Liberty Guard Author

Townhall.com

By Bob Barr

Most parents know negotiations with toddlers are less an artful debate than a war of attrition. Toddlers make their demands, and failing to immediately get their way, throw a tantrum until the parent either relents or punishment ensues. This, of course, is reflective of basic childhood development; their reasoning skills have not had a chance to mature, and the tantrum tactic is all they know. Parents face similar circumstances several years later with teenagers coping with raging hormones.

In this still new 21^st Century, our country faces a new challenge – confronting an emerging breed of adult whiners who are simply raging.

Over the last month, the United States women’s national soccer team battled through the FIFA World Cup to triumph over the Netherlands last Sunday. Largely overshadowing this impressive athletic victory, however, was the team’s disgraceful conduct off the field; most notably that of its co-captain, Megan Rapinoe.

Rapinoe first ignited a national firestorm by stating publicly and gratuitously early in the tournament that she was “not going to the f***ing White House” if the team won the World Cup. Rapinoe tossed more fuel on the fire when, after the team’s final victory, she pointedly dropped and stepped onto the American flag rather than hold it aloft as has become the custom for victors in such international tournaments.

By pushing herself into the limelight on the World Cup stage, Rapinoe has become the newest anti-Trump hero in a movement always on the prowl for new champions. 

Far from achieving notoriety based on activities or ideas of substance, Rapinoe joins a growing list of egomaniacal celebrities who consider a moment in the national (or international) spotlight simply an opportunity to “virtue signal” their hatred for Republicans generally, and President Trump in particular.  

Whether it is Olympic ice skater Adam Rippon’s needlessly antagonistic comments about Vice President Mike Pence, or the MVP of Whining, Colin Kaepernick, declaring “hurtful” a Nike tennis shoe depicting the Betsy Ross American flag, the new breed of whiners has overtaken much of professional sports. Lost in their fits of rage, of course, is any real opportunity to accomplish that which their words and antics purport to seek.   

Refusing an opportunity to meet with the President of the United States, for example, even as one member of a championship team, closes off a unique opportunity to have a substantive impact for their cause (whatever that might be).   This President, more so than his predecessors, has shown himself open to listening to other viewpoints and changing his views on issues, if approached respectfully rather than with profanity and name-calling.  Rapinoe could take a lesson from Kim Kardashian in this regard.

Kardashian certainly is not a Trump supporter, but she wisely has engaged the White House on criminal justice reform multiple times in recent years. The result of her work with the White House not only secured the release of Alice Marie Johnson, a grandmother serving a life sentence for a non-violent drug offense, but provided momentum for the “First Step Act,” a major criminal justice reform package signed earlier this year by Trump– a goal denied to President Obama even when he enjoyed a Democrat-controlled Congress.

These whiners find delight in feeding the toxic environment infecting today’s politics; in which liberals prefer to throw “f-bombs” and milkshakes at political opponents (or worse), or have them censored on social media, rather than engage them in thoughtful debate. Unfortunately, we cannot even expect better than the behavior exhibited by Rapinoe from most elected Democrats, who as a group have come to realize this boorish behavior plays well to their followers on social media; even if it means further alienating their colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and thereby making any substantive progress virtually impossible to achieve.

How much will Rapinoe accomplish for gay rights, or equal pay for women, by refusing to meet with the President in favor of taking snarky shots at him on Twitter or in other venues?  In the end, she and others like her really don’t care; to them, the goal is the delivery of the message, not the result.

Townhall.com

by Bob Barr

There was a time when America’s big city mayors were real leaders. While few of them we so arrogant as to claim the title of “America’s Mayor” as did Rudy Giuliani, as a breed they exemplified the “take charge,” “get it done” attitude that voters respected and appreciated. Now, in the Snowflake Era that is seeing our country’s college campuses turn into adult day care centers, a number of elected mayors have transitioned to timid, “touchy-feely” office holders afraid to take bold action to protect their citizens and the institutions within their jurisdictions.  Portland, Oregon’s Ted Wheeler personifies this new breed of Snowflake Mayors.

Wheeler’s timidity to respond to violence by Antifa thugs last weekend, sent conservative reporter Andy Ngo to the hospital with potentially permanent brain injury.

Not surprisingly, Antifa gangs in Portland, and in Berkeley, California and elsewhere, are responding to the fecklessness of officials like Wheeler, and are becoming increasingly bold and more violent in their activities. And why not? Law enforcement under the command of officials like Wheeler are ordered to stand aside, “exercise restraint,” and allow Antifa gangs to work their will; especially against conservative speakers and organizations.

Perhaps the only surprise in all this is that Wheeler appears so clueless about how the real world operates, that he was surprised by last weekend’s violence in the city he is supposed to lead. The Mayor turned to Twitter to express his surprise that “some” people disrespected Portland’s status as a “beacon of free speech,” when an Antifa gang beat up Ngo, who was simply covering events as a bona fide journalist.

Of course, there was nothing new or surprising about Antifa’s antics last weekend in Portland. These groups have a clear, and recent history of engaging in lawless and frequently violent behavior in that city and others, where police and elected leaders turn a blind eye to their activities.

There, in fact, are numerous examples of how Antifa thrives in such situations; like undisciplined teenagers taking full advantage of the “safe space” given to them by fearful parents. The problem is, we now are dealing not with individual families, but with major metropolitan areas in which elected leaders are in effect turning over the keys to their cities to organized groups of malicious, leftist thugs.

Two years ago, in Berkeley, California – a sister Snowflake City — Antifa thugs caused an estimated $100,000 in property damage at the campus of the University of California because they objected to an appearance by a conservative speaker. Similar to Wheeler’s approach to mob violence in Portland, Berkeley’s police were told to stand down in face of the violence.

This “stand down” policy by left-wing mayors is not a phenomenon limited to cities on the west coast. During the Charlottesville, Virginia Alt-Right march in 2017, police were ordered by local officials to stand down; thereby allowing Antifa and march participants to battle on the streets, resulting in one death and several other injuries. 

In spite of what should have been clear warning signs to Wheeler last weekend, he continued to approach Antifa demonstrations with the same, do-nothing strategy that has become his trademark. Obviously, to Wheeler — and perhaps to a majority of the city’s voters — it is more important to cultivate Portland’s image as a city with a gentle soul and a caring hand (at least for left-wing groups), than it is to uphold the rule of law and to protect the lives and health of citizens and visitors.

No tourist in their right mind would visit Portland today. Nor would any sane person think seriously of moving to a city where expressing conservative political or social views (or daring to don a “MAGA” hat) now is considered to be “asking for it.” Wheeler has, for all his blustering about Portland being a beacon for free speech, created a veritable war zone for anyone who does not toe the progressive line. Such an environment does not make for a friendly or healthy place to visit, or in which to live or run a business. 

The Pansy of Portland can tweet all he wishes about what wonderful liberal ideals Portland stands for under his brand of leadership.  But the reality is that Portland, like its sister Snowflake Cities, are cities that have been shorn of true leadership, and abandoned to lawlessness and violence.  

Townhall.com

by Bob Barr

After a contentious debate between southern and northern states about how to count slaves towards the apportionment of congressional representation and taxation, known as the “Three-Fifths Compromise,” our Founding Fathers probably thought the actual mechanism of counting heads to be the easy part. In fact, the origin of what is known today as the U.S. Census comes from a single line in Article 1, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution. 

Today, in the era of Big Government and Bigger Partisanship, the Census is anything but simple and straightforward; and has become a major flashpoint in the increasing politicization of what was intended to be a mere headcount of the population. Rather than a few questions about the number of people in a residence, and basic demographics to create a broad snapshot of the American population at a moment in time, Census questions have expanded to include invasive prodding into citizens’ lives, such as when a person goes to work in the morning, and how much they pay in rent.

However, it is not the intrusiveness of the manner by which the Commerce Department (which administers the census) collects massive information on individuals that has roiled the waters in which this decennial census will be taken. Rather, it is the heretofore a simple question of “citizenship” — which was included in the census as far back as 1820 — that has caused liberals to rise up. 

Short-tempered liberals are accusing the White House of ulterior motives in wanting to include the question of “citizenship” on the 2020 Census; never mind that the 2000 census undertaken by the Clinton administration asked this very thing. Democrats now in control of the House are going so far as to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt of Congress for refusing to kowtow to their demands to know “why” such an un-American question as “are you a citizen” is proposed to be asked as part of the census process. 

Democrats allege evidence exists that proves the Trump administration might have a political reason to include a question about citizenship on the 2020 census; but this is hardly a relevant point. If the role of the census is to provide a broad understanding of America’s population today, citizenship is a straightforward, if not obvious, question to ask. Therefore, the real debate is not whether the question should be included, but rather if there are any good reasons why it shouldn’t.

Democrats fecklessly argue that the use of citizenship data could assist the GOP in gerrymandering political districts, giving them an electoral advantage – though the same argument could be made against Democrats. Additionally, Democrats fear the citizenship question could scare non-citizens, in particular illegal immigrants, into not taking the Census, leading to undercounting this population and thus, as they likely figure, fewer House seats for them. This clearly is ironic — given that Democrats are the ones accusing Trump of playing politics with the question — but does not impede their campaign in the slightest.

Regardless of motivations, the actual question of citizenship is cut and dry, requiring only a “yes” or “no” answer, and otherwise reveals nothing further about the legal status of a person in the U.S. The idea that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency could use this information to “round up” people is laughable, not least of all because of the practical limitations of doing so. As a question on the Census, citizenship information would provide an objective look at how the demographics of the United States have changed since 2000, when the question was last asked; being, perhaps, the real reason Democrats are so uncomfortable with it.

Without hard counts of citizens versus non-citizens in the United States, policy debates over immigration can be discussed in the abstract, with numbers that fit the narratives on either side of the issue. If we are able to actually determine how many people in the U.S. are citizens and how many are not, programs such as universal healthcare, free higher education, and many others proposed by Democrats take on new significance. Suddenly, taxpayers are able to easily see just how much these programs will cost them in supporting non-citizens. 

Adding a citizenship question to the Census would potentially lift the veil on democratic socialism’s true cost to society.

The inclusion of a citizenship question on the Census is one based on objectivity and historical use that spans party lines. The exclusion of the citizenship question, however, is one rife with politics and ulterior motives, but not from the Party being accused today of contempt. Herein lies what Democrats are truly fighting; not the question itself, but the power to keep voters in the dark about the changing demographics (and societal costs) due to their intentional obstruction in working towards fixing problems at the border. 

Townhall.com

by Bob Barr

We defenders of the Second Amendment are no stranger to disinformation and ignorance by the Left when it comes to issues regarding firearms in America.  Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “Everytown for Gun Safety” routinely manipulates gun violence statistics to fit its narrative. The mainstream media still appears willfully ignorant about what is an “assault weapon,” even though they use the term amply in their reporting. And, who can forget Virginia state Delegate Joe Morrissey’s inane rant against gun violence while holding an AK47-style rifle as fellow members pleaded with him to remove his finger from the trigger (a basic rule of gun safety).

Yet, an editorial from the Washington Post last weekend sets a new standard for mind-boggling superficiality when it comes to the Left’s lack of understanding about firearms. The editorial itself is a laughably weak criticism of sound suppressors like the one used in last week’s tragic mass murder in Virginia Beach; but one paragraph in particular truly catches the knowledgeable reader’s eye. The author is Juliette Kayyem, a faculty chair of the homeland security program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government; and she writes, “In terms of death-to-time ratio, single-shot weapons are preferable to multi-round handguns and handguns are preferable to the semiautomatic, and the favorite of mass shooters, the AR-15.”

Say what? In no way whatsoever does this text make any sense; not mechanically, not factually, and not even grammatically. Still, Kayyem doubles-down on her polemic by boasting on Twitter that her critics were simply “mansplaining” firearms to her because she “know[s] something about guns.” Her editorial suggests otherwise.

However, the incoherence of Kayyem’s screed and the smugness with which it is delivered, are par for the course when it comes to the manner in which the gun-control movement frames the “national conversation” it calls for in the wake of any mass murder involving a firearm.  The difficulty faced by those who actually do understand firearms in attempting to debate those who adhere to the mush delivered by gun-control proponents like Kayyem, is akin to arguing with the Jabberwock in Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass.” 

When pressed to demonstrate even rudimentary awareness of firearms, many liberals tend to cite the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) as the gold standard for “gun control.” However, few on the Left recognize that the AWB did nothing to make the firearms it targeted less lethal or less able to be used in mass shootings. That legislation’s prominence in gun control lore is pure fiction yet holds a mystique on the Left simply because it purported to be, “gun control.” As former Supreme Court Justice Stewart Potter declared when attempting to define pornography, “I know it when I see it.” 

Unfortunately, as illustrated by Kayyem’s editorial, the only thing the Left sees when demanding a “national conversation” on mass shootings, is the firearms.  This is the classic “failure to see the forest for the trees” approach that nets no true understanding.

By continuing to focus exclusively on the instruments used in mass shootings (the “how”), we fail to explore the far more pressing issue of why these events occur in the first place. In her most recent writing, Kayyem decided to make the Virginia Beach tragedy about sound suppressors and how they supposedly present a new danger to potential victims of a mass murderer.  Here again, she displays a lack of basic understanding of firearms.

The first responders in Virginia Beach – knowing that a sound suppressor does not silence the report of a firearm — were able to locate the shooter immediately due to very obvious sounds of gun fire.  More to the point, the issue thus framed fails to address the far more important question of why this man decided to resign his job and return mere hours later to murder co-workers with whom he worked for years. 

It is, however, much more difficult to raise and debate questions about deficiencies and defects in our society that appear to be birthing far too many of these evildoers, than it is to earn a pat on the back by the Left for raising the alarm about firearms suppressors, or positing that by deciphering the “death-to-time ratio” we will come to understand the mind of a mass murderer and thereby prevent a recurrence.