; Taylor said. &#8220;So we&#8217;re going to be talking about that on the campaign trail. We’d love for folks to follow us.&#8221;

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez  And Bernie Sanders Attend Green New Deal Rally At Howard University

WATCH: Alabama Congressional Candidate Vows To Take On Ocasio-Cortez With Her Own Conservative Squad

Alabama

On Monday’s episode of “The Andrew Klavan Show,” Klavan talked about AOC’s endorsement speech for Bernie Sanders. Video and partial transcript below:
What you&#8217;re hearing, when you hear the news, is the Democrats; and what you&#8217;re hearing, when you hear the Democrats, is the slow move to socialize this country as much as it&#8217;s possible to do political — at any given moment until we are a socialist country. That means that you make money — you work, you earn it — they spend it, [and] they decide where.
They shut down your free speech by declaring it hate speech. They de-platform you. You know, Mark Zuckerberg went to the Capitol Hill and said Facebook is in favor of free speech, and the Democrats attacked him. They said, No, no, you&#8217;re playing Trump ads, you can&#8217;t play Trump ads.
Kamala Harris wants Trump taken off Twitter. It&#8217;s really funny, Leftists love to compare guns to penises, basically. They say it&#8217;s a phallic symbol, and if you&#8217;re insecure about your manhood, you have to carry a gun. Let me tell you something: They&#8217;re right. They are absolutely right. Men need guns if they want to be free, guns are for men who don&#8217;t want to be taken care of, but want to take care of themselves and are willing to fight to keep that right. If that&#8217;s an extension of your manhood, it&#8217;s a pretty useful one, because you&#8217;ll need it to stop what they&#8217;re trying to do.
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/irvqX4APB8o?start=518" width="720" height="385" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen">﻿</iframe>
Let me play you a cut, an amazing cut really, of Alexandria “Occasional-Cortex.” She had her weekend at Bernie&#8217;s — Bernie, as you know, Bernie Sanders passed away sadly, unfortunately, passed away of a heart attack a few weeks ago, but they&#8217;re still carrying him around from place to place. And there was this massive, massive rally for him in New York, and AOC backed him and gave him her coveted endorsement. Here&#8217;s what she told people that we need for the future of America. 
<blockquote>OCASIO-CORTEZ: The future, and our future is in public systems, and it’s publicly owned systems. Because we need to take power over our lives again. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want Mark Zuckerberg making decisions over my life. I don’t know about you, but the Waltons have already been making decisions over our lives, and what we got was nothing. We need a United States that really, truly, and authentically, is operated, owned, and decided by working – and all – people in the United States of America. </blockquote>
I hope you were paying attention to that, because what she&#8217;s saying is if you want to be free, you have to give everything to the government. Free people like Mark Zuckerberg, who built a business, and the Waltons, who build businesses, they can&#8217;t be free to do that. It has to be owned by the government in order for you to be free. Individuals can&#8217;t be free because then they can do what they want. But if the government can control everybody, then you&#8217;re free. I mean, that&#8217;s “1984” Orwellian reasoning.
I don&#8217;t even think she&#8217;s smart enough, to be honest with you, to be Orwellian. I think she&#8217;s a product of a public education system that simply doesn&#8217;t teach kids civics, and she doesn&#8217;t even know how this country works or what it&#8217;s about. She is just talking, echoing stuff that she has heard. But she&#8217;s Nurse Ratched. That&#8217;s a government of Nurse Ratched. That&#8217;s the evil nurse in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo&#8217;s Nest,” who tell you that they&#8217;re going to take care of you. But in fact, are taking away all your freedom and basically leaving you, you know, sitting there in a chair, absolutely useless and helpless.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show">Listen to full episodes of “The Andrew Klavan Show” on iTunes. </a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show">Watch “The Andrew Klavan Show” on-demand!</a>

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Bernie Sanders

KLAVAN: Bernie Sanders Receives The Much Coveted AOC Endorsement

On Friday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) appeared on ABC’s &#8220;The View&#8221; in order to promote his new book, &#8220;The Case Against Socialism.&#8221;
While two of the regular hosts were absent (Meghan McCain and Joy Behar), political strategist and commentator Ana Navarro filled in. Following an initial sparring match among the hosts and Sen. Paul over military intervention and the ongoing crisis in Turkey, the conversation turned to socialism.
<blockquote>NAVARRO: Let me ask you this because I live in Miami, there’s tens of thousands of Venezuelan exiles living there. You talk a lot about Venezuela in your new book. I get a lot of political ads from the Republican Party – Donald Trump has tweeted this, many have tweeted this – &#8220;If you vote for Democrats, they will turn the United States into Venezuela.&#8221; Do you think that&#8217;s a fair statement to make?
PAUL: Well, if you vote for a socialist, you might get socialism.
NAVARRO: Come on. Don’t do that. Maduro is not a socialist; he&#8217;s a corrupt, murderous thug who is starving his people.
PAUL: That’s not true.
NAVARRO: That’s not true? Maduro’s not a thug and a murderer who’s starving his people?
PAUL: Let’s have a conversation here. Chavez was a socialist, and socialism was the economic system Venezuela –
NAVARRO: And they stole. [It’s a] kleptocracy. It’s not socialism.
PAUL: But here’s the question &#8230; they voted for socialism.</blockquote>
At this point in the exchange, Navarro gave Paul an incredulous look, prompting him to say, &#8220;Let me finish,&#8221; to which Navarro replied: &#8220;No, I can&#8217;t let you finish. If you are going to say Maduro is not a murderous thug, I’m not letting you finish because that&#8217;s a damn lie! And I’ve got a bunch of neighbors and friends who know this.&#8221;
Paul then waved his hands in Navarro’s direction, and Navarro stated: &#8220;Don’t do this to me. Don’t mansplain. I’m a 47-year-old grown woman!&#8221;
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GWGNrAmNsTw?start=103" width="720" height="385" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
For comment, The Daily Wire reached out to Daniel Di Martino, a Venezuelan expatriate who fled to the United States in 2016.
Di Martino, who is set to graduate in December with a degree in economics from Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis, stated:
<blockquote>Ana Navarro is wrong to say Maduro isn&#8217;t socialist. Nicolás Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, nationalized thousands of companies and greatly expanded welfare programs and government employment. It was as a result of these socialist policies that our economy was destroyed and that today 9 out of every 10 Venezuelans live in poverty and more than four million Venezuelans like myself have been forced to leave our homeland. Corrupt and evil people govern many countries around the world, but these countries don&#8217;t see the terrible humanitarian crises that socialist countries like Venezuela and Cuba experience.
It is insulting that media personalities continue to try to defend the socialist system that has killed so many people throughout history just to protect the radical Democrats that promote those same policies in America.</blockquote>
During a previous Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/interview-part-ii-venezuelan-expat-how-socialism-frank-camp">interview</a> with Di Martino, he elaborated on the idea posed by individuals like Navarro that &#8220;corruption&#8221; and thuggery are to blame for Venezuela’s problems, not socialism:
<blockquote>There are many other corrupt countries that are not going through starvation. In fact, most Latin American countries are very corrupt. Mexico is very corrupt. Colombia is very corrupt. Brazil, Peru, Guatemala. Those countries are not seeing the kind of economic crisis that Venezuela is seeing, where we have lost two thirds of our economy in just the last three years because of the socialist policies.
In Venezuela, they implemented policies such as price controls, such as excessive government deficits because they spent so much on welfare that they had to print money. That’s what destroyed our country. Huge minimum wage hikes that people don’t talk about at all in Venezuela. We had countless minimum wage hikes to the point that the person who cleans the school earns the same as the principal of the school, and the person who was a doctor in the hospital made the same as somebody who was a construction worker or a teacher.
Everybody started earning pretty much the same, so people just stopped working. We had a huge brain drain of skilled workers leaving our country. That’s a real consequence of drastic increases in the minimum wage.</blockquote>
Sen. Paul’s book, &#8220;The Case Against Socialism,&#8221; will be available to purchase on October 15.

Ana Navarro.

WATCH: Ana Navarro Claims Venezuela’s Maduro Is ‘Not A Socialist’

Ana Navarro

Venezuela

On Tuesday’s episode of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” Shapiro talks about how Senator Bernie Sanders’ proposed wealth tax goes farther to the Left than even Senator Elizabeth Warren. Video and partial transcript below: 
Bernie is starting to open up his guns — as I suggested he would have to — on Elizabeth Warren. Earlier today, he proposed a super wealth tax, not just a wealth tax, a super wealth tax, in which he would reduce the ability of billionaires to be billionaires. 
He literally tweeted out, [Sanders impression] Billionaires should not exist! Perhaps we should put them on trains to very cold places, you know like Montana or something, and we will build — we won&#8217;t call them gulags, but they will be kind of like gulags, and we&#8217;ll put them there and then they won&#8217;t be billionaires anymore, and we will liquidate the Kulaks and we will unite the workers of the world. 
Bernie Sanders was really going for it. He tweeted out: &#8220;There is no justice when three billionaires are able to own more wealth than the bottom half of the entire country.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
There is no justice when three billionaires are able to own more wealth than the bottom half of the entire country.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) <a href="https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1176492974877945856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 24, 2019</a></blockquote>
Well no, there might be justice depending on whether they also employ hundreds of thousands of Americans, made millions of lives better with their products, and engaged in voluntary exchange. So in his new plan, Bernie Sanders is going to go for the super duper wealth tax, and you knew this was coming, right? Elizabeth Warren proposed her 2% wealth tax, which is unconstitutional and would not raise anywhere near the kind of money she&#8217;s talking about. Because you know what wealthy people are very good at? Tax avoidance. Very, very good at it.
In fact, it&#8217;s one of the reasons why you see Democrats say stuff [like], &#8220;Well you remember back in the 1960s when the top tax bracket was 91%?&#8221; Right, and the effective tax rate on rich people was pretty much the same because rich people started taking their money and putting it in places that were not taxable. The tax revenue of the federal government versus the GDP of the United States has basically remained stable since the reduction of war spending after World War II. So that has not really changed. 
But Bernie Sanders is proposing a new wealth tax, a 1% tax on net worth over $32 million every year, 2% from from $50-250 million, 3% from $250-500 million, 4% from $500 million to $1 billion, and 8% on wealth over $10 billion. He says this will raise $4.35 trillion per decade, and then he says this would be used to fund Bernie’s affordable housing plan, universal childcare, and would help fund Medicare For All. That’s sort of a problem considering that Medicare For All is supposed to cost something like $34 trillion, so if he raises $4.35 trillion over the next decade, where is the other $30 trillion is going to come from? But this is Bernie Sanders upping the ante. 
Also, Bernie Sanders is more of a true believer than Elizabeth Warren, and you&#8217;re gonna see him make that case. So just in the last 24 hours, Bernie Sanders is drawing the contrast between Elizabeth Warren and her supposed warm embrace of capitalism and his own love for socialism. Here&#8217;s Bernie saying that people are brainwashed to believe in capitalism, someone says this to him and, of course, he fully agrees. 
[Sanders impression] Even though I have a lake house, and I love pudding, many types of pudding. Pudding is delicious.
<blockquote>AUDIENCE MEMBER: I think that the kind of brainwashing, or the idea at least that I grew up with, is that our definition of success, is like the American dream, and in capitalism, you&#8217;re rewarded for getting everything and just keeping it to yourself and not worrying about everybody else, and that&#8217;s sort of like a psychology that we&#8217;ve all been taught. 
SANDERS: I think Lizzie is exactly right, that a profound — it’s a profound point. </blockquote>
Oh it&#8217;s super profound to believe that capitalism is good. People have been brainwashed to believe that capitalism is good by, you know, the immense prosperity that capitalism has created … I don&#8217;t know how he claims that he is in favor of quote unquote “Democratic Socialism,” Norway, Finland, Sweden-style when he is ripping on capitalism, which provides the entire growth basis for the Nordic countries — as every politician in Norway, Sweden, and Finland will tell you openly. But Bernie is trying to draw a contrast with Elizabeth Warren. 
<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ben-shapiro-show/id1047335260">Listen to full episodes of “The Ben Shapiro Show” on iTunes. </a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-ben-shapiro-show">Watch “The Ben Shapiro Show” on-demand!</a>

Alex Wong/Staff via Getty Images

SHAPIRO: Bernie&#8217;s Plan To Crumble The Billionaire Class

Ben Shapiro

Thomas Fahr Steyer, a California-based billionaire and leftist activist focusing on environmental issues, is a candidate for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination. Steyer, a longtime leftist philanthropist and prolific donor to Democratic candidates and causes, is by far the wealthiest candidate in the 2020 Democratic field. Steyer&#8217;s political activism has focused disproportionately on environmentalism and global warming/climate change issues, although he has the political profile of an across-the-board, full-spectrum progressive/leftist. As the most recent entrant into the 2020 Democratic presidential field, he does not yet register in <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/democratic_nomination_polls/">current polling for the nomination</a>.
Steyer, who has a bachelor degree from Yale University and a MBA from Stanford University, is the founder of San Francisco-based hedge fund Farallon Capital and the co-founder of Oakland-based Beneficial State Bank. In 2012, Steyer stepped down from Farallon in order to focus more of his time on environmentalist/alternative energy advocacy. In addition to his involvement with Beneficial State Bank, which focuses on community development, Steyer has been involved with other leftist philanthropic causes — including his <a href="http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Tom-Steyer-says-effort-to-end-inequality-isn-t-6438690.php">2015 founding</a> of the Fair Shake Commission on Income Inequality and Middle Class Opportunity, which promotes reducing income inequality. But above all, Steyer has spent more time and resources on environmentalist activism. In 2013, for example, Steyer founded NextGen America, an environmentalist nonprofit and political action committee.
Steyer, who would become the first president with a Jewish parent if successfully elected, is married and has four children. He has an <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/thomas-steyer/">estimated net worth</a> of $1.6 billion, and has committed self-funding his 2020 presidential bid to the tune of <a href="https://time.com/5623149/tom-steyer-presidential-campaign/">$100 million</a>.
Electoral History: Steyer has never sought political office prior to his current campaign for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination. However, he has a lengthy history of involvement in partisan Democratic causes. Steyer has been a prolific fundraiser for many leading Democrats over the past few decades, including for Barack Obama in 2008. Steyer also spoke at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, and reportedly considered a 2018 run for California governor.
On The Issues: Perhaps more so than any of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, Steyer&#8217;s candidacy revolves around one core issue: Environmentalism. He has made global warming prevention, opposition to the oil and natural gas industries, and a concomitant greater government role in investing in alternative energy sources the central tenets of his public activist profile. Steyer has a less prolific track record and history of commentary on other issues, but all available evidences points toward his being an across-the-board, full-spectrum progressive/leftist. For example, his 2020 campaign <a href="https://www.tomsteyer.com/about-tom/">website</a> also touts his work in &#8220;promot[ing] social justice and increas[ing] participation in our democracy through voter registration and grassroots organizing.&#8221;
Constitution: Steyer has a very thin public record of commenting on legal and judicial issues. He has, however, been a prominent advocate for impeaching President Donald Trump. Steyer has stated that he opposes Citizens United v. F.E.C., the U.S. Supreme Court&#8217;s landmark 2010 political speech-affirming case. He also <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/12/megadonor-steyer-abortion-rights-candidates-241563">supports</a> Roe v. Wade, thus indicating a belief in the so-called constitutional &#8220;right to privacy&#8221; and &#8220;right to abortion.&#8221; Steyer has suggested sympathy for gun control measures that would undermine Americans&#8217; Second Amendment rights, and he also supports a robust role for the federal government in economic regulation that is consistent with mainstream legal progressivism.
Economy: Steyer supports raising personal taxes and strongly opposed President Trump&#8217;s 2017 tax cut law. In his 2020 campaign announcement video, Steyer <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-does-tom-steyer-believe-where-the-candidate-stands-on-6-issues">lamented</a> how corporations have an &#8220;unlimited ability to participate in politics, [which] will skew everything because they only care about profits.&#8221; His anti-corporation message is also decidedly populist, as Steyer has also <a href="https://www.axios.com/tom-steyer-on-the-issues-in-under-500-words-2020-presidential-election-2e5a747a-b6bf-459d-a581-e7d1efcd75bd.html">said</a> that &#8220;the only way for us to solve the urgent problems facing our country is to loosen the stranglehold that corporations have over our politicians and return political power to the American people.&#8221; Like many of his 2020 Democratic rivals, Steyer also <a href="https://www.latimes.com/la-pol-sac-essential-poli-tom-steyer-praises-minimum-wage-hike-1459196428-htmlstory.html">supports</a> raising the federal minimum wage. Steyer, though a billionaire, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/12/this-billionaire-wants-trump-to-raise-his-taxes.html">vocally opposes</a> income inequality.
Health Care: Steyer <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/09/tom-steyer-2020-democrats/540357/">supports</a> &#8220;Medicare for All,&#8221; which would effectively amount to a single-payer health insurance system and a de facto governmental takeover of health insurance and imposition of socialized medicine in America. He <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-does-tom-steyer-believe-where-the-candidate-stands-on-6-issues">has been critical</a> of the perceived corporate greed of large pharmaceutical companies.
Immigration: Steyer has been harshly critical of the Trump administration&#8217;s attempts to secure our border amidst a hitherto unprecedented influx there of Central American migrants. Steyer <a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/392482-billionaire-steyer-to-invest-1-million-to-help-immigrants-fight">donated</a> last year to leftist/open-borders legal groups at the southern border working to assist illegal aliens facing deportation. He <a href="https://twitter.com/TomSteyer/status/1146079566374457344">addresses</a> illegal immigration in starkly pro-illegal alien — and not rule-of-law — terminology. Steyer appears to <a href="https://nextgenamerica.org/issues/immigration/">support</a> a pathway to citizenship for much of America&#8217;s illegal alien populace.
Foreign Policy: Steyer has a thin track record on foreign policy, although he <a href="https://twitter.com/TomSteyer/status/1005947721361121281?s=20">has been critical</a> of President Trump&#8217;s foreign policy approach. He has also taken the standard leftist approach to Special Counsel Bob Mueller&#8217;s now-infamous report: <a href="https://www.needtoimpeach.com/obstruction-of-justice/">Accusing</a> President Trump of obstruction of justice.
Abortion: Steyer is <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Thomas_Steyer">emphatically pro-abortion</a>.
Guns: Steyer has founded organizations have <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Thomas_Steyer">worked closely</a>, at times, with anti-Second Amendment organizations. He is largely seen as sympathetic to gun control initiatives.

Where Does Tom Steyer Stand On The Issues? Here’s Everything You Need To Know.

Abortion

Constitution

Donald Trump

Economy

Environmentalism

Foreign Policy

Our age loves scientific equations. Here&#8217;s one you weren&#8217;t taught at college but which affects you as much as the law of gravity:
GI &#8211; W = E
Good Intentions (GI) minus Wisdom (W) leads to Evil (E).
You weren&#8217;t taught this rule at college because the modern university believes only science has rules. &#8220;Rules of life&#8221; is another term for wisdom, and there is no wisdom — or even pursuit of wisdom — at our universities.
Life has rules just like the natural sciences do. Examples include:
Ingratitude makes happiness impossible.
Corrupt people think everyone else is as corrupt as they are.
Human nature is not basically good.
Feelings are far less important than actions.
Most men need a woman to mature. Most women need a man to mature.
The list is long. And the more life rules people know and live by the better people they&#8217;ll be — the better the world will be.
There is a reason Jordan Peterson&#8217;s book &#8220;12 Rules for Life&#8221; has sold millions of copies, mostly to young people. It is the same reason PragerU has a billion views a year, mostly among people under 35. Many young people are sensing they have been cheated by the adults that have taught them, for example, to pursue self-esteem rather than self-control — a &#8220;rule&#8221; guaranteed to lead to moral and professional failure.
But one rule almost no one was taught, that explains most organized evil and the left in particular, from the Bolsheviks to Mao to Castro to Chavez to your everyday leftist in New York or Iowa: Good intentions without wisdom leads to evil.
Communism, the greatest mass murder ideology in history, was for almost all its rank-and-file supporters rooted in their desire to do good. (This was rarely true for its leaders, whose greatest desire was power.)
The many millions of people all over the world who supported communism did not think they were supporting unprecedented levels of mass murder and torture or an equally unprecedented deprivation of the most fundamental human rights of a substantial percentage of humanity. They thought they were moral, building a beautiful future for humanity — eliminating inequality, enabling people to work as hard or as little as they wanted, providing their fellow citizens &#8220;free&#8221; education and &#8220;free&#8221; health care. They were convinced that the moral arc of history was bending in their direction and that they were good because their motives were good.
That&#8217;s why leftists have such moral contempt for those who differ with them. Because those on the Left are so good, only bad human beings could possibly oppose them. That is the position of virtually every editor and columnist at The New York Times.
The problem with communists and with leftists who don&#8217;t consider themselves communists is not that none of them mean well. It&#8217;s that they lack wisdom. There are wise and foolish liberals, wise and foolish conservatives; but all leftists are fools. Every one of the Democrats running for president is a fool. This is not, however, a description of their totality as a human being. Fools may be personally kind and generous, may be loyal friends and devoted spouses, and of course, they may be well-intentioned. But in terms of making the world worse, there is little difference between a well-meaning fool and an evil human being. Tens of millions of well-intentioned Westerners supported Stalin. The Westerners who supplied Stalin the secrets to the atom bomb were not motivated by evil. They were simply fools. But few evil people did as much to hurt the world as they did.
They are fools partly because they believe good intentions are all that matter. Therefore, they never ask perhaps the most important moral question one can ask: What will happen if my policy is enacted? Leftist supporters of communism never asked.
Democrats who push the country-bankrupting Green New Deal provide a contemporary example. They not only deny the economy- and society-crushing consequences of the Green New Deal, they deny any price will be paid. Every home, office, hospital, school and business will be forced to stop using fossil fuels, yet only good will come from that. Giving that amount of coercive power to the state is of no consequence to leftists. In their make-believe world, no one will suffer. On the contrary, America will become richer, and millions of jobs will be created while we destroy our economy. Poor Africans trying to electrify their countries will be told not to — yet they, too, will somehow become rich using only wind and sun.
If the Green New Deal is enacted, the American economy will tank — and with it, much of the rest of the world. Tyrannies like China and Iran will be emboldened, as will dictatorships like Russia.
On every issue in which the Left differs from conservatives (and often from liberals), they are fools. They push for a Palestinian state although even Israelis on the left know this would mean a Hamas-Hezbollah state on the Israeli border. But they know they mean well.
They routinely label the beacon of freedom on Earth racist, misogynistic, homophobic, imperialistic, genocidal; cheapen the label &#8220;Nazi&#8221;; promote all-black dorms and graduations; promote preteen boys&#8217; performing drag shows; tell young women career is more important to happiness than marriage; believe a country can remain a distinct nation with open borders; condemn parents who try to reassure their 3-year-old son that he is a boy; and ruin the university, the arts, late-night comedy, pro football and religion.
But they mean well.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in April 2018, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Exodus. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Equations.jpeg

PRAGER: The Equation That Explains Evil

Last night, Robert Francis &#8220;Beto&#8221; O&#8217;Rourke doubled down, in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51718/beto-says-hell-yes-were-going-take-americans-guns-james-barrett">rather colorful fashion</a>, on his vow to confiscate from law-abiding Americans their <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51381/hammer-i-will-never-ever-let-government-buy-back-josh-hammer">cherished</a> rifles whose <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44327/hammer-here-are-three-core-reasons-oppose-ban-josh-hammer">cosmetically amorphous and technically undefinable</a> features lead leftists to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/50263/hammer-conservatives-must-not-go-soft-assault-josh-hammer">peculiarly label</a> them so-called &#8220;assault weapons.&#8221; &#8220;Hell yes, we are going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,&#8221; O&#8217;Rourke said to enthusiastic audience applause, as The Daily Wire&#8217;s James Barrett <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51718/beto-says-hell-yes-were-going-take-americans-guns-james-barrett">reported</a>.
Last night, furthermore, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43796/hammer-bernie-sanders-entire-worldview-grotesquely-josh-hammer">communist</a> loonbag <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/48572/where-does-bernie-sanders-stand-issues-heres-josh-hammer">Bernie Sanders</a> and demagogic harridan <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/48596/where-does-elizabeth-warren-stand-issues-heres-josh-hammer">Elizabeth Warren</a> each doubled down in their joint defense of a one-size-fits-all socialized medicine national health care takeover that would, in the estimate of fellow 2020 presidential contender <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/49364/where-does-amy-klobuchar-stand-issues-heres-josh-hammer">Amy Klobuchar</a>, strip over 140 million Americans of their privately held health insurance plans. Joe Biden, the purported &#8220;moderate&#8221; in this hellish menagerie, parroted last night the &#8220;no one will lose his doctor under Obamacare&#8221; ruse — a ruse, that is, which was literally exposed by left-leaning PolitiFact as its 2013 &#8220;Lie of the Year&#8221; with respect to the very underlying health care plan Biden now haplessly touts.
All of this, of course, came precisely two primary debates after open-borders zealot Julian Castro decided to hail the pagan glory that is abortion for <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/49056/hammer-democratic-party-fundamentally-unfit-lead-josh-hammer">&#8220;trans females&#8221;</a> — which would be biological men who subjectively feel as if they are women. The careful reader — or really anyone who has ever opened a biology textbook — will note that a member of the human species with both X and Y chromosomes, otherwise known as a man, cannot possibly procure an abortion even if he desires to do so. Yet we are still reliably informed that the Democrats, who have never seen a statist economic program they didn&#8217;t tendentiously glom onto under the hectoring veneer of &#8220;climate change,&#8221; are the Party of Science™.
I am not sure if the Democrats are the Party of Science. But I do know that the modern Democratic Party, which promotes youngsters who would&#8217;ve been <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/49515/hammer-aocs-squad-will-destroy-democrats-2020-josh-hammer">right at home in the Soviet Politburo</a> and remains emphatically <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51709/hammer-democratic-party-fatally-attracted-hardcore-josh-hammer">in the throes of its leftist base</a>, has not merely become <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/49056/hammer-democratic-party-fundamentally-unfit-lead-josh-hammer">fundamentally unfit</a> to govern the United States of America. It has also become an utter parody of its very self.
For decades, Republicans have mocked Democratic anti-gun proposals by calling them &#8220;gun grabbers.&#8221; Now, Beto O&#8217;Rourke is literally promoting — and <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/sep/13/beto-orourke-selling-t-shirts-hell-yes-were-going-/">fundraising</a> off of! — his proposal to forcibly confiscate the firearms of tens of millions of peaceful, law-abiding gun owners. In <a href="http://theresurgent.com/2019/09/13/is-beto-orourke-trying-to-sabotage-the-democrats-again/">sabotaging</a> his own party, O&#8217;Rourke has outed the Democratic id for the masses to see — and boy, is it <a href="https://twitter.com/MattMackowiak/status/1172315168446935040">ugly</a>.
For years if not decades, Republicans have ridiculed Democratic health care proposals by asserting their pie-in-the-sky pipe dreams on socializing medicine would inevitably lead to the stripping away of private health insurance for tens of millions of Americans. Now, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/2020_democratic_presidential_nomination-6730.html">two of the top three contenders</a> for the Democrats&#8217; 2020 presidential nomination, are advocating for precisely that. A major political party entertained a genuine policy debate last night on the efficacy and morality of eradicating the health insurance plans of over 140 million Americans. Think about that for a second.
For years, Republicans have sneered at Democrats that their anti-biology crusade in the realm of normalizing &#8220;transgenderism&#8221; was, ultimately, untenable. Biology, many conservatives have told their Party of Science™ counterparts, is immutable. Now, Julian Castro advocates <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51556/hammer-bernies-pagan-support-child-sacrifice-josh-hammer">pagan-esque unborn child sacrifice for Moloch</a> for a &#8220;class&#8221; of human beings who are <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/48927/walsh-democrats-put-their-scientific-illiteracy-matt-walsh">biologically incapable of bearing children</a>. Contemporary fealty to political correctness apparently demands such devout obeisance to the LGBTQ+ alphabet soup lobby such that science itself must be subordinated and shunned.
We are truly through the looking-glass.
Forget The Onion. Forget The Babylon Bee. Parody is here, and its name is the Democratic Party.

Menu