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Are the policies of the secular left good for children?

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Why do people think that CNN are biased leftist clowns?
Why do people think that CNN are biased leftist clowns?

The buzz on Friday was all about a fake news article put out by Time magazine, and later celebrated by CNN and the Washington Post. Let’s quickly review the mistakes in the Time / CNN / Washington Post propaganda, and then we’ll ask the question in the title: do people on the secular left really care about children?

The review comes from The Federalist:

The cover features a 2-year-old Honduran girl sobbing as she looks up at Trump, with the words “Welcome to America.” Inside, TIME reported the little girl was one of those separated from her mother because of the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy on families crossing the border illegally. She was taken “screaming” from her mother by border agents, the report claimed.

[…]“The original version of this story misstated what happened to the girl in the photo after she taken from the scene,” the correction reads. “The girl was not carried away screaming by U.S. Border Patrol agents; her mother picked her up and the two were taken away together.”

Reuters talked to the little girl’s father, who said she was not separated from her mother. The Honduran government confirmed his version of events. A border patrol agent who was at the scene, Carlos Ruiz, described what actually happened to CBS News.

We were patrolling the border, it was after 10 o’clock at night. We asked her to set the kid down in front of her, not away from her … and so we can properly search the mother. So, the kid immediately started crying as she set her down. I personally went up to the mother and asked her, ‘Are you doing okay, is the kid okay?’ And she said, ‘Yes, she’s tired and thirsty and it’s 11 o’clock at night.

The father also revealed the mother left three other children behind, and was crossing the border in search of a job — not in search of asylum. She didn’t tell any of them when she left. He told The Daily Mail the photo “broke his heart,” and he didn’t support her decision.

“Why would she want to put our little girl through that?” he said. “But it was her decision at the end of the day.”

In addition, Immigration and Customs Enforcement told media outlets the mother was attempting to cross the border illegally for a second time — moving her crime from a misdemeanor up to a felony.

“I don’t have any resentment for my wife, but I do think it was irresponsible of her to take the baby with her in her arms because we don’t know what could happen,” the father added.

He also claimed he heard the mother paid a smuggler $6,000 to get her across the border .

Even after the facts came out, Time continued to defend the piece, but then was forced to print a major correction. Time was celebrated by other #FakeNews media. CNN posted an article praising the #FakeNews story, before correcting it. The Washington Post also celebrated the #FakeNews story, until they had to issue a correction, but they hid the correction. A commonsense interpretation of these facts shows that the mainstream media really has no interest in reporting the news objectively. As I explained before, all the peer-reviewed studies show that the mainstream media is almost entirely composed of secular leftists.

But nevermind all that. I want to focus on whether the people on the secular left, and their allies in the #FakeNews media, really do have an authentic concern for children.

Do secular leftists really care about children?

This article by Trevor Grant Thomas from The American Thinker lists a few secular leftist policies that are anti-child, and then I’ll excerpt one, and add some that he missed.

The list:

  1. abortion (kill unwanted children)
  2. welfare state (makes women to swap fathers for welfare)
  3. poverty (socialism and fatherlessness kills prosperity)
  4. public schools / teachers unions (against school choice and voucher programs)

The excerpt is about #2:

Even longer than they have ignored the right to life, American liberals have worked to build a massive welfare state that has played a terrible role in the destruction of the family — especially the black family. Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh again reminded Americans which political party enabled generations of children — again, especially black children — to be separated from their parents.

The Democrat Party exists on dependency, and people that escape it pose a problem. So don’t buy that the Democrats care about separated families. Because, after all… the Democrat Party literally subsidized single motherhood in the black community for decades. It was called AFDC.

The Democrat Party promoted a welfare policy that gave single women additional money for every child they had. The father need not ever be around. In many cases, the father was not even known, the father was not even identified because the Democrat Party assumed the role.

If you want to talk about honestly separating families, the Democrat Party wrote the book on it and promoted it and campaigned on it and won elections on the basis of separated families where the government took over the economic responsibilities of the father.

Never forget that it was Democrats who destroyed the black family in America.

Black women were more likely to be married before welfare programs
Black women were more likely to be married before welfare programs

For my contribution, I’ll note that the two great redefinitions of marriage, no-fault divorce and same-sex marriage, were both championed by secular leftists. These deprived children of their biological mother or father, or both in the case of gay adoption. The sexual revolution also a project of the secular left, made sex about recreation instead of keeping it inside of a life-long commitment. Finally, the secular left under Obama increased the national debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion. This basically means that future generations of children will have all their income taxed away to pay for the hedonism of secular leftists today. The Democrat Party is truly the party of slavery – children not yet born are their slaves.

Here is a corrected version of the Time Cover with the inaccuracies fixed:

This is what the Time magazine cover should have said
What the Time magazine cover should have said (Source: The Daily Caller)

OK, and finally, check out this hilarious tweet by an actual journalist, Stephen Miller, who accurately predicted how CNN would attack anyone who pointed out the mistakes in the Time story. He tweeted that to Brian Stelter of CNN. And sure enough, CNN later mailed out an attack on the fact-checkers that matched Miller’s prediction almost word for word.

News

Is anyone on the secular left not an intolerant bigoted violent domestic terrorist?

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Harassing women is just fine, according to this radical feminist UK Guardian writer
Harassing women is just fine, says radical feminist UK Guardian writer

Well! Whenever there is an attack on conservatives by deranged secular leftists, I try to write about it. Over the years, there have been many – but they were infrequent. Now the left is becoming so violent that it’s a daily occurrence. I decided to collect together a few articles to show you how intolerant and threatening the secular left has become.

Here’s something from The Federalist by Kelsey Harkness, a female conservative:

Jessica Valenti revealed a new standard for liberal feminists on Tuesday: Driving women out of restaurants is wrong, unless they’re a Republican. If that woman is named Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen, the behavior is not only acceptable — it’s to be applauded.

The situation began when the head of the D.C. branch of Democratic Socialists of America tweeted the restaurant name and exact addresswhere Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen sat down for dinner. The dinner came after a very public day for Nielsen, who defended the Trump administration’s decision to fully enforce U.S. immigration laws against all who illegally cross the border — a policy that in some case results in separating children from their illegal immigrant parents due to a settlement entered into in 1997 by the Clinton administration.

The protesters marched through MXDC Cocina Mexicana uninterrupted for 11 minutes, screaming things at Nielsen such as, “Shame, shame, shame,” “Fascist pig,” ‘End Texas concentration camps,” and “No borders, no walls, sanctuary for all.”

The protest was supported by many on the left, including an editor at The Washington Post and Valenti, a feminist writer who recently penned a New York Times op-ed telling conservative women they can’t be feminists. Valenti, who supposedly stands for the championing of women, described the harassment of Nielsen “VERY satisfying” to watch.

“She should never be able to show her face in public again,” she said.

So, according to this feminist writer who writes for the UK Guardian, harrassment and intimidation of women is OK, as long as the woman is conservative. Female conservatives and black conservatives seem to get the maximum level of hatred from people on the secular left. There’s nothing like this level of harrassment by conservatives. If we disagree with something, we write about it or vote against it. We don’t shoot you full of holes like the Bernie Sanders supporter did with the Republican legislators, and like the gun-wielding gay activist tried to do at the Family Research Council.

It wasn’t just the UK Guardian, either… it’s CNN, too:

CNN says that harassing women is totally OK, if they're conservative
CNN says that harassing women is totally OK, if they’re conservative

Another female conservative Joy Pullmann had a lot more details on the hate coming from the intolerant secular left. This is from The Federalist again:

A few weeks ago, this same local chapter of socialists, about 60 to 70 strong, marched down the middle of the street to the northern Virginia home of Lora Ries, who assisted the Trump transition team with homeland security policy and has worked for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They stood outside her home chanting things like: “No borders! No nation! F-ck deportation!” “Aqui estamos! No nos vamos!” (Spanish for “Here we are, we’re not going.”) “Lora Ries, you’re a villain, locking up immigrant children.” “No bans, no wall, sanctuary for all.”

[…]Meanwhile, activists have also begun a doxxing campaign to enable further aggressive social agitation against the homes, privacy, and careers of people who work for ICE and other federal officials.

The “activists” screen scraped LinkedIn to find all the people who enforce the border security, in order to publish their personal information. The goal was to make them easier targets for threats, violence, harassment, vandalism, etc.

Just to remind you, the last time something like this happened, it was the Southern Poverty Law Center publishing the address of the Family Research Council, a conservative think tank. The result was that a gay activists went into the building with a gun, with the goal of mass murdering everyone inside. He was later convicted of domestic terrorism. Nothing was ever done to the SPLC.

Speaking of gay activists, consider this article from the Daily Signal about the kinds of comments that Christians get when they decline to participate in same-sex weddings.

Excerpt:

We were penalized $135,000 for the “emotional damages” we caused by politely explaining our religious convictions and why we could not create a custom cake to celebrate a same-sex ceremony.

The outrageous magnitude of that penalty—based largely on the fact that we dared to quote in our business the scriptures we hold sacred—is, we think, the type of anti-religious bias Kennedy had in mind when he determined that Jack’s commissioners “violated the state’s duty under the First Amendment not to base laws or regulations on hostility to a religion or religious viewpoint.”

We hope the justice system will undo the damage Avakian’s lack of respect and neutrality has inflicted upon us. When the government acts with hostility to someone’s religion or religious beliefs, citizens take that as license to treat one another with even greater hostility.

While Avakian was publicly judging our religious beliefs, Nicole B. voiced her opinion on Facebook: “I hope your shop burns and you never make another cake, wh—.”

Matthew M. wrote: “If being a Christian means being a prejudiced, stupid piece of s—, you both are great Christians!”

But Briana T.’s was one of the most painful to read: “We hope your children get cancer and die … . You are worthless.”

Beyond that, our business was shut down, our vehicles were vandalized, our home was broken into, and we have received more death threats than we care to count.

I was just reading a tweet by the Family Research Council on Twitter, and there are threats of violence in the replies by secularist leftists. Just in case you didn’t know, the FRC publishes research papers showing the benefits of natural marriage for children over other arrangements like cohabitation and same-sex relationships. That’s it, that’s how they got labeled a “hate group”.

Look at the reply to their tweet below:

Threats of violence against the FRC by secular leftists abound
Threats of violence against the FRC by secular leftists abound

Is this what normal rank-and-file secular leftists are like? Should we now think that everyone who identifies as a secular leftist is a potential domestic terrorist? They seem to all either be actively involved in this violence / vandalism / intimidation / harassment, or actively condoning it. They don’t make arguments. They don’t marshal evidence. They just make threats. They just shout and scream. They just vandalize. They just open fire on unarmed people that they disagree with. This is the secular left in America.

News

A modest proposal for dealing with illegal immigrants at the border

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Net annual cost of illegal immigration
Net annual cost of illegal immigration: 116 billion per year (Source: FAIR)

I want to write about Christian apologetics and moral issues, but all the news is about illegal immigration. So I feel that I must address some of the endless stream of lies and misrepresentations of the problem coming from the mainstream media.

Here is a helpful article from the Daily Signal that corrects four of the myths:

During the White House press briefing Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said: “This is a very serious issue that has resulted after years and years of Congress not taking action.”

Here’s a look at four of the more questionable claims made about the enforcement action.

“The Democrats forced that law upon our nation,” Trump asserted last week.

Democrats, backed by some media commentators, counter that it’s not the law but a Trump administration policy.

Actually, experts say, the situation is a combination of a bipartisan law and a Clinton administration policy.

In 1997, the Clinton administration entered into something called the Flores Settlement Agreement, which ended a class action lawsuit first brought in the 1980s.

The settlement established a policy that the federal government would release unaccompanied minors from custody to their parents, relatives, or other caretakers after no more than 20 days, or, alternatively, determine the “least restrictive” setting for the child.

In a separate development, in 2008 the Democrat-controlled Congress approved bipartisan legislation to combat human trafficking and President George W. Bush, a Republican, signed it into law.

Section 235 (g) in that law, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, states that unaccompanied minors entering the United States must be transferred to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement rather than to the Department of Homeland Security.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit expanded the Flores settlement in 2016 to include children brought to the country illegally by their parents.

For consistency between the provision of the anti-trafficking law and the 9th Circuit’s interpretation of the Flores agreement, children who came into the country illegally with parents had to be taken into HHS custody, said Art Arthur, former general counsel for Immigration and Naturalization Services (now known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement) as well as a former federal immigration judge.

“As soon as their parents are detained, the children are classified as unaccompanied,” Arthur, now a resident fellow for law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Daily Signal.

Some media outlets have called the practice of separating children from parents at the border “unprecedented” or a “new low” for the United States.

That is the most important point that needs to be corrected. It’s important to note that families seeking asylum that enter the country legally are NOT separated. The separation is only for people with minors who enter the country ILLEGALLY and then are caught. But the main point is that everything the media is complaining about today was legal under the Obama administration. The only difference is that the media at that time had no interest in making Obama look bad.

Now for something very helpful for this problem. Oh, it’s true that Senator Ted Cruz has introduced a bill that would immediately solve the problem and prevent it from happening again. His solution drew the praise of moderate conservative David French, who normally doesn’t like Ted Cruz, and favors ending family separation at the border for those caught entering the country illegally.

But that’s not the only solution that’s been proposed. Here is John Zmirak’s solution, which he posted at The Stream.

He writes:

Since the law won’t let us hold children more than 10 days, and the squealing elites won’t let us separate them from the adults who claim to be their parents, we need a sane compromise. One that:

  • Respects our national sovereignty and the rule of law.
  • Keeps families together.
  • Lets our bishops go back to attending George Soros’ conferences. And
  • Most important of all, heals Laura Bush’s broken heart. Hasn’t that woman suffered enough?

My plan shifts the cost of this complex policy where it really belongs. It offers the people who clamor the loudest from illegal immigration (and profit from it more than most) the chance to also absorb its costs. In the words of Nicholas Nassim Taleb, we offer them the privilege of having some “skin in the game.”

Yes, Harvard and Yale of course. In fact, all the Ivies. (Yes, Cornell counts.) Also Brandeis, Stanford, Duke and even those state universities that flirt with “elite” status, such as UNC and UVA. Out of respect for Catholic bishops’ firm stance on these issues, major Catholic schools should also take part, such as Georgetown and DePaul University.

At each of these schools the comfortable, often lavish dormitories currently inhabited by students should be filled with migrant families. Students, for their part, will reside in tent cities constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers.

I’m having a lot of debates lately with stupid, spoiled progressive millennials. They don’t know anything about the world, and they never cite anything to back up their claims. They think that they can pay off the debt by taxing the productive, but they don’t know what the debt is, nor how much the productive pay in taxes. They think that universal health care will reduce health care costs, but they don’t know how much it costs in other countries. They think that illegal immigrants, who by definition CANNOT pay income taxes, would be a net gain to the economy because they pay more in taxes than they use in education, health care, etc.

I really can’t stand these stupid stupid young people. And that’s why I have to say that the Zmirak proposal has a lot more going for it than the Cruz proposal. We definitely need to put the costs of leftist compassion onto the leftists. Maybe we could also house illegal immigrants in the homes of religious leaders who have spoken out in favor of illegal immigration.