Daily Archives: May 22, 2017

At the beginning of Vice President Mike Pences address, a group of students walked out of the graduation ceremony in protest. | Getty

By Bianca Padr Ocasio

05/21/2017 02:30 PM EDT

Updated 05/21/2017 05:08 PM EDT

Vice President Mike Pence said Sunday that attacks on freedom of speech on college campuses, including administration-sanctioned political correctness, are on the rise and should not be met with silence.

This university is a vanguard of freedom of expression and the free exchange of ideas at a time, sadly, when free speech and civility are waning on campuses across America, he told the graduating class during a commencement speech at the University of Notre Dame.

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While this institution has maintained an atmosphere of civility and open debate, far too many campuses across America have become characterized by speech codes, safe zones, tone policing, administration-sanctioned political correctness all of which amounts to nothing less than suppression of the freedom of speech, the vice president added.

The former Indiana governor encouraged the graduates to speak up against the increasing intolerance toward opposing views, which he said are destructive of learning.

As you, our youth, are the future, and universities, the bellwether of thought and culture, I would submit that the increasing intolerance and suppression of the time-honored tradition of free expression on our campuses jeopardizes the liberties of every American, Pence said.

This should not and must not be met with silence.

The vice president might have left thinking he had some confirmation for his views on tolerance.

At the beginning of Pences address, a group of students walked out of the graduation ceremony to protest his presence. The South Bend Tribune said about 150 students and family members took part in the walkout.

GLAAD, a non-profit that advocates for LGBTQ rights, streamed remarks from some of the students who left the ceremony.

"Graduates around the country deserve commencement speakers who inspire them to propel our diverse country forward, and these Notre Dame students bravely told the world that Vice President Pences anti-LGBTQ actions fly in the face of unity and inspiration," GLAAD president Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement.

"These Notre Dame graduates should be applauded for demonstrating true leadership and standing up for freedom and acceptance," she said.

For his part, Pence also commended the new graduates and their approach to freedom of speech.

"Notre Dame is a campus where deliberation is welcomed," Pence said, "where opposing views are debated and where every speaker, no matter how unpopular or unfashionable, is afforded the right to air their views in the open for all to hear."

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At Notre Dame, Pence attacks campus 'political correctness' - Politico

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Clint Eastwood at Cannes decries political correctness KOIN.com CANNES, France (AP) Clint Eastwood regaled the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday with stories from his long career, predicted a possible return to acting and decried the rise of political correctness. Eastwood was honored with several screenings of his ... Eastwood on Political Correctness: 'We're Killing Ourselves'LifeZette Clint Eastwood Decries P.C. Culture in Cannes: 'We've Lost Out Sense of Humor"Hollywood Reporter Clint Eastwood: We're killing ourselves with political correctnessStarts at 60 Daily Mail all 28 news articles »

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Clint Eastwood at Cannes decries political correctness - KOIN.com

Photo Credit: U.S. Department of State via Flickr

While the election of President Trump represented a setback to political-correctness, Secretary of State Rex Tillersons interview on May 14, 2017 NBCs Meet the Press reflected the State Departments political correctness on US-Israel and US-Arab relations, the Palestinian issue and the relocation of the US Embassy to Jerusalem.

The interview may have sent a message of US procrastination on the relocation of the US Embassy to Jerusalem, the ancient core of Judaism and Jewish history, which inspired the early US Pilgrims and Founding Fathers. Procrastination would be interpreted by Arabs as US retreat in the face of Arab pressure and threats, eroding the US posture of deterrence, triggering further pressure and emboldening anti-US Islamic terrorism.

Secretary Tillerson embraced the State Departments zero-sum-game philosophy. He assumes that enhanced US-Israel relations undermine US-Arab relations. However, since 1948, and especially in recent years, US-Israel geo-strategic cooperation has surged dramatically, simultaneously with expanded US-Arab security cooperation, and unprecedented counter-terrorism cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Jordan and Egypt, despite the lack of progress on the Palestinian front.

Contrary to conventional Western wisdom, the pro-US Arab regimes distinguish between challenges which are primary (e.g., the Iranian threat) and secondary/tertiary (e.g., the Palestinian issue). Therefore, when the machetes of Irans Ayatollahs and other Islamic terrorists are at their throats, the pro-US Arab regimes recognize that Israel is the only reliable life insurance agent in the Middle East, regardless of the Palestinian issue.

Secretary Tillerson insinuated that the relocation of the US Embassy to western Jerusalem which is within the boundaries of pre-1967 Israel could undermine the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Thus, he provided tailwind to the 69-year-old Department of States view which contradicts the position of the American people and their representatives in the House and Senate that there is no legitimacy to Israels sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem. It radicalizes the Arabs, forcing them to outflank the US from the maximalist side, deluding themselves that they have nothing to lose and time is, supposedly, on their side.

Tillerson also seems to subscribe to Foggy Bottoms view that the Palestinian issue is a core cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict and Middle East turbulence, and a top priority for Arab policy-makers. Therefore, he assumes that the relocation of the US Embassy to Jerusalem could fuel anti-US terrorism and undermine US cooperation with pro-US Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia, against the mutual threats of the Ayatollahs of Iran and additional sources of Islamic terrorism.

However, anti-US Islamic terrorism has been totally divorced from the Palestinian issue and Israel, as demonstrated by the blowing up of the US Embassy and Marines barracks in Lebanon in 1983 (300 US Marines murdered), at a time when the US brutalized Israel over its hot pursuit of the PLO. In fact, the 1998 suicide car-bombing of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (300 persons murdered), and the October 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen (17 US Marines murdered), occurred while President Clinton refrained from relocating the US Embassy to Jerusalem, as prescribed by 1995 legislation, and while Israeli Prime Minister Barak offered the Palestinians a full Israeli withdrawal, including Jerusalems Temple Mount.

Moreover, since 1948, contrary to the Department of States conventional wisdom, Middle East reality has documented top-heavy pro-Palestinian Arab talk, but anti-Palestinian, or indifferent, Arab walk.

For example, no Arab-Israeli war was ever ignited by the Palestinian issue. It was highlighted by the conclusion of the 1948-49 war, when Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Syria occupied Gaza, Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and Al-Hama, but never contemplated transferring these areas to the Palestinians, strictly constraining Palestinian activities.

In addition, none of the recent Arab tectonic eruptions from Tunisia, in Northeastern Africa, through Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Bahrain in the Persian Gulf are related, directly or indirectly, to the Palestinian issue or Israel.

The assumption that the relocation of the US Embassy to Jerusalem would undermine US-Saudi cooperation in the face of the Ayatollahs and additional sources of Islamic terrorism, ignores the Saudi and all other Arab regimes view of the Palestinians.

They have always considered the Palestinians a role model of intra-Arab treachery and subversion. Hence, the severe constraints of Palestinian maneuverability in their countries, and the meager financial assistance to the Palestinians (compared with the US foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority), and the absence of military support. For instance, no Arab regime ever got involved in any of the Palestinian-Israeli wars in Lebanon, Judea and Samaria and Gaza.

In contrast to the recent Arab talk and State Department political correctness, the Arab countries have never considered Jerusalem to be their top holy city status reserved for Mecca and Medina capital or cultural center. Jerusalem was largely neglected during Islamic rule, serving at most as a political platform in their conflicts with the infidel.

Reality-based political incorrectness motivated Israel and Egypt, in 1977, in defiance of US President Carter, to negotiate and conclude a bilateral peace accord with no Palestinian, regional or international involvement. It also motivated Israel and Jordan, in 1994, to conclude another bilateral peace accord. The US played a critical deal-closing role in both cases, but only after the two parties reached the framework of bilateral agreement.

Moreover, a litany of peace initiatives, launched by the US, failed when attempting to subordinate reality to the US own benevolent political correctness, which stipulated a multilateral peace process, focusing on the Palestinian issue.

Will President Trump and Secretary Tillerson embrace Middle East reality, and reject political correctness, by avoiding procrastination on the relocation of the US Embassy to Jerusalem, thus sparing the US further erosion of its posture of deterrence in the Middle East and beyond?

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Secretary Tillerson's Political-CorrectnessThe Jewish Press | Yoram ... - The Jewish Press - JewishPress.com

Exhibit Challenges the Madison Myth was the breathless headline. Im jaded but I looked, titillated by the possibility of some long-undiscovered link between our fourth president and the New England Royalists of 1814. Or maybe conciliatory letters between Madison and the Dey of Algiers before the latter capitulated to Commodore Decatur, much to the delight of shippers in the Mediterranean. Alas, it was not to be.

Instead, readers were treated to another fashionable excoriation of another Founding Father as a slaveholding hypocrite. The article, about a new exhibit at Madisons Montpelier plantation, recycles a tired old complaint: how could Madison, responsible as much as any man for our Constitution, a bulwark of human liberty and monument to freedom, own slaves?It is a question asked ad nauseam about all southern Founders: Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, Madison the list is long.

It is also as obtuse as calling a bunny rabbit cowardly for terrorizing the grass but running away when a hound approaches. Nevertheless it is thinking worth examining, not because of what it reveals about its objects, those eighteenth-century upper-class types who gave us both our Constitution and nation, but about those who ask the question.

Inherent is the assumption that humans are entirely one thing: good or evil, greedy or generous; they either love and extol freedom and liberty or they are slave drivers who would make Simon Legree recoil in horror. Real people who pay attention to the real world know this is piffle: most people have a bit of both in them and understand their contradictions. The Founders knew this; its one of the reasons they created the constitution they did.

Which directs us to the authors second erroneous idea: that the Constitution was designed to protect the institution (slavery) without ever using the term. This is of a piece with modern America can do no right historians like Edward Baptist, and it is just as ham-handedly wrong.Whether the Constitution which Madison had a large part in creating was pro-or anti-slavery is a question invented in the early 1830s by the likes of John C. Calhoun as they sought to manufacture protections for their cherished Peculiar Institution, rightly under growing attack. Now, as in 1834, the argument misses the point. The Constitution was designed and ratified not to protect slavery but to form a more perfect Union, as it says of itself. That is why it did not mention the term: the Founders priorities were elsewhere. And the Constitutions notorious ambiguity on this question was the price of its ratification without which the United States would not exist.

Which illustrates the problem faced by those who project our values into the past:the residents of previous centuries did not think quite as we do; their motives were different, their ethics not ours. They generally reflect our view of humanity, its ends and the proper methods of achieving them, but that does not mean we are the same. To illustrate, contrast the articles assumptions about Mr. Madisons character and ideas with those of New York City native and Constitutional delegate Gouveneur Morris, who decried the three-fifths compromise and refused to sign the document because of it. Before we declare the acerbic New Yorker victor in the good guy derby, we should note that he also loathed the idea of common folk voting, stating more than once that The evils we experience spring from an excess of democracy.

More disturbing is that these negative attitudes about Madison, his contemporaries, and the world they made are actively being jammed into the heads of students young enough to believe them without question. Given enough of this, a majority of citizens will come to see the Founders not as farsighted men who embraced sacrifice and compromise to give their country the oldest surviving constitutional government on earth, but as a greedy, self-interested cabal.They will think their country not a unique and powerful bastion of liberty where, despite shortcomings, human freedom tends to advance, but a nation created by hypocrites whose ill deeds outweigh their positive contributions; a nation founded on lies and crimes, whose sole purpose is to enrich the few at the expense of the many and whose greatest contribution to liberty would be to vanish.

When we arrive at that point, the Republic will be at deaths door. If it shrugs indifferently and enters, to where might we fly that our freedoms be protected? History holds an answer, but its not pleasant.

Morgan Liddick lives in Stuarts Draft.

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OPINION: Self-righteousness + political correctness = God help us - The Daily Progress

Ad will collapse in seconds CLOSE May 18, 2017 05/18/2017 3:32 pm By Ed Kilgore Share Stewarts embrace of the Lost Cause not proving to be an electoral winner.

With all the recent controversy about Confederate memorials being pulled down, you might think Republican gubernatorial candidate Corey Stewart was being shrewd by exploiting old-white-vote resentment over the issue in Civil Wardrenched Virginia. But at present, it doesnt seem to be doing much for the exurban local-government figure whos tried to make himself into a Trump-like vehicle for protests against a GOP Establishment that is fully behind his opponent Ed Gillespie. According to a new Washington Post/George Mason poll, Stewart is trailing Gillespie by 20 points (3818, with 15 percent going to State Senator Frank Wagner), and does not have a lot of money to catch up before the June 13 primary.

Virginia does not require receiving a majority of the primary vote to win a nomination, so Stewart cant count on a second chance if Gillespie beats him but falls short of 50 percent.

He must be given credit for persistence, though. Stewart has pursued his argument that taking down Confederate memorials reflects the kind of p.c. culture that Trump opposes up to and beyond the gates of political prudence, as Politico noted:

When he hasnt lamented the shoddy treatment of Southern heritage, he has compared the politicians who support removing statues to ISIS, the murderous Islamic extremists who have destroyed historic artifacts and religious sites throughout Syria. Or suggested that George Soros needs to be tried for sedition, stripped of his citizenship or deported. Or labeling his main opponent a cuckservative, the disdainful epithet of choice among the alt-right.

His particular focus on the City of Charlottesvilles decision to remove a Lee memorial has brought Stewart into uncomfortably close proximity to white supremacists, as became apparent when Richard Spencer led a torchlit march to the memorial last weekend.

Virtually every political figure in Virginia, including Gillespie and Wagner, condemned the marchers except for Stewart, who remained silent. He then announced a Facebook Live event for Monday during which, after speculation that he might be dropping out of the race, he instead attacked his enemies and rivals again:

That is certainly something Stewart is ever-ready to do.

But his Trump-Heavy campaign does not seem to be working at all. The WaPo/GMU poll shows him only winning 15 percent of the likely GOP primary voters who strongly approve of Trumps job performance. It isnt clear how many Republicans are aware that Stewart was fired as the moguls Virginia campaign manager last October after he held an unauthorized rally at the RNC headquarters, in Washington, based on fears the national party might abandon its presidential nominee. They may have noticed, though, that Stewarts campaign isnt exactly getting any help from the White House or its political operatives.

Assuming Gillespie wins on June 13, Stewarts campaign may be remembered as showing the limits of race-tinged attacks on political correctness, even among a very conservative electorate. Racist dog whistles are one thing. Howling at the moon while defending the Lost Cause is another thing altogether.

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Brace Belden, back from Syria and readjusting to life in the Bay Area, has a new Twitter handle.

The criminal liability of presidents is a difficult and unsettled area of constitutional law.

Compared to his campaigning, it was a blatant flip-flop. Will his supporters who bashed Hillary Clinton for being soft on terrorism forgive him?

The controversial Milwaukee sheriff, who says he was tapped to join the Department of Homeland Security, denies the CNN report.

The members of WeStaNDFor werent having it.

In Saudi Arabia, Trump describes a battle of good versus evil, and calls on his audience to take the lead in stamping out terrorism.

It was almost identical to the North Korean missile fired off in February in the countrys first weapons test during the Trump administration.

On Friday, Trumps nominee for deputy Treasury secretary suddenly realized that he needs more family time than a White House job would allow.

Iranians rejected a right-wing nationalist challenger and reaffirmed their desire for greater social freedom and international co-operation.

The Trump Organization promised not to make any new foreign deals while Donald Trump was president. Its friends in the UAE dont seem to buy that.

Trump spent most of last year demonizing the Saudis and their faith. And Riyadh already likes him better than Obama. Heres why.

Hes taken a real beating of late. But former FBI director James Comey will have his day in the Senate, and in the court of public opinion, very soon.

Signs are growing that House Republicans, including some very senior members, could be in trouble next year.

He doesnt realize the implications of what he was doing or what he was saying or how it could be interpreted.

Ninety percent of clinical cases have been found in New York and New Jersey.

After agreeing to continue Obamacare insurer subsidies to avoid a government shutdown, Trump may abandon them as he embarks on his overseas trip.

Some stories are upfront about the allegations, while others dont mention them until the last paragraph.

Also, a senior White House official has reportedly become a person of interest in the FBIs investigation.

Its time to start thinking more aggressively about protecting people on foot in cities.

This is a huge relief for those of us concerned that the Trump tax cuts might be tilted to the rich.

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Failing GOP Candidate in Virginia Shows There Are Limits to Attacks on Political Correctness - New York Magazine

Donald Trump appears to have envisioned his speech on Sunday in Riyadh as an answer to Barack Obamas 2009 address in Cairo. And reading the two side by side is illuminating. The speeches differ in many ways, but none more striking than this: Trumps speech was far more politically correct.

Political correctness, as it is used in common parlance, means avoiding hard truths so as not to offend the people around you. And Trump made his hostility to political correctness a centerpiece of his campaign. Nowhere was this more evident than in his discussion of radical Islam. Again and again, Trump blamed Americas vulnerability to jihadist terrorism on President Obama and Hillary Clintons refusal honestly to speak about the pathologies of Muslims and Islam. At a Wisconsin town hall in March of last year, CNNs Anderson Cooper asked, Do you trust Muslims in America? Trump responded, We have a problem, and we can try and be very politically correct and pretend we dont have a problem, but, Anderson, we have a major, major problem. In June, in defending his proposed ban on Muslim immigration to the United States, Trump declared that, The current politically correct response cripples our ability to talk and to think and act clearly to keep America safe from terrorism.

Trump's Speech on Islam, Annotated

But for all the pillorying Obama received for supposedly whitewashing the problems of the Islamic world, his Cairo speech actually addressed them quite bluntly. Speaking at Egypts prestigious Cairo University, Obama condemned Holocaust denial in Muslim countries, calling it baseless, ignorant, and hateful. He denounced people who threaten Israel with destruction and repeat vile stereotypes about Jews. He highlighted the oppression of women in Muslim lands, declaring that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality. And it is no coincidence that countries where women are well-educated are far more likely to be prosperous. He referenced the Middle Easts economic failures, arguing that no development strategy can be based only upon what comes out of the ground, nor can it be sustained while young people are out of work. And in a clear challenge to his host, Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, he insisted that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere.

Compare that to Trump, who said virtually nothing that caused his hosts any discomfort. Trump criticized terrorist groups like ISIS for their persecution of Jews, and he condemned Iran for pledging the destruction of Israel. But since ISIS and Iran are Riyadhs most bitter foes, those condemnations wont have bothered the Saudi monarchs at all. Unlike Obama, Trump avoided the broader problem of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in Islamic countries, a problem in which his Saudi hosts are deeply complicit. Nor did he even hint at the fact that Saudi Arabia still does not recognize Israel.

On the question of womens rights, it was much the same. Trump attacked jihadist terrorists for the oppression of women. But he described King Salmans government as a virtual beacon of womens rights. Saudi Arabias Vision for 2030 is an important and encouraging statement of tolerance, respect, empowering women, and economic development, Trump declared. You would never have known that women in the Kingdom still cant drive.

Trump didnt even mention the words democracy, liberty, or freedom. To the contrary, in a sentence that will bring grins to autocrats across the region, he declared that, We are not here to lecturewe are not here to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be.

Trump did condemn extremism. But speaking in the country he has accused of complicity in 9/11, he did not once pointedly suggest that any Middle East regime except Irans might bear any responsibility for that extremism. Rather than suggesting, as both Obama and George W. Bush did, that the authoritarianism and corruption of Arab governments might have helped spawn groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS, Trump reversed the causality. The Middle Easts untapped potential he declared, is held at bay by bloodshed and terror. And in so doing, he endorsed the agenda that Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab dictatorships have been urging for years: Help us confront Iran and kill terrorists (which includes anyone who opposes our hold on power) and all will be well. In his speech in Riyadh, Trump didnt even use the phrase that he endlessly excoriated Clinton and Obama for avoiding: radical Islamic terrorism. He talked about extremism. But never used it as an adjective to modify the noun Islam.

None of this should be a surprise. Trump is a coward. He says wildly offensive things when the objects of his derision arent around, but crumples when he actually meets them. In his presidential announcement speech, Trump called Mexican immigrants rapists. But when he sat down with his Hispanic Advisory Council, he proved humble and conciliatory and called mass deportations neither possible nor humane. During the campaign, he endlessly trashed Mexicos government. But when he actually arrived in Mexico City last August, he declared the trip a great, great, honor and when President Enrique Pea Nieto asked him about his famous pledge to make Mexico pay for a wall between the two countries, Trump refused to discuss the subject. During the campaign, Trump accused Black Lives Matter of being responsible for the murder of police, and described African American living conditions as hellish. But when he actually showed up at a black church in Detroit last September, he spent most of his time flattering his hosts. Trumps speech, noted The Washington Post, constituted a jarring shift in tone and message. During the campaign, Trump repeatedly claimed that China was manipulating its currency. But after meeting with Chinas president, he acknowledged that was not true.

The Saudis appear thrilled that Trump was so conciliatory on his visit. They should enjoy themselves while they can. Americans have learned this about Trump: What he says to your face often bears no relationship to what he says behind your back.

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Trump Turns Politically Correct in Saudi Arabia - The Atlantic