Townhall Review | Commentaries

ESPN is back in the news—not for its perpetually declining ratings, but because of comments by two female anchors. Jemele Hill caused a stir when she called President Trump a “white supremacist” and identified his close associates in the same terms. Linda Cohn, a longtime anchor, observed—accurately—that some viewers may be tuning ESPN out because of its left-leaning coverage.

ESPN reacted differently to the two journalists, issuing a statement about Hill, while suspending Cohn.

There’s a strange double standard operating in American culture today. If athletes and celebrities voice progressive views, they’re activists for social justice. They get a gold star. But if they support anything right of center, they’re often labelled as politically divisive, and they get sidelined.

Tons of viewers turn to ESPN for dunks, heroic comebacks, and witty exchanges. Maybe the network should leave the idea-silencing to police states.

There may still be time to “Make ESPN Great Again.”

Maybe.

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The New York Times recently noted the death of a prominent feminist, Kate Millett, who died at 82. The obituary rightly points out that Millett’s book “Sexual Politics” became known as the Bible of Feminism in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s.

In her book, published in 1969, included her words, “Patriarchy’s chief institution is the family. It is both a mirror of and a connection with the larger society; a patriarchal unit within a patriarchal whole.”

What she called for was an overthrow of patriarchy, which would involve the complete overthrow the family and marriage and the normativity of heterosexual relationships, and the expectation of having children.

In the end, Kate Millett died a very sad life. The passing of Kate Millett reminds us of how these kinds of ideas and come into our culture and of the toxic effects that they often have. But very sadly, it also reminds us that any worldview that sees the having and raising of children as a problem and as a burden rather than as a blessing cannot but end in sadness.

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Godzilla has landed.

Ben Shapiro spoke Thursday night at the University of California-Berkeley. Prior to the young conservative’s talk on free speech, local press noted that the university had added major concrete fortifications to handle protestors. In addition, 76 campus faculty members signed a letter urging students to sit out Berkeley’s “Free Speech Week” and stay home. Responding to press coverage, Shapiro compared the reaction to his talk as one befitting Godzilla. In truth, Godzilla might have proved less scary than a thoughtful voice promoting the free exchange of ideas.

Irony abounds in Berkeley. Violent leftists associated with Antifa do their darndest to supposedly oppose violence. Faculty members who demand that their views be heard show no such fairness to others.

But, some students today are still thinking for themselves. They’re seeing tolerance play out that is no tolerance at all. Perhaps the next generation is not lost.

Let’s engage them. Let’s make the case for sound principles and permanent things.

We’ll talk to anyone—even Godzilla.

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After a miserable summer for movies, with box-office down some 15 percent across the board, September brought a big surprise: a modestly budgeted fright-fest with no big names smashed all records for horror films or for September releases in general.

“It,” based on a 1986 Stephen King novel and a ’90s TV miniseries, centers on an ageless cannibal clown who arises from the sewers of a Maine town every 27 years to murder and mutilate local children. A group of outcaste 13-year-olds does battle with this demonic force, while the film’s only adults engage in incest, sadism, attempted rape, child abuse, and wanton cruelty.

As in many Stephen King stories, supernatural power functions only on the dark side, never balanced by the goodly or the godly. The only genuinely scary aspect of the whole “It” phenomenon is the public reception for this mediocre product: the $117 million in opening weekend business is as grotesque as anything on screen.

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Since the Trump Administration announced the end of President Obama’s DACA policy, the nation now turns to Congress to determine what should be done about the “dreamers,” those 800,000 young people brought illegally to the U.S. as children who are now hoping for a future in America.

It is vital that we make an important distinction made often in our American courts: namely, the distinction between what is constitutional and what is right.

Justice Antonin Scalia is famous for saying that a policy can be stupid but not unconstitutional. Similarly, a policy may achieve a righteous end, but the means of doing so may be unconstitutional. Such is the case with DACA.
There has to be a way of getting to what the DACA policy was attempting to do, but that does not circumvent Congress, and it’s now Congress’ responsibility.

President Trump has given Congress six months to act legislatively and decisively to guarantee the same kind of security to DACA recipients. Now is the time for Congress to act.

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This summer, Commentary magazine published a forum on the question: Is free speech under threat in the United States?

Ironically, in a country where the Constitution and the courts carefully protect free speech, many people do not feel free to speak freely. Why? Because of a smothering blanket of political correctness that starts in our colleges and permeates our society.

Speakers with points of view that differ from the liberal orthodoxy are not welcome on many campuses, and in some cases have been subject to threats and violence. Students are supposed to be protected from so-called trigger words and microaggressions in the classroom. So much for free speech and the open debate of competing ideas.

The problem is that the First Amendment protects free speech from limitations by government, but the big challenges to free speech come from our culture and our campuses. It will take a strong fight to protect free speech, which is clearly under threat.

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The sharpest divisions in politics today aren’t based on race or economic status, but on religion. Last year’s exit polls showed 26 percent who described themselves as Evangelical Christians, and they preferred Donald Trump by a crushing margin of 81 to 16 percent.

Among the rest of the electorate—the 74 percent who said they were NOT evangelical or born-again—Hillary won a landslide, 60 to 34 percent.

Why the difference, when few fervent Christians viewed Trump as a paragon of virtue, or a person of deep faith?

The answer involves pervasive fear about threats to religious liberty—with people of faith alarmed at attacks on individuals, businesses and even religious organizations that espouse politically incorrect views on same sex marriage, abortion, or public prayer. Unless liberals begin standing up for religious liberty and freedom of conscience, and stop treating religious believers as the enemy, people of faith will continue to swing elections to the GOP as a matter of self-defense.

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At key turning points in history, dramatic events seem to come together to force cooperation between even the most reluctant partisans. In the face of devastation from Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma, for instance, even a brief governmental shutdown would have been unthinkable, so Republicans and Democrats came together to provide disaster relief, to pass a budget, and to raise the debt ceiling.

Meanwhile, the H-bomb explosion by North Korea means that all sides should rally behind the President in his strong economic or military response to the brutal regime in Pyongyang, and to build-up our armed forces.

Finally, there’s the new six-month deadline for so-called “Dreamers”: the prospect of deportation of 800,000 gainfully employed young Americans who've been raised since childhood in the US, would do major economic and social damage, so liberals must work with conservatives for meaningful immigration reform and enhanced border security.

Big challenges require big and bi-partisan responses, including better coordination between Congress and the President.

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President Trump has ended DACA and given Congress six months to take action on the issue of illegal immigration.

As Congress works to write and pass a bill, they must recognize the moral necessity of building a border wall—a border barrier—a border fence.

In July alone, there were 18,000 arrests at the border. Imagine how many were not arrested—made it past.

I’m not certain how many people were swept away by Hurricane Harvey while trying to come into this country illegally, but it had to be a significant number, drawn here by the promise of easy access across that border.

If we do not secure the barrier, we will continue to attract people to make the arduous and sometimes deadly trip that ends for too many in a Walmart parking lot, dead in the back of a truck from asphyxiation, or swept away in a flood.

We have a moral imperative to remove the incentive.

The policy that German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a couple of years ago was essentially if you can survive the journey to Europe, you can stay here. What kind of policy is that? America can and must do better. We must be better than that.

It’s time to build that barrier.

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President Trump recently announced that he intends to end President Obama’s executive action called DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which prevents the deportation of persons brought illegally to the United States as children. The Trump Administration will renew DACA permits for the next six months in order to give Congress time to act to protect the “Dreamers.”

Now, let’s make one thing abundantly clear: DACA is unconstitutional. The president said in 2010 and 2011, President Obama, that it would be unlawful for a president to take the kind of action that he eventually did indeed take. The state attorneys general who were preparing to challenge the constitutionality of that executive order in court would certainly have been successful.

In fact, President Trump did a favor to every DACA kid by providing a ripeness argument so that courts may delay ruling DACA unconstitutional, as they surely will.

Now is the time for Republicans and Democrats to come together to provide a solution for the 800,000 people in their 20s and 30s currently protected under DACA, while simultaneously cutting off the flow of illegal immigration into our country.

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