Category Archives: Federalist

In July, the Chinese Communist Party will celebrate its centenary. The birthday presents it gave itself included re-written party history and a hotline for Chinese people to snitch on fellow citizens who dare to raise any questions about the newly revised party history. Such behaviors remind everyone the CCP cannot be considered a trustworthy partner in addressing international affairs, such as finding the true origin of the coronavirus.

The CCP was founded in 1921 at the International Settlement area in Shanghai, an area managed by the British that housed Western businesses, politicians, and visitors. It was the only place in China where free press and dissent were much more tolerated. The area helped foster a press boom with the publication of hundreds of Chinese-language newspapers. It also became a hotbed for radical ideas, including Communism.

Both Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai future leaders of the Chinese Communist Party avoided the Chinese governments persecution by living in the International Settlement in the early 1920s. There, they met other like-minded radicals.

They founded the CCP at the French Concession in late July of 1921, intending to start a Communist Revolution in China with the goal of driving out all foreign invaders. Since its founding, the CCPs history was written in blood from purges and power struggles to policies that inflicted immense suffering on Chinas people.

To maintain its legitimacy, the CCP has constantly been re-writing history to serve its political agendas.For instance, the CCP continues to blame the weather, not the CCPs disastrous socialist policies, as the cause for the worst famine in human history (1959-1961), even though the weather during those years was mild.

An estimated 40 million Chinese people perished in the famine. The CCP continues to hide official records of the famine from Chinese people and researchers, so no one knew the exact number of fatalities. In government-sanctioned Chinese history books, the famine is referred to as Three Years of Natural Disasters.

The CCP alsore-wrote the history of World War II, claiming China defeated Japan under CCP leadership. Even some Chinese scholars disagree, saying the party was engaging in wholesale distortion of history. They pointed out that the CCPs army was nothing but a ragtag of guerrilla fighters back then. The Nationalist government led a united front to achieve the hard-won final victory.

While the Nationalist Partys troops took the most casualties in direct combat against Japanese forces, the CCP was busy growing its territories and the size of its army. During Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanakas visit to China in 1972, CCP leader Mao told Tanaka the CCP wouldnt have come to power if not for the Japanese invasion of China.

A more recent example is how the CCP re-wrote the history of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. The whole incident has been airbrushed down to a few sentences in todays Chinese history books, which denounce the 1989 pro-democracy movement as an anti-government riot influenced by hostile foreign forces.

The CCP claimed no shots were fired on the eve of June 4, when the Chinese troops and their tanks rolled onto Tiananmen Square, and no one died from the militarys activities. Chinese who have grown up since 1989 believe the governments liethat any photos or other evidence of the massacre were forgeries created by the CIA.

Now, as it approaches its centenary, the CCP completed another round of rewriting the partys history to burnish its image in a new edition of a booklet titled A Brief History of the Communist Party of China. According to Radio Free Asia, the latest edition deleted chapters on the famine, the CCPs agricultural collectivization movement in the 1950s that contributed to the famine, and deleted information about often cruel anti-rightist political campaigns targeting intellectuals.

In its previous edition, the booklet admitted Chairman Mao should bear responsibility for starting the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), which turned out to be a serious disaster for the Chinese people. In this new edition, however, readers wont find any criticism of Mao. Instead, the booklet praises Mao for launching the Cultural Revolution to fight corruption and blames the internal turmoil on many of Maos correct ideas about how to build a socialist society werent fully implemented.

In truth, plenty of evidence has shown that Mao launched the Cultural Revolution to regain power, purge his political enemies (real or imagined), and purify Chinese society with a bloody revolution. The movement resulted in mass destruction of Chinese culture, Chinas economy, and the social fabric of Chinese society, ultimately leading to the needless and tragic deaths of more than 20 million lives. The movement only ended when Mao died in 1976.

Why would the CCP tell such blatant falsehoods about Mao and the Cultural Revolution? The answer lies with the CCPs current leader, Xi Jinping.

Xi is the most ambitious, aggressive, and ruthless dictator China has seen since Mao. In many ways, Xi models his leadership style directly after Mao, launching a sweepinganti-corruption campaign to aid his effort to purge his political rivals, cement his control of power, and win popular support from the Chinese public. Taking Maos saying, power comes from the barrel of a gun, to heart, Xi got the Peoples Liberation Army firmly under his control through a series of reorganizational measures.

Xi eliminated term limits for his current position to be leader in China for life and has slowly, but surely, concentrated power in his hands by putting himself in charge of almost every essential government body a culmination of actions that led foreign media to name him the chairman of everything.Worse, as Xi demands absolute obedience and loyalty not only from his party members but also from the general public, the Chinese people have been subjected to increased surveillance, censorship, and the worst crackdown on dissent since Maos Cultural Revolution (19661976).

Xi brazenly embraced efforts to build a cult of personality like that last seen in China under Mao. There are songs including lyrics such as To follow you [Xi] is to follow the sun, and videos presenting him as a man of the people and a great leader.

The partys propaganda machine has showered him with great titles: the Core of the Party, the Helmsman of the Nation, the Leader of a Great Country and Architect of Modernization in the New Era. These were superlatives last used to address Mao. The entire nation has been called to unite tightly around President Xi.

Like Maos, Xis portraits are ubiquitous. Like Maos little red book, the collection of Xis speeches and instructions has been a national bestseller and is compulsory reading even for schoolchildren.

Re-writing the history of the Cultural Revolution and Maos role in it is really about cementing Xis legitimacy and authority. Any criticism against Mao can be laid against Xi. Therefore, to make sure no one challenges him, Xi decided to turn Mao into a flawless saint.

Nevertheless, rewriting history didnt seem to go far enough for Xi. He wants Chinese people to forget the past they knew and be fully committed to the partys new version of history. Radio Free Asiareports the Chinese government has set up a hotline for Chinese people to report each other to the authorities for failing to toe the partys freshly revised line on matters of history.

Turning people close to you into government informants was first introduced during Maos Cultural Revolution, when children were encouraged to report on their parents, spouses were pressured to report on each other, and neighbors were coerced to sell out neighbors. Such practices destroyed the social bonds used to connect people and resulted in a trust deficit that still affects Chinese peoples relationships with one another to this day.

Xi and the CCP may think they are so powerful they can bend history and truth to their will. History, though, is about things that already happened. As someone lamented, the past cannot be changed, forgotten, or erased.

There are already many credibly sourced books about the true history of the CCP and the atrocities it has committed, such as Frank Diktters A Peoples Trilogy, a series of books that covers the CCPs history from 1945 to 1976 and the impact of Communism on the lives of Chinese people in China. Also numerous memoirs, including my Confucius Never Said,have documented ordinary Chinese peoples sufferings on a personal level. No matter how much the CCP tries, it cannot erase all of them.

The CCPs attempt to re-write history and turn Chinese people into government informants will cause anger and frustration among the Chinese people, further damage the CCPs international reputation, and reinforce the belief that the CCP is not a trustworthy partner. After celebrating its centenary, the CCP will begin its new century on very shaky ground.

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China's Communist Party Is Hiding More History To Celebrate 100 Years - The Federalist

Its been a big month for sci-fi primates. On Apr. 8, Elon Musks start-up Neuralink announced they created a cyborg monkey who can play MindPong using a brain chip. The following week, scientists at the Salk Institute in California revealed they successfully grew human-macaque embryos in test tubes. These hybrid babies were aborted at 20 days.

The ethical implications of such experiments are now debated with a resigned shrug. Theres a sense of inevitability to it all. Powerful humans will indulge in any behavior thats both pleasurable and possible. What could be more pleasurable than playing God?

The practical question isnt how to stop them, but how to survive in their technocratic age. Where do we draw such boundaries? Do we reflexively reject technologys terms and conditions? Or, when its our turn to get chipped, do we take the plunge?

Ultimately, these are religious questions. Many traditional cultures view living beings as sacred. Each creature is endowed with a spark of consciousness and is therefore deserving of dignity, even those we kill and eat. From this standpoint, tinkering with the fundamental make-up of any living being is a form of blasphemy, especially in the case of humans.

For materialists quite prevalent in Silicon Valley an organism is only a collection of cells and chemical signals with nothing like a soul. In their self-conception, these innovators are simply joining Natures inexorable march from steam engines to smartphones to cyborgs, and beyond. Many of them view pain and suffering as mere brain signals on a flickering monitor. For them, the pleasure of advancement is a much higher priority.

Musks wired-up primate is being celebrated as a major breakthrough in cyborg technology. The overall system is fairly simple. Neuralink scientists trained a nine-year-old macaque, Pager, to play Pong and other puzzles on a computer screen using a joystick. Every time the monkey made a correct move, a metal tube squirted banana smoothie into his mouth.

All the while, Pagers brain was being scanned by two Neuralink chips jabbed into his skull. More than 2,000 wires fanned out into his gray matter, monitoring his motor cortex as he wiggled the joystick and sucked down the banana smoothie. Once the monkeys neural activity had been correlated with his actions onscreen, the researchers unplugged the joystick.

The cursor kept moving. The monkey was playing a video game with nothing but his brain waves.Maybe its just me, but it seemed like the cursor moved more smoothly when the Neuralink chip was being employed.

According to Musks declared ambitions, this breakthrough is just a stepping stone to inputting Neuralink chips into human skulls, thereby merging our cognition with artificial intelligence. In the hyper-competitive world looming just over the horizon when AI has surpassed the human mind getting a brain chip could be seen by many as merely a way to keep up in the rat race.

Neuralinks monkey is just the latest chapter in a long history of animal-machine hybrids. Twenty years ago, Chicagos Northwestern University revealed the first vertebrate cyborg. In that experiment, scientists cut a lamprey eels brain out of its head, kept the brain alive in a nutrient solution, hooked wires to its visual and motor cortices, and stuffed the sentient organ into a small machine the size of a hockey puck. There, the eels visual cortex was connected to light sensors and its motor cortex controlled the devices wheels.

Researchers placed this fresh cyborg in a dark space. They flashed lights on one end of the chamber, and then on the other. Because lamprey eels orient themselves to light coming through the oceans surface, the brain-controlled hockey puck turned and moved toward the light wherever it shined. The creature buzzed back and forth, trying desperately to orient itself.

Two decades ago, publications like CNN and the Washington Post responded to such advances with suspicion and moral concern. Today, they chronicle the rise of technocracy with a mixture of awe and shameless product placement, if they cover it at all. Looking at Musks cyborg macaque, they see a bright future where the lame shall walk, the blind shall see, and the dumb shall think like superintelligent machines.

On Apr. 15, Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte and his joint American-Chinese team at the Salk Institute announced the successful fertilization of human-macaque chimeras, a term derived from Greek mythology. In Homers Iliad, the chimera had a lions head, a serpents tail, and a goats body, and it breathed fire.

Today, we see myths becoming reality. Created in Promethean bio-labs around the world, chimeras are hybrid creatures whose stem cells derive from multiple species. This endeavor has been in progress for more than five decades. In that time, scientists have created viable rat/mouse hybrids, a scraggly sheep/goat, and a crippled quail/chicken, among others. More recently, the Salk Institute engineered pig hosts that grow healthy human lungs.

The way it works is simple. Lab techs take a fertilized embryo (like a macaque), then add the stem cells of another organism (like, say, a human being). They let the resulting entity gestate in vitro or preferably, in utero then stand back to watch the magic happen.

Among the weirder results is the blending of behavioral tendencies. One good example is a classic mouse hybrid. Scientists mixed the stem cells of a jittery species with a more docile variety. The behavior of the lab-grown offspring was somewhere in between.

When Belmonte was asked about the ethical implications of creating chimeras three years ago, he downplayed the possibility of runaway advancement: Thats science fiction. We are at the earliest stage. Today, hes the proud father of three recently aborted human-macaque chimeras (more than 100 others simply withered in their jars). In the future, Belmonte hopes, similar creatures will grow up to have their organs harvested for human use. That means his labs work is not only philanthropic, its necessary to the ends he foresees.

The brief, but meticulously documented lives of these human-monkey hybrids pushed medical science to the next level. Meanwhile, their mortal bodies were tossed into biowaste containers. Grim as that reality may be, the prospect of nurturing such a being into adulthood is far more disturbing. What happens if a few human stem cells migrate to the monkeys developing brain?

Considering the many examples of blended characteristics in adult chimeras, concerned scientists predict this modified simian would exhibit human-like intelligence. It might, for instance, be smart enough to figure out how the Statue of Liberty got buried up to her neck in sand. That possibility isnt just reasonable, judging from present trends, its probably inevitable.

In truth, if a behavior is both pleasurable and possible, then a few powerful people are bound to do it if they havent done it already. Yet by the time they get caught, its probably too late.

Today, your kid needs braces to feel good about her smile. Tomorrow, shell need a Neuralink chip to keep up in school. Given the laws of supply-and-demand, the price of fresh fetal tissue could be the crypto bubble of tomorrow. Indeed, that trend appears to be well underway.

Again, the question for regular people isnt how to stop this technocratic revolution from taking place. Barring some circuit-frying electromagnetic pulse, that ships already sailed. The question is how to stay human in this emerging world.

At what point are you just being stubborn? On the other hand, at what point have you sold your soul?

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Scientists Are Mixing Human Body Parts With Robots And Monkeys - The Federalist

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a new anti-riot bill into law on Monday as violent protests threaten to grip the nation for a second year, this time under President Joe Biden, despite pledges of unity.

The Combatting Public Disorder Act, approved by the Republican legislature last week, protects funding for municipal law enforcement from the progressive efforts to defund police and raises penalties for demonstrators who engage in criminal conduct. Under the new law effective immediately, riot is defined as a group of three or more people engaging in a violent public disturbance with common intent to injure others, damage property, or pose an imminent danger of injury or damage.

This is the strongest anti-rioting, pro-law enforcement piece of legislation in the country, DeSantis celebrated in a signing ceremony press conference with lawmakers and police. Theres just nothing even close.

The law made controversial by Democrats, who claim with routine criticism that the bill to deter the destructive Black Lives Matter rioting is racist also opens the door for residents to sue local governments that fail to protect their communities from outbreaks of domestic terrorism. The legislation also creates a second-degree felony for those criminally culpable in riots of more than 25 people that cause significant bodily harm, create an excess of $5,000 in property damage, block roadways, or even threaten the use of a deadly weapon.

Florida lawmakers approved the legislation, with provisions first proposed by the governor last year in the aftermath of the most devastating display of political unrest to sweep the nation in decades, as another riot season gets underway in hard-hit areas still in recovery.

In the twin cities area of Minneapolis, where former police officer Derek Chauvin is standing trial for the death of George Floyd in custody, riots and rampant looting erupted after the shooting of 20-year-old Daunte Wright by law enforcement.

Other parts of the country to witness riots following Wrights death stretched from Los Angeles to D.C. in an ominous preview of another anarchic summer.

California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters fomented rage this weekend when she joined demonstrators in Brooklyn Center and demanded they get more confrontational if the Chauvin trial wrapping up this week ends in a verdict of anything but guilty.

We are looking for a guilty verdict. Weve got to get more confrontational, Waters said, speaking with a chorus of demonstrators behind her. Weve got to make sure that they know that we mean business.

The jury in the Chauvin trial has not been sequestered as lawyers proceed to closing arguments.

Hours later, two National Guardsmen sustained minor injuries from a drive-by shooting in Minneapolis.

House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy demanded the lower chamber take action over the California congresswomans remarks after Democrats stripped Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments for amplifying conspiracies.

Greene announced she would soon introduce a resolution to expel Waters.

After traveling across state lines to incite riots, her orders recorded on video last night at the Brooklyn Center, directly led to more violence and a drive by shooting on National Guardsmen in Minnesota early this morning.

Cont’d..

— Marjorie Taylor Greene ?? (@mtgreenee) April 18, 2021

While Florida takes measures to deter the coming wave of political violence fomented by Democrats in Congress and elites in corporate media who inflame racial divisions, Colorado Republican Rep. Ken Buck has reintroduced anti-riot legislation at the federal level. The Blocking Rioters and Insurrectionists from our Cities to Keep us Safe (BRICKS) Act, first proposed in November, ups the maximum prison sentence for rioters.

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DeSantis Signs Anti-Riot Bill Ahead Of Second Summer Of Rage - The Federalist

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, recently introduced a bill to prohibit funding for the United Nations Population Fund. American funding for the UNFPA has long been controversial due to the organizations link to coercive abortion and sterilization, especially in China. Americas recent genocide determination against China over its forced sterilizations of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang makes the effort to cut U.S. funding with the UNFPA even more urgent.

Last year, the Trump administration withheld funding for the United Nations Population Fund on account of its partnership with the Chinese government, including the coercive practices that have now been declared to be genocide. Unfortunately, President Biden has already taken steps to restore federal funding of the UNFPA, although he voted against funding the UNFPA as a U.S. senator.

Since 1985, presidents have had discretion under the Kemp-Kasten Amendment to withhold funds from any organization that supports or participates in coercive abortions or involuntary sterilizations. Under this provision, the United States has withheld funds from the UNFPA in 18 of the past 36 years. All of these presidential determinations have been based on the UNFPAs cooperation with the Chinese government.

A Jamestown Foundation report found funds from the Chinese central government went towards funding sterilizations in Xinjiang, sufficient for almost 200,000 sterilizations. The UNFPA should not be partnering on family planning efforts with a government that brutally employs sterilization and abortion to commit genocide against a minority group. The fact that the UNFPA continues to do so is more than enough reason for the United States to halt all contributions.

In 2019, the UNFPA spent $624,204 in China on vaguely defined integrated sexual and reproductive health services. The UNFPA may not directly fund sterilizations and abortions in Xinjiang, but even if it doesnt, their partnership with Chinas National Health Commission allows it to divert other funds elsewhere. By partnering with the commission, the UNFPA also effectively endorses the work of an organization with ties to ongoing atrocities.

China is the worlds foremost perpetrator of coerced abortions and sterilizations. Its notorious One Child Policy, which lasted from 19792015, was responsible for preventing more than 400 million births, according to Chinese state media. Forced abortions and subsequent sterilizations were central to the program.

A former Chinese midwife interviewed in the 2019 documentary One Child Nation admitted to having performed between 50,000 and 60,000 abortions throughout her career. She had been told her actions were for the good of the country. Now full of regret, she testified that women were tied up and dragged to us like pigs for their state-ordered abortions.

Today, the Chinese government uses similarly brutal tactics to target the Uighur ethnic and religious minority group. Throughout Xinjiang, hundreds of thousands of Uighur women are forced to accept intrauterine devices and undergo sterilizations and even abortions. Those on both sides of the abortion debate can agree that coerced sterilizations or abortions are a grave violation of human dignity.

Mihrigul Tursun was luckier than most Uighur women. She survived a Chinese internment camp and managed to flee to the United States. But it came at a cost. While in the camp, she was given an unknown liquid she was told was medicine, but the treatment soon stopped her menstrual cycles. After arriving in the United States, she was heartbroken to learn that she had been sterilized.

These abuses are not confined to Chinas camps. When Gulzia Mogdin was visiting from Kazakhstan, authorities in Xinjiang discovered WhatsApp on her phone, a punishable offense that prompted extra scrutiny.

Police took her to the hospital, where medical workers discovered she was pregnant with her third child. The authorities forced Mogdin to have an abortion, threatening to detain her and her brother if she resisted. She later told the Associated Press, I cannot sleep.

Mounting evidence of a widespread program of forced sterilization and abortion in Xinjiang was a key factor in former Secretary of State Mike Pompeos determination that the Chinese government is committing an ongoing genocide in Xinjiang. The genocide determination is significant, and it will inevitably affect U.S.-China relations moving forward.

Chinas genocidal sterilization and abortion program against Uighur Muslims must be met with strong international condemnation and with genuine consequences. As the Biden administration decides how it will react to the Uighur genocide, the United States must ensure American funds do not support, even indirectly, the Chinese governments abuse of the Uighur people.

To protect American taxpayers from being complicit in human rights abuses, the Biden administration should pause before reinstating funding to the UNFPA and consider support for Roys bill to defund the organization. At the very least, the U.S. government must conduct a thorough review of the UNFPAs connection to Chinas National Health Commission and the Xinjiang Health Commission.

The ongoing genocide in Xinjiang ought to prompt the United States to rethink its interactions with China on many levels, and that includes U.S. support for the UNFPA.

Arielle Del Turco is FRCs assistant director of the Center for Religious Liberty. Connor Semelsberger is FRCs Director of Federal Affairs for Life and Human Dignity.

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American Dollars Should Have No Part In China's Forced Sterilizations - The Federalist

On the morning of April 15, 1912, the survivors of the Titanic were pulled from the icy North Atlantic by the Carpathia. The night before, at 11:40 p.m., shipboard time, the ship had struck an iceberg in a glancing-but-fatal blow, tearing into six of her 16 compartments two more than the greatest ship ever made could withstand.

Capt. Edward Smith, a man with four decades on the seas, immediately went to the bridge and then down below with the ships architect, Thomas Andrews, to ascertain the extent of the damage. By five past midnight, Smith would order the passengers brought to the deck and the lifeboats prepared. Twenty minutes later, Andrews gave him the terrible news: the unsinkable ship was going to the bottom.

What followed is a story of the heights and the depths of humanity. Rare virtues such as duty, honor, selflessness, and gentlemanly respect were on full display, as too were mans based, beastial natures: selfishness, cravenness, and abandonment of duty. Pride, ignorance, and more than a little old-fashion stupidity walked hand-in-hand with both the rare and common reactions of that horrible night. What separated the two types of reactions was something different: courage.

In those last hours aboard the Titanic, confusion reigned both above and below the decks, with many factors involved. The night was bitter cold. The ship lacked a mass intercom, making communication among the crew and with the passengers haphazard at best.

The different classes of passengers had different numbers of stewards with fewer assigned to the masses of steerage and different lengths and heights to journey to the deck, with the richer closer to escape. The only lifeboat drill that had thus far been scheduled had been called off. U.S. law demanded that the Third Class passengers many of them immigrants who did not speak English be kept separately for immigration and disease checks once in-country.

A good number of those poorest immigrants were culturally schooled to wait and do what they were told. Finally, many of all classes believed a ship such as this simply wouldnt go down.

While some members of the crew locked the gates to keep throngs of steerage passengers from swamping boats, ignoring the cries of women and children, others, like Third Class Steward John Edward Hart, made multiple trips into the lower decks to escort them to the lifeboats.

Then there were the people Colonel [Archibald] Gracie, [Second Officer Charles] Lightoller and others saw surging up from below, just before the end, Titanic chronicler Walter Lord wrote in his seminal 1955 book, A Night To Remember.

Until this moment Gracie was sure the women were all off they were so hard to find when the last boats were loading. Now, he was appalled to see dozens of them suddenly appear. The statistics suggest who they were the Titanics casualty list included four of the 143 First Class women (three by choice) 15 of 93 Second Class women and 81 of 179 Third Class women.

Not to mention the children. Except for Lorraine Allison, all 29 First and Second Class children were saved, but only 23 out of 76 steerage children

Fr. Thomas Byles, whom Pope Pius X would later declare a blessed martyr of the church, helped as many Third Class passengers board the lowering boats as he could, refusing escape multiple times and staying aboard to pray the rosaries, hear confessions, and deliver final absolution to the remaining faithful after all the lifeboat were gone.

Lady Lucy Duff-Gordon and her secretary, Laura Mabel Francatelli, turned down two boats for women and children, choosing to wait for a third, which agreed to also take her husband, Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon. Her husband went on to receive heavy criticism in the press for allegedly giving a bribe to the sailors so they did not return their under-capacity craft to the desperate survivors soon stranded in the dark waters.

While some of those still on deck fought and clawed, jumping down and nearly toppling some of the lifeboats into the sea while still others boats remained foolishly under-capacity, some men chose to stoically help their families into boats and then stand aside, assuring crying wives they would be right after them.

It is only a matter of form to have women and children first, Lucien Smith yelled out to his crying young wife, Eloise, as she boarded to safety. The two were newlyweds, returning to the States from their honeymoon. The ship is thoroughly equipped and everyone on her will be saved.

Go, Lottie! Harvey Collyer yelled out to his crying wife, Charlotte. They had sold their grocery store in England and set out to begin a new life in Idaho, where they intended to buy a farm with their savings. For Gods sake, be brave and go! Ill get a seat in another boat!

Benjamin Guggenheim boarded his French mistress, Lontine Ausabart, and her maid, Emma Sgesser, aboard and comforted the frightened German, promising, We will soon see each other again! Its just a repair. Tomorrow the Titanic will go on again.

Lt. Col. Jacob Astor the richest man aboard and the highlight of ensuing news stories in a time before Hollywood and sports stars, when the American aristocracy dominated our imaginations helped his sickly wife, her maid, and her nurse aboard a below-capacity boat but was denied his request to join them by Lightoller, a heroic officer who foolishly interpreted the captains order to help women and children before men as excluding men from rescue. Well, tell me the number of this boat so I may find her afterwards, Astor told the officer so his wife could be assured by his words.

Astor, Collyer, Guggenheim, and Smith all knew by the time they boarded their wives they wouldnt see their families again, but they comforted them and knew their widows would understand that their sacrifices for the other women and children were no selfish abandonments. As the ship listed and desperate passengers scrambled for the remaining rafts, Astor, joined by his loyal valet Victor Robbins, lit a cigarette with the author Jacques Futrelle, who perished with them in the sea.

Things werent so bad at first, survivor and first-class Steward James Etches told The New York Times once ashore, but when I saw Mr. Guggenheim about three-quarters of an hour after the crash there was great excitement.

What surprised me was that both Mr. Guggenheim and his secretary were dressed in their evening clothes. They had deliberately taken off their sweaters, and as nearly as I can remember they wore no lifebelts at all.

Whats that for? I asked.

Weve dressed up in our best, replied Mr. Guggenheim, and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.

Etches delivered a message Guggenheim had given him for his wife. If anything should happen to me, he had said, tell my wife in New York that Ive done my best in doing my duty.

Thats all he said, Etches told the press after delivering the message. There wasnt time for more.

The 63-year-old Ida Strauss refused to leave her husband, Rep. Isidor Strauss, sitting instead in a chair beside his. We have been living together for many years. Where you go, I go.

The communication officers stayed at their posts long after their futile rescue calls had grown garbled, fleeing only in the final moments.

Now its every man for himself, Captain Smith told the radio officers and crew at the very end. Well boys, do your best for the women and children, and look out for yourselves. In an account confirmed by some but disputed by others, he then went to the bridge to meet his Maker.

One of the Titanics two band leaders, Wallace Hartley, who went down with the ship, heeded the captains orders to keep the calm as best he could, and organized the musicians to play waltzes and other light-hearted music to the increasingly panicked passengers until the increasingly sloping decks could no longer hold their instruments in place.

Today, Lord writes, nobody could carry off these little gestures of chivalry, but they did that night. An air of noblesse oblige has vanished too.

Among those few who survived the plunge into the 28-degree water, Lightoller, Col. Archibald Gracie, and teenager Jack Thayer made it to a capsized boat, trying with several others in the waves to keep it afloat on the small pocket of water left between the upside-down deck and oblivion.

Hold on to what you have, old boy, Gracie called to one soul who tried to board after the barely floating boat was at its capacity. One more of you aboard would sink us all.

In a powerful voice, Lord recounts, the swimmer replied All right boys. Good luck and God bless you.'

The last voice I heard, Lady Duff-Gordon later recounted, was a man shouting, My God! My God!'

But along with the prejudices, Lord writes of the tumultuous years after the sinking, some nobler instincts also were lost. Men would go on being brave, but never again would they be brave in quite the same way.

But he is wrong in that. Courage is not a permanent state, its a choice, and its a choice some men and women made while others chose cowardice. But he is correct in seeing how those nobler impulses on display in the ships final, fateful moments came from a sense of God and honor our society often fails to teach.

Cowardice is also not an immutable characteristic it too is a choice, and one we face at some low level most days, and someday will face for real. Often it wont be so clear as in those frantic minutes, but other times it will, and we must always be on guard.

Although the Titanic went to the bottom 109 years ago on April 15, its passengers and crews legacies of cowardice and bravery stand to us as testaments to both the cruel depths and enlightened heights mere men can achieve.

Let us remember those men and women who went before us: The lessons of how they lived and died reach out through the voices of those who survived them, and they are as real for those who live now as they were those whom the dead left that terrible early morning, alone in the darkness. Strive to wrap yourself in their courage, wearing it like armor for the trials you will face in this life and at its end.

And may God bless the souls of the RMS Titanic.

Photo The RMS Titanic. US National Archives.

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On The Anniversary Of The Titanic, Remember Their Final Hours - The Federalist

Union leaders bet that they could convince workers it was in their best interests to be enrolled in a union that would stand up to management. They lost.

Big labor suffered a significant loss in its attempt to unionize employees at Amazons warehouse facility in Bessemer, Alabama. Of the workers eligible to vote, an embarrassingly small 16 percent voted to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.

It was the most recent in a series of high-profile losses for labor including failed attempts to unionize factories for Volkswagen, Nissan Motors, and Boeing. In each case, union leaders bet that they could convince workers it was in their best interests to be enrolled in a union that would stand up to management over wages and working conditions. In each case, they lost.

With private-sector union membership down from 24.2 percent in 1973 to 6.3 percent today, union leaders realize they are in an uphill battle. But the problems they face are nearly impossible to address absent a reassessment of their political affiliations unless, that is, they can get the government to change the rules so that joining a union is less of a choice and more of a mandate.

One such problem is union leaderships overwhelming support for Democrats and progressive political causes, which clashes with more varied political affiliations among rank-and-file union members.

As reported on the pro-union website Strikewave last October, polling data commissioned by the progressive think tank Data for Progress found that active union members were more strongly Republican (31 percent) than strongly Democrat (29 percent), though a slight majority lean Democrat. Yet, according to OpenSecrets.org, labor organizations contributed a whopping $27.5 million to President Bidens campaign and groups that supported him, while President Trump took in a mere $360,000.

That kind of political bias might be helpful if the unions were trying to organize Harvard professors or the top-level executives in multinational corporations. But it wasnt a plus in Alabama, where Trump got 62 percentof the vote much of which came from precisely the kind of employees who work in the Amazon warehouse.

Nor did it help for the unions to bring in Sen. Bernie Sanders, the millionaire socialist who gave a speech promising that union success at Amazon would spread all over this country. American workers dont want socialism particularly Republican workers, nearly 80 percent of whom view capitalism positively.

What workers of all political stripes do want is more opportunity, better wages, and better working conditions. It might help the unions if they focused on those things rather than spending union dues on candidates many of their members and potential members oppose or bringing in an 80-year-old socialist to give the same unconvincing speech hes been giving for the last 50 years.

These tactics only serve to convince workers that the unions goals may not match their own. Its not like union leaders have been shy about it. As AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka admitted in 2007, I got into the labor movement not because I wanted to negotiate wages. I got into the labor movement because I saw it as a vehicle to do massive social change to include lots of people.

So, no one should be surprised that union efforts to organize workers at Amazon failed so miserably. But labor leaders and their Democratic allies have a solution they believe will keep those union dues and political contributions flowing: a bill designed to prop up labor unions by making it far easier to coerce unwilling workers into unionizing. Its called the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act), and the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives has already passed it.

The PRO Acts provisions are draconian. Among other things, it would require that employers disclose employee contact information such as home addresses and phone numbers to union organizers. It would then undermine secret-ballot voting with a process called card check. Basically, the union would know where workers live, where their kids go to school, and, eventually, how they voted, making it easier to coerce these employees to vote for a union.

If a business did unionize, the PRO Act would then compel union membership by eliminating laws in 27 states that grant workers who choose not to join a union the right to work without being forced to join a union or pay union dues.

The PRO Act is an acknowledgment that big labor is unable to grow private-sector union membership by doing a good job representing workers interests. Instead, union leaders want to force union membership and union dues on unwilling employees, and their allies in the Democratic Party are prepared to apply the heavy hand of government to help them do it.

Unions played an important role in American life when they focused on the concerns of real employees in real workplaces. Theyre not doing that now not in the private sector, anyway and thats why employees are rejecting them. If union leaders want that to change, they should try winning workers support by meeting their needs without offending their values.

This article was originally published by RealClearMarkets.

Andy Puzder was chief executive officer of CKE Restaurants for more than 16 years, following a career as an attorney. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy.

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Amazon's Rejection Of Unions In Alabama Is A Big Loss For Big Labor - The Federalist

Federalist Publisher Ben Domenech said Wednesday Republican politicians need to get used to a hostile press in the post-Trump era as legacy outlets have shifted from mere bias to blatant hard-left activism.

Its moved well beyond bias, Domenech said on Fox News Special Report with Bret Baier. We now are witnessing a situation where people are behaving in an incredibly irresponsible manner against the politicians they view as being really on the opposite side.

Domenech emphasized the recent experience of Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who became a target of CBSs flagship political program 60 Minutes earlier this month where leftist activists masquerading as objective journalists manipulated interviews to fit their preconceived narrative. The network omitted key transcripts of DeSantiss response to a CBS reporter at a press conference while refusing an interview with the Democrat mayor of Palm Beach County, who offered insight to correct their reporting before the show went to air.

This is the kind of thing that Republican politicians should get used to, Domenech said. It is the new reality and its not going away.

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Ben Domenech: Republicans Need To Face Reality Of Propaganda Press - The Federalist

Two days after that ABC interview, Chinese diplomats came to sovereign U.S. territory in Anchorage, Alaska, and brutally dressed down Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. The media did their best to downplay the embarrassing situation, but the disrespect that the Chinese showed the United States was impossible to ignore.

Particularly hurtful was that the Chinese diplomats, like Putin, used the Democratic Partys own talking points about how corrupt, racist, evil, and irredeemably sinister the United States is. The message oft-repeated by the left this past year was that black people are routinely hunted on the streets, are regularly killed by law enforcement, and have no rights. Its not any surprise that the Chinese said they agreed with those points.

Bidens team cant say, politically, that those lines parroted by the highest echelons of their own party are lies, even though they are. Instead, they mumbled something about how America tries to improve itself.

The tongue-lashing against the United States occurred after the U.S. diplomats condemned China for its economic policies and human rights abuses, including against the Uighur ethnic group. China said the United States is in no position to lecture. It was a poorly thought-out effort from the U.S. diplomats.

The Biden team, which has largely maintained the Trump administrations economic policies, including controversial tariffs, against China, went into the meeting thinking they could easily dunk on the prior administration and show how much better they were at diplomacy. They should have thought through their standing and strategy a bit more.

Rather than staying focused on giving China-specific demands and conveying our seriousness, the U.S. team insulted half the Americans who voted for Trump and was glad for his administrations foreign policy approach by saying America is back. America never left. And its the approach from the last administration that returned our focus on China and power and away from merely abstract ideas when we deal with other nations, said Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Rebeccah Heinrichs.

Blinken has said he wants to move from Trumps foreign policy focused on national interest back to the post-World War II familiar ruts and abstractions of enforcing a rules-based order. But the liberal international order has now officially turned its sights on the United States, with the UN Human Rights Council saying it will investigate systemic racism in the United States.

The New York Times, the leading paper of the Democrat Party, says the country was founded when slaves arrived, not when the Declaration of Independence was signed. That helped lead to a summer of murderous riots that destroyed major downtowns across the country.

Hating America is a luxury we can no longer afford, the liberal writer Caitlin Flanagan tweeted this weekend. Well said. The hatred of this fine country would be awful even if foreign adversaries didnt exploit it. But they do.

Putin challenged Biden to a debate about U.S. history and the White House scurried. Xi Jinping had his people yell at U.S. diplomats in their first meeting with the new administration on U.S. soil. Tough words between adversaries are to be expected, but these two big, powerful adversaries have no regard, no esteem, and no respect for the people who lead this country, in part because those people dont seem to respect themselves or the country they lead.

While the liberals in the media and other D.C. establishments arent concerned about it at all, few things express the weakness of the current ruling regime like the fact that the U.S. Capitol is still surrounded by troops, months after a riot that erupted over widespread concerns concerns that those who control the discourse in this country are not allowing to be expressed publicly about the integrity of a U.S. election conducted mostly by mail-in ballots. The United States would be using that as leverage against any adversary if it were happening in their country.

Whats more, it leaves genuine issues of national interest abandoned. Blinken punts on punishing China for coronavirus outbreak, read the headline after an interview this weekend. China hid the origin story and deceived the rest of the world about the attributes of the deadly virus that they unleashed upon the world. Viruses can arise anywhere, but Chinas behavior and lack of transparency was reprehensible and a country that cared about its dead and the carnage this outbreak caused would demand some accountability.

Then, unfortunately, Biden stumbled up the stairs to Air Force One. Three times. Anyone can fall, even three times, but the White House response to the repeated stumbles was not great. They blamed the falls on the single-digit wind speeds in D.C. that day. Our world leader gets knocked over by slight gusts, is not the message you want to send the day after top diplomats are dressed down by our chief adversary.

Whats more, Biden had gone out of his way to mock President Trump for walking gingerly down a slippery ramp last year. Look at how he steps, and look at how I step. Watch how I run up ramps and he stumbles down ramps. OK. Come on! the 78-year-old Biden said.

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Biden's Weakness On The World Stage Is Dangerous - The Federalist

The New York Times on Monday characterized former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as a partisan combatant who is flouting protocol that former secretaries remain quiet after their exit from public service.

Out of office for more than two months, Mr. Pompeo has not stopped punching, the Times wrote. In a series of speeches, interviews and Twitter posts, he is emerging as the most outspoken critic of President Biden among former top Trump officials. And he is ignoring, much as he did in office, the custom that current and former secretaries of state avoid the appearance of political partisanship.

The criticism glossed over the fact that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who served under President Barack Obamas tenure from 2009 to 2013, later went on to become the Democratic presidential nominee just three years after leaving the State Department. Obamas next secretary of state, former Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, remained a critic of Republicans throughout the Trump years and re-entered the White House under President Joe Biden as the climate czar.

While the Times acknowledged the political presence of Clinton and Kerry in their post-diplomatic careers, the paper de-emphasized their frequent criticisms and presented their partisanship as mere pushback from Pompeos allies.

Mr. Pompeos political strategist did not respond to messages seeking comment or an interview, but people close to Mr. Pompeo said Democratic secretaries of state before him, including John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, were openly critical of President Donald J. Trump, the paper wrote. But Mr. Kerry largely held his tongue for the first months of the Trump presidency, growing more openly critical if less relentlessly so after Mr. Trump announced in June 2017 that the United States would pull out of the Paris climate agreement.

On Clinton, the Times merely wrote, By the time Mr. Trump took office earlier that year, Mrs. Clinton, his election opponent, had long shed any nonpartisan diplomatic veneer.

Clinton had announced her bid for president as early as 2015, just two years after leaving the Obama administration. Shortly after she lost in 2016, the former secretary of state went on a book tour where she blamed the Russians and has since continued to spew debunked conspiracies alleging her political opponents are agents of the Kremlin government.

By May 2017, Kerry railed against the new Trump administration in a speech to Harvard graduates telling them they should learn to speak Russian to work in the White House, as a special counsel probe went underway to investigate Trump. Kerry also engaged in shadow diplomacy with Iran in 2018 to undermine the Trump administration and save the Iran deal.

But Pompeo, according to the Times, is breaking protocol to probe presidential ambitions.

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NYT Glosses Over Russia Hoaxer Hillary To Say Pompeo Is Too Partisan - The Federalist

California State Assemblymember Ash Kalra eliminated language in his proposed bill AB 655, the California Law Enforcement Accountability Reform Act, that could have banned conservatives and people of faith from law enforcement. The Democratic lawmaker made the change on Friday.

As reported by The Federalist, the San Jose assemblyman previously sought to define hate speech as advocating or supporting the denial of constitutional rights of, the genocide of, or violence towards, any group of persons based upon race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability.

By this standard, organizations such as the California Family Council, Pacific Justice Institute, and SacramentoPeace Officers Association said the measure would classify a whole swath of Americans as hateful for dissenting from the left on views such as abortion, marriage, or gender ideology.

Under the guise of addressing police gangs, the bill at the same time launches an inexplicable, unwarranted, and unprecedented attack on peaceable, conscientious officers who happen to hold conservative political and religious views, said Pacific Justice Institute Senior Staff Attorney Matthew McReynolds a few weeks ago. Indeed, this is one of the most undisguised and appalling attempts we have ever seen, in more than 20 years of monitoring such legislation, on the freedom of association and freedom to choose minority viewpoints.

The definitions of a hate group in particular are so broad that it would encompass all sorts of groups that nobody would say would actually constitute some sort of a problematic hate group, argued David Levine, a constitutional law professor at the University of California.

The same day The Federalist published an outline of how the measure could effect Christians and conservatives, Kalra doubled-down on the proposed bill in an interview with an NBC News affiliate.You have a constitutional right to have racist and bigoted views. You dont have a constitutional right to be a police officer, Kalra said, clearly insinuating his arbitrary definition of racism ought to determine who can protect and serve communities.

I think that the end goal is the same, is to try and root out that kind activity and nobody wants to get rid of people who shouldnt be cops more than agencies and more than good cops, said Shaun Rundle of The California Peace Officers Association. But there has to be a right way to do it and make sure that the language is clear. And I think that the bill, 655, isnt quite as clear as it could be.

Now that Kalras legislation has garnered national attention, he appears to be changing course. Speaking to KPIX CBS News on Friday, the San Jose assemblymember said, We have put in amendments to remove the specificity regarding denial of constitutional rights. Because, you do have the First Amendment right to be part of groups that may differ in opinion.

Nevertheless, Kalra still has not adequately addressed the persisting ambiguity of the claim that participation in hate group activities, or public expressions of hate, as specified, and as those terms are defined would disqualify a person from employment. The ultimate question remains. What will be defined as a hate group in the far-left stronghold?

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California Democrat Changes Bill That Would Have Prohibited Christians, Conservatives From Serving In Law Enforcement - The Federalist