Daily Archives: March 16, 2021

ABCs The View co-host Joy Behar denied the militant left-wing group Antifa existed on Monday.

During a segment on Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson claiming he wasnt concerned by rioters who stormed the Capitol at the start of the new year, but might have had they been militant Black Lives Matter or Antifa demonstrators, Behar condemned the Midwestern Republican as worried about racist fiction.

Hes right out there with his racism, theres no dog-whistle for him you know, its like Im a racist, have a nice day.' Behar said. Hes scared of this fictitious idea of Antifa, a thing that doesnt even exist.

Behar claimed the militant left-wing group, which was responsible for repeated outbursts of routine record-breaking destruction, was nothing more than a racist idea in the second segment on the topic following a commercial break. In fact, Antifa racked up a total of damages 66 times greater than the estimated expenses of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6.

Its an idea, not a real thing, Behar repeated to fellow co-host Meghan McCain who challenged her on the issue.

What separates Antifa is their willingness to use violence. I have very good friends who have been reporting on Antifa for months, and months, and months, McCain said. We can say Ron Johnson is an absolute moron, we can say that not all activism is violent, but the idea that Antifa doesnt exist is just factually inaccurate and wrong and a lie.

Just last week, Antifa rioters in Portland mounted another assault on the Hatfield Federal Courthouse, a federal building demonstrators lit on fire while people remained inside.

The Portland carnage follows a summer of siege where demonstrators rioted for more than 100 consecutive days injuring at least 277 officers, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Behars comments are reminiscent of how Democrats and their allies in legacy media endorsed, excused, and encouraged the far-left demonstrations which routinely tore through the country last year, only for the same enablers of the violence to exploit the Capitol riots in January which were similarly condemned in a consistent fashion by the political right.

As Portland was undergoing an epidemic of summer violence that featured mortar-style fireworks blown up at police officers, New York Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler said Antifa was nothing more than a myth that was only being spread in Washington D.C.

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'The View' Co-Host Joy Behar Claims Antifa 'Doesn't Even Exist' - The Federalist

Biden Tells Nation There Is Hope After a Devastating Year.

Hopeful Biden Says, I Need You.

Biden Sets Vaccine Goal That Would Allow Americans To Gather By July 4.

These headlines, from the covers of the printed New York Times, LA Times, and Boston Globe, greeted Americans Friday morning, 51 days into the Biden presidency and a full year into the beginnings of Americas long lockdown experiment.

Seven Takeaways From Bidens Prime-Time Address topped CNNs site. Chris Cillizzas first two takeaways? Donald Trump dug the hole was number one. Number two? A return to empathy. Chris Cillizza, its worth noting, is a 45-year-old man and does not work for the White House.

Last night is why Joe Biden won the presidency, Politico Playbook opened with a straight face.

If you hadnt watched the presidents prime-time address, you might think it was something anything other than the most depressing, defeated, and resigned speech since President Jimmy Carter held the office. You might think he hadnt devoted his third sentence to a baseless attack on his predecessor, and the entire rest of his address to death, sadness, loneliness, and despair. You might think he hadnt literally threatened the American people, warning, We may have to reinstate restrictions to get back on track, please, we dont want to do that again.

Rather, to read The Washington Post homepages featured commentary on the address, youd think Much of that speech was about hope.

It was about seeing a shaft of light at the end of a dark horror, Robin Givhan, a 56-year-old woman who once won a Pulitzer for witty, closely observed essays that transform fashion criticism into cultural criticism, wrote. His white French cuffs and his crisp pocket square, she went to tell us, evoked all of the institutional power and authority at his disposal to make things better.

[H]is mere presence on television, she insisted, was a declaration of his pride in the countrys progress.

If youre wondering why you didnt see any of this, dont worry: It didnt happen. But more and more, we all have to take a step back, throw some water on our faces, and look around in disbelief at the state of our corporate media.

Take the other big story of the week: Fox Newss Tucker Carlson dared say that our country, faced with a vicious China growing stronger every day, shouldnt pat itself on the back for its military featuring maternity flight suits. This is so obvious it shouldnt need to be said at all, but the Pentagon felt the need to react anyways, launching a full-on broadside on his heresy.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a veteran whose Blackhawk was shot down by insurgents, launched a fundraiser for her campaign called F*ck Tucker Carlson. The commander of Space Force filmed an unintentionally hysterical video on his webcam reminding his delicate troops that Tucker thinking pregnant women arent ideal fighting machines is based off of actually zero days of serving in the armed services.

So what does this have to do with corporate media? Reporters, in unison, chased the ball. And like that, just one day after the Pentagon (or someone at it) leaked the classified report showing the Chinese military dominating the United States in a Pacific war game, the news cycle changed to Tucker Carlson Bad.

Throw the ball and theyll chase it. Its a good trick. President Donald Trump knew it well, if he played it differently.

But thats not all! This week also marks the Biden administration setting a record as the longest a president has gone without a press conference in an entire century. So do reporters even need a ball to chase? As we saw on the campaign trail and as we read Friday morning, the answer is no. While easily distracted from actual news, our corporate media is also perfectly content with, perfectly skilled at, perfectly shameless over crafting their new presidents propaganda for him basically regardless of what he says. The only question is, are you listening?

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If You Heard Biden is 'Hopeful' And Tucker Carlson Is Evil, Congratulations, You've Been Lied To - The Federalist

The government response to COVID-19 has mostly been a failure. Theatric, yessee New York Gov. Andrew Cuomos Emmy. Symbolic, yes. But there is no evidence shutdowns did anything but deepen the economic suffering, increase suicides, and prevent lifesaving medical tests and treatments.

With the exception of former President Trumps effort to speed research, approval, and rollout of a COVID vaccine through Operation Warp Speed, and efforts to discourage the spread of the virus through border restrictions (now abandoned by President Biden), what policies can objectively be shown to have worked?

Last May, in The Federalist I examined state-level unemployment through April, using job losses as a proxy for the severity of government-imposed shutdowns, finding these even then suggested lockdowns had no effect on the course of a virus released by what appears to be sloppy lab procedures in Wuhan, China. I also found a statistical connection between a states reliance on mass transit and a higher fatality rate.

One year on, has anything changed? What does the data say? Does anything suggest that the shutdowns were worth it?

The change in private employment among the states from January 2020 to December 2020, the latest month for which data is available, can be used as a proxy for the severity of government edicts to slow the spread of the virus. It represents closed restaurants and family-owned businesses, destroyed lives and lifes savings.

In theory, this pain should have been rewarded with a lower COVID fatality rate. Thats what we were told as we obediently stayed at home. Yet the data shows no benefit earned by the states that inflicted the largest destruction on their job base, judging by the fatality rates from COVID. Graphically, it looks like this.

Another constant feature of the corporate medias COVID-19 coverage was the claim red states were killing their people. Again, the data after a year shows no correlation between a states level of freedom, as measured by the Fraser Institute in their annual Economic Freedom of North America survey, and COVID fatalities.

However, there is a modest correlation between economic freedom and the strength of the job market over the past year, although it is important to note that the correlation between freedom on the state level and job creation has been a long-term trend, one that COVID-19 did not change.

Digging deeper into the data, a regression analysis seeking correlations to per capita COVID-19 fatalities at the state level to five variablesuse of mass transit, change in private-sector employment, economic freedom, share of the population 65 and older, and the percentage of adults with obesity in 2020finds only a weak connection (adjusted R square of 0.19). Only two variables are significant in this correlation: the share of mass transit use (P-value of 0.001) and prevalence of obesity (P-value of 0.009).

This would suggest that the virus takes its course regardless of the severity of shutdowns. Thats not to say that any government action is futile. For instance, the Trump administrations effort to speed development of an effective vaccine appears likely to save a significant number of peopleassuming the vaccines retain their effectiveness as the virus mutates.

If the preceding macroeconomic analysis isnt convincing, there are also peer-reviewed studies that find the same. For instance, Ioannidis, Bhattacharya, et al. publishing in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation, concluded, we do not find significant benefits on case growth of more restrictive NPIs (nonpharmaceutical interventions) such as mandatory stayathome orders and business closures.

Thus, with no statistically consistent difference in virus fatality outcomes between Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New Yorks 11.9 percent drop in private-sector jobs, Gov. Gavin Newsom of Californias 8.3 percent loss of jobs, Gov. Greg Abbotts Texas decline of 3.7 percent, and Gov. Ron DeSantiss Florida drop of 5.1 percent, it makes sense to encourage opening the economy while protecting the most vulnerable populations.

Lastly, as a crowning example of our politicians proclivity to reward failure, it is illuminating to see that more than 90 percent of the $1.9 trillion Biden stimulus is not directly related to COVID-19. Some $350 billion of the behemoth spending bill bails out the same state and local governments that inflicted the greatest damage on their own economies, realizing no measurable gain in public health.

As the Foundation for Economic Education notes, Bidens bill spends more than twice as much lining the pockets of bankrupt blue states than it does actually addressing public health. But then, spending, not public health, is the purpose of the bill.

Chuck DeVore is vice president of national initiatives at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and served in the California State Assembly from 2004 to 2010.

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Did The Shutdowns Save Lives? A Year Later, Stats Suggest Not - The Federalist

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Dr. Marty Makary, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health and chief medical adviser to Sesame Care, joins Federalist Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss what the so-called experts are getting right and wrong about COVID-19, the vaccine rollout, and how Americans should navigate the newest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines.

I dont know how we ended up in a world where infection control epidemiologists are running public policy, Makary explained. What do they know about education and poverty and substance abuse and loneliness and deferred medical care? So weve got to put things in perspective.

Makary said that theCDC has been consistently late and missed the mark on multiple COVID-19 protocols, handing out advice that some medical experts warned against. The problem, Makary noted, is that the CDC did not want to listen to critical or dissenting opinions.

We have groupthink in medicine just like we do in society right now and theres groupthink that results in everybody believing the same thing and if you dont, then youre kind of sidelined a little bit. And that groupthink is very dangerous, Makary explained.

Were seeing it with delaying the second dose and the data around that. Weve seen it with natural immunity from prior infection there is a cancel culture in medicine right now. We see it in the public health community, you know we saw it with a sort of, you can selectively criticize certain political demonstrations but not others.

Read Makarys book The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health CareAnd How to Fix It here.

Listen here:https://mp3.ricochet.com/2021/03/Makary.mp3

Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

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What Groupthink Caused The CDC To Get Wrong About COVID-19 - The Federalist

Failed Democratic congressional candidate Rita Hart is pushing onward with a challenge to her lost election last fall to freshman Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks who was sat in the lower chamber in January. Miller-Meeks was certified the winner by state election officials by six votes.

Hart, however, bypassed state avenues for challenging elections and instead appealed her case directly to the House of Representatives, which may determine its own membership. House Democrats on the Administration Committee greenlit a probe into the Iowa contest Wednesday.

On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who chose in December to seat Miller-Meeks despite the ongoing challenge launched by Hart, threatened theres still a chance the House would overturn the Iowa result to add one more Democrat to a razor-thin majority. Pelosi currently presides over the slimmest majority of her congressional career with a nine-vote advantage over House Republicans.

Could you see a scenario, depending on what they find in their probe, of unseating of the current member and seating Rita Hart if it came to that? Fox News Chad Pergram pressed Pelosi at a Thursday press conference.

Could you see a scenario? We dont do press conferences on can you see a scenario. Of course! Pelosi said, repeating herself, of course!

I respect the committee Well see where that takes us. There could also be a scenario to that extent, the House speaker continued.

On Fox News Special Report Friday, Miller-Meeks railed the Democrats desperate decision to consider Harts challenge after the election re-examined by Iowa election officials was declared in the Republicans favor.

There is no doubt in my mind, and there is no doubt in the bipartisan executive council who has certified me the winner. So it was not only the secretary of state, it was a bipartisan executive council, Miller-Meeks said of the results in the contested race. Iowa law is what determines what our election process is, how the ballots are included, and all of that was done. What my opponent wants to do is to violate Iowa law, to go against Iowa law, and go against the representation of the voters of Iowa, and disenfranchise 400,000 voters.

Harts challenge to the House Administration Committee centers on 22 ballots the Democrats campaign argues were improperly rejected. Hart claims that had the ballots been counted, Hart would have carried the race in Iowas 2nd Congressional District by nine votes.

Iowa courts however, have been circumvented in reviewing the decision of bipartisan state election officials to seat Miller-Meeks.

The mechanism trigged by Hart to challenge her race has not been used for more than three decades. The last time such an appeal was made directly to the House was in 1984 between Democratic incumbent Frank McCloskey and Republican challenger Richard McIntyre in Indiana. House Speaker Tip ONeill, who enjoyed a wider majority at the time than held by Pelosi today, denied McIntyre, who won state-certification, a place in the lower chamber until the process was able to play out.

After the Government Accountability Office re-examined the race, it declared McCloskey the winner by a mere four votes, and the Democratic House voted the incumbent member of their caucus would retain the seat.

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Pelosi Threatens To Disenfranchise Iowa Voters With Contested Race - The Federalist

It doesnt matter how the Biden administration tries to spin it, there is undeniably a crisis underway at the southwest border. The number of illegal border crossings is up 100 percent over this time last year, and at this rate apprehensions of illegal immigrants will surpass all of 2018, 2019, and 2020 combined. As of this writing, a record number of unaccompanied migrant teens are in federal custody, with hundreds more arriving every day.

The Washington Post reports that more than 8,500 minors are in shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services, and another 3,500 are in U.S. Border Patrol stations facilities that are basically concrete holding cells, not designed for minors or families, and not intended to house anyone for more than 72 hours. As of now, however, minors are being held for an average of 107 hours, in violation of federal law, because HHS has nowhere to place them.

The largest number of migrants held in these Border Patrol facilities during the Trump administration was 2,600 in June 2019, when President Trump was denounced by Democrats and the corporate press for putting kids in cages. The press is now predictably silent, and Democrats deny there is even a crisis.

But that, of course, has been as predictable as the crisis itself. President Biden came into office and signed a raft of executive orders that ended key Trump-era policies that had helped reduce illegal border-crossing. The effect of that shift has been profound. From the Rio Grande to Tegucigalpa, word has gone out that now is the time to migrate north, that if you can get into the United States, Biden will let you stay.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador acknowledged as much after a virtual meeting with Biden on March 1, saying, They see him as the migrant president, and so many feel theyre going to reach the United States. Mexican officials are now worried that Biden administration policies are creating a boon for organized crime, which increasingly traffics in migrants, charging each one thousands to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. Migrants have become a commodity, one Mexican official told Reuters this week.

Cartel-associated smuggling networks are making huge profits charging migrants, most of them from Central America, for passage through Mexico and into the U.S. As in previous migrant surges, smugglers commonly referred to as coyotes are advising people to bring children with them, even offering discounted rates for adults crossing with children.

The reason for the discount is simple: An adult with a child makes a smugglers job easier. Instead of trying to evade Border Patrol, adults with children simply turn themselves in to the nearest Border Patrol agents and claim asylum. In some cases, the adult is not actually the parent of the child he is traveling with, a practice that was well-documented during the 2019 border crisis.

Under the Biden administrations new border policies, which mirror the Obama-eras catch-and-release procedures, most of those claiming asylum will be released into the United States after a short time with instructions to appear before an immigration judge. This creates an enormous incentive for desperate people in Central America seeking a better life, but also enormous incentives for cartels and smuggling networks to profit off the flow of migrants. Indeed, cartels along the border have developed highly-sophisticated systems for tracking migrant payments, with most of their customers remaining in a form of debt bondage even after theyre residing in the states.

But thats just one end of the problem. By the time Central American migrants get to northern Mexico, its very difficult to prevent their crossing into the U.S., given the resources and incentives of the cartels.

The other end of the problem is in the sending countries in Central America, the so-called Northern Triangle of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. The corporate press and lawmakers of both parties most often focus on the poverty and gang violence in Central America but miss a more important aspect, which is the extent of official corruption in the governments of these countries. That corruption is directly tied to drug trafficking and the transnational cartels that are helping drive illegal immigration on the border.

For example, in the scrum of headlines about the royal family and President Joe Bidens dogs this week, you might have missed an important story that bears directly on all of this: The president of Honduras was implicated in a massive drug-trafficking scheme and is allegedly in the pay of transnational drug cartels.

At the opening of a trial for accused Honduran drug trafficker Geovanny Fuentes Ramrez in New York on Tuesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob Gutwillig said Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernndez was an integral part of Fuentes Ramrezs trafficking operation. His operations thrived because of his connections, Gutwillig said. Mayors, congressmen, military generals, police chiefs, even the current president of Honduras. The defendant bribed them all.

One of the witnesses who will testify during the trial, added Gutwillig, was present when Hernndez said he wanted to shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos and flood the United States with cocaine.

This isnt the first time Hernndezs name has come up in a high-profile federal trial. During a 2019 trial that led to the conviction of his brother, Juan Antonio Hernndez, the Honduran president was accused of accepting more than $1 million in bribes from the now-imprisoned former head of the Sinaloa Cartel, infamous Mexican drug trafficker Joaqun El Chapo Guzmn.

Hernndez has long denied any involvement in drug trafficking, although a filing by prosecutors in the Fuentes Ramrez case confirmed he is under investigation by U.S. authorities, according to the Associated Press.

The reason all this matters to the migrant crisis underway at the border is that, to put it bluntly, putatively sovereign states like Honduras are in a state of collapse. Ordinary people in these countries, encouraged by the Biden administration, are making a rational and reasonable choice to travel north and get into the United States by any means possible.

As countries like Honduras continue to implode under the weight of corruption and collusion with cartels, people in those countries will keep coming north. Turning them away, as the Trump administration did, is only a partial fix. Allowing them in, as the Biden administration is doing, enriches cartels by providing them a nearly unlimited supply of paying customers (and victims). It also creates a humanitarian crisis in South Texas and other border states, as were now seeing.

In the long run, the United States cant continue its long-standing policy of benign neglect of our southern neighbors. The chaos and corruption that plague those countries will, one way or another, make its way to us eventually. At that point, it will be too late to stop an illegal immigration crisis that wont number in the tens or even hundreds of thousands, but the millions.

Photo U.S. Customs and Border Protection

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The Migrant Crisis Isn't Just At The Border, It Stretches To Central America - The Federalist

Federalist Publisher Ben Domenech hosted progressive political data scientist and Senior Fellow at The Center for The American Progress Action Fund David Shor on his new Fox News podcast published Monday to break down the math on winning elections, and why President Donald Trump was good for the Republican Party.

Elections are a lot closer than they used to be, Shor says. It used to be that there were really big blow outs one way or another.

Polarization however, particularly among the educated elite, have made such elections far more rare.

Looking ahead to 2022, Shor said, Republicans have a lot to be optimistic about considering Trumps expansion of the base combined with the historical gravity where the party in the White House fairs poorly in the new presidents first midterms.

Midterms are usually pretty predictable, Shor said, citing the common gains of the opposition party. That means that going into this, Democrats are in a pretty bad position. If we just do business as usual, then were going to lose an enormous number of House seats, and a couple of Senate seats.

Listen to the full podcast here.

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Ben Domenech Breaks Down The Math On What Wins Elections With David Shor - The Federalist

Asian Americans are beginning to realize that their values are no longer aligned with the shifting Democratic Party.

A recent spike in Asian hate crimes has led to leftist and corporate media that deliberately refuse to talk about the perpetrators and their motives. They insinuate the hate crimes are due to either structural imbalances in society or a direct result of white supremacy rhetoric. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bizarrely blamed the rise in attacks on Asians on former President Trump.

The New York Times also attributed it to Trumps alleged xenophobia with the term Chinese virus. NBC News even went further, pondering whether violence against Asians should really be considered a hate crime, given that Asians are privileged and it might hamper the fight against systemic racism.

Outlets refuse to acknowledge who the crimes (including murder, gang rape, and assault) are committed by or fear of a backlash from activist groups. As with most attacks on Jews in New York city, most of the perpetrators are black.

Meanwhile, real systemic racism, as in racism perpetuated in a systemic way by figures in authority specifically targeted at any minority race, is happening against Asians. Americas oldest and top medical journal recently wrote that Asian Americans must recognize their position of privilege now. This idea is a direct result of the perpetuation of critical race theory, where success, hard work, and other conservative values are considered white supremacy.

The Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York (CACAGNY) issued a statement, completely ignored by corporate media, calling critical race theory (CRT) a hate crime against Asians.

One way or another, CRT wants to get rid of too many Asians in good schools. Asians are over-represented. CRT is todays Chinese Exclusion Act. CRT is the real hate crime against Asians, the statement read, adding that CRT appears in our workplaces under the cover of implicit bias/sensitivity training. It infiltrates our schools pretending to be culturally/ethnically responsive pedagogy, with curricula such as the New York Times 1619 Project and Seattles ethnomathematics.

CRT activists push for lowering admission standards and the removal of merit-based entrance exams, alarming Asian parents who know that means fewer admissions for qualified Asian students. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio even went as far as proposing an admission process based on race in an attempt to prevent too many Asians in NYCs elite schools. Asian Americans are taking note of which side these proposals are coming from.

What we are observing is the first spark of a reactionary pan-Asian class consciousness, and the realization that Asian Americans (including both East and South Asians) perhaps do not belong in the Democratic Party. Leftists words of diversity clearly ring hollow, as hard-working Asians from every socio-economic background, with stable family structures and strong disciplined work ethic, face discrimination.

This discrimination ranges from the abolition of gifted programs in schools, where Asians earn a larger portion of the student pool than their percentage of the population, to universities, where Asians face direct discrimination in admissions as they score high in standard admission tests. In addition, now Asians are facing violence on the streets, and the perpetrators are typically glossed over in media reporting.

The cultural dynamic is also important. A stable family structure is important for a disciplined life, which in turn is important to developing an instinct for success. This is not racial. It is simply the kind of character and values that help people succeed.

The evidence on this is overwhelming and cross-racial. Anyone who adopts these values has a better chance to succeed in life. Broken families and fatherlessness are directly correlated with lack of academic and career success, so much so that it forms a pattern too large to ignore.

But they are ignored, as these are taboo to mention in leftist circles. Hollywood has perpetuated a myth that humans cannot be culturally superior or inferior. Consider the Hollywood telling of origin stories that feature evil characters who reinforce the central leftist myth that all evil results from early traumas, social oppression, or toxic ideologies, and not from any evolutionary or cultural influences.

According to modern philosophy, one must always be a victim of circumstances or structural inequality. Naturally, when Asian Americans shatter that myth through sheer hard work, they also bust the narrative of white supremacy and structural racism. There are then only two weapons leftists see: Either to offset that success with affirmative action, which actively harms anyone intelligent, or to call successful Asian Americans a cog in the machine of white supremacy.

Why is there no collective fight against this? John Yoo and Avik Roy wrote in 2019 that the natural home of Asian-Americans is in the GOP. They are a natural match with conservatism, from work ethic to sexual politics to academic success. Yet it appears Republican leadership has squandered that opportunity.

For a start, neither Asian Americans nor Indian Americans have powerful lobby groups with deep pockets and coordinated action plans. Most of the demographics are deeply instinctively conservative, yet the few left-wing Asian and Indian Americans continue to hog the rhetorical limelight and the microphones. As long as that continues, there is no chance of any fight back.

The first thing Asian-Americans need to do is have something akin to Mumsnet in Britain, the nascent forum that formed the backbone of middle-class British mothers to organize against left-wing politics, to write petitions, organize mass calls, and coordinate movements, to pressure universities, schools, and local politicians.

Second, they need to form local committees and groups not just for physical safety, but also to form a pressure bloc in local politics. Third, they need to stand for elections, in a political party that supports hard work and success.

Asian Americans and Indian Americans are mostly middle class, the class that gives the most back to society while getting the least in return. Their cultural instinct is to put their heads down to work hard and save money and have a family and not make much of a fuss. But those days are coming to an end.

Asian Americans need to urgently understand that a society where success, discipline, ambition, and other conservative values are in considered traits of white supremacy, and affirmative action is implemented to offset them, is not a society where they can ever thrive, succeed, or even survive.

Sumantra Maitra is a doctoral researcher at the University of Nottingham, UK, and a senior contributor to The Federalist. His research is in great power-politics and neorealism. You can find him on Twitter @MrMaitra.

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Leftists Are Pushing Asian Americans Out Of The Democratic Party - The Federalist

When I learned in high school that Hillary Clinton had written a book called It Takes A Village, it ruined the phrase for me. As a good disciple of rugged American individualism, I resented the concept as basically closet communism.

Conservatives and libertarians rightly celebrate the accomplishments of individuals, glorifying images of self-sufficient mountain men and self-made businessmen. We admire the opportunities that a free market provides for people to create their own success. America is, after all, built on the idea that anyone can climb the ladder of progress and prosperity.

But when individualism goes so far as to sever the roots that anchor the individual in his local community, he simply becomes dependent on something else.When he stops shopping in his local hardware store, he starts ordering from Amazon. When county commission meetings seem defunct, he looks to the federal government to solve his problems.

Too many conservatives shirk the idea of community interdependence because it sounds too much like a leftist assault on capitalism and personal responsibility. Grace Olmsteads new book Uprooted challenges that view, reclaiming localism and community interdependence as the conservative causes they are.

A native of the small farming town of Emmett, Idaho, Olmstead moved to Northern Virginia for college, where she and her husband still live. Researching for the book, she traveled back home, documenting the handed-down stories of her great-grandparents and their neighbors. Examining the threat of brain drain in rural farming communities, she wrestled with her own responsibility to her hometown.

In my first few years living in Washington, DC, I wrote many articles defending broken placesfighting for towns experiencing postindustrial collapse or brain drain, Olmstead writes. I didnt even consider the fact that I was one of the kids that had blown away.

The book is also an appreciative eulogy for previous generations. Recalling Wallace Stegners division of transient boomers who go where the winds of progress blow and stickers who put down roots, Olmstead celebrates the stickers who built her hometown.

Her stories of the farmers who settled Emmett and those who continue to put down roots there are sometimes tragic and always charming. When her newlywed great-grandparents bought their farmhouse, she says, they had mere dollars in their pockets and had to watch when their neighbors left the fields for a lunch break because they couldnt afford a clock.

Now, the farmhouse is home to Emmett natives Terry and Ashley Walton and their five young children. Every year since their first child was born, theyve loaded the whole family onto Terrys combine at harvesttime as it makes its way through the fields.

Interwoven with the success stories are also hardships and loss. Olmstead shares the story of Lucy and Joe Lourenco, who moved to Emmett from Portugal as newlyweds in the 1980s. In 1993, a snowstorm almost ruined the Lourencos fledgling dairy farm.

After almost 30 years of overcoming bad weather and economic hardship, the Lourencos decided to downsize and sell their dairy in 2019. They arent alone; half of American dairy farmers disappeared between 2000 and 2018, Olmstead reports.

Local communities and especially farming towns continue to struggle as more Americans move their homes to cities, their business online, and their sights toward a vague notion of upward mobility. Those who stay in their hometowns, Olmstead laments, are too often seen as the ones who couldnt keep up.

Wealth is no longer built through allegiance to a community or a town, she says. It is increasingly achieved in isolation by individuals and grown through rootlessness, not through loyalty.

While the individualist virtues of determination, hard work, and personal responsibility are important, they shouldnt (and dont have to) lead to a belittling of the role of community roots. Rootedness is foundational in the philosophies of conservative giants like Edmund Burke, who emphasized the obligations that every person has to the people around him and the ancestors who have gone before him.

Rootedness is also intricately woven into the fabric of federalism and limited government. Nationalization and globalization, on the other hand, emphasize the relationship between a citizen and the government and the governments place in solving problems, providing rights, and policing disagreement. Localism combats that, reinforcing the ties of loyalty between people that transcend political allegiances.

In the Emmett, Idaho that her great-grandfather knew, Olmstead writes, Life was a given thing: poured out and then offered back in a list of dependencies and debts so long, it could never be settled. It was never meant to be.

Those neighborly dependencies and debts are not antithetical to conservatism, but foundational to it. The ties of community around us are what keep us going far more effectively and far more lovingly than federal programs and handouts can.

While many conservatives feel they are fighting a losing battle on the national scale, many of our most important tasks are those we tackle in our immediate communities with the people surrounding us. They are in church potlucks and county fairs in cultivating liberty and loyalty at home.

Wherever we decide to live, we must learn to stick: choosing to invest ourselves in place, to love our neighbors, to leave our soil a little healthier than it was when we arrived, Olmstead says. Every place will be imperfect. Our own efforts at living well in place will be imperfect. But love suggests that we ought to keep trying anyway: to keep sowing seeds of service and generosity in the lands we love.

Uprooted is available here on March 16, 2021. Better yet, buy it at your local bookstore, which you can do online at IndieBound.org.

Elle Reynolds is an intern at the Federalist, and a senior at Patrick Henry College studying government and journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.

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'Uprooted' Protests The Amazon-ification Of The World - The Federalist