Townhall Review | Commentaries

Economic anxiety, food supply disruptions, foreign wars, cultural decadence, corruption in the ruling class, populist uprisings…

No, I’m not talking about 2022, I’m talking about 2,022 years ago, or thereabouts, when Christ was born in Bethlehem. Light came into the darkness, but the darkness could not comprehend it. 

The darkness still cannot comprehend it, and will never defeat it. Herod tried, and died. Rome, the alleged eternal city, tried to murder the eternal God. But Christ rose and Rome fell. China is trying to eradicate the faith. It too will fail and then fall, until it repents. 

What happened in Bethlehem two millennia ago was D-day for the Kingdom of God, an invasion of the kingdom of darkness. We spend a lot of time arguing about politics and who should represent us—as we should. This time of year, how about refocusing us on the far more important question: Who our King is. 

Rejoice, Jesus the Messiah is born of the virgin Mary, rejoice!

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The seventh tranche of internal Twitter documents revealed disturbing new facets of the attempts by the FBI to censor public debate. Not only did Twitter executives come under pressure to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story, Twitter essentially deputized them by granting security clearances. In fact, they even did a dry run one month earlier in September 2020—by positing a hypothetical disinformation story about Hunter.

That’s one heck of a coincidence.

This tranche also reveals that major American news organizations took part in this supposed disinformation effort. Along with Twitter and Facebook, “top national security reporters” from the New York Times and Washington Post took part in these briefings. Both papers later declared the New York Post report “disinformation,” refusing to acknowledge its legitimacy until earlier this year.

That’s not a coincidence. The cooperation of the newspapers that exposed Watergate in a government censorship combine is a disgrace, however. Congress needs to get to the bottom of this ASAP.

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The red wave may have fallen short of expectations. But come January, Republicans will control the House of Representatives. So why would some Senate republicans be willing to finalize all next year’s spending now?

Our country has serious issues that must be addressed. They include border security and the politicization of the Justice Department and FBI. And the Democratic spending spree over the last two years has resulted in hideous inflation.

Republicans’ only leverage is the power of the purse. Passing an omnibus bill now gives that power away for another full year.

If the GOP limits their support to a short-term, continuing resolution, that would allow a new, Republican-controlled House to shape next year’s appropriations bill and control the purse strings.

Americans are right to wonder: If Republicans don’t use their power, why did we give them any?

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When the Soviet Union fell, the archives were opened—and all the world could see the corruption of the regime well documented by its own bureaucracy. Now, Twitter isn’t exactly the USSR. For example, no nuclear missiles. But the prior regime did fall and now Elon Musk has opened the files for all the world to see. 

Anyone who cares about the truth can see Twitter’s reign of censorship—every bit as bad as its critics thought. We see well-educated people permanently banning a former president, building blacklists and shadow-banning. It’s jaw-dropping. 

The whole thing is an object lesson for us all. This crowd should not be gatekeepers over our national discourse. Whether it’s Twitter, YouTube, Google, Facebook—or the government and elite media who colluded with them—the elite managerial class has shown that it cannot be trusted to decide which speech we should be allowed to hear. 

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The nation awaits the launch of the 118th Congress—with new leadership and some serious work to do.

The top national security priority has to be the House Select Committee on China. Wisconsin Rep. Mike Gallagher is Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s choice to chair the new committee.

He’s a good fit for this huge job: An active-duty Marine for seven years— including two tours in Iraq—and a serious student of security studies with his PhD from Georgetown University. 

Congressman Gallagher will need to waken Americans to the new Cold War that China has launched over the past 20 years while we dozed complacently. 

The Select Committee should start by asking C-SPAN to cover every hearing gavel to gavel, scheduled in the evening so Americans can easily watch them. 

Michael Pillsbury of the Hudson Institute calls this competition, the New Cold War,  “The Hundred-Year Marathon.” It’s been underway for decades—but we’re just waking up as the race reaches a critical moment.

The stakes could not be higher.

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America needs to wake up. China is moving on the world stage, and it means business. In fact, China has established its own proxy police stations and courts in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

They are part of a world-wide network attacking, harassing and intimidating Chinese critics of the CCP in America. They masquerade as innocuous service centers assisting with drivers licenses renewals. They are actually monitoring dissenters from the Chinese Communist Party line.

That’s not all. Newsweek magazine has found 626 groups linked to CCP influence operations here in the United States.

Speaker-elect McCarthy has created a Selected Committee on China, naming Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin as Chairman. It needs to get to work.

Let the left obsess over their pronouns and the latest sexual fads. The rest of us need to focus on a real and growing threat—that’s not just overseas.

 

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From shock to anger to outrage: That describes my arc of reaction to the latest installment of the “The Twitter Files” coming from Bari Weiss in this case.

Using Twitter’s own internal files, released with the blessing of new owner Elon Musk, Weiss demonstrated that Twitter was indeed censoring conservatives, despite vigorous and repeated denials from company brass over the years.

Now we know: Conservatives were singled out, secretly muffled, as Twitter robbed them of time and of influence.

The most damaging result of this new scandal will be the further erosion of faith in elections in the social media era. The Twitter Files license an endless series of counterfactuals that cannot be proven or disproven. “If Twitter hadn’t tipped the scales, then [you fill in the blank] wouldn’t have happened.”

Once again, conservatives have been told to trust a public square that turns out to be rigged against them. Each time it happens, more damage is done. “Russia, Russia, Russia” well now it’s going to be supplemented by “Twitter, Twitter, Twitter.”

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Media outlets erupted in outrage at an accusation from Elon Musk about Yoel Roth’s work as the top trust and safety officer at Twitter. Musk claimed Roth ignored child abuse and exploitation, citing his Ph.D. dissertation as evidence—where Roth argued gay hook-up platforms should remain accessible to gay and queer minors. 

Yes: Roth did argue that the platforms should develop safety protocols to keep them from being engaged by older users and allow them a “safe space” to find each other. 

But Roth’s media defenders missed the point: He also argued that the platforms themselves should largely be absolved of liability for real-world predatory conduct and other illegal activities. 

Remember: His censorship regime at Twitter was predicated on the opposite—claiming that political engagement was dangerous, even between adults.

So: The result at Twitter was the infantilization of adult users while arguably ignoring the real threats and exploitation aimed at children. 

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Brittany Griner, a WNBA player imprisoned in Russia for drug possession, has been released. She once was best known for protesting our National Anthem. One wonders whether nine months in a Russian prison camp has led her to reconsider her views.

Griner was exchanged for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, the so-called “Merchant of Death” – who’s armed Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The Biden administration worked hard to bring Griner home – as it should. No American should rot in a Russian prison. But even as Biden basks in the approval of his constituents for rescuing an LGBTQ celebrity, former US Marine Paul Whelan remains in Russian captivity. Unlike Griner, who actually did have drugs in her suitcase, Whelan’s been falsely accused of spying.

And trading Griner for a notorious arms dealer has just put a higher price on the head of every American abroad. It’s great she’s home, but at what cost?

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The Supreme Court recently heard the biggest First Amendment case this term—perhaps the biggest case in a generation.

I’m referring to 303 Creative v. Elenis.

For now, I just want to highlight what is at stake:

The key issue in this case is whether or not a Christian website designer in Colorado can be compelled or coerced by law to express what violates her deepest religious Christian convictions. 

Kristen Waggoner—CEO of Alliance Defending Freedom—argued the case before the Supreme Court. She made very clear that the key issue here is what is known as the compelled speech doctrine. That is the constitutional doctrine, in the United States, that says that the state cannot compel speech against conviction.

Essentially, it is the recognition that the First Amendment rights of the Constitution go both ways:  Not only may the state not prevent you as an American citizen from exercising your freedom of speech, it also means that the state cannot compel you to make speech—to say what the government wants you to say.

The stakes, as you can see, are high indeed.

We’ll be watching closely.

 

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