Are Americans Becoming Sovietized?

 By Victor Davis Hanson | Real Clear Politics

What ultimately ended the nihilist Soviet system?

Was it not that Russians finally tired of the Kremlin's lies and hypocrisies that permeated every facet of their falsified lives?

Here are 10 symptoms of Sovietism. Ask yourself whether we are headed down this same road to perdition.

1. There was no escape from ideological indoctrination -- anywhere. A job in the bureaucracy or a military assignment hinged not so much on merit, expertise or past achievement. What mattered was loud enthusiasm for the Soviet system.

Wokeness is becoming our new Soviet-like state religion. Careerists assert that America was always and still is a systemically racist country, without ever producing proof or a sustained argument.

2. The Soviets fused their press with the government. Pravda, or "Truth," was the official megaphone of state-sanctioned lies. Journalists simply regurgitated the talking points of their Communist Party partners.

In 2017, a Harvard study found that over 90% of the major TV news networks' coverage of the Trump administration's first 100 days was negative.

3. The Soviet surveillance state enlisted apparatchiks and lackeys to ferret out ideological dissidents.

Recently, we learned that the Department of Defense is reviewing its rosters to spot extremist sentiments. The U.S. Postal Service recently admitted it uses tracking programs to monitor the social media postings of Americans.

CNN recently alleged that the Biden administration's Department of Homeland Security is considering partnering with private surveillance firms to get around government prohibitions on scrutinizing Americans' online activity.

4. The Soviet educational system sought not to enlighten but to indoctrinate young minds in proper government-approved thought.

Currently, cash-strapped universities nationwide are hiring thousands of diversity, equity and inclusion staffers and administrators. Their chief task is to scan the admissions, hiring, curriculum and administration at universities. Like good commissars, our diversity czars oversee compliance with the official narrative that a flawed America must confess, apologize for and renounce its evil foundations.

5. The Soviet Union was run by a pampered elite, exempt from the ramifications of their own radical ideologies.

Now, woke Silicon Valley billionaires talk socialistically but live royally. Coke and Delta Airlines CEOs who hector Americans about their illiberality make millions of dollars a year.

What unites current woke activists such as Oprah Winfrey, LeBron James Mark Zuckerberg and the Obamas are their huge estates and their multimillion-dollar wealth. Just as the select few of the old Soviet nomenklatura had their Black Sea dachas, America's loudest top-down revolutionaries prefer living in Martha's Vineyard, Beverly Hills, Montecito and Malibu.

6. The Soviets mastered Trotskyization, or the rewriting and airbrushing away of history to fabricate present reality.

Are Americans any different when they indulge in a frenzy of name-changing, statue-toppling, monument-defacing, book-banning and cancel-culturing?

7. The Soviets created a climate of fear and rewarded stool pigeons for rooting out all potential enemies of the people.

Since when did Americans encourage co-workers to turn in others for an ill-considered word in a private conversation? Why do thousands now scour the internet to find any past incorrect expression of a rival? Why are there now new thought criminals supposedly guilty of climate racism, immigration racism or vaccination racism?

8. Soviet prosecutors and courts were weaponized according to ideology.

In America, where and for what reason you riot determines whether you face any legal consequences. Politically correct sanctuary cities defy the law with impunity. Jury members are terrified of being doxxed and hunted down for an incorrect verdict. The CIA and FBI are becoming as ideological as the old KGB.

9. The Soviets doled out prizes on the basis of correct Soviet thought.

In modern America, the Pulitzer Prizes and the Emmys, Grammys, Tonys and Oscars don't necessarily reflect the year's best work, but often the most politically correct work from the most woke.

10. The Soviets offered no apologies for extinguishing freedom. Instead, they boasted that they were advocates for equity, champions of the underclass, enemies of privilege -- and therefore could terminate anyone or anything they pleased.

Our wokists are similarly defending their thought-control efforts, forced re-education sessions, scripted confessionals, mandatory apologies and cancel culture on the pretense that we need long-overdue "fundamental transformation."

So if they destroy people in the name of equity, their nihilism is justified.

_______________

Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The Case for Trump. You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.

 https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/05/06/are_americans_becoming_sovietized_145713.html 

Democrats Are Killing the American Dream

 By Daniel Henninger | Wall Street Journal

President Biden signs an executive order in the Oval Office, Feb. 2. - PHOTO: EVAN VUCCI/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Joe Biden’s American Families Plan replaces individual striving with middle class entitlements.

President Biden’s American Families Act makes one political reality officially clear: The Democratic Party has given up on the American dream.

The Biden proposals—coming as they do with the Democratic progressives’ rise to power—present the American people with a once-in-a-lifetime decision about what kind of country they want to live in for the next half-century.

This isn’t about the culture wars or standard Keynesian stimulus spending. The Biden plan is about public policies that will redesign American society.

The American Families Plan and other recent Democratic legislation implicitly pose several important questions. Is the traditional American idea of upward mobility still important? If so, how should upward mobility happen—through Washington or individual effort? Indeed, should the habit of individual striving give way to a presumably more important goal of nationalized paternalism?

It is no surprise that a liberalism that embraced the “1619 Project’s” rewriting of the U.S.’s founding history would not stop there and try now, despite its almost invisible congressional majority, to displace the country’s originating idea of individual opportunity with a broad birth-to-death entitlement state.

This transition began in March, when Democrats enacted a federal unemployment-insurance bonus of $300. That bonus, pushing benefits past market wage rates, indisputably is causing many to shun previously held jobs, which surely will do long-term damage to the notion of working to get ahead.

Why bother? Instead, hold out for all this new state-subsidized compensation that reduces the incentive or need to work—the same skip-work choice public-school teachers across the country have made the past year.

Mr. Biden’s American Families Plan proposes four significant new federal entitlements: two years of free, universal prekindergarten; virtually free child care for all; a paid family and medical leave program; and two years of community college.

Nowhere will you find a Democrat calling these proposals what they are—entitlements like Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. Rejecting that criticism at his news conference Wednesday, Mr. Biden said all his spending will “create” jobs and growth.

His progressive colleagues don’t justify spending as optimism about the American system or its private economy. For years, the word favored by progressive analysts to describe the U.S. economy has been “stagnation.”

Though this argument is disputable, they say private-sector wage growth in the U.S. has been stagnant since the 1970s, isn’t likely to improve and that middle-class survival isn’t possible without replacement income in the form of federal social-welfare programs. Some conservatives agree but purport not to want Mr. Biden’s entitlements.

At his news conference, Mr. Biden made the manifestly false claim (also falsely citing the Heritage Foundation in support) that the Trump administration’s policies produced minimal economic benefit. In fact, before the onset of the pandemic last year, median household income in 2019 grew 6.8%, with higher increases among blacks, Hispanics, Asians and women. Unemployment for these classes hit historic lows. Possibly Mr. Biden was distracted with something else then and never heard about these gains.

Americans need to understand the realities of what Mr. Biden is offering them. Bernie Sanders wanted “Medicare for all,” but that applied only to healthcare. Mr. Biden’s reach goes beyond even Bernie, proposing what will become Medicaid for everything.

Medicaid is minimalist, bare-bones healthcare for the poor. Because of its scale and cost, it is necessarily lowest-common-denominator healthcare. When Joe Biden and the progressive Democratic Party demand “equity” everywhere, they are proposing a lowest-common-denominator society.

The reality of the new Biden entitlement is that costs will be contained, even nominally, only by defaulting over time to Medicaid-quality child care and universal pre-K.

But what if the progressive analysis is correct—that most Americans are ready to accept new middle-class entitlements as a substitute for centuries of individual striving?

Mr. Biden himself made this proposition clear in an interview Monday on the “Today” show when he said that “after 400 years,” black Americans remain “far behind the eight ball in terms of education, health, in terms of opportunity.”

If the American Families Plan passes, we’ll all be behind the same federal dependency eight-ball.

Generations of similar welfare compensation eroded the American dream for many black Americans by disincentivizing upward mobility. Hundreds of thousand still live in public-housing units built for them in the mid-1960s. The unions whose teachers refuse to return to inner-city schools will run child care.

The Biden Democrats not only don’t apologize for this malgovernance, they want to spread it to the nonpoor.

If Republicans let the Biden entitlements become law this year, they will indeed become tax collectors for the permanent welfare state, with payroll-tax increases or a national value-added tax becoming inevitable. The current Biden entitlement pay-fors—higher taxes on corporations and the 1%—are obviously preposterous as long-term support.

And permanently unanswered will be whether American parents ever actually concluded that traditional paths upward are out of reach for them, their children and grandchildren.

Come to think of it, that turns out to be the true big steal in the 2020 election: Joe Biden never asked voters if they wanted to replace the American dream. He’s doing it anyway.

Write henninger@wsj.com.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-are-killing-the-american-dream-11620251334?mod=trending_now_opn_1

MODELS ARE NOT EVIDENCE

By  JOHN HINDERAKER | POWERLINE

The point is so elementary that it should not be necessary to state: a model is not evidence. It is a theory expressed in arithmetic terms. A theory is either validated or disproved by observation. A model that is contradicted by experience is simply wrong, and is useless. History is littered with theories that sounded plausible at the time, but were invalidated by experience.

Which brings us to covid-19. A number of modelers around the world, particularly in the U.K. and the U.S.A., tried to predict the spread and impact of the virus under various conditions. Those models–certainly the ones that were most prominently publicized–turned out to be not just wrong, but grotesquely wrong. That is why we haven’t heard much about them lately.

Here in Minnesota, home-grown models #1, #2 and #3 were rolled out, hyped, and then shelved in short order as each turned out to be wildly off the mark. Though having served, allegedly, as the principal basis for policy decisions that destroyed thousands of small businesses and blighted the lives of many thousands of children, they have been quietly forgotten as an embarrassment.

In Great Britain, models apparently have retained some currency, despite being always wrong. The Telegraph brings us up to date: “How the UK’s Covid reopening has proved Imperial’s pessimistic modelling wrong.”

Asked on BBC Radio Four’s Today Programme about the latest data showing Britain is enjoying an eight-month low in coronavirus deaths and infections, Professor Neil Ferguson said on Tuesday: “The data is very encouraging, and very much in line with what we expected.”

This is the guy who predicted millions of Wuhan deaths but nevertheless violated his own guidelines to arrange a liaison with his illicit mistress.

As it was on the radio it was impossible to tell whether this was said with a straight face, but we must assume it was.

It is a wonder that nobody choked on their morning toast, for if Imperial modelling has stood for anything in this crisis, it is relentless pessimism. Plummeting figures were certainly not predicted by its researchers.

The difference this time is that the Government has pressed ahead with reopening despite the doom-mongering, and so has proven the models wrong.

Details at the link. Ferguson and his Imperial model were wrong, wildly wrong, about everything.

Under the February modelling which informed the roadmap, hospitalisations should be starting to tick up around now, but there is no evidence of that happening, with cases down 11 per cent in the past week.

On Tuesday, Prof Ferguson admitted that the link between infections and deaths had now been broken, and that up to 90 per cent of people who would have ordinarily ended up in hospital after contracting Covid would no longer be admitted.

Hey, off by a factor of 90%? That isn’t bad for a liberal.

Ferguson’s Imperial model grossly overestimated the impact of re-opening Britain’s schools, an empirical fact that would be important for the U.S. if corrupt teachers’ unions did not run public education in this country. Then there is the model’s inept projections of the impact of vaccinations:

Vaccine efficacy was badly underestimated, too. In the February modelling, one dose of AstraZeneca was assumed to protect between 56 and 70 per cent of people from hospitalisation and death. In reality, it was up to 94 per cent.

In fact, the only thing that Imperial modelling has going for it, was it was slightly more optimistic than the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, which predicted an even more devastating third wave.

Well, there’s that. It is curious, but the one thing that all the models I know of had in common is that they grossly overestimated the health consequences of the Wuhan virus under various conditions. They thus served as the basis for hysterical government actions that limited personal freedom to an unprecedented degree, but that turned out to do no good at all–a fact that no model predicted, and about which not a single government entity, seemingly, is embarrassed.

Coincidence? I don’t think so. If there is a silver lining to the covid fiasco, it could be increased public skepticism of models and other theories that lack empirical support. But for such skepticism to take root would likely require honest news reporting, so don’t hold your breath.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/05/models-are-not-evidence.php

The Armed Citizen®

By NRA WOMEN STAFF

A woman fought back against her abuser of six months, shooting him in self-defense. Witnesses at the scene corroborated the abuse, and police confirmed they had physical evidence of the assault. Upon his release from the hospital, detectives arrested the man, charging him with varying degrees of domestic abuse, sexual battery, child endangerment and attempted second-degree murder. The suspect was held without bond. The shooting was considered to be in self-defense. (katc.com, Crowley, La., 2/19/21)

A man attempted to rob a 23-year-old woman at a gas station in Miami around 7 a.m. However, it turns out he chose the wrong woman, because the would-be-victim fought back with her legal CCW handgun, shooting the thug multiple times before he could harm her. (Local10.com, Miami, Fla., 2/13/21)

https://www.nrawomen.com/content/the-armed-citizen-april-30-2021/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=insider&utm_campaign=0521

FBI Caught Snooping Through NSA Records to Look for ‘Racially Motivated Violent Extremists’

BY ROBERT SPENCER | P J Media

AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh

The Daily Beast reported last week that “The FBI, without any court order, sifted through the National Security Agency’s massive troves of foreign communications for information on American “racially motivated violent extremists,” even though the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court warned the FBI in 2018 that its warrant-free queries” were unconstitutional. The first question that springs to mind in connection with this is: to whom can we turn when those who are supposed to be protecting us have been thoroughly corrupted and weaponized against the American people? And the second question is: Why are “racially motivated violent extremists” so hard to find that the FBI has to do an illegal deep dive into NSA material to find them?

The FBI is trying to validate the narrative that Old Joe Biden’s handlers had him enunciate (which he did, remarkably, without getting tongue-tied or saying something incoherent) during his message to Congress. “’As I stand here tonight,” Biden intoned Wednesday, “just one day shy of the 100th day of my administration. 100 days since I took the oath of office, lifted my hand off our family Bible, and inherited a nation in crisis. The worst pandemic in a century. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”

The idea that the entry of a group of unarmed people into the U.S. Capitol constituted the “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” was not just ridiculous (remember 9/11? Pearl Harbor?); it was insidious. Beyond the silliness and hysteria is an insidious agenda. Biden’s handlers mean to stigmatize, demonize and silence all dissent from their far-left agenda. Wildly exaggerating what happened on January 6, and the concomitant “white supremacist agenda,” is in service of that agenda.

And so the FBI goes fishing in material the NSA obtained without a warrant, trying to validate the left’s claims. And this has been a long time coming: Jana Winter reported in Yahoo News in February that “the U.S. government is acknowledging for the first time that right-wing extremists were responsible for the majority of fatal domestic terrorist attacks last year, according to an internal report circulated by the Department of Homeland Security last week.” But as you might expect, the actual report was long on vague assertions and decidedly short on facts.

Before that, FBI Director Christopher Wray claimed back in September 2017 that “white nationalist” violence was at least as much of a danger to the United States as the Islamic State. But now this claim is being codified as policy. Seth Jones of the Center for Strategic and International Studies states of the new report: “What is a little unusual is that they’ve used terms like ‘right- and left-wing’ in a government document, because the government has generally used other terms. The government in 2020 did try to stay away from ‘right-wing’ terms because they were easily politicized.”

No kidding. And you’ll never guess who is responsible for the fact that this alarming surge in “right-wing” terrorism hasn’t been noted until now, according to Yahoo News: “The report also comes not long after the end of the Trump administration, which was criticized for downplaying right-wing violence. Former President Donald Trump, in particular, frequently referred to the threat from antifa, a loose movement of left-wing activists.” Yes, and we all know how peaceful and cuddly Antifa is.

Making it very clear what the point of this report was, Mike German, whom Yahoo News identifies as a “former FBI agent and now a fellow at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice,” explained: “There is a lot of overlap between white supremacists and far-right militias, and they often work together during the commission of violent acts, like at the attack on the Capitol.”

However, before you sign on to the idea that support for Donald Trump equals support for “insurrection” and the enabling of terrorism, note that, as Yahoo News points out, “the government has released no data on historical activity or the current threat landscape.” Apparently we’re just supposed to take their word for it.

Also conspicuously lacking in this report were definitions of the key terms. What does the government define as “right-wing”? What do they classify as “left-wing”? What do they define as a “terrorist attack”? The Joint Regional Intelligence Center report defines “terrorist incidents” as “violence motivated by political or religious conviction,” but offer no definitions of the other terms.

And now comes the revelation of the FBI’s dumpster-dive at the NSA. It is all part of the effort to portray peaceful, law-abiding Americans who supported President Trump and dissent from the leftist agenda as terrorists and as enablers of terrorism. And one certainty of the regime of Biden’s handlers is that there will be a great deal more of this.

Meanwhile, while our agencies purvey this propaganda, the global jihad proceeds apace.

 ___________

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 21 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest book is Did Muhammad Exist?: An Inquiry into Islam's Obscure Origins―Revised and Expanded Edition. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/robert-spencer/2021/05/03/fbi-goes-hunting-for-racially-motivated-violent-extremists-n1444256?utm_source=pjmedia&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=&bcid=227841a8b1ca836b99e21ea36efa6859&recip=28551147

 

No, Joe -- You are Not a Nice Guy

By Alison Nichols

Image: Gage Skidmore

No, Joe, you are not a nice guy. Despite your need to keep telling us, we know the ugly truth. You are a pretty nasty guy. You are pugilistic, a plagiarist, a documented racist, a race hustler, creepy with woman and children, the "Big Guy" of a crime family, and have thrown a wrecking ball into America.

Your pugilism is epic. How many times have you garnished your weakness with the threat of taking someone behind the gym?  There is a difference between a bully and a tough guy. The truth is you are the archetypal man of the pampered class. If reporters dare to ask uncomfortable or "unfair" questions, you either freak, cop a few alligator tears, or hastily leave the podium. Mostly you hide.

If you are as bright as you think you are, why do you have a history plagued by plagiarism? Was it necessary for you to commit fraud in law school to get by? And who can forget your plagiarizing leaders such as Neil Kinnock? Do you realize that you were stealing his life story? The curious are wondering what was missing in your own life story.  Adding that to your plagiarism of Hubert Humphrey and the Kennedy brothers classifies you as a first-rate charlatan. And stop taking credit for what Trump did to make vaccines available in "Warp Speed." It is his success, not yours.

Your not-so-thinly veiled racism disgusts the most. You have the nerve to smear our underpaid, overworked police force as systemically racist. It is they, Joe, who risk their lives every day for the safety of all Americans. There are a few bad cops, just as there are bad people in all professions-politicians, teachers, physicians, attorneys, and yes, clergy. The police force is not systematically racist. And the backlash from all your anti-cop rhetoric is that retirements are up and recruitment is down. Is that your intention, Joe? Oh, of course, it was the hero of the hard left, Karl Marx, who signaled that a "socialist society has a withering police force."

Your racism goes way back, Joe. During your political career, you praised segregationist George Wallace, opposed school busing in the 1970s because, as you said, it would lead to a "racial jungle," admired and eulogized a former KKK kleagle, voted for  the 1994 crime bill, and praised Barack Obama as the "first mainstream African American who is articulate, and bright and clean." It is a repulsive record, Joe. A racist record.

For a documented racist, your constant race-hustling from the Oval Office is particularly disturbing. Time and time again, your Marxist ideology dictates your efforts to divide Americans to incite ethnic and racial tension. The Jim Crow reference concerning the new Georgia voting laws outstrips human decency. Your Marxist rhetoric is not only a lie but an insult to every Black American. Joe, you are not a nice guy.

Creepy with women and children is an understatement. Who goes around sniffing women's hair and continually invading a woman's space? And what would you say about another older man who tells the story about the hair on his legs turning blond in the sun and then letting kids rub his blond hairy legs? Sick comes to mind. You are not a nice guy.

While the media and intelligence have chosen to protect you from the investigation, it is clear to most that you are the "Big Guy" of the Biden crime family. Your family has an impressive rap sheet. They have had severe scrapes with the law but never pay for their crimes. How come, Joe? And you, what is your role in making your family millions? How often did you monetize the vice presidency? Anyone with an IQ above their body temperature can figure out what is going on.

Your "Trump Derangement Syndrome" compelled you to reverse the effective border policies of the previous administration. As a result of your derangement, there is a humanitarian catastrophe at our southern border. Do you even care about the miserable conditions? It appears not. And your socialist economic policies are egregious and smell like inspissated bile. How long will it take for America to become Venezuela?

No, Joe, you are not a nice guy by any stretch of the imagination. Please stop trying to convince us. Niceness is akin to money and sex. If you have it, there is no need to brag.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/04/no_joe__you_are_not_a_nice_guy.html

Tim Scott Faces Heinous Racist Attacks for Telling the Truth

BY TYLER O'NEIL | P J Media

Screenshot via CNBC Television

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) delivered a powerful response to President Joe Biden’s joint address to Congress on Wednesday. He noted that, despite Biden’s unity rhetoric, “the president and his party are pulling us further apart.” He spoke about his struggles as a black man, but he countered the leftist critical race theory narrative by clearly stating that “America is not a racist country.”

For that, leftist influencers and Democrats branded Scott “Uncle Tim” and accused him of trying to protect “white supremacy.”

“A major strategy of racists, is to incentivize one of it’s [sic] Black victims to act as the crash test dummy for white supremacy. When Uncle Tim Scott says America is not a racist country, he is fully aware he is speaking in bad faith. The purpose is to protect white supremacists,” film producer Tariq Nasheed, who has more than 250,000 followers on Twitter, declared.

Former MSNBC host Touré defended the “Uncle Tim” label — a racist attack suggesting that Tim Scott is an “Uncle Tom,” a traitor to his race.

“What makes Tim Scott an Uncle Tim? He has siblings and they have kids. Duh,” Touré sardonically wrote. Then he got to the real issue: “Also he was on TV denying that America is racist thus aiding and abetting white supremacy.”

Talbert Swan, a Canadian bishop and the president of Greater Springfield NAACP in Massachusetts, delivered perhaps the nastiest attack.

“Uncle Tim Scott has perfected the art of sycophantic bootlicking,” Swan tweeted. “He’s a master step n fetch it artist and cunning white supremacy apologist, who demonstrated his buck dancing skills in front of the entire world.”

Adam Ford, founder of The Babylon Bee, arguably gave the best response to this attack: “As this ‘pastor’ so colorfully illustrates, ‘antiracism’ is nothing more than actual racists discovering a way to shout their racism in civil society without being silenced … because it allows them to accuse anyone who disagrees with them of racism!”

Swan did not shy away from attacking Vice President Kamala Harris when she echoed Scott in saying, “I don’t think America is a racist country.” He did not use the same kind of race-tinged attacks against Harris as he did against Scott, however.

“This comment is as asinine as Uncle Tim Scott’s,” Swan responded. “Stop giving white supremacy cover.”

While Swan did attack Harris for her truthful admission, he also stepped up to defend her when Meghan McCain referred to her as “Kamala.”

“It’s Madam Vice President, not Kamala, you disrespectful shrew,” he jabbed at McCain. After McCain praised Tim Scott, Swan again attacked the senator as “Uncle Tim” tweeting, “Uncle Tim Scott is a sycophantic white supremacy apologist.”

By attacking Scott as an “Uncle Tim,” these left-leaning commentators proved the senator’s point.

“Nowhere do we need common ground more desperately than in our discussions of race,” Scott said in his speech. “I have experienced the pain of discrimination. I know what it feels like to be pulled over for no reason. To be followed around a store while I’m shopping.”

Yet he also described having ” experienced a different kind of intolerance. I get called ‘Uncle Tom’ and the N-word — by ‘progressives’! By liberals! Just last week, a national newspaper suggested my family’s poverty was actually privilege… because a relative owned land generations before my time.”

Yet Scott also condemned the divisive racialist politics of critical race theory that the Democratic Party has championed.

“A hundred years ago, kids in classrooms were taught the color of their skin was their most important characteristic — and if they looked a certain way, they were inferior. Today, kids again are being taught that the color of their skin defines them — and if they look a certain way, they’re an oppressor,” he lamented.

“From colleges to corporations to our culture, people are making money and gaining power by pretending we haven’t made any progress. By doubling down on the divisions we’ve worked so hard to heal. You know this stuff is wrong,” Scott said.

Then he delivered the message that so triggered the leftists: “Hear me clearly: America is not a racist country. It’s backwards to fight discrimination with different discrimination. And it’s wrong to try to use our painful past to dishonestly shut down debates in the present.”

Yet Scott does not oppose police reform. Elsewhere in the speech, he said, “Believe me, I know our healing is not finished. In 2015, after the shooting of Walter Scott, I wrote a bill to fund body cameras. Last year, after the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, I built an even bigger police reform proposal.”

“But my Democratic colleagues blocked it! I extended an olive branch. I offered them amendments. But Democrats used the filibuster to block the debate from even happening,” Scott recalled. “My friends across the aisle seemed to want the issue… more than they wanted a solution.”

On issue after issue — from COVID-19 relief to the infrastructure bill to police reform — Democrats in Congress and the Biden administration have refused to work with Republicans to craft a bipartisan clean piece of legislation that addresses the issue without including massive Democratic handouts. Each time, Democrats turned away Republican efforts.

Only about 5 percent of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 “relief” package Biden signed actually went to fighting the pandemic. Only about 10.5 percent of his $2.25 trillion “infrastructure” bill actually funds traditional infrastructure. Democrats fought Tim Scott’s police reform bill before Scott had finished writing it. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) called it a “token” effort and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tripled down on accusations that Republicans were “trying to get away with murder, the murder of George Floyd” because Tim Scott’s provisions against chokeholds did not go far enough, in her view.

In fact, Tim Scott’s JUSTICE Act is substantially similar to the Democrats’ bill, the Justice in Policing Act. Yet the Democrats’ bill goes further by banning chokeholds and no-knock raids rather than incentivizing police departments to ban them, by prohibiting “racial, religious and discriminatory profiling,” and by eliminating qualified immunity for law enforcement.

The fact that Tim Scott counters critical race theory and the claim that America is “systemically racist” does not make him an “Uncle Tim” or a “white supremacy apologist.” America has indeed experienced tremendous racial progress thanks to abolition, the civil rights amendments, the civil rights movement, the election of a black president, and more.

It is extremely telling that proponents of critical race theory are willing to engage in racist attacks against a black Republican because he disagrees with their hyperbolic rhetoric. This episode demonstrates that it is vitally important for Americans to reject critical race theory and the hucksters who push it.

__________

Senior editor of PJ Media, Tyler O'Neil is an author and conservative commentator. He has written for numerous publications, including The Christian Post, National Review, The Washington Free Beacon, The Daily Signal, AEI's Values & Capitalism, and the Colson Center's Breakpoint. He enjoys Indian food, board games, and talking ceaselessly about politics, religion, and culture. He has appeared on Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight." He is the author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/04/30/tim-scott-faces-heinous-racist-attacks-for-telling-the-truth-n1443801?utm_source=pjmedia&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=&bcid=227841a8b1ca836b99e21ea36efa6859&recip=28551147

_________________

RELATED ARTICLE

GOP Sen. Tim Scott Delivers a Unifying Message on Race That (Shock!) Even Kamala Harris Agrees With

BY STACEY LENNOX | P J Media

Screenshot via CNBC Television

Republicans selected Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) to give the response to President Joe Biden’s joint address to Congress. He spoke convincingly and sincerely on issues of race currently dominating the culture. Of course, only one line from his entire segment on the topic is making the rounds, which I have highlighted in his full remarks on the subject:

I have experienced the pain of discrimination. I know what it feels like to be pulled over for no reason. To be followed around the store while I am shopping. I remember every morning at the kitchen table, my grandfather would open the newspaper and read it, I thought. But later I realized he had never learned to read it. He just wanted to set the right example.

I’ve also experienced a different kind of intolerance. I get called Uncle Tom and the n-word by progressives. By liberals. Just last week, a national newspaper suggested my family’s poverty was actually privilege.  Because a relative owned land generations before my time.

Believe me, I know firsthand our healing is not finished. in 2015 after the shooting of Walter Scott I wrote a bill to fund body cameras. Last year after the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, I built an even bigger police reform proposal.

But my Democratic colleagues blocked it. I extended an olive branch. I offered amendments. But Democrats used a filibuster to block the debate from even happening. My friends across the aisle seem to want the issue more than they wanted a solution. But I’m still working. I’m hopeful that this will be different.

When America comes together, we’ve made tremendous progress. But powerful forces want to pull us apart. One hundred years ago, kids in classrooms were taught the color of their skin was their most important characteristic. And if they looked a certain way, they were inferior. Today kids are being taught the color of their skin defines them again. And if they look a certain way, they’re an oppressor.

From colleges to corporations to our culture, people are making money and gaining power by pretending we haven’t made any progress at all. By doubling down on the divisions we’ve worked so hard to heal. You know this stuff is wrong. Hear me clearly, America is not a racist country. it’s backwards to fight discrimination with different types of discrimination. And it’s wrong to try and use our painful past to dishonestly shut down debates in the present.

Out of all that passionate, personal, sincere, and even personally painful prose from Scott, five words are all the corporate media cares about. That is how much the activist commentariat relies on racial divisions to distract and divide us on behalf of their political party. Predictably, Vice President Kamala Harris was asked to comment. Keep in mind that Harris was raised by two Ph.D.s in one of the country’s most liberal cities and spent a large portion of her childhood in Canada. A single mother raised Tim Scott in the South.

On Good Morning America, Clinton hack George Stephanopoulos posed the question to Harris:

Stephanopoulos: [Senator Tim Scott said] last night that America is not a racist country. Do you agree with that? And what do you make of his warning against fighting discrimination with more discrimination?

Harris: I believe that we need to adj… well, first of all… no. I don’t think America is a racist country, but we also do have to speak truth about the history of racism in our country and its existence today. And I applaud the president for always having the ability and the courage frankly to speak the truth about it.

Sure. The guy whom Harris, for all intents and purposes, accused of racism during the primary, speaks the truth and has courage on issues of race. They make quite a pair. Their policies incarcerated thousands of young black men for lengthy sentences on minor, non-violent crimes between the two of them. After Harris bailed on the primary, writers acknowledged that black voters did not trust her because of her record as a prosecutor. She had little black support in the primary. Others said they just didn’t identify with her. It is still a mystery how Biden got a pass with black voters, given his history.

Still, Harris let the cat out of the bag. America is not a racist country. There is no way to put that toothpaste back in the tube. Her caveat is ridiculous, since, as you can see above, Scott acknowledges the history and current presence of racism in personal and cultural terms. His approach is different. He considers the problem to be one that afflicts individuals and does not require a fundamental change to our entire system of government, education, and policing. Instead, he advocates incremental change through targeted reforms to policing and school choice.

Just because Democrats can point to a disparity in outcomes between the races does not mean they have evidence of discrimination. It is the only evidence they point to for “systemic racism” when any individual outcome has dozens of factors contributing to it. Solving these problems will require different discussions, and they will be more complex than their preferred method of solving past discrimination with discrimination in the present and the future. Senator Scott knows this and is willing to have difficult conversations about complex problems.

Scott’s speech demonstrates that he can speak about racial issues clearly and in language we can all understand rather than woke-speak. Hopefully, Americans can rally around a youthful leader who speaks as Martin Luther King Jr. did of marching forward together to make real and meaningful improvements rather than the ones that have picked up the Black Panthers’ mantle and just want to burn it all down. It seems even Vice President Harris may agree that Scott’s path is the better one.

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Stacey Lennox is a recovering Fortune 500 executive and healthcare professional. Busting the COVID-19 narrative under the VIP tab to avoid the censors. PJ Media readers can hear Stacey on the weekly Loftus Party podcast with comedian Michael Loftus and multiple shows a week on KLRN Radio.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stacey-lennox/2021/04/29/senator-tim-scott-creates-a-unifying-message-that-even-kamala-harris-can-agree-with-n1443649