The Patriot Post Digest 10-27-2016

________________________________________
The Patriot Post Digest 10-27-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
________________________________________

Mid-Day Digest

Oct. 27, 2016

IN TODAY’S EDITION

Americans oppose “assault weapons” bans — not that our rights are determined by polls.
Hillary wants “free college.” That’s not what she’s actually going to give us.
A Georgia pastor faces a bizarre assault on religious liberty.
Blacks are demanding segregation on college campuses across the country.
And more news, policy and opinion.

THE FOUNDATION

“The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.” —Tench Coxe (1788.)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Americans Say ‘No’ to Rifle Ban1

Gallup just released a poll2 showing Americans' support for a ban on so-called “assault rifles3” at an all-time low of only 36%. This number may come as a shock to anti-gun leftists and the Leftmedia, who endlessly attempt to associate4 violent crime with the lack of stricter gun control and supposed legal “loopholes” for gun purchasing.

Thankfully, the vast majority of Americans recognize as farcical and factually inaccurate the anti-gun demagoguery preached by the likes of Hillary Clinton. It’s simply foolishness to insist that creating increasingly onerous laws will make criminals less likely to commit crimes. The reality is that more laws limit the freedoms of law-abiding citizens and tend to create more lawbreakers, not fewer. Obviously, it’s not curbing crime that motivates the Left, but securing and centralizing more governing power over citizens.

Irrespective of what the poll shows, it’s important for all Americans to remember that our rights are not dictated by the whims of popular opinion. And it’s not the government’s role to grant rights to its citizens, but rather to recognize, preserve and protect those God-given rights. To attack those rights enumerated in the Constitution is to attack the very essence of what makes America unique. The Second Amendment was established as a citizen safeguard. It’s good news indeed that more Americans are embracing this truth. It’s also a shot across the bow for Democrats, who should learn from this and the 1994 “assault weapon” ban — it’s a losing proposition.

Free College? Not So Much5

A growing number of policy experts aren’t jumping on board Hillary Clinton’s tuition-free college plan6 for a number of significant reasons. Hillary estimates that her plan would give up to $500 billion more to public universities and colleges over the next decade. Clinton claims this is needed to combat growing student loan debt and the ever-increasing cost of higher education. (What she doesn’t say is that it’s a craven pander to Bernie Sanders Millennials.) While no one argues rising college tuition isn’t a concern, there is little evidence to suggest that making tuition free for most college students would lower costs or increase graduation rates.

Giving public colleges and universities more money doesn’t mean they will spend it wisely or efficiently. In fact, it only encourages greater tuition increases since it’ll be the government paying bill, not students. Free tuition also doesn’t produce higher graduation rates. Third Way, a center-left think tank, has reported that students with a modest amount of debt are more likely to earn a degree than those who have no debt. Neil McCluskey of the Cato Institute stated, “The less of your own money you spend on something, the less you tend to be focused on whether or not you’re doing the best, most efficient thing.”

Finally, what may be one of the most troubling aspects of Hillary’s plan is the estimated impact it would have on private colleges. Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce estimates that private school enrollment would decrease by 11%, whereas public school enrollment would increase by 16%. This could effectively put some private schools out of business, so once again the government would be engaged in picking winners and losers. Americans would be wise to stop Hillary from doing to higher education what Barack Obama and the Democrats did to health care.

Georgia’s Anti-Christian Crusade7

Give us your sermons. The state of Georgia is requiring that Dr. Eric Walsh, a pastor who is suing the state for wrongful termination, turn over all his past sermons. This chilling story has been developing since 2014, when Dr. Walsh was suddenly terminated from his job as district director with Georgia’s Department of Public Health mere days after being hired. Walsh contends he was fired due to his religious beliefs, and he has a good argument to support this claim.

Approximately a week after Walsh was hired, the health agency requested copies of his sermons — a request with which he complied. After reviewing these sermons, the agency fired him, so it’s no wonder he objects to submitting them to the state. The state of Georgia contends that Walsh was fired for failure to disclose “outside employment.” This is a questionable argument, given that Walsh, during his interview for the job, did indeed disclose the fact that he preached for a local congregation. If the dispute over his firing had nothing to do with his religious beliefs, then why would the state request he turn over all his sermons, sermon notes and anything he has written on his religious beliefs, including any content written on social media sites?

This anti-religion (specifically anti-Christian) crusade perpetrated by many on the Left is fundamentally a misapplication of the separation of church and state. The state’s concern should not be protecting the public from religion, but protecting the right of the public to freely and openly engage in religion. The idea that one’s religious beliefs should be kept private and not be allowed to have an impact on one’s work and opinions is simply absurd. Everyone has a worldview that informs and motivates their decisions and actions. To act like this is not the case is to deny reality.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Victor Davis Hanson: Lessons From the Highway of Death8
Veronique de Rugy: Social Security’s IOU Trust Fund9
Rebecca Hagelin: Hillary Clinton Insults Intelligent, Thoughtful Women10

For more, visit Right Opinion11.

TOP HEADLINES

Project Veritas, Part IV: How to Inject Foreign Money Into an Election12
U.S. Abstains From UN Embargo Vote on Cuba13
Republicans Prepare for Years of Clinton Investigations14
Britain, U.S. Amassing Forces on Russian Border15

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report16.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Re-Segregating America, One University After Another17

By Arnold Ahlert

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.” —Martin Luther King, Aug. 28, 1963

While Americans remain distracted by the election, college campuses across the nation are busy turning Martin Luther King’s vision on its head. Students are demanding to be segregated, and spineless administrators are accommodating them.

At California State University Los Angeles, the Black Student Union sent a letter18 to president William A. Covino asserting that black students “have been, and still are, consistently made the targets of racist attacks by fellow students, faculty, and administration.” Fourteen “DEMANDs” were listed, including “the creation and financial support of a CSLA housing space delegated for Black students.”

Spokesman Robert Lopez offered up Orwellian rationale for Cal State’s surrender, insisting the arrangement “focuses on academic excellence and learning experiences that are inclusive and non-discriminatory.”

At the University of Connecticut, there19 is a “living-learning” community reserved for black male students. That’s okay with administrators because it doesn’t take over the whole dormitory — it’s one of 20 learning groups “topically” categorized — and because, as UConn spokesperson Stephanie Reitz put it, at “many predominantly white institutions nationwide, elements of African-American culture are harder to find, which can make some students experience a sense of detachment from their universities.”

________________________________________
The Patriot Post Digest 10-27-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
________________________________________

Northwestern University plans to quadruple20 the number of black student safe spaces on campus, based on a 149-page21 task force report titled “Black Student Experience.” It asserts black students feel “dissatisfied, exhausted and alienated on campus,” and recommends a “cultural audit” of the entire campus to ensure it is “representative of the diversity that exists within the University.”

In a Washington Post op-ed22, Northwestern president Morton Schapiro revealed the intellectual bankruptcy that attends these segregationist impulses. Commenting on an incident where a group of black students in the cafeteria decided they didn’t want two white students joining them, he insisted the black students “had every right to enjoy their lunches in peace.” He elaborated, “There are plenty of times and places to engage in uncomfortable learning, but that wasn’t one of them. The white students, while well-meaning, didn’t have the right to unilaterally decide when uncomfortable learning would take place.”

One need only imagine a group of white students denying black students seats at a cafeteria lunch table to grasp the hypocrisy.

Unfortunately, at DePaul, the nation’s largest Catholic university, no imagination at all is necessary to see how deep23 the hypocritical rot goes. A group of pro-life students was told it could not display posters reading “Unborn Lives Matter” because doing so could upset the campus’s Black Lives Matter movement. “By our nature, we are committed to developing arguments and exploring important issues that can be steeped in controversy and, oftentimes, emotion,” explained University president Father Dennis Holtschneider in a letter to the College Republicans who had sponsored the effort. “Yet there will be times when some forms of speech challenge our grounding in Catholic and Vincentian values. When that happens, you will see us refuse to allow members of our community be subjected to bigotry that occurs under the cover of free speech.”

Apparently the BLM movement, whose entire existence is based on fomenting anti-police bigotry, remains a paragon of Catholic and Vincentian values, even as one of the central tenets of the Catholic faith is too provocative for First Amendment protection. Not to mention that abortion claims a hugely disproportionate number of black lives.

Chicago Tribune reporter Ted Slowik adds24 a dollop of the victimist worldview to the mix, insisting that “our system of public education isn’t perfectly balanced,” meaning some students “simply aren’t as well prepared for college as others.” Thus “peer support” (read: segregation) is an acceptable tool for achieving academic success.

Maybe some students of color aren’t well prepared for college because in virtually every major city in America, public education has been controlled25 by Democrats for decades. Democrats completely aligned with unaccountable education unions promising “reform” for 50 years and failing to deliver. Unions so strong, the NAACP voted for a moratorium on charter schools26, despite the reality they currently provide 700,000 black families with an escape route from the most disastrous public schools overwhelmingly located in minority neighborhoods.

Or maybe students are indoctrinated into the grievance culture long before they reach college. Like those “taught” by the thousands of Seattle teachers who wore27 Black Lives Matter T-shirts to an event organized to dramatize the inequality of public schools — run by those same teachers. Or like students at Middletown South and Toms River North who decided to honor police officers, EMTs, firemen and military at a football game — only to be sent a memo28 by the New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union condemning the ceremony as a “frightening message” designed to “intimidate and ostracize people who express their views about systemic racism and social just [sic].”

“Americans need to understand that this otherwise fringe ideology and extremism is now thoroughly embedded throughout the education system, from pre-K through university,” asserts Alex Newman, co-author of “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children.” Newman further points out this system has “harmed black Americans even more than others, although all Americans have suffered from it” even as he warns the cure is not more of the same “racialist, collectivist, leftist poison.”

It is racialist, collectivist, leftist poison that has engendered one of the great ironies of modern times: people of color demanding segregation, making an utter mockery of King’s work and his vision. It doesn’t get much more twisted than that.

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

‘Advancement of Colored People’ No Longer NAACP’s Mission26 — It’s all politics, money and power. The kids get left behind.
Court Halts Another Executive Order29 — A contractor “blacklist” is unconstitutional, a judge rules.
University: Don’t Say ‘Man Up’ or ‘You Run Like a Girl’30 — Man up, America.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Veronique de Rugy: “Social Security faces a $10 trillion funding shortfall. Since 2010, Social Security has been running a constant cash flow deficit, meaning that the taxes collected for the program aren’t enough to cover the benefits paid to beneficiaries. To fill the gap and keep the checks going out, the program has been drawing from federal trust funds. However, the government’s trust funds aren’t like trust funds in the real world. Trust funds in the real world contain assets; the government’s trust funds basically contain IOUs. What that means in simple terms is that the government already has to go further into debt to pay Social Security’s bills — and it’s only going to get worse. … Beyond solvency, Social Security suffers from many other problems, so meek tweaks, higher taxes or expanded benefits without other cuts aren’t acceptable solutions. The free market movement has provided many reform ideas over the years, from private accounts to an expansion of Roth IRAs or traditional individual retirement accounts to plain termination. Now is the time to act.”

SHORT CUTS

Insight: “To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.” —John Ruskin (1819-1900)

Upright: “Weapons like the AR-15 have been demystified. Americans have bought them by the millions, and millions more have either fired an AR-15 or know a friends or neighbor who owns one. … With every AR sold, more Americans enjoy the benefit of greater liberty and security. In other words, the AR-15 is its own best argument.” —David French

Now she says so: “I think one of the worst things that happened on the Affordable Care Act is that it was all Democrats. Republicans and Democrats have got to start working together.” —Rep. Debbie Dingell

The BIG lie, part I: “There’s no sense in which [ObamaCare] has to be fixed. The law is working as designed. However, it could work better and I think probably the most important thing experts would agree on is that we need a larger mandate penalty.” —Jonathan Gruber

The BIG lie, part II: “You never heard me criticize the Tea Party. The reason I didn’t is because a lot of people are scared, beat up, and they lost a lot.” —Joe Biden (Oh really?31.)

Non Compos Mentis: “The idea of being a Christian is to just behave that way, and [Hillary Clinton] behaves that way. That’s what’s great about it. She doesn’t talk about it, she lives it. She acts it.” —Michael Moore

And last… “What are the American people supposed to do when the only way they can learn the actual agenda and priorities of their aspiring president is through the leaks from a foreign intelligence service?” —Jim Geraghty

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis!
Managing Editor Nate Jackson

Join us in daily prayer for our Patriots in uniform — Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen — standing in harm’s way in defense of Liberty, and for their families.