Townhall Review | Conservative Commentary On Today's News

Talking politics with your average young male these days, chances are you will hear all kinds of odd theories coming from the Pied Pipers of Podcastistan. You will hear them mentioning “experts” nobody heard of until about 10 minutes ago or until they were discovered by these podcasters because of their contrary, and often, conspiratorial thinking.

Young men, especially, are attracted to this novel “wisdom,” and they are so prone because, as they will tell you, mainstream institutions have been untruthful over the years. But because some institutions that we used to rely on and respect have been taken over by partisanship and been wrong doesn’t mean that all normative thinking and scholarship is a lie or cannot be trusted, or that people nobody have ever heard of are the replacements of true wisdom.

We dismiss and ignore this fallacious thinking at our collective peril.

The task of the serious is to be able to discern truth from fiction and greatness from mediocrity. In these critical times, that task has never been more important than now.

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Today’s Democrats seem to be trying a new take on the “Extreme Makeover” reality show.

Their offshoot: I’d call it “Extremist Makeover.”

And we see it in their likely candidate for Senate in Maine.

It looks pretty close to certain Democrats be nominating oysterman Graham Platner in the Pinetree state.

He is not a "liberal." Platner is not even a "leftist." He’s an extremist. For years, he had a tattoo of a death head worn proudly by the Nazi era SS, Hitler’s worst of the worst.

It was—and remains—a vile symbol worn by guards at the concentration-extermination camps.

Maine’s current and—I trust—future Senator is Susan Collins.

Collins and Platner could not be more different.

It’s rare to have a Susan Collins represent your state from a position of power and influence do so with class and humility. To trade that in for a death’s skull and online bigotry It doesn’t seem like a bet Mainers are going to make.

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It’s an age-old question: God or Mammon? What leads to a happier, more fulfilling life — religion, or money? Now, it seems we have an answer. According to the General Social Survey, church attendance predicts happiness more strongly than wealth does.

In fact, poor Americans who attend church regularly are happier than wealthy Americans who never attend at all.

Prominent behavioral scientist William von Hippel has observed, “Money buys a fair bit of happiness, but connection gives you more bang for the buck.”

He’s right. But let’s be clear about what “connection” really means.

It matters to connect with friends and neighbors — and church offers the opportunity to do that every week, and often more.

But more important still is our connection to God: our Father, our Creator, and the source of every good and lasting bond.

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Many predictions about the midterm elections in the United States are dire for the GOP: a wipeout in the House, perhaps losing the Senate majority as well. The GOP could weather the electoral storm that almost always chastens the party of a president finishing his sixth year in office. But they got to do stuff.

To do that weathering: Every candidate in every partisan race has to make the case, which is easy to make: The Islamic Republic of Iran is an evil regime that cannot have nukes.

It seems certain that President Trump is not going “to go wobbly” in the battle with Iran.

Similarly: The GOP better not go wobbly either.

Americans have lost the muscle memory of victory. It will quickly regain an appreciation for resolve once the conflict is over.

GOP candidates must loudly and persuasively argue that the battle with Iran was long past due and is well worth winning.

There is no winning for the GOP in November without demanding and defending victory in this battle with Iran.

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With its decision in Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court took the United States one step closer to the race-blind, color-blind equal opportunity society envisioned by our Constitution.

The ruling shifts voting rights law from judging maps by racial outcomes, toward a simpler question: whether lawmakers intentionally discriminated.

This is as it should be.

Today, there are a record 58 minority members of Congress. Most were elected from plurality white districts. America twice elected an African American president. These aren’t the marks of a nation closed to candidates of color.

Ending racial gerrymandering encourages leaders to focus on ideas and results rather than skin color. By rejecting racial line-drawing, the Supreme Court affirmed a vital truth: In twenty-first century America, skin color isn’t what defines us. Our convictions — and our character — do.

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In the wake of the third assassination attempt on President Trump in a period of less than two years, the President correctly concluded: “He was probably a pretty sick guy.” That came from his interview Sunday night on “60 Minutes.”

In looking for a cause the president pointed to the changes we’ve all been living through: “The internet, maybe more than anything else, has radicalized some people. It’s made them mentally sick,” President Trump said.

He’s right, of course. But how, more specifically, does that happen?

The tempting, all-purpose answer for busy people is simply to do what the president did: point at the internet.

But: What dots have never been connected about factors in the upbringing of the actors that tip them, the unbalanced, into the land of the "statement" would be killers or killer?

For the good of the nation, we need quality research to fill that very specific gap.

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Our First Amendment is a cherished guarantee. Every American has the right to criticize elected officials — even in harsh terms — so long as there’s no incitement to imminent violence.

But having a right to say something doesn’t necessarily make it right to say. And too many in our cultural elite have normalized reckless rhetoric about President Trump.

Among others, ABC host Jimmy Kimmel recently “joked” about the First Lady becoming an “expectant widow.” Congressman Dan Goldman called for Trump to be “eliminated” from public life. Former President Biden urged putting Trump “in the bulls-eye.”

None of that is illegal, nor are they responsible for a criminal’s actions. But after three attempts on President Trump’s life, left-wing elites should ask themselves whether flirting with assassination rhetoric is morally defensible — even if they have every right to engage in it.

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The nation narrowly avoided a horrific tragedy Saturday night—and history will record it as just that. The scene at the Washington Hilton looked more like a motion picture, it wasn’t. It was reality: Someone intending to assassinate the President of the United States and as many cabinet officials as possible made it past the first round of security.

There was enormous attention to this particular dinner—the White House Correspondents Association dinner. This was the first of these dinners that Donald Trump, as President, was planning to attend.

Every time something like this happens however, everyone has to learn new hard lessons.

I am confident of this: There will now be a new protocol for the security for the President and Vice President of the United States, and perhaps for others in the line of succession.

History often records how close we have come to disaster. And though on the other side of it, everything has to change in a moment.

Perhaps we need to learn some very constructive lessons from a near miss.

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America has once again descended into an era of political violence. And once again, the political violence originates from the American Left.

This weekend, the third assassin in less than two years attempted to kill Donald Trump. The would-be assassin left behind a manifesto explaining his rationale. It echoes the Left’s “resistance” rhetoric used for the last eleven years. His argument could have easily been a monologue on late-night television or on cable channels like MSNOW.

The mainstream Left and the media have demagogued Trump to the point where violent reaction is now the norm. This began from the riot in DC on Trump’s first inauguration day through the 2020 George Floyd riots, to the riots in Los Angeles and Minneapolis over immigration enforcement, to these assassination attempts. 

Despite efforts by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Joe Biden’s DOJ to falsely depict conservatives as dangerous, the violence comes from one direction: The left. And all who demagogue over a duly elected president’s legitimacy share responsibility for it.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

America has once again descended into an era of political violence. And once again, the political violence originates from the American Left.

This weekend, the third assassin in less than two years attempted to kill Donald Trump. The would-be assassin left behind a manifesto explaining his rationale. It echoes the Left’s “resistance” rhetoric used for the last eleven years. His argument could have easily been a monologue on late-night television or on cable channels like MSNOW.

The mainstream Left and the media have demagogued Trump to the point where violent reaction is now the norm. This began from the riot in DC on Trump’s first inauguration day through the 2020 George Floyd riots, to the riots in Los Angeles and Minneapolis over immigration enforcement, to these assassination attempts. 

Despite efforts by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Joe Biden’s DOJ to falsely depict conservatives as dangerous, the violence comes from one direction: The left. And all who demagogue over a duly elected president’s legitimacy share responsibility for it.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.