Thuggish censors in the marketplace of ideas

From the files of Jeff Jacoby at The Boston Globe

Baltimore burns, shops are looted, rioters attack firefighters with bottles and bricks. And amid all the violence and ruin, what drives the chattering class into a froth of indignation? That anyone would use the word "thugs" to describe the vandals and criminals reducing Baltimore to rubble.

As berserkers ran amok Monday, the city's mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, deplored the destruction: "Too many people have invested in building up this city to allow thugs to tear it down."

That set the hounds baying. Rawlings-Blake was accused of using a racial slur. Baltimore City Councilor Carl Stokes angrily told CNN that calling rioters "thugs" is just like calling them the N-word.

The Rev. Jamal Bryant, who delivered the eulogy at Freddie Gray's funeral, repeated the accusation: " 'Thugs' is the 21st-century word for the N-word," he said Wednesday, "and it is repulsive and it is offensive." Wale, the popular Washington, D.C.-based rapper, told Baltimore teens that Rawlings-Blake owed them a direct apology for saying something so "stupid." Others piled on.

It didn't take long for the mayor to surrender. "We don't have thugs in Baltimore.... We have a lot of kids that are acting out," she told a group of church leaders. For good measure, she blamed her "little anger interpreter," pointing to her head in self-abasement.

There was more apologizing online. "I wanted to clarify my comments on 'thugs,'" she tweeted. "When you speak out of frustration and anger, one can say things in a way that you don't mean."

So now in Baltimore, which has the nation's seventh-highest violent crime rate, the nonracial word "thugs" is banished as racist — even when spoken by a black mayor. Thus the degradation of the public discourse proceeds.

Meanwhile, Rawling-Blake's forced walk-back was nothing compared to the self-mortification of Ian Reisner and Mati Weiderpass, two gay hoteliers in New York who hosted a small reception for Senator Ted Cruz on April 20.

The business partners, longtime backers of gay-rights causes, strongly disagree with Cruz on same-sex marriage, but share his views on foreign policy. They invited a dozen guests to meet the Republican presidential hopeful over dinner for a discussion of politics. Apparently they were under the impression that in America it is permissible, even admirable, for voters to talk to politicians, exchanging thoughts on a range of issues.

They know better now.

Reisner and Weiderpass were savaged for having hosted the dinner for Cruz. Activists organized a boycott of their hotels, threatening to "shut the place down" as punishment for talking to the enemy. Within days, the businessmen were begging for mercy, berating themselves as if they were inmates in a North Korean slave-labor camp, forced to confess their crimethink in public.

"I am shaken to my bones by the e-mails, texts, postings and phone calls of the past few days," groveled Reisner on Facebook. "I made a terrible mistake. I was ignorant [and] naïve.... I sincerely apologize for hurting the gay community and so many of our friends, family, allies, customers, and employees.

Two prominent gay businessmen hosted Senator Ted Cruz at a small dinner party.
The backlash they faced from gay activists was poisonous
(Above: Cruz, left, with hotelier Mati Weiderpass)

I will try my best to make up for my poor judgment." Weiderpass followed suit, flagellating himself for a blunder that may have "nullified" his 20 years of supporting gay rights.

More and more, this is what the marketplace of ideas is turning into. The ruthless determination not just to silence opposing points of view, but to humiliate and crush even allies willing to hear an opposing point of view, violates every liberal principle of tolerance, reason, and dialogue in the public sphere.

The language police in Baltimore and the auto-da-fé of Cruz's dinner hosts are but two fresh examples of a phenomenon rising all around us. Commencement speakers are disinvited from college campuses. Mozilla's CEO is forced to resign over a donation made years earlier to a ballot campaign supporting the traditional definition of marriage.

Hillary Clinton declares that abortion rights must be defended with the "political will" needed to change "deep-seated ... religious beliefs." Speech codes and "trigger warnings" are deployed to enforce a spurious — but expanding — right not to be offended or disturbed.

Increasingly, the censors and silencers are at work, stifling ideas, demonizing speakers, ostracizing open-mindedness — decreeing even certain words beyond the pale. It is a dangerous, illiberal, antidemocratic trend.

If we don't rouse ourselves to reverse it now, we may never get the chance.

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Democrats opposition agenda revealed

From the art studios of Dan Youra at Utoons.com

Get Your Daily Dose of Humor and Reality from Dan Youra at Utoons.com

Dan Youra is one of the outstanding conservative cartoonists in the trade today who follows in the footsteps of the great political cartoon masters, whose quotes inspire a new generation of followers.

"Outside of basic intelligence, there is nothing more important to a good political cartoonist than ill will." ~ Jules Feiffer, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist.

"Too many of today's artists regard editorial cartooning as a trade instead of a profession. They try not to be too offensive. The hell with that. We need more stirrer-uppers." ~ Bill Mauldin.

Youra was one of the first recipients of a Fulbright Scholarship and worked in Latin America. He served as an editor of Current Thought on Peace and War at the United Nations in New York.

"As long as there are politicians who continue to try and fool the voters, there is no chance of ever running out of material to work with because they create it themselves and about themselves," says Dan Youra.

Dan is the small business owner and operator of the Youra Studios located in the State of Washington.

Visit the Youra Studios at Utoons.com

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Words outlawed in the Hillary campaign

Anyone covering the Hillary Clinton campaign will not be recognized if they use certain descriptive words.

Stay Politically Correct

Do you work in the media and have the gall to think that the entire Webster’s dictionary is at your disposal? Think again, you sexist.

When it comes to reporting on Hillary Clinton, George Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” have turned into “Twelve Words You Can Never Say About a Powerful Politician.”

“We will be watching, reading, listening and protesting coded sexism,” the pro-Hillary group HRC Super Volunteers warned The New York Times’ Amy Chozick Wednesday.

HRC Super Volunteers have been laying in wait for Clinton to announce her candidacy, with one organizer of the independent group boasting to colleagues that “our supervols tended to be more loyal to HRC than hired staff who worried about getting a job after the campaign.
I think back to the staff party in Denver when me, Ahmed, and another top vol were the only ones with Hillary buttons.”

Here are the words that you can’t use to describe Clinton:

• Polarizing
• Calculating
• Disingenuous
• Insincere
• Ambitious
• Entitled
• Over Confident
• Secretive

Did they tack this one on after the secretive-email scandal?

• Will Do Anything to Win Represents the Past Out of Touch

They didn’t put “old” on here for some reason. They didn’t put in “elderly” or “ancient” or “Grandma Moses” or “go put in your dentures."

Well - You have been warned. Don’t use any of those words to describe Hillary Clinton or else the “Super Volunteers” will destroy your life.

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Hey soldier - No more yelling at terror suspects

Warfare hits new low of absurdity: British soldiers told not to yell at terror suspects from the files of Allen B. West

"No More Yelling at Terror Suspects Soldier" - Yes Sir!

Here we go again, as political correctness makes warfare a joke.

Obviously, those of us in Western civilization have to do better in our relationships with jihadists. Hillary Clinton admonished us to empathize with the perspective of our enemy and respect them. Sen. Dianne Feinstein last week released what was termed the “torture report” — which was nothing more than a Senate Democrat partisan political stunt with the backing of the White House.

And now this ridiculous revelation from our cousins across the Atlantic.

As reported by the UK Telegraph, “British soldiers have “lost their capability” to interrogate terrorist insurgents because of strict new rules on questioning that even ban shouting in captives’ ears, military chiefs have warned. The rules — detailed in court papers obtained by The Telegraph — also prevent military intelligence officers from banging their fists on tables or walls, or using “insulting words” when interrogating a suspect.”

The regulations replaced a previous policy that had to be withdrawn after a series of legal challenges and the death in custody of Baha Mousa, an Iraqi detainee in Basra. But there is growing disquiet within the ranks that the latest guidelines, officially called Challenge Direct, are so stringent that it makes interrogation pointless.”

As I mentioned last week, why don’t we just stop fighting Islamic terrorists and jihadists all together? I suppose the end result will be giving the terrorists tea and having Oprah Winfrey come in and asking them what hurts their inner self? Or maybe we can play repetitive games of tic-tac-toe with captured jihadists.

How have we come to this point in dealing with an enemy that crucifies, beheads, and disembowels people — and please spare me the “we are better than them” argument — of course we are. But to get to the pointwhere we don’t want to hurt the enemy’s feelings is unconscionable.

You can’t yell, shout, use insulting language? That’s the basis of military basic training. Yes, we even water board our own military members as part of SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) training.

Here is the perplexing issue. You can’t kill jihadis and terrorists — first the ROE (rules of engagement) are restrictive (and if you violate them you’ll be sentenced to Ft. Leavenworth prison). If you capture jihadists and terrorists you can’t detain them — President Obama and his minions on the left believe that GITMO violates standards of human rights, so they’re released to hang out in places like Uruguay. You can’t shout at them, use tough language or basically show any anger that they are jihadists and terrorists who want to kill you — just show them some love!

So yeah, we just might as well stop fighting — at least until we get civilian leadership that gets it and understand this is a war.

As the Telegraph reports, “British military chiefs fear the current restrictions on Army interrogators are hindering the gathering of information. They insist interrogations can be vital in thwarting future terrorist attacks and in combating insurgents in hostile environments.

Col Tim Collins, who made a celebrated eve-of-battle speech during the Iraq war and now runs a private security company with expertise in intelligence gathering, said: “Since I was serving, the rules on interrogations have been tightened up because of the lawyers. We [the military] are no longer able to carry out tactical questioning.

“The effect of the ambulance-chasing lawyers and the play-it-safe judges is that we have got to the point where we have lost our operational capability to do tactical questioning. That in itself brings risks to the lives of the people we deploy. “These insurgents are not nice people. These are criminals. They behead people; they keep sex slaves. They are not normal people.”

I couldn’t agree more with Col Collins — these unlawful enemy combatants and savage barbaric animals are living in the 7th century. They don’t operate on the same cultural wavelength and standards of decency. Yet, we continue to kowtow to those who feel they know better for America.

Lord Alan West, the former First Sea Lord and national security adviser,(and probably not a relation), said: “We have gone too far in letting people take us to court. “While these insurgents are chopping people’s heads off and raping women, the idea they can take us to court because somebody shouted at them is ridiculous.”

Yes sir, it is ridiculous, but we are treating this like a police action where these unlawful combatants are supposed to have our national rights, just l the same as our citizens have. We bestow upon them constitutional rights and give them lawyers.

Once upon a time in the history of warfare, when someone was captured operating on the battlefield in civilian attire, he was immediately tried and executed as a spy. The danger of non-state, non-uniformed belligerents in and around civilians was recognized, but today we allow them to operate freely in the shadows and grant them far too much leniency. Just check out the pictures of the jihadists recently released from GITMO to Uruguay and the freedom they have.

“In an interview with The Telegraph, Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, voices his concern about the legal scrutiny on British troops. He says he is gravely concerned about the rising cost of legal cases “that turn out to be completely spurious”.

He added: “What’s important for us is to understand the legal scrutiny that we are under all the time now, the cases that are being brought sometimes spuriously by law firms representing people who claim they were wrongly detained.“ Our Armed Forces are under a huge degree of scrutiny.” He said he feared this could inhibit commanders in the field in future.”

It’s not just affecting commanders in the field for the future, it’s affecting them now — as well as the morale of our warriors who feel like Sisyphus, rolling a boulder uphill, only to have it crash back down on them.

These are inane policies by which we ignore sound and effective policies to prosecute combat operations against islamo-fascism, jihadists, and terrorists and tie the hands of our warriors.

We cannot win this way by “empathizing” with this vile enemy or considering their feelings. I am quite sure they are laughing at us and using this as yet another propaganda tool to paint us as weak, feckless, and effete — they are the strong tribe. They’re raping, pillaging and beheading, and we’re issuing orders not to yell, shout, or use bad language?

Folks, we are so losing this conflagration at every level. This must end and we must find more Churchills and send the damn Neville Chamberlains home. The combat battlefield is not the place for political correctness and misguided sympathy.

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Muslims and Jihadists target social media

TARGETING SOCIAL MEDIA: Muslim and Leftist Jihad On Free Speech from the files of Audrey Russo at Clash Daily.com

Read Russo's Reports at Clash Daily.com

The last bastion of free speech available to the free world is the internet. A place where lovers of liberty can still go to opine, rant or create parody. So you had to know that those who love cultural Marxism (political correctness) and long for the tentacles of tyranny to take the last breath from a free people…were chomping at the bit.

Enter the current day cultural tyrants and they’re strange bedfellows.

First, you have the Leftists who love to bandy around the term freedom, but not a trace of it can be found in their ideology. You find them at the source of every over-financed failure, that the government has robbed from its potential in the free market system.

Everything the Leftist ideology touches, turns into an insatiable black hole draining those who never wanted to invest (and it only happens to Conservatives when they get their ideas from the Left).

Well, via their current spokesman, Barack Obama, they are attempting to yet again get their tentacles around our freedom by pushing “net neutrality”. He lifted his scepter and called for the FTC to regulate Internet service providers like telephone companies, citing concerns about ISPs “picking winners and losers in the online marketplace.”

Allow me to interpret this. Nanny wants to make sure everyone is equal (like in North Korea), so Nanny must step in and make all decisions concerning this form of communication because, after all: Americans are too stupid to understand. Senator Ted Cruz nailed it when he said:

“Net Neutrality is ObamaCare for the Internet; the Internet should not operate at the speed of government.” If government manages to get their hands on the net in any way, shape or form…freedom is a distant memory.

And second, we have the Islamists who have no leg to stand on to bandy about the term freedom, because their ideology has an aversion to personal freedom. But that won’t stop them from having their piece of the infidel pie. Sharia Islamic Law demands that all infidels submit to their laws whether they do it willingly (convert) or not (remain a non-Muslim but pay the jizya or protection money as a second-class citizen (Dhimmi).

The Quran 33:57 says – “Lo! those who malign Allah and His messenger, Allah hath cursed them in this world and the Hereafter, and hath prepared for them the doom of the disdained.” So, the freedom that democracies have to allow citizens to speak their mind, is a pernicious No-No in Islam.

And since the devout followers of Muhammed believe that they must conquer the West/Non-Muslims (as they did for 450 years, which provoked the Crusades) they must use whatever they can to accomplish that end (Gee, sounds just like the Leftist ideology dictated by Saul Alinsky).

Along comes an organization by the name of “Muslim Advocates” that is working diligently with top executives from Facebook, Twitter, Google/YouTube and many other social media biggies to silence any criticism of Islam. Disguising their true agenda behind a burqa of “..freedom and justice..”, they are pushing arduously to have all Facebook pages, websites and videos with any negative nuance against Islam removed post haste.

These Islamo-fascists, touting themselves as moderates, started a campaign:

“Click Here To End Hate: Anti-Muslim Bigotry Online and How To Take Action” - which is nothing more than an opportunity for traitors of free speech to rat out their fellow citizens, who are exercising their rights.

We need to make it clear to both these enemies of free will, that free speech on the internet is not on the menu for their consideration. When I think of these crybabies, who always demand their way, a childhood fairy tale comes to mind of the “Three Little Pigs.”

When they say, “Little pig, little pig, let me come in.”

We respond, “Not by the hair on my chinny chin chin.”

And if they respond, “Then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house down” - no worries. A free people can handle airbags. We do in politics all the time.

Oh, and if I offended any Muslim with the “pig” reference - deal with it - we call it: Freedom!

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Update: Obama will consider a military blockade

Obama is considering a military blockade from the art sudios of A.F. (Tony) Branco and being featured at Net Right Daily.com

Try a Daily Dose of Humor from A.F. (Tony) Branco

Check out some of the sights listed below that publish the A.F. (Tony) Branco Political Cartoon features.

• Editorial cartoonist
• Net Right Daily
• Legal Insurrection
• Liberty Alliance
• ConservativeDailyNews.com

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Some will die politically and financially

Confronting Political Correctness: Some Will Financially and Politically Die from the files of Lloyd Marcus

[Click Here] to Read the Lloyd Marcus, Unhyphenated American Files

I caught a bit of an interview with conservative actor Kevin Sorbo promoting his movie, “God's Not Dead” on the Sean Hannity radio show. Sorbo lamented that political correctness operatives continue to bully Americans with little push back. He cited a recent incident in which a little girl was kicked out of school for saying “God bless you” when a classmate sneezed, punished for religious talk in school.

My wife Mary told me about a U.S. soldier who was told by a school never to walk his child to school in uniform again. I am sure all of you could share horror stories of political correctness operatives overruling common sense and bullying people into submission.

Admittedly, I continuously rant about this topic. Folks, while I have evolved into somewhat of a sophisticated responsible adult, my roots are in the hood, the projects of east Baltimore. Living in that extremely tough environment, I knew if you did not deal with (confront) bullies, you would forever be their chump. As a 9 or 10 year old, I detested watching bullies push people around. I still detest seeing snooty intellectual liberal wimps with their big microphones and big stages get away with terrorizing people into submission.

When we were kids, though he was a little wild and crazy, my cousin Jimmy taught me the value of a strong military and how to deal with bullies. Two kids were taking my lunch money. Jimmy got in their grills and threatened to kick their butts. That was the end of that nonsense.

Six foot something high school varsity football star Broadus ordered me out of my seat beside pretty Barbara Jean on the school bus. Had he asked, I would have given him my seat. Even as a four foot something tall seventh grader, I instinctively knew I would lose something inside if I allowed Broadus to order me around. I told him no, I was not moving.

Once off the bus, Broadus began pounding my head into the gravel road. My mom saw the attack from a block away. She began running, but said it felt like she was running in place, unable to get to us fast enough. Incredibly, Broadus and I later became friends.

So yes, I have this “thing” about bullies.

Liberals, Democrats and the complicit MSM have hijacked the word “bully” to exclusively refer to anyone who dares to push back against their aggressive attempts to force their socialist/progressive agenda down our throats. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, Leftists call us bullies when we reject allowing them to bully us. Very clever, insidious and evil.

I worked at a major ABC affiliate TV station in Baltimore for 15 years. Thus, I have witnessed from the inside the MSM arrogant superior mindset which dominated the TV station and their intention to force their agenda on the public. The general consensus at the TV station was that the public was a bunch of yahoos and we were the sophisticated smart guys.

The TV station launched a campaign titled, “Family First”. On the cover of the brochure, I used a silhouette of a traditional family holding hands; father, mother, a girl and a boy. Public Relations axed my cover design claiming it was insensitive and offensive because families come in all configurations, two men, two women and so on. There was no agenda behind me selecting the image other than it worked for the theme of the campaign. I seriously doubted that the image of a traditional family on the cover of the station's brochure would have sparked mass outrage from the public.

And yet, the PR representative acted as though I was attempting to push my Christian values on the public. She used her authority to bully me into changing the cover design. I later learned that she was a lesbian.

Folks, I realize that I sound like a broken record continuing to write about the Left bullying us into submission. It just sticks in my craw. Allowing them to get away with it is an anathema to my spirit; like allowing Broadus to order me out of my seat. We must push back. We must say no.

In the Clint Eastwood movie, “Pale Rider”, the locals were terrorized by bullies. They asked a mysterious stranger portrayed by Eastwood to lead them into battle against the bad guys. Eastwood consented, but also informed the locals that some of them were going to die tomorrow.

Make no mistake about it folks, confronting evil, pushing back against political correctness operatives is serious business. Our Nemesis are extremely vicious and relentless. They take no prisoners. Just as Eastwood warned the locals, I warn you. In the battle to take back our freedom, some will sacrifice themselves for freedom. They will financially and politically die.

Brave U.S. troops who have made the ultimate sacrifice have shown us that freedom “ain't” free. Are the fruits of freedom, self-respect and dignity, worth it? Absolutely.

Political Correctness is a horrible destructive cancer eating away at the core of our American culture. The miracle cure is courage.

Lloyd Marcus, The Unhyphenated American Chairman
Conservative Campaign Committee

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