Dear conservative, freedom-loving student,

When we met you on campus some time ago, you mentioned your grades suffering because of your conservative views.

Yes, taking a stand against evil will always cost you something.  It’s much safer to go to sit quietly at Pizza for Jesus meetings, soak it in, and do little else … and it is very tempting.  But I’d like you to consider a world being run by these people:

These thugs use violence to intimidate and shut down people they don’t like.  And they don’t like you.

Teachers who threaten you or punish you for your views are no different.  Maybe they don’t wear masks of cloth, but they use their lofty positions as masks of respectability.  And they are nothing more than bullies trying to shield themselves from accountability for their thuggery.  Don’t be afraid of them.

But I have to tell you that, unfortunately, they do have a clear path to victory.  Edmund Burke showed us their roadmap.  He said that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”  That’s why they threaten you, so that you will do nothing and they will win.  When they do, we all lose … and we lose more than just good grades.

Please consider two kingdoms.  The first is our earthly kingdom, the United States and the freedom, security, and prosperity it offers.  Please consider what your freedom cost, from our the founding of our nation until the present day.

We are reminded of the cost when we see the monuments to fallen soldiers at Bunker Hill, at King’s Mountain, at Flanders Field, at Normandy, at Manilla, and many other places around the globe.  Hundreds of thousands have given their lives so that we can live free.  And not just we alone, but hundreds of millions of others around the globe who were rescued from tyranny by the blood of US soldiers.

The second is the Kingdom of Heaven.  Jesus said when we stand for truth, we will be persecuted.  He said, “If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:20).  But he also said to count it a blessing: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matthew 5:10-12).

I count it a blessing to be in this battle with you.  Let us heed the words of  Winston Churchill, who famously encouraged his nation during the darkest hours of WWII.  “Let us neither flag nor fail.  Let us fight on to the end,” for the alternative is to be governed by thugs, and that is unthinkable.

Thanks,
Fletcher

From Eduardo Suastegui:

I have been surprised at how often the MAGA hat has sparked serious discussions about important moral and political issues.

by Fletcher Armstrong

Not wanting to talk about decapitating and dismembering little human beings, pro-aborts often change the subject.  For example, they will ask if we support every social welfare program, because if we don’t, it means we hate moms and children.  Or they might ask our position on same-sex marriage, because if we don’t accept their enlightened view, we don’t really believe in equality.

To prevent them from changing the subject, we point to the abortion photo and ask, “What does your question have to do with decapitating and dismembering little human beings?”  Other than proclaim the Gospel — we are commanded to do that — many pro-lifers believe we should abstain from hot-button issues that might create barriers to dialogue and just focus on abortion.

After all, people who disagree with us on a wide range of issues can still agree with us that killing is wrong, that killing 6 million Jews is wrong, and that killing pre-born children is wrong.

On the other hand, abortion attitudes often reflect an unwillingness to accept personal responsibility.  Whether it is taking care of their own children, paying off their own college loans, or paying for their own contraceptives, many students consider even the mere notion of personal responsibility to be something akin to a human rights violation.  And this entitlement extends not only to themselves; everyone on the planet is entitled to come to the USA and have their expenses paid as well.  That is idiotic at a number of levels, but many believe it.  There is a political component to all of this that cannot be ignored, and our society cannot long survive if too many people believe that personal responsibility is a human rights violation.

Leftist kookery not only puts our nation at risk, as if that were a small thing, its advocacy of sexual perversion also puts students at risk of great personal harm — spiritually, emotionally, and physically.  God designed love, marriage, sex, and child-rearing to operate as one package.  He designed us to enjoy sex and raise children within the context of a lifelong, monogamous, committed partnership (i.e., marriage) between one man and one woman.

In rejecting this model, man (a) separates himself from God, (b) destroys the healthy formation of relationships between men and women, (c) denies children both male and female role models in the home, (d) exposes himself to dozens of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and (e) invites serious physical injury.  At Middle Tennessee State, a young man enslaved by the homosexual lifestyle told us that he must get tested for STDs every two months.  The god of this world tells him this is “freedom.”

People like this desperately need somebody to tell them the truth.  For some, we might be the only ones who can.  We can’t be so focused on abortion that we forget to love the person in front of us, and the best way to love this person is often to tell him the truth he needs to hear.

To invite discussions of lifestyle and personal responsibility, I have been wearing my Make America Great Again hat when on the campus.  It has stimulated important dialogue on a wide range of important issues, way beyond my expectations.

At Evergreen State College, a young man walked up to me and said, “I wanted to speak with the one person furthest away from me politically, and when I saw your hat, I knew you must be the one!”

We both laughed.  I told him that I wear the hat, not so much to support our President, although I do, but because I wanted to speak with him about three things that make America great.  He was open to that.  I told him this:

1. “Our founding belief ‘that all men are created’ has made us the freest people on the planet.
2. “Our system of capitalism and free enterprise has made us the most prosperous people on the planet.
3. “Our respect for the Constitution and the rule of law has made us the most stable society on the planet.

“Yet we have a political party that wants to set all of that aside and hunt around for something that ‘works.’”

He agreed with my first point, he said, because he is a Christian.  I further explained that because we are created, we are equal before the Creator and bound to respect the dignity of every human person.  We owe that responsibility not to the magistrate, but to God Himself.

He agreed with all of that, but then he then went on to say that he was a practicing homosexual, and he wondered what I had to say about that.  Here was a person in desperate need of hearing the truth.

I told him that I was bound to treat him with respect, just as I would anyone else, but as a Christian, I could not endorse his self-destructive behavior.  I told him,

1. “The Centers for Disease Control reports that men having sex with men are 2% of the population, but are nearly 70% of the new AIDS cases every year.  My best friend in childhood was killed by AIDS that he contracted from same-sex relationships.
2. “The tissues that God designed for waste management purposes will not stand up to the punishment that this kind of activity inflicts.
3. “As a Christian, he should know that God’s Word strictly forbids homosexuality.”

We talked for about 20 or 30 minutes.  Another student stood and listened, without comment.  After I answered all of his questions, we shook hands and he left.

I don’t know how God will use the encounter.  I don’t know if this young man will repent and let God put him on a better path.  But at least I loved him enough to tell him the truth.  And nobody was harmed in the process.

by Gov. Mike Huckabee

I’m not going to recount everything that happened Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia, because the details are being updated constantly. We do know that the Unite The Right protest and the Antifa counter-protest turned into brawls and riots, which might have been planned (there was a report that some counter-protesters brought weapons, although fortunately not guns – one blogger compared it to a “rumble.”) The ACLU confirmed that as the violence escalated, the police were ordered to stand down for some reason that begs investigation. And worst of all, one woman is dead and at least a dozen more people injured after a 20-year-old Ohio man believed to be a white supremacist sympathizer drove a car into a crowd of counter-protesters. He’s been charged with murder, malicious wounding and hit-and-run. He should also be charged with an act of domestic terrorism and prosecuted to the full extent of the law .

But before we discuss the aftermath, let’s talk about something that seems irrelevant, but is not at all. Back in the 1940s, a new technology swept America’s kitchens: the pressure cooker. In those pre-microwave days, pressure cookers were a miracle. They cooked food faster and with less energy because the heat couldn’t escape. Instead, a lid was clamped down tight. All the steam that might have been blown off if the system was open was instead held in. As the heat rose, with no way to vent it, so did the pressure. Under pressure, things get hotter and hotter. It was a great way to cook food, but there was one drawback: at the first crack or weak spot, there was a very real danger that the whole thing could explode like a bomb. Today’s pressure cookers have safety features to prevent that, but if ignored, the results can still be deadly. Recall that the Boston Marathon bombings were carried out with pressure cookers.

“Jesse Watters on Fox News illustrated the double standard with a montage of clips.”

Over the past few years, several small but loud factions of society have been trying to turn America from an open system into a pressure cooker, and the explosions of rage and violence in Berkeley, Dallas, Charlottesville and other places are the result. The Founders knew that there would always be clashing ideas, and the best way to deal with them was a free marketplace where everyone could express and defend his views, and the best would be adopted while inferior ideas were exposed and rejected. America hasn’t always gotten things right, but thanks to free and open debate, we have consistently gotten things better.

Unfortunately, in recent years, we’ve seen a dangerous trend toward clamping down the lid on the free marketplace of ideas. Places that were once bastions of unfettered debate, such as college campuses and the Internet, are now rigidly policed to silence any ideas not approved by self-appointed authorities. Americans who don’t toe a particular line have not only been driven from the public square, even their private conversations make them targets for the thought police, if they’re caught in surveillance by a leaky intelligence agency or overheard by an overzealous busybody. It’s not enough that any opinions that vary from the “approved” line be silenced, but those who dare express them, even thoughtfully and anonymously, must be ferreted out, exposed, threatened, publicly shamed, bankrupted and fired.

I don’t say all this to try to shift blame for what happened in Charlottesville. The people who started this are vile, hateful racists and should be condemned in the strongest terms . But it’s not a coincidence that violent extremist groups are suddenly popping up all around us. They’re a symptom of a larger problem. They are the weak spots that turn dangerous when the pressure gets too high and too hot. Violent extremist movements have always drawn their numbers from those who think they have no voice. When you take away the free marketplace of ideas, it creates a breeding ground for their recruitment.

But why should people be allowed to express bad ideas? Because when they express them in the open, they have to defend them. Maybe they can be reasoned into seeing the error of their ways. In fact, that’s a large part of the history of America: bad ideas that used to be taken for granted are now seen as abhorrent, because good ideas won out. We used to be a nation where people who disagreed could sit down over a beer, have a spirited discussion, and maybe end up by seeing things from the other person’s perspective. Ban the open discussion, tell some people their perspective is invalid and they have no right to express it, and you’ll end up with a barroom brawl instead.

In light of the tragedy in Charlottesvlle, President Trump issued this initial statement: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides. On many sides.” He was immediately blasted by politicians, the media and celebrities for not singling out just the white nationalists for condemnation. But at that point, it wasn’t entirely clear what had happened. What was he supposed to do, leap to a conclusion that might fire up the conflict even more, only to have it turn out to be incorrect, the way President Obama did with Ferguson, Missouri?

Trump later issued a stronger statement specifically condemning white separatist and neo-Nazi groups and calling on Americans to end the violence, stop exploiting divisions and come together to concentrate on the positive things we have in common. This statement, very similar to a statement once made by Barack Obama under similar circumstances, was greeted by more attacks from left-wing politicians, media figures and celebrities, some of whom blamed Trump directly for violent racists in Charlottesville and claimed that they represent the entire Republican Party. Jesse Watters on Fox News illustrated the double standard with a montage of clips, showing many of these same people insisting that the angry Bernie Sanders supporter who shot Rep. Steve Scalise and tried to slaughter Republicans at a charity baseball practice in no way represented the Democratic Party.

And they were right. I absolutely believe that the deranged shooter and the black-masked rioters who shut down free speech at UC-Berkeley are not representative of the approximately 96 million registered voters who identify as Democrats, any more than I believe that the racist idiot who ran down people with a car or a small group of white supremacists represent the views of 88 million registered voters who identify as Republican. They are two opposite extremes that exploded when the political pressure cooker got turned up too high.

We should all be doing everything we can to reduce the heat, release the pressure, let the steam out and open up the system to more dialogue and discussion between people of different backgrounds and viewpoints. But when people in positions of public trust respond to violence, division and hatred with even more heated, divisive rhetoric, seeking not to put out the fires of rage but to pour gasoline on them, they should be well and truly ashamed of themselves.

It only takes 2 sentences to define Western Civilization:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

This is the focal point of everything Western Civilization stands for:

• We are created beings.
• Because we are created, we are equal.  You can’t get to equality by way of Darwinian evolution.
• Our rights are granted to us by our Creator, not by government nor by popular will.
• Government is instituted not to grant rights, but to secure rights already granted by our Creator.

It’s that simple.  Thank God we finally have a President who is willing to defend our values and challenge all of us to do the same.

by Jacqueline Hawkins

I was not surprised by the results of the 2016 election.  By the time election night rolled in, I knew that it was 100% in God’s hands.  Granted, everything is 100% in God’s hands, but this was a situation where Christians pulled together and did all the work they could.  If we lost it was because God willed it to be so, not because Christians sat around and did nothing.

Christians engaged in fervent prayer for months before the election.  We all saw the potential for things to go very badly for Christians in America and around the world if the presidency went to Hillary.

Pro-life and pro-family Christians were on edge.  So was anyone who is pro-Constitution or even pro-economic sanity.  Very much on edge.  We felt helpless in our own power.

How could we as individuals make a national difference against evil?  How could we stand against injustice and insanity in 2016, when we failed so miserably in 2008 and 2012?  But even though we were helpless in our own power, Christians turned to our Father, knowing that He has all the power.  Christians turned to God — asking, begging, pleading, and imploring God grant favor to a nation that really didn’t deserve it.

And God heard our prayers — our fervent, near-desperate prayers.  He heard.  He listened. He had mercy on us, despite all of our complicity and complacency in the face of child sacrifice, sodomy, and many other abominations.  He, as Fletcher Armstrong wrote, granted us a stay of execution.  Not a pardon — we don’t deserve that — but a merciful stay of execution.

Let us now pray that we use this opportunity wisely.  Pray that we don’t get lazy.  Pray that we don’t lose hope.  Pray that God guides and blesses our work.  Pray that we can make America great again by making her righteous in God’s eyes.

Jacqueline Hawkins is a CBR Project Director and a regular FAB contributor.

Even left-wing sources agree:

• Slate:  “Most meaningless abortion statistic ever”
• Washington Post:  3 Pinocchios, “Very misleading”

According to PP annual report:

• Number of abortions = 323,999
• Number of patients = 2.5 million
• Do the arithmetic: 1 out of 8 patients gets an abortion, (not 1 out of 33)

Live Action explains in detail:

In case you missed it, I posted an op-ed piece in TownHall soon after the historic Trump election win.  It is all still relevant.

The Taste of Crow, and Other Random Thoughts

I was wrong.  Surely Republicans would never nominate Donald Trump for President. Because surely he had no chance of winning. But they did, he did, and crow never tasted so good!

Uneducated racists. When they voted Democrat, they were “blue collar working men.” When they vote Republican, they are “non-college-educated white men.” In other words, uneducated, racist, bitter clingers.

Ding-dong, the witch is dead! Trump showed Republicans they need no longer fear the media hacks and their mockery, dishonesty, and hypocrisy. Trump pushed back. Hard. He wasn’t afraid to speak his mind and call the media out for being the crooked liars they are. They cranked up their attack machine, but it didn’t work. Let’s hope conservatives have learned their lesson and never forget it.

We’ll show you! In 2008, John McCain won Missouri by only 0.1%. But …

[Link to entire article here.]  Please share it to your Facebook page!

I saw Dinesh D’Souza’s new movie, Hillary’s America, over the weekend.  You must go and see it.  This documentary exposes many deplorable aspects of Democratic Party history, including how Democrats have promoted abortion to reduce the numbers of Blacks and other “undesirables.”

Some of you are old enough to remember how the Clinton’s perpetrated and covered up sexual harassment/abuse during the 1980s and 1990s.  Their crimes have gotten bigger and more lucrative.  Hillary’s America exposes the formula used over and over again by the Clinton’s and career criminals at every level:  When caught, deny, deny, deny.  Then deny, deny, deny some more, until nobody cares or even remembers.

Who’da thunk it?  Who would have believed that a top-tier candidate for president would feature part of a CBR aborted-baby video in her advertisement?

The more the leftists try to pretend that this video isn’t there, the more they discredit themselves.

Yes, the baby in the video isn’t the same exact baby whose face was cut open to harvest the brain, but so what?  Planned Parenthood still cut through a baby’s face to harvest the brain.  And their only defense is to say, “No, the baby in that video isn’t the same one we killed; we cut open the face to get the brain of a different baby!”  Do they really think people will buy that?

by Lt. Gov. Ronald L. Ramsey

Independence Day is a day to cherish. While it is fun and relaxing to grill out and shoot fireworks, it is important to remember that July 4 is not just a date on a calendar. It is a day to remember how we gained our independence. It is a day to remember who we are.

Going about our daily lives in this great country we take for granted just how this nation came to be. America did not become America by sitting back and accepting the commands of those who thought they knew better. We did not become a nation by bowing to the whims of an elite. This nation was established because free men and women had no interest in listening to a King who no longer represented them.

So they fought. Against greater numbers — and even greater odds — and won their freedom.

On this day, I often try to remove any thought of current events and think only of the great history of this republic and the story of its founding.

The news of the past few weeks makes that very difficult. It seems that every time I turn a channel or click a link, I see our culture and cherished institutions maligned and marginalized.

In Tennessee, the future is bright. I am consistently amazed at the ability of Tennesseans to care about each other and look after one another. We remain the best state in the nation to live, work and raise a family.

The nation’s future, however, looks darker.

We will not be fighting with guns or live ammunition, but there is a fight ahead. It is a fight about fundamental values. It is a fight about who we are. Like the American colonists of the 1770s, we must not sit back and let those who think they know better determine how we shall live. We need to take back the country our founders fought for 239 years ago.

After emerging from the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked by a citizen what kind of government this new nation had. He responded simply: “A republic, ma’am, if you can keep it.”

This day — more than any other — is a day to remember the tremendous gift we were given by our founders and reflect on what we can do to keep it.

God Bless the Great State of Tennessee and God Bless America.

Ron Ramsey is a frequent FAB contributor.  In his spare time, he is Tennessee’s Lieutenant Governor and Speaker of the Senate.

What a smackdown!

One of the most fascinating — indeed, illuminating — exchanges to come out of the House Oversight Committee hearing Tuesday.  Here is Chairman Darrell Issa grilling Jonathan Gruber:

ISSA:  When you made these repeated comments [We wrote ObamaCare in such a way as to hide its costs; we counted on the American voter being stupid enough to believe us; lying is a huge political advantage, etc.] in an intellectual community with lots of other like-minded people, did anyone ever come up to you and tell you that what you were saying was inappropriate?

GRUBER:  Not that I recall.

ISSA:  I guess what you said was popular in that community.

What a smackdown!  But so true.  The “intellectual” class believes they do no wrong when they lie to you, because they are obviously so much smarter than you.

In the Los Angeles Times, Jonah Goldburg described the real genius of the smarter-than-you “intellectual” class:

[Gruber] represents the arrogance of the expert class writ large.  They create systems, terms and rules that no normal person on the outside can possibly penetrate.  They make life and living more complicated and then get rich and powerful off of their ability to navigate that complexity.  Time and again they sell simplicity and security and deliver more complications and insecurity, which in turn creates demand for more experts promising simplicity and security the Gruberians never deliver.

It’s not that Americans are stupid, it’s that the experts have been geniuses at creating a system that makes normal people feel stupid.

Mike Huckabee and Andy Andrews remind us to get out and vote on Election Day!

This is a hoot.  Get more on this story here.

Media Bias – Election 2014

Matt Barber explains how the Left intends to normalize pedophilia.  Excerpts:

There is categorically a movement to normalize pedophilia. I’ve witnessed it firsthand and, despite “progressive” protestations to the contrary, the “pedophile rights” movement is inexorably linked to the so-called “gay rights” movement.
***
Two years ago I – along with the venerable child advocate Dr. Judith Reisman – attended a Maryland conference hosted by the pedophile group B4U-ACT. Around 50 individuals were in attendance, including a number of admitted pedophiles (or “minor-attracted persons,” as they euphemistically prefer). …  Here are some highlights from the conference:

• Pedophiles are “unfairly stigmatized and demonized” by society.
• “We are not required to interfere with or inhibit our child’s sexuality.”
• “Children are not inherently unable to consent” to sex with an adult.
• An adult’s desire to have sex with children is “normative.”
• The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, ignores that pedophiles “have feelings of love and romance for children” in the same way adults love one another.
• The DSM should “focus on the needs” of the pedophile, and should have “a minimal focus on social control,” rather than obsessing about the “need to protect children.”
• Self-described “gay activist” and speaker Jacob Breslow said that children can properly be “the object of our attraction.”  He further objectified children, suggesting that pedophiles needn’t gain consent from a child to have sex with “it” any more than we need consent from a shoe to wear it.  He then used graphic, slang language to favorably describe the act of climaxing (ejaculating) “on or with” a child.  No one in attendance objected to this explicit depiction of child sexual assault.  There was even laughter.

See entire article here.