The Front Page Cover
~ Featuring ~
Liberal thought police getting even scarier
by David Limbaugh
.
Tillerson Seeking 9% Cut to U.S. State Department Workforce, Sources Say
by Nick Wadhams
{theconservativetreehouse.com} ~ The State Department plans to cut 2,300 U.S. diplomats and civil servants -- about 9 percent of the Americans in its workforce worldwide -- as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson presses ahead... with his task of slashing the agency’s budget, according to people familiar with the matter. The majority of the job cuts, about 1,700, will come through attrition, while the remaining 600 will be done via buyouts, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the decision hasn’t been publicly announced. William Inglee, a former Lockheed Martin Corp. official and policy adviser in Congress, is overseeing the budget cuts and briefed senior managers on the plan Wednesday, the people said. The personnel cuts, which may be phased in over two years, represent the most concrete step taken by Tillerson as he seeks to reverse the expansion the department saw under former President Barack liar-nObama’s administration and meet President Donald Trump’s demand... https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/04/28/report-secretary-t-rex-begins-reducing-state-dept-bureaucrats/
.
DHS May Turn Over Jihadi Jeh Johnson’s
“liar-Clinton-Style” Secret Emails...
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ Jihadi Jeh Johnson may have hoped he had buried the evidence deep enough to where it would never be found, and if liar-Hillary Clinton had won the election, he would have surely been correct... But she didn’t, John Kelly’s in charge at DHS and Jihadi Jeh may be in for a little accountability. This is, after all, the “law and order” Department of Homeland Security now, the opposite of the crime syndicate Johnson oversaw. Johnson engaged in a personal war, his and liar-nObama’s jihad against border enforcement, immigration laws and the national security of the United States, helping to enable the invasion from around the globe by characters of every description. It’s understandable why he would circumvent public records laws and the Freedom of Information Act...http://rickwells.us/dhs-may-turn-jihadi-jeh-johnsons-clinton-style-secret-emails-saudis-kuwaitis/
.
America Is Losing the Cyber Information War
by Bill Gertz
{freebeacon.com} ~ The United States faces a growing threat of information warfare attacks and needs new strategies and organizations to counter it, national security experts told Congress this week... John C. Inglis, former deputy director of the National Security Agency, said cyber attacks are only one form of influence, propaganda, and disinformation attacks being waged in the cyber war of ideas. "Cyber warfare, in my view, is not a standalone entity," Inglis told a Senate subcommittee hearing Thursday. "When you're talking about information warfare, it's at that top-most stack, and it does not necessarily comprise of an exchange of tools or an exchange of literal warfare. It is, in fact, a conflict of ideas."...http://freebeacon.com/national-security/america-losing-cyber-information-war/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=5e8719e5eb-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_04_28&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-5e8719e5eb-45611665
.
Trump First 100 Days Exceptional Despite
Paul Ryan And Dems Obstructionism
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ Lou Dobbs has a few thoughts “as President Trump approaches the 100 day mark of his Presidency. Since President Trump took the oath of office, 99 days ago... he’s met with more than 170 business leaders, he’s held meetings with 16 foreign leaders, he’s held 9 press conferences, 21 of his 22 cabinet members have finally been confirmed.” Dobbs points out, “But the Dems have created capricious, frustrating obstacles for the President’s nominees, and in an unprecedented commitment to frustrate the legitimate prerogatives and authorities of the White House, they’ve slowed the process beyond any reasonable level of tolerance. The President’s Trade Representative nominee, Robert Lighthizer, has been moved out of committee now, but he’s yet to be confirmed by the full Senate.” “President Trump’s successes, however,” says Dobbs, “are unmatched in recent presidential history...http://rickwells.us/dobbs-trump-first-100-days-exceptional-despite-paul-ryan-dems-obstructionism/
.
House Democrats Hide 2016 Autopsy,
Won’t Even Allow Members to Have Copies
by Alex Griswold
{freebeacon.com} ~ An official Democratic "autopsy" detailing the miscues and mistakes that led to their 2016 election losses will not be made public but will be kept strictly under lock and key... The practice of election autopsies took off in 2012 when Republicans drafted and then publicly released a detailed breakdown of why presidential candidate Mitt Romney lost and how to fix the mistakes in the future. Democrats likewise did their own autopsy after their 2014 midterm election losses. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee set out to draft a similar autopsy after only picking up six seats in the House in 2016, far less than expected. But this time around, the public won't learn any of the findings...
.
.
by David Limbaugh
Liberal thought police getting even scarier
by David Limbaugh
{wnd.com} ~ The totalitarian left is emboldened by its selective suppression of speech. Just as scary is the deluded thought process that inspires its Stalinism.
Recognizing its inability to compete in the marketplace of ideas, the left has been chipping away for years at the concept of free speech. You have to give leftists points for cleverness, not to mention persistence, because they don’t openly advocate censoring conservative speech as such. They pretend to be protecting some greater good or preventing imminent harm to certain groups.
When they failed in talk radio, they resurrected the Fairness Doctrine, which is euphemistically disguised as a policy to ensure the presentation of all viewpoints but is actually a sinister ploy to dilute the power of conservative talk. They always have some excuse – and plausible deniability.
They protest conservative speakers or those easily demonized as conservatives on college campuses, arguing that conservative “hate speech” can lead to violence against certain groups. No one wants violence, so we must muzzle conservative political speech, right?
But it’s patently absurd to contend that everyday conservative speech is “hate speech” and that it leads to violence. It is pernicious nonsense. What’s worse is that these speech cops don’t acknowledge their own hypocrisy in committing violence – the very harm they claim to be preventing – to prevent speech that allegedly could lead to violence. Let’s just burn some buildings down and smash some skulls in to show just how adamant we are about preventing violence. I wish I were exaggerating.
But the thought-control zealots are now coming up with even more bizarre rationalizations to curb competitive speech. In a recent New York Times op-ed, New York University provost Ulrich Baer argues: “The idea of freedom of speech does not mean a blanket permission to say anything anybody thinks. It means balancing the inherent value of a given view with the obligation to ensure that other members of a given community can participate in discourse as fully recognized members of that community. Free-speech protections – not only but especially in universities, which aim to educate students in how to belong to various communities – should not mean that someone’s humanity, or their right to participate in political speech as political agents, can be freely attacked, demeaned or questioned.”
You may consider that to be psychobabble. What would you expect from an academic who describes himself in the same piece as “a scholar of literature, history and politics”? But I digress.
Let’s try to decipher what he’s saying. To do so, we must understand that like so many leftists, Baer cannot avoid viewing these matters through the grid of identity politics; everything must be evaluated in terms of how it affects minorities or historically oppressed groups.
Even though one could define unfettered freedom of expression as “guaranteeing the robust debate from which the truth emerges,” we shouldn’t support it, Baer also says in the piece. Specifically, we shouldn’t protect speech that insults whole groups in an effort to discredit and delegitimize them “as less worthy of participation in the public exchange of ideas.” He seems to be saying that if you discredit groups of people with your speech, then you unlevel the playing field to the point that any speech these groups express will be less valuable and effective.
We must weigh the “inherent value” of ideas against the dangerous possibility that these ideas could discredit other groups and thereby effectively silence them, he says. Thus, a “pure model of free speech” presents a “clear and present” danger to our democracy.
So the republic is better-served if we allow certain ivory tower elites, with their worldly wisdom, to weigh the “inherent value” of speech to determine whether it should be protected. If it arguably demeans a certain group – and there are newly defined groups all the time in the left’s world – it is not worthy of protection.
Thus, the liberal thought police can decree that because anything conservative firebrand Ann Coulter would say at Berkeley on immigration or other topics would diminish other groups, it should not be protected. She’s a conservative, and conservative ideas don’t have much inherent value to liberals and, in their distorted world, also discredit certain groups. Voila! Shut her down. The sophistry is astounding.
I urge you not to miss the most stunning aspect of Baer’s specious analysis. The thrust of the left’s message against conservatives across the board is that because of our toxic ideas, we should be discredited and delegitimized “as less worthy of participation in the public exchange of ideas.”
Just as leftists support the commission of violence in the name of preventing speech that could arguably lead to it, they would muzzle us because through our speech, we would discredit and then effectively muzzle them. Insanity.
We don’t want to muzzle liberals; we want to defeat them in the marketplace of ideas. We don’t want to commit violence against them, but they often want to do so against us. Boy, how they project.
Let me ask you: In their world, who would decide whether certain speech has inherent value? The federal government, no doubt, provided Democrats are in control at the time. The true acid test of Baer’s preposterous arguments would be to ask how liberals would feel if Republicans were allowed to make such decisions while in control of the federal government. How would they feel if a conservative had written this silly, scary op-ed?
It is precisely because we can’t have certain self-appointed groups deciding what speech is worthy that we must vigorously protect “robust” political speech in this country. The Founding Fathers knew this, and everyone with common sense understands it. But the crazy modern left wants us to unlearn it – and leftists call us conservatives a danger to democracy.
Whatever you do, don’t casually dismiss Baer’s ideas as fringe. This is the way leftists think today – and they are the people teaching our university students, producing Hollywood movies and largely controlling the mainstream media. Wake up and be vigilant! And fight back!
Recognizing its inability to compete in the marketplace of ideas, the left has been chipping away for years at the concept of free speech. You have to give leftists points for cleverness, not to mention persistence, because they don’t openly advocate censoring conservative speech as such. They pretend to be protecting some greater good or preventing imminent harm to certain groups.
When they failed in talk radio, they resurrected the Fairness Doctrine, which is euphemistically disguised as a policy to ensure the presentation of all viewpoints but is actually a sinister ploy to dilute the power of conservative talk. They always have some excuse – and plausible deniability.
They protest conservative speakers or those easily demonized as conservatives on college campuses, arguing that conservative “hate speech” can lead to violence against certain groups. No one wants violence, so we must muzzle conservative political speech, right?
But it’s patently absurd to contend that everyday conservative speech is “hate speech” and that it leads to violence. It is pernicious nonsense. What’s worse is that these speech cops don’t acknowledge their own hypocrisy in committing violence – the very harm they claim to be preventing – to prevent speech that allegedly could lead to violence. Let’s just burn some buildings down and smash some skulls in to show just how adamant we are about preventing violence. I wish I were exaggerating.
But the thought-control zealots are now coming up with even more bizarre rationalizations to curb competitive speech. In a recent New York Times op-ed, New York University provost Ulrich Baer argues: “The idea of freedom of speech does not mean a blanket permission to say anything anybody thinks. It means balancing the inherent value of a given view with the obligation to ensure that other members of a given community can participate in discourse as fully recognized members of that community. Free-speech protections – not only but especially in universities, which aim to educate students in how to belong to various communities – should not mean that someone’s humanity, or their right to participate in political speech as political agents, can be freely attacked, demeaned or questioned.”
You may consider that to be psychobabble. What would you expect from an academic who describes himself in the same piece as “a scholar of literature, history and politics”? But I digress.
Let’s try to decipher what he’s saying. To do so, we must understand that like so many leftists, Baer cannot avoid viewing these matters through the grid of identity politics; everything must be evaluated in terms of how it affects minorities or historically oppressed groups.
Even though one could define unfettered freedom of expression as “guaranteeing the robust debate from which the truth emerges,” we shouldn’t support it, Baer also says in the piece. Specifically, we shouldn’t protect speech that insults whole groups in an effort to discredit and delegitimize them “as less worthy of participation in the public exchange of ideas.” He seems to be saying that if you discredit groups of people with your speech, then you unlevel the playing field to the point that any speech these groups express will be less valuable and effective.
We must weigh the “inherent value” of ideas against the dangerous possibility that these ideas could discredit other groups and thereby effectively silence them, he says. Thus, a “pure model of free speech” presents a “clear and present” danger to our democracy.
So the republic is better-served if we allow certain ivory tower elites, with their worldly wisdom, to weigh the “inherent value” of speech to determine whether it should be protected. If it arguably demeans a certain group – and there are newly defined groups all the time in the left’s world – it is not worthy of protection.
Thus, the liberal thought police can decree that because anything conservative firebrand Ann Coulter would say at Berkeley on immigration or other topics would diminish other groups, it should not be protected. She’s a conservative, and conservative ideas don’t have much inherent value to liberals and, in their distorted world, also discredit certain groups. Voila! Shut her down. The sophistry is astounding.
I urge you not to miss the most stunning aspect of Baer’s specious analysis. The thrust of the left’s message against conservatives across the board is that because of our toxic ideas, we should be discredited and delegitimized “as less worthy of participation in the public exchange of ideas.”
Just as leftists support the commission of violence in the name of preventing speech that could arguably lead to it, they would muzzle us because through our speech, we would discredit and then effectively muzzle them. Insanity.
We don’t want to muzzle liberals; we want to defeat them in the marketplace of ideas. We don’t want to commit violence against them, but they often want to do so against us. Boy, how they project.
Let me ask you: In their world, who would decide whether certain speech has inherent value? The federal government, no doubt, provided Democrats are in control at the time. The true acid test of Baer’s preposterous arguments would be to ask how liberals would feel if Republicans were allowed to make such decisions while in control of the federal government. How would they feel if a conservative had written this silly, scary op-ed?
It is precisely because we can’t have certain self-appointed groups deciding what speech is worthy that we must vigorously protect “robust” political speech in this country. The Founding Fathers knew this, and everyone with common sense understands it. But the crazy modern left wants us to unlearn it – and leftists call us conservatives a danger to democracy.
Whatever you do, don’t casually dismiss Baer’s ideas as fringe. This is the way leftists think today – and they are the people teaching our university students, producing Hollywood movies and largely controlling the mainstream media. Wake up and be vigilant! And fight back!
Comments