Columns

May

2020

Keep Calm and Cloister On…

As the reader will likely have noticed, there’s a common theme playing out in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic on the part of some of our elected officials. Here, I refer to the emergence of little tin gods among leftist governors, some of whom are resisting calls to ease stay-at-home orders and social distancing restrictions. This week, conservative commentator and former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino excoriated certain governors in this regard, calling them “mini tyrants” as he condemned California Gov. Gavin Newsom for extending marginally constitutional stay-at-home orders and keeping parks and beaches in his state closed.

Newsom isn’t alone, of course. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker was taken to task over his stay-at-home order on religious grounds (which a U.S. district judge nevertheless ruled as constitutional earlier this week), and New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s clumsy vacillation between prudence and leftist objectives continues to provide cheap entertainment on a daily basis—at least for those who don’t live in my former home state.

Anyone who’s been paying attention will be aware that some of the most egregious actions have been taken by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, whom I believe is emotionally disturbed on a very deep level. Arrogant and imperious, she probably exemplifies the deportment against which Mr. Bongino railed.

It’s obvious that the nationwide cloistering is getting old for a lot of folks, and most Americans want to see restrictions eased in their states, largely for economic reasons. It’s also noteworthy that private citizens who are making a lot of noise in this regard are on both the left and right sides of the political spectrum.

I certainly agree that some of these little tin gods have abused their offices, and it’s evident that a few are desperately clinging to the augmented powers they’ve enjoyed during this pandemic. As I indicated earlier in this space, some would probably love to see the crisis drag on indefinitely. Part of this has to do with the advantage they believe they will have over President Donald Trump going into the November election the longer the pandemic persists, but I believe that power intoxication is playing a far bigger role.

Perhaps it is because I was exposed to the concept of abuse of power and authority at a very young age, but I have very little tolerance for those who do abuse their offices, whether in education, the criminal justice system or government. Quite honestly, I don’t think there’s anything I find more despicable. My go-to is desperately wishing we could have such people rendered down for fuel, but I realize that’s not how we do things in America.

In good conscience however, I have to admit that there are stupid things being said and done across the board (meaning by parties on both sides of the aisle). Some of this has clearly been reactive rather than deliberative, and has the potential to significantly compound our problems.

Case in point: I’m in contact with people who work on the front lines in the battle against COVID-19 on a daily basis and, as I’ve said more than once, I’ve worked with infectious diseases. I know that this pathogen is not “just like the flu,” and despite the very real political opportunism afoot, I don’t believe the risks are being overplayed. This is a serious illness, and it would seem to me that erring on the side of caution with a disease that could conceivably kill you is probably a pretty good idea.

Then we have the armed protesters who demonstrated against Gov. Whitmer’s stay-at-home orders outside Michigan’s Capitol building, which drew some very well-placed criticism from Fox News’ Sean Hannity.

While I readily confess that Gov. Whitmer would be close to the top of my list for rendering over her antics, you don’t lay siege to a government building brandishing firearms to “make a statement.” You do this when all other contingencies have failed, as our founders intended. Inasmuch as Whitmer isn’t rounding up coronavirus patients and having them incinerated, it occurs to me that there is still sufficient time to remedy the Michigan situation in a civilized manner, either through recall, or simply voting Whitmer out of office at the earliest opportunity—which actually is how we do things in America.

In the current political climate, it is imperative that those of us who have the capacity to govern our passions double our efforts to do so despite the stresses and frustrations attendant to this pandemic. We already know that those on the left lack the ability to do so, and that any lapses on our part in this area will only provide fodder for their propaganda and wild accusations, as well as inordinately alarming our neighbors.

Oct

2019

A “Cold Civil War” We Absolutely Must Win

By Erik Rush •

Last Friday on his radio show, conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh said that America is in the middle of a “Cold Civil War” whose origins lie in Democrat attempts to oust President Donald Trump and preserve the culture of corruption in Washington.
While this is most certainly true, it is important that those who acknowledge this are mindful of the fact that despite the ceaseless incendiary rhetoric and abject hatred aimed at Trump, the president is really just a symbolic representation of the political left’s real enemy: The American people.

Most recently, House Democrats stepped up their efforts to impeach the president despite their inability to cite even one high crime or misdemeanor he has allegedly committed. This was largely catalyzed by the White House’s public focus on Democratic presidential hopeful and former vice president Joe Biden’s involvement in corruption stemming from his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China and Ukraine. Recent inquiries and press coverage surrounding a telephone call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, supposedly spurred on by a shadowy whistleblower, proved to be little more than a diversion calculated to obfuscate the former vice president’s questionable role in his son’s business.

I could spend all day enumerating and dismantling the lies, calumnies and projection Democrats and the hard left have put forth in their quest to tarnish Trump’s presidency in recent months, but I’d like to return to Mr. Limbaugh’s statement for a moment.

The Cold War represented the period of geopolitical tension between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union which lasted from shortly after World War II through 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. The nomenclature was derived from the fact that despite there having been no direct military engagement between the two sides, pretty much everything else that goes on between warring nations was going on; military buildups, proxy wars, espionage, sabotage and the like. All that would have been needed at the time was an initial military strike or declaration of war, and the game would have been on. Since this would have likely resulted in a global exchange of nuclear weapons, it is fortunate that none of these things occurred.

Considering that the primary distinction between a “cold war” and a real war is the lack of actual fighting, it may be helpful to examine the sentiments and the similarities common to both the Cold War of the post WWII era and the “Cold Civil War” referenced by Mr. Limbaugh.
The first commonality that occurs to me is that during the Cold War, the U.S. was pitted against a communist regime, the USSR. During this period, it was clear to nearly all Americans that we were resisting a political system so odious and amoral that the risk of nuclear annihilation during the course of our efforts to overcome this regime was quite acceptable.

In other words, nearly all Americans would have rather gone down fighting than “go communist.” There was very little that either side was unwilling to do to prevail over the other, short of triggering actual military engagement. Despite this, we did come close a few times.

The second concerns the methods and strategies employed by the USSR during the Cold War. While these were common to many communist regimes of the era (such as China, North Korea and Cuba), they became familiar to all Americans during this period. The charges of Soviet premiers and other officials against America, our leaders and our people were so fallacious and patently bizarre that they became fodder for the jokes of stand-up comedians, and were even ridiculed in the American press.

They were also a pointed and ongoing lesson in the abject immorality of the political left. During the height of the Cold War (chiefly, the 1960s through the mid-1980s), Americans who embraced leftist politics were regarded as fringe elements who, while troublesome, were unlikely to amass any real political power.

What’s unfortunate here is that despite the fringe designation, leftists were patiently and quite effectively doing just that.

As we know, the election of Donald Trump represented a popular rejection of encroaching socialistic policies and the corrupt status quo in Washington. Between this and Trump’s efforts to expose and dismantle that corrupt culture and elements of the Deep State, leftists have become undone, at least in the mental and emotional sense. Having been so patient over the previous 100 years, and having made substantial gains in ensuring their ascendency during the Obama administration, between the stakes involved and their mounting fear and desperation, it is clear that their strategy has become a do-or-die proposition.

The abject immorality of American left’s methods perfectly echoes those of leftist Cold War regimes, and their operatives are now shamelessly supporting policies and measures so antithetical to our traditions, the Constitution and the rule of law that merely suggesting them 50 years ago would have resulted in the suggesting party or parties being placed on an FBI watch list or worse.

On Monday, Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Kamala Harris argued on CNN that President Trump’s Twitter account ought to be suspended. Harris cited the president’s unacceptable rhetoric as a rationale for such a move, but the real motivation lies in the Democratic leadership’s knowledge that Trump is killing them on social media and has been doing so since he before he took office.

Last week, perhaps in a bid to re-energize his flagging presidential campaign, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) told an audience at Kent State University that only the government should be trusted with guns. O’Rourke, who said “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15” at the most recent Democratic debate, apparently doesn’t recall or doesn’t care that it was National Guard soldiers acting at the behest of the federal government who killed four people and left nine others injured at an infamous 1970 protest at that very university.

Add to this the increasing lawlessness of the left’s special interest groups, leftists both rich and poor, and leftist politicos unapologetically telegraphing their intention to install a fascistic socialist regime sooner or later, and the battle lines in this “Cold Civil War” have been clearly drawn.

These hard-line progressives and “Democratic Socialists” are neither; they’re communists, and as far as I’m concerned, a scorched Earth is still preferable to communism.

Given that, we had better find a way to effectively and completely disenfranchise leftists in America, and the only person in power currently making overtures toward doing so is our president. As economically-savvy as Trump is, I’m sure he’s aware that unlike the USSR, we can’t depend upon American leftists simply running out of money anytime soon.

Originally published in WorldNetDaily

Sep

2019

Leftists Traumatizing Kids for Political Gain

By Erik Rush •

There are a few key issues being debated surrounding the recent school climate strike movement and one of its principals, Greta Thunberg, the 16 year-old autistic environmental activist from Sweden who’s been plastered across press venues over the last couple of weeks. One is that the phenomenon is being driven by the most odious elements of the far left, and that adopting their climate policies would devastate Western economies and enslave populations.

Another is the argument that developed nations should most certainly not base their climate policy on the ranting of an ill-informed child with a developmental disability and horribly irresponsible parents who is being shamelessly exploited by the aforementioned far left elements among us.

This is of course leaving aside the fact that the chief scientific study addressing anthropogenic climate change (upon which climate change alarmists are basing their activism) has long since been debunked.

I remember the gas lines of the 1970s. I remember the photos and the footage of the smog enshrouding Pennsylvania’s steel mills and the anti-pollution PSAs that appeared on TV. I recall the alarmist entreaties of environmental activists back then, and their predictions that the planet was going to be a fossil fuel-less, airless, foodless, poisonous asphalt ball by 1990.
I also recall that none of those calamities ever came to pass.

The political left exploiting children to gain assent to their climate change agenda is only occurring because they know that tugging at heartstrings through the exploitation of children has worked in the past—but this column isn’t about Greta Thunberg or even the left’s climate change agenda.

The last, less frequently discussed aspect of the school climate strike is the highly-questionable morality attendant to enrolling children into political causes using fear and alarmism. Some have gone as far as to say that this rises to the level of child abuse, which I certainly believe it to be.

I’ve had several discussions with people in the field of mental health concerning the epidemic of depression and anxiety disorders amongst children, teens and young adults. Without exception, these have cited the portents of doom to which they are increasingly being exposed by parents, teachers, media and the press. Thus, I was not at all surprised when I began to see reports citing a growing number of children being treated specifically for anxiety disorders over their exposure to alarmist climate change doctrine.

Those on the political left are morally bankrupt; this has been demonstrated more clearly over the last few years than over the last few decades. Their habit of exploiting children to advance their agenda is nothing new however, nor is their habit of damaging them via emotional trauma in the process.

The early sexualization of children which began in the 1960s gave rise to cavalier sexual attitudes, an escalation in out-of-wedlock pregnancies, sexually-transmitted diseases and contributed to a rising divorce rate. Subsequent generations, many now parents themselves, succumbed even more to the pernicious “new sensibilities” being advanced by leftists, and are now happily indoctrinating their own children into sexual dysfunction and gender confusion.

While dragging children to “Close The Camps” demonstrations to protest a president who allegedly has it in for all brown people must be frightening, dragging them into the grotesque world of transvestites at a “Drag Queen Story Hour” poses even more danger to their emerging sexual sensibilities. At present, there are even parents who refuse to acknowledge the biological gender of their children, which promises to breed even more sexual dysfunction down the road.

The far left Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) recently introduced something they call the “Teaching Tolerance” campaign, which is being promoted nationwide in K-12 public school classrooms. Since diversity worship has become an important part of the liberal canon, there are millions of parents who have no problem with their children being indoctrinated into leftist notions of sexuality and “gender non-conformity.”

As one might expect, entertainment industry icons have been more than willing to do their part. More and more Hollywood stars are (very publicly) “coming out” as trans, gender non-conforming or pansexual; others have determined that they will not “impose gender norms” upon their children, even allowing their little boys to attend school in dresses.

The fruits of these grossly dysfunctional lifestyles often include depression, anxiety disorders and suicide, which occur in the LGBTQ community at a far higher rate than in the general population. But leftists have a handy explanation for this: It’s the lack of acceptance and “persecution” by “cisgendered” people which is leading to the emotional malaise and mental disorders within the LGBTQ population, rather than the disempowering lifestyle choices they’ve made.

Where does it end?

As I’ve said so many times in this space, it ends when the rest of us muster the courage to say “no” despite the schoolyard invective and accusations of bigotry the left employs in order to gain our capitulation. It ends when we become as loud and as determined as they are. It ends when we become willing to stand up and assert that this is not about tolerance; it’s about destroying the moral fabric of our society in order to advance a manifestly evil political agenda, and we will not stand for it one day longer.

Originally published in WorldNetDaily

Sep

2019

Americans’ Celebrity Worship, Demystified

By Erik Rush •

On Sept. 7, Fox News reported that actress Zooey Deschanel and her husband Jacob Pechenik decided to separate after four years of marriage. This bit of news was carried “below the fold,” but on the home page of the Fox News website. On Sept. 14, Fox reported that Deschanel was now dating “Property Brothers” star Jonathan Scott after splitting from husband. On Sept. 15, Fox carried a story about Scott’s comments on his romance with Deschanel, and a Sept. 17 installment carried both entertainers’ back story of how their romance was kindled.

Leaving aside the legendary superficiality of Hollywood romances and the moral ambivalence of people in the entertainment industry in general, there are some cultural observations here upon which I intend to expound.

More often than not during my morning scan of news sources, I run across at least one or two stories like those above. This is the case
whether we’re discussing Fox News, another alternative media source, or traditional media sources, although the latter do tend to give far more ink to celebrity news.

My thesis statement, or more accurately, my thesis question, is this: Who cares?

I’m not singling out Fox News on this one either, it’s just that their coverage handily illustrated the observations I’m addressing here. Nor is this a case of your humble commentator simply being frustrated with celebrities given how dedicated so many are to leftist politics and how vociferous their incessant, uninformed utterances typically are.

The central observation of which I speak is that Americans are far too keenly “tuned-in” to celebrities overall: Their lives, their romances, their children, their addictions, their adversities and their opinions. It’s one of those things that’s become so culturally ingrained we don’t even think about it, but even the most informed among us are guilty of this to some extent.

Granted that when a film or TV icon, a professional athlete or a high-profile music industry personality breaks the law or passes away, this is legitimate news, because they’re famous. Thus, the widely-reported college admissions scandal involving actress Lori Loughlin is legitimate news. Her beleaguered daughter making a vulgar Instagram post in her frustration attendant to the scandal and then deleting it however, is most definitely not newsworthy.

Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer appearing on “Dancing With The Stars” may be worth a mention above the fold because he
used to work for President Trump, but actor Nicholas Cage being unrecognizable at a movie premiere because he’s now sporting a full beard should most certainly be relegated to the Entertainment section, as should the decades-old story of an unrequited romance between Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra.

There’s also no escaping the newsworthiness of some of the incendiary political rhetoric emanating from entertainment industry celebrities and pro athletes these days. Considering the hostile political climate at present and the leftist leanings of so many celebrities, their presence in the news talking politics is pretty much unavoidable.

The phenomenon of this cult of personality in America has of course been exhaustively discussed over many decades, but given the political climate and the stakes at hand, I believe it’s more important than ever to put it into perspective.

Our proclivity for consuming titillating, salacious tripe is part of our nature as human beings, and could be called something of a collective but minor character defect. There are however, a lot of things we as human beings feel drawn to do but refrain from doing because we know that there are harmful aspects to certain behaviors.

I would submit that this entrenched celebrity fixation is one of them.

The culture of Hollywood—wherein celebrity worship had its genesis—has been freakish and narcissistic since the institution’s inception, but the impetus for cultivating this culture of worship around celebrities was originally motivated by money. Obviously, if a marketer cultivates an ongoing sense of awe and wonder around their product, consumers are more likely to buy in perpetuity. The same marketing strategy was then applied to pro athletes and music industry icons. It is a financial imperative that drives movie and record companies, TV producers and sports franchises to nurture an atmosphere in which fans wait with bated breath for the next story or sound bite from their favored star or icon.

While we’re at it, let’s not neglect the idiomatic derivation of such words as “star” and “icon.” These designations have always carried the
connotation of worship, so I’d wager it’s no accident that these were applied early on, and intentionally, in order to foster celebrity worship. Our aforementioned proclivity for consuming titillating, salacious tripe is now what the press and entertainment media count on as legions of managers, agents, publicists, paparazzi, celebrity-dedicated publications, and reporters work doggedly to keep celebrities on our radar.

It’s been said that one reason Americans have a tendency toward celebrity worship may be because we don’t have royalty, as they do in Britain. I believe that this is completely fallacious, nor do I think that Americans’ proclivity for engaging in celebrity worship of the British Royal Family has much to do with our historical ties to Britain.

In the end, I believe that celebrity worship in America comes down to one part consumerism and one part idolatry. It’s the idolatry part that concerns me, because this is being driven by the same agencies that are driving the culture war and socialist ascendancy.

And isn’t it curious that, as those agencies have encouraged Americans to abandon long-held traditional values and spiritual pursuits, they’ve provided us with a ready-made pantheon of gods to worship?

Originally published in WorldNetDaily

Sep

2019

Writer’s CBS Resignation: Thank a Self-Righteous Leftist

By Erik Rush •

Here’s a story that garnered some coverage in the establishment press, but which definitely needs to be addressed in the proper context because it is disgraceful and disgusting: A well-accomplished, well-respected black man was recently forced to resign from his job for using the dreaded n-word in his place of employment.

The word was reportedly used in context, which means that it was not directed at an individual. This is only part of what makes this disgraceful and disgusting. Suffice it to say that most conscientious folks find that word distasteful, but said in context, I personally don’t find it offensive in the least, regardless of the race of the person uttering it.

The point here being that when a distasteful word uttered in context becomes as troublesome in the workplace as a person exposing himself to a co-worker, we have a problem.

Earlier this year, novelist and screenwriter Walter Mosley quit the CBS drama “Star Trek: Discovery” after getting a formal complaint about him having used the dreaded n-word in the writer’s room. Following this, Mosley penned an account of the incident in an op-ed for The New York Times.
Long story short, Mosley is an old-school black guy with rough edges who speaks the way a lot of old-school black guys with rough edges

speak, especially when the creative juices are flowing—and it doesn’t matter who happens to be in attendance. Apparently this triggered some hypersensitive, putrid little snowflake at CBS who filed a complaint with the Human Relations department.
According to Mosley, the individual who complained was someone in the writer’s room, but he was never informed as to this person’s identity.

When most people who aren’t mincing, hypersensitive little snowflakes are offended by someone’s words or actions on the job, they typically take the issue to the offender. If they can’t straighten the issue out between the two of them, one or the other might take the problem to the Human Relations department. In most places of employment with HR departments (like CBS), when someone has a problem with another on the job, there’s a thing called moderation which they use to get the lay of the land and determine if anyone involved has violated the law or the company’s policies and procedures. Excepting very rare cases, they do not allow parties to remain anonymous.

Judging by his rhetoric, most of Mr. Mosley’s sensibilities lie in the liberal realm, but he has very strong beliefs regarding self-expression. He doesn’t believe that the Confederate flag should be outlawed, for example, nor that any person’s speech should be stultified simply because it makes someone else uncomfortable.

Make no mistake: In the end, this is not about race at all, it just happens to involve a black man and a racial epithet. What it’s really about is the atmosphere of hypersensitivity and censorship in which we are all increasingly operating, and this is being driven solely by far left radicals. Since Mr. Mosley happened to be working in an environment dominated by such people, unfortunately he ran afoul of their orthodoxy.

This is also about those on the left aggressively advancing their doctrine with all of the cavalier self-righteousness and sense of invulnerability of a Deep South bigot in the early 20th Century harassing a random black man for fun. As has become apparent over the last few years, there is no lie to big to tell, no calumny too damning to level, no tactic too amoral or illegal to employ in the name of socialist ascendancy.
“[T]he easiest way to silence a woman or a man,” Mosley wrote in ‘Times his op-ed, “is to threaten his or her livelihood. Let’s not accept the McCarthyism of secret condemnation.”

These days, threatening or destroying someone’s livelihood has become an essential weapon in the left’s arsenal. We’re all aware of the high-profile individuals whose livelihoods and fortunes were destroyed defending themselves against the illegal machinations of Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, but there are many whose livelihoods have been significantly damaged as a result of that cavalier self-righteousness and sense of invulnerability on the part of leftists.

Conservative media outlets have been a major target of tech giants’ censorship for some time, and even moreso since Donald Trump came to the presidency. As a result, the fortunes of many alternative media venues and those who work with and for them have turned very much for the worse. This is not widely discussed, perhaps as a point of pride, but also because we’re not a bunch of whining, putrid little snowflakes who can’t abide adversity, contrived and inequitable though it may be.

In the meantime, we have those on the far left who are attempting to dictate the use of gender-neutral pronouns and advancing the inclusion of sexual deviance in primary school curricula. We have the widespread doxxing of conservatives and Trump supporters being advocated even by Democrat lawmakers, and people of faith being accused of hate crimes for engaging in heretofore normal, inoffensive behavior. Draconian censorship on social media and online advertising platforms has become the norm. In similar fashion to that in which blacks were once viewed as inferior simply because they were black, whites, males and heterosexuals are increasingly being characterized as inherently evil simply for possessing those traits.

As always with the left, the consequence for disobedience is being labeled as a bigot, in which vandalism of one’s property or assault upon one’s person remains very much on the table.

Based on the progression observed in every other nation in which socialists have come to power, we know how this plays out. Our sense of inclusion, fair play, compassion and adherence to the rule of law have become liabilities, because these are the very things our enemies are using against us.

Rather than offering my opinion as to what I believe our course of action ought to be under these circumstances, I’ll leave the reader to carefully consider the previous paragraph and come to his or her own conclusions.

Originally published in WorldNetDaily

Sep

2019

What Will Future Americans Say After Our Next Civil War?

By Erik Rush •

It is unlikely that I’m the first person to whom this has occurred, but if the heretofore unthinkable should take place and the United States winds up on a civil war footing within the next decade or so, historians will probably cite many of the controversial and bizarre phenomena to which we are routinely being exposed as having been clear harbingers of that conflict.

In such a case, if we’re fortunate enough to defeat socialism once and for all, it’s probable that said historians will point to the enemy having surreptitiously coalesced its power over the previous hundred years, advancing draconian, liberty-stultifying policies that had failed when implemented in other nations during that period, but which appeared palatable to a populace that had been dumbed-down and propagandized by strategically-placed operatives in government, education, the press and entertainment media.

Perhaps documentary producers and classroom instructors will relate how the leftist-fostered moral decay which began during the latter part of the 20th Century gave rise not only to a general moral ambivalence among Americans, but to increased numbers of people retreating into apathy, addiction, sexual promiscuity and increasingly-bizarre and harmful forms of sexual deviance. Maybe they’ll tell of how socialist agitators organized these people, the members of ethnic minorities and real or imagined gender groups and sowed dissent among them, and between these groups and white Americans, who were framed as ruthless oppressors despite significant gains made during the Civil Rights Movement.

Following such a debacle, one would hope that the imperative for instruction in history and civics would make a comeback. It will probably be very illuminating for Americans to learn how socialists, who sought only power, reasoned that since even the poorest 20th Century American was too prosperous to abide a socialist system, they would have to sabotage and compromise the economy at every available opportunity, which they set about doing through entitlement programs, crony capitalism and widespread graft.

Entire media presentations and college courses might be offered, addressing how the press had been completely taken over by radical leftists. Citizens who had been accustomed to trusting the Fourth Estate suddenly learned that this body had been wholly given over to shameless propagandists. Those who learned this too late became their political pawns and boarded the express train to societal suicide.

High school instructors and college history professors might showcase the former WWII Nazi collaborator who’d become a billionaire via predatory global financial schemes, then used his vast wealth in an attempt to destroy the West, and America, from within. Students in classrooms of the future might be regaled with stories of how radicals who’d insinuated themselves in government had weakened our border security and immigration policy, leading to an influx of millions of low-skilled, poorly-educated masses, many from nations hostile to the United States. These emigrés went on to elect candidates with viciously anti-American sentiments to government, dangerously compromising the rule of law.

These students might learn of the hooded, black-clad thugs who carried out violent demonstrations and attacks on political opponents at their rallies, and how these miscreants were protected by leftists in local government and in Congress. They’d hear about how socialists had attempted to disarm citizens before the outbreak of open hostilities by demonizing firearms and law-abiding firearms owners. They might even learn about a few related crises orchestrated by the left, and how even gun crimes committed by their operatives were attributed to their political opponents or to a lack of “common sense” gun legislation.

They’d learn about the wholesale campaigns which took place in the press and in the technology sector to destroy the livelihoods of Christians, conservatives and other threats to socialist preeminence by demonizing individuals, organizations and businesses through doxxing and censorship.

If there’s still a United States of America in existence, citizens will hear about how our celebrated first black president was not-so-secretly committed to Islamic ascendency in America and had close ties to subversive Muslim groups whose mission was that of displacing the Constitution with Islamic law despite a stark incompatibility between the two systems.

There’s little doubt that latter-day Americans subject to these accounts would find them incredulous and quite surreal. How could so many have fallen for a creed so odious, and whose stock-in-trade was nothing but lies? Had their progenitors really sanctioned things like infanticide and tolerated a brisk market in dissected baby parts? Did they really let 350-pound, bearded males in dresses terrorize women and little girls in ladies’ rooms just because they said they “felt like women?” Did parents actually stand by while such individuals were invited into their local schools to instruct their children?

It’s altogether probable that, following a domestic upheaval costly in blood and treasure, generations following ours will ask themselves how a nation that was poised for success and prosperity following two world wars, which had begun to erase many of the lines of division that had existed for so long, suddenly imploded. They’ll wonder why, in light of our past patriotism and having collectively overcome so much adversity, we suddenly turned on each other.

Finally, they’ll wonder why we allowed a small, malignant faction to amass so much power and bring all of this about. Why didn’t we demand action against corrupt government officials and crony capitalists who were selling our sovereignty to the highest bidder? Why didn’t we demand that our borders be policed, as other nations did? Why did we allow legions of disruptive, America-hating foreign garbage to pour into our heartland and establish political strongholds?

What I’ve described here is probably among the best case scenarios that might follow another widespread, violent internal conflict in America. I for one shudder to consider the worst, but I’m sure many have considered this as well.

Originally published in WorldNetDaily

Aug

2019

Fake Conservatives in the Ranks

By Erik Rush •

On this Tuesday’s installment of the Fox News program “Fox & Friends,” my fellow commentator and radio host Larry Elder addressed Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin’s recent call to “burn down” the GOP to cleanse it of those who support President Donald Trump. Elder called Rubin’s claim that Trump had somehow perpetrated a hostile takeover of the Republican Party “absurd,” which it most certainly is.

Elder went on to assert that Rubin and a host of prominent media personalities who claim to be conservatives really aren’t, that their employers are well aware of this, and that their true mission is to undermine conservatism and the Republican Party.

“They hire these columnists who purport to be conservatives,” Elder said, “and they dump on the Republican Party and they dump on Trump.”

We’ve certainly seen a lot of this sort of thing over the last few years, and not just from liberal media outlets that pretend to fairness in reporting by hiring token conservatives who aren’t really conservatives. The frequency of occurrences such as the above and the instance of faux conservatives being outed have increased due to the fear and desperation on the part of establishment progressives, more commonly known as “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

In truth, the last decade has revealed far more in the way of professed conservatives revealing themselves to be progressive establishment hacks than many of us are comfortable with, and these occupy the ranks of politics, media and activism. To be fair, I’m not using one’s status as a Trump detractor as the sole basis for leveling this charge. One can be honestly opposed to aspects of Trump’s policies without being a fake conservative, but it is helpful if one articulates why. If such a person is merely chiming in with unpleasant abstractions, they’re no better than the far left mouthpieces who call Trump a racist.

Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes, founders of the now-defunct Weekly Standard, were once considered stalwarts of the conservative movement. As Reagan conservatives, they talked a great game, occasionally approaching the cerebral tones of William Buckley. If we were going to restore conservative values in politics, these were they guys who’d be at the forefront, many thought.

During America’s “fundamental transformation” that began to take place under Barack Obama however, many rank-and-file conservatives and commentators began to see far less of a response to his actions and his policies among these stalwarts than was deemed appropriate. Yes, we understood that a lot of Republican politicians were reluctant to offer too much criticism given how readily the race card was being played—but that shouldn’t have mattered to conservative media players and activists. When Kristol became one of the most prominent anti-Trumpers, his fate was sealed as far as many conservatives were concerned.

In 2011, the bona fides of the high-profile conservative icon and activist Grover Norquist came into question when it was revealed that he had ties to parties acting on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood. His status as an advisory board member of GOProud (an organization ostensibly representing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender conservatives) and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations didn’t help in supporting his conservative credentials.

We certainly can’t forget former GOP rockstars like Marco Rubio (R-FL), who were once considered the young salvation of the conservative movement (at least on the political side), but whose favor among conservatives quickly diminished when they signed onto causes that had clear establishment interests.

Finally, there’s Jeff Sessions, the former Alabama Republican who for years was practically venerated amongst conservatives. When he was tapped as President Trump’s attorney general, there were high hopes for a Beltway housecleaning, but Sessions torched his conservative credentials, not only by recusing himself from subsequent investigations into Trump’s campaign, but by being essentially invisible as the nation’s top law enforcement official.

There are a lot of rank-and-file conservatives who don’t approve of Donald Trump simply because he’s not a conservative. I acknowledge that he’s not a conservative, and I’ve said that he was on the bottom of my list for the GOP nomination at the outset of the 2016 campaign cycle. There are a lot of conservatives who find Trump’s economic foreign policy questionable, and I certainly understand why.

What I don’t understand in the current climate of intense enmity between leftist radicals and everyone who is not a leftist radical, is how some conservatives so easily overlook not only Trump’s accomplishments to date, but his dedication to thwarting the designs of the Beltway establishment, which remains the real enemy of all Americans.

Occasionally, I encounter a professed conservative whose disdain for Trump rivals that of far left radicals. The problem I have with these folks is they are no more able to articulate specifics with regard to their disapproval of Trump than the leftists who despise the president. The fact that Trump isn’t a traditional conservative appears to be enough cause to disparage him to anyone who will listen.

To these, I would ask: Who among the 2016 GOP presidential hopefuls could have galvanized the electorate in the manner in which Trump did, and continued to shine a light on the dark machinations of the Deep State as president? Rick Santorum—who told me to my face in 2011 that if there had been anything sketchy about Barack Obama’s birth certificate, the press would have uncovered it? John Kasich? Chris Christie? Jeb Bush?

Given the stakes we currently face, “because he’s not a conservative” just isn’t a sufficiently damning charge against a president who has consistently championed the rule of law and a preponderance of conservative values.

Originally published in WorldNetDaily

Aug

2019

Life Imitates Art With Our Elite Class of Perverts

By Erik Rush •

There’s a recurring theme in most of the films and TV shows that have been produced over the last decade or so which include futuristic dystopian settings. In such offerings, you typically have a very small, elitist faction that controls everything, and a massive oppressed class that supports the elites through their labor.

In these productions, the elites are usually portrayed as incomprehensibly wealthy, capricious, perverted, ruthless and of course very cavalier concerning the manner in which they treat the oppressed classes, which run the gamut from the starved masses depicted in “The Hunger Games” to the scraping, drugged-up, violent urbanites in “Altered Carbon.” Invariably, these unfortunates have very little control over many aspects of their lives, and very few have a clue as to the dynamic of their governance, other than the imperative for staying in line—or else.
I for one find it quite ironic that such fare should come out of Hollywood, considering that this is precisely the path we’re on. I sometimes wonder if such films and TV shows are part of a grooming process that Americans and others in the West are undergoing, perhaps in the hopes that we will acclimatize to such an existence more readily if we’re exposed to it in this manner first.

One of the most poignant parallels to the elites in these films and TV shows has been the scandal surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, the late disgraced financier and friend of powerful (mostly) Democrats who allegedly hanged himself in jail on Aug. 10 as he awaited trial on federal charges relating to running a sex trafficking operation involving underage girls. As we know, the accounts and allegations coming out of this story (which actually reaches back a couple of decades) are appalling; the level of power and influence of the individuals with whom Epstein associated and who were allegedly involved in illegal activities should outrage anyone who is even remotely concerned with the quality of our governance.

Then we have the #MeToo movement, ostensibly a grass-roots effort to highlight the prevalence of sexual assault and harassment,
particularly in the workplace. Although liberal activists and feminists credit the dreaded “patriarchy” and a culture of misogyny as the impetus for the rise of this movement, it is important to note that nearly all of the high-profile offenders revealed since October 2017 were leftists, and that some of the entertainment industry victims were minor children at the time they were victimized. One may also recall the revelation of a congressional slush fund which exists to pay off sexual harassment claims against members of the House and Senate that came to light at around the same time.

Thus, it appears that many of those in power, and many of those poised to seize power are shaping up to fit the twisted roles described in the beginning of this column quite nicely. A notable difference arises in the fact that none of the dystopian entertainment offerings we’ve seen in recent years depicted an elite class that craves sex with children and will go to great lengths—such as traveling to a private island—to get it.
So, how do we get from where we were 50 years ago to the dark future of these films and TV shows? That’s simple: We merely examine the moves leftists have made over the last 50 years and the moves they’re making now.

A strategy in the left’s subversion of the electoral process has been one that proved extremely successful in Europe, particularly Britain: The importation of sufficient numbers of individuals from nations which hold antipathy for the United States, and/or those who believe they are entitled to a share of America’s wealth based on her status in their minds as an imperialist, oppressor nation. Such people then vote for like-minded subversives from among their countrymen to the detriment of our national interests.

Division is of course a major component to the left’s design for breaking America, and much of what we’re seeing in this regard is focused on ethnicity, or race. I’ve covered this extensively in recent months in this space, and the leftist-fostered heightening of racial tensions over the last few years should be apparent to all. Support for violent radicals on the part of prominent politicos adds fuel to the fire, and increases the danger of widespread civil unrest.

A premier example of the left’s intention lies in the recent New York Times Magazine offering, “The 1619 Project.” This began with a series of shamelessly revisionist articles which frame the entire history of America as an illegitimate enterprise and centers on the evils of capitalism and an overblown representation of the role of slavery in building our nation. According to the ‘Times, the publication plans for these topics to remain a chief focus through the 2020 election.

Finally, we have the platform items from the field of 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls, any one of which could be devastating to our economy and national security. Promises to erase our borders and import millions of unskilled, uninvested Third World denizens, socialize just about everything and redistribute wealth on an incomprehensible scale would have gotten a candidate clubbed to death at the next whistle stop fifty years ago, but from Joe Biden on down, Democratic hopefuls appear to be at perfect ease in offering these proposals in the current political climate.

At this juncture, there can be doubt that we are under siege from within by a lawless, pernicious cabal whose only protection lies in misrepresented interpretations of the First Amendment. Sedition is not a right; it is a crime which should be prosecuted accordingly.

Originally published in WorldNetDaily

Aug

2019

Civil War Preferable to a Democratic President

By Erik Rush •

It would be difficult to argue that the political environment in America has not grown significantly more toxic and hostile over the last several years. I pointed out in my column of two weeks ago that the political left cites the culture of the Trump administration for the recent deterioration in race relations. Similarly, the left blames the culture of the Trump administration for this dramatic downturn in civility. Again (as I detailed in the earlier column), this decline actually began during the Obama administration, and represents the left’s reaction to the popular rejection of socialist policies by the electorate.

The fear and desperation of those on the left cannot be understated. With the ascendency to the White House of an individual who could relate to average Americans, had the nation’s best interests at heart and who sought the dismantling of the corrupt Beltway machine, the political establishment faced a threat it had never before seen. This fear and desperation accounts for the augmented hyperbole and venom coming from the left, and the incomprehensibly absurd charges being leveled against President Donald Trump and his supporters on an hourly basis.

We have never before seen as much incendiary rhetoric, calumnies and fearmongering coming from powerful Democrats and their co-conspirators in the press, the entertainment industry and the activist community. Hardly a day goes by without a prominent liberal mouthpiece citing “irrefutable evidence” that President Trump and all of his supporters are vehement racists and fascists, that the president rose to his position via dishonest and unlawful means, and that he and his supporters represent an unprecedented threat to the future of our nation.

The Orwellian propaganda (which Nineteen Eighty Four author Orwell derived from the Third Reich and Soviet Union as the model for the government in his novel) emanating from the left is at an all-time high. “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth,” the phrase frequently attributed to the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, has evidently become the left’s standard operating procedure.

On Aug. 11, Fox News’ Brit Hume took to Twitter, blasting Democratic presidential hopefuls Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) for claiming last Friday that Michael Brown, the young black man who was shot and killed by Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson in 2014 after assaulting the officer, was murdered in cold blood. Hume pointed out the abject fallacy of the claim, then chastised the two senators for the incendiary nature of their rhetoric, asserting that it did “nothing to calm racial tension in this country.”

Due to our nation’s history and our collective sensibilities, a racist is one of the worst things a person can be in America. It follows that baseless charges of racism are among the worst calumnies that one can level against another. Despite this, those on the left are dispensing such charges against President Trump and his supporters with a dizzying vigor, along with allegations of their proclivity toward homophobia, misogyny, Islamophobia, Nazism, fascism, and so forth. Leftist mouthpieces are instructing their followers to “destroy” Trump supporters, and the instance of left-on-right violence has far outpaced that of the reverse.

If this fire hose volume of lies and histrionics sets the engaged conservative or libertarian off balance (and it definitely does me), one can only imagine the overstimulation and cognitive dissonance it has the potential to produce in the rank-and-file unaffiliated voter. Many of those who succumb to the left’s rhetorical vitriol may be among weak-minded people, but the weak-minded do have the right and the capacity to vote. For the most part however, the battle lines have been drawn; it is unlikely that too many people who don’t believe President Trump is a racist will be convinced otherwise between now and November 2020, nor will any of those already convinced of this change their minds.

Suffice it to say that all of this is going to make for a very interesting fifteen months ahead.

Apart from acknowledging that the Democratic party was indeed the party of slavery, segregation and Jim Crow, whatever the party once was, it is clear that the party now represents America’s garbage. I will qualify these as the maladjusted, indolent, emotionally-stultified, covetous misfits who believe that others owe them an existence, immigrants who come here not to assimilate and contribute, but to drain our resources and contribute to crime, civil unrest and social decline, and deviants who wish to subvert our moral fabric to accommodate their proclivities.

The power brokers on the left already know that their divisive rhetoric has the potential to set Americans at each others’ throats; this is why they are dispensing it so freely, and why they have mobilized the above fringe groups like never before.

These facts, along with the incomprehensibly destructive, hard-line socialist policies being touted by the 2020 Democratic presidential field, the left’s “ends justifies the means” deportment and the history of socialist regimes from the early Twentieth Century on clearly illustrate the imperative for utterly neutralizing the political left in this country, and at this point I would say by any means necessary. A protracted civil war would be a superior outcome to this cabal gaining political preeminence, and as dangerous as the left claims Donald Trump is, the next Democrat president—whoever they are, and whenever they come to the office—will represent a level of danger to this nation exponentially greater than even Barack Obama represented in 2008.

Originally published in WorldNetDaily

Columns

Keep Calm and Cloister On…

A “Cold Civil War” We Absolutely Must Win

Leftists Traumatizing Kids for Political Gain

Americans’ Celebrity Worship, Demystified

Writer’s CBS Resignation: Thank a Self-Righteous Leftist

What Will Future Americans Say After Our Next Civil War?

Fake Conservatives in the Ranks

Life Imitates Art With Our Elite Class of Perverts

Civil War Preferable to a Democratic President

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