Monthly Archives: April 2017

Devon man who downloaded ‘abhorrent’ abuse of children spared jail – Devon Live

Posted: April 27, 2017 at 2:42 am

A utility worker has been sent on a sex offenders course after being caught with 'abhorrent' movies of young children suffering sexual torture.

Shane McCollum downloaded the sickening videos and still images from peer to peer file sharing sites on the internet and used them for sexual arousal.

He started by watching adult pornography but when it no longer aroused him he moved on to child images and sought ever more extreme material.

He was caught with 171 movies in the most extreme category A and 24 showing adults having sex with animals, Exeter Crown Court was told.

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McCollum, aged 37, of Rising Sun, Dalwood, near Axminster, admitted three counts of making indecent images of children and one of possessing extreme images.

He was jailed for 15 months, suspended for two years, and ordered to undertake the 60 day probation-run 'Maps for Change' programme.

He was also ordered to sign on the sex offenders' register for ten years and made subject of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO) by Judge Erik Salomonsen.

He told him: "Some of the material depicted extreme cruelty and sexual offending against very young children. It was described by the prosecution as sexual torture.

"The images are abhorrent even by the standards of some of the material which is dealt with in this court. The offence is aggravated by the age of the children, their pain and distress, the fact many are moving images, and the number of children involved.

"These are not victimless crimes. Every time someone views these images it stimulates the demand among those who produce them to produce yet more of them."

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The judge said he was suspending the sentence because he believed the public were better protected by McCollum receiving treatment than serving a short jail sentence.

Mr Nigel Wraith, prosecuting, said police acting on information about the use of peer to peer file sharing sites raided McCollum's home in July last year and seized a laptop and other equipment.

They found a file marked 'porn' on the computer and images and movies on four data discs. There were 171 movies and four stills in the most extreme category and 119 at lower levels.

He said: "Some of the images are particularly extreme and depict scenes of what can only be described as sexual torture sometimes involving very young children indeed."

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Mr Warren Robinson, defending, said McCollum is a lonely and isolated man who had been using adult pornography since his teens.

He was drawn into seeking images of children and more extreme material at a time when he was working in utilities and was very unhappy while living on his own in Taunton.

Since his arrest he has moved to a new address near his family in East Devon, sought counselling for depression and anxiety, and contacted the Lucy Faithfull Foundation for help to prevent him using pornography again.

He told the police on his arrest that he needed help, he has shown remorse, and the probation service have deemed him fit to take part in one-to-one work.

A probation report said McCollum had been drawn to more and more extreme material which gave him sexual gratification despite him being shocked and sickened by it.

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Devon man who downloaded 'abhorrent' abuse of children spared jail - Devon Live

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Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand | NOOK Book (eBook … – Barnes …

Posted: at 2:41 am

INTRODUCTION

Ayn Rand held that art is a re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments. By its nature, therefore, a novel (like a statue or a symphony) does not require or tolerate an explanatory preface; it is a self-contained universe, aloof from commentary, beckoning the reader to enter, perceive, respond.

Ayn Rand would never have approved of a didactic (or laudatory) introduction to her book, and I have no intention of flouting her wishes. Instead, I am going to give her the floor. I am going to let you in on some of the thinking she did as she was preparing to write Atlas Shrugged.

Before starting a novel, Ayn Rand wrote voluminously in her journals about its theme, plot, and characters. She wrote not for any audience, but strictly for herselfthat is, for the clarity of her own understanding. The journals dealing withAtlas Shruggedare powerful examples of her mind in action, confident even when groping, purposeful even when stymied, luminously eloquent even though wholly unedited. These journals are also a fascinating record of the step-by-step birth of an immortal work of art.

In due course, all of Ayn Rands writings will be published. For this 35th anniversary edition ofAtlas Shrugged,however, I have selected, as a kind of advance bonus for her fans, four typical journal entries. Let me warn new readers that the passages reveal the plot and will spoil the book for anyone who reads them before knowing the story.

As I recall, Atlas Shrugged did not become the novels title until Miss Rands husband made the suggestion in 1956. The working title throughout the writing was The Strike.

The earliest of Miss Rands notes for The Strike are dated January 1, 1945, about a year after the publication ofThe Fountainhead.Naturally enough, the subject on her mind was how to differentiate the present novel from its predecessor.

Theme. What happens to the world when the Prime Movers go on strike.

This meansa picture of the world with its motor cut off. Show: what, how, why. The specific steps and incidentsin terms of persons, their spirits, motives, psychology and actionsand, secondarily, proceeding from persons, in terms of history, society and the world.

The theme requires: to show who are the prime movers and why, how they function. Who are their enemies and why, what are the motives behind the hatred for and the enslavement of the prime movers; the nature of the obstacles placed in their way, and the reasons for it.

This last paragraph is contained entirely inThe Fountainhead.Roark and Toohey are the complete statement of it. Therefore, this is not the direct theme ofThe Strikebut it is part of the theme and must be kept in mind, stated again (though briefly) to have the theme clear and complete.

First question to decide is on whom the emphasis must be placedon the prime movers, the parasites or the world. The answer is:The world.The story must be primarily a picture of the whole.

In this sense,The Strikeis to be much more a social novel thanThe Fountainhead. The Fountainheadwas about individualism and collectivism within mans soul; it showed the nature and function of the creator and the second-hander. The primary concern there was with Roark and Tooheyshowing what they are. The rest of the characters were variations of the theme of the relation of the ego to othersmixtures of the two extremes, the two poles: Roark and Toohey. The primary concern of the story was the characters, the people as suchtheirnatures. Their relations to each otherwhich is society, men in relation to menwere secondary, an unavoidable, direct consequence of Roark set against Toohey. But it was not the theme.

Now, it is thisrelationthat must be the theme. Therefore, the personal becomes secondary. That is, the personal is necessary only to the extent needed to make the relationships clear. InThe FountainheadI showed that Roark moves the worldthat the Keatings feed upon him and hate him for it, while the Tooheys are out consciously to destroy him. But the theme was Roarknot Roarks relation to the world. Now it will be the relation.

In other words, I must show in what concrete, specific way the world is moved by the creators. Exactlyhowdo the second-handers live on the creators. Both inspiritualmattersand (most particularly) in concrete, physical events. (Concentrate on the concrete, physical eventsbut dont forget to keep in mind at all times how the physical proceeds from the spiritual.) . . .

However, for the purpose of this story, I do not start by showinghowthe second-handers live on the prime movers in actual, everyday realitynor do I start by showing a normal world. (That comes in only in necessary retrospect, or flashback, or by implication in the events themselves.) I start with the fantastic premise of the prime movers going on strike.This is the actual heart and center of the novel. A distinction carefully to be observed here: I do not set out to glorify the prime mover (that was The Fountainhead). I set out to show how desperately the world needs prime movers, and how viciously it treats them. And I show it on a hypothetical casewhat happens to the world without them.

InThe FountainheadI did not show how desperately the world needed Roarkexcept by implication. I did show how viciously the world treated him, and why. I showedmainly what he is.It was Roarks story. This must be the worlds storyin relation to its prime movers. (Almostthe story of a body in relation to its hearta body dying of anemia.)

I dont show directly what the prime movers dothats shown only by implication. Ishow what happens when they dont do it.(Through that, you see the picture of what they do, their place and their role.) (This is an important guide for the construction of the story.)

In order to work out the story, Ayn Rand had to understand fully why the prime moversallowedthe second-handers to live on themwhy the creators had not gone on strike throughout historywhat errors even the best of them made that kept them in thrall to the worst. Part of the answer is dramatized in the character of Dagny Taggart, the railroad heiress who declares war on the strikers. Here is a note on her psychology, dated April 18, 1946:

Her errorand the cause of her refusal to join the strikeis over-optimism and over-confidence (particularly this last). Over-optimismin that she thinks men are better than they are, she doesnt really understand them and is generous about it.

Over-confidencein that she thinks she can do more than an individual actually can. She thinks she can run a railroad (or the world) single-handed, she can make people do what she wants or needs, what is right, by the sheer force of her own talent; not byforcingthem, of course, not by enslaving them and giving ordersbut by the sheer over-abundance of her own energy; she will show them how, she can teach them and persuade them, she is so able that theyll catch it from her. (This is still faith in their rationality, in the omnipotence of reason. The mistake? Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.)

On these two points, Dagny is committing an important (but excusable and understandable) error in thinking, the kind of error individualists and creators often make. It is an error proceeding from the best in their nature and from a proper principle, but this principle is misapplied. . . .

The error is this: it is proper for a creator to be optimistic, in the deepest, most basic sense, since the creator believes in a benevolent universe and functions on that premise. But it is an error to extend that optimism to otherspecificmen. First, its not necessary, the creators life and the nature of the universe do not require it, his life does not depend on others. Second, man is a being with free will; therefore, each man is potentially good or evil, and its up to him and only to him (through his reasoning mind) to decide which he wants to be. The decision will affect only him; it is not (and cannot and should not be) the primary concern of any other human being.

Therefore, while a creator does and must worshipMan(which means his own highest potentiality; which is his natural self-reverence), he must not make the mistake of thinking that this means the necessity to worshipMankind(as a collective). These are two entirely different conceptions, with entirely(immensely and diametrically opposed)different consequences.

Man, at his highest potentiality, is realized and fulfilled within each creator himself. . . .Whether the creator is alone, or finds only a handful of others like him, or is among the majority of mankind, is of no importance or consequence whatever; numbers have nothing to do with it. He alone or he and a few others like himaremankind, in the proper sense of being the proof of what man actually is, man at his best, the essential man, man at his highest possibility. (Therationalbeing, who acts according to his nature.)

It should not matter to a creator whether anyone or a million orallthe men around him fall short of the ideal of Man; let him live up to that ideal himself; this is all the optimism about Man that he needs. But this is a hard and subtle thing to realizeand it would be natural for Dagny always to make the mistake of believing others are better than they really are (or will become better, or she will teach them to become better or, actually, she so desperatelywantsthem to be better)and to be tied to the world by that hope.

It is proper for a creator to have an unlimited confidence in himself and his ability, to feel certain that he can get anything he wishes out of life, that he can accomplish anything he decides to accomplish, and that its up to him to do it. (He feels it because he is a man of reason . . .) [But] here is what he must keep clearly in mind: it is true that a creator can accomplish anything he wishesif he functions according to the nature of man, the universe and his own proper morality, that is, if he does not place his wish primarily within others and does not attempt or desire anything that is of a collective nature, anything that concerns othersprimarilyor requires primarily the exercise of the will of others. (This would be an immoraldesire or attempt, contrary to his nature as a creator.) If he attempts that, he is out of a creators province and in that of the collectivist and the second-hander.

Therefore, he must never feel confident that he can do anything whatever to, by or through others. (He cantand he shouldnt even wish to try itand the mere attempt is improper.) He must not think that he can . . . somehow transfer his energy and his intelligence to them and make them fit for his purposes in that way. He must face other men as they are, recognizing them as essentially independent entities, by nature, and beyond hisprimaryinfluence; [he must] deal with them only on his own, independent terms, deal with such as he judges can fit his purpose or live up to his standards (by themselves and of their own will, independently of him) and expect nothing from the others. . . .

Now, in Dagnys case, her desperate desire is to run Taggart Transcontinental. She sees that there are no men suited to her purpose around her, no men of ability, independence and competence. She thinks she can run it with others, with the incompetent and the parasites, either by training them or merely by treating them as robots who will take her orders and function without personal initiative or responsibility;with herself, in effect, being the spark of initiative, the bearer of responsibility for a whole collective.This cant be done. This is her crucial error.

This is where she fails.

Ayn Rands basic purpose as a novelist was to present not villains or even heroes with errors, but the ideal manthe consistent, the fully integrated, the perfect. InAtlas Shrugged,this is John Galt, the towering figure who moves the world and the novel, yet does not appear onstage until Part III. By his nature (and that of the story) Galt is necessarily central to the lives of all the characters. In one note, Galts relation to the others, dated June 27, 1946, Miss Rand defines succinctly what Galt represents to each of them:

For Dagnythe ideal. The answer to her two quests: the man of genius and the man she loves. The first quest is expressed in her search for the inventor of the engine. The secondher growing conviction that she will never be in love . . .

For Reardenthe friend. The kind of understanding and appreciation he has always wanted and did not know he wanted (or he thought he had ithe tried to find it in those around him, to get it from his wife, his mother, brother and sister).

For Francisco dAnconiathe aristocrat. The only man who represents a challenge and a stimulantalmost the proper kind of audience, worthy of stunning for the sheer joy and color of life.

For Danneskjldthe anchor. The only man who represents land and roots to a restless, reckless wanderer, like the goal of a struggle, the port at the end of a fierce sea-voyagethe only man he can respect.

For the Composerthe inspiration and the perfect audience.

For the Philosopherthe embodiment of his abstractions.

For Father Amadeusthe source of his conflict. The uneasy realization that Galt is the endofhis endeavors, the man of virtue, the perfect manand that his means do not fit this end (and that he is destroying this, his ideal, for the sake of those who are evil).

To James Taggartthe eternal threat. The secret dread. The reproach. The guilt (his own guilt). He has no specific tie-in with Galtbut he has that constant, causeless, unnamed, hysterical fear. And he recognizes it when he hears Galts broadcast and when he sees Galt in person for the first time.

To the Professorhis conscience. The reproach and reminder. The ghost that haunts him through everything he does, without a moments peace. The thing that says:Noto his whole life.

Some notes on the above: Reardens sister, Stacy, was a minor character later cut from the novel.

Francisco was spelled Francesco in these early years, while Danneskjlds first name at this point was Ivar, presumably after Ivar Kreuger, the Swedish match king, who was the real-life model of Bjorn Faulkner inNight of January 16th.

Father Amadeus was Taggarts priest, to whom he confessed his sins. The priest was supposed to be a positive character, honestly devoted to the good but practicing consistently the morality of mercy. Miss Rand dropped him, she told me, when she found that it was impossible to make such a character convincing.

The Professor is Robert Stadler.

This brings me to a final excerpt. Because of her passion for ideas, Miss Rand was often asked whether she was primarily a philosopher or a novelist. In later years, she was impatient with this question, but she gave her own answer, to and for herself, in a note dated May 4, 1946. The broader context was a discussion of the nature of creativity.

I seem to be both a theoretical philosopher and a fiction writer. But it is the last that interests me most; the first is only the means to the last; the absolutely necessary means, but only the means; the fiction story is the end. Without an understanding and statement of the right philosophical principle, I cannot create the right story; but the discovery of the principle interests me only as the discovery of the proper knowledge to be used for my life purpose; and my life purpose is the creation of the kind of world (people and events) that I likethat is, that represents human perfection.

Philosophical knowledge is necessary in order to define human perfection. But I do not care to stop at the definition. I want touseit, to apply itin my work (in my personal life, toobut the core, center and purpose of my personal life, of mywholelife, is my work).

This is why, I think, the idea of writing a philosophical nonfiction book bored me. In such a book, the purpose would actually be to teach others, to present my idea tothem.In a book of fiction the purpose is to create, for myself, the kind of world I want and to live in it while I am creating it; then, as a secondary consequence, to let others enjoy this world, if, and to the extent that they can.

It may be said that the first purpose of a philosophical book is the clarification or statement of your new knowledge to and for yourself; and then, as a secondary step, the offering of your knowledge to others. But here is the difference, as far as I am concerned: I have to acquire and state to myself the new philosophical knowledge or principle I used in order to write a fiction story as its embodiment and illustration; I do not care to write a story on a theme or thesis of old knowledge, knowledge stated or discovered by someone else, that is, someone elses philosophy (because those philosophies are wrong). To this extent, I am an abstract philosopher (I want to present the perfect man and his perfect lifeand I must also discover my own philosophical statement and definition of this perfection).

But when and if I have discovered such new knowledge, I am not interested in stating it in its abstract, general form, that is, as knowledge. I am interested in using it, in applying itthat is, in stating it in the concrete form of men and events, in the form of a fiction story.This lastis my final purpose, my end; the philosophical knowledge or discovery is only the means to it. For my purpose, the non-fiction form of abstract knowledge doesnt interest me; the final, applied form of fiction, of story, does. (I state the knowledge to myself, anyway; but I choose the final form of it, the expression, in the completed cycle that leads back to man.)

I wonder to what extent I represent a peculiar phenomenon in this respect. I think I represent the proper integration of a complete human being. Anyway,thisshould be my lead for the character of John Galt.He, too, is a combination of an abstract philosopher and a practical inventor; the thinker and the man of action together . . .

In learning, we draw an abstraction from concrete objects and events. In creating, we make our own concrete objects and events out of the abstraction; we bring the abstraction down and back to its specific meaning, to the concrete; but the abstraction has helped us to make thekind of concrete we want the concrete to be.It has helped us to createto reshape the world as we wish it to be for our purposes.

I cannot resist quoting one further paragraph. It comes a few pages later in the same discussion.

Incidentally, as a sideline observation: if creative fiction writing is a process of translating an abstraction into the concrete, there are three possible grades of such writing: translating an old (known) abstraction (theme or thesis) through the medium of old fiction means (that is, characters, events or situations used before for that same purpose, that same translation)this is most of the popular trash; translating an old abstraction through new, original fiction meansthis is most of the good literature; creating a new, original abstraction and translating it through new, original means. This, as far as I know, is onlyme my kind of fiction writing. May God forgive me (Metaphor!) if this is mistaken conceit! As near as I can now see it, it isnt. (A fourth possibilitytranslating a new abstraction through old meansis impossible, by definition: if the abstraction is new, there can be no means used by anybody else before to translate it.)

Isher conclusion mistaken conceit? It is now forty-five years since she wrote this note, and you are holding Ayn Rands master-work in your hands.

You decide.

Leonard Peikoff

September 1991

PART ONE

NON-CONTRADICTION

Chapter I

THE THEME

Who is John Galt?

The light was ebbing, and Eddie Willers could not distinguish the bums face. The bum had said it simply, without expression. But from the sunset far at the end of the street, yellow glints caught his eyes, and the eyes looked straight at Eddie Willers, mocking and stillas if the question had been addressed to the causeless uneasiness within him.

Why did you say that? asked Eddie Willers, his voice tense.

The bum leaned against the side of the doorway; a wedge of broken glass behind him reflected the metal yellow of the sky.

Why does it bother you? he asked.

It doesnt, snapped Eddie Willers.

He reached hastily into his pocket. The bum had stopped him and asked for a dime, then had gone on talking, as if to kill that moment and postpone the problem of the next. Pleas for dimes were so frequent in the streets these days that it was not necessary to listen to explanations and he had no desire to hear the details of this bums particular despair.

Go get your cup of coffee, he said, handing the dime to the shadow that had no face.

Thank you, sir, said the voice, without interest, and the face leaned forward for a moment. The face was wind-browned, cut by lines of weariness and cynical resignation; the eyes were intelligent.

Eddie Willers walked on, wondering why he always felt it at this time of day, this sense of dread without reason. No, he thought, not dread, theres nothing to fear: just an immense, diffused apprehension, with no source or object. He had become accustomed to the feeling, but he could find no explanation for it; yet the bum had spoken as if he knew that Eddie felt it, as if he thought that one should feel it, and more: as if he knew the reason.

Eddie Willers pulled his shoulders straight, in conscientious self-discipline. He had to stop this, he thought; he was beginning to imagine things. Had he always felt it? He was thirty-two years old. He tried to think back. No, he hadnt; but he could not remember when it had started. The feeling came to him suddenly, at random intervals, and now it was coming more often than ever. Its the twilight, he thought; I hate the twilight.

The clouds and the shafts of skyscrapers against them were turning brown, like an old painting in oil, the color of a fading masterpiece. Long streaks of grime ran from under the pinnacles down the slender, soot-eaten walls. High on the side of a tower there was a crack in the shape of a motionless lightning, the length of ten stories. A jagged object cut the sky above the roofs; it was half a spire, still holding the glow of the sunset; the gold leaf had long since peeled off the other half. The glow was red and still, like the reflection of a fire: not an active fire, but a dying one which it is too late to stop.

No, thought Eddie Willers, there was nothing disturbing in the sight of the city. It looked as it had always looked.

He walked on, reminding himself that he was late in returning to the office. He did not like the task which he had to perform on his return, but it had to be done. So he did not attempt to delay it, but made himself walk faster.

He turned a corner. In the narrow space between the dark silhouettes of two buildings, as in the crack of a door, he saw the page of a gigantic calendar suspended in the sky.

It was the calendar that the mayor of New York had erected last year on the top of a building, so that citizens might tell the day of the month as they told the hours of the day, by glancing up at a public tower. A white rectangle hung over the city, imparting the date to the men in the streets below. In the rusty light of this evenings sunset, the rectangle said: September 2.

Eddie Willers looked away. He had never liked the sight of that calendar. It disturbed him, in a manner he could not explain or define. The feeling seemed to blend with his sense of uneasiness; it had the same quality.

He thought suddenly that there was some phrase, a kind of quotation, that expressed what the calendar seemed to suggest. But he could not recall it. He walked, groping for a sentence that hung in his mind as an empty shape. He could neither fill it nor dismiss it. He glanced back. The white rectangle stood above the roofs, saying in immovable finality: September 2.

Eddie Willers shifted his glance down to the street, to a vegetable pushcart at the stoop of a brownstone house. He saw a pile of bright gold carrots and the fresh green of onions. He saw a clean white curtain blowing at an open window. He saw a bus turning a corner, expertly steered. He wondered why he felt reassuredand then, why he felt the sudden, inexplicable wish that these things were not left in the open, unprotected against the empty space above.

When he came to Fifth Avenue, he kept his eyes on the windows of the stores he passed. There was nothing he needed or wished to buy; but he liked to see the display of goods, any goods, objects made by men, to be used by men. He enjoyed the sight of a prosperous street; not more than every fourth one of the stores was out of business, its windows dark and empty.

He did not know why he suddenly thought of the oak tree. Nothing had recalled it. But he thought of itand of his childhood summers on the Taggart estate. He had spent most of his childhood with the Taggart children, and now he worked for them, as his father and grandfather had worked for their father and grandfather.

The great oak tree had stood on a hill over the Hudson, in a lonely spot on the Taggart estate. Eddie Willers, aged seven, liked to come and look at that tree. It had stood there for hundreds of years, and he thought it would always stand there. Its roots clutched the hill like a fist with fingers sunk into the soil, and he thought that if a giant were to seize it by the top, he would not be able to uproot it, but would swing the hill and the whole of the earth with it, like a ball at the end of a string. He felt safe in the oak trees presence; it was a thing that nothing could change or threaten; it was his greatest symbol of strength.

One night, lightning struck the oak tree. Eddie saw it the next morning. It lay broken in half, and he looked into its trunk as into the mouth of a black tunnel. The trunk was only an empty shell; its heart had rotted away long ago; there was nothing insidejust a thin gray dust that was being dispersed by the whim of the faintest wind. The living power had gone, and the shape it left had not been able to stand without it.

Years later, he heard it said that children should be protected from shock, from their first knowledge of death, pain or fear. But these had never scarred him; his shock came when he stood very quietly, looking into the black hole of the trunk. It was an immense betrayalthe more terrible because he could not grasp what it was that had been betrayed. It was not himself, he knew, nor his trust; it was something else. He stood there for a while, making no sound, then he walked back to the house. He never spoke about it to anyone, then or since.

Eddie Willers shook his head, as the screech of a rusty mechanism changing a traffic light stopped him on the edge of a curb. He felt anger at himself. There was no reason that he had to remember the oak tree tonight. It meant nothing to him any longer, only a faint tinge of sadnessand somewhere within him, a drop of pain moving briefly and vanishing, like a raindrop on the glass of a window, its course in the shape of a question mark.

He wanted no sadness attached to his childhood; he loved its memories: any day of it he remembered now seemed flooded by a still, brilliant sunlight. It seemed to him as if a few rays from it reached into his present: not rays, more like pinpoint spotlights that gave an occasional moments glitter to his job, to his lonely apartment, to the quiet, scrupulous progression of his existence.

He thought of a summer day when he was ten years old. That day, in a clearing of the woods, the one precious companion of his childhood told him what they would do when they grew up. The words were harsh and glowing, like the sunlight. He listened in admiration and in wonder. When he was asked what he would want to do, he answered at once, Whatever is right, and added, You ought to do something great . . . I mean, the two of us together. What? she asked. He said, I dont know. Thats what we ought to find out. Not just what you said. Not just business and earning a living. Things like winning battles, or saving people out of fires, or climbing mountains. What for? she asked. He said, The minister said last Sunday that we must always reach for the best within us. What do you suppose is the best within us? I dont know. Well have to find out. She did not answer; she was looking away, up the railroad track.

Eddie Willers smiled. He had said, Whatever is right, twenty-two years ago. He had kept that statement unchallenged ever since; the other questions had faded in his mind; he had been too busy to ask them. But he still thought it self-evident that one had to do what was right; he had never learned how people could want to do otherwise; he had learned only that they did. It still seemed simple and incomprehensible to him: simple that things should be right, and incomprehensible that they werent. He knew that they werent. He thought of that, as he turned a corner and came to the great building of Taggart Transcontinental.

The building stood over the street as its tallest and proudest structure. Eddie Willers always smiled at his first sight of it. Its long bands of windows were unbroken, in contrast to those of its neighbors. Its rising lines cut the sky, with no crumbling corners or worn edges. It seemed to stand above the years, untouched. It would always stand there, thought Eddie Willers.

Whenever he entered the Taggart Building, he felt relief and a sense of security. This was a place of competence and power. The floors of its hallways were mirrors made of marble. The frosted rectangles of its electric fixtures were chips of solid light. Behind sheets of glass, rows of girls sat at typewriters, the clicking of their keys like the sound of speeding train wheels. And like an answering echo, a faint shudder went through the walls at times, rising from under the building, from the tunnels of the great terminal where trains started out to cross a continent and stopped after crossing it again, as they had started and stopped for generation after generation. Taggart Transcontinental, thought Eddie Willers, From Ocean to Oceanthe proud slogan of his childhood, so much more shining and holy than any commandment of the Bible. From Ocean to Ocean, foreverthought Eddie Willers, in the manner of a rededication, as he walked through the spotless halls into the heart of the building, into the office of James Taggart, President of Taggart Transcontinental.

James Taggart sat at his desk. He looked like a man approaching fifty, who had crossed into age from adolescence, without the intermediate stage of youth. He had a small, petulant mouth, and thin hair clinging to a bald forehead. His posture had a limp, decentralized sloppiness, as if in defiance of his tall, slender body, a body with an elegance of line intended for the confident poise of an aristocrat, but transformed into the gawkiness of a lout. The flesh of his face was pale and soft. His eyes were pale and veiled, with a glance that moved slowly, never quite stopping, gliding off and past things in eternal resentment of their existence. He looked obstinate and drained. He was thirty-nine years old.

He lifted his head with irritation, at the sound of the opening door.

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Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand | NOOK Book (eBook ... - Barnes ...

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This Oil Tycoon And Ayn Rand Fan Says ‘I Feel Better Living In Texas’ – Forbes

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Forbes
This Oil Tycoon And Ayn Rand Fan Says 'I Feel Better Living In Texas'
Forbes
In Atlas Shrugged, Rand created an oil tycoon character named Ellis Wyatt, who made his fictional fortune figuring out how to coax oil out of Colorado's thick layers of shale. A half-century later real-life oil mavericks like Harold Hamm, Mark Papa ...

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Ann Coulter the Liberal – Politico

Posted: at 2:38 am

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Opinion

By Rich Lowry

April 26, 2017

Because the California National Guard couldnt be mobilized in time, Ann Coulter had to withdraw from giving a speech at Berkeley.

If you take it seriously, thats the import of UC Berkeleys decision to do everything it could to keep the conservative provocateur from speaking on campus over safety concerns.

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If somebody brings weapons, theres no way to block off the site, or to screen them, the chancellor of the university said of Coulters plan to go ahead and speak at an open-air forum after the school canceled her talk scheduled for this week.

The administrator made it sound as if Coulter would have been about as safe at Berkeley as she would have been addressing a meeting of MS-13and he might have been right.

We have entered a new, much less metaphorical phase of the campus-speech wars. Were beyond hissing, or disinviting. Were no longer talking about the hecklers veto, but the masked-thugs-who-will-burn-trash-cans-and-assault-you-and-your-entourage veto.

Coulter is a rhetorical bomb-thrower, which is an entirely different thing than being a real bomb-thrower. Coulter has never tried to shout down a speaker she doesnt like. She hasnt thrown rocks at cops. She isnt an arsonist. She offers up provocations that she gamely defends in almost any setting with arguments that people are free to accept, or reject, or attempt to correct.

In other words, in the Berkeley context, shes the liberal. She believes in the efficacy of reason and in the free exchanges of ideas. Her enemies do not.

Indeed, the budding fascism that progressives feared in the Trump years is upon us, although not in the form they expected. It is represented by the black-clad shock troops of the anti-fa movement who are violent, intolerant and easily could be mistaken for the street fighters of the extreme right in 1930s Europe. That they call themselves anti-fa speaks to a colossal lack of self-awareness.

It is incumbent on all responsible progressives to reject this movement, and just as important the broader effort to suppress controversial speech. This is why Howard Deans comments about hate speech not being protected by the First Amendment were so alarming. In Deans defense, he had no idea what he was talking about, but he was effectively making himself the respectable voice of the rock throwers.

After his tweet about hate speech got pushback, Dean tried to throw up a couple of Supreme Court decisions supporting his contention and came up empty. As Eugene Volokh of UCLA law school explained, the court has defined nonprotected fighting words narrowly as insults directed at a specific person. Having unwelcome opinions on immigration, or a whole host of other issues, doesnt remotely qualify.

The upshot of Deans view was that Berkeley is within its rights to make the decision that it puts their campus in danger if they have her there. This justification, advanced by the school itself, is profoundly wrongheaded.

It is an inherently discriminatory standard, since the Berkeley College Republicans arent given to smashing windows and throwing things when an extreme lefty shows up on campus, which is a near-daily occurrence.

It would deny Coulter something she has a right to do (speak her mind on the campus of a public university) in reaction to agitators doing things they dont have a right to do (destroy property, among other acts of mayhem).

It would suppress an intellectual threat, i.e., a dissenting viewpoint, and reward a physical threat.

This is perverse. As it happens, one of the more stalwartly liberal voices in the Democratic Party is the socialist who isnt formally part of the Democratic Party, Bernie Sanders. He rebuked the movement to shut down Coulter as a sign of intellectual weakness. Perhaps Sanders is simply old enough to recall the 1960s arguments for free speech advanced by a different generation of UC Berkeley protesters. It is welcome, nonetheless.

For now there is a consensus in favor of free speech in the country that is especially entrenched in the judiciary. The anti-fa and other agitators arent going to change that anytime soon. But they could effectively make it too burdensome for certain speakers to show up on campus, and over time more Democrats like Dean could rationalize this fact by arguing that so-called hate speech doesnt deserve First Amendment protection.

So, it isnt enough for schools like UC Berkeley to say that they value free speech, yet do nothing to punish disrupters and throw up their hands at the task of providing security for controversial speakers. If everyone else gets safe space at UC Berkeley, Coulter deserves one. If the anti-fa are willing to attack free speech through illegal force, the authorities should be willing to defend it by lawful force.

Heck, if necessary, call out the National Guard.

Rich Lowry is editor of National Review and a contributing editor with Politico Magazine.

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The ‘Shut It Down!’ Left and the War on the Liberal Mind – New York Magazine

Posted: at 2:38 am

Shut it down. Photo: Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images

Since I started writing about the upsurge in illiberal left-wing thought two years ago, many of the responses have dismissed the phenomenon as the antics of silly college students, or just a series of isolated incidents that keep happening over and over for some reason. In reality, these episodes are the manifestation of a serious ideological challenge to liberalism less serious than the threat from the right, but equally necessary to defeat.

In recent days, Howard Dean argued (referring, specifically, to conservative pundit and provocateur Ann Coulter, whose speech was threatened with cancellation by Berkeley administrators) that hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment. Aaron Hanlon, a professor writing for The New Republic defended no-platforming, the left-wing tactic of shutting down public speeches by objectionable figures. An even more elaborate defense of illiberalism comes from Ulrich Baer, vice-provost for faculty, arts, humanities, and diversity at New York University, writing for the New York Times op-ed page.

The liberal ideal sees free speech as a positive-sum good, enabling an open marketplace of ideas where, in the long run, reason can prevail. (And while reason may not always carry the day, if you compare the current state of affairs to 50, or 100, or 200 years before, the liberal model looks pretty good.) Left-wing critics of liberalism instead see the free-speech rights of the oppressed and the oppressors set in zero-sum conflict, so that the expansion of one inevitably comes at the cost of the other. Baer praises recent violent protests that halted speeches by Charles Murray and Milo Yiannopoulos as, therefore, an attempt to ensure the conditions of free speech for a greater group of people, actually enhancing freedom of speech. When those views invalidate the humanity of some people, they restrict speech as a public good, he argues.

But what kinds of speech should be shut down on these grounds? Baers definition is rather vague. Some topics, such as claims that some human beings are by definition inferior to others, or illegal or unworthy of legal standing, are not open to debate because such people cannot debate them on the same terms, he writes. So Baer wants his audience to believe that his rejection of free speech amounts to no more than preventing a handful of racist cranks from expressing highly noxious views on a handful of especially sensitive topics.

But which topics would qualify? In recent years, liberals have found race or gender buried within a wide and expanding array of subjects. Indeed, one increasingly popular formulation holds that identity issues cannot be abstracted from politics at all, since all politics is identity politics. That goes a bit farther than Id put it I propose that one could discuss the relative merits of a carbon tax versus cap-and-trade without addressing identity questions but the point stands that the sensitive identity issues exception to the free-speech principle is a loophole with the capacity to swallow up the entire rule.

It is likewise highly doubtful that the need for repression would be limited to the right-wing fringe. A racist like Milo Yiannopoulos might seem like an easy case. Charles Murray is a harder case. Murray was targeted by protesters because of his work two decades before defending scientific racism in The Bell Curve (a work Ive never read except in abridged form, and which has been persuasively, to me, demolished by scholars). But the speech he attempted to deliver at Middlebury College before being shut down by a mob was not on that topic. Indeed, when some scholars distributed a copy of Murrays speech to 70 college professors, omitting the name of the author, they deemed it quite moderate. Even assuming his Bell Curve work does not merit free-speech rights, should that subject any future speeches of his to suppression?

Nearly all American politicians in both major parties support some limits on legal immigration, and some measures to enforce those laws. Virtually all of them define some human beings as unworthy of legal standing a position Baer insists does not deserve to be defended in public at all. Perfectly cogent arguments can and have been made that, say, Hillary Clinton advocates systemically racist policies or that Bernie Sanders encourages sexism. The ability to associate disagreeable ideas with the oppressor, and to quash free speech or other political rights in the name of justice for the oppressed, is a power without any clear limiting principle. Historically, states that rule on that basis tend to push that power to its farthest possible limit.

The debate has largely centered on campus free-speech battles because academia is one of the few subcultures in American life where the left can wield hegemonic power. But the problem is ideological, not generational, and one can find signs of the phenomenon creeping out into other corners of political life. The illiberal left has used the fear of Donald Trump to goad broader elements of the progressive movement to adopt their repressive methods and slogans. The slogan shut it down! has come into fashion on the left. Protesters caused the cancellation of a Trump rally last summer, and were seen chanting shut it down! at a conservative think tank this week.

The illiberal left has brought its notion that opposing views can and should be shut down into wide circulation. It has disproportionate influence within the progressive movement, but remains, for now, a noisy minority. But noisy minorities like the cranks and kooks of the far right who had been, 60 years ago, banished to the margins of Republican politics have a way of developing over time into majorities, unless they meet forceful opposition.

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Bannons back.

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Trumps new plan would slash his businesss tax rate by 25 percent, while handing out other free lunches across the corporate sector.

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A noisy, illiberal minority in the progressive movement might not be a minority forever.

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The Democratic Party is stumbling toward liberal purity – The … – Washington Post

Posted: at 2:38 am

The Democratic Party is in a bad way. It's trying to figure out how to climb out of its historically bad position, and given the split results of the 2016 primaries (and Hillary Clinton's eventual loss), there's plenty of debate about whether the future should be aboutpurity or pragmatism.

To oversimplify things: You've got the Sen. Bernie Sanders/Sen. Elizabeth Warren wing urging a fearless focus on progressive issues (especially on the economy) even in conservative-leaning areas,and you've got the old establishment types who think appealing to the political middle with moderation is the way to go.

There haven't been many major elections this year, but this uneasy balancehas beenspotlighted in just about all of them.

In Kansas, you had liberals crying foul over the party's lack of supportfor a Democrat running in a very tough district who espoused some Sanders-ian beliefs. The party is confronted with a similar choice in Montana, where an anti-Wall Street Democrat is the underdogon May 25. Last week, Sanders (I-Vt.) momentarily questioned the progressivism of Georgia special-election candidate Jon Ossoff. Then a related controversy over Sanders's embrace of an antiabortion rights candidate for Omaha mayor led theDemocratic National Committee's chairman tosuggest Democrats must support abortion rights.

The common thread in all four is that nagging pull to the left to combat President Trump with fearless progressivism even in tough districts. But all four have also shown the limits of that approach.

In Kansas and Montana, special election candidates James Thompson and Rob Quist, respectively, have both used some of the language of the progressive left most notably on social media. Both have gotten support from Sanders backers, and Sanders will visit Montana to campaign with Quist.

But here's the prevailing images of the candidates that voters have seen in their TV ads:

These ads are carefully planned for mass consumption as the pictures these campaigns want voters to remember as they head to the polls. None of them really screams progressive Democrat.

In Kansas, nearly every Thompson ad featured him either wielding a gun or wearing a hat with a gun on it. In contrast, there was very little red meat for progressives, beyond general statements about prioritizing education and women's rights.

In Montana, one Quist ad recycles a tired campaign-ad conceit: The candidate literally shooting something with a gun.Philip Bump recapped the many, many examples of this past year, and almost all who have done it are either Republicans or Democrats running in very red areas. It is one of two Quist ads featuring a heavy gun presence.

It is, of course, possible to marry this pro-gun message with a progressive economic one. But the prevailing public images of both candidates are not about a $15 minimum wage; they're guns.

In that other special election this month, Sanders momentarily questioned Ossoff's progressivism despite Democrats making Ossoff a cause celebre the firstpossible sign of a progressive, Democratic backlash against Trump. It was a curious decision in the first place, and one Sanders ultimately backed off of, endorsing Ossoff.

But while he was wavering on Ossoff, Sanders was on his way to campaigning in Omaha with mayoral candidate Heath Mello, who has a progressive message but also has a history of supporting abortion restrictions involving ultrasounds. And Sanderseven told NPR this(again, while questioning Ossoff's progressivism): And we have got to appreciate where people come from, and do our best to fight for the pro-choice agenda. But I think you just can't exclude people who disagree with us on one issue.

The predictable outcry there led DNC Chairman Thomas Perez toapparently declare an abortion litmus test for Democrats. Every Democrat, like every American, should support a womans right to make her own choices about her body and her health, Perez said. House and Senate Minority Leaders Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) quickly differed with Perez, saying it's okay to be an antiabortion Democrat as about 1 in 4 Democratic voters are.

In all four cases, Democrats have flirted with a purity focus in four tough areas of the country. Each shows how difficult that is to pull off.

And that's got to be frustrating for progressives. After all, Republicans have fought over purity for years, with the tea party giving the GOP establishment repeated fits. And the GOP only continued its ascent in Congress and now to the presidency. Why can't Democrats do the same with progressivism? Why can't they run like Sanders in Montana and Wichita and Omaha and suburban Atlanta?

The reason is pretty simple: reality. Because of the way our population is distributed, Democrats can't afford to enforce the kind of doctrinaire purity that the tea partywas so successful in policing.

Here's how I put itback in February:

There are simply more red states and more red congressional districts. Republicans took over the House and Senate in recent years largely because they knocked off some of the final hangers-on among Democrats in conservative-leaning places. It first happened in the South; then it spread to Appalachia and the Midwest. ...

The 2016 election is a good example of this. Trump, as everyone knows, lost the popular vote by two full points, 48percent to 46 percent. But despite that loss, he actually won 230 out of 435 congressional districts, compared with 205 for Hillary Clinton, according to numbers compiled by Daily Kos Elections. And in the Senate, he won 30 out of 50 states.

So basically, 53 percent of House districts are Republican and 60 out of 100senators hail from red states, according to the 2016 election results (in which the GOP, again, lost the popular vote).

Democrats won the House because socially and culturally conservative candidates carried conservative states districts in the South and along the Rust Belt in 2006 and 2008. Schumer led the recruiting effort in the Senate, and Pelosi became speaker as a result of then-DCCC Chairman Rahm Emanuel's political pragmatism. They know the deal.

The Democrats' tendency these days will be to demandtheir party be as un-Trump and un-Republican as possible in trying to win back control of Congress. These examples show how bumpy that path is already proving.

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Mark Cuban: Trump?s an ?Idiot,? but I?m Not a Liberal – Daily Beast

Posted: at 2:38 am

Mark Cuban, Shark Tank billionaire, investor in 150 companies, impresario, and dedicated tech-aficionado, hates it when people tell him he toes an ideological line. Sometimes he just laughs, sometimes he rolls his eyesand he almost always corrects that assertion. I think for myself! he told Tucker Carlson last week while on his show. Im not a liberal. The way Cuban processes politics, personal interests, and personalities of political candidates is not unlike a swath of Americans on both sides of the political aisle.

This is the kind of view many Americans held when they elected Donald Trump for president, and likely still do. The difference between them and Mark Cuban is that theyre still happy with the president. The maverick Mavericks owner, and many who think like him, arent, never were, and likely never will be.

On CNNs New Day last Friday, Cuban told anchors Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota about a conversation with a friend of his, who described Trump as political chemotherapy, a poisonous cure to an ailing political culture. His friend voted for Trump hoping he would change the political system much like chemotherapy changes cancer. Cuban said, If thats the way youre evaluating Donald Trump, hes doing a phenomenal job.

I asked Cuban Friday, via his Cyberdust app, about the political chemotherapy comment that made several headlines. He corrected this. I didnt say I agreed with the political chemotherapy idea, he told me. Rather that people voted for him to be disruptive. People voted for him knowing the cure was as bad as the disease.

Indeed, on New Day, Cuban gave Trump a C- for his first 100 days, citing his signing a bevy of executive orders he didnt understand and failing to pass a health care bill to replace the ACA legislation, a signature promise of the Trump campaign. Gallup reports Trumps job approval in his first quarter is, at 41 percent, the lowest of any modern president by 14 points.

Yet, like the mass of Americans who cast their ballot for Trump, Cuban holds many ideas that conservatives traditionally embrace. Conservatism for economics is fine. Taxes and smaller government can still do well, Cuban told me, with one caveatthe elephant in the room: Unless they pass Trumpcare. If that happens they [Republicans] lose in 2018. Cuban, unlike most conservatives, believes some kind of socialized medicine should be implemented, though he admits Obamacare is flawed and needs to be fixed. He shared his own ideas for correcting the system on his blog.

Still, Cuban is a fan of Ayn Rands economic philosophies, cant stand the SEC, and thinks the best government is a small, efficient government that stays out of an entrepreneurs way (for the most part). So why didnt he shill for Trump? Why did he show up to one of the presidential debates as a guest of Hillary Clinton to the chagrin of conservatives everywhere?

It all came down to personality and qualifications. Trump is an idiot, Cuban told me, and its not the first time hes told me that. Despite Cubans business interests that drive strains of conservative thinking, he still lobbied for Clinton because he believed she would make the better president. Cuban repeated, [Trump] is an idiot. Ill support a ham sandwich over an idiot. I pushed back and reminded Cuban in terms of business and investments, Clinton advocated for policies that would increase regulations and taxestwo things he hates.

Cuban responded, I can fight attempts to regulate. I can lobby whatever. I cant fight stupidity. I cant stop a moron that didnt think it prudent to read about the relationship between China and the DPRK. Or might drop bombs that causes a war because it was harder to figure out than he thought. We can change tax law. We cant change stupid.

Like many Americans, Cuban isnt all Democrat or all Republicanhe cherry-picks from both sides of the political aisle. And like Cuban, a swath of voters thought Clinton the better candidate. Unlike him, another swath of voters thought Trump would make an ideal leader of a movement for which disgusted voters have long yearned, not despite his lack of qualifications but because of them.

As Cuban said on New Day, Some people say [Trump] started a movement; I think the movement found him. This explains why Trump won more Democratic counties than anyone predicted, because they were tired of voting for politicians who do the same thing repeatedly. They, too, seem to believe theres a disease in this country and Trump might be the curewhether holistic or poisonous, that remains to be seen.

While this dichotomy in Cuban is unpredictable and even disheartening for conservatives who agree with so many of his Randian ideas, Cuban isnt a traitor because he never swore allegiance to conservatism in the first place. Like many Americans today, Cuban doesnt have a deep political ideology that guides himjust sharp observations, pragmatic solutions, and a laser-focus on business, the economy, and investing. When conservativesand liberalshear him advocate for smaller, more efficient, government, declaim against the SEC and lobby for fewer regulations, they hope for a deeper ideology that drives those ideas. But that is his ideology. Everything else is extraneous.

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Many Americans think the same way, which is, as Twitter likes to say, How we got Trump. Will he be as disruptive as voters on both sides of the political aisle hoped? His voters likely think he is but Cuban remains nonplussed: I dont think he has been. If thats the case, its hard to see a scenario where the billionaire on Shark Tank who has long sparred with the billionaire in the White House becomes satisfied with what Trump does in office. Unless of course Trump starts to fix stupid.

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Ecuador and the Case of the Liberal Losers – The National Interest Online

Posted: at 2:38 am

The recent poison gas attack in Syria, Americas stepped up military activities in Afghanistan, a presidential power grab in Turkey and the clownish bellicosity of North Koreas leader have overshadowed an important development closer to home: left-wing populisms slow-but-steady decline in the Americas. Just a few years ago left-wing populism was on the rise, embraced in one form or another by Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guyana, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Venezuela and even Chile. Today, even the Peoples World, the news organ of the Communist Party USA, concedes the pink tide may be receding.

The recent presidential vote in Ecuador confirms this.

The election pitted Guillermo Lasso, a former banker who campaigned on a free-market reform platform, against the aptly named Lenn Moreno, who outgoing President Rafael Correa had hand-picked to be his successor.

As strong-man presidents (right and left) often do, Correa made sure that Moreno won the early April election, a runoff contest between the two candidates who pulled the most votes in an earlier contest.

How could Moreno lose? Correa had all but destroyed Ecuadors free press, turning the media into Moreno cheerleaders, and the election itself was plagued with irregularities that led to claims of fraud.

For example, the election tribunals computer system conveniently went down after early results seemed to point to a Lasso victory, which credible exit polls had predicted after the voting booths had closed. When the computer system was restored, lo and behold Moreno was firmly on his way to a win of more than 51 percent.

Other irregularities, most notably inconsistencies between some of the original election tally sheets and those showed by the electoral body, as well as episodes of police harassment against pollsters who put Lasso ahead the night of the vote, have thrown a dark shadow over the whole process.

Given Correas control of the election appeals tribunal (the TSE, or Supreme Electoral Tribunal) and the judiciary in general, we will never know whether Moreno was the legitimate victor.

What we do know this: at least half the country is desperate to get rid of left-wing populism and follow the path that Brazil and Argentina have taken in recent months, replacing governments closely allied with Venezuela with governments more in tune with the rule of law.

Correas decade-old government received more oil revenue than any other in the countrys history and used the money to establish an all-too-typical Latin American state based on patronage, corruption and the concentration of power.

The more than $300 billion that poured into the governments coffers enabled Correa to throw money at his people, giving them the illusion of prosperity, or at least protection, for a while, which is the reason a large percentage of Ecuadorians continue to support the government. (Almost 40 percent voted for Moreno in the elections first round, a proportion that probably also owed something to the wheelchair-bound candidates soft-spoken personal history as a symbol of the disabled).

But, of course, the price of oil went down and the mirage evaporated. Ecuadors economy came to a stop in 2015 and shrank in 2016. It is barely expected to grow this year.

Moreno has signaled that hes ready to turn the page from Correas confrontational politics and adopt a more friendly attitude towards the opposition and the countrys weakened institutions, such as business and the press. We will see.

For now, it is important to note that millions of Ecuadorians stand ready to push their country in the direction of globalization and free markets.

If Moreno tries to prolong Correas socioeconomic policies and political authoritarianism, not even the government-controlled electoral system will be able to ensure continuation of the regime. He will be handing almost certain victory to the opposition in the next election.

Alvaro Vargas Llosa is a senior fellow with the Independent Institute, Oakland, Calif. His latest book is Global Crossings: Immigration, Civilization and America.

Image:The march organized by Guillermo Lasso, leader of the movement created, toured the main artery of the city. Wikimedia Commons/Agencia de Noticias ANDES

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Liberal protesters storm Heritage Foundation’s Washington, DC … – TheBlaze.com

Posted: at 2:38 am

Liberal protesters stormed the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the conservative Heritage Foundation on Tuesday but the demonstration backfired when Heritage later took to Twitter using the event to promote one of its policy papers.

Just before noon, around 200 protesters marched up to and inside the conservative organizations Capitol Hill offices. Within about 20 minutes, however, they were gone, the Washington Examiner reported.

The protesters voiced their opposition to President Donald Trumps proposed budget blueprint. Congress has not yet voted on a 2018 fiscal year budget but is expected to do so by Friday night to keep the federal government from shutting down. Its unlikely that budget a deal later this week will include funding for a southern border wall.

Multiple federal agencies, including the EPA, will likely face drastic cuts as a result of Republicans controlling the House and Senate.

Protesters Tuesday at the Heritage Foundation seized upon the Republicans priorities.

Water not walls, protesters were heard chanting in one video tweeted out by Peoples Action, the liberal group that organized the protest.

Shut it down, other protesters shouted from inside the usually quiet office building.

Peoples Action, in a separate tweet, accused Heritage of being Trumps think tank.

Heritage employees fought back, displaying repeal Obamacare signs in their windows as protesters poured out from the lobby and onto the sidewalk.

The Heritage then took to Twitter, using the protest as a means to further promote their conservative agenda.

Thank you @pplsaction for the opportunity to tell more people about our budget to tackle the $20 Trillion debt! Heritage tweeted, along with a link to its proposed 2018 fiscal blueprint.

Heritage vowed it would not be bullied or silenced by staged protesters backed by progressive special interest groups connected to George Soros.

Heritage will not back down. We will keep fighting for a responsible budget, a pro-growth tax system, Obamacare repeal.. the organization wrote.

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CUNY Liberal-Activist Graduation Speaker Sparks Controversy – Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Posted: at 2:38 am

CUNY Liberal-Activist Graduation Speaker Sparks Controversy
Wall Street Journal (subscription)
In the wake of controversy over conservative speakers at UC Berkeley, the City University of New York has spurred its own debate by selecting a liberal activist to give a commencement address. The speaker, Linda Sarsour, an ally of New York City Mayor ...

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