On Sunday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-parliament-usa/china-tells-u-s-to-stop-wasting-time-in-coronavirus-battle-idUSKBN230076">offered</a> an apparent warning to politicians in the United States who “attack and slander China” over COVID-19, and are “costing &#8230; lives,” and “pushing our two countries to the brink of a new Cold War.”
“It&#8217;s most regrettable that while the coronavirus is still out there, a political virus is also spreading in the U.S., and jumping at any opportunity to attack and slander China,” Wang said. “Some politicians ignore the basic facts and make up countless lies and conspiracy theories concerning China.”
Wang then claimed that a “list of these lies has been compiled and debunked online,” and that the list will continue to grow.
“I call on the U.S. side to stop wasting precious time and stop costing people&#8217;s lives,” Wang said before claiming that the United States and China must cooperate and “share our experience.”
“Both China and the U.S. stand to gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation. This best captures what we have learned – positive and otherwise – from the past decades,” Wang stated. “Both sides should take this lesson to heart. China and the U.S. have different social systems, but this is a result of the different choices made by people, which we must respect.”
After noting that China and the United States have “many disagreements,” Wang said that our two countries must cooperate and that “China remains prepared to work with the U.S. in the spirit of no conflict or confrontation, mutual respect, and win-win cooperation, and build a relationship based on coordination, cooperation, and stability.”
Wang then stated that “China will defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity,” and that the United States must “give up its wishful thinking of changing China or stopping 1.4 billion people&#8217;s historic march toward modernization.”
The diplomat then issued a troubling warning shot:
<blockquote>It has come to our attention that some political forces in the U.S. are taking China-U.S. relations hostage and pushing our two countries to the brink of a new Cold War. This dangerous attempt to turn back the will of history will undo the fruits of decades-long China-U.S. cooperation, dampen Americans own development prospects, and put world stability and prosperity in jeopardy.</blockquote>
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6DQpE5-8lwc?start=422" width="720" height="385" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
This isn’t the first time a Chinese official has attempted to place blame on the United States for coronavirus-related “lies.”
In mid-March, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian <a href="https://twitter.com/zlj517/status/1238111898828066823?s=21">claimed on Twitter</a> that the United States Army might have brought the virus to China.
“When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected?” Zhao <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/communist-china-spokesman-claims-u-s-military-might-have-brought-coronavirus-to-china">wrote</a>. “What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!”
China also attempted to silence a doctor who spoke out about the virus early on.
On December 30, Dr. Li Wenliang sent a message to a small group of people about the coronavirus. According to a report in <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30382-2/fulltext">The Lancet</a>, four days after sending the message, Li “was summoned to the Public Security Bureau in Wuhan and made to sign a statement in which he was accused of making false statements that disturbed the public order.”
Li later <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51403795">died</a> from COVID-19.
In a February 7 piece in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/health/cdc-coronavirus-china.html">The New York Times</a>, it was reported that China ignored offers from the CDC for “more than a month” to “send a team of experts” in to help with the coronavirus outbreak.
“Current and former public health officials and diplomats” reportedly told The New York Times that they believed “the reluctance [came] from China’s top leaders, who do not want the world to think they need outside help.”
In early-April, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/china-concealed-extent-of-virus-outbreak-u-s-intelligence-says">Bloomberg</a> reported that according to three anonymous U.S. officials, “the U.S. intelligence community concluded in a classified report to the White House” that China had “intentionally” been undercounting their COVID-19 case totals and deaths.
The above are just several examples from a larger pattern of misdirection and obfuscation from China regarding COVID-19. These latest remarks from Wang appear to be just one more attempt to spin the ball and intimidate the United States.
The Daily Wire, headed by bestselling author and popular podcast host Ben Shapiro, is a leading provider of conservative news, cutting through the mainstream media’s rhetoric to provide readers the most important, relevant, and engaging stories of the day. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Chinese military band

Chinese Foreign Minister Accuses U.S. ‘Political Forces’ Of ‘Pushing Our Two Countries To The Brink Of A New Cold War’

China

Chinese Communist Party

Coronavirus

COVID-19

United States

The Swiss are with us.
Light artist Gerry Hoffstetter on Thursday projected the American flag onto the 14,692-foot peak of the famous Matterhorn mountain in the Alps in a show of solidarity with the U.S. during the COVID-19 crisis.
&#8220;Our thoughts are with all American people at this unprecedented time. We look forward to meeting again at the foot of the Matterhorn, we are all in this together,&#8221; the tourism organization Zermatt Matterhorn wrote on its Facebook page. “May our message convey solidarity and give you hope and strength. We look forward to meeting again at the foot of the Matterhorn, we are all in this together.”
Why the Matterhorn, you ask? “The Matterhorn has always been a symbol of Switzerland and a place of strength and stability. Zermatt is convinced: as strong as the Matterhorn, so strong must the society stand together, be anchored and let the storm pass,” Zermatt wrote online.
Jacque Pitteloud, the Swiss ambassador to the U.S., posted a picture of the projection on Twitter and wrote: &#8220;Magnificent! Last night, #Switzerland sent a message of #hope and solidarity to the US by projecting the American flag onto the peak of the iconic #Swiss mountain, the Matterhorn.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Magnificent! Last night, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Switzerland?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Switzerland</a> sent a message of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/hope?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#hope</a> and solidarity to the US by projecting the American flag onto the peak of the iconic <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Swiss?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Swiss</a> mountain, the Matterhorn. <a href="https://twitter.com/zermatt_tourism?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@zermatt_tourism</a> 🇨🇭🇺🇸 <a href="https://t.co/YntCsEJG1A">pic.twitter.com/YntCsEJG1A</a>
&mdash; Jacques Pitteloud (@SwissAmbUSA) <a href="https://twitter.com/SwissAmbUSA/status/1250812313717932032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 16, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The U.S. has the highest number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus at 706,830, according to Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering. Switzerland is 15th on the list, with 27,404 cases.
Hofstetter, known for transforming buildings and landscapes all over the world into temporary art projects, was enlisted to illuminate the mountain daily starting March 24, according to Zermatt Matterhorn.
The projections have included the flags of Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, France and Italy, as well as messages like “#StayAtHome” and &#8220;#AllOfUs&#8221; and &#8220;#Hope.&#8221; Other slogans projected on the mountain include the phrase &#8220;Dream now &#8211; travel later&#8221; because, as the website says, while travel is banned, &#8220;dreaming is not prohibited.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_104791" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-104791" class="size-medium wp-image-104791" src="https://editorial.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/horn-300x200.jpg" alt="TOPSHOT - A picture taken late on April 1, 2020 from the Swiss alpine resort of Zermatt shows the iconic Matterhorn mountain located on the Italian-Swiss border that peaks at 4478 meters illuminated by Swiss light artist Gerry Hofstetter &quot;as a sign of hope and solidarity&quot; amid the COVID-19 pandemic. - The campaign by Swiss artist Gerry Hofstetter, which transforms buildings, monuments and landscapes all over the world into temporary works of art, is being broadcast live by the ressort's webcam and is currently scheduled to run until 19 April, the deadline for action against the coronavirus in Switzerland. (Photo by Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY MENTION OF THE ARTIST UPON PUBLICATION - TO ILLUSTRATE THE EVENT AS SPECIFIED IN THE CAPTION (Photo by F" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/04/horn-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/04/horn-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/04/horn-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/04/horn.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />ABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images</div>
&#8220;With this light projection, Zermatt wants to give people a sign of hope and solidarity in these difficult times. The village shows solidarity with all the people who are currently suffering and is grateful to all those who are helping to overcome the crisis,&#8221; Zermatt said.
When he projected the flag of Japan on the mountain peak, Zermatt wrote: Switzerland and Japan have maintained a close exchange for many decades. With Myoko and Fujikawaguchiko, Zermatt has two sister cities in the land of the rising sun. We greet our Japanese friends, partners and guests and send them a sign of hope and strength to overcome this unusual and difficult time.&#8221;
And when the German flag was projected, Zermatt wrote: &#8220;Like many European countries, our neighbouring country Germany is suffering greatly from the Corona crisis. Many German citizens have a close relationship with Switzerland and Zermatt. With the German flag on the Matterhorn, the Swiss symbolic mountain, we send a sign of solidarity across the currently closed borders and look forward to the time when mutual visits are once again possible.&#8221;
You can watch the <a href="https://www.zermatt.ch/en/hope">projections live</a> here.

usa (2)

Matterhorn In Swiss Alps Lit Up With American Flag In Show Of Solidarity During Coronavirus

Switzerland

A group of peaceful protesters gathered in Raleigh, North Carolina on Tuesday to call for the re-opening of the state. They stood outside and observed social distancing guidelines. More importantly, they observed the guidelines of the First Amendment, which, plain as day, protects &#8220;the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.&#8221; They were assembled. They were peaceful. And they were petitioning their government for a specific and reasonable thing, namely the right to go back to work and feed their families.
But the protestors forgot that our Founding Fathers, when codifying our inherent human rights into the legal document known as the Bill of Rights, included the important caveat that all rights immediately evaporate whenever there&#8217;s a virus and people are scared. You can&#8217;t see it because it&#8217;s written in invisible ink. That appears to be the legal theory of the governor of North Carolina and his law enforcement agents, anyway, as Raleigh police descended upon the peaceful assembly and instructed it to disperse. At least one of the protestors was <a href="https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article241999131.html">arrested</a>.
When asked to justify their actions, the Raleigh Police Department <a href="https://twitter.com/raleighpolice/status/1250111779574894594?s=20">explained</a> on Twitter that &#8212; and this is a direct quote &#8212; &#8220;protesting is a non-essential activity.&#8221; I expect that the bootlickers who support the government&#8217;s right to arrest people for going to church will find this reasoning totally acceptable. But Americans who value freedom will recognize it as Orwellian insanity. If a politician can unilaterally abolish our fundamental liberties simply by declaring them non-essential, then we have no fundamental liberties. The whole idea becomes a farce. Or, at best, a symbolic concept that we sing about in our songs but that has no practical application in the real world.
It doesn&#8217;t matter if a particular protest or church service is essential. That is a matter of opinion, I suppose, and the opinion of a politician or bureaucrat should have no more weight than anyone else&#8217;s. The point is that the right to protest, just like the right to practice our religion, is essential. Essential not in the sense of being merely important, but in the deeper sense of being inherent to our nature as human beings. That is the idea that our country was founded upon.
It&#8217;s also worth noting that North Carolina has only 5,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus and a little over 400 hospitalizations. That is in a state of 10 million people spread out over 93 counties. Its coronavirus death toll of 108 means that there is an average of slightly more than 1 death per county. These numbers amount to a sad situation, and a serious situation, but they are not a cataclysmic emergency. North Carolina, like most states in the union, has never had a coronavirus emergency. Even if an emergency could justify the suspension of our fundamental human rights &#8212; which it can&#8217;t, in my view &#8212; this would not be such an emergency.
Governments across the country have exploited a virus, and the fear it generates, to seize unprecedented power. We are in the midst of the most severe assault on the Constitution that any of us currently living have ever witnessed. It&#8217;s time to choose a side &#8212; for freedom or against &#8212; and make our stand.

Flag Shutdown

WALSH: Police In North Carolina Arrest Peaceful Protestors, Declare Protesting A ‘Non-Essential Activity’ 

Bill of Rights

Constitution

Protest

The despotic theocratic regime in Iran, unsurprisingly, is blaming America and the Jews for the coronavirus outbreak in Iran that has now claimed the life of  the <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/world/coronavirus-iran-death-official-update">former Iranian ambassador to Syria</a> as well as an <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/02/middleeast/iran-coronavirus-supreme-leader-adviser-intl/index.html">adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader</a> Ayatollah Ali Khameini.
<a href="https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Iran-News/Irans-regime-pushes-antisemitic-conspiracies-about-coronavirus-620212">The Jerusalem Post</a> reports, “Over the last several days, Iran has pushed several reports claiming that ‘Zionists’ were behind the coronavirus. Press TV also quoted the same website that was at the center of an antisemitic article from 2017 that claimed “America’s Jews are driving America’s wars.”
The Post added, “On March 5, Press TV claimed that ‘Zionist elements developed a deadlier strain of coronavirus against Iran.’ Although the report claimed to reference a foreign ‘academic,’ it fits the pattern of Iran using foreign experts to give the regime’s own views a patina of authority.
The leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hossein Salami, has claimed the virus was “biological warfare” that came from the United States, asserting on March 5, “We are now dealing with a biological war,” and that it “may be the product of American biological warfare.” The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was named a foreign terrorist organization by the Trump administration in April 2019.  President Trump <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-designation-islamic-revolutionary-guard-corps-foreign-terrorist-organization/">stated</a>:
<blockquote>Today, I am formally announcing my Administration’s plan to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including its Qods Force, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act.  This unprecedented step, led by the Department of State, recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a State Sponsor of Terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft.  The IRGC is the Iranian government’s primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign.</blockquote>
On Sunday, Press TV linked to the claim that the U.S.  is waging “biological warfare,” and cited an article blaming Israel, claiming a “former CIA officer” stated “the US and Israel are working together.”
As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-iranians-lick-shrine-believed-to-be-infected-with-coronavirus">The Daily Wire</a> reported on March 2, some Iranians reportedly defied conventional wisdom regarding the coronavirus and deliberately licked Islamic shrines believed to be infected with coronavirus to prove that they were not afraid of the epidemic, some even declaring that they hope they are infected.
The Middle East Media Research Institute <a href="https://www.memri.org/tv/iran-lick-shiite-shrine-coronavirus">reported</a>, “Iranians have posted several videos on social media, featuring devout Shiites licking holy shrines in defiance of the coronavirus. In some of the videos, worshippers say they are licking the shrines in order to infect themselves, thus protecting future pilgrims to the shrines from contracting the virus. On March 1, 2020, a pilgrim posted a video of himself licking the steel bars protecting the window of a Shiite shrine.”
One man stated, &#8220;If there are diseases or microbes there, let them enter our bodies and the bodies of our children, so that nothing happens to the pilgrims visiting Imam Reza.”
<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-07/iranian-lawmaker-dies-of-coronavirus-as-infections-spread">Bloomberg</a> reported on March 7, &#8220;The number of cases jumped more than 20% to 5,823, a health ministry spokesman said Saturday on state television. There were 21 additional deaths, bringing the total to 145 — third highest in the world.&#8221;

Iranian Deputy Health Minister Iraj Harirchi tests positive for coronavirus

SHOCKER: Iran Blames America And The Jews For Coronavirus

Iran

Jews

During President Donald J. Trump&#8217;s impeachment trial, we&#8217;ll hear a lot of talk about our rules for governing. One frequent claim is that our nation is a democracy. If we&#8217;ve become a democracy, it would represent a deep betrayal of our founders, who saw democracy as another form of tyranny. In fact, the word democracy appears nowhere in our nation&#8217;s two most fundamental documents, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The founders laid the ground rules for a republic as written in the Constitution&#8217;s Article IV, Section 4, which guarantees &#8220;to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.&#8221;
John Adams captured the essence of the difference between a democracy and republic when he said, &#8220;You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe.&#8221; Contrast the framers&#8217; vision of a republic with that of a democracy. In a democracy, the majority rules either directly or through its elected representatives. As in a monarchy, the law is whatever the government determines it to be. Laws do not represent reason. They represent power. The restraint is upon the individual instead of the government. Unlike that envisioned under a republican form of government, rights are seen as privileges and permissions that are granted by government and can be rescinded by government.
Here are a few quotations that demonstrate the contempt that our founders held for a democracy. James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, wrote that in a pure democracy, &#8220;there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual.&#8221;
At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Edmund Randolph said that &#8220;in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.&#8221; Alexander Hamilton agreed, saying: &#8220;We are now forming a republican government. (Liberty) is found not in &#8220;the extremes of democracy but in moderate governments. &#8230; If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy.&#8221;
John Adams reminded us: &#8220;Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.&#8221;
John Marshall, the highly respected fourth chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court observed, &#8220;Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.&#8221;
Thomas Paine said, &#8220;A Democracy is the vilest form of Government there is.&#8221;
The framers gave us a Constitution replete with undemocratic mechanisms. One constitutional provision that has come in for recent criticism is the Electoral College. In their wisdom, the framers gave us the Electoral College as a means of deciding presidential elections. That means heavily populated states can&#8217;t run roughshod over small, less-populated states.
Were we to choose the president and vice president under a popular vote, the outcome of presidential races would always be decided by a few highly populated states, namely California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois and Pennsylvania, which contain 134.3 million people, or 41% of our population. Presidential candidates could safely ignore the interests of the citizens of Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Delaware. Why? They have only 5.58 million Americans, or 1.7% of the U.S. population. We would no longer be a government &#8220;of the people.&#8221; Instead, our government would be put in power by and accountable to the leaders and citizens of a few highly populated states. It would be the kind of tyranny the framers feared.
It&#8217;s Congress that poses the greatest threat to our liberties. The framers&#8217; distrust is seen in the negative language of our Bill of Rights such as: Congress &#8220;shall not abridge, infringe, deny, disparage, and shall not be violated, nor be denied.&#8221; When we die and if at our next destination we see anything like a Bill of Rights, we know that we&#8217;re in hell because a Bill of Rights in heaven would suggest that God couldn&#8217;t be trusted.
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.

WILLIAMS: Democracy And Tyranny

Democracy

Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Qods Force Commander Qassem Soleimani <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-the-just-and-proper-strike-of-mastermind-iranian-jihadist-qassem-soleimani">is no more</a>. He died with the blood of tens of thousands of people on his hands — Americans, Syrians, Kurds, Israelis, Lebanese, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Afghans, Africans in Nigeria, Chad, Mali, and more. He was an enemy combatant of the United States and leader of a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.
It is tempting just to say, “yippie” and move on. But the extraordinary number of people — including Americans, including The New York Times, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) — disapproving of President Donald Trump’s decision to have our military skillfully dispatch Soleimani to wherever he’s gone requires more comment.
The Times began its story with, “Mr. Trump’s decision to kill General Soleimani was one that Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama had rejected, fearing it would lead to war.” The Times makes the fundamental mistake: Nothing the United States does will “lead to war.” The war is already 40 years old — we just haven’t been fighting it much.
Iran declared real and operational war on the United States (and Israel) at the onset of the Islamic Republic in 1979. From the U.S. embassy takeover in 1979 to the Beirut Marine Barracks bombing in 1983 to the attacks against American troops in Iraq to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/man-in-iran-backed-plot-to-kill-saudi-ambassador-gets-25-years/2013/05/30/0435e7a2-c952-11e2-8da7-d274bc611a47_story.html">bomb plots</a> against the Saudi ambassador in Washington and the Israeli embassy in 2011 to the capture of <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-18/iran-captured-u-s-sailors-at-gunpoint-defense-department-finds">American naval personnel</a> in 2016 (and major violations of the Americans’ Geneva Convention rights) to the continuing Iranian harassment of U.S. shipping in the Persian Gulf and Bab-el-Mandeb Straits, Iran has killed Americans and threatened to kill more.
Soleimani was head of the Iranian militias that <a href="https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2019/04/04/iran-killed-more-us-troops-in-iraq-than-previously-known-pentagon-says/">killed 608 American soldiers</a> in Iraq and maimed thousands of others through the use of IEDs. He armed, trained, and commanded the Iraqi Kataib militia Hezbollah that was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/02/world/middleeast/iraq-embassy-attack.html">responsible for the killing</a> of an American contractor in Iraq and the injuring of several American soldiers — and for attacking the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, which directly precipitated the current situation.
And that’s only about the United States. Soleimani’s IRGC-controlled militias sent tens of thousands of troops, mostly Pakistani and Afghan, to Syria to commit large-scale ethnic cleansing of Syrian Sunnis and precipitating the Syrian refugee crisis in Europe. Soleimani’s IRGC-controlled militias ostensibly fought against ISIS in western Iraq, but committed a variety of crimes against Iraqi Sunni civilians there, as well. The arming of Hezbollah in Lebanon with precision missiles, now aimed at Israel, is a Soleimani-led IRGC operation. The establishment of Iranian missile factories in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq is a Soleimani-led IRGC operation.
At home, Pelosi and Schumer think <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/democrats-call-us-killing-of-soleimani-reckless-say-congress-wasnt-notified/">Congress should have been notified</a> — asserting a privilege that does not exist. For the record, President Barack Obama put American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki on a CIA “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/06/AR2010040604121.html">kill list</a>” in 2010 without discussion in Congress, let alone prior congressional approval. Al-Awlaki was dispatched by an American drone in Yemen in 2011.
Others, including Democratic presidential hopefuls <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/democrats-call-us-killing-of-soleimani-reckless-say-congress-wasnt-notified/">Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Andrew Yang</a>, are condemning the elimination of Soleimani out of fear of the retaliation that Iran might try to exact. Those people aren’t actually wrong. But if they believe the United States should ignore Iranian provocation or abandon the Middle East to protect ourselves here at home — it’s too late for that.
Just last month, Ali Hourani, an American citizen, was <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/prosecutors-ask-life-term-new-york-man-who-wanted-die-n1091421">sentenced to 40 years in federal prison</a> for “helping Hezbollah and Iran prepare to strike strategic and vulnerable targets around New York City, such as federal facilities housing day care centers, critical infrastructure, counterterrorism command posts, and international airports, as well as members of the NYPD, the Mossad, and the Israel Defense Forces,&#8221; according to the federal sentencing memo.
Anything <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-defund-lebanon-and-do-it-yesterday">Hezbollah knows</a>, Iran knows.
That, however, is less a reason to condemn the elimination of Soleimani than to understand the breadth and depth of the war Iran has long been waging. The present escalation of that war is a sign that the Iranian empire has overreached, is collapsing, and needs a “victory” against the mullahs&#8217; &#8220;Great Satan&#8221; (U.S.) or the &#8220;Little Satan&#8221; (Israel) to justify its continued existence.
The Trump administration has cut off Iran’s money supply and other countries have stopped trading with Iran, making bribery in the form of cash, weapons, arms factories, and training less and less possible. The regime, reduced to stealing Iraqi oil to sell on the black market, faces rebellion in its <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bryen-irans-imperial-overreach">provinces Lebanon and Iraq</a> — as well as at home. Opposition to Islamist clericalism <a href="https://besacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/1315-Political-Islam-Is-Declining-in-the-Middle-East-Frisch-final.pdf">appears to be on the rise</a> in the region.
Enemies are most dangerous when they see their demise on the horizon — the Battle of the Bulge was Hitler’s way of ensuring the greatest number of allied casualties before the end of the Nazi empire. That appears to be where Iran is now, that is why the dispatch of Soleimani was essential, and that is why Americans and our allies must present a united front against Iran.
&nbsp;
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/">The Jewish Policy Center</a> in Washington, and Editor of inFOCUS Quarterly.

Iran Middle East map

BRYEN: The Dispatch Of Soleimani And The Escalation Of The War

Donald Trump

Foreign Policy

Iraq

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

Middle East

Mike Pompeo

Radical Islam

Radical Islamic Terror

The world has awoken today a safer and more just place. And the unraveling of former President Barack Obama&#8217;s pro-Iran regional Middle East realignment, which began with President Donald Trump&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-trump-just-shredded-iran-deal-here-are-5-ben-shapiro">thunderous exit</a> from his predecessor&#8217;s pro-ayatollah nuclear capitulation, has now reached its logical conclusion.
The Obama Middle East foreign policy legacy is dead. As is the Islamic Republic of Iran&#8217;s infamous jihadist mastermind, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-trump-responds-to-u-s-military-killing-2-top-iranian-military-leaders-involved-in-terrorists">Qassem Soleimani</a>.
Good riddance to both.
It is difficult to overstate the geopolitical and strategic ramifications of Soleimani&#8217;s long-overdue demise. Aside from Osama bin Laden himself, no leading international jihadist thug has had more American blood on his hands than the decades-long veteran commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qods Force (IRGC-QF) — a U.S.-designated <a href="https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Releases/Release/Article/2049534/statement-by-the-department-of-defense/">Foreign Terrorist Organization</a> and umbrella organization overseeing so much regional and global evil, from Iraq to Yemen to <a href="https://ctc.usma.edu/irans-unwavering-support-to-assads-syria/">Syria</a> to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-defund-lebanon-and-do-it-yesterday">Lebanon</a> to Gaza to <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20190109-eu-sanctions-iran-over-assassinations-peoples-mujahedeen-france-bomb-plot">European</a> capitals to our very own <a href="https://mosaicmagazine.com/response/jewish-world/2019/08/the-men-responsible-for-the-amia-bombing-are-known-and-still-at-large/">western</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/man-in-iran-backed-plot-to-kill-saudi-ambassador-gets-25-years/2013/05/30/0435e7a2-c952-11e2-8da7-d274bc611a47_story.html">hemisphere</a>. From <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-defund-lebanon-and-do-it-yesterday">Hezbollah</a> to Hamas to Palestinian Islamic Jihad to Yemeni <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/world/houthis-explain-death-to-america-slogan-reveal-what-will-bring-them-to-peace-talks">Houthi rebels</a> to (contra Iranian <a href="https://twitter.com/JZarif/status/1212946202280579073">propaganda</a>) <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/19/us/politics/us-iran.html">al-Qaeda itself</a>, the extraterritorial tentacles of the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-iranian-revolution-forty-years-old-stand-josh-hammer">inherently jihadist</a> Iranian regime are simply ubiquitous.
No nation on Earth funds, sponsors, and exports more genocidal jihad than the Islamic Republic of Iran. And no one has been more responsible for that over the past 20-plus years than Qassem Soleimani. The Hudson Institute&#8217;s Michael Doran is thus correct when he <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/trump-iran-suleimani-assassination-baghdad.html">writes</a> today that, &#8220;[t]he killings of Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leaders of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, were certainly meaningful, but they were also largely symbolic.&#8221; By contrast, Doran continues, &#8220;[t]aking out the architect of the Islamic Republic’s decades-long active campaign of violence against the United States and its allies, especially Israel, represents a tectonic shift in Middle Eastern politics.&#8221;
This is <a href="https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1212943146512003073">precisely right</a>.
Soleimani, who was designated and sanctioned by the U.N., E.U., and U.S. alike, directly approved <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-now-is-not-the-time-to-go-soft-on-iran">Tuesday&#8217;s U.S. embassy storming</a> in Baghdad by Iranian proxy militia Kataib Hezbollah, and was credibly assessed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as actively planning more <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/pompeo-strike-on-soleimani-disrupted-imminent-attack-saved-hundreds/">&#8220;imminent&#8221;</a> attacks against hard American assets in the Middle East, has been directly active in the mass murder of Americans. He personally oversaw the mass arming of Shiite Iraqi insurgents and it is estimated that the IRGC-QF targeted and killed over 600 Americans in Iraq from 2003–2011. The State Department asserts that this personally amounts to a whopping <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/state-dept-iranian-general-killed-in-u-s-strike-responsible-for-17-of-american-deaths-in-iraq">17% of all </a>deaths of U.S. military personnel during the Iraq War. As Iraq War veteran Jesse Kelly <a href="https://twitter.com/JesseKellyDC/status/1212916676167122944">tweeted</a>, &#8220;If you’ve been to a VA hospital in recent years and seen a young man missing limbs, there’s a reasonable chance Qasem Soleimani is responsible for it.&#8221;
Qassem Soleimani was a monstrous thug. In addition to the hundreds of Americans killed in Iraq via Iranian-supplied roadside IEDs, Soleimani personally oversaw the jihad-led destabilization of all nations within Tehran&#8217;s coveted <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2019/09/03/the-shiite-crescent-and-regional-disaster/">&#8220;Shiite crescent&#8221;</a> of desired regional hegemony. He likely is responsible, on net, for tens of thousands of deaths. He was a relentless and unceasing foe of Western civilization, more broadly, though he held a special disdain for the mullahs&#8217; &#8220;Little Satan&#8221; of Israel and &#8220;Great Satan&#8221; of the United States.
Totalitarian regimes the world over crave Obama administration-style trepidation and appeasement. Sharks, alas, are always on the prowl for bloodletting weaklings. But it takes righteousness to refuse to be cowed by revanchist thuggery; it takes resolve to stake one&#8217;s ground; and it takes willpower to defend one&#8217;s carefully calibrated <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/death-iranian-gen-soleimani-long-overdue-justice/">strategic interests</a>.
The only travesty here is that Qassem Soleimani was not taken out sooner. The president of the United States deserves kudos for having the courage to execute this strike. America and her allies are today safer and stronger for it. A small portion of justice has been served, and there is no more deserving target of that rough justice than mastermind Iranian jihadist Qassem Soleimani.

Qassem Soleimani

HAMMER: The Just And Proper Strike Of Mastermind Iranian Jihadist Qassem Soleimani

Nuclear Weapons

Obama Administration

Last week, Democrats held their first true presidential debate. With the field winnowed down to 10 candidates — three of them actual contenders for the nomination — only one moment truly stood out. That moment came not from Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders but from a candidate desperate for attention: Beto O&#8217;Rourke.
O&#8217;Rourke ran in 2018 for a Senate seat in Texas and lost in shockingly narrow fashion to incumbent Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. But his persona at the time was more Biden than Bernie: He ran as a unifying quasi-moderate, an Obama-esque figure determined to bring Americans together. In the early going of the presidential race, Beto was figured to be a prime contender: An April poll showed him in a solid third place. But he&#8217;s faded dramatically; now the once-media darling is polling below 3%.
So O&#8217;Rourke has refashioned himself into a woke warrior. He&#8217;s declared that he wants to forcibly remove guns from law-abiding Americans (&#8220;Hell, yes, we&#8217;re going to take your AR-15&#8221;), that President Trump is a &#8220;white supremacist&#8221; posing a &#8220;mortal threat to people of color&#8221; and that the time has come for race reparations. Most dramatically, O&#8217;Rourke has refashioned his vision of American history. In this debate, he laid out his retelling of the American story, saying: &#8220;Racism in America is endemic. It is foundational. We can mark the creation of this country not at the Fourth of July, 1776, but Aug. 20, 1619, when the first kidnapped African was brought to this country against his will and in bondage, and as a slave built the greatness and the success and the wealth that neither he nor his descendants would ever be able to fully participate in and enjoy.&#8221;
This version of history is cribbed from &#8220;The 1619 Project&#8221; by The New York Times, a retelling of American history as a story rooted in white supremacy — not colored by or affected by white supremacy but rooted in it. Capitalism, criminal justice, lack of universal health care, traffic patterns, Donald Trump&#8217;s election — all of it, according to &#8220;The 1619 Project,&#8221; is fundamentally based on America&#8217;s legacy of slavery and racial discrimination.
That perspective on American history, in turn, is merely warmed over Howard Zinn. Zinn, the Marxist author of &#8220;A People&#8217;s History of the United States,&#8221; sought to recast America&#8217;s story as a story of hideous ugliness covered with the hypocritical facade of goodness. Never mind that &#8220;A People&#8217;s History&#8221; is, in fact, rotten history — factually inaccurate, wildly disjoined from a more comprehensive examination of time and place, near plagiarized from the work of better leftist historians. Zinn&#8217;s history has now infused the teaching of American history in high schools and colleges across the country.
But that historical retelling is at odds with the better, truer story of America: the story of a nation founded on eternally good and true principles, principles only fully realized for many Americans at the cost of blood and sweat and death. Ex-slave Frederick Douglass&#8217;s take on American history remains the most honest, as well as the most visionary. While acknowledging that to the American slave, Independence Day represents &#8220;more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim,&#8221; Douglass recognized that the Constitution is a &#8220;glorious liberty document,&#8221; the Declaration of Independence a charter of &#8220;saving principles.&#8221;
American history is our common history. O&#8217;Rourke&#8217;s pathetic rewriting of American history is designed not to unify us as a nation but to divide us — to call us away from the unifying principles that lie at the foundation of America, in favor of divisive principles of tribal partisanship. We must recognize the evils of American history — that is part of our common story. In fact, our quest to rid ourselves of those evils is our common story. But if we wish to survive as a nation, we must also recognize that the story of America lies in the constant purification of our actions to align with our founding principles, not oppose them.

O&#8217;Rourke debate

SHAPIRO: The Alternative History Of The United States

Ben Shapiro

Beto O'Rourke

New York Times

Patriotism

During an interview with CNN&#8217;s Ariane de Vogue on Tuesday, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch refused to get political and bash President Donald Trump, despite de Vogue&#8217;s persistent baiting.
Though de Vogue was interviewing Mr. Gorsuch on the release of his new book &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=neil+gorsuch+book&amp;gclid=EAIaIQobChMI8tjGksTJ5AIVwrTtCh0AzwbMEAAYASAAEgIQSvD_BwE&amp;hvadid=318579972164&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvlocphy=9005653&amp;hvnetw=g&amp;hvpos=1t1&amp;hvqmt=e&amp;hvrand=6808399844587619681&amp;hvtargid=kwd-603576764137&amp;hydadcr=22536_9636733&amp;tag=googhydr-20&amp;ref=pd_sl_6skdn67yyb_e">A Republic If You Can Keep It</a>,&#8221; a large portion of the interview was predictably spent searching for a sound bite to pin against President Trump.
<blockquote>Last fall, Chief Justice John Roberts issued a very rare statement because the president of the President of the United States was attacking judges. And the president doubled-down afterwords, and <a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1065346909362143232?lang=en">said</a>, &#8220;Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have &#8216;Obama judges,&#8217; and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country.&#8221; Do the attacks on those judges threaten the rule of law?</blockquote>
Gorsuch bucked the politics and emphasized how strong the rule of law is in the United States, which he later referred to as a &#8220;wonder&#8221; and the &#8220;envy of the world.&#8221;
&#8220;What I say to that is, the rule of law in this country is strong — strong and stable. And we are very fortunate. We shouldn&#8217;t forget how fortunate we are. And we shouldn&#8217;t forget how fortunate we are, we should take care with what we have. It&#8217;s a great inheritance. And I would say to anybody who questions what a wonderful inheritance we have in our courts and the rule of law in this country: Go spend six weeks in a court in another country, of your choice, and come back and tell me what you think about our courts in this country.&#8221;
&#8220;And what would you say to somebody who attacks judges,&#8221; de Vogue pressed, again referencing President Trump. &#8220;And also, what does that do for the safety of judges? … I think that these attacks are important. Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently said these are age-old, but judges can&#8217;t defend themselves.&#8221;
&#8220;Well, I think I&#8217;m doing a pretty good job of it now with you in explaining, I hope, the role of law, the role of judges in our country, and why I think we have something very special that we forget, at our risk,&#8221; Gorsuch continued. &#8220;Is it easy to take for granted? Is it easy to forget what a gift we have? Of course it is. I hear young people, for example, say, &#8216;I&#8217;m a citizen of the world.'&#8221;
&#8220;Do we have our problems? Of course,&#8221; Gorsuch said later in the interview as he continued to reject the political questioning. &#8220;We are enormously blessed and lucky,&#8221; he noted.
&#8220;The rule of law in this country is one of the wonders of the world,&#8221; he told de Vogue. &#8220;Step back and look at the forest.&#8221;
The Supreme Court justice went on to marvel that the highest court only hears some 70 cases a year — a paltry amount, in the grand scheme of the entire federal judicial docket.
&#8220;The stability of our law, the predictability of our law, the uniformity of our law is a wonder of the world and it&#8217;s an envy of the world,&#8221; he said, adding: &#8220;I&#8217;m hugely optimistic about the rule of law.&#8221;
WATCH:
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Justice Neil Gorsuch

WATCH: CNN Reporter Tries To Get Justice Gorsuch To Bash Trump. His Response Is Perfect.

Media Bias

Neil Gorsuch

Supreme Court

Seemingly every year, some prominent conservative goes out of his way to contemptuously mock the U.S.-recognized federal holiday known as Labor Day. The general rationale for such scorn is that Labor Day came into being and, to some extent, still exists to glorify and harken us back to the once-dominant labor movements of yore. Labor Day, the narrative goes, was a capitalism-undermining governmental fabrication that bestowed unnecessary social capital and legitimacy upon the restive, and oftentimes outright violent, unionized forces of the proletariat.
It is true that sometimes, shibboleths and outmoded orthodoxies require <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/49750/hammer-national-conservatism-conference-josh-hammer">fresh, innovative thinking</a>. But it is also the case that the general conservative disdain for Labor Day is not a particularly good example of that. This &#8220;holiday&#8221; deserves all the derision it can possibly receive.
Simply put, Labor Day is indeed an anti-capitalism, anti-economic growth federal &#8220;holiday&#8221; born out of the ashes of the late 19th century&#8217;s societally ruinous labor movement. It is a manifestly stupid socialist &#8220;holiday&#8221; and conservatives are wholly justified to make fun of it.
While the precise origins of how Labor Day came to be recognized as a federal holiday in 1894 are subject to historical debate, it is uncontested that various cogs of Big Labor served as the driving force. According to one version of the history, Central Labor Union (CLU) Secretary Matthew Maguire first proposed the federalization of the holiday after the CLU successfully held a pan-organizational parade of labor organizations in New York City on September 5, 1882. According to a different version of the history, American Federation of Labor Vice President P.J. McGuire initially proposed the federalized holiday to the CLU as a means of publicly demonstrating and flaunting Big Labor&#8217;s institutional might.
But the Haymarket massacre of 1886 threw a wrench into Big Labor&#8217;s self-aggrandizing plot. On May 4, 1886, radical leftist anarchist forces disrupted a pro-worker labor rally in Chicago by throwing a bomb at local police. Seven police officers and four civilians paid the ultimate price, and eight committed leftist anarchists were ultimately convicted of conspiracy. Indeed, Grover Cleveland&#8217;s initial 1887 decision to campaign on a September-based Labor Day, as well as his ultimate 1894 presidential decision to sign the holiday into law, were both based on a conscientious awareness that allowing the holiday to be celebrated in May — in accordance with the venerable European tradition known as May Day — risked the perception of positively commemorating the violent, radical leftist anarchy of the Haymarket massacre.
In a nutshell, then, Labor Day was born out of violence and Big Labor intimidation. Chris Pandolfo, writing at Conservative Review two years ago, <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/happy-labor-day-a-holiday-born-in-violence/">elaborated</a> upon how even President Cleveland&#8217;s ultimate signing of the holiday into law was itself a final act of gross capitulation toward the insubordinate socialist rabble-rousers of the labor movement:
<blockquote>When the Panic of 1893 hit, several workers were laid off from the Pullman Car Company, while the rest suffered an average of a one-fourth wage cut. Eventually, the downtrodden and livid workers organized a strike, and to their aid quickly came the American Railway Union (ARU) and its socialist leader, Eugene V. Debs. Debs helped orchestrate a national boycott of trains carrying Pullman cars.
The strike lasted three months, from May 11 to July 11, 1894. When replacement workers (&#8220;strikebreakers&#8221;) were called in to cross the picket line, violence erupted. Riots, the pillaging of railway cars, and property destruction ensued.
But it was the interruption of postal mail delivery that really brought the strike to the federal government’s attention. President Cleveland declared the strike a federal crime — insisting that the strikers were prohibiting the government from carrying out its constitutional responsibility for mail delivery. Soon after, 14,000 federal and state troops were called upon to break up the strike.
By the strike’s end, as many as 30 people had been killed. In Chicago, lawless strikers took advantage of the violence to &#8220;rob, burn, and plunder,&#8221; leading to an estimated $80 million in property damages. Debs and the leaders of the ARU were jailed and the union dissolved.
With the nation roiling and the 1894 midterm elections approaching, Cleveland’s administration sought a way to appease the labor movement. Thus came Labor Day. The legislation was expedited through Congress and signed by the president on June 28, 1894, in the midst of the Pullman strike.</blockquote>
By all means, conservatives, enjoy your day off work. Enjoy your end of summer sales. Enjoy your barbecues and picnics. Enjoy your final day showcasing the sartorial delight that is seersucker before our fashion overlords deem the fabric verboten tomorrow.
But while you are enjoying yourselves today, do be aware of Labor Day&#8217;s wretched, leftist, socialist, anarchist origins. And do not hesitate to mock this remarkably silly &#8220;holiday&#8221; as much as your heart desires.

Construction Workers

HAMMER: Labor Day Is A Stupid Socialist ‘Holiday’ And Conservatives Are Right To Bash It

Communism

Economy

Socialism

On Wednesday, CNN aired a segment in which a CNN British correspondent patronized that the rest of the world, including countries with massive murder problems such as Mexico and Venezuela, feels “anger and bewilderment” at how America deals with guns.
Nick Paton Walsh repeatedly condescended to the United States, with statements such as, “The U.S. has been here many times before. And so has the rest of the world watching on,” and “The reality is this is an American malaise with only American solutions. And which the rest of the world simply looks on in disbelief.”
As <a href="https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/mark-finkelstein/2019/08/07/guns-cnn-suggests-us-should-learn-mexico-and-other-countries">Newsbusters</a> noted, the segment, hosted by CNN hosts John Berman and Erica Hill, also showed New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern pontificating, “To be honest with you, I do not understand the United States.”
The transcript of the exchange via Newsbusters is below:
<blockquote>Hill: As America grapples with the mass shootings here in Dayton and in El Paso, some countries are issuing travel warnings for those planning to visit the U.S. CNN&#8217;s Nick Paton Walsh explains.
Nick Paton Walsh: The grief here is local. And agonizing.
Juan Martinez: [school superintendent of an El Paso-area district]: Not our children! Please don’t! Not one more.
Walsh: For the anger and bewilderment has slowly turned global. The U.S. has been here many times before. And so has the rest of the world watching on. Bewildered by the all-too-familiar debate about gun control, and the U.S. paralyzed by politics. Elsewhere, in their moment of violent tragedy, the answer seemed clear.
Jacinda Arden: Australia experienced a massacre and changed their laws. New Zealand had its experience and changed its laws. To be honest with you, I do not understand the United States.
Walsh: But the Mexican president went a step further. It’s time for American leaders to take action, he said.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador [through translator]: The U.S. needs to control the indiscriminate sale of weapons. I say this with all due respect. It is not our intention to meddle in the internal matters of any country, but, yes, the matter should be reviewed.
Walsh: The suspected El Paso shooter was a 21-year-old, apparently fueled by hatred of immigrants and hispanics. It&#8217;s prompted some Latin American countries to update their travel warnings. Venezuela is urging its citizens to postpone their plans or exercise caution. And Uruguay is warning travelers of, quote, &#8220;the growing indiscriminate violence in the U.S.&#8221;
The reality is this is an American malaise with only American solutions. And which the rest of the world simply looks on in disbelief . . . An extraordinary disconnect to how Americans don’t seem able to address politically this key issue. Americans you speak to feel the same frankly about the European view of their right to bear arms and the Second Amendment. They say it’s part of life. But really, so much shock, I think, felt globally over the past week. John.
Berman: Nick Paton Walsh, so you say there’s a cognitive dissonance. How could this possibly happen, is what we hear from around the world.</blockquote>
Video below:
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cnn.jpg

WATCH: CNN Patronizes America About Guns: The World ‘Looks On In Disbelief’

Guns

The leftist ingrates at Salon have decided to &#8220;celebrate&#8221; Independence Day — which is celebrated on July 4th for the sole reason that our beautiful republic&#8217;s Declaration of Independence was ratified on that day in Philadelphia in 1776 — today in a rather peculiar manner. In what can only be described as a dissemination of the most stereotypically woke of all stereotypically woke takes, the Salon dullards today tweeted: &#8220;Despite its positive impact on history, the #DeclarationOfIndependence was also a product of its time—and bears some of the shortcomings of its era, including racism, sexism and prejudice against #NativeAmericans.&#8221;
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">Despite its positive impact on history, the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DeclarationOfIndependence?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#DeclarationOfIndependence</a> was also a product of its time—and bears some of the shortcomings of its era, including racism, sexism and prejudice against <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NativeAmericans?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NativeAmericans</a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/4thofJuly?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#4thofJuly</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/IndependenceDay?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#IndependenceDay</a><a href="https://t.co/W3Hz8NO0n5">https://t.co/W3Hz8NO0n5</a>
— Salon (@Salon) <a href="https://twitter.com/Salon/status/1146766310036168704?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 4, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
The accompanying <a href="https://www.salon.com/2019/07/04/fourth-of-julys-ugly-truth-exposed-the-declaration-of-independence-is-sexist-racist-and-prejudice/">piece</a>, courtesy of an obscure Ph.D. named Matthew Rozsa, concludes that America&#8217;s Founding Fathers &#8220;were fallible human beings, and some of their flaws had terrible consequences for people who were not fortunate enough to be born into privileged groups.&#8221;
Suffice it to say that such a &#8220;celebration&#8221; of the Declaration of Independence is a far cry from how John Adams described his vision for future annual celebrations in a July 1776 letter to his wife Abigail: &#8220;I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.&#8221;
But Matthew Rozsa and Salon are not merely profoundly ungrateful. They are not merely flipping a proverbial middle finger to the epistolary legacy of John Adams. They are also affirmatively wrong to muddle and belittle the genius that was Thomas Jefferson&#8217;s drafted Declaration of Independence, and it is important to understand why.
Chattel slavery was the original sin of the American republic, and one would be an inveterate fool to deny that obvious truth. The continuation of slavery from the colonial era through the early decades of the constitutional republic represented a brutal compromise of annunciated principle for the sake of maintaining a fragile unity of disaggregated and often self-interested states.
But what Salon misses — and what leftists routinely miss — is that America&#8217;s original sin of chattel slavery was just that: A compromise of principle. Slavery was not in any way a tenet of the American Founding; it was an institution manifestly athwart the Founding. The sagacity of the Declaration, in fact, was that it actually laid the seeds — the very codified foundation — for the eventual eradication of that most horrific of compromises of principle.
For the greatest statesman in the history of the republic, Abraham Lincoln, the Declaration was precisely the tool he needed to latch onto in order to finally bring the American republic in conformity with its Founding-era principles. For Lincoln, the Declaration was paramount to understanding America — the Constitution, in fact, <a href="https://online.hillsdale.edu/document.doc?id=279">was to Lincoln</a> merely an encompassing &#8220;frame of silver&#8221; for the Declaration&#8217;s underlying &#8220;apple of gold.&#8221; Lincoln spoke eloquently of that Founding-era creed — what he called the &#8220;political revolution of &#8217;76&#8221; — all throughout his adult life, including during his <a href="http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/temperance.htm">famous 1842 speech</a> to the Springfield Washington Temperance Society: &#8220;Of our political revolution of &#8217;76, we all are justly proud. It has given us a degree of political freedom, far exceeding that of any other nation of the earth. In it the world has found a solution of the long mooted problem, as to the capability of man to govern himself. In it was the germ which has vegetated, and still is to grow and expand into the universal liberty of mankind.&#8221;
It is thus the Declaration — the &#8220;apple of gold&#8221; — that provided the Great Emancipator with the moral and intellectual sustenance he needed to &#8220;grow and expand &#8230; the universal liberty of mankind&#8221; insofar as that growth and expansion meant the eradication of America&#8217;s original sin. And the eradication of that original sin, following the bloody horror of the Civil War, tangibly took the eventual form of modifying the Constitution — the &#8220;frame of silver&#8221; — via the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. For Lincoln, none of this would have been possible had it not been for the <a href="https://amgreatness.com/2019/07/03/lincoln-americas-founders-iron-men-2/">&#8220;electric cord&#8221;</a> of the Declaration — which &#8220;links &#8230; patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.&#8221;
But perhaps no one <a href="https://amgreatness.com/2019/07/03/coolidge-declaration-men-created-equal-final-2/">said it better than President Calvin Coolidge</a> on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration&#8217;s ratification, in 1926:
<blockquote>About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.</blockquote>
It is a great paradox of modern &#8220;progressivism&#8221; — the likes of which is embodied by Salon&#8217;s self-hating screed published today — that such insipid idiocy is, in the Coolidge formulation, not &#8220;progress&#8221; at all. It is &#8220;reactionary.&#8221;

HAMMER: Salon Attacks The Declaration Of Independence. Here’s Why They’re So Wrong.

American History

Declaration of Independence

Leftism

Salon

Slavery

Thomas Jefferson

On Tuesday’s episode of “The Andrew Klavan Show,” Klavan discusses a new video released by The New York Times which claims that the United States is not great, and what that means for the other political side of the aisle. Video and partial transcript below.
The New York Times, this morning, the former newspaper, ran a video op-ed called something like &#8220;Stop telling me America is great&#8221;, and they ran this thing. It&#8217;s very well-made. It&#8217;s very clever and it puts forward the idea that this whole concept of America being great is ridiculous. Here&#8217;s a cut.
<blockquote>Video: &#8220;America, the greatest country on earth. A narrative packed and sold to tiny patriots. Reinforced by every cartoon, movie, cheeseburger and mattress sale. A mythology so entrenched our most beloved personalities urges never to question it. &#8211; Don&#8217;t let anyone ever tell you that this country isn&#8217;t great. This right now is the greatest country on earth. Greatest country God ever gave. We&#8217;re the greatest country in the world. America is the greatest country in the world. &#8211; But what if we did question it?”</blockquote>
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It&#8217;s a really dishonest video in a lot of ways. First of all, the entire setup in which children are being taught, all the pictures of the children are from the &#8217;50s. So, the idea that children are being taught this is a great country is kind of garbage. The fact that they put Michelle Obama and then they put Sean Hannity say oh it&#8217;s bad, both on the left and the right, that they&#8217;re saying it&#8217;s a great country. We know that the Obamas did nothing but apologize for this country. We didn&#8217;t forget that Michelle Obama said the first time she was ever proud of her country was the day her husband happened to get elected. So, we know it&#8217;s really only one side. They go on afterwards, I&#8217;m not going to play the whole thing, but they talk about all the ways they think America is not great and some of the stuff they say is fair, but a lot of it is questionable.
So, they use our high poverty rates without mentioning the fact that poverty in America is wealth anywhere else because of wealth transfers. The problem we have here is not that people don&#8217;t have enough money because they can get enough wealth transfer so that people living in poverty today are living at a fairly high level compared to other countries if you&#8217;ve ever been to another country with the exception of Democrat cities where people are homeless. That&#8217;s the kind of poverty that is widespread in a lot of other countries. We&#8217;ll talk about the high mortality rate among infants without mentioning the fact that we try to save a lot more infants who have been born so early that they would die in any other country. So you know the statistics are questionable but I don&#8217;t think that there is any question that this is not the country that it was. That is the fact and is the reason Trump is so popular with his slogan &#8220;Make America Great Again,&#8221; the idea that something has been lost.
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I think after eight years of listening to Obama apologize for this country, after eight years of listening to news people, like Katie Couric, who said she was uncomfortable when she saw somebody wearing an American flag pin. Questioning if it wasn&#8217;t going too far, when we were supposed to wonder why Al-Qaeda disliked us, instead of just bombing them into the Stone Age. I mean why should we wonder why animals like al-Qaeda dislike us?
They dislike us because we&#8217;re better than they are and we&#8217;re free. That&#8217;s why they dislike it. And it goes on to talk about how we&#8217;re not free. I mean it really is a dishonest video but still, I can&#8217;t help feeling that everybody senses that this is not the country that it was, and something was lost and a lot of the people in the left say oh that&#8217;s because you&#8217;re a racist. You want to go back to those days of Jim Crow and go back to the days when women were stuck in the house and all this stuff but that&#8217;s nonsense. That&#8217;s absolutely absurd.
What people want is to go back to the days when people were proud of their country when their children were taught to be proud of their country. And yes, now we understand that people were left out. Let&#8217;s include them too. I don&#8217;t think anybody is against that. I think the problem is that we&#8217;ve lost some sense of pride.
You know Gallup has a poll out that says as Americans prepare to celebrate the Fourth of July holiday, their pride in the U.S. has hit its lowest point since Gallup&#8217;s first measurement in 2001. While 70 percent of U.S. adults overall say they are proud to be Americans, this includes fewer than half who are extremely proud. Marking the second consecutive year that this reading is below the majority level, it&#8217;s only really a two percent decline which is kind of meaningless. Still, people were extremely proud of America. The last time that number really spiked was after 9/11 when people suddenly realized, &#8220;Oh yeah good country.&#8221; But when you read more closely into this Gallup poll, it&#8217;s the Democrats who weren&#8217;t proud. The latest overall declines in patriotism are largely driven by Democrats whose self-reported pride has historically been lower and has fluctuated more than Republicans.
Democrats latest 22 percent &#8220;extreme pride&#8221; reading is the group&#8217;s lowest in Gallup&#8217;s 19 years of measurement and is half of what it was several months before Donald Trump&#8217;s 2016 election victory. So they&#8217;re happy when they&#8217;re winning. They&#8217;re not happy when they&#8217;re losing, which is not true of the Republicans, who remained very proud even during Barack Obama. Republicans have remained extremely proud of their country, and the latest 76 percent reading is just 10 points below the high recorded in 2003. Even when Barack Obama was in office, Republicans&#8217; extreme pride never fell below 68 percent. And that&#8217;s really telling to me; it&#8217;s really telling that when the Democrats lose, they lose their pride.
In other words, they&#8217;re only proud like Michelle Obama. They&#8217;re only proud of a country they run, and they cannot see that there might be another way whereas Republicans are proud of the structure that the friends of the founding right. They understand that the founding is still in place even if they lose an election the fact that there&#8217;s an election, the fact that it works the way it&#8217;s supposed to work, the fact that we transfer power peacefully, that people are still constrained by the Constitution. Obama less than any other president I can think of but still you know was constrained to some degree by the Constitution and by the separation of powers and by the courts who gave him a record number of 9-0 defeats in the Supreme Court because he overreached on his executive powers.
So we remain proud because we feel the system is in place, whereas we know when the Democrats lose, it&#8217;s suddenly all we&#8217;ve got to get rid of the system, we got to stack the Supreme Court, we got to get rid of the electoral college, because they are only proud of this country when they win. And that is the difference between somebody who&#8217;s proud of the founding, who&#8217;s a friend of the founding, and someone who is just proud of himself and think he&#8217;s his own glorious compassion and virtue is going to transform the world into something it has never been ever. And that is the difference.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/show/andrew-klavan-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/show/andrew-klavan-show&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1562248239664000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHt5J2KejNIZKMc168c9fbTx1Wt2Q">Watch more of The Andrew Klavan Show here</a>.
<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-andrew-klavan-show/id1045171376?mt=2" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-andrew-klavan-show/id1045171376?mt%3D2&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1562248239664000&amp;usg=AFQjCNF-TAjcpeUfjB1FjkvZxTvAB9Lugw">Listen to more of The Andrew Klavan Show on iTunes here.</a>

KLAVAN: When Dems Lose Elections, They Lose Pride In America

Andrew Klavan

Barack Obama

Conservatism

Democratic Party

Michelle Obama

There is almost nothing to say about the fact that Nike <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/49067/nike-pulls-american-flag-sneaker-after-complaint-emily-zanotti">recalled a patriotic American flag shoe</a> after Colin Kaepernick complained. It is so self-evidently absurd and disgraceful — such a cowardly surrender to political correctness — that analysis is rendered moot.
Kaepernick reportedly felt that the flag — a Betsy Ross flag from the American Revolution — somehow represents slavery. Of course, if the American flag represents slavery, then every flag of every country 200 years old or over also represents slavery. Slavery was a universally accepted institution all across the world for thousands of years. The only thing unique about American slavery is that we practiced it for such a comparatively short amount of time. Egypt had slavery for 3,000 years. We had it for 90. These are facts that have apparently escaped Kaepernick&#8217;s notice.
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The one notable, though far from surprising, aspect of this story is how it finally exposes the truth behind Kaepernick&#8217;s kneeling stunt. We were told for years that the kneelers were not protesting the flag — or the country or the national anthem, for that matter. A viral <a href="https://twitter.com/kdreamcatchers/status/999781373958410240?lang=en">tweet</a> with over 300,000 likes summed up this defense: &#8220;Rosa Parks was not protesting the bus. Gandhi was not protesting the food. The colonists were not protesting tea. Players are not protesting the flag or the anthem. They are protesting injustice.&#8221;
Many in the media, <a href="https://www.upworthy.com/no-players-arent-protesting-the-anthem-fox-news-shep-smith-explains-perfectly">including Shep Smith</a> at Fox News, also made this claim. The NFL players themselves repeatedly <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/seahawks/seahawks-receiver-doug-baldwin-message-is-about-fighting-inequality-not-protesting-the-flag-our-country/">declared</a> that they were not protesting the flag, despite appearing to do exactly that. LeBron James, one of the highest-profile defenders of the anthem protests, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/lebron-james-trump-protests-press-conference-2017-9">tried to put a patriotic spin on it</a>: &#8220;We know this is the greatest country in the world — it&#8217;s the land of the free. But we still have problems just like everybody else. And when we have those problems, we have to figure out a way how we come together and be as great as we can be as a people.&#8221;
Kaepernick, who started it all, <a href="https://www.nbcsports.com/chicago/chicago-bears/49ers-qb-colin-kaepernick-anthem-protest-about-change-not-just-police-violence">said</a> that he was trying to call attention to &#8220;police violence&#8221; and &#8220;systematic oppression.&#8221; He and his fellow kneelers always insisted that this was not about the flag itself. Well, in case anyone was ever fooled by all of the misdirection, the truth should now be clear: It was indeed about the flag. It was always about the flag.
Colin Kaepernick does not like this country. That much is clear, by now. He is rich and famous and free — all things that he would not be if he lived in any number of other countries around the globe — but his privilege has made him bitter to his core. And he is free to be bitter. He is free to hate the United States and its flag and all it stands for. But he should be honest about where he really stands (or kneels) on the issue.

WALSH: We Were Told That Kaepernick Was Protesting Police Brutality, Not The Flag. Now The Truth Has Finally Come Out.

Colin Kaepernick

Nike

Last month, United States women&#8217;s national soccer team captain Megan Rapinoe told <a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/megan-rapinoe-is-a-walking-protest-162416461.html">Yahoo Sports</a>, &#8220;I&#8217;ll probably never put my hand over my heart&#8221; for the national anthem ever again.
At Tuesday&#8217;s World Cup match against Thailand, Rapinoe kept her word. The openly gay forward refused to put her hand over her heart and sing along to the national anthem, which was apparently a &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47169/us-womens-soccer-co-captain-ill-probably-never-hank-berrien">F you</a>&#8221; to &#8220;sexist,&#8221; &#8220;racist,&#8221; and &#8220;small-minded&#8221; President Donald Trump.
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American football player Megan Rapinoe refuses to sing the national anthem as a &amp; # 39; F You to Trump &amp; # 39; <a href="https://t.co/Loj79r5TXZ">https://t.co/Loj79r5TXZ</a> <a href="https://t.co/Yl9J8wvA27">pic.twitter.com/Yl9J8wvA27</a>
&#8212; XpressNews (@xpressnewsasia) <a href="https://twitter.com/xpressnewsasia/status/1138606516733456384?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 12, 2019</a></blockquote>
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During the Yahoo! Sports <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47169/us-womens-soccer-co-captain-ill-probably-never-hank-berrien">interview</a>, Rapinoe proudly dubbed herself &#8220;a walking protest when it comes to the Trump administration&#8221; because of &#8220;everything&#8221; she &#8220;stands for,&#8221; hinting at her sexuality.
&#8220;I feel like it&#8217;s kind of defiance in and of itself to just be who I am and wear the jersey, and represent it. Because I&#8217;m as talented as I am, I get to be here, you don&#8217;t get to tell me if I can be here or not,&#8221; she said.
&#8220;So it&#8217;s kind of a good &#8216;F you&#8217; to any sort of inequality or bad sentiments that the [Trump] administration might have towards people who don&#8217;t look exactly like him. Which, God help us if we all looked like him. Scary. Really scary. Ahh, disturbing,&#8221; added the soccer star.
The Internet was not pleased with Rapinoe&#8217;s move &#8212; viewing the protest as not a knock against Trump, but a hit against those who&#8217;ve selflessly sacrificed for her freedoms to, for example, protest the national anthem. In other words, Rapinoe&#8217;s American privilege was lost on her due to her blind hatred for Trump.
Here are some of the reactions following Rapinoe&#8217;s protest:
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Spineless act for publicity. Didn&#8217;t feel strongly enough to quit the team &amp;not represent the US. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/snoozefest?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#snoozefest</a> 
US soccer star Megan Rapinoe stays true to her word: Doesn&#8217;t sing national anthem before Thailand match | Fox News <a href="https://t.co/WokjAlULgz">https://t.co/WokjAlULgz</a>
&#8212; Amber Smith (@AmberSmithUSA) <a href="https://twitter.com/AmberSmithUSA/status/1138632908493791232?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 12, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Nice win ladies. Don&#8217;t tell me how this ends up. I don&#8217;t care. Not watching. <a href="https://t.co/ofJ8DJAgp8">https://t.co/ofJ8DJAgp8</a>
&#8212; Robert J. O&#8217;Neill (@mchooyah) <a href="https://twitter.com/mchooyah/status/1138571527547432961?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 11, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Someone should tell <a href="https://twitter.com/mPinoe?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@mPinoe</a> that people actually give a shit about the NFL. And they got crushed.
&#8212; Robert J. O&#8217;Neill (@mchooyah) <a href="https://twitter.com/mchooyah/status/1138576976007049216?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 11, 2019</a></blockquote>
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After we all looked back last week on the incredible sacrifices and loss of life suffered on D-Day and remembered the American heroes who made victory possible while marking the 75th Anniversary&#8212; the timing of this move seems incredibly callous.
<a href="https://t.co/lrUwSVlYQr">https://t.co/lrUwSVlYQr</a>
&#8212; Kari Lake Fox 10 (@KariLakeFox10) <a href="https://twitter.com/KariLakeFox10/status/1138695861284696065?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 12, 2019</a></blockquote>
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So you protest a president by dishonoring yourself and the entire nation? Statists hate America: Megan Rapinoe: My national anthem protests are an &#8216;F you&#8217; to Trump administration <a href="https://t.co/RB6rIDOulR">https://t.co/RB6rIDOulR</a>
&#8212; Chris Loesch (@ChrisLoesch) <a href="https://twitter.com/ChrisLoesch/status/1138847184030449664?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 12, 2019</a></blockquote>
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You <a href="https://twitter.com/mPinoe?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@mPinoe</a> play for Team USA, not team You. <a href="https://twitter.com/USWNT?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@USWNT</a> <a href="https://t.co/TAfyMP64Xg">https://t.co/TAfyMP64Xg</a>
&#8212; Andrew Wilkow (@WilkowMajority) <a href="https://twitter.com/WilkowMajority/status/1138577339539845120?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 11, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Megan Rapinoe needs to be booted for her lack of patriotism. Why play for a country you hate, smh. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/USWNT?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#USWNT</a>
&#8212; Big Dawg (@Moutdaman1) <a href="https://twitter.com/Moutdaman1/status/1138522427930152961?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 11, 2019</a></blockquote>
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so weird to have a scowl while your national anthem, the one that gave you the freedom to pretty much actually PLAY in this game <a href="https://twitter.com/mPinoe?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@mPinoe</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/USWNT?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#USWNT</a>
&#8212; Swami (@SwamiG8R) <a href="https://twitter.com/SwamiG8R/status/1138520352202661894?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 11, 2019</a></blockquote>
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The only obnoxious moment the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/USWNT?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#USWNT</a> has is each game when Rapinoe looks like she hates the country that made her a star during the national anthem. She disrespects a nation and her team to stick it to one guy who temporarily holds an office. Crazy.
&#8212; Eric Goranson (@EricAlan) <a href="https://twitter.com/EricAlan/status/1138898240982663168?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 12, 2019</a></blockquote>
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I love that people are so outraged at the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/USWNT?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#USWNT</a> for scoring too many goals and/or excessively celebrating. The real travesty is the mockery made of our country, its national anthem, and those that defend it. Hands over hearts; basic respect for the flag and our country.
&#8212; Mike MacGregor (@mikeymac0908) <a href="https://twitter.com/mikeymac0908/status/1138847020851109890?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 12, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Megan Rapinoe said that she would probably never sing the national anthem again before a game as a sort of protest against the president.
Your disrespectful to those who gave all to keep our freedom &amp; America safe.
Disrespectful liberal!! <a href="https://t.co/Cyecjf7WOk">https://t.co/Cyecjf7WOk</a>
&#8212; RICK MAGA (@barmore27) <a href="https://twitter.com/barmore27/status/1138776493549588480?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 12, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Another spoiled one that has no actual understanding or appreciation of what they have here, or what is takes to keep it. They can always go live in that perfect other country. Oh, that&#8217;s right, there is no such a thing as a perfect other country. <a href="https://t.co/JsEol8yMhD">https://t.co/JsEol8yMhD</a>
&#8212; Lee Culhane (@CulhaneLee) <a href="https://twitter.com/CulhaneLee/status/1138557526197383171?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 11, 2019</a></blockquote>
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As previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47169/us-womens-soccer-co-captain-ill-probably-never-hank-berrien">reported</a> by The Daily Wire, Rapinoe began kneeling during the anthem in 2016. &#8220;I know what it means to look at the flag and not have it protect all of your liberties,&#8221; the athlete claimed at the time.
Rapinoe was forced to drop the kneeling act after the United States Soccer Federation responded with a policy requiring the national team to &#8220;stand respectfully.&#8221;
&#8220;Our national anthem is an opportunity &#8230; to reflect upon the liberties and freedom we all appreciate in this country. As part of the privilege to represent your country, we have an expectation that our players and coaches will stand and honor our flag while the national anthem is played,&#8221; a <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnDHalloran/status/776607393098661889">statement</a> from the organization said.
Despite publicly praising the United States and acknowledging that she will &#8220;respect&#8221; the standing policy, Rapinoe bashed the bylaw in May, telling Yahoo! Sports: &#8220;Using this blanketed patriotism as a defense against what the protest actually is was pretty cowardly. I think the NFL does it. I felt like the statement from U.S. Soccer, and then the rule they made without ever talking to me, that was the same as what the NFL was doing &#8212; just to not have the conversation, to try to just stop me from doing what I&#8217;m doing instead of at least having a conversation, and trying to figure out a [solution] that makes sense for everyone.&#8221;

Megan Rapinoe Slammed After Ignoring National Anthem As ‘F You’ To Trump

Soccer

On Monday&#8217;s episode of &#8220;The Michael Knowles Show,&#8221; the host explains why the &#8216;queen of sin,&#8217; pride, has become a virtue in our culture and why that is a bad thing. 
Why is it called &#8220;pride?&#8221; It&#8217;s because the Left has a far bigger agenda than sexual tolerance. Sex is just the way &#8230; because we all love sex and we think about sex all the time and it&#8217;s a good way to pull people in and attract people. I think, at this point, homosexuality is totally tangential to Pride Month. Now it&#8217;s about gender, it&#8217;s about sexual identity, and there aren&#8217;t just two genders, there are 56 different genders. There is also a sexual pride, a fat pride, a skinny pride, there are all kinds of pride.
What is pride? Pride is excessive love of one&#8217;s own excellence. Pride is the opposite of humility. If pride is the queen of all sin, humility is the queen of the virtues and they&#8217;re exactly the opposite. Vice and virtue, sin and virtue, are the opposite and pride and humility are exact opposites.
We know that humility is the beginning of all wisdom. We know this from Scripture. We know this just from our own experience. Proud people come off like idiots. When you meet a proud person, no matter how popular they are, no matter how many credentials they have, they seem like idiots. And when you meet a humble person, even if he has no education, even if he&#8217;s from a humble station in life, they often come off as very wise.
In a healthy culture, we approach serious questions with humility. Serious people approach questions with humility. So instead of &#8220;pride&#8221; parades, if we had a humble culture, and people who have differing sexual preferences wanted to be more accepted, they might have a parade that was called the, &#8220;Please Don&#8217;t Ostracize Me For My Sexual Preferences or Sexual Behavior Parade.&#8221; Humility would be the recognition that we are all very flawed people, which is certainly the case.
Every single person that you have ever met is a very flawed person. Pride is the opposite; pride is the fantasy that we&#8217;re all perfect and that is what is being embraced and pushed by the Left. The leftist agenda is to suggest that human nature is perfectible, and we&#8217;re on our way to Progress &#8212; that&#8217;s what progress with a capital P means. And so, progressives see the utopia and they see perfect human nature and we&#8217;re just marching there, we&#8217;re so close, so just give us a little bit more money and a little bit more power.
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We have a culture that values the self above all other things. So, in a good culture, you have selflessness. You have people doing acts of charity for each other and you have people sacrificing for each other, for their children, for future generations. But in our culture, we don&#8217;t have selflessness.
We&#8217;re about to have the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of storming Normandy. That was an act of selflessness for the country. That&#8217;s unimaginable today. What we have today are parades celebrating the self. We have self-love and we have self-care. We have selfishness.
Selflessness is replaced by selfishness and humility is replaced by pride. It is a horrible thing. No matter your sexual preferences, no matter your sexual views, no matter your religious views, no matter your moral views, pride is terrible.
It will ruin society and it will ruin your life. If you live in a proud way if you think you&#8217;re so great and everyone else is just kind of shorting you and cheating you, and you&#8217;ve got a big chip on your shoulder, and everyone&#8217;s worse than you are, and you&#8217;re so much better than everyone else, you&#8217;re going to have a terrible life. Do not be proud. You have no reason to be proud, you should be humble. We should have humility parades.

KNOWLES: The Problem With Pride

Gay Rights

LGBT

Trump Administration

According to The Times of Israel, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif &#8212; who was the Islamic Republic&#8217;s top diplomat during the negotiation of President Barack Obama&#8217;s signature Iran nuclear <strike>capitulation</strike> deal &#8212; is accusing recently <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45789/all-3-major-israeli-tv-channels-declare-netanyahu-hank-berrien">re-elected</a> Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, along with the Mohammed bin Salman-led government of Saudi Arabia, of instigating an American war with Iran.
Per <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/zarif-accuses-netanyahu-and-saudis-of-trying-to-provoke-us-into-war-with-iran/">The Times of Israel</a>:
<blockquote>
Iran&#8217;s top diplomat said Wednesday U.S. President Donald Trump&#8217;s aim &#8220;is to bring us to our knees to talk&#8221; &#8212; but national security adviser John Bolton and key US allies in the Mideast want &#8220;regime change at the very least&#8221; and the &#8220;disintegration of Iran.&#8221;
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said he doubts Trump wants conflict because the president ran on a campaign promise &#8220;not to waste another $7 trillion in our region in order to make the situation only worse.&#8221;
But Zarif said what he called &#8220;the B team&#8221; &#8212; Bolton, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Saudi Arabia&#8217;s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed &#8212; is trying &#8220;to push Iran to take action&#8221; as a pretext for &#8220;crazy&#8221; and &#8220;adventurous&#8221; U.S. actions.
</blockquote>
The comments come as the United States recently ended all remaining oil waivers for Iranian crude exports and therefore tightened sanctions even further on the Iranian mullocracy. The Daily Wire&#8217;s Kassy Dillon <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46296/trump-administration-seeks-stop-all-countries-kassy-dillon">reported</a> earlier this week:
<blockquote>
On Monday, the Trump administration announced that the U.S. would increase its pressure on Iran by cracking down on countries that import Iranian oil. 
Last year, the Trump administration provided sanction waivers to several countries that purchased oil from Iran. But on Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States would not renew the waivers after they expire on May 2.
&#8220;Almost one year ago, after withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, President Trump implemented the strongest pressure campaign in history against the Islamic Republic of Iran. The goal remains simple: to deprive the outlaw regime of the funds it has used to destabilize the Middle East for four decades and incentivize Iran to behave like a normal country.&#8221;
</blockquote>
The Times of Israel also notes Iran&#8217;s response to Trump&#8217;s further upping of sanctions on the world&#8217;s number one terror-exporting regime. &#8220;Iran reiterated its long-running threat to close the Strait of Hormuz if it&#8217;s prevented from using the crucial waterway in the Persian Gulf through which about a third of all oil traded at sea passes,&#8221; the outlet noted. &#8220;The U.S. Navy has in the past accused Iranian patrol boats of harassing American warships in the waterway.&#8221;
Iran frequently threatens the Jewish state of Israel with existential elimination. But Shiite Iran and Saudi Arabia, which is the iconic center of the Sunni Arab world, also have a longstanding fierce regional rivalry of their own. Iran and Saudi Arabia engage in frequent proxy conflicts against one another, such as the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44687/course-tlaib-omar-serve-shills-irans-bloody-war-josh-hammer">current civil war</a> in Saudi Arabia&#8217;s neighboring country of Yemen. After the 2015 signing of the Iran nuclear deal, many Sunni Arab states &#8212; such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates &#8212; have extensively warmed their military and intelligence-sharing relations with Israel, due to their mutual arch-foe of an empowered Iran.

Top Iranian Minister Says Israel And Saudis Are Trying To Goad U.S. And Iran Into War

Israel

Saudi Arabia

Those who would claim that U.S. sanctions led to Venezuela&#8217;s downfall would do well to check their facts before speaking.
On Thursday&#8217;s episode of BBC One&#8217;s &#8220;This Week,&#8221; host Andrew Neil took former English politician Ken Livingstone to task for suggesting the U.S. is responsible for the chaos in Venezuela. Livingstone had suggested that U.S. sanctions on Venezuela&#8217;s state-owned oil firm cost the country &#8220;11 billion pounds a year.&#8221;
&#8220;Now, that&#8217;s an important impact on their economy,&#8221; Livingstone said.
Neil responded by asking when the U.S. oil sanctions were imposed, to which Livingstone responded: &#8220;I can&#8217;t remember when it started.&#8221;
Neil cut him off and told him that the sanctions were imposed &#8220;this week.&#8221; Livingstone tried to push back and say this was just the &#8220;latest&#8221; round of sanctions, but Neil wasn&#8217;t having any of it.
&#8220;No, no. Until then there have been no oil sanctions on Venezuela. Indeed, the United States, until this week, was Venezuela&#8217;s biggest importer &#8211; exporter &#8211; of oil. The 600,000 barrels of oil a day were exported from Venezuela to America. There have been no oil sanctions,&#8221; Neil said.
Livingstone tried to counter this by saying the U.S. has imposed sanctions on Venezuela like they have on Cuba and Nicaragua, but when pressed by Neil, couldn&#8217;t name what those sanctions allegedly were.
&#8220;The Venezuelan economy has shrunk by 50% in five years, what U.S. sanctions caused that?&#8221; Neil asked.
&#8220;Well, in the first place, it was the collapse of the oil price. That was damaging,&#8221; Livingstone said.
Neil pointed out that the oil price drop wasn&#8217;t a sanction. Livingstone again tried to blame U.S. sanctions and was again asked: &#8220;What were they?&#8221; Livingstone didn&#8217;t know.
Neil pushed back by noting the first sanctions against Venezuela came in 2015 under President Barack Obama, and were aimed &#8220;solely at regime members suspected of corruption and human rights abuses.&#8221;
&#8220;That was all. Their assets were frozen. That cannot bring down an economy nor create hyperinflation,&#8221; Neil said. &#8220;So, I ask you again, what U.S. sanctions have caused this collapse in the economy?&#8221;
Livingstone at this point tried to claim that U.S. sanctions are &#8220;illegal under international law,&#8221; again avoiding Neil&#8217;s question.
Livingstone resorted to saying the information he has was from the Venezuelan ambassador, who said the oil sanctions &#8211; which have been in effect for one week &#8211; were costing the country &#8220;$11 billion a year.&#8221;
&#8220;There was not a single trading sanction on Venezuela,&#8221; Neil responded. &#8220;You could export or import anything other than arms. There were no restrictions. Under this same time, Venezuela got $80 billion in loans from China and Russia. So, why did the economy collapse?&#8221;
Livingstone, yet again, blamed the collapse of oil prices and U.S. sanctions, which he can&#8217;t name, for the rapid decline of the country.
Livingstone suggested Neil was wrong about how long U.S. sanctions have been in place against Venezuela. The Congressional Research Service <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IF10715.pdf">has a report</a> about these sanctions that was updated on February 1. It stated that sanctions have been used &#8220;for more than a decade,&#8221; so Neil is wrong when he says the first sanctions came in 2015. But, the sanctions were directed at specific individuals for drugs, terrorism, sex trafficking, and other human rights abuses. The sanctions did not target the Venezuelan economy and could not account for the rapid decline.
Watch the full interview below:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
This clip of <a href="https://twitter.com/afneil?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@afneil</a> demolishing Ken Livingstone&#8217;s argument that socialist Venezuela&#8217;s woes were caused by &#8216;US sanctions&#8217; is utterly delicious. <a href="https://t.co/wSGKUCWWzl">pic.twitter.com/wSGKUCWWzl</a>
&#8212; Caleb Bond (@TheCalebBond) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheCalebBond/status/1091326743292534785?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 1, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>

WATCH: British Journalist DESTROYS Argument That U.S. Sanctions, Not Socialism, Hurt Venezuela

Venezuela

On Thursday, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Representative Francis Rooney (R-FL) <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-joint-resolution/1/actions">introduced</a> a joint resolution to amend the Constitution of the United States. The proposed amendment would place term limits on elected officials in the Senate and House.
The text of S.J.Res.1 reads:
<blockquote>
SECTION 1. No person who has served three terms as a Representative shall be eligible for election to the House of Representatives. For purposes of this section, the election of a person to fill a vacancy in the House of Representatives shall be included as one term in determining the number of terms that such person has served as a Representative if the person fills the vacancy for more than one year.
SECTION 2. No person who has served two terms as a Senator shall be eligible for election or appointment to the Senate. For purposes of this section, the election or appointment of a person to fill a vacancy in the Senate shall be included as one term in determining the number of terms that such person has served as a Senator if the person fills the vacancy for more than three years.
SECTION 3. No term beginning before the date of the ratification of this article shall be taken into account in determining eligibility for election or appointment under this article.
</blockquote>
The bill, which is co-sponsored by Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), was introduced and &#8220;read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary,&#8221; according to the official <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-joint-resolution/1/cosponsors">website</a> for the United States Congress.
In a press release, Cruz <a href="https://www.cruz.senate.gov/?p=press_release&amp;id=4245">stated</a>:
<blockquote>
For too long, members of Congress have abused their power and ignored the will of the American people. Term limits on members of Congress offer a solution to the brokenness we see in Washington, D.C. It is long past time for Congress to hold itself accountable. I urge my colleagues to submit this constitutional amendment to the states for speedy ratification.
</blockquote>
This isn&#8217;t the first time Cruz has proposed term limits. In January 2017, the senator introduced a joint resolution <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-joint-resolution/2/text">identical</a> to the one he proposed on Thursday, and it was referred to Judiciary Committee.
At the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Cruz said the following about term limits:
<blockquote>
This election was the American people saying, &#8220;Enough already with the corruption in Washington.&#8221; It&#8217;s both parties. It&#8217;s Democrats and Republicans who have been here too long, who have become captured by this city &#8230; what&#8217;s amazing is the support for this, it cuts across, in this polarized time, you get supermajorities of Republicans, of Democrats, of independents, who all say, &#8220;Throw the bums out,&#8221; and we ought to listen.
</blockquote>
Cruz later added that he wants the American people to &#8220;hold us accountable.&#8221;
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/g2NweFmUz3E" width="720"></iframe></div>
The idea of term limits isn&#8217;t a new one, nor is it one about which everyone agrees. There are those who believe that elections serve as a type of term limit, and that if the American people are no longer satisfied with a particular politician, they can and will vote them out.
Perhaps the most recent example of vote-based term limiting is the <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Claire_McCaskill">defeat</a> of former Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) in the 2018 midterm elections.
McCaskill took on Republican incumbent James Talent in the 2006 midterm election, and won. In 2012, she routed Republican challenger Todd Akin. After serving two terms in the United States Senate, McCaskill lost her seat to Republican Josh Hawley by more than five percentage points.
That said, term limits have been applied in the past. In 1947 &#8212; approximately two and a half years after Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected for a fourth term &#8212; Congress <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendments/amendment-xxii">introduced</a> what would later become the 22nd Amendment, which places a two-term limit on presidents. The Amendment was ratified in February 1951.
The idea of term limits is also popular among the American people. In 2013, a <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/159881/americans-call-term-limits-end-electoral-college.aspx">Gallup</a> survey showed that 75% of Americans would vote in favor of a congressional term limit law. In 2016, a <a href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/october_2016/more_voters_than_ever_want_term_limits_for_congress">Rasmussen</a> survey showed similar results, with 74% of &#8220;likely U.S. voters&#8221; favoring term limits.
When The Daily Wire spoke with Rep. Rooney, he noted that there are numerous &#8220;tangential benefits&#8221; to a term limit amendment. He also stated that the advantages of the incumbent, including but not limited to name recognition, can sometimes make it difficult to use voting as an effective means of limiting the time an elected official spends in office:
<blockquote>
There are a lot of advantages to the incumbency that make it more difficult. People become more skilled at building up their name ID, which is kind of like a capital asset. For a politician, name ID is like owning an oil well. It becomes harder and harder for people to lose under those circumstances.
Plus, I think [term limits] would be a predestined foreshortening of career; it would change the tenor of public service in Washington. It would mean that the special interests would limit their investment in these people, and these people would have to limit their investment in the special interests, and be looking down the road to the future. [They] wouldn&#8217;t have time to build up these long, cozy ties with their favorite lobbyist.
</blockquote>
As for potential Democratic support for the joint resolution, Rooney stated that although former Rep. Beto O&#8217;Rourke &#8220;was the only Democrat member of the term limits caucus last time,&#8221; it&#8217;s possible that elected term limit advocates &#8220;can recruit some more support now.&#8221;
In order to <a href="https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution">pass</a> an amendment to the Constitution, two-thirds of the House and Senate must approve, and then it must be ratified by 38 state legislatures (three-fourths of all states). If passed and ratified, it would become the 28th Amendment.

Sen. Ted Cruz And Rep. Francis Rooney Introduce ‘Term Limits’ Amendment

Congress

Marco Rubio

Mike Lee

Republican Party

Ted Cruz

In a move that is motivated by everything political and nothing factual, the United States has been listed among the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, according to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/united-states-added-list-most-dangerous-countries-journalists-first-time-n949676?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma">NBC News</a>.
In its <a href="https://rsf.org/sites/default/files/worldwilde_round-up.pdf">annual report</a>, the free-press advocacy group Reporters Without Borders lists the United States among countries like Mexico, India, Syria, India, and Afghanistan for being one of the most dangerous for journalists based on the number who died in the U.S. in 2018. Not one of the deaths they listed, however, had anything to do with the U.S. government. Four of the six deaths listed stemmed from the Capital Gazette shooting (performed by a crazed lunatic who had a beef with the newspaper); the other two were killed while covering a storm in North Carolina.
&#8220;The United States joined the ranks of the world&#8217;s deadliest countries for the media this year, with a total of six journalists killed,&#8221; the group reports. &#8220;Four journalists were among the five employees of the Capital Gazette, a local newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, who .were killed on 28 June when a man walked in and opened fire with a shotgun. He had been harassing the newspaper for six years on Twitter about a 2011 article that named him. It was the deadliest attack on a media outlet in the US in modern history. Two other journalists, a local TV anchor and cameraman, were killed by a falling tree while covering Subtropical Storm Alberto&#8217;s extreme weather in North Carolina in May.&#8221;
Though Reporters Without Borders does not explicitly state it, the media has incessantly blamed President Trump&#8217;s rhetoric toward the media for the Capital Gazette shooting this past summer.
&#8220;We won&#8217;t forget being called an enemy of the people,&#8221; the Capital Gazette <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/32536/capital-gazette-editorial-we-wont-forget-being-paul-bois">editorial staff said following the shooting</a>. &#8220;No, we won&#8217;t forget that. Because exposing evil, shining light on wrongs and fighting injustice is what we do.&#8221;
&#8220;Our community has rallied around us to show they understand who we are, and that we are not the enemy of the people,&#8221; it continued. &#8220;We are your neighbors, your friends. We are you.&#8221;
Of course, all of these deaths are tragic, but Reporters Without Borders lists them among journalists who have been killed either by the hands of local officials or organized crime. While the group notes that it distinguishes &#8220;between journalists who were deliberately targeted and those who were killed while reporting in the field,&#8221; it nevertheless lumps the United States among some strange bedfellows. Here is how the group describes the situation in Mexico, for instance:
<blockquote>
In Mexico, which has many press freedom predators, journalists who cover stories related to political corruption (especially at the local level) and organized crime are often the targets of intimidation and attacks or execution-style murder. Because of the widespread corruption, impunity reigns and is reaching unprecedented levels, feeding the vicious cycle of violence. The protection provided to journalists who have been threatened is very often insufficient and ineffective.
</blockquote>
The stories of journalists being killed in Mexico include the likes of website editor Rubén Pat, who was gunned down on the street after he requested urgent protection following the murder of a reporter in his employment. Another reporter, Mario Leonel Gómez Sánchez, was killed by gunmen on a motorcycle &#8220;the day after members of the Federal Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists announced that the government was yet again cutting back funding for protection.&#8221;
Listing the United States as one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists seems like an underhanded smack at President Trump for his standoffish nature against what he describes as the &#8220;fake news media&#8221; and for his keeping the status-quo with Saudi Arabia following the murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi.

Oh, Please: U.S. Added To List Of Most Dangerous Countries For Journalists

Journalism

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