ActRight

The popular progressive understanding of the Republican party and conservative movement is something like this: It is, at heart, a conspiracy of corporate oligarchs who use a collection of so-called social issues — religion, bigotry, racial resentment, anti-immigrant sentiment — to stir up the rubes in support of its own parochial economic agenda, tricking them into “voting against their own interests” in the popular progressive phrase. Wall Street guys pulling the strings and writing the checks, foot-washing snake-handlers manning the barricades. This isn’t really true, of course, as anybody who ever has spent any time around actual Republican politicians or conservative activists knows. But might something similar actually be true of the Democratic party? A few progressives have been wondering aloud this week why it is that Democrats have stirred themselves to oppose, with steely resolve, the nomination of Betsy DeVos as secretary of education, while more or less going along with the nomination of Jeff Sessions as attorney general. DeVos (a friend of this magazine) may have ideas about school choice that don’t comport with the views of some Democrats (though they comport very much with the views of other Democrats, particularly those of the black urban middle class), but she is a relatively anodyne figure, a philanthropist and activist who has made a career out of doing what she can to look after the interests of children who don’t have the advantages enjoyed by her own. Sessions, on the other hand, is — their view, not mine — a racist as well as a radical who as attorney general would be empowered to do real damage to all that progressives hold dear. So why does DeVos get the Eichmann treatment while Sessions just gets a rap on the knuckles? What’s the matter with Camden? Here is one possibility: The Democratic party in reality is the cartoon version of the Republican party stood on its head, with cold-eyed self-serving economic interests using the so-called social issues to stir up the rubes while they go about seeing to their own paydays and pensions. The economic interests attached to the Democratic party are fairly easy to identify: people who work for government at all levels. You may come across the occasional Ron Swanson in the wild, but when it comes to the teachers’ unions — which are the biggest spender in U.S. politics — or the AFSCME gang or the vast majority of people receiving a taxpayer-funded paycheck, the politics of the public sector is almost exclusively Democratic. And what they care about isn’t social justice or inequality or diversity or peace or whether little Johnny can use the ladies’ room if his heart tells him to — they care about getting paid. Here’s an interesting point of comparison. When Barack Obama was running for president in 2008, he opposed gay marriage. So did Hillary Rodham Clinton, but Obama’s opposition was especially interesting in that he cited religious doctrine in support of his position: “My faith teaches me . . . that marriage is a union between a man and a woman. For me, as a Christian, it is also a sacred union — God’s in the mix.” George W. Bush, who was derided as a fundamentalist bigot by lifestyle liberals, never said anything like that. (Dick Cheney was well to the left of the Democrats on the question.) But there was barely a murmur of opposition to Obama’s staking out this ground “on the wrong side of history.” Social issues are for the naïfs. During the 2008 Democratic primary, Obama gave an off-the-record speech to a group of Wall Street financial executives in which he shared his frustration with the sclerotic and bureaucratic state of American education, and declared that he was close to publicly endorsing a nationwide school-choice program. (This is according to one of those in attendance.) The moneymen were enthused by this, but nothing ever came of it. In fact, Obama went hard in the opposite direction, working to gut the school-choice program in Washington, D.C., a popular program, which benefited urban black families almost exclusively. You don’t have to be a hard-boiled cynic to suspect that this has to do with the manpower and money-power of the teachers’ unions, who could have done a great deal more than they did to elevate Hillary Rodham Clinton over Barack Obama that year. Justice is one thing, but getting paid is the real issue. Think about that: If you are the candidate of the Left running in the party of the Left, you could, in 2008, run against equal rights for gay people — but you could not, if you had any sense of self-preservation, run in favor of school choice. Justice is one thing, but getting paid is the real issue. That probably explains why Betsy DeVos is getting the business and Jeff Sessions really isn’t. Democrats are in an awful position just now. Hillary Rodham Clinton was beaten by Donald Trump; Republicans control the Senate; Republicans control the House; Republicans are about to put an Antonin Scalia–style constitutionalist on the Supreme Court, a development made possible by the Democrats’ weak position in the Senate; Republicans control 34 of 50 governorships; Republicans control the great majority of state legislative houses. What, exactly, are the Democrats up to? Dressing up as vaginas and inviting Madonna to rile up the rubes with empty speeches in D.C. while the real power in the party — the public-sector unions — concentrate their fire on . . . Betsy DeVos, who believes that there should be some choice and accountability in public education. What is the Democratic party? Is it a genuine political party, or is it simply an instrument of relatively well-off government workers who care about very little other than securing for themselves regular raises and comfortable pensions? If I were a progressive, I’d be curious about that. — Kevin D. Williamson is National Review’s roving correspondent. 

When a republic finds itself amid a massive constitutional crisis ... a little right-minded “hostility” on the bench is just what it needs.

SEWICKLEY, PA ? Just a few years ago, then-Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell were treated by their own Republican Party’s grassroots as the enemy. C…

Exposing La Raza's racial agenda is having an effect.

In 2016, liberals have launched a broadside attack on Donald Trump and his supporters, accusing them of racism, writes Brett J. Talley. By weaponizing racism, the left transforms what should be a serious accusation into little more than another tool in their bag of political tricks, he writes.

President Donald Trump reacted to the massive rioting at UC-Berkeley in response to a scheduled campus speech by Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos.

Hundreds of liberals rioted at the University of California Berkeley Wednesday night -- burning stores, throwing Molotov cocktails and clashing with police.

One has to wonder why two Republican Senators, without any warning, would suddenly announce they’d oppose Betsy Devo’s nomination to be the Secretary of Education. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska both said they’d vote against Devos because she lacked the necessary experience to “strengthen public schools.” Whatever that means. I for one would like to see the Department of Education wind | Read More »

On Wednesday's CNN Newsroom with Carol Costello, during a discussion of White House press secretary Sean Spicer complaining about the media calling President Donald Trump's restrictions on immigration a "Muslim ban," CNN political commentator Errol Louis repeated a story that has turned out to be a hoax that the Iraqi mother of an American citizen died in Iraq because she was barred from traveling to the U.S. for treatment. The story in question has since been exposed as a fabrication, as the woman died several days before the restrictions were imposed. Louis: "All of the stories that have been done by this network, by other news organizations, finding who these people are -- these so-called 'bad people' who had to be kept out and finding out that they're children, they're elderly people, they're patriots, they're members of the military, they're, you know, grandmothers. They're people who in at least one tragic case wasn't able to come here for medical treatment, and died, you know."

Californians targeting Sacramento for swamp-draining.

George Soros, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were behind a Vatican coup to remove conservative Pope Benedict and install radical leftist Pope Francis, according to Catholics leaders citing WikiLeaks and other evidence.

Reddit, the hard-left online community populated by stoners and men/children playing video games in their parents' basements, announced Wednesday that it has banned the subreddit r/altright, citing the lamest of lame excuses -- that posters were guilty of "doxxing," which is the "posting of personal information."  

During an interview on NBC’s “Today,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer talked about President Donald Trump’s executive order that prohibited citizens...

SCOTUS nominee Neil Gorsuch once opposed military recruiting at Columbia University because they discriminated against gays.

- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TriggerWarningShow - Twitter: https://twitter.com/jpb209 - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TriggerWarningShow For busin...

“They should be deported.”

Everybody has an obligation to calm the hell down.

Why the Left sides with radical Islam against American security.

A protest at UC Berkeley over a scheduled appearance by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos turned fiery and violent Wednesday night, prompting police to cancel the event and hustle the Breitbart News editor off campus. [...] even after the event’s cancellation, hundreds of protesters spilled off campus into the city streets, where the violence continued as they confronted drivers, engaged in fights, smashed storefront windows and set fires. Protesters decried President Trump’s policies as much as they did the visit by Yiannopoulos, a gay conservative who has been making the rounds at college campuses across the country with his “Dangerous Faggot” talks, specializing in remarks meant to insult, offend and disgust liberals who disagree with his ideas. Protesters outside the building began throwing fireworks and pulling down the metal barricades police set up to keep protesters from rushing inside. University police locked down all buildings and told people inside them to shelter in place, and later fired pepper balls and paint balls into the crowd of protesters who defied orders to leave the area. “This is what tolerance looks like at UC Berkeley,” Mike Wright of Berkeley College Republicans, the group that invited Yiannopoulos to the campus, said outside the student union building as smoke bombs went off around him. On Berkeley’s city streets, protesters took their rage against construction sites and businesses, smashing windows at banks and stores. In a letter to the campus community last week, Chancellor Nicholas Dirks said, “The U.S. Constitution prohibits UC Berkeley, as a public institution, from banning expression based on its content or viewpoints, even when those viewpoints are hateful or discriminatory.” Yiannopoulos was expected to use the event to kick off a campaign against “sanctuary campuses” that have vowed to protect students in the country illegally as President Trump cracks down on illegal immigration. In an interview with Fox News after Wednesday’s cancellation, the 32-year-old Yiannopoulos — a self-described “libertarian, gay, Trump-supporting provocateur” — said college campuses are places where “you should be able to engage with different ideas.” Three lines of zip-tied metal fencing separated the crowd of protesters from campus police officers who had secured the building where Yiannopoulos was supposed to speak. The protest turned violent around 6 p.m. when dozens of masked anarchists, dressed in black and wearing backpacks, emerged from the otherwise peaceful crowd. [...] they came in droves, as the dozens of university police officers in riot gear quickly retreated to an inner ring of fencing. Seizing the opportunity, the masked protesters ran toward the student center and breached the inner ring, picking up pieces of fencing and hurling them into the building’s windows. Carrying a thick black shield and wearing a milk-soaked kerchief over his face to protect against potential tear gas, Zombie said, “We’re anarchists.” Police soon declared an unlawful assembly and ordered everyone to leave, but hundreds of protesters stayed, filling the entire upper and lower plaza.

President Trump’s flurry of activity since taking office has been breathtaking to behold. Like no president before him, Trump is using the power of the presidential pen to roll back the worst excess

“Don't shut it down before we even get started. And two wrongs don't make a right.,” Manchin says.

“Starbucks looted during protests against alt-right speaker Milo in Berkeley.”

"When they go low, we go high. And then attack women." Follow her @kiarafrobles (https://twitter.com/kiarafrobles) TOUR: http://yiannopoulos.net READ: http:/...

Women in America walked in the shoes of Muslim women by wearing a hijab for World Hijab Day.

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