The War Against the Second Amendment

President Obama kicked off the last year of his term by announcing a serious of “Executive Actions” that he claims will address gun violence in the United States (despite FBI statistics that show violent crime involving firearms on a multi-decade decline).

Obama, the same President who allowed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to ship guns to Mexican drug cartels in order to foment violence that would justify more extensive gun control domestically, shed crocodile tears as he called for further restrictions on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans.

These latest “Executive Actions” continue the dictatorial trend under President Obama of circumventing Congress and violating Article One of the United States Constitution, which delegates the responsibility of drafting laws to Congress. As Judge Andrew Napolitano said on FoxNews.com, “President Obama has very little room to issue executive orders on guns because the congressional legislation is so extensive, detailed, and clear.”

Napolitano continued,”we still have a Constitution in America. Under the Constitution, Congress writes the laws, the president enforces them, and the courts interpret them. President Obama can no more write his own laws or impose his own interpretations upon them than the Congress or the courts can command the military.”

Under Obama’s latest gun grab plan, individuals who sell as few as one or two firearms will now be required to conduct background checks and obtain a federal firearm license through the ATF (a burdensome and expensive process according to the ATF’s own website).

Another “common sense” solution to gun violence, according to President Obama, calls for physicians and other health care providers to report patients they deem mentally ill to the the FBI’s national background check system in order to prevent them from purchasing a firearm. A simple visit to a cardiologist can lead to an individual losing their right to own a firearm, as was the case for David Sarti, who appeared on the National Geographic Channel’s series Doomsday Preppers.

Tucked away in the same medical provision section is a proposal that would prohibit some Social Security beneficiaries from owning guns. Specifically, those who are deemed incapable of handling their own finances or who are deemed mentally incompetent will be flagged in a background check as being ineligible to purchase a firearm.

As reported by Breitbart, “this means that information on beneficiaries who meet the criteria of mental impairment–demonstrated in part by an inability to manage their own benefits–will be added to the National Instant Criminal Background System (NICS) so that the beneficiaries cannot buy a gun.”

The fact that the latest Gallup poll shows only 2% of Americans view gun control/gun violence as the nation’s top issue places President Obama’s latest attempted gun grab on shaky ground.

Yet, as 2015 was likely a record year for gun sales demonstrates many Americans are afraid President Obama will continue his attack on the Second Amendment and charge towards his ultimate goal: a national gun registry that can be used by a tyrannical government to target gun owners.

One thing is clear: the opening salvos in the latest war to gut the Second Amendment have been launched.

Republican Establishment Betrays American People; Omnibus BudgetBill Fully Funds Obama’s Agenda

The House and Senate, with bipartisan majorities, passed a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending package that funds the federal government through September, 2016.

Despite frantic last-minute lobbying efforts by Speaker Paul Ryan and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi that made passage seem uncertain, the House passed the bill by a lopsided vote of 316-113. 95 House Republicans bucked Speaker Ryan and the Republican leadership and voted no, joining 18 Democrats in doing so. The Senate later passed the bill by a vote of 65-33, with six Democrats and Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont joining 26 Republicans in opposition.

Despite historic gains in the midterm elections in 2010 and 2014, leaving Republicans with majorities in the House and Senate, the Republican leadership choose to thumb their noses at the voters who elected them to halt President Obama’s far-left agenda and approve a spending bill that fully funds every item in his agenda.

The mainstream media, and the Democratic Party establishment, have suggested the reason behind the willingness of the Republican leadership to acquiesce to the continued funding of Obama’s agenda is due to the Democrats’ willingness to support lifting the decades-old oil export embargo.

“Republicans’ desperate thirst for lifting the oil export ban empowered Democrats to win significant concessions throughout the Omnibus, including ridding the bill of scores of deeply destructive poison pill riders,” Pelosi wrote in a Thursday night letter to Democrats, according to The Hill.

Among the concessions made by Republican leadership includes:

• Fully funding Obamacare, and approving a two year suspension of the so-called “Cadillac”tax on high-cost insurance plans (something sought by big unions who want the tax itself repealed as it effects many in high level union positions).
• Removing all provisions that sought to strip funding for Planned Parenthood.
• Removing all provisions that sought to stop Obama’s “refugee” resettlement plan (in fact, the spending bill provides funds for nearly 300,000 visas for Muslim “refugees”).
• Fully funding the monetary commitment made by Obama following the”climate change” conference held in Paris.

According to The Washington Times, the White House declared “total victory” in the “budget battle” with Republucan leaders. The headline itself is not accurate, as a battle implies both sides were actually opposing each other. The Republican leadership offered token resistance, at most, to Obama and Congressional Democrats.

The vote on the omnibus spending bill demonstrated something many Americans already know: the leadership of both political parties two sides of the same coin.

As talk-show host Rush Limbaugh said on Thursday, “This was out-and-out, in-our-face lying…There is no Republican Party! You know, we don’t even need a Republican Party if they’re gonna do this. You know, just elect Democrats, disband the Republican Party, and let the Democrats run it, because that’s what’s happening anyway.”

End the War on the Second Amendment in America

The New York Times dedicated nearly a third of its front page to an editorial promoting gun control following the San Bernardino shooting. The editorial board, ignoring many other historical moments over the last century, decided increased gun control was an important enough issue to warrant its first front page editorial since choosing to criticize the Republican Party for nominating Warren G. Harding for President in 1920.

Arguing that it is a “moral outrage and a national disgrace” that Americans are able to purchase weapons “designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency”, the editorial board makes a direct call to American citizens to turn in their guns “for the good of their fellow citizens.”

That statement demonstrates a view held by many liberals: it is the sole responsibility of the state to protect us and private gun ownership is a hindrance to that goal.

Referring to firearms as “tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection”, gun owners are portrayed as men trying to reassert their masculinity or violently overthrow the government.

It is clear that the true intentions of the Founding Fathers when drafting the Second Amendment have fallen by the wayside, something intentionally done by liberal academics, political pundits and others who believe private gun ownership is a threat to government power or a vestige of white culture that deserves to be eliminated from society.

The Founding Fathers lived under an oppressive power who denied the colonists all of the rights now guaranteed under the Bill of Rights. After achieving independence from Great Britain, the framers of the Constitution wisely enshrined all of the rights they were denied to all future generations of Americans.

The Second Amendment was drafted to give future generations of Americans the ability to protect themselves from a tyrannical government. Many Americans believe the prospect of a tyrannical government coming to power today is an impossible concept promoted only by conspiracy theorists, yet they are blind to the growing police and surveillance state coming to shape around them based on the constant threat of terrorism (a threat manufactured by the forces that have hijacked our government to achieve that very end).

Private gun ownership is the only major obstacle preventing the complete destruction of America as we know it, and the elimination of the rights many take for granted every day; the same rights our Founding Fathers risked their lives to leave to us.

As Noah Webster said in 1787, “Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States.”

In Federalist 28, Alexander Hamilton said, “If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual state. In a single state, if the persons intrusted with supreme power become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system, without resource; except in their courage and despair.”

The Story of Ahmed’s Clock: A Politically Opportune, and Untrue, Tale of Racism in America

14 year-old Ahmed Mohamed arrived at his high school in Irving, Texas hoping for praise from his teacher after he created a digital clock out of a pencil-case. However, the strange-looking, beeping device with wires caused alarm among MacArthur High School administrators, who reacted by calling the police. Irving Police officers subsequently placed Mohamed under arrest for suspicion of creating a fake bomb.

The arrest, and subsequent outrage among many on the left, prompted an invitation to the White House by President Obama and to Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg, an internship at Twitter, and thousands of messages of support on social media. The Daily Beast even portrayed Mohamed as “the Muslim hero America’s been waiting for.”

Instead of assuming the arrest was merely an issue of the Irving Police Department and public school district overreacting, the far left immediately sought to paint the arrest as an act of racism that can only occur in an intolerant state like Texas (despite the fact the clock Mohamed brought to school bears a striking resemblance to an improvised explosive device).

#IStandWithAhmed http://t.co/BzPRBfnTOF—
Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) September 17, 2015

Where is the outrage among the far-left “Progressives” for six year-old Elijah, a first grade student in Colorado Springs, who was suspended from school for pointing his fingers in the shape of a gun at another student? How about Nickolas Taylor, a 10 year-old middle school student in Milford, Massachusetts, who was suspended for pointing his fingers and mouthing laser sounds at another student in the cafeteria?

There was no White House invitation (nor an invitation to a Pop-Tart manufacturing facility) for Josh Welch, a second grader in Baltimore who bit his Pop-Tart into a shape resembling a gun and pointed it at another student. Welch, who reportedly suffers from ADHD, was suspended from school for two days.

No invitation to a natural history museum for Alex Stone, a Summerville, South Carolina high school student who was arrested and suspended after writing about killing a dinosaur with a gun for a class assignment. Stone’s attorney, David Aylor, described the situation perfectly: “This is a perfect example of ‘political correctness’ that has exceeded the boundaries of common sense.”

There was no public outrage for the five students sent home from Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, California for merely choosing to wear shirts depicting the American flag on Cinco de Mayo.

No reasonable person can look at the situations described above and claim white children are being targeted and punished for ridiculous issues solely based on their race. However, the far-left seem to say it’s only possible to be the victim of overzealous discipline in public schools if you are not white.

As Kyle Smith writes in the New York Post: “The main difference between the Ahmed Mohamed case and the others is that the mainstream media and the leftist point of view it presents just can’t let go of Ahmed. Ahmed is too useful to their narrative to be a one-day story.”

He continues: “Instead of being credited with enlightenment for being the only white-majority country ever to elect a black leader, now we’re told that everything is about racism.”

The Ahmed Mohamed case puts on clear display the tactics of the far-left: blame every ill in society on racism in order to promote racial division, balkanizing our society into segments that only identify with our own group rather than as a collective society. They seek to ensure we are either too busy fighting with each, or too afraid to interact with each other for fear of being labeled a racist, sexist, homophone, etc, to notice our government has been hijacked by off-shore corporate and banking interests who seek to amass power at the expense of us all.

Russia’s “Military-Build-Up” in Syria: The Beginning of Another Proxy War With NATO?

Obama administration officials expressed fears Friday that Russia may be planning to significantly increase its military support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The New York Times reported the Russian moves, which include “the recent transport of prefabricated housing units for hundreds of people to a Syrian airfield and the delivery of a portable air traffic control station there,” have caused great concern for Secretary of State John Kerry and other administration officials.

The airfield in question serves Latakia, Syria’s main port city on the Mediterranean Sea and the ancestral home of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The coastal regions of Syria are also home to the Alawites, a religious group that follow a branch of Shia Islam many radical Muslim groups consider heresy; Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is an Alawite, himself.

The Obama administration has repeatedly sought Russia’s involvement in the air campaign against ISIS. For his part, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said it is premature to talk about direct Russian military action against ISIS.

“We are looking at various options but so far what you are talking about is not on the agenda. To say we’re ready to do this today — so far it’s premature to talk about this. But we are already giving Syria quite serious help with equipment and training soldiers, with our weapons,” Putin told RAI Novosti during a visit to Vladivostok for the Eastern Economic Forum.

As images on Syrian State TV purportedly show Russian-speaking soldiers in Russian-manufactured armored vehicles fighting alongside Syrian troops, and images from a Twitter page linked to al-Nusra appear to show Russian aircraft and drones operating over the contested city of Idlib, it seems direct Russian military involvement in the Syrian Civil War is not so “premature” after all.

However, it should come as no surprise to anyone that Russia has focused so heavily on supporting the regime of Bashar al-Assad from the Western and Gulf State-backed rebels seeking to overthrow him. Russia has a naval base near Tartus, its only Mediterranean naval facility; in addition, according to The Guardian, the city of Latakia is also home to Russia’s largest electronic eavesdropping post outside its own territory.

If Putin steps up military support for the Syrian government, it would have drastic consequences for the Obama administration’s insistence that Assad must step down as part of any solution to end the conflict. With direct Russian military assistance, the Syrian government could make significant progress against ISIS, al-Nusra and the so-called “moderate opposition”, negating calls from the United States, Turkey and the Gulf States for Assad to step down. The concern, then, is how the United States would react if Russian aircraft struck fighters that belong to rebel groups it armed and trained.

The issue of Russian aircraft providing direct assistance to Syrian government troops brings to mind another potential flash-point: as calls for a no-fly zone in Syria to “protect civilians from ongoing aerial attack” increase, how would the United States and its allies react if Russian aircraft continued attacking targets in violation of the no-fly zone?

The blueprint for the civil war in Syria is virtually identical to that in Ukraine: the United States and NATO (in the case of Syria, Turkey and the Gulf States as well) fund a rebel force to overthrow a government friendly to Russia, in a country that Russia has a vested geopolitical interest in, and both sides begin arming and funding their respective side as civil war breaks out. In both Syria and Ukraine, the risk of a proxy war escalating into an all-out war between the West and Russia is all too real.

MSNBC Demotes Al Sharpton as the Public Continues Losing Faith in the Corporate-Run Mainstream Media

Following a decision in July to cancel three daytime programs, MSNBC President Phil Griffin has announced yet another far-left host will see their daytime program eliminated (or in this case, relegated to a new, less prominent, time slot). Al Sharpton, who has hosted PoliticsNation on MSNBC since August 2011, will see his previously five night per-week show relegated to Sunday mornings at 8 AM.

Despite the apparent demotion, Sharpton is taking his show’s removal from the weekly daytime line-up well. “First, I can reach a wider audience of people who don’t get home by 6 at night. Second, I can now get the A-list guests and newsmakers I want. And third, a Sunday morning host is what I always wanted to be,” he told New York Daily News. Never one for modesty, he continued, “I never wanted to be a weeknight pundit. I wanted to be a Sunday morning newsmaker. I wanted to be Dr. Martin Luther King, not Larry King.”

Sharpton’s demotion comes as three other far-left programs were eliminated at MSNBC. “The Cycle,” “Now with Alex Wagner” and “The Ed Show” were canceled in late July as the station’s management sought a shift away from ‘Progressive’ opinion-oriented shows to breaking news coverage.

“Change can be hard,” MSNBC President Phil Griffin wrote in an emailed memo to the channel’s staff. “There’s no doubt it’s been a difficult time, but we have exciting opportunities ahead.” Reportedly, the shake-up was ordered by the new chairman of NBC News (which itself owns MSNBC), Andrew Lack. According to the memo, the goal is for MSNBC to cover breaking news daily from 9 AM – 5 PM, with opinion-oriented shows to follow.

Griffin and Lack undoubtedly saw the writing on the wall: MSNBC has witnessed a dramatic decline in viewership as the American people lose faith in the honesty and integrity of the corporate-dominated mainstream media. A review of the 2015 Q2 Nielsen ratings report by Politico stated the following: “Meanwhile, MSNBC continues to struggle with its ratings, as viewership declined 17 percent in the total day demo. MSNBC currently sits in fourth-place in the demo for total day with just 86,000 viewers, behind CNN sister network HLN.”

According to a Gallup poll conducted from June 2-7 2015, only 24% of Americans have confidence in newspapers, while only 21% have confidence in television news. Both numbers are down from historical norms.

A poll conducted among 18-29 year-olds by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics found just 2% trust the media to “do the right thing” all the time; a result referred to by the Washington Examiner writer Paul Bedard as “the latest nail in the media’s coffin, a downward spiral that has resulted in fewer younger Americans reading traditional media and especially traditional platforms such as newspapers and magazines.”

The Creeping Specter of War With Russia: a War the Pentagon is Unsure it Can Win

As the ominous specter of war with Russia appears all but certain, a series of classified exercises conducted over the summer by the Pentagon has left many at the Pentagon unsure the United States could defeat Russia in a protracted war. “Could we probably beat the Russians today [in a sustained battle]? Sure, but it would take everything we had,” one defense official told The Daily Beast. “What we are saying is that we are not as ready as we want to be.”

After nearly 15 years of continuous war in Afghanistan and Iraq, American ground troops are unprepared to sustain the troop levels or logistics necessary to defeat Russia in a protracted war. One of the tabletop exercises conducted by the Department of Defense “told us that the wars [in Iraq and Afghanistan] have depleted our sustainment capability,” according to two defense officials.

The overthrow of the Russian-backed, and Democratically-elected, President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych by Western and George Soros-backed protestors, and the subsequent civil war that pitted the new government against rebels (backed by Russia) in the predominately Russian-speaking eastern half of the country has significantly contributed to the souring of relations between Russia and NATO. The presence of American troops in Ukraine training government forces has only further stoked Russian fears as NATO continues to encroach on its borders.

The European Leadership Institute, in a policy brief, asserts that there is another contributing factor in the decline of relations between Russia and the West: “the increased scope and size of the military exercises conducted by both Russia and by NATO and its partners in the Euro-Atlantic area since the Ukraine crisis began.” The policy brief points to two specific exercises:

1.) A Russian snap military exercise that occurred in March, 2015. The exercise began with approximately 12,000 troops in the far north of Russia, and grew to include 80,000 troops, 12,000 pieces of heavy equipment, 65 naval vessels, 15 submarines and 225 aircraft. The exercise encompassed: Northern Fleet coastal defense forces moving to designated defensive positions on the Kola Peninsula; airborne divisions preparing for a mock emergency deployment; aerial anti-submarine operations; emergency forward deployment of aircraft in Russia’s Western military district; anti-aircraft missile system testing; surface and anti-air action by Russia’s Northern Fleet, Baltic Fleet and Black Sea Fleet; activation of marines in the Black Sea Fleet; activation of military forces in Sakhalin and in the Kuril Islands; deployment of strategic bombers, fighter escorts and airborne troops to remote Arctic Islands; responses to simulated air, naval and ground attacks.

2.) NATO’s Operation Allied Shield, which occurred in June, 2015. Allied Shield was an umbrella term for four separate training exercises, including BALTOPS 15 (anti-submarine, air defense, surface warfare and amphibious landings conducted by 49 ships, 61 aircraft, one submarine and nearly 700 American and Swedish troops), Saber Strike 15 (conventional airborne and armored engagements in Estonia, Lithuania, and Poland), Noble Jump (deployment of NATO’s new Very High Readiness Joint Task Force in Poland to detect and defeat special forces and irregular troops), and Trident Joust (command and control exercise to test redeployment of a mid-sized NATO HQ).

While it may seem that the conflict in Ukraine is the sole catalyst for the rising tensions between Russia and NATO, history shows that to not be the case. While a significant undertaking, Russia’s snap exercises in 2015 were not the largest military exercise conducted by Russia in recent memory. In 2013, Russia conducted its largest military exercise since the collapse of the Soviet Union; the exercise itself involved 160,000 troops and nearly 5,000 tanks from Siberia to Russia’s Far-Eastern territory bordering China and islands bordering Japan. According to Fox News, “Konstantin Sivkov, a retired officer of the Russian military’s General Staff, told the daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta that the Sakhalin part of the maneuvers was intended to simulate a response to a hypothetical attack by Japanese and U.S. forces.”

It is clear that Russia viewed the United States and NATO as a fundamental threat to its national security prior to the war in Ukraine. The United States’ proposed missile shield in Eastern Europe, long claimed to be directed at “rogue regimes” like Iran and North Korea, is widely (and correctly) speculated to actually be aimed at preventing Russia from deploying nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles in the event of a war with the West. With a tentative nuclear deal reached between the United States and Iran, Russia is now calling for the missile shield plans to be scrapped all together.

Apparently not content with the prospect of eliminating Russia’s nuclear deterrent, Western governments fermented the overthrow of one of the last Russian-friendly governments in Eastern Europe with the expectation Russia would capitulate and allow a new Western (and NATO) oriented government to assume control. However, the West made one grave miscalculation: misjudging how far Russia was willing to go to protect the home of its Black Sea Fleet: Sevastopol, on Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

Russia amended its military doctrine in December 2014 to specify NATO as its number one strategic threat, and outlined a new policy of using nuclear weapons “as part of strategic deterrent measures.” President Vladimir Putin just recently announced the approval of a revised naval policy with a renewed focus on the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dimitry Rogozin stated the focus on the Atlantic is due to “NATO expansion, the need to integrate Crimea and the Sevastopol naval base into the Russian economy, and to re-establish a permanent Russian Navy presence in the Mediterranean,” while the focus on the Arctic is due to “growth of the Northern Sea Route, the need for free entry into the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and the wealth of the continental shelf.”

As Russian nuclear-capable Tu-95 Bear bombers regularly test the air-defense capabilities of the United States, and Russia recently announced the deployment of 40 more nuclear missiles, the prospect of a cataclysmic nuclear war is all too real.

Target to Drop “Offensive” Gender Labels From Kids Sections in Latest Case of Political Correctness Gone Awry

In yet another case of political correctness gone awry, the retailer Target has announced its intention to phase out gender labels from several kids sections after “outrage” from customers. According to Bloomberg, the apparent outrage boiled over when an Ohio mother posted a photo on Twitter in June showing a sign for “Girl’s Building Sets”, similar to the type sold by the company Goldieblox, directly adjacent to a sign for regular “building sets”.

“It stood out to me as a good example of the way our culture tends to view boys and men as the default, normal option and girls and women as the specialized option,” Amy Bechtel, the Ohio mother in question, told CNN at the time.

According to a statement posted on its website, Target announced several changes aimed at placating customers. In the children’s bedding area, for example, “signs will no longer feature suggestions for boys or girls, just kids”. In addition, Target has pledged to remove “reference to gender, including the use of pink, blue, yellow or green paper on the back walls of our shelves,” in toy aisles.

The attempt by the far-left to eliminate “offensive” gender labels is not unheard-of. The Lincoln Public Schools District in Nebraska sought to end usage of words like “boy” and “girl” due to their allegedly offensive manner; rather, all children were to be called “Purple Penguins”. The school district ultimately scrapped the proposal after outrage from parents.

While some toys and other products are marketed as for boys or girls specifically, there is no law that prohibits a parent from buying their daughter a Darth Vader costume. However, those leading the gender labeling crusade are not content with ending labels on toys or other products; the mere mention of the words “boy” and “girl” are now being construed as offensive. The very notion that boys and girls are different in any way is now an offensive and sexist statement. It seems that the most radical gender labeling crusaders will not be satisfied until we are a completely unisex society with absolutely no distinguishable differences between men and women.

Of course, their attempt to end “gender division” in the name of “equality” will not stop the far-left from promoting racial, ethnic and class division to ensure we are all too busy fighting with one another to notice control of our government and both political parties have been usurped by off-shore mega banks, the military-industrial complex, and other crony corporate interests.

FEC Renews Internet Power Grab; Claims Power to Regulate Campaign and Political Speech Online

After a prior attempt by the Democratic members of the FEC to regulate election-related videos online, effectively granting the FEC power to silence Libertarian and Conservative-leaning websites like Drudge Report, failed after strong public outcry, the new head of the FEC has recently signaled her intent to push for greater regulations on political speech online.

Ann Ravel, the current head of the FEC, spoke during a conference hosted by the Brennan Center for Justice, the New York City Campaign Finance Board, and the Committee for Economic Development. When asked about regulating political activity on the internet, Ravel asserted it was under the “purview” of the FEC to oversee online political activities such as fundraising and donation-collecting.

“It would be under the purview of the FEC to look at some of the issues that arise in new media and the impact of new media, in particular with respect to disclosure and ensuring that there is no corporate contributions, for example excessive contributions or contributions to a particular candidates for example,” Ravel said.

This is not the only example of Ravel seeking to expand the regulatory power of the FEC to encompass political activity on the internet. In October, 2014, while Vice-Chair, Ravel sought to introduce regulations targeting online campaigns and videos, arguing, “a reexamination of the commission’s approach to the internet and other emerging technologies is long over due.”

The FEC Chairman at the time, Republican Lee E. Goodman, warned the Democrats on the FEC sought to use those proposed new powers target Conservative and Libertarian-leaning online media. “There are hundreds of thousands of blogs, websites, podcasts, webcasts, and I can’t image a regulatory regime where the federal government starts culling websites and YouTube posts on a daily basis to identify those that might not have registered and reported their expenditures,” Goodman told Fox News. “It really is a specter of a government review board culling the Internet daily. … I don’t know how we could begin to regulate all the hundreds of thousands of political commentaries online.”

Goodman had similar concerns earlier that year, arguing Conservative media like Drudge Report and Sean Hannity were facing regulations similar to PACs. “The picking and choosing has started to occur….There are some in this building that think we can actually regulate [media]. And if that occurs, then I am concerned about disparate treatment of conservative media.”

The use of governmental regulations to silence political speech and identify political dissidents is something not unheard of in totalitarian societies, as well as societies that masquerade as free and open.

In Venezuela, eight people have been jailed over the last eleven months for tweeting messages the Socialist government under Nicolas Maduro found “offensive”. Charges for those imprisoned include conspiracy, instigating hatred to espionage, espionage and “causing anxiety.”

In supposedly Democratic Spain, the government recently adopted the “Basic Law for the Protection of Public Security,” condemned by rights organizations as an attempt to “gag” political speech. According to the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the law “introduces administrative sanctions, some very severe, aimed at dissuading citizens from expressing their concerns through public demonstrations. This law criminalizes new forms of collective action and expression that have developed in recent years, including escraches (‘demonstrations aiming at public denunciations’), sit-ins, ‘occupying’ public spaces, peaceful ‘surrounding’ of parliaments and ‘concerts of pots and pans’.”

Under the Far-Left’s Twisted Political Correctness: All Muslims Are to Blame for the Chattanooga Shooting

In the aftermath of the shooting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in which 21-year-old Dylann Roof is accused of killing nine African-Americans attending a bible study inside the church, many on the far-left were quick to use the tragedy to cast blame on all white people. In an article on Salon.com, writer Chauncey DeVega suggested that all white people must share the blame for the shooting.

“White Americans will not have to look in the mirror and ask, ‘what does it feel like to be a problem.’ In the aftermath of recurring mass shooting events, and right-wing domestic terrorism, it is essential that they start to practice such acts of introspection in the interest of the Common Good,” DeVega wrote, after expressing concern that Fox News, an apparent dysfunction in white families, a lack of “sensible and reasonable gun control policies”, a “pathological” violent white culture, and a lack of appropriate role models contributed to the shooting.

DeVega continued, “White right-wing domestic terrorism is one of the greatest threats to public safety and security in post 9/11 United States of America. Such a plain-spoken fact is verboten in mainstream American public discourse.”

The effort to collectively assign blame to all white Americans for the shooting in Charleston directly contradicts Salon.com writer Wajahat Ali’s effort to deflect blame from all Muslims following the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing.

“The Tsarnaev brothers’ criminal and perverse actions do not speak for me or the overwhelming majority of Muslims. I am not compelled to apologize for them or explain their actions. Muslims are not a monolithic, Borg-like collective, who possess a shared consciousness, specializing in counterterrorism knowledge with a telepathic understanding of the perverse mind-set of radicals in their ‘community.’ This is like asking Republican Christians to apologize for Timothy McVeigh or expecting young white males to explain why individuals like Adam Lanza, Jared Loughner and James Holmes used assault rifles to unleash terror on innocent civilians,” Ali wrote.

In the world of Political Correctness we live in today, when a 21-year-old enters a church and shoots nine African-Americans and posts pictures of himself online holding a Confederate Flag, the logical conclusion is to ban the flag itself.

Following the emergence of images depicting Roof holding the Confederate (and Rhodesian) flags, the South Carolina legislature voted to remove the Confederate flag from the war memorial located just outside the capitol building, the city of Fresno, California passed an ordinance to prohibit the sale of Confederate flags without a historical or educational reason, the Ohio State Fair announced a ban on the sale of all Confederate merchandise, online websites eBay and Amazon banned the sale of all Confederate-themed merchandise (as did retailers Sears and Walmart), and Warner Brothers’ announced the suspension of sales of the “Dukes of Hazzard” car depicting the Confederate flag.

The quest to purge America of all links to the Civil War have not been limited to the Confederate Flag alone. The Memphis, Tennessee City Council voted to exhume the remains of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest (and his wife), move them to another location and sell off the statue that marked his 110-year old resting place. The Atlanta chapter of the NAACP has called for the sandblasting of the images of Confederate Generals depicted on Stone Mountain. CNN hosts Don Lemon and Ashleigh Banfield suggested the time to “re-think” the Jefferson Memorial may be upon us. DC residents interviewed suggested renaming Washington, DC because George Washington owned slaves and redeveloping the American flag because of the racism that occurred under its banner.

In a totalitarian society, or in this case the twisted version being forced upon us by far-left “Progressives” under the guise of Political Correctness, everything deemed hurtful to someone is banned and purged from society. Before push-back by parents, the Lincoln, Nebraska Public School District advised its teachers to not use words like “boy” or “girl” to not offend students who do not identify as a boy or girl, opting instead to call every student a “purple penguin.”

So, following that logic, why are all links to Islam not being banned after the Chattanooga shooting? Why is the display and sale of Islamic symbols not being banned? Why are the graves of prominent Islamic figures in the United States not being dug up and relocated?

Why stop there? If someone decides to run over ten people using a Dodge Charger, why not ban the Dodge logo and force Dodge to recall all cars with their logo on the roads? If someone decided to use a bow and arrow to kill someone, why not demand the state of Massachusetts remove the bow and arrow depicted on its state flag?

Of course it is ridiculous to blame all Muslims for the Chattanooga shooting, just as it is ridiculous to blame all white people for the Charleston shooting. The notion of imposing collective responsibility on a group of people for the actions of lone individual is something seen in totalitarian regimes. When SS General Reinhard Heydrich was assassinated in Czechoslovakia in 1942, the nearby village of Lidice was razed to the ground, with all men over the age of 16 shot dead and the remaining women and children deported to concentration camps.