Townhall Review | Commentaries

Regarding the hateful image connected to Governor Ralph Northam, Virginia Democrat, it doesn’t matter whether he’s the figure in blackface, the one in Klan costume, or neither one of them.

He IS the one who chose to place that photograph on his personal page in his medical school yearbook. Among just four photos he used to define his personality, he chose one that recycles racist stereotypes while trivializing murderous violence.

In Northam’s own lifetime, the Klan had committed bombings and shootings of civil rights workers throughout the South. Conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was taken to task for stupid references to beer in his high school yearbook when he was 15; but no one in press or politics ever exposed Northam for treating racist violence like a joke when he was 25.

There’s a double standard at work that needs to end.

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We’ve seen headlines coming out of China recently about a flagging economy—and we’ve seen headlines about a government crackdown on the Christian faith. Perhaps these two are related.

Two friends who are also experts on the Chinese economy, point out how evangelical Christians in China tend to be successful entrepreneurs.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is known to be a student of history. Here’s a good study topic, 300 years ago the French Royalty persecuted and drove out their evangelical Huguenot citizens, who were also the core of the entrepreneurial class. The resulting economic stagnation helped lead to the French revolution and the death of the royal class.

Chinese elites fear economic stagnation could lead to revolution. Then they should stop cracking down on tens of millions of China’s most economically productive citizens.

That’s a bad idea anytime, but especially during an economic slowdown, and has a history of bad endings.

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Liberal California Senator Kamala Harris made a splash last week when she launched her campaign for president.  The signature idea she plans to run on?  A single-payer, government-run health care system called Medicare-for-all.

It all sounds great until you realize what it means for your health care and mine.  Put simply, if you like your health care plan, say goodbye to it.  In her own words, she said of private health insurance: “Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on.”

So, let’s be clear about what she means.  Medicare-for-all would take away the health care that 150 million American workers rely on, and replace it with a liberal pipe-dream that will result in the rationing of care, higher taxes, and lower the quality of care.

Our health care system is still too expensive and inaccessible for far too many Americans. But completely replacing it with a socialist-style health reform isn’t the right answer.

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Our government has now introduced sanctions targeting Venezuela’s oil industry as we up the pressure on the dictator Maduro to get out. We’ve turned off the oil as well as access to the money. We’ve called for military leaders to switch their allegiance to the man now recognized as Venezuela’s legitimate head of state: Juan Guaidó.

And we’ve made it clear that any attempt to harm remaining U.S. diplomats in Venezuela will—in the words of National Security Adviser Ambassador John Bolton—“Be met with a significant response.”

Bolton declined to comment on what that response would be, but he was carrying a yellow pad. And on that yellow pad was written, “5,000 troops to Columbia.” That’s an army combat brigade.

Now: John Bolton does nothing by mistake. Ambassador Bolton is a friend of mine. I know John Bolton. I’ve worked with John Bolton. John Bolton is no Ben Rhodes.

All options are on the table.

Maduro’s days in power are numbered.

Thank God!

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Pastor Wang Yi of the Early Rain Covenant Church in China has been in detention for over a month now—along with his wife and dozens of church members.

 

Christianity has been growing rapidly in China, which apparently frightens President Xi Jinping. His fear is misplaced. Chinese Christians are good citizens and productive workers. Instead of fearing the growth of the church, Xi should fear the consequences of his own crackdown.

 

We’re engaged in a research project which shows the correlation between persecution and regime change. It’s abundantly clear: Regimes which persecute the Church are much more likely to be removed.

 

Since 2000, the 50 worst persecutors have seen a sky-high 38 percent rate of forced regime change.

 

Just by numbers alone: If the Chinese government is concerned about losing power, the last thing they should be doing is persecuting the Church.

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New York state has just enacted a new abortion law, making it an even deadlier place for the unborn to be.

After Democrats gained control of the state Senate in 2018, they now have control of the entire government of the Empire State. They have a liberal Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo and now democratic majorities in both chambers of the state legislature.

That explains why—on the 46th anniversary of Roe v. Wade—governor Cuomo signed into law an act that allows abortions right up until a baby’s due date if mothers health is at risk. The word “health” has been defined legally in such a way that it can mean anything. Eventually, it can mean everything.

This bill now defines a person as “a human being who has been born and is alive.”

That’s chilling …

And the response from the New York State legislature can only be described as macabre.

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“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry.”

That was Rev. Martin Luther King’s appeal to work as soulcraft in his 1967 “Street Sweeper” speech at New Covenant Baptist Church in Chicago.

All too often, it seems like those words are something close to blasphemy to Leftist elites who invoke his name while seeking to expunge from history those names King called forth.

Shakespeare—invoked by MLK—has today been dropped by Yale as required reading for English Literature majors. And Yale is by no means alone.

King argued the purpose of education was to, “teach one to think intensively and think critically.”

Today, the politicized professoriate would rather students not think for themselves at all.

It’s a Shakespearean tragedy for black and white alike that so few of today’s students do.

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Two destructive impulses distort media coverage of far too many major – and minor – events. And both of these instincts were on powerful display in the recent distortions involving a non-violent, Lincoln Memorial exchange between pro-life, Catholic high school boys from Covington, Kentucky and activists representing “Indigenous Peoples” and “Black Israelites.”

First, reporters tend to blame conservatives for anything that goes wrong, even when there’s scant evidence to back them up. Second, the media almost always exaggerate anything that does goes wrong.

Any problem—from the environment, to the economy, to the political system to schools and even foreign relations—automatically becomes a catastrophe. The idea is that the public will pay more attention if you can make them worried or scared: the news business becomes the bad news business, promoting an unduly pessimistic view of our country and the world.

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Perhaps you’ve heard about the Green New Deal?  It’s freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s revolutionary scheme to reinvent the entire American economy.  She calls it “the Great Society, the moonshot, the civil rights movement of our generation.”

But look a little deeper and you’ll see different colors:  the blue of progressivism and mostly the red of government spending and debt.  The proposal calls for a breathtaking $90 billion in green initiatives.

Even mainstream Democrats are hesitant about this sweeping effort to reinvent the economy and eliminate income inequality.  But media darling Ocasio-Cortez will make it front and center.

The first New Deal turns out not to have solved the Great Depression as we once thought.  We hardly need a new one. Is it green? Yes. Is it utopian?  Yes.

But mostly it’s the same old liberal blue of government spending and the red of more debt.

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To paraphrase Dr. King: “Judge others by the content of their character, not by the color of their …. MAGA caps.” Unfortunately, a group of pro-life Kentucky schoolboys drew savage media criticism based on their pro-Trump headgear, not their personal conduct.

The video record shows that in the face of taunts and insults, the teenagers showed admirable restraint and dignity. Internet and journalistic commentators should have learned a crucial lesson: if someone holds opinions that differ from yours, that alone doesn’t make him or her a bad person.

The kids from Covington Catholic, the “Native Elder” and Indian activists who beat drums and chanted at them, even the “Black Israelites” who hurled insults instead of rocks or bombs, all showed that vigorous expressions of First Amendment rights need not produce a meaningless melee.

Not a bad day for our badly divided country!

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