We are watching today a collapse of trust in television news, especially cable news.

Certainly, a percent or two of the 330 million Americans “trust” a handful of broadcasters with whom they agree. Rush Limbaugh probably has the highest raw number of devoted listeners who really trust him—but he has no one even remotely his equal on television.

The vast majority of Americans believe, with good reason, that all those TV talking heads on television are somewhere on the political spectrum and that all the journalists, producers and executives standing behind them bend the news to fit their politics.

Journalists of all shapes, sizes, platforms and personalities are presumed to be advancing an agenda because almost everyone on television is actually doing just that.

We need a new birth of news—new faces and production teams, new mission statements and, yes, new executives.

The Rome of television is in ruins, but it can be rebuilt.

For the good of the nation, it must be rebuilt.

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Thanks to the coronavirus crisis, we have a new vocabulary, including “bending the curve” of the disease to protect the public health system from collapse.

But other curves should be bent upward and not down including America’s civic education.

Recent national test scores show once again that young people do not know American history or how their government works.  Only 24% of 8th graders tested as “proficient” in government and proficiency in history dropped to a pitiful 15%.  Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos rightly called the test results “stark and inexcusable.”
But these scores have been low for years and little has been done.  It’s time that we require students to study as much civics and history as they do math and science.  It’s past time that we demand our students understand the country they will soon be running.

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This is Jerry Bowyer of Townhall Finance for Townhall.com.

Amidst all the protest and violent unrest, radical activists are flinging the accusation of ‘systemic racism’ against America.

Well, we do have an educational monopoly system which keeps poor children trapped in failing schools.

Our government built a welfare system which conditions support on mothers not marrying the fathers of their children.

Our media and broadcast systems glorify sex outside of marriage and target poor black communities with ‘reproductive health care’ that monetizes a lethal false solution to an unplanned pregnancy.

Our tax system imposes very high rates in major metropolitan areas which drive the middle class out of cities but traps those too poor to move.

So it does seem like there are real problems in our system—the results of decades of bad policy clearly fall more heavily on one race.

Maybe there is something to this systemic racism idea after all—just not what we’ve been told.

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A call is going out now for the “dismantling” of the Minneapolis police department. The President of the city council said this when asked about what to do in the case of a break-in:

“Yes, I mean I hear that loud and clear from a lot of my neighbors, and myself, too, and I know that that comes from a place of privilege… calling the police may mean more harm is done.”

There’s no doubt that our cities and communities need restoration, including greater peaceful engagement between police and citizens. Yet the idea that wanting protection is “privilege” is not sound. In fact, it’s absurd and won’t restore anything.

Police who act unjustly are accountable to the rule of law, and must be. But there is no need to qualify what a society without police will look like: more harm will surely be done.

May coming days bring greater safety—and meaningful restoration.

I’m Owen Strachan.

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Angry protestors want to turn public sentiment against the police, but their ugly tactics remind all sane observers how much we need the cops. Rioting, looting, arson, Molotov cocktails, graffiti and vandalism demonstrate how vulnerable all citizens would be without the courage of police officers who put their lives on the line every day.

Sure, you can find examples of bad or poorly trained cops. but they’re far more rare in police ranks than are violent, criminal elements in the ranks of the demonstrators.

In a difficult moment, time when Americans can’t decide whether to emphasize economic recovery or continued precautions against COVID-19, the nationwide rioting harms both hopes.

Literally thousands of already struggling businesses have been badly damaged, while assembling “super-spreader,” densely packed crowds will only generate new spikes in the spread of the virus.

No wonder most Americans love and value our police officers – without whom decent lives, and livable cities, could not exist.

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How is it that what we used to call the “liberal leaning media” have turned so decisively even further to the left?

The Wall Street Journal recently published an important piece from Van Gordon Sauter, a former President of CBS News. The headline captures his point perfectly: “The ‘Liberal Leaning’ Media Has Passed Its Tipping Point.”

He begins with an anecdote of his lunch with Jeanne Kirkpatrick, the foreign policy advisor to President Reagan, who was lamenting what she called the “liberal leaning media.”

Van Gordon Sauter then said, “it was only a liberal tilt and could be corrected.”

“You don’t understand,” said Jeanne Kirkpatrick, “It’s too late.”

Today, Sauter—one of the most prestigious of names in journalism—says, “Kirkpatrick was prophetic.”

His concern is that—at some point—the American people either will or have figured out that the elites of mainstream media don’t much like them and don’t much like their understanding of their country.

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The widespread rioting and looting we’ve witnessed in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer highlight the need for stability and trust in the achievement of justice.

In the United States, the act of political protest has often led to constructive political change, but rioting never has. And the more widespread and the more violent the rioting, the more negative the political effects have been over time.

The United States Constitution guarantees citizens the right to a redress of grievances.

But there are preconditions that are necessary—the first is a stable order in which justice can actually take place. The second is the kind of trust, social trust, that is necessary for any effort at achieving even approximate justice.

If you take out stability, if you eliminate order, and if you erode social trust, the accomplishment of justice becomes well-nigh impossible.

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Do the riots make any sense? While there is a clearly an understandable rationale behind peaceful protests over the death of George Floyd, what purpose can there be in looting, destroying businesses and engaging in more acts of violence against innocent people?

How is justice served by piling injustice on top of injustice?

There’s no logic to this except for that of mysterium iniquitatis—Latin for the ‘the mystery of evil’. The sacking and burning of businesses, the breakdown of order, the embrace of chaos is not rational. It’s not just destructive—it’s self-destructive.

Much of what is happening has nothing to do with race or economics or politics or ideology.

Some things are too big for us to handle on our own. It’s time for Americans to pray about the crises that have engulfed us.

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The recent events across America have reminded citizens that freedom, peace, and safety are fragile things.

The death of George Floyd in Minnesota calls for justice through our system of due process. The officer who suffocated Floyd had numerous citations for bad conduct. Unfortunately, police unions make it very hard to remove bad cops. Following Floyd’s death, peaceful protests were held. But then depraved rioting, looting, and destruction unfolded.

In the midst of this lawlessness, the group that calls itself Antifa has wreaked havoc. Antifa is evil, a movement of nihilism cloaked in the tones of liberation.

Thankfully, President Trump labeled Antifa a “domestic terrorist group,” one of the more important domestic decisions thus far of his presidency. Attorney General William Barr publically reinforced this stance in force.

In riled times, we seek freedom, peace and safety. And we seek justice—justice in Floyd’s case, and justice to end Antifa’s reign of terror.

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The video of George Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis, held down by a police officer in an arrest with his knee on the back of his neck resulted—as we now know—in his tragic death.

Commenting on the video, Art Acevedo, who is the head of the Major Cities Chiefs Association said, “I haven’t heard anybody justify this.”

The sad reality is that George Floyd is now dead.

When you look at the protests and rioting in Minneapolis, it is an ugly picture everywhere you look—and now not just in Minneapolis.

But where does this story lead?

It all comes down to the importance of the rule of law. If the rule of law breaks down, there is no rescue.

Injustice documented before our eyes cries out for justice, but justice calls out for the rule of law—in the courtroom and on the streets of America’s cities.

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