With the Collapse of Marriage Comes the Collapse of Civilized Culture

Fellow conservative, Mark Waldeland sent the following article at Touchstone:

Wilberforce for Good

Regis Nicollon Marriage, Moral Corruption & the Christian Duty of Witness

“Following the legalization of so-called same-sex marriage inObergefell v. Hodges, there has been a lot of chatter among social conservatives. Some, including a number of Republican presidential hopefuls, are pushing for a constitutional amendment to overturn the decision. Others are suggesting that articles of impeachment be initiated against the justices. Many are looking to the ballot box, believing that if we elect officials who respect the rule of law and embrace conservative values, the country will pull out of its moral tailspin.

Nearly all are placing hope in some political solution. But if history has taught us anything, it is that political affiliation, policies, and fixes are no guarantee that conservative values, like the sanctity of life and natural marriage, will be upheld.

Recalling History

Persons of a certain age will recall that, as governor of California, Republican Ronald Reagan pioneered “no-fault” divorce in 1969. Four years later,Roe v. Wadewas decided in a Republican administration by a Supreme Court in which six out of the nine justices had been installed by Republican presidents. And let’s not forget Justice Anthony Kennedy, the man who has often been the swing vote in decisions against socially conservative positions over the last three decades. He was appointed by President Reagan.

Yet none of those actions originated in the grey matter of our government leaders; rather, they percolated from the soil of our moral consensus. That’s because law and politics are reflections of society’s cultural values, not the other way around.

When the Supreme Court took us over the “gay marriage” Rubicon in 2013 by overturning the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), public approval of its legalization had reached 50 percent. But neither the ruling nor popular sentiments were the problem, only symptoms of it.
The problem, as evidenced by the incidence of, and even attitudes concerning, non-marital sex (among other things) in the Christian camp, is the Church’s neglect of its foremost duty: to form believers whose lives reflect the teachings and example of Christ. The failure of Christians to exemplify the standards of sexual morality they demand from homosexuals goes a long way toward explaining the waning moral authority of the Church and the growing acceptance of homosexuality.

The Results of Neglect

Indeed, in the two years following the DOMA ruling, support for same-sex marriageincreasedby seven percent. With 59 percent of the general public favoring it, Fortune 500 companies like Wal-Mart, Apple, Starbucks, and Target have come out boldly for “marriage equality.” Having read the collective moral conscience correctly, a number of corporate titans have successfully pressured legislators for anti-discrimination laws and have threatened to cease doing business in states promoting religious liberty—all without consumer pushback or loss of market share.

In the same two-year period, the number of states legalizing same-sex marriage skyrocketed, from nine to 37. While all but three of the decisions were by judicial fiat or legislative decree, it is doubtful, given the rapid shift in popular attitudes, that the results of public referenda would have been markedly different……”  Please read on:

http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=29-01-015-v#ixzz4A2x2TMbZ

NY Times Surveys Election Battleground States

“With Donald J. Trump pulling even or ahead of Hillary Clinton in a series of recent national polls, the once unthinkable has become at least plausible. But if he is to be elected the 45th president, he must compete on a political map that, for now, looks forbidding.

In the Republican primaries, he proved a master of nationalizing the political debate, appealing to voters across regional lines with jeremiads about immigration and crime that captivated an almost uniformly white primary electorate. At the outset of the general election, Mr. Trump has dominated the day-to-day political combat on national television and social media.

In the general election, however, his fate will be determined not by his Twitter followers or a relatively homogeneous Republican electorate, but by a set of interlocking and increasingly diverse regions, home to some 90 million Americans, that hold many of the 270 electoral votes he needs to win.

Republicans enter the general election at a hefty disadvantage: Since the 1992 campaign, 18 states have voted consistently for Democrats in presidential elections, giving their party a firm foundation of 242 electoral votes to build upon.

And in the four regions likely to decide the presidency — Florida, the upper Southeast, the Rust Belt and the interior West — Mr. Trump faces daunting obstacles, according to interviews last week with elected officials, political strategists and voters.

Of course, months remain before voting begins, and this political year has defied many predictions. But if Mrs. Clinton clinches the Democratic nomination as expected, she may find an electoral bulwark in these coveted swing-state voters……”  Please read on:

Hillsdale Man: Of Course Donald Can Beat Hillary

Never #NeverTrump: Hillsdale’s Larry Arnn

By HUGH HEWITT

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/never-nevertrump-hillsdales-larry-arnn/article/2592563

“Arnn, part of the official Churchill biographical team for years with Sir Martin Gilbert and a life long student of Lincoln, is very slow to exile anyone from the conservative movement in America if that individual hasn’t sinned against constitutional norms.

And Trump hasn’t. Yet. He may be “Jacksonian” in temperament as Walter Russell Mead has written, but he hasn’t articulated anything other than fealty to the Framers’ forms.

Many fear Trump cannot be trusted in this regard. “Power shows the man,” Arnn replies, quoting his beloved Aristotle.

Arnn is often at Hillsdale’s D.C. stronghold, its “Kirby Center” on Capitol Hill. He has many students and friends among the Capitol’s powerful. Among them are three of conservatism’s brightest stars: Sens. Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton and Mike Lee. If Arnn is not against Trump, many conservatives ask of the #NeverTrump band, why are you so adamantly so?

The answer is simply “Fear of what Trump might do with the vast powers of be White House.” To which Arnn replies that surely Hillary Clinton would put those powers at the service of an ever expanding regulatory state. A very, very strong point that.

If Trump were to name Cotton his veep, and say former Sen. Jon Kyl his secretary of defense and Joe Lieberman to State while anointing very publicly Lee or Paul Clement to be Justice Scalia’s replacement — not one of a list of 11, but THE certain nominee — Arnn would find himself surrounded by scores of similarly situated “influencers,” and Cleveland would become a genuine celebration, not a signing of an elaborate truce.

Now Arnn’s is somewhat lonely ground to occupy, but Hillsdale has often been a lonely place, especially when apparently every single one of its male students left to join Mr. Lincoln’s Army a long time ago. It’s a serious place, and it’s president is a serious man. Trump should listen to him. And the #NeverTrump forces should as well.

Hugh Hewitt is a nationally syndicated talk radio host, law professor at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law, and author, most recently of The Queen: The Epic Ambition of Hillary and the Coming of a Second “Clinton Era.” He posts daily at HughHewitt.com and is on Twitter @hughhewitt.

 

 

Leftist ‘Blind Man’, Nicholas Kristof, Discovers Truth at Last

Long time leftist at the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof, wrote the following article in yesterday’s Sunday issue:

The Liberal Blind Spot

“CLASSIC liberalism exalted tolerance, reflected in a line often (andprobably wrongly) attributed to Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

On university campuses, that is sometimes updated to: “I disapprove of what you say, so shut up.”

In a column a few weeks ago, I offered “a confession of liberal intolerance,” criticizing my fellow progressives for promoting all kinds of diversity on campuses — except ideological. I argued that universities risk becoming liberal echo chambers and hostile environments for conservatives, and especially for evangelical Christians.

As I see it, we are hypocritical: We welcome people who don’t look like us, as long as they think like us.

It’s rare for a column to inspire widespread agreement, but that one led to a consensus: Almost every liberal agreed that I was dead wrong.

“You don’t diversify with idiots,” asserted the reader comment on The Times’s website that was most recommended by readers (1,099 of them). Another: Conservatives “are narrow-minded and are sure they have the right answers.”

Finally, this one recommended by readers: “I am grossly disappointed in you for this essay, Mr. Kristof. You have spent so much time in troubled places seemingly calling out misogyny and bigotry. And yet here you are, scolding and shaming progressives for not mindlessly accepting patriarchy, misogyny, complementarianism, and hateful, hateful bigotry against the LGBTQ community into the academy.”

Mixed in here are legitimate issues. I don’t think that a university should hire a nincompoop who disputes evolution, or a racist who preaches inequality. But as I see it, the bigger problem is not that conservatives are infiltrating social science departments to spread hatred, but rather that liberals have turned departments into enclaves of ideological homogeneity.

Sure, there are dumb or dogmatic conservatives, just as there are dumb and dogmatic liberals. So let’s avoid those who are dumb and dogmatic, without using politics or faith as a shorthand for mental acuity.

On campuses at this point, illiberalism is led by liberals. The knee-jerk impulse to protest campus speakers from the right has grown so much that even Democrats like Madeleine Albright, the first female secretary of state, have been targeted.

Obviously, the challenges faced by conservatives are not the same as those faced by blacks, reflecting centuries of discrimination that continues today. I’ve often written about unconscious bias and about how many “whites just don’t get it.” But liberals claim to be champions of inclusiveness — so why, in the academic turf that we control, aren’t we ourselves more inclusive? If we are alert to bias in other domains, why don’t we tackle our own liberal blind spot?

Frankly, the torrent of scorn for conservative closed-mindedness confirmed my view that we on the left can be pretty closed-minded ourselves.

As I see it, there are three good reasons for universities to be more welcoming not just to women or blacks, but also to conservatives.

First, stereotyping and discrimination are wrong, whether against gays or Muslims, or against conservatives or evangelicals. We shouldn’t define one as bigotry and the other as enlightenment.

When a survey finds that more than half of academics in some fields would discriminate against a job seeker who they learned was an evangelical, that feels to me like bigotry.

Second, there’s abundant evidence of the benefits of diversity. Bringing in members of minorities is not an act of charity but a way of strengthening an organization. Yet universities suffer a sickly sameness: Four studies have found that at most only about one professor in 10 in the humanities or social sciences is a Republican.

I’ve often denounced conservative fearmongering about Muslims and refugees, and the liberal hostility toward evangelicals seems rooted in a similar insularity. Surveys show that Americans have negative views of Muslims when they don’t know any; I suspect many liberals disdain evangelicals in part because they don’t have any evangelical friends.

Sure, achieving diversity is a frustrating process, but it enriches organizations and improves decision-making. So let’s aim for ideological as well as ethnic diversity.

Third, when scholars cluster on the left end of the spectrum, they marginalize themselves. We desperately need academics like sociologists and anthropologists influencing American public policy on issues like poverty, yet when they are in an outer-left orbit, their wisdom often goes untapped.

In contrast, economists remain influential. I wonder if that isn’t partly because there is a critical mass of Republican economists who battle the Democratic economists and thus tether the discipline to the American mainstream.

I’ve had scores of earnest conversations with scholars on these issues. Many make the point that there simply aren’t many conservative social scientists available to hire. That’s true. The self-selection is also understandable: If I were on the right, I’d be wary of pursuing an academic career (conservatives repeatedly described to me being belittled on campuses and suffering what in other contexts are called microaggressions).

To improve diversity, universities have tried to increase the numbers of minority scholars in the pipeline, in part by being more welcoming. Maybe a starting point to bolster ideological diversity would likewise be to signal that conservatives are not second-class citizens on campuses: We liberals should have the self-confidence to believe that our values can triumph in a fair contest in the marketplace of ideas.

There are no quick solutions to the ideological homogeneity on campuses, but shouldn’t we at least acknowledge that this is a shortcoming, rather than celebrate our sameness?

Can’t we be a bit more self-aware when we dismiss conservatives as so cocky and narrow-minded that they should be excluded from large swaths of higher education?

Cocky? Narrow-minded? I suggest that we look in the mirror.

WWII…and “The Best Years of Our Lives”

I was born during the Great Depression and schooled during World War II.    I had two close family relatives in the Navy fighting in the Pacific.   Although dyslexic, I was an avid ‘reader’ of the St. Paul Sunday Pioneer Press rotogravure  section specializing in on-the-spot photos of the fighting.   The first headline I remember reading was “Battle Waging at Midway”, June, 1942.

Every day except Sunday we boys played war games some time or another bombing Nazi installations we had built for the purpose, or Japanese aircraft carriers, the  boats we had built of cardboard.   (We were punished a couple of times for using matches burning the sinking ships to make it look more like the war news films like from  The March of Time.)

I am guessing I saw the movie, “The Best Years of Our Lives” the first time in 1946….and have seen it six or seven times since on television.   (What a better America there was then.  Adults were married, Churched,  bore  children and battled wrong with right.)

It is likely the vast majority of so called “college graduates” since the sex, racist, and atheist revolution of the late 1960s know nothing at all about the War beyond the American  bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 6 and 9, 1945……which forced the Japanese to surrender.    Instead at universities today, the human female animal is programmed to believe she is a carbon copy of the human male animal in peace and war.  Sick…sick…sick  Hillary feminist claptrap sold as fact.

Please read the following article regarding the film:

When Wyler came back

Corruption in Obama’s “Justice” Department

America is getting everything but justice from Obama’s Justice Department

by Jay Sekulow  at Fox news opinion:

“The Obama administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) is “unethical” and “intentionally deceptive.”

Harsh words, right? You’d expect that kind of criticism came from a political opponent or maybe even from a conservative commentator.  But no – that’s not the case.

In fact, that stinging assessment came from a district court in Texas – the same court that blocked President Obama’s unlawful Executive Order on immigration to award legal status and federal and state benefits to nearly five million aliens.

That case is now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court and a decision could come at any time.

Just last week, U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen issued a 28-page order, posted here, that concluded the Justice Department attorneys involved in the case were “unethical” and “intentionally deceptive” and made misrepresentations when they had “knowledge of the truth.”

In the words of Judge Hanen: “The misconduct in this case was intentional, serious and material. In fact, it is hard to imagine a more serious, more calculated plan of unethical conduct.”……..”    Please read on:

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/05/24/america-is-getting-everything-but-justice-from-obamas-justice-department.html

Bill Kristol’s Sabotage of the GOP

A small group of saboteurs are attempting to spread their personal dictate of conservatism to defeat the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential candidate this year, AD 2016, Donald Trump.  Such  witches huddle around the cauldrons at the Weekly Standard mixing and selling  brew in their attempt to poison the man.

I have been a subscriber to this text, the bible Bill Kristol has bossed,   for a number of years.  I have found his ‘notes’ in writing and on Fox television in the past  interesting, but often  boring and bookish, a religion of wealthy man’s congested conservatism rather than reality of life as it is in our USA, year 2016.

I believe Kristol lives in New York City…..a light year away from Republican states elsewhere.   And, being Jewish, one must understand Mr. Kristol’s heritage  has long been  confined to indoor matters, business offices, shop owning, journalism,  mob and similar leftist  and other rebellious Democrat enterprises  throughout our American years.    These days,  whether  leftist or conservative, they enjoy life by making a living  informing and  commanding  others what to think and how to vote from their special perspectives.   They star propagandizing leftisms at college producing rabid followers of socialist Bernie Sanders.

Donald Trump apparently isn’t in the Bill Kristol league of economic and political superiority.    He, like most American adults over 60, still works for a living. On the other hand Kristol has migrated to the political  top of the tops in today’s America.  He talks and writes for his  matter in life.

His editorial in today’s the Weekly Standard sells the headline:  A CHOICE NOT AN ECHO!

(Does indoor person Kristol really believe our Donald as president will be someone’s ECHO?…..Mr. Kristol’s echo?)

“Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are manifestly among the worst presidential candidates ever to be presented to the American people”……..and then qualifies somewhat by adding “by their respective parties”.

The statement is a lie.  Bill Kristol’s establishment  Republicans hacks especially those who professionally compete in buying and selling  elections, fought our Donald Trump from the beginning last June to   June  this coming week.  THE VOTERS voting Republican gave our Donald the winning delegate numbers despite “Kristoline” spits from far and wide among the narrow and bigoted  in the Party.

Mr. Kristol then relies on polls.  His polls today “prove” our Donald,  as a Republican,  is a loser, AND is unliked, even hated by the many.  Further, very Democrat, the living and the dead including Hillary, would beat our Donald this coming November……

But, that is what everyone was forecasting regarding  our Donald as a Republican candidate since last June until last month.

Surprise!  Our Donald, being Donald,   won big time based upon his personality, salesmanship, cleverness, cultural and business skills, some would add brilliance,  humor, speech, and  passion as an honest  American leader should these days considering the miasma caused by the past eight plus years of American disorder emanating from politicos in Washington.

Mr. Indoors-Kristol claims, “It’s unclear whether a credible independent candidate will choose to step forward”….to apply  venom to defeat our Donald and  nostalgia to dream a replacement to sell  his politics.   He adds, “And our political class and pundit elites are nothing if not old and tired.”   He then pushes the Never Trump button for hope and salvation.

Although 69 years old, our Donald doesn’t seem old and tired.  Quite the contrary, he is a fireball filled with personality and brain, if short on conservative style and shadow.

I wonder if Mr. Kristol and others of today’s indoor American crowd have ever made any effort to call the Donald for a meeting….two conservative Republicans beginning with a hand shake, for instance.

Conservative idol,  Dennis Prager, also  advertises his disdain for the talented, successful indoor-outdoor American Trump, concerned   his support for our Donald  might dirty his reputation as a conservative  indoor teacher-preacher.  But fortunately, Dennis does pray we vote to elect our Donald over long-time, experienced evil Hillary any and every day.

With Donald’s election in November, I believe our Dennis Prager will quickly come to discover  that this  indoor-outdoor today’s American conservative builder is indeed, MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

Our Republican Party is rallying around our Donald despite the closeted, including sour Paul Ryan.

 

 

 

 

Victor Davis Hanson: Why GOP Will Vote Trump

Why Republicans Will Vote For Trump

by Victor Davis Hanson    at Hoover Institute

“If Donald Trump manages to curb most of his more outrageous outbursts by November, most Republicans who would have preferred that he did not receive the nomination will probably hold their noses and vote for him.

How could that be when a profane Trump has boasted that he would limit Muslim immigration into the United States, talked cavalierly about torturing terrorist suspects and executing their relatives, promised to deport all eleven-million Mexican nationals who are residing illegally in the U.S., and threatened a trade war with China by slapping steep tariffs on their imports?

A number of reasons come to mind.

First, Trump stays in the news not just by taking extreme positions, but also by taking extreme positions on issues that are already extreme. When Mexico prints comic books advising its own citizens on how to enter the U.S. illegally, when the major illegal-alien lobbying group is called The National Council of La Raza (“The Race”), and when major U.S. cities, in Confederate-style, declare themselves “sanctuaries” in which U.S. federal immigration law does not apply, then we long ago entered zones of extremism……(Please continue.)

http://www.hoover.org/research/why-republicans-will-vote-trump

The Importance of Indicting that Hillary

James Comey:  Enforcing the Law Requires Indicting Hillary Clinton

by Scott S. Powell   at American Thinker

“When James Comey was appointed FBI Director by President Obama, he became the “hands on” chief law enforcement officer of the U.S. As he laid his hand on the Bible and recited his oath of office on September 4, 2013, swearing to “faithfully discharge the duties of the office… without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion,” Mr. Comey never thought he would face indicting the heir apparent leader of the party under which he would serve.

The facts known about Secretary Hillary Clinton’s actions surrounding the use of an unsecure private email server for conducting State Department business, show that she acted with reckless disregard of the security interests of the United States and violated some ten federal statutes. Several are national security-related felonies, just three of which include: 1) disclosure of classified information (22 of which documents were Top Secret); 2) unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents; and 3) destruction of evidence (erasure of the hard drive and deletion of some 30,000 emails by Secretary Clinton), after a government investigation had commenced (Benghazi hearings began October 10, 2012).

Mr. Comey can’t give Secretary Clinton a pass without trouble because a related, but lesser violation in handling classified material by General David Petraeus was recently adjudicated, resulting in a $100,000 fine  a two years’ probation. Petraeus merely gave his personal notebooks, which contained classified information to his biographer, who never disclosed any secrets. Hillary Clinton showed reckless disregard for the nation’s security; her email server — hosting voluminous classified and Top Secret information — was repeatedly breached and exposed by notorious Romanian hacker “Guccifer” and by the Russians (who have 20,000 Clinton server emails in their possession).

The fact that the administration under which Mr. Comey serves has conducted itself with unprecedented partisanship and lawlessness makes it even more important for him to uphold the law and proceed with indictment. The American people need to see that both lawlessness and dereliction of duty are not given a pass and that no one is exempt or above the law.

But the reasons for this step go deeper. Hillary Clinton has been an integral part of the Clinton Foundation, which is unprecedented in size and global scope as an influence peddling political slush fund. According to the foundation’s own recent tax returns, just 10% of expenditures go to charitable grants, with the bulk of the expenditure balance spent on salaries and benefits, lavish life-style travel and conference organizing. The record shows that the Clinton Foundation took large contributions from several business magnates who soon thereafter received clearance for controversial international business deals. Saudi Arabia contributed $10 million to the Clinton Foundation before Hillary became secretary of state. A few years later the Hillary Clinton State Department formally cleared the largest single sale of military aircraft to the Saudis.

The most plausible explanation for Hillary Clinton’s circumventing longstanding Federal government rules on secure communication and for her insistence on implementing a private email server, was simply to conceal a conflict of interest in continuing a role in the Clinton Foundation while also serving as secretary of state. It is instructive that Secretary Clinton’s top aide, Huma Abedin, was simultaneously on payrolls of both the State Department and the Teneo Group, a consulting operation founded by a Clinton confidant with influence peddling activities similar to the Clinton Foundation. Additionally, a private email server would protect disclosure of quid pro quos and fundraising activities for Hillary Clinton’s anticipated run for president.”   Please continue:

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/05/james_comey_enforcing_the_law_requires_indicting_hillary_clinton.html

Supporting Hamas at Portland State “U”

Selling Peace and Love at Portland State University