BY JOHN SHAFFER A long, long time ago, during the third Presidential Debate last year, Donald Trump was asked if he would accept the results of the election. He responded by saying things such as “I’ll keep you in suspense,” or “I’ll accept it if I win.” His remarks were met with almost universal disapproval across the political spectrum. Of course, we never will know if he would have accepted the results if he had lost, because – he won. Hillary Clinton most emphatic critics of Mr. Trump’s comment, saying it was “horrifying.” Well, here we are, about ten months later, and Mrs. Clinton her self has told an interviewer that she might challenge the election, even though there is no Constitutional means to do so. And, although Mrs. Clinton did concede, she has hardly let a day go by without finding some platform for denouncing the President, calling the legitimacy of his win into question, or supporting “the resistance” to President Trump in some form. The people who screamed the loudest over Mr. Trump’s remarks have been silent over Mrs. Clinton’s. Heck, none of them have even given her a gentle tut-tut or a wrist slap. Mr. Trump justified his concerns by speculating that the system could be “rigged” or that there were millions of illegal votes cast for Mrs. Clinton; Mrs. Clinton justifies her concerns by claiming the the President conspired or colluded with Russia to thwart her candidacy.
By John Shaffer Last year NFL player Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the National Anthem, because, he said, of America’s racism and the deaths of blacks at the hands of police. We believed, then and now, that his protest was based on a false premise- that the number of such deaths was very small and, in fact, most of them were “line of duty” type incidents, in which the victim actually committed a crime, resisted police, attempted to seize an officer’s weapon, or approached a police officer in a threatening manner. In any case, policemen in America are almost exclusively local, and even assuming the worst, a handful of violent racist officers should not be used to taint the vast majority of good, honest policemen; and why Mr. Kaepernick decided that “America” should be represented by the negative rather than the positive is something he has yet to explain.
Yes, we disagreed with Mr. Kaepernick’s protest, although he surely has the right to protest. A handful of other football players joined in, a few singers, and others, but the number was still pretty small until this past week, after President Trump called out the protestors in impolite language. That statement was like the crack in a levee, because this past weekend nearly 200 NFL players “took a knee,” stayed in the locker room, or otherwise protested the Anthem. The Dallas Cowboys, united with their owner Jerry Jones, linked arms and “took a knee” prior to the National Anthem, although all of them did stand for the Anthem. The protests have inspired folks to come out in support of the kneelers, and also to oppose them, and that turmoil of conflicting view points has always been part of life in America. We do have the right to “take a knee,” but that also means that those who don’t like “taking a knee” can freely express that viewpoint as well. BY JOHN SHAFFER This Monday was the sixteenth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001. We all should know the story: Radical Islamic terrorists hijacked aircraft, which they used as weapons in an attempt to destroy America. Unfortunately, and though it defies belief, many people seem not to know the story. The radical left has long believed that America, and not the terrorists, were responsible for the attacks. For the record, most of the progressive left use the word “terrorist” to describe entities such as the US government, Congress, the Republican Party, the President (when he is a Republican), Big Business or the Military. They will almost never use it to refer to actual terrorists (except for one instance, which we will explain below). Similarly, they use the word “Nazi” to mean anybody who holds a political belief anywhere to the progressive’s own right. We think it is pretty accurate to make the supposition that if the progressive left calls someone a terrorist or a Nazi, that he actually is neither; this says more about the progressive left than about Nazis or terrorists.
But although it may be disappointing or even distressing that there are Americans who believe that America “had it coming” on 9-11, it is truly dangerous that there are Americans who refuse to treat radical Islamic terrorism as the threat it is. There are a great many people, including our previous President and most of the senior members of his administration, who, even as they fought them, refused to utter the term “radical Islamic terrorist” to describe the enemy. Why won’t they use the terminology? Because, they say, its use fortifies claims that America is hostile to Islam; and drives people to oppose us and even to become terrorists. We say, in response, that anyone who takes up the mantle of terrorism because someone calls an Islamic terrorist an Islamic terrorist was pretty far along the path to radicalism to begin with. And, despite the fact that the 9-11 hijackers were almost exclusively upper middle class, wealthy, well-educated, even professionals, from prominent families, there is a belief out there that it is poverty and Western prejudice that breed terrorists. (Please note that is the time we referred to above, one time the progressive left feels free to use the term “terrorist” to describe actual terrorists: when they can accuse a Western nation or society of doing something that causes people to become terrorists.) BY JOHN SHAFFER We got to thinking about some of the ways that things have changed in the last few years, at least in the eyes of the major news media outlets:
During the Obama years: athletes who said they would not visit the White House were attacked by the media as racists or reactionaries During the Trump presidency: athletes who said they would not visit the White House are held up as heroes During the Obama years: We are admonished to have understanding and empathy for violent criminals During the Trump presidency: We dare not forgive men who have been dead for over 100 years. During the Obama years: if a radical Jihadi committed a violent act, we were cautioned not to use it to judge all other members of that group. During the Trump presidency: If a neo-Nazi crashes a car and kills a woman, everyone with any non-Progressive opinions is considered to be guilty of the crime. During the Obama years: Nancy Pelosi never mentioned Confederate statuary in the Capitol During the Trump presidency: Nancy Pelosi demands that the Republicans remove the Confederate Statuary in the Capitol |
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