They’re increasingly rigid and orthodox, even as Republicans have shown a new flexibility.
By Bobby Jindal Mr. Jindal served as governor of Louisiana, 2008-16, and was a candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. February 11, 2020
The Democrats have turned religious. Not in the sense that they espouse a belief in an omnipotent and benevolent Creator or eternal and universal moral principles. They are religious in the sense that they hold dogmatic beliefs that are impervious to contradiction by logic, evidence or experience, and cultivate a moral superiority toward unbelievers. The party that loudly prides itself on tolerance and diversity is increasingly intolerant in at least three areas.
First, Democrats have moved beyond traditional environmentalism, with its emphasis on regulation, technological innovation and market incentives to achieve incremental progress, toward a radical vision grounded in an unshakable belief in climate apocalypse. Both parties once cooperated to protect endangered species and clean the air, water and soil. Today’s Democrats demand bans on fracking and new oil and gas leases on federal lands, and endorse the elimination of all fossil fuels and decarbonization of the economy in unrealistic time frames. Rather than aspirational moonshots, intended to inspire the public and private sectors to work together, Democrats use these impossible goals as rationales for completely restructuring how Americans live, work, commute and even eat.
More-radical activists regard eating meat, driving SUVs, having children, flying and using plastic straws as akin to mortal sins. During last week’s primary debate, Tom Steyer went so far as to declare that climate change, not terrorism or a resurgent China, is the “biggest problem that we face internationally in the world.” Democrats are increasingly willing to sacrifice allies—such as union workers in extraction and construction—to scramble after unreachable climate targets. Sen. Bernie Sanders denounced the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, endorsed by the AFL-CIO, because it was silent on climate change.
No. It doesn’t match his shrinking regulations and limiting government
by Allan H. Ryskind Allan H. Ryskind, a former editor and owner of Human Events, is the author of “Hollywood Traitors” (Regnery, 2015)
December 31, 2019
Prominent liberal Fareed Zakaria insists that Donald Trump “has been profoundly unconservative” because he’s abandoned what “Republicans used to call the core of their agenda — limited government.” But it’s hard to take the charge seriously, even though some conservatives have sent his piece around for comment to see if he’s onto something. Yet no politician in recent memory has restricted the reach of government at both the federal and state level more than the current occupant of the Oval Office.
Mr. Trump’s drastic shrinking of federal economic regulations, opening vast expanses of federal lands for energy exploration, drawing overseas businesses home with tax breaks and passing major tax cuts for corporations and individuals have generated an explosion of well-paying jobs, personal wealth and soaring wages, as well as the lowest level of unemployment for minorities on record. Some 7 million new jobs have been created during Mr. Trump’s presidency and more than 100 million American shareholders have watched the market jump 55 percent since his election.
You’d think Mr. Zakaria would be celebrating Mr. Trump’s low-tax, pro-growth economic agenda as not only core Republicanism but virtually Reaganesque. Increasing prosperity by stimulating market forces without enacting high taxes and big government programs is, of course, how conservatives try to keep government limited.
Mr. Zakaria concedes that Mr. Trump has delivered what conservatives have wanted in the realm of “social and cultural policy,” such as “appointing judges, tightening rules related to abortion and asylum, etc.” but suggests they have little to do with taming the Leviathan.
Really? Stacking the courts with judges steeped in the philosophy of federalism is, of course, precisely the way to limit government on both the economic and cultural fronts. Mr. Zakaria may ignore the threat, but Democratic Party presidential candidates, along with their media support groups, are panicked over the president’s court selections.
Does the Democratic Party represent the interests of black Americans? Larry Elder gives 10 reasons why blacks might consider leaving the Democratic Party.
This article originally appeared in the Wall Street Journalon September 5, 2019.
This year’s Democratic presidential candidates have a favorite whipping boy: “powerful interests.” Get ready to hear again in coming weeks how the National Rifle Association rules Washington, how the Koch empire dominates politics, how the right is pouring “dark money” into its agenda. And then remember that these are among the biggest whoppers of the 2020 election. One side will do battle with the aid of a huge and savvy nonprofit political empire—and it isn’t the right. Though the sooner Republicans understand that, the better.
A helpful tutorial arrived this week,“Power Grab,” a new book by Republican former Rep. Jason Chaffetzof Utah. Mr. Chaffetz has been digging into nonprofits since his time as House Oversight Committee chairman, and the book details how powerful the liberal nonprofit sector has grown. It may surprise many Americans—those who read daily stories about conservative “influence”—that the likes of the NRA, Judicial Watch and the National Organization for Marriage barely rank by comparison to the assets and revenue of Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union or the Nature Conservancy.
These aren’t only big political players; they’re the biggest political players. In 2018 the nonprofit watchdog Capital Research Center analyzed grants handed out in the 2014 election year by six big foundations on the right (including the Bradley and Charles Koch foundations) versus six on the left (including the Open Society and Tides foundations). Liberal public-policy charities, organized under chapter 501(c)(3) of the tax code, bagged $7.4 billion of this foundation money in 2014. For conservative charities, the figure was a mere $2.2 billion. That $7.4 billion also dwarfed total 2013-14 campaign receipts to federal, state and local campaigns ($4.1 billion) and spending that cycle by independent groups ($830 million).
They ignore reality and march in lockstep with their base. Did they learn anything from 2016?
By Peggy Noonan June 28, 2019
I’ve received tens of thousands of letters and other communications from Trump supporters the past few years, some of which have sparked extended dialogues. Two I got after last week’s column struck me as pertinent to this moment, and they make insufficiently appreciated points.
A gentleman of early middle age in Kansas City wrote to say he’d sat out the 2016 election because he was dissatisfied with both parties. But now he’s for Donald Trump, and the reason “runs deeper than politics.”
America’s elites in politics, media and the academy have grown oblivious to “the average Joe’s intense disgust” at being morally instructed and “preached to.”
“Every day, Americans are told of the endless ways they are falling short. If we don’t show the ‘proper’ level of understanding according to a talking head, then we are surely racist. If we don’t embrace every sanitized PC talking point, then we must be heartless. If we have the audacity to speak our mind, then we are most definitely a bigot.” These accusations are relentless.
“We are jabbed like a boxer with no gloves on to defend us. And we are fed up. We are tired of being told we aren’t good enough.” He believes the American people are by nature kind and generous—“they would give you the shirt off their back if you were in trouble”—and that “in Donald Trump, voters found a massive sledgehammer that pulverizes the ridiculous notion that Americans aren’t good enough.” Mr. Trump doesn’t buy the guilt narrative.
“It’s surely not about the man at this point. It stopped being about Trump long ago. It is about that counter-punch that has been missing from our culture for far too long.”
The culture of accusation, he says, is breaking us apart.
A reader who grew up upper-middle-class in the South writes on the politics of the situation. His second wife, also a Southerner, grew up poor. She is a former waitress and bartender whose politics he characterizes as “pragmatic liberal.” They watched Mr. Trump’s 2015 announcement together, and he said to her, “He doesn’t have a chance.” She looked at him “with complete conviction” and said, “He’s going to win.”
As the campaign progressed, she never wavered. At the end, with the polls saying Hillary, “I asked my wife how she could be so certain Trump was going to win.” He found her response “astute and telling.”
“She told me, ‘He speaks my language, and there’s a lot more of me than there is of you.’ ”
I have to say after a week of reading such letters that emotionally this cycle feels like 2016 all over again. Various facts are changed (no Mrs. Clinton) but the same basic dynamic pertains—the two Americas talking past each other, the social and cultural resentments, the great estrangement. It’s four years later but we’re re-enacting the trauma of 2016.
And the Democrats again appear to be losing the thread.
They’ve spent the past few months giving the impression they are in a kind of passionate lockstep with a part of their base, the progressives, and detached from everyone else.
And in the debates they doubled down. Both nights had fizz. There was a lot of earnestness and different kinds of brightness.
But what Night One did was pick up the entire party and put it down outside the mainstream and apart from the center.
This is what the candidates said:
They are, functionally, in terms of the effects of their stands, for open borders.
They are in complete agreement with the abortion regime—no reservations or qualms, no sense of just or civilized limits.
They’re all in on identity politics. One candidate warned against denying federally funded abortions to “a trans female.”
Two said they would do away with all private health insurance.
This has to be the most disturbing article I have ever read. Evidently, liberals lack a respect for the dead as they lack respect for the unborn. Several states are trying to pass laws that require proper burials for aborted babies so they won’t be thrown away with medical waste and the liberals are fighting even fighting that law. Tell me again how liberalism is supposed to be all about compassion and caring. Nancy
Washington becomes first state to legalize ‘green funerals’
Process composts human remains into soil
In this April 19, 2019, file photo, Katrina Spade, the founder and CEO of Recompose, a company that hopes to use composting as an alternative to burying or cremating human remains, poses for a photo in a cemetery in Seattle, as she displays a sample of compost material left from the decomposition of a cow using a combination of wood chips, alfalfa and straw. On Tuesday, May 21, 2019, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill into law that allows licensed facilities to offer “natural organic reduction,” which turns a body, mixed with substances such as wood chips and straw, into soil in a span of several weeks. Th law makes Washington the first state in the U.S. to approve composting as an alternative to burying or cremating human remains. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File) **FILE**
By Dan Boylan– The Washington Times – Tuesday, May 28, 2019
Washington has become the first state to legalize “green funerals” — the process of mixing human remains with straw and wood chips and placing them in soil to help grow flowers and trees.
The Washington-based firm Recompose has pioneered human composting, which has been hailed as more affordable and environmentally friendly than caskets or cremation — America’s most popular form of burial.
“The idea of returning to earth resonates with many different faiths around the world,” Katrina Spade, founder and CEO of Recompose, told The Washington Times. “And nature is really good at death.”
Some opposition to the new law came from the Catholic Church, which argued that the composting technique fails to follow church doctrine on the treatment of the dead.
But Washington state’s association of funeral directors supported the initiative, echoing sentiments expressed by the National Funeral Directors Association that the method offers environmental benefits at lower costs.
I am posting this article on our conservative women’s forum website under the category Culture Rot. The Democrat Party is rotting at its core and a number of Republicans have also lost their moral compass too. Disgusting ! Thanks to Jeff Miller for sharing this article. Please note: This was a difficult article to copy and paste as there are several videos in the article so I suggest you click on the link provided to read the entire article and view the videos. Where are the liberals who pride themselves on being compassionate and caring? Nancy
House fails to override Cooper’s veto of abortion bill
By Matthew Burns, WRAL.com senior producer/politics editor, & Laura Leslie, WRAL Capitol Bureau chief
RALEIGH, N.C. — After weeks of delay, House Republicans on Wednesday failed in their attempt to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of the “born alive” abortion bill.
The House voted 67-53 after almost an hour of emotional debate to override the veto, falling five votes short of the three-fifths majority needed for an override.
Senate Bill 359, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, would make it a felony for a doctor not to provide care for an infant born after a botched abortion. It also would create a duty for other health care professionals to report any such failure to act.
, R-Carteret. insisted Wednesday that isn’t the case as she pleaded for an override.
“Babies born from an abortion are not protected in our statutes,” McElraft said. “Why should those babies not have the same rights as a baby born naturally?”
A number of override supporters argued that the bill isn’t about abortion rights, only about human decency.
“We’re called to be kind and loving. That’s all we’re asking,” said Rep.
