Generational hypocrisy

By Steve Woodward

The Left rejects the United States of America as founded.

It would confiscate and ban firearms owned by law abiding citizens. But it does not reject the use of knives, bricks, rocks, flames fueled by chemical agents and spray paint in the hands of lawless citizens.

It is calling for police departments to be defunded by state governments. But it resists calls to defund Planned Parenthood abortion on demand, which annually culls the black population by the tens of thousands.

The Left is fine with killing and wounding law enforcement officers. The Left is unmoved by weekly deaths of young black and Hispanic men who are murdered openly, on the streets, by fellow young black and Hispanic men. The Left ignores white people who are improperly detained by law enforcement, white and black, and, sometimes, killed, deliberately or unintentionally.

The Left rejects school choice for children of impoverished black families, preferring they attend underperforming public schools, from which they are likely to drop out.

The Left decries “systemic racism” in 2020. Before that, it was 1964. 1968. 1992. 2008. 2014. Black Lives Matter. But they only matter, apparently, when a moment in time says they matter. The rest of the time, black lives are shackled by the soft tyranny of low expectations and social justice programs imposed on those lives by, guess who? The Left.

Few civil rights warriors possess stronger truth radar than North Carolina native Clarence Henderson. In 1960, he and other young black men sat down at a white-only lunch counter in Greensboro. They changed the world. Nothing was set on fire. Nobody died. They sat down. Before the end of the decade federal legislation passed to begin the slow unraveling of segregation. The Left is unimpressed. Why did it not happen in the 1600s when slaves arrived on the shores of a future land mass called America? Why did it take so long? Ask Democrats, who defended slavery in the 1860s, and formed the Ku Klux Klan around the same time to oppose Republican Reconstruction-era policies.

“As someone who made an impact during the (’60s) Civil Rights era, I know that strong, peaceful protests can make a difference,” writes Henderson. “We never damaged property or encouraged any type of riotous actions.”

The men who are complicit in the alleged murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis will remain, perhaps forever, a mystery to a majority of Americans because we go about our lives without a trace of contempt toward “people of color”. We worship together. We work together. We volunteer together. What is not mysterious is why one man’s senseless death has sparked violence, property destruction and orchestrated outrage which our streets have not see in more than a half century.

One, it is an election year and the Left despises President Donald Trump. So there is a strong exploitation motive. Two, widespread riots, mostly violent not mostly peaceful, carried out by Antifa and other global threats to civilization, conveniently divert attention from generational black poverty, lawlessness and unemployment.

Observe where the deepest unrest lies. In cities controlled by Democrats and the Left for decades. The worst kind of racism is subtle, and the Left owns it. A friend from college days who has devoted 20+ years serving Los Angeles homeless through a major organization should be angry at the neglect of California’s Democrat establishment which today finds areas overrun by homeless. But instead he laments in an email to donors “decades of generations being denied their basic rights, access to quality education, equal pay and opportunity.” But no mention of Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, Jerry Brown or other long entrenched Democrats who have been quite content to let the crisis escalate knowing they’d be re-elected for life.

Where are we two weeks into this? The Left is calling for what President Barack Obama promised 12 years ago as the nation’s first president of color, a transformational change. It did not happen under our black president and his black Attorney General, Eric Holder. How will it happen now? Perhaps if we just allow property destruction to go on long enough. On our side of the “aisle”, pathetically, there is pandering. Hollow, boilerplate outrage.

A Republican N.C. congressman who I choose not to embarrass calls for “important and needed conversations regarding race and equality” without saying who is doing the talking. He says we should “learn from one another” and “bridge the divides”. And, the worst cliche of all: “Let’s get to work.”

Here’s an idea. Let’s denounce the Left for cheering our country toward anarchy. Let’s engage more National Guard and U.S. military in the streets to restore order. And let’s stop accepting false narratives. Let’s promote facts and reality in 21st century America.

Writes Hans Bader, a civil rights attorney, in a recent post to CNSNews.com: “Resist calls from prominent Democrats to ‘defund the police.’ Police save many lives in the black community by arresting dangerous people. Black people are much more likely to be killed by an ordinary criminal than by a police officer. Peter Kirsanow, a black civil-rights commissioner, says that in 2015, ‘a cop was 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male was likely to be killed by a cop’.”

In other words, let’s defund the Left, defund Antifa and heavily fund leaders like Clarence Henderson who are not invested in false narratives.

 

 

 

A mentor’s story

By Steve Woodward

We spent a few hours together on weekends for a span of nine months. He was a high school teenager. I was assigned through a local agency to be his mentor. We both were novices — at being mentored and mentoring.

Let’s call him Buddy. Buddy was an atypical “troubled youth”. He was not always in trouble, or always pushing limits, or always back talking. He was, however, mostly neglected like so many teens denied an upbringing within a stable family. When I was introduced to Buddy he was living with an adult sister, who is married and has a child of her own. The arrangement came about after Buddy was involved in a domestic dispute in another state, which left him estranged from his mother and charged with several offenses as a juvenile.

I never pressed his sister for details. She often repeated that he was a good kid who just ended up in a bad situation.

His father lived hundreds of miles to the south. Buddy rarely spoke about him. Nonetheless, Buddy traveled to visit Dad for a period of time during the mentorship. He had very little to say about the visit when he returned. Buddy had very little to say about anything. He was painfully quiet, acutely shy and, I was told, uneasy around other kids in his high school. In fact, Buddy kept a distance from kids in the school he was attending when I first came onto the scene. It was a school for kids with behavioral issues. The deal was that Buddy would be eligible to transfer to a “normal” public high school if he stayed out of trouble. He was wise enough to know that trouble was one encounter away. So he told me he stayed clear of other kids, went to his sister’s house right after school and spent a lot of time alone in his room. He played video games, listened to music and lifted weights. I did my best detective work to get that much detail out of him.

Eventually, Buddy was transferred. That was progress. I had the impression he was proud of himself. A rye smile was the only confirmation of that. If I could get a smile out of him now and then that, too, was progress. When we first began our Saturday or Sunday interactions, I would try to chat him up. I was lucky to receive a head nod, or “yes” or “no” for my efforts. Finally, I figured out that if I endured long periods of silence Buddy eventually would mumble a question. “Ever been fishin’?” “Do you like motorcycles?” “Do you play video games?”

As time passed, there was no doubt that he enjoyed our get-togethers. His sister always delivered Buddy right on time, and off we’d go. He had a typical teenager appetite for junk food, sweet tea and jumbo soft drinks. He was the most meticulous eater I’ve ever seen, and not one to chit-chat over a meal. During our occasional sit-down meals, Buddy typically ordered chicken and french fries. He would eat all of the fries, one by one, before moving on to the chicken. We made a deal that he would try one new menu item. Eventually, he ate seafood. A dramatic breakthrough.

My mentor role was focused on spending time with Buddy away from school, so I was tasked with finding new things for us to do or see. We visited Fort Bragg, an indoor skydiving facility in Raeford (where Buddy was a willing participant), and a car show in Charlotte at the speedway. We attended a Panthers football game one sunny Sunday, and a Hurricanes hockey game in Raleigh. We went fishing, bike riding around Reservoir Park, and hung out during a fall arts, crafts and food festival. Buddy was doing all of the things I never did as the father of a daughter with a horse.

I never was able to come close to peeling away his emotional shell to understand what was going on inside of his head. I never wanted Buddy to feel he was being interrogated. Occasionally, he would giggle convulsively while we were together. I wondered if this was an expression of joy, or an expression of what he thought about his gray haired, salad eating, sparkling water sipping mentor. Maybe he thought of me as a big dork. No telling. Nonetheless, when our time together came to an end — his charges were dropped and he was green lighted to leave town and move in with his Dad — Buddy strained to look me in the eye as he stammered, “I’m gonna miss you, man.”

I miss Buddy, too. My experience tells me that Americans might consider spending more time mentoring and encouraging neglected teens and less time knee-jerk reacting to gun and other violence perpetrated by emotionally damaged young men. Just think how many Buddys are out there today with no one to talk to who cares about them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Media high on Hogg

By Dalton Clodfelter

I grieve with the students of Santa Fe, Texas, and Parkland, Florida. These tragedies are becoming all too familiar across America because municipalities and school boards have insisted school campuses remain gun-free zones and, thus, vulnerable to mentally ill attackers.

David Hogg, a Parkland student and anti-gun activist, has become the “face” of this tragedy, particularly at his new home away from home, CNN. And the liberal media has jumped on his bandwagon — supporting his profanity-laced tirades with countless articles and appearances on news/talk shows. The media has given Hogg a voice to support its own liberal narrative. 

Hogg is not my voice or that of hundreds of other young people who aren’t given a media platform. And, he is certainly not the voice of my generation. 

I am a proud member of the NRA; a young Christian Conservative who supports our Constitution, and isn’t afraid of the mob mentality that is the liberal culture on many high school campuses today. I’m David Hogg’s worst nightmare. 

Hogg has been praised by the left as a virtuous advocate for peace. He has now entered into a contract along with his sister to publish a book titled, “#NeverAgain”, which will pursue a theme that if you are pro-gun then you must be pro-killing children. Expect to find this book a short time from now on the discount tables at Costco and Walmart. 

Here, Mr. Hogg, are some facts. Statistics maintained by data.cityofchicago.org show that, in 2017, more than 600 people were killed by illegal use of a firearm even though Chicago is among many large cities with stringent gun laws. 

The mainstream media crow about declines in urban murder rates, overlooking that outlaws are still randomly killing innocents on the streets. Are the families of the 5,738 victims of homicide in the nation’s 50 biggest cities in 2017 consoled by the fact that 2.3% more were killed in 2016? Where is the outrage centered on the slaughter of 26 law enforcement officials so far in 2018?

Remember when the “Black Lives Matter” movement was emerging and a Maryland lawmaker was roundly shouted down for retorting that “all lives matter”. That same illogic seems to to pervade the “gun control” crowd. The deaths of high school kids gunned down by mentally unstable fellow students are unthinkable, but the drug lords and gang members in cities killing kids are just statistical anomalies.

Washington, D.C., also was known for its climbing homicide rate and strict gun ban policy enacted in 1976, with the annual homicide rate rising from 188 to 364. Of course, after politicians eliminated the gun ban, there was a decrease in homicides. 

According to the University of Chicago’s gun crime stats, from 1977 to 1999, the right-to-carry laws drastically decreased the frequency and devastation of mass public shootings, and where shootings did occur they were in areas of the state that still did not permit concealed handguns.

The liberal media and its Hogg puppets focus much of their venom on the National Rifle Association. Some have labeled the NRA a “terrorist organization”. Yet, the NRA, more than any other organization, has labored to address the core issue tied to school shootings — preparing and protecting schools from massacres. Parents and school administrators are doing the kids in their communities a disservice if they are not visiting the the NRA’s web site and learning about the National School Shield program.

Hogg’s book will be nothing more than another attack on our 2nd Amendment rights, just like his speeches, interviews and Twitter posts. David Hogg is the epitome of today’s social justice warrior the liberal media loves and promotes. Unfortunately, his 15 minutes will not soon be up.

Dalton Clodfelter is a high school senior and founder of the web site rightwingworld.com, which strives to enable young people to break free from the mob mentality and collectivist movement on school campuses today.

 

 

Bring it on

President George W. Bush was roundly criticized for uttering his taunt of “bring it on” in articulating a strategy for fighting back against radical Islamic terrorism. President Donald Trump essentially takes the same view on a number of issues, most recently China and illegal trade imbalances. America First means being ready to fight, never nurturing the status quo.

Despite what has been and will be accomplished by a President and an administration rarely fazed by confrontation, we are increasingly hearing the drumbeat of Republican gloom as the 2018 mid-term election season approaches. The Democrats are energized, we’re told, by pundits and politicians alike.

Walker Warns of Dem Wave in Wisconsin after Liberal Wins State Judicial Race, read a headline at TheHill.com, citing a tweet by Republican Gov. Scott Walker:

“Tonight’s results show we are at risk of a #BlueWave in WI. The Far Left is driven by anger & hatred — we must counter it with optimism & organization.”

A similar headline appears on the The Daily Beast website, Mitch McConnell Frets on Midterms: ‘The Wind is Going to Be in Our Face’. “This is going to be a challenging election year,” McConnell said.

Another Daily Beat headline shouts, New Analysis Finds More Republicans at Risk in Midterms.

“Democrats are widening their targets and a nonpartisan analysis shows that more GOP incumbents might be at risk.”

There is plenty of historical data to back Democrat optimism about a blue tsunami sweeping them into control of the U.S. House or Senate (the latter, a longer shot). But, as with healthy returns on investments, the past does not assure what will happen in the future.

This much we know. The present looks pretty solid for Republicans. In North Carolina the economy is growing, while unemployment is shrinking. The state ranked in the top 10 among best places for wage growth in 2017 (3.8%), tied at ninth with Georgia, according to Business Insider. Nationally, President Trump’s favorable rating (51% reports Rasmussen) has surpassed Barack Obama’s at the same stage of their presidencies. It is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that Republicans will struggle in states Trump carried in 2016 because of dissatisfaction with him since he took office, especially in the aftermath of last year’s tax cuts and a renewed pledge to secure the Southern border.

Also not to be overlooked in the face of inner-party fear mongering is the raw reality of what it is Democrats are actually for. The young co-founder of Great America Era, commentator and prolific tweeter Jack Murphy, neatly summarized just how far to the left the Dems are shifting as evidenced by themes on which they plan to win:

“Free college. High taxes. Open borders. Getting rid of ICE. Taking the guns. Unlimited welfare. Single-payer healthcare.”

In another tweet, Murphy brilliantly itemizes the Democrats’ glorious scandals and track records during the Obama era, the 2016 election and here and now in the Age of Trump:

“Fast & Furious (under Obama AG Eric Holder). FISA abuse. Oakland’s mayor (warning illegals about ICE raids). A failing Veterans’ Administration. IRS abuse. Benghazi. Hillary emails. Uranium One. NSA spying. Bowe Bergdahl.”

He might have added sanctuary cities and the bogus Mueller investigation, which can’t find a sliver of Russian collusion evidence.

We remind you that this is the RESOLVE blog. It is named for an acronym: Republicans for Security, Opportunity, Liberty and Victory that Endures. If we remember what we stand for, rally our voters to grasp the pivotal importance of the 2018 midterm elections, and hammer home the absurdity of Democrats running on a Hate Trump platform, it will indeed be a blue November — for them.

Dem delusion ‘revealed’

A reader of this blog kindly drew our attention to a content-rich web site, Constitution.com, operated by Atlanta-based editor Onan Coca, who oversees multiple digital platforms covering politics. His sites draw contributions from an extensive roster of writers and scholars.

One of Coca’s latest posts addresses that which is top of mind for both political parties, but especially Republicans — the 2018 midterm elections. His piece reviews all of the historical reasons why Republicans might/should lose majorities in the House and Senate. He points to the added Trump factor, which refers to fierce opposition to the President within his own party, along with the reality that “the GOP is incredibly unpopular” when the public is surveyed.

Finally, Republicans must contend with an increasingly biased (and corrupt) mainstream media, which has become an unapologetic appendage of the Democrat party in the age of Trump.

The grim tone of the dispatch, however, is presented under the sarcasm-laden headline, Secret Democrat Strategy for 2018 Discovered. The so-called “strategy”, Coca unveils, is rife with the ability to do widespread damage to the Dem’s 2018 prospects. In other words, Republicans must remain vigilant and determined to get out the vote, but should do so with less wrist wringing. Here’s why:

Just as the Republicans spent much of the last 25+ years shooting themselves in the foot and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, the Democrats seem poised to be their own worst enemies come November 2018.

  • Gun “control”. Almost always a losing prospect for Democrats, Coca writes, and while many Americans may be unhappy in the wake of the Douglas High School shooting (in Parkland, Fla.), they’ve not necessarily shown any appetite for the Democrats extreme gun control proposals.
  • The Democrats just released their $1 TRILLION TAX HIKE plan that they hope America will support in November. It’s almost as if the Democrats think Americans hate it when the economy is doing well.
  • Illegal immigration policy. Democrats are moving away from any pretense of desiring to stem the tide of illegal immigration. In fact, their new united front, and with a sense of urgency, is centered around the abolishment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Democrat rock star, Sen. Kamala Harris (CA), was quickly rebutted across social media for merely suggesting that ICE plays an important role.

Democrats, perhaps more impacted than anyone imagined by Trump Delusion Syndrome, are planning to unleash a “blue wave” in 2018 thusly:

Gun Control, Tax Hikes, abolishing ICE and opening our borders. I cannot imagine a more disastrous platform to run a campaign on, but I’m not a Democrat, so I have a difficult time thinking of terrible ideas. It honestly seems as if the Democrats are trying their best to lose the 2018 midterm election, but that can’t be right. Can it?