Townhall Review | Commentaries

In late April, hundreds of Orthodox Jews gathered for the funeral of a beloved Chassidic rabbi, but New York’s mayor deemed their rites “absolutely unacceptable” and threatened mass arrests if it happened again.

A month later, tens of thousands of angry, often violent protestors, rallied for Black Lives Matter but the same mayor encouraged them, boasting of his own daughter’s participation. Simultaneously, 1,300 medical and public health professionals who had previously advocated strict social distancing, signed a statement in support of mass demonstrations and, idiotically, called them “vital to the national public health.”

This ludicrous, illogical switch demonstrates that so-called “social justice activism” has become a substitute religion for secular progressives—with its own saints, martyrs and intolerant, unassailable creed. In this replacement faith, the holiest sacrament is public protest—not because it achieves anything practical but because it amounts to a form of self-destructive, fanatical, secular worship.

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President Trump is officially launching his re-election campaign on June 20th in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Before Tulsa’s black residents were massacred by a racist mob in 1921, Tulsa was home to what was known as “Black Wall Street”—a hub for an emerging class of affluent black entrepreneurs.

In the decades after the Civil War, former slave Booker T. Washington spear-headed the creation of a black entrepreneurial class through his Tuskegee Institute—rooted in the Biblical foundations of human dignity and the merit of hard-work: Washington wrote that the black slave came out of bondage “with a hammer and a saw in his hands and a Bible in his hands.”

The president has an opportunity to shift the conversation towards the heroic successes of black people—despite the troubling history.

He can shift the focus from victimhood to victory. I hope he uses it.

 

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A little noted detail in a new national poll raises questions on its report of a solid, steady Biden lead.

The Wall Street Journal/NBC News Poll also asked respondents about social distancing and 85 percent claimed they regularly wear masks outside the home, but anybody noting real-world habits of neighbors and strangers knows mask-wearing isn’t really that universal.

Yes, many respondents must be fibbing—telling pollsters what they think they want to hear. Similarly, some voters no doubt feel reluctant to inform representatives of big media companies that they’re planning to vote for the president. 

Last time, the phenomenon of “shy Trump voters” contributed to notorious polling errors. That pattern may or may not repeat itself, but it’s possible that many voters again prefer to mask—you should pardon the expression—an inclination to vote for Donald Trump.

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The decision handed down this week by the Supreme Court of the United States, expanding the sex discrimination clause of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include the categories now of LGBTQ, is going to be one of those decisions that will have massive and dangerous impact as a precedent.

It's going to go down as one of those decisions in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States that will set the trajectory for our culture. And that is very lamentable.

To argue that sex discrimination in 1964 had anything to do with the letters LGBTQ is irrational and it is intellectually dishonest. It’s sad that two conservative justices joined the majority in this case, including Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wrote the majority opinion after all. Justice Samuel Alito in dissent got it exactly right when he said that what the court did this week is not to judge, but rather to “legislate.”

And that is not what the Constitution calls upon the court to do. It’s a sad day in American constitutional history, and it sets the stage for even more sad days in our future.

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Public health officials across America have spent the last several months warning about the dangers of the coronavirus, and the need for us to stay at home, halt economic activity and avoid social interactions with our friends and neighbors.

We are now reopening our economy in many parts of the country, but these same public health officials have compromised their own credibility as we do so. On the one hand, they’ve urged caution and a slow return to work, school, and faith gatherings. They’ve criticized those who opposed the stay-at-home orders.

But, at the same time, these officials have been broadly supportive of the large protests on America’s streets in the last few weeks.

Public health officials should be helping us understand the comparative risks of activities, not endorsing the causes they like while prohibiting the ones they don’t.

Their hypocrisy is costly, indeed: They have impacted our ability to address future health crises.

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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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