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It's not uncommon for liberals to applaud abortion rights; it's less unusual for them to straight-up advocate a kind of soft eugenics in order to improve, of all things, climate change. This is not only authoritarian and immoral but a natural extension of being fanatically pro-choice.

Liberals are applauding the study cited in this Guardian piece, originally published in Environmental Research Letters, which finds that "the greatest impact individuals can have in fighting climate change is to have one fewer child, according to a new study that identifies the most effective ways people can cut their carbon emissions."

Vocal pro-choice proponent and feminist Jill Filipovic approves those suggestions and took it a step further, revealing an inside look at how many of her peers feel about where children rank on the scale of importance, next to the all-consuming, scientifically-proven armageddon of the future: climate change.

The study also found that, while having fewer kids could also somehow help the planet fight its own demise, "there are other things, like "selling your car, avoiding long flights, and eating a vegetarian diet." Not only do scientists fail to agree climate change poses an imminent threat to the world 40 percent doubt man-made global warming but notice a difference in the scale of important things people can do to lessen climate change? One has to do with mostly material stuff, and the other is about procreating a human.

For liberals who are vocal about the right of women to abort their own growing, unborn babies, it stands to reason the same group would applaud the concept of merely avoiding having babies altogether, or at least family planning, for the environment's sake.

Children are not only a gift, but a boon one of those babies might actually become the person who cures cancer or invents the newest Apple-like product. I wouldn't expect a group who rallies for eugenics and abortion to understand that.

Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She was the 2010 recipient of the American Spectator's Young Journalist Award.

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'Study' finds fewer children would help climate change liberals ... - Washington Examiner

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It isnt easy for some Jewish liberals, but many of them are waking up to a world that doesnt neatly conform to their existing prejudices.

The event that really set off the alarms took place last month when a gay pride paradeexpelled LGBT Jewswho carried rainbow flags with a Star of David. The reason was that this symbol of the Jewish people offended the left-wing parade organizers who felt triggered by anything that reminded them of racist Israel and Zionism.

Much like the statements of Linda Sarsour, the Palestinian activist who is a leader of the anti-Trump resistance, insisting that Jews must choose between their support of Israel and feminism, the Chicago march organizers claimed the Jewish star made people feel unsafe at an event that they said was avowedly anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian.

It didnt matter that the overwhelming majority of American Jews support gay rights or even that the state of Israel is one of the worlds most gay-friendly nations. Nor are they interested in the fact that Palestinian LGBT individuals must either stay in the closet or flee to the Jewish state for their lives from a society where they are oppressed.

That counts for nothing when weighed against intersectionality,which asserts the fight for gay rights is indivisible from the efforts of Arabs and Muslims to eradicate the one Jewish state on the planet that also happens to be the one democracy in the Middle East.

The one element that lends an element of logic to this ironic stand: anti-Semitism.

To those who hate Jews, any inconsistency is permissible. But what makes this hard for many Jews to understand is that it doesnt conform to their pre-existing worldview, in which enemies are on the right and allies are on the left.

We saw how that worked earlier this year when mainstream liberal Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League and others were quick to blame President Trump for a surge in anti-Semitic incidents that mainly centered on a series of bomb threats at JCCs around the country.

Trumps views about immigration and volatile rhetoric were assumed to be the source of the trouble. But it turned out the culprits were a left-wing American writer and an Israeli teen with a mental health condition. Yet embarrassed liberals still refused to apologize.

That doesnt mean right-wing anti-Semitism doesnt exist. But the neat lines in which political foes must somehow always be anti-Semites, and sympathetic allies must be friends of the Jews, dont exist except in the minds of liberals living in a dream world.

One such dreamer who may be slowly snapping out of it is ADL national director Jonathan Greenblatt, whose recent article in Time magazine carried the headline Anti-Semitism is Creeping Into Progressivism. But to claim that it is creeping into the landscape of the political left is shockingly ignorant. It has been an integral part of it for decades.

Unfortunately, many decent liberals have turned a blind eye to left-wing anti-Zionist agitation that is indistinguishable from anti-Semitism. Those who say they wish to deny Jews statehood, the right of self-defense, or the ability to live in peace in their homeland are practicing discrimination against Jews. This is the definition of anti-Semitism. And it is on the left, not the right, where support for such hatred, whether in the form of backing for the BDS movement or cultural boycotts, is growing.

It isnt alt-right Internet trolls who are orchestrating anti-Jewish protests like those of Sarsour orefforts to boycott Israeli plays at Lincoln Center, where the appearance of even the work of a critic of Israel like David Grossman was enough to generate protest from mainstream artists.

Nor is it Trump who is responsible for turning universities into places where Jewish students no longer feel safe expressing their Jewish identity.

But unfortunately, all too many liberals would still rather believe Trump, their main political foe, is the real reason anti-Semitism is growing.

Its long past time for the Jewish community to understand that its best allies in this struggle are conservative Christians with whom they disagree on social issues, while it is their alleged friends on the left who are preaching intolerance for Jews.

That doesnt obligate liberal Jews to abandon their political principles, but they need to understand the world is a complicated place where Jewish safety can be endangered by solidarity with the left.

Originally posted here:
Liberals Still Slow To Recognize Anti-Semitism On The Left - The Jewish Press - JewishPress.com

BRUNSWICK Ever since the Republicans in Congress proclaimed a desire to repeal the Affordable Care Act, prominent progressive liberals have been lamenting dire ramifications should that happen. They have made wild claims that the elderly and our children will die as the result of repeal. Their fear-mongering has permeated nearly every news broadcast on every major network since before President Trump took office. The notion that children will die if the Republicans get their way is consistently implied by many liberal media commentators, pop icons and those in political leadership positions.

That steady drumbeat has a powerful impact on people. The connotation of children dying is a prepotent message that seeps into the subconscious mind and works on all of us.

This type of psychological programming sensitizes us to the connotation of death and dying, and, when framed within a message alleging who is responsible for the death, it creates a villain for people to hate and a target to fight. The progressive liberals dont want to repeal the ACA, so they have ratcheted up their rhetoric to imply that children will die and the Republicans will be at fault. Their talking points link the words children, Republicans, death, resist and fight, and by doing so, they have created a sense of dire urgency and identified a villain in need of elimination.

Once violence erupts, progressive liberals explain that the perpetrators are really victims who should be treated as an oppressed, marginalized special-interest group and, therefore, are not culpable.

We have seen this process take shape on college campuses and in the protests on city streets across this country.

In January, pop culture icon Madonna proclaimed, in a profanity-laden tirade at a Womens March rally, that she had had thoughts of blowing up the White House. Within that context, the rest of her speech was more than just spotted with violent and hostile connotations directed at our current president and his administration.

In February, in that former bastion of free speech, the University of California at Berkeley, the university was unable to keep violent protesters dressed in black, hooded ninja costumes from taking away a conservative speakers platform. With their faces covered, the anarchists were able to cause over $100,000 in property damage and suppress free speech priceless.

Shockingly, campus police made only one arrest and Berkeley city police made no arrests! The lack of a law enforcement response to the criminal activity was a tacit agreement with the violence and served only to encourage more of it.

In early May, former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton announced her opposition to our new president using military jargon, saying that she had joined the resistance.

More recently, we all saw former comedian Kathy Griffin with a gruesome depiction of herself holding a likeness of our presidents severed head. The two most salient, yet thinly veiled messages were her support for the killing of our president and her appreciation for the ruthless barbarism of radical Islamic terrorists.

It is no wonder, then, that people with a left-leaning political ideology and who are predisposed to violence are acting out. They keep hearing the same two points emphasized over and over again: We are at war with Republicans and they are killing us. The exaggerated rhetoric, the pervasiveness of these vitriolic messages, is pathogenic of an increasingly sick society, and dysregulated progressive liberals are fueling the fires of hostility and violence.

While progressive liberal leaders like Nancy Pelosi, pop stars and media commentators are not directly responsible for the shootings last month in Alexandria, Virginia, they do share a responsibility for creating a nationwide cultural acceptance of violence as means to an end.

That is just wrong.

Political rhetoric is unlikely to go away. Vitriolic diatribes between political parties must go away.

We the people must demand that our political leaders stop the hate-filled hyperbole and get back to discussing the issues concerning American citizens. Stop with the political grandstanding in order to make the next news cycle and find solutions that are in Americans best interests. Stop with the adult version of a temper tantrum after losing the presidential election and move on.

We have to tell the liberal-leaning media that we are not going to listen to them. We are not going to watch their networks or read their newsprint. We have to tell the pop stars we are not buying their music or watching their movies, and we have to tell them why. Change your tone or we will reject you.

My pastor once said, What we tolerate today we will inherit tomorrow, and I want none of the violence.

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Maine Voices: Fear-mongering by liberals on ACA repeal incites hostility and violence - Press Herald

Malcolm Turnbulls speech reminded his Liberal colleagues that he has not stolen the party and his leadership is legitimately Liberal.

It is a sign of how serious the divisions have become in the Liberal Party that speaking the truth about Robert Menzies is now depicted as making a provocative attack on the Liberal right.

Yet that is the situation in which Malcolm Turnbull found himself after giving his Disraeli Prize speech in London. As Turnbull pointed out in that speech, Menzies intentionally avoided calling the new party conservative in case that gave rise to misconceptions. Rather, Turnbull cites Menzies statement that they:

took the name Liberal because we were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no sense reactionary but believing in the individual, his right and his enterprise, and rejecting the socialist panacea.

As the leading academic expert on Robert Menzies, Judith Brett, has pointed out, Menzies recognised when the party was founded in 1944 that there was a strong public sentiment in favour of building a progressive, new post-war society that was far better than the old.

In other words, it was a party that pledged to reject socialism, but wouldnt necessarily stand in the path of social progress.

In short, Turnbull is attempting to reclaim both Menzies and the Liberal Party he played a key role in founding, for a centrist rather than reactionary position. He is gently taking issue with Tony Abbott and those conservatives in the party who have focused on undermining, rather than working with him, regardless of the damage this might do to the partys electoral prospects.

I say gently because, as even the arch-conservative Eric Abetz acknowledges, Turnbull also cites Tony Abbotts earlier phrase that the sensible centre is the place to be. Nonetheless, Turnbull is reminding such conservatives that he has not stolen the party, and his leadership is legitimately Liberal.

There is a long tradition of attempting to appeal to the centre in Australian politics, not least in the hope that centrist politicians will be able to harvest votes from both major parties. Turnbull can legitimately argue that many of the small-l liberal positions he is associated with (despite his more recent concessions to the right) are in line with popular opinion. Same-sex marriage is an obvious case in point.

There was also a vibrant small-l liberal tradition on issues such as homosexuality in the party in the 1970s, prior to John Howards conservative ascendancy.

Nonetheless, there were some elephants in the room in London when Turnbull gave his speech.

It is open to debate what a modern Menzian position would be in regard to issues such as same-sex marriage or racial equality. After all, Menzies, like Labor prime ministers John Curtin and Ben Chifley before him, continued to support the White Australia Policy. Male homosexuality was illegal under state law for all of Menzies prime ministership.

Turnbull refers to Menzies forgotten people. However, the famous speech in which Menzies articulated that concept assumed (as Curtin and Chifley also did) that employees would continue to be predominantly male, and women would largely be in the home.

Turnbull clearly assumes that a modern sensible centre position would have kept pace with changing social attitudes. But at least on some issues, other Liberals will disagree.

The bigger elephant in the room is the issue of Menzies economic beliefs at the time the Liberal Party was founded, and what a modern day centrist position on economic policy would be. After all, contemporary Australian voters seem to be concerned about their economic futures, the power of big business, and cuts to social services.

Turnbull does briefly acknowledge in his speech that, by modern standards, Menzies:

was hardly an economic liberal. He believed in a highly regulated economy with high tariffs, a fixed exchange rate, centralised wage fixing and generally much more Government involvement in the economy than we would be comfortable with.

Indeed, Menzies was more of a Keynesian economically, not a market liberal like Turnbull.

Furthermore, Menzies characterised the middle class as the forgotten people partly because he believed that unskilled workers were not forgotten but were already well-protected by unions and had their wages and conditions safeguarded by popular law. Meanwhile, the rich were able to protect themselves.

While strongly supporting individual endeavour, he argued that the new politics should not return to the old and selfish notions of laissez-faire. Rather, our social and industrial laws will be increased. There will be more law, not less; more control, not less.

Menzies was strongly anti-communist and anti-socialist, but he was not a neoliberal.

Voters could be forgiven for thinking that at least some of Menzies words sound more like those of the contemporary Labor Party than the modern-day Liberal Party. The Liberal Party itself acknowledges that a belief in social equality was one of the principles on which the party was founded.

However, despite some concessions in this years budget, Turnbull may have his work cut out trying to convince centrist voters that his economic liberalism can adequately address todays scourge of rising inequality. Keynesian-influenced solutions are on the rise again in the wake of the global financial crisis.

Turnbull argued in his speech that the terms left and right had begun to lose all meaning. However, there is another, more unpalatable truth that he may need to face. It may be more that left and right are moving conceptually, because the centre has shifted too.

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Turnbull is right to link the Liberals with the centre but is the centre where it used to be? - The Conversation AU

Premier Christy Clark has announced the B.C. Liberals key staffers as the party transitions to its new role as opposition, the same day that Premier-designate John Horgan named six women who will help fill out his leadership team.

The Liberal appointments include seasoned staffers and communications professionals.

These appointments will support our strong and experienced team of 43 MLAs in the legislature. Together, I believe we will form an extremely effective opposition to hold the NDP-Green alliance to account on behalf of British Columbians, an email signed by Clark, which was sent to Liberal staff and caucus this morning, said.

Clark has appointed Nick Koolsbergen as chief of staff. Koolsbergen most recently served as executive director of communications and research for the Liberal caucus and previously served as director of issues management in the Prime Ministers Office under Stephen Harper.

Jessica Woolford will serve as deputy chief of staff under Koolsbergen. Woolford most recently worked as executive director of corporate priorities at government communications and public engagement. She previously served as chief of staff to Minister Todd Stone and as an adviser to Ministers Mary Polak and Shirley Bond.

Clarks press secretary, Stephen Smart, will move into the role of executive director of communications and issues management for the Liberal caucus. Smart previously worked as a CBC reporter and has 18 years of media experience.

Primrose Carson will serve as executive director of operations and MLA support for the caucus.

Now that our leadership team is in place, in the coming days we will move forward with interviews of those staff who have expressed an interest in continuing to serve British Columbians through the B.C. Liberal Caucus, the email said.

Premier-designate John Horgan also announced today more names in the NDP leadership team lineup.

The six women, many of whom played key roles in Horgans election campaign, will serve in roles ranging from press secretary to the head of a new office dedicated to delivering on the NDP-Green alliance agreement.

After 16 years, we have a lot of work to do to address the problems caused by B.C. Liberal choices. Im confident that the leadership team were building has the energy, drive and commitment to deliver the change we promised British Columbians, Carole James, Victoria-Beacon Hill MLA and transition spokeswoman, said in a statement.

Donna Sanford, senior policy analyst at the climate action secretariat, will move into the role of executive director of the confidence and supply agreement secretariat. The new office will be responsible for delivering on the agreement between the NDP and Green parties, which sets out key priorities like campaign-finance laws and electoral reform.

Sage Aaron will serve as director of communications in the Premiers Office, a promotion from the same role at union MoveUP.

Kate Van Meer-Mass becomes director of operations in the Premiers Office, which will involve tour planning, scheduling and other leadership responsibilities.

Jen Holmwood assumes the role of deputy director of communications in the Premiers Office; Sheena McConnell will serve as Horgans press secretary and Marie Della Mattia will work as special adviser to Horgan. All three held similar roles for Horgan as leader of the opposition.

asmart@timescolonist.com

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NDP, Liberals announce key staff positions - Times Colonist