Alfonzo Rachel - Is It Time for Students to Expose Biased Professors and Biased Republicans?

Zo talks about the USC student Tyler Talgo, who filmed his professor disparaging and insulting Republicans. Was this the right thing to do? Find out what AlfonZo Rachel thinks as he details his recent visit to the USC campus.

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PJTV Trifecta - The Grand Old Circular Firing Squad - Does the GOP Compromise Too Much?

Some complain that the Republican Party compromises too much. Others say it doesn't compromise enough. Is there something wrong with sticking to one's principles? Find out as Trifecta examines the state of the Grand Old Party.

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Dr. Ben Carson - Responds to Rush Limbaugh Comments

On this morning’s Fox and Friends (3/20/2013), Dr. Ben Carson weighed in on his CPAC talk that’s continuing to make waves and headlines around the country. In particular, the doctor reacted to comments made yesterday by conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, who claimed that the ripple effects of Carson’s speech are undoubtedly being felt within the Democratic party.

“I think Dr. Benjamin Carson probably got everybody in the Democratic party scared to death. It’s going to be really hard to demonize this guy … really, really hard, partially because of his race, but not just because he’s African American. It’s because you can call this guy all kinds of demonic names; he just doesn’t fit the bill,” Limbaugh said.

Carson said that he hopes the host is right.

“I try to lead the right kind of life, a life that is inspired by my love of God and love of my fellow man, and it is very hard to demonize someone under those circumstances.” However, he made a point to express his belief that both political parties are guilty of trying to “rule by fear” and deceit, adding that he would be happy to expose any politician engaging in such tactics.

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CPAC 2013 - Phyllis Schlafy

Conservative legend Phyllis Schlafly told the Conservative Political Action Conference that the Republican establishment had given America a series of losers as presidential candidates over the last two decades. Schlafly, who founded Eagle Forum and has been a leader of the Conservative Movement for more than four decades, said the establishment tries to enforce “certain criteria” on their candidates.

“First of all, they only want candidates who will vote the way they’re told to vote, and we like to have ones who will go down there and stir up a little trouble and make sure they vote no,” she said. “You know they’re blaming Ted Cruz for voting no on everything that’s come up. Well good for him!”

Schlafly challenged political consultants like Karl Rove, who founded the super PAC American Crossroads, over their losing record.

“Now one of their chief spokesman was Karl Rove, and he had almost $400 million to spend on the election last year, and he ran TV ads for 31 candidates and only elected seven of them. That’s a pretty bad record. If you had a football coach with that kind of score, I don’t think you’d keep him the next year,” she said.

Schlafly said the other mistake that the establishment made was focusing its spending on television ads while neglecting get-out-the-vote efforts.

“And the running of the TV ads is kind of profitable to those who pick the ads, but it isn’t doing the job. There are a lot of people who don’t even watch TV anymore,” she said.

“Why is it that the establishment has given us this bunch of losers?” Schlafly said. “The establishment has given us a whole series of losers: Bob Dole and John McCain and Mitt Romney.

"And even when they picked a winner--George W. Bush--they picked somebody who spent more than the Democrats,” she said.

RG's article on the 'Winning' Reagan Strategery by clicking HERE

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Daniel Greenfield - Dances With Confused Elephants

Originally Published on the Sultan Knish blog

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The one question I invariably encounter in a conservative movement that tends toward the gray side is how to engage the youth. And the answer is usually nothing that the questioners want to hear.



Now the Republican Party has laid the corpse of the last election on the slab and come up with the expected answers. Some of them are correct, albeit belated. Many others are the sorts of things that the squishy side of the party has been recommending for a while.

The Republican Party has gone from denying that there is a culture war to conceding defeat in the culture war while denying that it ever existed. Its program now is to push aside the socially conservative material and stop frightening off minorities. And that misses the whole point about everything.

The right has its racist elements like the left, but its weakness with minority groups has nothing to do with what the Republican Party is, but with what the Democratic Party says it is. The GOP is taking on responsibility for the things that it never did. That is a bad idea on the best of occasions, but a terrible idea since it only reinforces the exact same image that has attached to it.

The Republican Party doesn't poll poorly with minorities because its party members wear hoods and jump out of cars in minority neighborhoods while shouting "Boo". It polls poorly with minorities because the Democratic Party has built up an extensive infrastructure in minority communities, backed by a national and local media presence.

George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney were not racists, but if you listen to the media and have no opinion of your own, you might get that impression. And if you're a member of a group that experiences racism and your community leaders and role models tell you that they are racist, then you have excellent odds of believing it.

Clarence Thomas, Herman Cain or Ben Carson are not going to fundamentally change that because the problem is not really in the Republican Party. The problem is that the other side has an extensive investment in depicting Republicans as racist and it controls much of the media and academia. Its figureheads also happen to be highly influential in those communities being targeted.

The only way to counter that is to build up an actual working presence in these communities, focused on their middle class and their small businesses, finding common cause where it's possible, and doing something to build up rival community leaders.

And this isn't only true of minorities. Plenty of white communities are in the same boat. They can occasionally be won over, but they have been structurally indoctrinated and organized into seeing the Republican Party as the enemy. That isn't going to change because the Republican Party goes out of its way to announce that it is now friendly.

A non-retarded Republican Party would have spent the Bush Administration seeing that all that money from Washington D.C. is going to friendly organizations, rather than unfriendly ones. The Democratic Party has spent decades doing just that. But that is very doubtfully the GOP plan.

Instead perhaps there will be a series of LDS-style ads featuring minorities who announce proudly, "I am Black and a Republican." And someone will make a lot of RNC money proposing that idea.

That naturally brings us to the youth. A sizable number of them do believe in gay marriage, abortion and a cradle to the grave nanny state complete with free contraception and abortion for all. But for various reasons the Grand Old Party has decided to bend on gay marriage in the hopes of winning over the kids.

Romney didn't actually lose the white youth vote and going for gay marriage will likely alienate young religious voters while failing to attract nearly enough socially liberal/fiscally conservative voters to make up the difference. Not unless Rand Paul is on the ticket and probably not even then. But the GOP still isn't thinking with its head. And like Rob Portman, it's driven as much by personal concerns as by political ones.

The answer that I give when asked about the youth, that no one really wants to hear, is that in many cases they aren't 'gettable'. That doesn't mean that they are permanently off-limits, but that with delayed employment opportunities and delayed maturity, it will take time until they actually share conservative economic and social concerns. That's not true across the board, but it is true of the very voters that the Grand Old Party wants to get its hands on.

Shifting on gay marriage will not make a difference. It will only reinforce the image of the GOP as a dated party that lags behind the Democratic Party's initiatives. And gay marriage does not exist as an individual cause. It is part of a constellation of social causes representing progressive social mores. The idea that gay marriage is a stopping point is laughable. There is no stopping point. That is the whole point.

The left is not interested in gay marriage because it believes in marriage, but because it believes in destroying all existing social institutions. A Republican Party that fails to grasp that has no clue where it is or what it's fighting. It might as well be sent blindfolded into the ring with Muhammad Ali. And that is indeed what has been largely going on. The Republican Party has capitalized on populist backlashes to the left's culture war without really understanding them or believing in them.

The Republican Party can go fiscally conservative and socially liberal and the joke will be on it, because a socially liberal society of broken families and absent values is naturally dependent on the Nanny State. Trying to be fiscal conservatives in a socially liberal society makes as much sense as trying to sell burnt Korans to Mecca.

A socially conservative society can be naturally fiscally conservative, but a socially liberal society is going to reserve its patches of fiscal conservatism for the upper classes. A socially liberal and fiscally conservative party will revisit the old broken Eastern Establishment GOP with a veneer of radicalism that will quickly rub off once the Democratic Party takes its proposals and runs with them.

That brings us back to the youth. If we are to believe the brilliant rebranders of the GOP, then the youth have naturally socially "advanced" on gay marriage. That is of course utter nonsense. The advance has been carefully engineered by the left for its own reasons using popular entertainment and the education system, among other methods. The same process that branded the Republican Party racist led to this amazing social revolution in believing what you see on television to be true.

Gay marriage exists as part of a set of progressive social values. To accept it, you have to accept everything that comes with it... or a year from now you'll be right where you were before you accepted it. And the people moving the agenda forward are not your friends. The places that they are moving the agenda are meant to stagger you and bewilder you. To make you feel like you are losing your own country.

The natural advance theory is a myth. And trying to keep pace with these 'advances' is hopeless because they are managed culture war strikes, not some external process naturally progressing at its own pace.

The same problem exists with the youth vote as with the minority vote. We are not up against a cultural or social misunderstanding, but a deliberate program that has been developing for over a century and that is backed by heavy investment in role models, in entertainment and in ideas. We have not alienated them. They have been alienated from us. The distinction is an important one because it means that we are not in control of the process.

Trying to win by evolving is a lost cause. Trying to repackage conservatism as socially liberal ignores the most basic elements of human psychology and the entire process of youthful rebellion that feeds radicalism. All that's left is to get rid of conservatism, rename the Republican Party the Freedom Party that now stands for everything the Democratic Party stands for except higher taxes and big government and wait for the laughter.

The Republican Party isn't competing with issues. It's competing with schools and comedians. It's competing with the entire messaging apparatus of the left which is extensive, elaborate and pervasive. Imagining that the conservative position will get equal time with their professors and Family Guy because of a shift on gay marriage is the most deluded idea ever. The problem isn't gay marriage, it's the apparatus that's the problem.

Imagine a Republican candidate trying to adopt his liberal opponent's positions in a debate with a one-hour delay. That is how ridiculous the GOP is being. And its leaders should not doubt that even a crowd of voters which gets sizable chunks of its politics from its entertainment will only sneer at them for their hopelessly uncool efforts at trying to fit in.

The GOP leadership wants a quick fix solution. How to Get Minority Voters and Young Voters in 4 Easy Steps. There is no such solution.

The left did not get to where it is with quick fix solutions. It thought in the long term and it acted in the long term. And while we may lack the time and the committed manpower to replicate its tactics, it's absurdly silly to think that its cultural advantages, which include, among other things, control of the education system and your television set, can be negated by turning on a few positions.

This is a war of values. Whatever your beliefs about marriage or any other subject may be, every political struggle is about what we believe about society at large. It is about what we believe other people should believe. The man who believes in the least amount of government imaginable still needs a society that agrees with him and is willing to implement that kind of system or it all comes to nothing.

We are in the middle of a culture war. That doesn't mean our leaders should go around shouting that to the skies, but they should understand what it means. This is not really a struggle over ObamaCare or gay marriage or whether money should be pumped into green energy, agricultural subsidies or foreign aid to Pakistan. It's a battle over what kind of society we should have and what its people should believe and not believe.

You don't win a culture war by opting out. You don't win it by surrendering on most of the points. And you don't win it by pretending it isn't there. If you fail to make an argument, then you lose by default. And then when the polls catch up with you, you chalk up that failure to changing mores and count yourself clever for catching up to the bandwagon of your enemies and then fighting a last stand on the next issue of the day for as long as the polls say that you should.

This is not simply about government. This is about the kind of society that we want to have and the kind of people that we want to be. This isn't about enforcing morality, but it is about recognizing that if we don't have a system of values that we put forward, then we will automatically lose to those who do. And their system of values will have very little room for freedom of speech or any other kind of freedom.

Some people vote for parties, swapping them out like yesterday's laundry. These are the independent voters. Others vote their values and that is as true in Portland as it is in Salt Lake City. Most vote their culture. That tribal sense of where they belong. It is why Jewish support for the Democratic Party is so hard to shake. It is why social conservatives keep voting Republican even when they see little out of it.

If the Republican Party ever starts understanding where its voters are coming from and where the people who aren't its voters are coming, and the entire process that has been tearing apart the country for generations then it might have a shot. But that's not a quick fix. It's not an easy answer. It can't be solved with an online ad campaign full of videos meant to go viral, but not in the way that the people making them think that they will.

The GOP used to understand the culture war, now it doesn't. It would like a unilateral detente. It would like to opt out and just focus on economic reform. And that plan has as good a chance of succeeding as interrupting an exchange of shelling in WW1 to ask if this whole thing can't be settled with a spirited debate. It doesn't work that way.

The real problem is not just that the Republican Party is still shell-shocked from its defeat, but that it has learned very little from that defeat. Despite being beaten by a coalition, it has no real plan for assembling its own coalition. It doesn't really understand its base or the other side's base and it is thinking in urban liberal terms about the future of a conservative party.

Daniel Greenfield

Visit Daniel's Blog Sultan Knish by clicking HERE

Daniel Greenfield is a blogger and columnist born in Israel and living in New York City. Daniel is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and a contributing editor at Family Security Matters.

Daniel's original biweekly column appears at Front Page Magazine and his blog articles regularly appear at Family Security Matters, the Jewish Press, Times of Israel, Act for America and Right Side News, as well as daily at the Canada Free Press and a number of other outlets. Daniel has a column titled Western Front at Israel National News and his op eds have also appeared in the New York Sun, the Jewish Press and at FOX Nation.

Daniel was named one of the Jewish Press' Most Worthwhile Blogs from 2006-2011 and his writing has been cited by Rush Limbaugh, Melanie Philips, Robert Spencer, Daniel Pipes, Judith Klinghoffer, John Podhoretz, Jeff Jacoby and Michelle Malkin, among others.

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Deneen Borelli - CPAC 2013 Analyzed

"I think the message is to stay on message. I think it's very exciting and refreshing that conservatives really are taking over the Republican party, because the problem has been for many, many years is that we've had a moderate establishment republican politicians - the squishy politicians, they're not sticking to their core values, their core principles of smaller government, less spending, lower debt, lower taxes this is what we need really to propel our economy and also to get jobs growing in our country."
Deneen Borelli

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Paul Ryan - House GOP unveils A Responsible, Balanced Budget

Today, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Committee Republicans released their plan to balance the budget in ten years. It is a responsible plan to cut spending, reform government, and foster a healthier economy. It provides economic security for families, repairs the safety net for the poor, strengthens retirement for seniors, and expands opportunity for all.

March 12, 2013

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Wild Bill for America - A Special Kind of Stupid

The Republicans have lost a lot of friends with their foolish election antics.

Visit the Wild Bill for America Blog

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Crystal Wright - Time for GOP to Push Obama off the Fiscal Cliff

Republicans need to stand for something and start defending conservatism not apologizing for it. Whether we’re talking about economic or individual prosperity, conservative policies work. When Presidents Reagan and Clinton cut taxes, government revenues increased and economies boomed. When babies are born to married couples, their chances of succeeding in life grow exponentially as opposed to falling into a life of poverty and crime, if they are born to single moms.

As Mitt Romney remarked in his NAACP speech, a Brookings Institution study found kids “who graduate from high school, get a full-time job, and wait until 21 before they marry and then have their first child, the probability of being poor is two percent. And if those factors are absent, the probability of being poor is 76 percent.”

When parents are given choices to escape failing public schools with programs like vouchers, their kids’ chances of finishing high school and going to college increases. The Republican Party supports policies that promote an opportunity society versus a government dependent society. Living off welfare and food stamps won’t buy you a home in the suburbs or send your kids to college. Yet Democrats make their pursuit of an ever-growing role of government in our lives sound chic, fulfilling and something to aspire toward.

Congressional Republicans have allowed Democrats and President Barack Obama to use the fiscal cliff battle to paint Republicans as the party of bad while falsely positioning Democrats as the party of good. There’s nothing good about a person or nation living beyond his or her means and that’s what Democrat policies persistently pursue.

As expected, Republicans have lost control of the narrative just like Mitt Romney did during the election because the party won’t stand on terra firma and defend its principles. America doesn’t have a taxing problem we have a spending problem and are living in debt denial. Republicans need to remind Americans that our nation is marching down the path of Greece and Spain both with a 25% unemployment rate unless we reign in our spending.

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), entitlement programs of Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid are nearly solely responsible for blowing up our deficits in the next 75 years. This is why we need bold entitlement and spending reform and tax reform of the kind Rep. Paul Ryan proposed in his budget plan, The Path to Prosperity. As Bob Woodward’s The Price of Politics notes, CBO confirmed Ryan’s budget would cut $4.4 trillion from the deficit over ten years.

Thanks to Obama’s penchant for spending on his favorite things like the failed stimulus, Obamacare, and Dodd-Frank, the president has taken the debt from $10 trillion in 2009 to over $16 trillion in four years. President George W. Bush spent that in eight years. As Senator Rob Portman noted in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial, our “national debt now tops $130,000 a person” and allowing the $800 trillion in Bush tax cuts to expire for higher earners only pays for “nine days of spending.”

Why aren’t House Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell getting their people in line and hammering away at these facts?

Why isn’t the GOP reminding Americans that the $3.2 trillion in Bush tax cuts Obama wants to protect for 98% of Americans “was proposed and put into law largely by Republicans.” So if Obama admits we can’t afford to hit the middle class with tax cuts then it wouldn’t be good to hit 2% with $800 trillion in tax cuts either because this group includes small business owners, who create jobs and put money back into the economy.

Moreover, why isn’t the GOP reminding Americans as Portman wrote only 4% of the $12 trillion of in deficits accumulated from 2002-2011 was due to tax hikes on the rich or that Obama’s $3 trillion budget increases spending by $1 trillion over ten years. Curiously, Obama’s relentless quest to make higher earners pay more in taxes would only pay 7% ($80 billion a year) of Obama's $1 trillion yearly deficits.

Why aren’t Republicans reminding Americans Obama's budgets are so out of control they never passed Congress? Obama’s cliff bargain of $1.6 trillion in tax hikes on the rich is the same cost of “the three entitlement programs in 2012,” (p. 379, The Price of Politics) but Obama refuses any reforms to entitlements or cuts in government spending. In ten years Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will cost $3 trillion.

“The single biggest threat to the future of this country—there’s nothing even close—is the unsustainable path we’re on, driven by excessive generosity beyond our ability to pay . . .on very popular programs,” said McConnell, (p.364, The Price of Politics). Why aren’t Republicans telling the American people this story?

If Republicans cave into Obama’s demands to punish higher earners with tax hikes while all other earners enjoy the lower Bush tax cuts, the GOP will lose all credibility with the American people. Looking to the 2014 mid-term elections and the 2016 presidential election, Democrats will campaign against untrustworthy Republicans. “They said they were for lower taxes and raised taxes. Their presidential nominee Mitt Romney changed his positions like the wind to suit the political climate. What does the Republican Party really stand for?”

It’s time for Republicans to stand, deliver and let Obama face his own cliffhanger. America has a spending problem, not a taxing one. Do or die. The moment is now!

Crystal Wright

Crystal Wright is a black conservative woman living in Washington, D.C. Some would say she is a triple minority: woman, black and a Republican living in a Democrat dominated city. She’s contemplating moving back to her home state of Virginia, where her vote would count for something. By day, Crystal is a communications consultant and editor and publisher of the new website, conservativeblackchick.com. Crystal earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Georgetown University and holds a Masters of Fine Arts in Theatre from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Wright is the principal owner of the Baker Wright Group, LLC , a full service public relations firm, specializing in communications counseling, media relations, message development, media training and crisis communications. The firm’s approach is straight forward counseling: an unvarnished approach to public relations.

Visit Crystal's Website by clicking HERE

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Alfonzo Rachel - Liberals and Democrats Are Racist, Not Republicans!

Zo gives a history lesson about the legacy of racism in the Democratic Party. Hear how Democrats take gross liberties with concepts of freedom on this ZoNation.

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Alfonzo Rachel - The Democrats Don't Own Dr. Martin Luther King

Nobody owns Dr. Martin Luther King. So why do the Democrats think that they should have complete control over his legacy? AlfonZo Rachel thinks that King and his vision is one for all Americans, not just those registered in the Democratic party.

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David Barton - America's Election History

David Barton gives some surprising results from past elections.

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Michael Brown - Is the Republican Party the Party of God?

The Democratic Party Platform contains just one reference to “God,” and the inclusion of that single reference was famously booed by many delegates at the Democratic convention. In contrast, the Republican Party Platform contains 12 references to “God,” and candidate Romney has emphatically stated, “I will not take God out of the name of our platform. I will not take God off our coins and I will not take God out of my heart. We’re a nation that’s bestowed by God.” Does this make the GOP the party of God?

The Democratic Platform certainly stands in stark contrast with the Republican Platform. The former is radically pro-abortion, endorses same-sex marriage, and is decidedly weak on Israel. The latter is strongly pro-life, in favor of natural, organic marriage, and unashamedly pro-Israel.

All this is readily seen in Liberty Counsel’s Voter’s Guide, which contrasts 10 categories in both platforms: Abortion and Human Life; Family Values; First Amendment, Liberty, and Responsibility; ObamaCare; Gun Rights; Fiscal Reform; Israel as an Ally; Government Oversight; Judiciary; Word Use Comparisons.

Starting with the last category, as already noted, the Democratic Platform (from here on DP) used the word “God” once; the Republican Platform (from here on RP) spoke of “God” 12 times. But is this more semantics than substance? Apparently not.

The DP did not mention the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. The RP condemned them.

The DP did not mention the protection of individual conscience in healthcare; the RP explicitly supported it.

The DP did not mention the right to publicly display the Ten Commandments; the RP explicitly endorsed it.

The DP favored the so-called Fairness Doctrine; the RP opposed it.

The DP did not encourage abstinence-only education for teens; the RP encouraged it.

The DP did not mention the enforcement of laws against pornography and obscenity; the RP did.

The DP did not support a constitutional amendment that marriage is the union of one man and one woman, nor did it support the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA); the RP supported both.

The DP did not mention euthanasia and assisted suicide; the RP opposed both.

The DP supported taxpayer-funded/subsidized abortion; the RP opposed this.

The DP did not mention the Human Life Amendment in defense of the unborn; the RP supported it.

And Romney continues to ratchet up the God talk, stating, “I will not take God out of the public square,” and “we are [a] nation under God.” But that does not mean that the Republican party is the party of God. Not by a long shot.

Both parties have more than their share of cronyism, compromise (if not outright corruption), ungodly alliances, hypocrisy, blind spots, and poor role models. It would be a terrible mistake to invoke some kind of divine sanctity on the Republicans. (For the record, it would also be a terrible mistake to think that there are no godly Democrats out there.)

To be perfectly clear, as a religious conservative, I strongly support the GOP Platform when it comes to family, life, and Israel. And I find it interesting that individuals, religious organizations, and political parties which invoke God and the Bible as authorities tend to be pro-life, pro-traditional family, and pro-Israel (which does not necessarily mean anti-Palestinian). In contrast, individuals, religious organizations, and political parties which either marginalize God and the Bible or reject the plain sense of the Scriptures tend to be pro-abortion, in favor of same-sex marriage, and anti-Israel (or, at least, not strongly pro-Israel).

And I do understand why conservative pundits have referred to the “godless Democrats” and why conservative politicians have runs ads highlighting the Democratic “booing of God.” But even if many (or most) Democrats are “godless,” that does not mean that the Republicans, for the most part, are godly, nor should we look at them as the Party of God. (For the conservative Christians reading this, do you think God would appoint a Mormon to head up his party?)

Let’s not forget how many Republican candidates have used “God language” to win the votes of conservative Christians (especially evangelicals) only to disappoint those very voters once in office.

Let’s not forget that marriage was redefined in New York State because four Republican senators caved in. (It’s true that the bill was driven and supported by Democrats, but the Republicans certainly failed to hold the line.)

Let’s not forget that the Republican Party of Massachusetts has not embraced the national platform as its own.

And let’s not forget the fundamental error we make when we exaggerate the goodness and godliness of a large and diverse political party.

Without a doubt, the Republican Platform is far closer to conservative Judeo-Christian values than is the Democratic Platform, but let’s not get carried away. The only true, political “party of God” is sitting in heaven right now. Here on earth, the political scene is mixed, and the ones calling themselves the “party of God” are groups like Hezbollah. (In case you didn’t know, that’s what Hezbollah means in Arabic.)

Dr. Michael Brown

Michael Brown holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University and is the author of 20 books. He has served as a professor at a number of seminaries and hosts the nationally syndicated, daily talk radio show, the Line of Fire.

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PJTV Trifecta - Obama's Money Trouble: Are People Voting With Their Pocketbooks?

GOP nominee Mitt Romney is raising more money than the Obama money machine. Now Democrats worry that the President will soak big donors that would otherwise give to House and Senate races. Do fundraising totals prove that America has had it with President Obama? Find out.

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Star Parker - Freedom is the Only Issue Facing Americans

The political parties throw a lot of glitz at us with their made-for-TV spectaculars, which we call conventions.

But the bottom line defining the choice facing Americans this year is stark and clear, and these conventions provide no new insights or information.

If you think we're struggling because we don't have enough government, then the Democrats are the party for you. If you think the point of government is to protect individual freedom, and the problem is it has gone way beyond that, then Republicans are the party for you.

No visual dominates the landscape of our nation's capital like the Washington Monument. Today, however, other than memorializing our first president, it also provides a message about the role and efficacy of government.

Last year on Aug. 23, a 5.8-magnitude earthquake hit Washington, D.C. The earthquake caused cracks in the monument, which stands at a height of almost two football fields, so the National Park Service shut it down.

Now, one year later, the monument remains in disrepair, closed to the 600,000 annual visitors it usually receives.

The Washington Post reported in January that the monument would be closed until sometime in 2013. According to that report, the contract to do the repairs would "probably not be awarded until late summer, with work starting sometime after that."

Now the latest report in The Washington Post indicates that repair of the monument may not be complete until sometime in 2014.

In January 1994, Los Angeles was hit with a massive 6.7-magnitude earthquake, knocking down two sections of the Santa Monica Freeway.

An initial estimate from the California Department of Transportation was that it would take 12 to 18 months for repairs.

Considering the massive potential costs to the local economy of shutting down sections of the world's busiest freeway, Caltrans officials decided to turn loose the time-tested formula for American success: market incentives and individual ingenuity.

They opened bidding to contractors who would accelerate the repair process, offering incentive bonuses for early completion.

The result: The repairs were completed in less than three months, with the contractor collecting a $14.5 million bonus for finishing 74 days ahead of schedule.

A rule of life is that we can always expect the unexpected.

Natural disasters deliver this truth in graphic and shocking ways. But the unexpected is with us constantly, natural disasters or not.

It's why an enduring society must be a free society. Only when free can individuals deal with life's endless surprises in creative and resilient ways.

Bureaucracy and government control are guarantees for failure.

Now, sadly, we watch those on Louisiana's Gulf Coast bear the brunt again of a brutal hurricane.

Think of the despair that followed Katrina. There was no shortage of opinions that New Orleans was done forever, that it could never recover.

But, human resilience, will, creativity and freedom have revived this city.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate in the New Orleans region is below the national average.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported on the surge of entrepreneurial activity that has occurred there. Tax incentives have given birth to a growing, nationally competitive film industry, with music and software design following suit.

A failed public school system has been revitalized, with 80 percent of the schools now charter schools.

Shouldn't it tell us something that Apple, the icon for innovation, once on the brink of failure, is now the most valuable company in history?

And that all the major areas where we are having problems are areas controlled or dominated by government?

Americans don't need to watch fancily produced political conventions to know that one question faces us this year: Do we want to be free?

Star Parker

Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can do About It.

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PJTV Trifecta - Romney Shows Gold Mettle. So, Why Do Liberals Think Mitt's a Wimp?

The liberals want to kick sand in someone's face, and that someone is Mitt Romney. Obama supporters think Romney's a wimp, and are calling him wimpy and insecure. Is Romney a wimp, and what do his recent statements about Israel, Iran and the London Olympic games say about Mitt's mettle? Find out on this Trifecta.

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Star Parker - Republicans Missing Chance on Education Reform

One area that awareness of the need for freedom from government control has penetrated black attitudes is in education.

The chronic failure of public schools to notably improve dismal test scores and high dropout rates of black children has made it clear to many black citizens of good will that there has got to be a better way.

Polls show black support for school choice. For example, in a poll done last year in New Jersey by the Rutgers-Eagleton Center at Rutgers University, 54 percent of blacks expressed support for school vouchers compared to 36 percent of whites.

Growing grass roots support among blacks for education alternatives surely influenced the Obama administration’s agreement, this past week, to ongoing support for the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. The administration opposes the program and would have been perfectly happy to see its funding spigot turned off.

This is a modest program, with federal funds available now for 1,615 scholarships for kids in DC’s public schools to attend private schools. Its existence and potential for growth was at stake, with House Speaker John Boehner and Senator Joseph Lieberman carried the ball for it. The new agreement will allow it to continue, with a small provision for 85 new scholarships.

But this makes even more perplexing recent incidents where Republican state legislators have turned their backs on the education hopes of blacks.

Republicans in Pennsylvania can change the political landscape of their state by helping black aspirations for education freedom. But in a state that some analysts see as conceivably swinging into the Republican column, Republicans are blowing it.

The Pennsylvania state Senate passed a bill last year that would make vouchers available to kids in the worst 5% of public schools.

The public schools serving blacks kids in cities like Philadelphia are disasters. I know from my own survey of pastors in local churches there that hopes for this voucher initiative have been high.

Yet, by all indication it’s not going to happen.

The state House, controlled by Republicans, has been sitting on the bill. With no action before the end of the session on June 30 it will be dead.

There is talk of an alternative scholarship bill financed through tax credits. But the most optimistic estimate I have heard is that the scholarship would be worth less than half what the voucher would pay and therefore insufficient on its own to pay full tuition in a private church school.

Courageous leadership by Republicans could have captured black hearts and minds in Pennsylvania’s cities that might have paved a path to a new black relationship with Republicans.

But sadly, fear of union power rather than leadership and courage seems to be motivating these legislators.

In 2010, a similar disappointment occurred in Illinois.

In a genuine breakthrough, a black Democrat in the Illinois state Senate, Rev. James Meeks, who happens to also be the pastor of Chicago’s largest Baptist congregation, introduced a school voucher bill.

The bill passed the Illinois senate and then died in the state House, with only 25 of 48 Republicans supporting it. It fell 12 votes short of the 60 it needed to pass.

This is not an across the board indictment of Republicans. Two Republican governors – Mitch Daniels in Indiana and Bobby Jindal in Louisiana – have spearheaded passage of school voucher programs in their states.

In a new Gallup poll, only 29 percent, an all time low, express “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in our public schools.

The Republican Party is supposed to be the party of freedom and limited government. No where are these principles more needed than in education, and no community needs it more than blacks.

At a time when our country and our poor communities are hurting so badly, any failure of leadership by those in the party of Lincoln is inexcusable.

Star Parker

Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can do About It.

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Star Parker - America Now a “Pro-Life” Nation

Do House Republicans risk being branded as extremist and out of touch by bringing abortion back into the national spotlight when supposedly the economy is all Americans care about today?

Last Thursday, Republicans brought to a vote in the House a bill introduced by Arizona Republican Trent Franks that would have criminalized abortion based on sex. Although the bill received healthy support, 246 – 168, including 20 Democrats that voted for it, it was not enough to pass. The floor rule under which the bill was considered required a two thirds vote for passage and it fell short of that.

New Gallup polling shows that bringing abortion back into the national debate may not be a bad political call for Republicans.

Whereas public opinion has moved in recent years against the conservative position opposing same sex marriage, the opposite is true on abortion. On abortion, Americans have become decidedly more pro-life, moving in the direction of conservatives.

A just released Gallup poll shows that now 50 percent identify as “pro-life” compared to 41 percent as “pro-choice.” This is a complete reversal from sixteen years ago in the mid-90s when 56 percent were “pro-choice and 38 percent “pro-life.”

Moreover, 51 percent now say abortion is morally wrong compared to 38 percent who say it is morally acceptable.

Also of political interest is that Independents are now on the “pro-life” side of the ledger, 47 percent identifying as “pro-life” compared to 41 percent “pro-choice.”

Years of relentless work by pro-life conservatives raising public awareness about the horror of abortion, coupled with the reality of unborn life being graphically conveyed by ultrasound, is making a difference.

This most recent House initiative to ban sex selected abortion came in the wake of two notable events bringing public attention to this issue.

One was the recent arrival in our country of blind Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng.

Chen miraculously escaped prison in China, seeking asylum in the American embassy in Beijing. He had been imprisoned for over four years for his work bringing to public attention the horror stories associated with forced abortion and sterilization in China associated with China’s one child policy.

According to data reported in 2009 in the Shanghai Daily, a state operated newspaper in China, abortions performed in China annually exceed 13 million.

Also capturing public attention to the issue of sex selected abortion was the release by pro-life activist group Live Action of an undercover video showing a Planned Parenthood counselor in Austin, Texas providing counseling for doing a gender selected abortion.

The young woman posing as a client seeking advice told the counselor she wanted to abort if the child she was carrying in her pregnancy turned out to be a girl. “….we want two, I already have a girl, and we want a boy and a girl.”

The Planned Parenthood counselor advises her to wait 5 months into her pregnancy when she can be assured of the sex of the child, and if it is a girl, abort her. The counselor also advises her how she can scam Medicaid to pay for her pre-natal care under the guise that she intends to birth the child.

Those who insist that social, moral issues constitute an agenda separate and apart from economic issues should consider why socialist societies are secular, atheist societies. We need not be limited to looking at China and the former Soviet Union to appreciate this. On display today is the tragic collapse of Europe, now largely secular, under the burdens of the unsustainable welfare state it has created.

It is societies that respect both life and property, societies in which the mystery of life is revered and respected, that nurture a culture of personal responsibility that make a free and prosperous nation possible.

Latest polling indicates good news that a majority of Americans are waking up to this fact.

Star Parker

Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can do About It.

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Wild Bill for America - Stupid Republicans

Unless the Republicans get smart, they will lose this nation.

Visit the Wild Bill for America Blog

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Alfonzo Rachel - A Herman Cain Presidential Nomination Would Expose Liberal Bias and Racism

It's not impossible for Romney to beat Obama, but would Republicans have a better chance with Herman Cain? Would a Cain candidacy have exposed the Democrats as opponents of civil rights and tolerance? Hear what AlfonZo Rachel thinks.

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