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Two days before an assassination attempt on Republicans, the NRA posted a video on Facebook warning of leftist violence. Progressive journalists are now pretending political violence is the NRA's fault.

Barely two weeks after a progressive Democrat activist attempted a mass assassination of Republican officials, progressives are outraged at the NRA for noting that the Second Amendment gives people the right to defend themselves, with arms if necessary, from people who might try to assassinate them or their families.

You might not remember it because the news media pivoted away from the story as quickly as possible, but just two weeks ago an anti-Trump Bernie Bro tried to assassinate a bunch of elected Republican officials while they practiced for the annual bipartisan Congressional baseball game. Just days after the New York Times revealed that Republicans regularly practiced at a public park in Alexandria with minimal protective detail, the shooter showed up at the park and started surveilling it. According to the FBI, he even took pictures of the location. Before opening fire on the lawmakers, the shooter also confirmed that the assembled officials were Republicans.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of Republicans responded to the attempted massacre by noting that unconstitutional laws in D.C. actually prevented the Republican officials from carrying firearms for the purpose of self-defense (although the shooting was in Virginia, most lawmakers reside in D.C., meaning D.C. law effectively bans them from carrying anywhere in the area since they would eventually have to return to their homes with the firearms).

Progressives, however, are outraged at Second Amendment defenders for having the audacity to claim a right to self-defense in the wake of a mass assassination attempt. On Thursday, failed Baltimore mayoral candidate and Black Lives Matter gadfly Deray McKesson raged at Dana Loesch and accused her and the National Rifle Association (NRA) of white supremacy for noting in a prophetic promotional video filmed in April that progressive activists were becoming increasingly violent.

They use their media to assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler. And then they use their ex-president to endorse the resistance, Loesch states in the video. All to make them march, make them protest, make them scream racism and sexism and xenophobia, to smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and airports, bully and terrorize the law abiding until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs and stop the madness.

And when that happens, theyll use it as an excuse for the outrage, Loesch concludes. You can watch the full video here. Rather than undercutting Loeschs claim that progressives reflexively scream racism whenever anyone challenges them, McKesson only underscored her point by accusing her of being a white supremacist for pointing out violence committed by leftists.

On June 12, just two days before the progressive Democrat activist opened fire on GOP members of Congress and other innocent civilians just minding their own business, the NRA reposted the video on Facebook. That aroused the ire of Michael Goldfarb, a liberal journalist who writes for the Guardian, who took to his Facebook page to condemn the NRA.

This new NRA propaganda piece is the most disturbing video Ive seen, Goldfarb wrote in response to the June 12 NRA post on Facebook featuring the Loesch video. Not surprising but disturbing. Reinforces my despair that America is not going to get out of its mess without bloodshed.

Two days after that Facebook post by the NRA, a Democrat political activist tried to murder a park full of Republican politicians.

Judging by his Twitter and Facebook feeds, neither of which mentions the June 14 anti-GOP assassination attempt even a single time, Goldfarb appears to be unaware that bloodshed happened quite recently, that it wasnt perpetrated by the NRA, and that the shooter was a vocal progressive activist who loved Bernie Sanders and hated President Donald Trump. Goldfarb did, however, take time to attack Trump and his supporters, Vice President Mike Pence, GOPygmies, and British conservative Boris Johnson. He does not appear to have ever condemned the June 14 shooter who nearly killed Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.)

Anne Applebaum, another liberal journalist and former member of the Washington Post editorial board, hopped onto Twitter and did her best to amplify Goldfarbs rage at the NRA for noting on Facebook, two days before an anti-Republican assassination attempt, that progressives were becoming increasingly violent and unhinged in their opposition to the Trump administration and the Republican Congress.

Like Goldfarb, Applebaum also appears to be under the misimpression that no major political violence occurred in the U.S. in recent weeks.

Rather than attempting to exploit what happened in Alexandria earlier this month, Dana Loesch and the NRA predicted it. And rather than acknowledging the reality of what happened, McKesson and Goldfarb and Applebaum chose instead to close their eyes and stick their fingers in their ears and scream at the NRA and its allies for pointing out the need to protect the right of self-defense in the wake of a politically motivated assassination attempt on Republicans. Projection in this case, progressives accusing people on the Right of plotting violence while completely ignoring excusing constant violence being perpetrated by the Left is one thing. But what we see in these examples isnt just projection. Its outright denial of reality. Its the Big Lie on steroids: dont just refuse to acknowledge one of the most heinous acts of political violence in recent memory, convict the other side for acts that havent even been committed.

The fact of the matter is that it wasnt the NRA that tried to murder a bunch of its political opponents. It wasnt the NRA that published the location and security details of its foes. It wasnt the NRA that surveilled a park and confirmed that everyone in it had the wrong politics before unloading on them. No, that was done by a progressive Democrat activist. All the NRA did was point out leftist violence and note that Americans have a God-given right, affirmed by the U.S. Constitution, to defend themselves and their loved ones from that very violence.

To Golfarb and Applebaum and McKesson, the NRAs crime wasnt committing or fomenting violence. The NRAs crime was refusing to let leftist violence go unnoticed.

Sean Davis is the co-founder of The Federalist.

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Progressive Journalists Are Outraged At The NRA For Pointing Out Leftist Violence - The Federalist

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Posted: Jun 30, 2017 12:01 AM

Years ago Marxist-socialist leftists, embarrassed at being Marxist-socialist leftists, made up a shiny new name for themselves, progressives. Its a word that sounds like a garden of forward-thinking delights, but is simply code for the failed, human-spirit-destroying government-command-and control that birthed all the evil isms of the past. Thats why every time I hear a conservative commentator in print, radio, or on TV call lefty-socialists progressives my 200 billion brain cells swoon.

The Fourth of July brings to mind how far alleged progressivism deviates from this nations founding freedoms. The government command-and-control against which the American revolutionaries fought was King George III and British rule that denied the colonists basic human rights and the freedom to govern themselves. The Kings officials and soldiers bullied the colonists and tried to break their independent spirit with oppressive laws. The Declaration, Constitution and Bill of Rights gave citizens the electoral power to choose their own leaders, make their own laws, and the right to freely speak their minds without reprisal from the powerful.

But today, progressives are trying to destroy our God-given Constitutional rights by force and intimidation, the traditional tactics of despotism. Wearing black masks, they smash cars and stores, rioting at college campuses and violating the law and the First Amendment to shut down speakers they dont like. Prominent progressive voices in the media, celebrities, even some in Congress actually call for physically harming conservatives. Some actually gloated when Rep. Steve Scalise and other Republicans were attacked at a baseball practice by a leftist wacko whose heroine is leftist wacko Rachel Maddow.

Once content with telling us what light bulbs we could buy and how much soda we could drink, now progressives mimic ISIS terrorists by holding up a bloody fake beheaded Trump, or not too subtly suggest presidential assassination in a public play partly funded by taxpayers. Celebrities adored by millions of impressionable fans say they want to blow up the White House or ruminate about actors assassinating presidents.

These are the behaviors of tyrannical anarchists who are the very opposite of progressive which Webster defines as continuous improvement; the development of an individual or group in a direction considered more beneficial than and superior to the previous level. Theres nothing beneficial for us as citizens or our nation about lawlessness, property and First Amendment destruction, deadly threats, and calls for personal attacks and assassination. Yet as long as we let them get away with calling themselves progressive, we allow them to claim moral and intellectual superiority over the rest of us.

Its an insult to all Americans when so-called progressives try to claim they are the new revolutionaries, freedom fighters like the original colonist tea-dumpers. Theyre actually freedom-destroyers, bent on ripping apart the freedom of expression and the elective will of the voters, scorning the Constitution and torching the flag of liberty. Their goal is the death of liberty, not its advancement. Their heroes are murdering monsters Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, while they revile white-privileged Washington and Jefferson who pledged their lives for freedom.

The progressive credo is the same as the Cuban dictators and their mentors Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot: oppressive government control under the guise of leveling the playing field or equality and redistribution of wealth. But the people on the receiving end of the progressive promises of that eravariously known as socialism, Communism, or Marxismrather than thriving, have instead died in huge numbers thanks to the benevolent progressive policies imposed on them. The innocent victims of progressivism amount to 120 million or so expiring at the hands of their own governments, according to historians.

Now multi-billionaire progressives like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and entrepreneur Elon Musk are calling for an exciting new way for government to ensure equality, today called social justice. While America was founded by brave settlers who built the new nation with their fierce spirit of independence, personal responsibility and achievement based on hard work, Zuckerberg (whose name means Sugar Mountain in German) wants to replace all that with the ultimate Sugar Daddy, a government that would provide everyone with a universal basic income.

Zuckerberg feels guilty that not everyone has the financial safety net to become entrepreneurial billionaires like he did with Facebook. But everyone should its only fair! Hopefully millions of people immediately sent him their addresses so he could start cutting their monthly checks.

Actually a universal basic income is already here for millions. The number of Americans receiving assistance from about 79 federal poverty programs is up 32 percent since 2008, the year Barack Obama was elected president. Now more than 100 million nearly one in three Americans get benefits from at least one of these programs, not including Social Security and Medicare payments.

This huge redistribution of taxpayer wealth toward welfare benefits is making Americas founding values of personal responsibility and self-reliance seem not only quaint, but unnecessary. Amazingly, in 35 states combined welfare benefits pay more than minimum-wage jobs, which means many have no reason to work. According to a Cato Institute study, a worker would need to make more than $60,000 in Hawaii, and more than $50,000 in Washington D.C. and Massachusetts, to earn more than collecting welfare would bring.

So its no mystery that U.S. labor participation is at an all-time low and that those numbers pretty much mirror the number of people collecting government benefits. Just before the 2016 elections fully 37.2 percent of our non-institutionalized, civilian population over 16 was not working or even looking for work. Of course, free money becomes an effective bribe to vote for the party that will keep the checks coming: the Democrats.

Given human nature, it only makes sense that for many, if you dont need to work to support yourself and your family, you wont. Those who continue to work will be ridiculed by those who feed at the government sugar dispenser.

But the satisfaction of work, almost any kind of work, is essential for a healthy sense of self-worth in humans. Even FDR, the Democrat president who created the New Deal to aid the jobless in the Great Depression, warned against the habit of welfare; relief as it was called then. The lessons of history show that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber, he said in 1935. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. The federal government must and shall quit this business of relief. But it has only increased.

Government is a fickle master as the victims of the isms discovered. Dependency breeds subservience and finally bondage after it destroys the aspirational nature fundamental to human happiness.

Since its been abundantly demonstrated for centuries that the progressive approach leads to more human suffering rather than an improvement in the human condition, the leftist/socialist/Marxistists are actually taking us backwards, not forward. Their plans would regress humanity to an earlier and utterly failed model thats left a trail of blood across human history. So lets call them what they are: regressives, not progressives. And lets celebrate Independence Day, not Dependence Day.

Joy Overbeck is a Colorado journalist and author who writes for Townhall.com, The Daily Caller, The Washington Times, American Thinker, BarbWire and elsewhere. More columns: https://www.facebook.com/JoyOverbeckColumnist Follow her on Twitter @JoyOverbeck1

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Stop Calling Them Progressives - Townhall

California Democrats have been some of the most vocal critics of the Trump administration to date and it's not just the lawmakers.

Ahead of next year's midterms, a growing number of grassroots organizers are throwing their support behind political outsiders.

In Southern California, one group of activists is hoping to flip the last Republican-held seat based primarily in L.A. County. They're called Indivisible 2.9, and they gathered on the deck of a private home in the Hollywood Hills earlier this month to discuss their next steps.

They're throwing their weight behind congressional hopeful Katie Hill, a 29-year-old political newcomer.

"She's young, she's smart, she's progressive, she's incredibly committed to her district in a way that I think is quite unusual," says Michele Mulroney, who is hosting the meeting. She's backing Hill as the one who can beat incumbent Republican Steve Knight. She thinks Hill's knowledge of the district and her work in the nonprofit sector more than make up for her lack of traditional political experience.

"Yeah, she's technically 29, but her wisdom goes way beyond her years, and I think it's time frankly to turn this country over to the young and passionate candidate," Mulroney says.

Indivisible is a political advocacy group started by a few Democratic congressional staffers after the 2016 election. Their mission: resist the Trump agenda.

To do this, they put together a playbook of best practices for organizing. They say they were inspired by another, more infamous grassroots organization: the conservative Tea Party, which rose in prominence in 2009 during the Obama presidency.

Now, Indivisible members crash town halls, knock on doors and raise money about $2 million since last year. Their website says there are 5,800 chapters of the group registered in the country, including many in California each in places where they hope to replace a Republican with a Democrat.

Hill and her supporters are after District 25 in Northern L.A. County, which includes cities like Santa Clarita, Simi Valley, Palmdale, and Lancaster.

Incumbent Steve Knight won re-election in November by about 16,000 votes but voters in his district chose Clinton over Trump. Results like these give Indivisible hope, but Hill faces some significant hurdles, such as campaign financing.

She'll need to raise about $200,000 by the end of this week in order to unlock funding from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee $3 million to flip the seat. And money is just part of it.

Democrats face long odds in Republican districts, in part, because the party itself is less than united: There's still a rift between progressives who supported Bernie Sanders and more traditional Democrats.

Another challenge: Progressives are also political outsiders. Theyre up against people who know how to play the game.

"The fact is [the] Democratic Party's been around a long time. It has rules and procedures and people who have really dedicated their lives to it blood, sweat and tears for a long time," says Matt Rodriguez, former western states director for the Obama campaign.

Rodriguez says enthusiasm is generally a good thing in politics, but it's not enough.

"Their issue set might not be enough for large swaths of voters. That means you have to work within that system. That's the system that exists. And that's gonna take time," he says.

Indivisible's organizers continue to work on plans to get their candidates elected, but it's not clear if they'll have enough support (and enough money) to put political newcomers like Hill into office.

Despite these clear challenges, the voters at Hill's event say they want change. And to them, change is only something an outsider can bring.

Press the blue play button above to hear the full report.

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SoCal progressives are growing in numbers but can they get a candidate elected? - 89.3 KPCC

Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Intolerant Progressives and Puritans of Old Compared Wall Street Journal (subscription) Regarding the headline Progressives Are the New Puritan Busybodies atop the June 24 letters: It would seem to be a clever analogy, and one that contains a certain historical truth. Many of the elite colleges at the forefront of progressivism were ...

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Intolerant Progressives and Puritans of Old Compared - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

The progressive strategy of investigating President Donald Trump nonstop for Russian collusion or obstruction of justice or witness tampering so far has produced no substantial evidence of wrongdoing.

The alternate strategy of derailing the new administration before it really gets started hasnt succeeded either, despite serial efforts to sue over election results, alter the Electoral College vote, boycott the inauguration, delay the confirmation of appointments, demand recusals, promise Trumps impeachment or removal through the 25th Amendment, and file suit under the Emoluments Clause.

Likewise, athird strategy of portraying Trump as a veritable monsterso far has failed in four special elections for House seats.

Apparently progressives have accepted the idea that Barack Obamas formula of twice winning the Electoral College is not yet transferrable to other progressive candidates such as Hillary Clinton. And they probably have concluded that Obamas progressive political agenda proved unpopular with voters by 2010 and had to be implemented by ad hoc executive orders presidential prerogatives now utilized by Donald Trump to overturn the ones Obama issued.

A fourth potential pathway to power would be a return to Bill Clintons pragmatic agendas of the 1990s. But apparently progressives find that centrist remedy worse than the malady of losing elections given that during the Obama tenure, more than 1,000 state and local offices were lost to Republicans, in addition to majorities in the House and Senate, and a majority of governorships and legislatures.

What next?

Trump acts as if he is a Nietzschean figure, assuming that anything that does not destroy him only makes him stronger. And now, slowly, his accusers are becoming the accused.

One nagging problem with the progressive case against Trump for purported Russian collusion and obstruction of justice was that members of the Obama administration had more exposure to those allegations than did the political newcomer Trump.

Last year, thenFBI director James Comey testified that not only did former attorney general Loretta Lynch improperly meet in secret with Bill Clinton during an investigation of Hillary Clinton, but also that Lynch had asked Comey to downplay the investigation into Hillarys use of a private e-mail server during her tenure as secretary of state. Comey confessed that he had reluctantly agreed to Lynchs request.

Earlier this month, in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey admitted that he asked a friend to leak notes about Comeys earlier conversation with Trump in hopes of forcing the nomination of a special counsel to lead the Russia investigation perhaps a successful gambit, given that Comeys friend, former FBI director Robert Mueller, was soon appointed to that role.

Comey also wrongly dismissed Hillary Clintons e-mail problems because of a perceived lack of criminal intent a supposedly mitigating circumstance that legally should have had no bearing on things.

As far as alleged Russian collusion, there had long been conservative accusations that Bill and Hillary Clinton used Hillarys status as secretary of state to leverage honoraria for Bill and donations to the Clinton Foundation in exchange for concessions to Russian interests.

Moreover, Russian tampering efforts had been going on for months before the 2016 election, but without any retaliatory measures from the Obama administration, which knew about Russias meddling.

In an inadvertent hot-mic request in 2012, Obama asked outgoing Russian president Dmitry Medvedev to urge Russian president Vladimir Putin to give me space during Obamas reelection campaign, so that after his assumed success, Obama could reciprocate with more flexibility on Russian issues. In the present highly charged climate, would that be seen as a form of Russian collusion?

Meanwhile, the House Intelligence Committee is still investigating whether top Obama-administration officials wrongfully used the power of foreign-intelligence collection to conduct surveillance of Americans particularly members of the Trump campaign.

The point is not whether the Clintons, James Comey, Barack Obama, or members of the Obama administration can be proven to have engaged in illegal or unscrupulous behavior.

Rather, the lesson is that progressives should have offered alternative political visions that might have won back the American people rather than attempting to terminate the Trump presidency on charges to which the progressive side is far more vulnerable.

Now that Trump is emerging from successful House special elections and has fended off six months of media attacks, celebrity invective, and progressive efforts to abort his tenure, he seems to be going back on the offensive.

Currently, House and Senate investigations are doing to Democrats what has been done Trump. So far these probes seem to have better chances ofprovingwrongdoing.

What does all this political back-and-forth mean?

Democrats struck preemptively to take out Trump before he unwound the Obama legacy. That effort has probably been stalled.

The return volley is being launched at a time when an energized Trump is gaining momentum on health care and tax reform, and an improving economy.

In sum, to thwart a new presidents policies, it is probably wiser to offer alternative agendas instead of trying to destroy him before he has even entered office.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, to appear in October from Basic Books. You can reach him by e-mailing [emailprotected]. 2017 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

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Not only have progressives failed to take down the president, but they also haven't offered an alternative agenda. - National Review