Supporters of the Confederate Flag continue to approach Alabama Governor Robert Bentley to bring the flags back to the Confederate Memorial in Montgomery.
Bentley came to his home county in Wilsonville on Thursday for a park dedication where supporters of the Flag greeted him.
Jerry Hill of Wilsonville wants Bentley to know that Confederate Flag supporters haven't forget about the flag, its history and vows to never forget it.
In reply, "We need to honor the flag in the right way. I agree with that. I want us to continue to honor history. I believe in history. We need to learn from history and we need to honor the flag. But the flag will not be flying over the capitol as long as I'm governor." Bentley said.
While the governor continues to say no to the Flag supporters say they will continue to pressure Bentley and whoever runs for governor to bring it back to Montgomery.
JUDGE REVERSES ORDER PROTECTING MONUMENT
In a ruling from the bench, Jefferson Circuit Judge Judith McDonald-Burkman dissolved the order from three weeks ago that had blocked the city and a local university from taking down the monument.
Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said he would begin work on removing the 70-foot-high monument as soon as his office receives the judge's written order, according to a statement from his office.
Three weeks ago we reported that local residents and the SCV sued to keep the monument at its location near the University of Louisville which was the reason for the original order to prevent the statue from being moved while that suit made its way through the courts. A lawyer for the monument's supporters, Thomas McAdam, did not respond to requests for comment on the judge's ruling.
Judge McDonald-Burkman, in lifting the order halting its removal, has essentially indicated how she intends to rule when hearing the case.
Danville group appeals their case
The Heritage Preservation Association has argued its appeal against the city of Danville in the Virginia Supreme Court, hoping to convince the court to agree to hear the case involving the Confederate flag.
The Danville Register & Bee reports HPA attorney Kevin Martingayle argued Tuesday that the latest version of a state statute protects the flag that flew at Danville's Sutherlin Mansion.
In August the Danville City Council approved an ordinance that allows only certain flags to be flown on city-owned property, excluding the Confederate flag. The HPA filed a lawsuit claiming breach of contract in Danville Circuit Court.
In October a judge ruled in the city's favor and dismissed the case. Martingayle filed the appeal in December.
If the court decides to hear the appeal, both sides will have 15 minutes to argue their cases.
R. E. LEE ELEMENTARY WILL NOT BE RENAMED FOR ADOLF HITLER
In April, we reported on the list of proposed names for the renaming of Robert E. Lee Elementary in Austin, Texas. The name that topped the list was Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, real estate mogul and reality-TV star. Another proposed name topping the list was Adolf Hitler Elementary.
The Campus Advisory Council (CAC) would not even consider Trump as a viable option, Austin's KXAN (NBC) reported. They were even less thrilled with the prospect of naming the school after the late German Fuhrer.
On Monday, the Austin Independent School District board of trustees voted 8-0, with one abstention, to rename the school Russell Lee Elementary. A change that will not require nearly as much new signage.
This "Lee" is the acclaimed Depression Era social-documentarian who founded the UT-Austin photography program. He is best known for his U.S. Farm Security Administration images captured between 1936 and 1943. The university's Briscoe Center for American History houses his extensive photographic catalog.
Russell Lee's name actually came in third on that list, behind those in favor of keeping the school named after Robert E. Lee. The advisory council is made up of teachers, staff, parents and other members of the school community.
The photographer was not trustees' first choice, either. Bettie Mann, the school's first black teacher, was the sentimental favorite. Mann, 85, taught at the elementary school for 37 years. The Austin American-Statesman reported a community effort arose to rename the campus for the beloved educator.
Mann was present at Monday night's board meeting. She told KXAN before the meeting she did not want to see the name Robert E. Lee change. The school's kindergarten wing will be named for her.
Trustee Ted Gordon shared that the "problem for me" with rebranding to Russell Lee was the name was chosen to retain the "Lee" name. He said, "It seems to me that the name Russell Lee was chosen precisely because it's reminiscent of the previous name."
Robert E. Lee Elementary opened in 1939. It was one of five Austin ISD schools with a Confederate connected name.
Republican Governor Hates Robert E. Lee?
Arkansas' Republican Governor, Asa Hutchinson, has said he wants lawmakers next year to end Arkansas' practice of commemorating Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Legislation to remove Lee from the holiday failed repeatedly before a House panel last year.
Bentley came to his home county in Wilsonville on Thursday for a park dedication where supporters of the Flag greeted him.
Jerry Hill of Wilsonville wants Bentley to know that Confederate Flag supporters haven't forget about the flag, its history and vows to never forget it.
In reply, "We need to honor the flag in the right way. I agree with that. I want us to continue to honor history. I believe in history. We need to learn from history and we need to honor the flag. But the flag will not be flying over the capitol as long as I'm governor." Bentley said.
While the governor continues to say no to the Flag supporters say they will continue to pressure Bentley and whoever runs for governor to bring it back to Montgomery.
JUDGE REVERSES ORDER PROTECTING MONUMENT
In a ruling from the bench, Jefferson Circuit Judge Judith McDonald-Burkman dissolved the order from three weeks ago that had blocked the city and a local university from taking down the monument.
Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said he would begin work on removing the 70-foot-high monument as soon as his office receives the judge's written order, according to a statement from his office.
Three weeks ago we reported that local residents and the SCV sued to keep the monument at its location near the University of Louisville which was the reason for the original order to prevent the statue from being moved while that suit made its way through the courts. A lawyer for the monument's supporters, Thomas McAdam, did not respond to requests for comment on the judge's ruling.
Judge McDonald-Burkman, in lifting the order halting its removal, has essentially indicated how she intends to rule when hearing the case.
Danville group appeals their case
The Heritage Preservation Association has argued its appeal against the city of Danville in the Virginia Supreme Court, hoping to convince the court to agree to hear the case involving the Confederate flag.
The Danville Register & Bee reports HPA attorney Kevin Martingayle argued Tuesday that the latest version of a state statute protects the flag that flew at Danville's Sutherlin Mansion.
In August the Danville City Council approved an ordinance that allows only certain flags to be flown on city-owned property, excluding the Confederate flag. The HPA filed a lawsuit claiming breach of contract in Danville Circuit Court.
In October a judge ruled in the city's favor and dismissed the case. Martingayle filed the appeal in December.
If the court decides to hear the appeal, both sides will have 15 minutes to argue their cases.
R. E. LEE ELEMENTARY WILL NOT BE RENAMED FOR ADOLF HITLER
In April, we reported on the list of proposed names for the renaming of Robert E. Lee Elementary in Austin, Texas. The name that topped the list was Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, real estate mogul and reality-TV star. Another proposed name topping the list was Adolf Hitler Elementary.
The Campus Advisory Council (CAC) would not even consider Trump as a viable option, Austin's KXAN (NBC) reported. They were even less thrilled with the prospect of naming the school after the late German Fuhrer.
On Monday, the Austin Independent School District board of trustees voted 8-0, with one abstention, to rename the school Russell Lee Elementary. A change that will not require nearly as much new signage.
This "Lee" is the acclaimed Depression Era social-documentarian who founded the UT-Austin photography program. He is best known for his U.S. Farm Security Administration images captured between 1936 and 1943. The university's Briscoe Center for American History houses his extensive photographic catalog.
Russell Lee's name actually came in third on that list, behind those in favor of keeping the school named after Robert E. Lee. The advisory council is made up of teachers, staff, parents and other members of the school community.
The photographer was not trustees' first choice, either. Bettie Mann, the school's first black teacher, was the sentimental favorite. Mann, 85, taught at the elementary school for 37 years. The Austin American-Statesman reported a community effort arose to rename the campus for the beloved educator.
Mann was present at Monday night's board meeting. She told KXAN before the meeting she did not want to see the name Robert E. Lee change. The school's kindergarten wing will be named for her.
Trustee Ted Gordon shared that the "problem for me" with rebranding to Russell Lee was the name was chosen to retain the "Lee" name. He said, "It seems to me that the name Russell Lee was chosen precisely because it's reminiscent of the previous name."
Robert E. Lee Elementary opened in 1939. It was one of five Austin ISD schools with a Confederate connected name.
Republican Governor Hates Robert E. Lee?
Arkansas' Republican Governor, Asa Hutchinson, has said he wants lawmakers next year to end Arkansas' practice of commemorating Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Legislation to remove Lee from the holiday failed repeatedly before a House panel last year.
One of the most notable things about last week's congressional action to remove the display of Confederate flags at cemeteries was the debate before last week's vote.
There was none.
Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., offered an amendment that would ban the flying of the flags and no one said a word against it. Yet, many did vote no. Although their silence shows that it is increasingly unpopular to be associated with Confederate symbols, 159 House members, all Republicans but one, said no to Huffman's amendment.
Ironically, the lone Democrat who voted against the measure is a black man and an Army veteran, Rep. Sanford D. Bishop Jr. of Georgia.
"While as a descendant of slaves I find the Confederate flag and the history it represents deeply offensive," Bishop said in a statement, "I believe that the descendants of Confederate veterans should not be denied the privilege of honoring their dead ancestors."
Now Congressman Huffman has announced that he will soon propose House action against the display of Confederate flags in National Park Service property and the sale of Confederate memorabilia in park stores.
Confederate symbols represent "opposition to the United States of America," Huffman said, adding, "Even General Robert E. Lee recognized that symbols of the Confederacy are symbols of treason."
None of the Republicans contacted would comment on their votes. Our question is will those that voted against Huffman's original ban of the flag in cemeteries likewise vote against his upcoming proposal to ban the flag at National Parks? Or will they seek to distance themselves from Confederate symbols when they next have the chance?
And at the same time, the Democratic Party on Thursday said it's dropping Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson's names from its annual fundraising dinner, joining a growing number of state parties distancing themselves from the slave-owning presidents.
The party's upcoming Jefferson-Jackson Dinner on July 15 will be the last to include the late presidents' names, a nine-member panel will recommend a new name to the party's executive committee early next year.
The parties' efforts to distance themselves from the two presidents were part of a wider re-evaluation of names and symbols linked to slavery and the Confederacy last year.
Jefferson and Jackson are considered founders of the Democratic Party, but their ownership of slaves has drawn increased scrutiny. Jackson also signed the Indian Removal Act that led to the removal of Native Americans from their lands in what became known as the Trail of Tears.
Georgia Democrats last year renamed their Jefferson-Jackson Dinner the Democratic Party of Georgia State Dinner. In Connecticut, it's now called the Connecticut Democratic Progress Dinner.
The dinner is the party's largest annual fundraiser and was headlined last year by Democratic presidential front-runner and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The party has not announced who's speaking at this year's dinner.
SUPPORT DIXIE HERITAGE
Receive a banner ad in the next 52 issues of the Dixie Heritage Letter for the reduced rate of just $300 - thats just $5.76 per issue. Your banner ad will also go on the website for an entire year at no additional cost. Click the banner below to eMail for more information on how you can support Dixie Heritage and at the same time put yourself before a great audience of Southern patriots.
There was none.
Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., offered an amendment that would ban the flying of the flags and no one said a word against it. Yet, many did vote no. Although their silence shows that it is increasingly unpopular to be associated with Confederate symbols, 159 House members, all Republicans but one, said no to Huffman's amendment.
Ironically, the lone Democrat who voted against the measure is a black man and an Army veteran, Rep. Sanford D. Bishop Jr. of Georgia.
"While as a descendant of slaves I find the Confederate flag and the history it represents deeply offensive," Bishop said in a statement, "I believe that the descendants of Confederate veterans should not be denied the privilege of honoring their dead ancestors."
Now Congressman Huffman has announced that he will soon propose House action against the display of Confederate flags in National Park Service property and the sale of Confederate memorabilia in park stores.
Confederate symbols represent "opposition to the United States of America," Huffman said, adding, "Even General Robert E. Lee recognized that symbols of the Confederacy are symbols of treason."
None of the Republicans contacted would comment on their votes. Our question is will those that voted against Huffman's original ban of the flag in cemeteries likewise vote against his upcoming proposal to ban the flag at National Parks? Or will they seek to distance themselves from Confederate symbols when they next have the chance?
And at the same time, the Democratic Party on Thursday said it's dropping Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson's names from its annual fundraising dinner, joining a growing number of state parties distancing themselves from the slave-owning presidents.
The party's upcoming Jefferson-Jackson Dinner on July 15 will be the last to include the late presidents' names, a nine-member panel will recommend a new name to the party's executive committee early next year.
The parties' efforts to distance themselves from the two presidents were part of a wider re-evaluation of names and symbols linked to slavery and the Confederacy last year.
Jefferson and Jackson are considered founders of the Democratic Party, but their ownership of slaves has drawn increased scrutiny. Jackson also signed the Indian Removal Act that led to the removal of Native Americans from their lands in what became known as the Trail of Tears.
Georgia Democrats last year renamed their Jefferson-Jackson Dinner the Democratic Party of Georgia State Dinner. In Connecticut, it's now called the Connecticut Democratic Progress Dinner.
The dinner is the party's largest annual fundraiser and was headlined last year by Democratic presidential front-runner and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The party has not announced who's speaking at this year's dinner.
SUPPORT DIXIE HERITAGE
Receive a banner ad in the next 52 issues of the Dixie Heritage Letter for the reduced rate of just $300 - thats just $5.76 per issue. Your banner ad will also go on the website for an entire year at no additional cost. Click the banner below to eMail for more information on how you can support Dixie Heritage and at the same time put yourself before a great audience of Southern patriots.
The Associated Press reported on Thursday that with the pledged support of several of the "uncommitted" Republican delegates that Donald Trump now has 1239 delegates. That is two more than he needs to secure the nomination.
The following has been submitted by a Ted Cruz supporter:
Ted Cruz supporters, and I am one, have a decision to make.
My story on this decision starts on May 20, 2014, the night I had the great good fortune to attend a small dinner with Sen. Ted Cruz, to talk strategy and policy. Personally, I was skeptical of him and his chances in a potential presidential bid, which fluttered over the entire conversation like a smart, subtle butterfly.
His replies to my questions floored me. Why on Earth would he run for president when he'd been in the Senate less than two years? Because, he said, he was looking for someone else who was fighting the conservative fight on more than one or two of the major issues of the day - ObamaCare, Amnesty, a rational foreign policy based on peace through strength - and just literally wasn't seeing anyone else doing it. Other than my boss at the time, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, I had to flatly admit that was true.
How could he possibly hope to win, I asked? Everyone had counted him out of the Senate bid as well, he said, and he defeated the Establishment favorite and went on to victory in the fall in a bad GOP year.
Republican moderates said every four years, "We need to nominate someone who can win" - and then when the party nominates their choice, they lose, over and over, Ford, Dole, McCain, Romney, because they don't excite the base or draw in skeptical Independents and Democrats with a compelling vision. It was exactly what I had been arguing for years in academics and beyond.
I came out of that dinner a believer. I've been one ever since, even when my belief was tested, as inevitably it was.
Today, all of us who believe Sen. Cruz would make a great president - and conservatives generally - need to decide whether or not we support Donald Trump, now that he is the almost-certain Republican nominee. Some staunch conservatives have decided they can't - to the point that they may help orchestrate a third-party challenge on Trump's right.
While I respect that view, I don't share it. Here are five reasons for a Cruz supporter, and a constitutional conservative more generally, to back Trump, for whatever they're worth:
1) You had me at "Hillary."
A third party bid all but assures that Hillary Clinton, Richard Nixon with breasts, will become president. As of today, Trump has the best shot at beating Hillary - and it is absolutely possible, stop saying it's not.
Republicans who believe Donald Trump is really as bad as Hillary Clinton simultaneously argue that he is lying about what he would do on immigration, abortion, and gun control, but not lying about what he would do on trade and taxes. (If you are more sympathetic to his trade-skeptic and tax-cutting ways, by the way, this double-edged argument actually cuts the wrong way in both directions.) Likewise they assert that in our post-Constitutional era, Hillary would be gridlocked by Congress, while Trump would not be. Would she not have a pen and a phone, like Obama?
2) If Trump wins, the Establishment loses.
OK, so you still think The Donald is as bad or worse than Hillary. Consider this: If Donald Trump loses this election, the Republican Establishment wins it. Trump's voters will give up voting for the rest of their rapidly shortening lives, which some say they deserve (that's a winning message for the general election by the way).
Moderates and the media will crow that they told us so: We need to go back to nominating moderates who lose the old-fashioned way. And many conservative voters will grudgingly conclude they're right. Consider the alternative: If Trump wins this election, the GOP Establishment is finished.
He will have proven once and for all that given the chance, voters reject the pro-amnesty, free-trade-at-all-costs, sweep-social-issues-under-the-carpet, Leftist-narrative-accepting, Washington-Post-only-reading, corrupt pay-for-play politics of the party's Washington wing.
3) A Trump Presidency would be the Best Antidote for Political Correctness.
Remember, PC did not originate on American college campuses in the 1980s. Plato wrote in his Republic of the need, in the words of one (supportive) scholar, to "suppress free speech and to spread lies in the interest of the state."
Karl Marx wrote with approval about suppression of speech during the short-lived radical socialist Paris Commune in 1871. When Marxist revolution did not sweep the world after Moscow fell in 1917, socialist theorists trying to figure out why came together in the (in)famous Frankfurt School, housed at the Institute for Social Research (ISR).
The explicitly Marxist Frankfurt School produced Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin in the 1920s, arguably the forefathers of Deconstructionism premised on the idea that "truth is the death of intention." The Frankfurt School also spawned Herbert Marcuse, who joined it in 1932, then almost unbelievably worked in the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II and headed the Central European Section of the U.S. Office of Intelligence Research after the War.
The father of the New Left, Marcuse wrote Eros and Civilization (1955) arguing for a sexual revolution to throw off the chains of repression, as well as Repressive Tolerance (1965), which argues for "the practice of discriminating tolerance in an inverse direction, as a means of shifting the balance between Right and Left by restraining the liberty of the Right." What we call PC is better understood as cultural Marxism, perhaps the greatest struggle of our time of communism against freedom, in which communism is currently winning.
Why did Trump's support tend to increase with each "gaffe?" Americans instinctively yearn for someone, anyone, to challenge, snap, and eventually destroy the Left's linguistic fetters that grow tighter every year. Who could possibly do that better than Donald Trump?
4) Trump takes the border and the Jihadi threat seriously.
Whatever you think of Donald Trump's positions, including their various incarnations over the course of the campaign, he has taken perhaps the strongest stance in the originally 17-person GOP field on immigration. That includes standing up against both illegal aliens pouring across the border as well as what sometimes appears to be Obama's single-minded attempt to import Jihadis.
If he decides to totally abandon those positions, he couldn't possibly be worse than Hillary Clinton on border security. But if he's serious about anything, he appears to be most serious about this. Don't throw away the potential opportunity to save our territorial integrity and our nation's security based on an impression that Trump is not a politician and therefore doesn't conform to a politician's airbrushed policy positions.
Most Establishment Republicans have been lying to you for decades on immigration; will you really not vote for Trump because you think he's mediocre at achieving their level of mellifluous mendacity, when he appears to at least be serious?
5) Trump gives us at least a chance of preserving the Supreme Court and thereby the Constitution.
The Left's attempt to crack down on your freedom of speech is hardly limited to collegecampuses. In Europe, without the Constitution's protections, you can be arrested for quoting Churchill orwriting a poem about a foreign leader.
Already here in America, Democrats are kicking in the doors of political opponents, jailing those who do not believe in gay marriage, and most recently subpoenaing think tanks for climate change apostasy. Donald Trump is now all that stands between you and a Hillary Clinton-appointed justice who would create a Supreme Court majority of "Interpretivists," the legal school of thought reacting against the Court's restrictions on the New Deal which teaches that the Constitution means whatever Leftists believe it should.
The Court has become a mini-legislature in which today's four Democratic appointees vote in lockstep while the five Republicans do not. I had the privilege to attend a meeting with Justice Antonin Scalia just months before his death at which he noted that for 50 years GOP nominees have been an ideological coin-flip, while Democratic nominees have been uniformly leftist. Granted, early signs of what Trump might do have not been promising.
But anything is more promising than the absolute certainty that Hillary would follow in a half-century-long drive to control the court, including striking down the Second Amendment, supporting her unilateral efforts beyond those of President Obama to open the borders and impose climate change regulations, count illegal immigrants when drawing districts, impose restrictions on your political speech, enshrine abortion and gay marriage for another generation, and protectgovernment employee unions' ability to take money straight out of their members' paychecks and spend it on candidates you - and sometimes they - loathe.
In short, a Hillary Clinton presidency would mean the end of the Constitution has you understand it. There's at least a shot that a Trump presidency would protect the Court majority - especially if you support him and end up helping make the choice.
Granted, Trump poses the danger that he doesn't mean what he says on issues where you agree, or that he does agree with his less savory supporters on issues on which we passionately disagree. But if good conservatives - especially principled Cruz supporters - like you don't support him, only they will. He loses, the Establishment and Hillary win. He wins, and those supporters will help shape his presidency.
Those who choose to sit this election out or support a third-party candidate will have my respect for their decision. But don't choose either path without considering the consequences in the context of the struggle for America in which the nation is currently engaged.
The following has been submitted by a Ted Cruz supporter:
Ted Cruz supporters, and I am one, have a decision to make.
My story on this decision starts on May 20, 2014, the night I had the great good fortune to attend a small dinner with Sen. Ted Cruz, to talk strategy and policy. Personally, I was skeptical of him and his chances in a potential presidential bid, which fluttered over the entire conversation like a smart, subtle butterfly.
His replies to my questions floored me. Why on Earth would he run for president when he'd been in the Senate less than two years? Because, he said, he was looking for someone else who was fighting the conservative fight on more than one or two of the major issues of the day - ObamaCare, Amnesty, a rational foreign policy based on peace through strength - and just literally wasn't seeing anyone else doing it. Other than my boss at the time, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, I had to flatly admit that was true.
How could he possibly hope to win, I asked? Everyone had counted him out of the Senate bid as well, he said, and he defeated the Establishment favorite and went on to victory in the fall in a bad GOP year.
Republican moderates said every four years, "We need to nominate someone who can win" - and then when the party nominates their choice, they lose, over and over, Ford, Dole, McCain, Romney, because they don't excite the base or draw in skeptical Independents and Democrats with a compelling vision. It was exactly what I had been arguing for years in academics and beyond.
I came out of that dinner a believer. I've been one ever since, even when my belief was tested, as inevitably it was.
Today, all of us who believe Sen. Cruz would make a great president - and conservatives generally - need to decide whether or not we support Donald Trump, now that he is the almost-certain Republican nominee. Some staunch conservatives have decided they can't - to the point that they may help orchestrate a third-party challenge on Trump's right.
While I respect that view, I don't share it. Here are five reasons for a Cruz supporter, and a constitutional conservative more generally, to back Trump, for whatever they're worth:
1) You had me at "Hillary."
A third party bid all but assures that Hillary Clinton, Richard Nixon with breasts, will become president. As of today, Trump has the best shot at beating Hillary - and it is absolutely possible, stop saying it's not.
Republicans who believe Donald Trump is really as bad as Hillary Clinton simultaneously argue that he is lying about what he would do on immigration, abortion, and gun control, but not lying about what he would do on trade and taxes. (If you are more sympathetic to his trade-skeptic and tax-cutting ways, by the way, this double-edged argument actually cuts the wrong way in both directions.) Likewise they assert that in our post-Constitutional era, Hillary would be gridlocked by Congress, while Trump would not be. Would she not have a pen and a phone, like Obama?
2) If Trump wins, the Establishment loses.
OK, so you still think The Donald is as bad or worse than Hillary. Consider this: If Donald Trump loses this election, the Republican Establishment wins it. Trump's voters will give up voting for the rest of their rapidly shortening lives, which some say they deserve (that's a winning message for the general election by the way).
Moderates and the media will crow that they told us so: We need to go back to nominating moderates who lose the old-fashioned way. And many conservative voters will grudgingly conclude they're right. Consider the alternative: If Trump wins this election, the GOP Establishment is finished.
He will have proven once and for all that given the chance, voters reject the pro-amnesty, free-trade-at-all-costs, sweep-social-issues-under-the-carpet, Leftist-narrative-accepting, Washington-Post-only-reading, corrupt pay-for-play politics of the party's Washington wing.
3) A Trump Presidency would be the Best Antidote for Political Correctness.
Remember, PC did not originate on American college campuses in the 1980s. Plato wrote in his Republic of the need, in the words of one (supportive) scholar, to "suppress free speech and to spread lies in the interest of the state."
Karl Marx wrote with approval about suppression of speech during the short-lived radical socialist Paris Commune in 1871. When Marxist revolution did not sweep the world after Moscow fell in 1917, socialist theorists trying to figure out why came together in the (in)famous Frankfurt School, housed at the Institute for Social Research (ISR).
The explicitly Marxist Frankfurt School produced Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin in the 1920s, arguably the forefathers of Deconstructionism premised on the idea that "truth is the death of intention." The Frankfurt School also spawned Herbert Marcuse, who joined it in 1932, then almost unbelievably worked in the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II and headed the Central European Section of the U.S. Office of Intelligence Research after the War.
The father of the New Left, Marcuse wrote Eros and Civilization (1955) arguing for a sexual revolution to throw off the chains of repression, as well as Repressive Tolerance (1965), which argues for "the practice of discriminating tolerance in an inverse direction, as a means of shifting the balance between Right and Left by restraining the liberty of the Right." What we call PC is better understood as cultural Marxism, perhaps the greatest struggle of our time of communism against freedom, in which communism is currently winning.
Why did Trump's support tend to increase with each "gaffe?" Americans instinctively yearn for someone, anyone, to challenge, snap, and eventually destroy the Left's linguistic fetters that grow tighter every year. Who could possibly do that better than Donald Trump?
4) Trump takes the border and the Jihadi threat seriously.
Whatever you think of Donald Trump's positions, including their various incarnations over the course of the campaign, he has taken perhaps the strongest stance in the originally 17-person GOP field on immigration. That includes standing up against both illegal aliens pouring across the border as well as what sometimes appears to be Obama's single-minded attempt to import Jihadis.
If he decides to totally abandon those positions, he couldn't possibly be worse than Hillary Clinton on border security. But if he's serious about anything, he appears to be most serious about this. Don't throw away the potential opportunity to save our territorial integrity and our nation's security based on an impression that Trump is not a politician and therefore doesn't conform to a politician's airbrushed policy positions.
Most Establishment Republicans have been lying to you for decades on immigration; will you really not vote for Trump because you think he's mediocre at achieving their level of mellifluous mendacity, when he appears to at least be serious?
5) Trump gives us at least a chance of preserving the Supreme Court and thereby the Constitution.
The Left's attempt to crack down on your freedom of speech is hardly limited to collegecampuses. In Europe, without the Constitution's protections, you can be arrested for quoting Churchill orwriting a poem about a foreign leader.
Already here in America, Democrats are kicking in the doors of political opponents, jailing those who do not believe in gay marriage, and most recently subpoenaing think tanks for climate change apostasy. Donald Trump is now all that stands between you and a Hillary Clinton-appointed justice who would create a Supreme Court majority of "Interpretivists," the legal school of thought reacting against the Court's restrictions on the New Deal which teaches that the Constitution means whatever Leftists believe it should.
The Court has become a mini-legislature in which today's four Democratic appointees vote in lockstep while the five Republicans do not. I had the privilege to attend a meeting with Justice Antonin Scalia just months before his death at which he noted that for 50 years GOP nominees have been an ideological coin-flip, while Democratic nominees have been uniformly leftist. Granted, early signs of what Trump might do have not been promising.
But anything is more promising than the absolute certainty that Hillary would follow in a half-century-long drive to control the court, including striking down the Second Amendment, supporting her unilateral efforts beyond those of President Obama to open the borders and impose climate change regulations, count illegal immigrants when drawing districts, impose restrictions on your political speech, enshrine abortion and gay marriage for another generation, and protectgovernment employee unions' ability to take money straight out of their members' paychecks and spend it on candidates you - and sometimes they - loathe.
In short, a Hillary Clinton presidency would mean the end of the Constitution has you understand it. There's at least a shot that a Trump presidency would protect the Court majority - especially if you support him and end up helping make the choice.
Granted, Trump poses the danger that he doesn't mean what he says on issues where you agree, or that he does agree with his less savory supporters on issues on which we passionately disagree. But if good conservatives - especially principled Cruz supporters - like you don't support him, only they will. He loses, the Establishment and Hillary win. He wins, and those supporters will help shape his presidency.
Those who choose to sit this election out or support a third-party candidate will have my respect for their decision. But don't choose either path without considering the consequences in the context of the struggle for America in which the nation is currently engaged.
The following appeared as a letter to the editor in a South Carolina newspaper:
Paul Ryan is rubbing it in against the South
May 20, 2016
Southern Patriot
House Speakers at both the state and federal level very rarely cast votes in their chambers. The fact that Paul Ryan deviated from that practice to vote against the Confederate flag meant that he was intentionally rubbing it in against the South.
Ryan should know that most Americans, according to polling data, know that the Confederate flag stands for Southern pride, not for any sort of racial thing. So, in major part, Ryan's vote was against Southern pride. But it is worse than that. This was about the display of the flag over war graves. This was about respect for our war dead. This was arrogant disrespect for our ancestors who gave their lives for southern independence or to defend their homes from yankee aggression. Paul Ryan has disrespected out ancestors.
The good thing is that Paul Ryan has a substantial challenger in his primary:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/05/07/ryan-challenger-paul-nehlen-he-has-betrayed-us-all/
We need to dump Ryan, just like Eric Cantor was dumped. In memory of my great grandfather who fought for southern independence in the War Between the States, I went to the website of Ryan's conservative challenger Paul Nehlen and sent him a contribution online.
If your ancestors have been dishonored by our House Speaker, I urge you to do likewise at: www.paulnehlen.com
NEW ADDRESS - fACEBOOK
DIXIE HERITAGE fACEBOOK page now has a new address. Use this link to visit the fACEBOOK page:
https://www.facebook.com/dixieheritageletter
VISIT OUR WEBSITE:
YES, we are still giving a FREE eBook (PDF) copy of the book The Truth About the Confederate Flag to everyone who visits the website - so tell your friends - and your enemies!
www.dixieheritage.weebly.com
Until next week,
Deo Vindice!
Chaplain Ed
Paul Ryan is rubbing it in against the South
May 20, 2016
Southern Patriot
House Speakers at both the state and federal level very rarely cast votes in their chambers. The fact that Paul Ryan deviated from that practice to vote against the Confederate flag meant that he was intentionally rubbing it in against the South.
Ryan should know that most Americans, according to polling data, know that the Confederate flag stands for Southern pride, not for any sort of racial thing. So, in major part, Ryan's vote was against Southern pride. But it is worse than that. This was about the display of the flag over war graves. This was about respect for our war dead. This was arrogant disrespect for our ancestors who gave their lives for southern independence or to defend their homes from yankee aggression. Paul Ryan has disrespected out ancestors.
The good thing is that Paul Ryan has a substantial challenger in his primary:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/05/07/ryan-challenger-paul-nehlen-he-has-betrayed-us-all/
We need to dump Ryan, just like Eric Cantor was dumped. In memory of my great grandfather who fought for southern independence in the War Between the States, I went to the website of Ryan's conservative challenger Paul Nehlen and sent him a contribution online.
If your ancestors have been dishonored by our House Speaker, I urge you to do likewise at: www.paulnehlen.com
NEW ADDRESS - fACEBOOK
DIXIE HERITAGE fACEBOOK page now has a new address. Use this link to visit the fACEBOOK page:
https://www.facebook.com/dixieheritageletter
VISIT OUR WEBSITE:
YES, we are still giving a FREE eBook (PDF) copy of the book The Truth About the Confederate Flag to everyone who visits the website - so tell your friends - and your enemies!
www.dixieheritage.weebly.com
Until next week,
Deo Vindice!
Chaplain Ed
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