Cut to the News - Weekend Edition - Happy July 4th, America!
Published: Sun, 07/04/21
The war for the soul of America . . . President Biden and his party are removing America’s backbone — our love of liberty — and hollowing out the soul of the country. In his speech to Congress in April, he said, “We must come together to heal the soul of this nation.” He said this after naming “the most lethal terrorist threat to the homeland today: white supremacy’s terrorism.” Minutes later, Mr. Biden accused the justice system of harboring “systemic racism.” Bidens’ American Families Plan is another frontal assault on any meaningful independence from the state. The $1.8 trillion spree includes: Free, universal preschool. Heavily subsidized day care. Free community college. Child tax credits that will quickly become a budget staple for millions of families. The plan also has tons of other free stuff for the Democrats’ base, which is growing daily with hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants coming into “Borderless Joe’s Free for All.” Mr. Biden’s $6 trillion spending spree over three bills is designed to ensnare tens of millions more citizens into permanent government dependency. Instead of a self-governing nation whose “unalienable rights” come from God, we’re being groomed to worship at the altar of an all-powerful government that promises to meet all our needs. Liberty? Not so much. Washington Times
Joe Biden, The Concierge of American Decline . . . The Biden Administration serves up complacency in the face of deterioration. Joe Biden’s handlers and media friends continue to delude nobody but themselves that his legacy will land him in the history books alongside FDR and LBJ as a beloved, era-defining Progressive hero. His supposedly moderate priorities—infrastructure, family policy, and voting “rights”—have readily been exposed as deceitful partisanship and wasteful graft, and laden with power grabs so objectionable a senator of his own party had to distance himself to save face. Further complicating his aspirational legacy, Biden is beholden to an eye-popping amount of dark money from leftist sources that propelled him to the White House in the first place. A careerist chameleon, he knows the ultimate currency of the Washington favor economy is obedience to donors to whom he is obligated to indulge fringe priorities. To many Americans, the Biden Decline feels distinctly wrong. A president who supplants his obligations to the people with wildly impractical ideological fixations does not seem motivated to steward our country to success. He seems intent on ushering in an era of weakness that puts our country’s safety, prosperity, and future at risk. The American people are resilient, but the lengths to which our leaders have gone to subvert our country’s strength will require serious course-correction to return to fighting weight. American Mind
Our New Religion Is Staying Safe . . . “Safetyism,” as it is sometimes called, like all religions, places what it values—in this case, being safe—above other values. Safetyism explains the willingness of Americans to give up their most cherished values—including liberty—in the name of safety for the last year and a half. Millions of Americans not only gave up their right to go to work, earn a living, attend church or synagogue, and visit friends and relatives, but they even gave up their right to visit dying relatives and friends. One can assume that nearly every person recorded as having died of COVID-19 died without having a single loved one at their bedside from the moment they entered a hospital until their death. The acceptance of such cruelty—irrational and unscientific cruelty, one might add—can only be explained by the failure of generations of schools and parents to teach liberty, while successfully teaching the worship of safety. Daily Signal
Sowell Searching . . . Most celebrity gossip doesn’t live up to the hype. But there are a handful of people who have lived such colorful and improbable lives that, when presented with an absurd story about them, the best thing to do is assume it’s true.Did Thomas Sowell once rent a helicopter with Steven Pinker to go on a "photo safari" of the San Francisco Bay Area? You’d better believe it. Sowell, the noted economist and social thinker, has had quite the career. He grew up poor in Harlem, dropped out of high school, and tried out for the Brooklyn Dodgers. He did a stint in the Marines, graduated from Harvard, and went on to become one of the nation’s leading public intellectuals. And that only brings us through the introduction of Jason Riley’s Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell. Riley, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, has done an admirable job distilling Sowell’s 90 years, 30-odd books, and countless columns into a single volume. Maverick will delight Sowell’s biggest fans and help introduce new generations to the man and his work. Washington Free Beacon
Defending America . . . From its beginnings, America has offered its citizens the most important freedom: freedom of belief. It has been a nation where the faithful can practice their religion without fear of persecution. By protecting fundamental rights, Americans have asserted the dignity of each individual, and have guaranteed the rights of speech, press, assembly and protest, and property, among others. And so have opened the door to individuals to seek to better themselves. With everyone free to pursue their dreams, we have been an inventive, prosperous, and generous people. From around the world, the best from other nations have been attracted to the United States: those who had the courage to risk everything to come breathe the air of freedom; those with talent who simply wanted the chance to prove themselves; those who wanted to give their families a secure and prosperous life. And so the United States has been a nation of immigrants. And it has been a nation of scientific and technological advancement, of excellence in education, and of the steady lifting of living standards. Epoch Times
Guns for Women: Let’s Get to What Really Matters . . . Recently I was asked to crank out yet another ”best guns for women” article. I cringe every time I see that sort of title, because the truth is, guns don’t care what sex you are. In more than eight years of instructing and 15 years of daily carry, I’ve learned (and it’s confirmed by US military research) that there is little predictability between gender and the dimensions of hands or fingers. Let's instea focus on conquering what gets in the way of becoming competent in the arts of gun defense. In broad terms, those arts can be categorized as mindset, weapon manipulation, and marksmanship. And then there are a couple factors I’ll call the Big Boogeymen. These are predictable obstacles for women who buy a gun for self-protection but never advance in their skills to the point of having a good chance of winning in the fight for their own life or that of a loved one. Most of these obstacles apply to both genders, but since the request I got is specific to women, and since women represent the largest demographic of first-time gun owners in the last two years, these observations are focused on females. Not all of it will apply to you or the woman you care about. As with any instruction, harvest from it what is useful for your own situation. At the core of self-protection is a conscious decision not to be a victim. It’s a choice, and it’s possible to make that choice right now if you haven’t already. Firearm Blog
Happy Fourth, everyone! Enjoy yourself celebrating the greatest country, not just on earth, but in all of history. Remember our glorious Founding Fathers, the freedoms they gave us, and how unique and brave was their endeavor, forming this republic. We have never been a perfect country. Perfection is only for God. But we are a great nation. Today its very premise is under attack. So celebrate it as loudly and fiercely as you can! Have fun! Rebekah. White House Dossier
"Those who won our independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness."