The Patriot Post Digest 4-24-2017

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The Patriot Post Digest 4-24-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
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Mid-Day Digest

Apr. 24, 2017

IN TODAY’S EDITION

Leftists prefer to define “hate speech” as anything they don’t like.
Interesting new revelations in the case of Comey v. Clinton and Lynch.
Just how conservative is the European “right wing”? Not very.
Daily Features: Top Headlines, Cartoons, Columnists and Short Cuts.

THE FOUNDATION

“Speak seldom, but to important subjects, except such as particularly relate to your constituents, and, in the former case, make yourself perfectly master of the subject.” —George Washington (1787)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Howard Dean Really Hates ‘Hate Speech’1

Former Vermont governor and failed presidential aspirant Howard Dean has some advice for conservative firebrands targeted by student snowflakes on college campuses. According to Dean2, “Hate speech is not protected by the first amendment.” He asserted this last week after former New York Times reporter Steven Greenhouse reminded his followers (also via Twitter), “Free Speech Defenders Don’t Forget: Ann Coulter once said: My only regret w/ Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.”

But that wasn’t the end of Dean’s screed. In March, Ann Coulter, in her typically inflammatory way, facetiously said, “I would like to see a little more violence from the innocent Trump supporters set upon by violent leftist hoodlums.” This prompted another retort3 from Dean, who last night asserted, “This is NOT protected speech under the first amendment.” Add all this up, Dean contends4, and here’s the bottom line: “This does not mean she can be prosecuted for saying this but I argue this kind of stuff is grounds for barring her from a University campus.”

There’s a legitimate argument to be had regarding Coulter’s approach to confabulation. But there’s no overstating how important it is to protect free speech — one of the cornerstones of a free society. That’s why Coulter’s remarks — unnecessarily provocative though they may be — shouldn’t be, and legally aren’t, considered to be promoting violence.

If “hate speech” can be interpreted any way we want, then literally any and all dissent is fair game5. Oddly enough, an unlikely politician understands this. Another Vermont renegade, Bernie Sanders, correctly said, “Obviously Ann Coulter’s outrageous ― to my mind, off the wall. But you know, people have a right to give their two cents-worth, give a speech, without fear of violence and intimidation.” He even offered this challenge to anti-Coulter antagonists: “Ask her the hard questions. Confront her intellectually. Booing people down, or intimidating people, or shutting down events, I don’t think that that works in any way.”

And here we have yet another strange rift among leftists. Perhaps Sanders and DNC chief Tom Perez can add this to their list of issues to hash out while on their “unity tour,” whose only achievement thus far has been highlighting just how divided the party is.

Comey Knew Lynch Couldn’t Be Trusted6

A Saturday exposé7 in The New York Times contains some interesting claims and insight on the extent to which FBI Director James Comey felt that then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch was duplicitous in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email. The article speaks of Comey’s “distrust of senior officials at the Justice Department, who he and other F.B.I. officials felt had provided Mrs. Clinton with political cover. The distrust extended to his boss, Loretta E. Lynch, the attorney general, who Mr. Comey believed had subtly helped play down the Clinton investigation.” Come now, it’s not like she secretly met with Bill Clinton8 on the airport tarmac during the investigation. Oh, right…

Two revelations in particular aptly demonstrate Comey’s dilemma. First, the Times relays the events of a 2015 meeting in which “everyone agreed that Mr. Comey should not reveal details about the Clinton investigation. But Ms. Lynch told him to be even more circumspect: Do not even call it an investigation, she said, according to three people who attended the meeting. Call it a ‘matter.’ Ms. Lynch reasoned that the word ‘investigation’ would raise other questions: What charges were being investigated? Who was the target?” Many words come to mind, but “impartiality” isn’t one of them.

Second, the Times continues, “Early last year, F.B.I. agents received a batch of hacked documents, and one caught their attention. The document, which has been described as both a memo and an email, was written by a Democratic operative who expressed confidence that Ms. Lynch would keep the Clinton investigation from going too far, according to several former officials familiar with the document.” This document, which was intercepted by Russian hackers, appears to be yet another self-inflicted wound for the Clinton campaign.

What’s interesting is how the Times early on appears to takes a shot at Comey because, in conjunction with last fall’s pre-election lay-up for Clinton9, “He did not say … that the F.B.I. was also investigating the campaign of Donald J. Trump. Just weeks before, Mr. Comey had declined to answer a question from Congress about whether there was such an investigation. Only in March, long after the election, did Mr. Comey confirm that there was one.” There’s just one glaring issue with this line of reasoning: Evidence. The evidence is overwhelming regarding Clinton and Co.’s coverup and corruption, while nearly a year later the facts have failed to establish a grand Trump-Russia scheme.

On Saturday, the March for Science was held in Washington, DC, where demonstrators lambasted conservatives for ostensibly ignoring facts and science. Yet everywhere you look it’s increasingly obvious that leftists conjure up narratives where no proof exists and ignore overwhelming evidence when it’s an inconvenient stumbling block to their crusade. Case in point: The 2016 election. Whatever their goal is, it’s based on twisting facts and evidence.

Top Headlines10

Poll: Two-thirds of Americans think that the Democratic Party is out of touch with the country. (The Washington Post11)

Poll: Trump would beat Clinton in a rematch among 2016 voters. (The Washington Post12)

Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron head to runoff in French election — a blow to the establishment. (The Daily Signal13)

Barack Obama to give first speech since leaving office. (Chicago Tribune14)

Chicago adopts ID program for undocumented immigrants. (CBS Chicago15)

Biden used false data to smear Marine Corps over armored vehicle request from Iraq. (The Washington Free Beacon16)

We’re apparently stuck with that Australian refugee deal after all. (Hot Air17)

North Korea threatens Australia with nuclear strike over “toeing the line” with U.S. (NBC News18.)

Settled science? 107 cancer papers retracted due to peer review fraud. (Ars Technica19)

New Orleans starts tearing down Confederate monuments, sparking protest. (Associated Press20)

Policy: Shunning the shutdown. (Heritage Foundation21)

Policy: Inconvenient truths the “March for Science” protesters ignore. (Investor’s Business Daily22)

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report23.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
How Conservative Is the European ‘Right-Wing’?24

By Brian Mark Weber

Since Donald Trump emerged as a viable candidate in 2016 and went on to win the presidency, other politicians in Europe have ascended in popularity including Marine Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and Nigel Farage in Great Britain. Typically, the media have lumped together Donald Trump with just about any non-establishment European political candidate. So, thanks in large part to Leftmedia mischaracterization, most Americans simply assume these upstarts to be in the same grain as American conservatives.

For example, in 2016 the Washington Post suggested25 that little separates Trump’s rise in the U.S. from the emergence of populists in Europe, and that one of the primary threads tying them all together is an uneducated, aging support base that fears social change.

There is certainly some truth to that — after all, Trump himself is definitely more populist and nationalist than conservative. But this narrative is a narrow oversimplification of what’s happening. Certainly, European populist candidates have latched onto Trump’s message by appealing to their own citizens' weariness over migrant populations and eroding national sovereignty within the European Union.

Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Front party, is headed to a May 7 runoff for the French presidency after Sunday’s vote. She’s a 20-point underdog against globalist EU proponent Emmanuel Macron. Interestingly, neither establishment party advanced to the runoff. Le Pen regularly warns about the threat posed by immigration into France, saying, for example, “Mass immigration is not an opportunity for France; it’s a tragedy for France.” She promises to protect citizens from the dangers of unfettered immigration. But one issue alone is not enough to brand Le Pen a conservative.

Trump applauded her, saying, “She’s the strongest on borders, and she’s the strongest on what’s been going on in France. Whoever is the toughest on radical Islamic terrorism, and whoever is the toughest at the borders, will do well in the election.”

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The Patriot Post Digest 4-24-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
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The issue of immigration alone seems to have forged an alliance between American conservatives and European nationalists, but there are more differences than similarities. Populist politicians in Europe are generally not in favor of deregulation or transferring power away from a centralized bureaucracy. Le Pen is all for big government. If anything her policies will result in France’s government being more powerful and influential in the lives of the French, not less. And despite the media tall tale, she is far more likely to form an alliance with Vladimir Putin than is Trump.

Ronald Brownstein writes26 in the Atlantic, “European populist parties share a common set of priorities focused on restricting immigration, unwinding global economic and political integration (by renouncing the European Union, and, for some of these parties, NATO as well), taking tougher steps to fight Islamic radicalism, and, in most cases, opposing cultural liberalism and secularization at home. On all those fronts, they view Putin not as a threat, but as an ally.”

Nonetheless, the symbolic power of the immigration issue has brought American conservatives and European populists together for the time being. Bill Wirtz and Casey Given explain27 in the Washington Examiner, “American alternative media outlets have been taken by Le Pen for months. Breitbart News has written about her at least 224 times. The site’s editor-in-chief, Alex Marlow, even entertained the idea of establishing a Paris bureau for the website last November.” Yet, other than publicly criticizing unfettered immigration into France, there is little that Le Pen has in common with American conservatives.

And there’s a risk in making bedfellows of politicians in Europe who appear conservative due to their tough talk on immigration but otherwise embrace a very left-wing political agenda. Categorizing European socialists as part of a right-wing ideology raises false hopes of a global conservative tide and prevents conservatives at home from staying focused on those principles necessary for limited government.

Conservatives in the United States must be wary of getting caught up in any movement that doesn’t move us closer to our conservative objectives. Andrew McCarthy writes28 in National Review that these goals shared by American conservatives are founded “in a deep understanding of why the Constitution’s separation-of-powers framework and promotion of individual liberty are, in the long run, good for society. It is fantasy to believe these objectives will be helped along by populism. More reflective of a mood than a theory, populism is notoriously content to have big-government preening overrun limited-government caution.”

In short, the European “right” is nothing like the American right, in that we stand for liberty, constitutionally limited government, and truly free enterprise, while they stand for big government and the welfare state. The only reason they’re lumped in with us is because people confuse nationalism with conservatism. There’s plenty of overlap in interests, but the two terms are not synonymous. They like to tell us the Nazis (the National Socialist Workers Party) were “right wing,” so anything feeding that narrative gets play. It all depends on how you define your terms, and we don’t accept their definition.

American conservatives and constitutionalists should not expect a wave of limited government policies to sweep across Western Europe anytime soon. Nor should we put our time, energy and efforts into buttressing left-wing politicians simply because they wave the flags of nationalism or talk tough on immigration, or because our media derides them as “right wing.” That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t support European politicians who are intent on tackling some of the same problems we have here at home, but we need to reject the notion that Europe’s supposed right wing is in alignment with American conservatism.

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

The ‘Failure to Launch’ Generation29 — Millennials are having a tough time growing up in the real world, as some pretty staggering statistics reveal.
‘Ladies First:’ Men Are Suffering Campus Injustice30 — Sexual assault on campus is a real problem, but false accusations are also ruining some young men.
Bill Who? Never Heard of Him31 — Apparently O'Reilly, whose highest-rated show elevated Fox News ratings for the last decade, is now persona non grata.
Creating New Ethnic Groups?32 — Obama set in motion the government’s attempt to create new categorizations for Americans. Not a good idea.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Joe Bastardi: The March for … What?33
Tony Perkins: Preying Silently: The Crisis of Christian Persecution34
Gary Bauer: Don’t Dismiss Dr. Dean5

For more, visit Right Opinion35.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Joe Bastardi: “No one in their right mind would say they are against [the March for Science] because of its name. First of all, you are standing against the right of people to march for whatever cause they wish. Second, you would be portrayed as someone who is against science. I am all for science. I think the climate changes. It always has and always will. Yet I have been portrayed as anti-science and a climate change ‘denier’ by many who [marched] for things I certainly believe in. Just who does not believe in science? It’s a straw man the marchers are marching against. … What I am trying to figure out is why there is a march when many of the people in that march have no tolerance for the questioning of their position. While I think it’s noble to be inclusive and diverse, are any ‘skeptics’ included as speakers? Is there diversity of thought? Of course not. … One must be very careful when questioning the motives in academia. There seems to be two opposing forces today in society in general: people who seek to earn their keep, and people who believe they are owed their keep. There is no question that without research … we would not be where we are today. But guess what fuels the economic engine that allows people the grant money, etc., for research?”

SHORT CUTS

The Gipper: “It was leadership here at home that gave us strong American influence abroad, and the collapse of imperial Communism. Great nations have responsibilities to lead, and we should always be cautious of those who would lower our profile, because they might just wind up lowering our flag.”

Non Compos Mentis: “Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and her health. That is not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state.” —DNC chairman Tom Perez

Alpha Jackass: “I think [Trump is] dangerous. I think he’s not a credible leader of this country. … He cannot be trusted, and even though you may think it’s not in the best interest of my constituents, I think it’s in the best interest of my constituents to get rid of him.” —Rep. Maxine Waters

Demo-gogues: “To think that [Trump] would consider shutting down the government of the United States of America over this outlandish proposal of a border wall … would be the height of irresponsibility. He would not want that to define his first 100 days. … Don’t try any political stunts, don’t put any poison pills into this process. Let’s just do our responsible, important work of funding this government.” —Sen. Dick Durbin

Braying Jackass: “Hate speech is not protected by the first amendment.” —Howard Dean

For the record: “Clearly, Hillary still sees herself as the leader of the Democratic Party. And why shouldn’t she? Democrats have been locked in an abusive relationship with the Clintons for decades, enabling, explaining, convincing themselves that next time will be different.” —Maureen Callahan

Late-night humor: “Time magazine … released its annual list of the ‘100 Most-Influential People in the World.’ Making the list this year, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Pope Francis, James Comey, and of course, Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton did not make the list. Which is really crazy. Hillary Clinton influenced a whole half of a country to vote for Donald Trump for president. You’d think that would be worth something.” —Jimmy Kimmel

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Managing Editor Nate Jackson

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