Category Archives: Liberal

We were all told that 2021 would be a better year for the country, but the first two weeks could hardly have been worse. The left is out to discredit not just President Trump and his indefensible behavior since the election but also his ideas. They are triumphantly saying that free market conservatism is dead and that the era of big government is back with a vengeance. Not so fast.

Ive lived through two major Democratic takeovers of Washington in my 35 years inside the capital beltway. The first was in 1993, when Bill Clinton and the new Democrats seized complete control of power, and the second was in 2009, with the Barack Obama hope and change liberal agenda. In both cases, Democrats and their liberal allies outran their mandate from voters with Hillarycare and then Obamacare, obscenely obese spending bills and a regulatory vice grip on American businesses large and small.

In both cases, within two years of unchecked liberal mischief, voters had had it and pummeled the Democrats with massive Republican victories from coast to coast from local dogcatcher races to congressional seats and governorships.

My prediction is this is precisely what Democrats will do. The dominant far-left wing of the party will feel uncaged. The squad in the House, led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, will be demanding a take-no-prisoners rush to socialist policies on health care, education, student loans and climate change. President-elect Joe Biden has already announced that, right out of the gate, the Democrats will ram through a $2 to $3 trillion stimulus bill with the debt careening past the $30 trillion mark.

Yes, they will try to jerry-rig the rules in Washington to sidestep every check and balance that was installed by our Founding Fathers and nearly 230 years of speed bumps to protect the rights of the minority. This means adios to the Senate filibuster and hello to court-packing schemes. The House Democrats have already canceled the pay as you go budget rules requiring new spending to be offset with other deficit-reduction measures.

This whole leftist power agenda has a name: the Great Reset, which is a repudiation of capitalism and free markets and a grand tilt toward re-empowering the elites and the ruling class. The globalists are all for it. Putting America first is to be replaced with globalism.

As sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, Americans will be repulsed by this anti-freedom agenda. The nation voted against Trumps antics and his bombastic personality, not his policies which were a spectacular success, particularly on the economy. Lets not forget that right before the November elections, almost 6 of 10 Americans said the country was better off today than four years ago i.e., the end of the Obama-Biden regime. Biden promised that the agenda of Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders would be kicked to the side of the road, but thats not where the party in Washington is. Thats not where last years most liberal senator, Kamala Harris, is at. Democrats will concentrate power in Washington and refill the swamp. Most voters still want it drained.

To save the country from socialism which voters in 2020 said they clearly do NOT want Republicans need to do what former Rep. Newt Gingrich did in 1993 and 1994 and the young guns in the House did in 2009 and 2010: play defense like its fourth down on the one-yard line and lay out an alternative vision for America based on opportunity, freedom, free markets, choices and, yes, making America great again.

Stephen Moore is a syndicated columnist.

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Liberalism will be unleashed and will fail again - Boston Herald

Keki Daruwalla

PITY the liberal. His mooring rope has been cut or stolen. The pegs on the banks of the Ganga, Volga or the Danube have disappeared. Where the hell does he hitch his boat? I, for one, am in a quandary. In the good old days when Life and Time, Encounter and our desi Quest were lambasting the Commies and their political practice, we believed them but held back, though they gave us ample reason to believe them. The Soviets first invaded Hungary in 1956 and executed Imre Nagy (pronounced Naudge in Magyar), the liberal Prime Minister. Two years later in 1968, they invaded Prague and the Czechs gave them a hard time. But the Soviet army was the Soviet army. Frankly, we did not believe all we heard. We bought our Turgenevs and Tolstoys, sturdily bound, from pavements in Connaught Place for at the most 10 rupees. And the vocal leftists extolled Dange and said all this was CIA propaganda. And lo and behold, there were genuine press leaks to say that Encounter and Quest were infiltrated by the CIA. Cuba was a terrestrial version of paradise, the Left would have us believe. Then a firing squad shot Nicolae Ceausescu, the President of Romania, and his wife. That was 1989, on Christmas, Good Governance Day, as some of our ministers would style it later in the first flush of nationalist triumph. (Be it known that all BJP victories are nationalist. They have yet to find a name for Congress wins, as in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh, where after the elections the rightists purloin the victories.) Then the Berlin Wall fell, USSR broke up, and Gorbachev was followed by the sozzled Yeltsin. He may have been very infrequently drunk, but a reputation for drinking can knock the ground under a politicians feet. In one century, the hammer and sickle rose and fell.

The Social Democrats on the European continent tried to humanise capitalism, promote social justice. Sweden led the way, after all the Social Democrats had founded a party there in 1880! But now it is a solitary country which professes socialism. Then came the rightists. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were the first edition. It must be noted that this is a personal History of Political Philosophy, which could be disputed. As rightists tighten the screws on liberty, and ecology (look at Brazil), we in India may pause for breath.

As Donald Trump and his lumpen followers (70 million, if you please) went haywire on Capitol Hill, we need to ponder. Here is a man who avoided the Draft, has half a dozen bankruptcies on his record, had even his allies on tenterhooks about how he would react to any situation. He has one of the worst records on climatology, withdrew from the Paris Accord, a worldwide agreement to face global warming. The American press goes in detail about him being parsimonious with the truth. He initially said that coronavirus was not a serious worry, America believed him and now the US leads the world in deaths. He is being called the worst President America has had. Arnold Schwarzenegger compared the mob at Capitol Hill with Nazi mobs.

How did our Prime Minister, during the Howdy Modi celebration, amid our mostly Gujarati NRIs, turn a deaf ear to the cry of Abki bar, Trump sarkar? On such trips, doesnt the Prime Minister have a complement of MEA senior officers to advise him? India gave Trump quite a reception. Some rightists wanted Trump to carry back a good impression of India, and so wanted peaceful protesters out of the way. That triggered some MLAs into action and we got the Delhi riots. About 50 people died, and the police hunted down victims and threw them in jail, including a pregnant scholar.

Then we invited the President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro., to grace our Republic Day parade last year. He is outrageously into climate change denial for decades, and fires rage in the Amazon. The National Institute for Space noticed 39,194 fires in 2020 in the Amazon region, the largest rainforest in the world, providing 20 per cent of the planets oxygen. Any threat to the regions ecology is a threat to the planet. Sao Paulo, the biggest city, was plunged into total darkness because of the smoke from the fires. Bolsonaro and his Environment Minister, Ricardo Salles, have retrograde views and are known for stubborn climate denialism. There is global outrage against their policies and views. According to reports, Bolsonaro told an Opposition lawmaker, I wouldnt rape you because you are not worthy of it. He graced our Republic Day. Did our Ministry of External Affairs sit quietly when the PMO invited him? Or was the MEA overruled? Are we now an accredited member of the rightist club? Is bashing up the leftists, as we did in JNU with the help of masked goons, now the official policy?

We started with the poor liberal, now orphaned. If the left and the right have let him down, what about the centrists? We have had centrists for over half a century. And they can tilt every which way, remember opening of locks in Ayodhya and later Shah Bano? And the scams. I have written a jingle on the subject.

Reporter: Sir, why did you make money hand over fist?

UPA II: Simply because we couldnt resist.

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The unmoored liberal & others - The Tribune India

January 15, 2021 at 4:19 pm ET

Liberal social media users were more likely to say that they perceived Google (42%), Twitter (39%), YouTube (39%), Apple (38%), Amazon (37%) and TikTok (37%) as having liberal political leanings.

Conservative users were far more inclined to say that Parler had conservative leanings (40%) than any other platform included in the poll.

In the days following President Donald Trumps removal from Twitter, Facebook and several other online platforms, the president leaned on age-old rhetoric, calling Big Techs moves dividing and divisive. And Parler Inc. Chief Executive John Matze, whose platform was booted from the app stores and internet for allegedly failing to moderate hate speech on its site, said those decisions were a coordinated attack by the tech giants to kill competition in the marketplace.

But while roughly 3 in 5 social media users, including both liberals and conservatives, said in a new Morning Consult survey that they want social media sites to show a variety of political viewpoints, where they spend their time online and their perceptions of various platforms political leanings tell a different story, with many flocking to companies they believe are like-minded.

In the survey conducted Jan. 12-14 among 2,116 self-identified social media users, 62 percent said theyd prefer if social media sites offered content recommendations from all perspectives, rather than cater specifically to their own political views.

On the surface, conservative and liberal social media users appear to want similar things from their platforms. Both have comparable views regarding who is responsible for crafting and implementing policies about how political content is shared on social media platforms, with majorities of each ideology saying the responsibility lies with the companies, instead of lawmakers, the president or users on the platform.

And theyre drawn to sites for similar reasons. On a list of nine possible reasons for users to engage with a social platform, each ranked having the ability to adjust their privacy settings as their top factor, with 84 percent of liberal users saying it was either very or somewhat important and 80 percent of conservative users saying the same. While the exact rankings varied slightly, liberal and conservative users had the same characteristics for engaging with social platforms in their top four: their friends and family are also on the platform, the ability to follow news outlets and stay informed and the sites content moderation policies.

But thats where their similarities end.

Mention the name of a specific platform, and the views of liberal and conservative social media users change drastically, underpinning an apparent desire to be on sites that cater to their own values.

Liberal social media users were more likely in the survey to say that they perceived Google (42 percent), Twitter (39 percent), YouTube (39 percent), Apple (38 percent), Amazon (37 percent) and TikTok (37 percent) as having liberal political leanings.

Conservative users were far more inclined to say that Parler had conservative leanings (40 percent) than any other platform included in the poll, with Amazon having the next highest share at just 12 percent who said the company leaned toward the right.

And those preferences are clear in where they currently say they have accounts. Twitter was the most divisive, with 59 percent of liberals and 35 percent of conservatives saying they had an account on the platform a difference of 24 percentage points, the largest of the 14 sites the poll asked about. Twitter Inc. was the first to issue a permanent ban of Trumps personal account on its platform after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Similar double-digit differences in account holders across ideologies were seen with Facebook Inc.-owned Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat. Both Facebook and Snap Inc. have either announced indefinite suspensions or planned permanent bans of the president on their platforms.

Meanwhile, there was virtually no difference in the share of liberal and conservative users who had Facebook accounts, although the companys main platform is easily the most widely used platform of them all. In its latest earnings report, Facebook reported daily active user numbers of 1.82 billion in September, up 12 percent from the same period a year ago.

As mainstream social media companies further restrict posts from Trump and extremists, apps and sites popular with Trump supporters and those extremists have grown in popularity over the past week.

According to data provided to Morning Consult from Apptopia, daily downloads in the United States of Parler, an alternative to Twitter favored by conservatives, more than tripled between Jan. 8 and 9, reaching 94,711 that Saturday, before it was removed from the Apple iPhone and Google Android app stores and taken offline early Jan. 11 after Amazon Web Services revoked its hosting services. Parler is in the middle of legal proceedings to seek a preliminary injunction against AWS and restore its service.

Downloads of Telegram, a general encrypted messaging app popular with extremists and reportedly used to plan the Jan. 6 attack, saw similar growth, with downloads growing more than six times in the week since the Capitol storming, from 42,815 the day of the riots to 286,365 on Wednesday.

Other platforms that market themselves as supporting free speech, including MeWe, CloutHub and Rumble, also saw their downloads steadily increase in the past week, according to Apptopias data.

These partisan divides play a key role in users thinking about which content should be removed and whether its appropriate to ban users if they violate certain policies.

Among all social media users, 65 percent said they believe that social media companies have a right to ban their users if they violate their content moderation policies. But depending on the ideology, users feel differently: 84 percent of liberals said they believed these companies have the right to ban users for these issues, while 44 percent of conservatives said the same. Another 45 percent of conservative social media users also said they believe such bans are violations of users free speech rights.

The survey was conducted Jan. 12-14, with a margin of error of 2 percentage points among all social media users and 4 points among the liberal and conservative user subgroups.

Correction: The first chart was updated to correct the share of social media users who view Facebook and Google as liberal.

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Most Liberal, Conservative Social Media Users Want Platforms That Cater to All. Many of Their Account Sign-Ups Indicate Something Else - Morning...

One of the most common justifications for immigration restrictions is the claim that letting in too many of the wrong type of immigrants would undermine liberal democratic institutions. In the worst-case scenario, their flawed culture, values, or political ideologies could "kill the goose that lays the golden eggs" that attracted immigrants in the first place, and turn the receiving nation into a cesspool of despotism. Such concerns should be taken seriously, and I devote a large part of Chapter 6 of my book Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom to addressing them. Alex Nowrasteh and Benjamin Powell's just-published Wretched Refuse? The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions undertakes the same task in much greater depth, and is likely to become the most authoritative treatment of the subject.

But, as Nowrasteh points out in a recent blog post, the focus on immigrants as a threat to American institutions leads many to overlook the much greater danger posed by nativist nationaliststhe people most hostile to immigration. Recent events highlight the severity of that threat:

Benjamin Powell and Iwrote our book Wretched Refuse? The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions to address the argument that liberalized immigration will undermine the very American institutions that created economic prosperity that attracted immigrants here in the first place. Immigrants generally come from countries with political, cultural, and economic institutions that are less conducive to economic growth than those in the developed world. The fear is that they'd bring those antigrowth institutions with them. Thus, as their argument goes, immigrants could actually kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

As we assiduously document, immigrants do not bring those institutions with them and there is even evidence that immigrants improve institutions after they immigrate.

It's ironic that the immigration restrictionists most worried about immigrants degrading Americaninstitutions are attacking those very institutions at every level. After President Trump lost his reelection bid, the most nativistic members of his party have embarked on aquest to reverse theelection. Adozen Republican Senators, mostly those supportive of cutting legal immigration, plan to object to the certification of Biden's win over Trump. Over 100 representatives could join in too. President Trump cut legal immigration more than any other president and he recently threatened Georgia election officials.

Immigration restrictionists have also attacked the institution of private property. The Trump administration has seized or is trying to seize 5,275acres of privately owned land to build aborder wall, most of it in Texas. Trump even diverted Congressionally appropriated funds from the military to build the border wall.

Many in Trump's orbit are also conspiracy theorists or work with them at every opportunity. Making up stories to tarnish your opponents and believing in nutty conspiracy theories bothbreak down trust in institutions, which is exactly what some nativists claim immigration does to the United States.

Alex's post was published on January 5, the day before the attack on the Capitol by pro-Trump rioters. But the events of that awful day further demonstrate his point. While we do not have detailed demographic data on them, it is highly likely that the rioters were overwhelmingly native-born whitesand (much more importantly) strong supporters of Trump's nationalist, anti-immigration agenda.

Political scientists and survey researchers find that white ethnic nationalism and hostility to immigration are among the strongest predictors of support for Trump and his agenda. Those who fear that immigrants are a menace to American culture and institutions also tend to be most likely to tolerate and make excuse for Trump's authoritarian tendencies.

Some of the awful events of the last few weeks are the result of Trump's distinctive personality and behavior, and of idiosyncratic characteristics of the American political system. But many are common characteristics of ethno-nationalist anti-immigration movements around the world. Over the last century, it has been extremely common for nationalist movements hostile to immigrants and ethnic minorities to subvert democratic institutions, often eventually installing brutal dictatorships.

The Nazis are, of course, the most notorious example. But the same was true of other early-20th century fascist movements in Italy, Spain, and elsewhere. More recently, nationalist movements have destroyed or severely undermined democracy in Russia, Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Brazil, the Philippines, India, and elsewhere. In each of these cases, authoritarian nationalists claimed to represent the true will of the peopledefined as those of the majority ethnicity, religion, or culture.

Such claims also naturally lead to the idea the election victories by the opposition must be illegitimate, because only the nationalists represent "real" Americans, Hungarians, Russians, Poles, or Indians (defined, again, as members of the majority ethnic or culture group, free of "foreign" influence). Nationalist movements also commonly promote conspiracy theories. If they alone represent the will of the people, any political setbacks must be due to the machinations of shadowy, nefarious forces, such as foreigners, "globalist" elites, international bankers, Jews, and so on.

Trump's conspiracy-mongering about the 2020 election, complete with claims that the vote was falsified by illegal immigrant voters, foreign agents, and others, is of a piece with similar conspiracy-mongering by Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, and other nationalist leaders in Europe and elsewhere.

The US is not as far-gone as Russia, Hungary and other nations that have succumbed to authoritarian nationalism, and our democratic institutions are (so far) stronger than theirs. But we would be foolish to ignore the parallels between these movements and Trumpism, and even more foolish to ignore the risks of letting such movements grow. Trump and his allies themselves recognize the similarities, and have embraced Orban, Putin, and other similar leaders and movements (including ethno-nationalists in Western Europe), as ideological soulmates.

By contrast with the long record of nationalists subverting democracy, there are no modern instances of a democracy collapsing or even significantly degenerating because of the political influence of immigrants with illiberal ideologies. In their book, Nowrasteh and Powell document how liberal democracies such as the US and Israel have coped well with large-scale immigration from repressive, undemocratic societies. That is partly because most immigrants from such nations don't actually support the ideologies of the regimes they are fleeing (that is a key reason why many fled in the first place), and partly because liberal societies have strong capacity to absorb and assimilate people.

A more sophisticated variant of the claim that immigrants are a threat to democratic institutions is the idea that the problem is not the immigrants themselves, but rather the political backlash they generate. Excessive immigration, it is said, bolsters the political fortunes of authoritarian nationalists (including Trump!), who in turn undermine democratic institutions when they come to power. Thus, we must restrict immigration to protect ourselves against native nationalists.

One flaw in this argument is that survey data consistently shows that most people in both the US and Europe consistently overestimate the true amount of immigration, and those most opposed to immigration overestimate the most. Given such widespread ignorance, we cannot assume that, say, a 10% reduction in immigration will lead to a parallel reduction in ethno-nationalist sentiment. Indeed, most nationalist voters might not even notice the difference.

It is also worth noting that hostility to immigration among natives often tends to be greatest in parts of the US and other countries that have the fewest immigrants. Indeed, it is striking that anti-immigrant nationalist movements came to power in Hungary and Poland, countries with very few immigrants (no more than 4.6% of the population at any time in the last 30 years, in the case of Hungary; no more than 3% in the case of Poland, and much lower in the last 20 years). This too weakens claims that we can reduce support for illiberal nationalist movements simply by cutting back on immigration at the margin.

Efficacy aside, the idea that we must restrict immigration in order to protect against native-born nationalists is morally perverse. It suggests we severely restrict the liberty and opportunity of innocent people in order to protect against wrongdoing by others. The innocent people in question include natives, as well as potential immigrants, since immigration restrictions also impose severe burdens on many of the former.

The backlash-prevention rationale for immigration restrictions is similar to nineteenth-century claims that we must allow southern whites to impose racial segregation on blacks in order to prevent the former from continuing to engage in violence and otherwise pose an ongoing threat to the Union. And, indeed, immigration restrictions have many similarities to domestic racial segregation, as both impose severe constraints on liberty and opportunity based on arbitrary circumstances of birth, and often based on the desire to maintain the dominance of a given racial or ethnic group.

If we must restrict liberty in order to protect ourselves against illiberal nationalists, the most appropriate people to target should be the nationalists themselves. But I hasten to add that I do not believe the US and other Western nations should actually go down this path, so long as there is any other plausible alternative. There should be a strong presumption against any constraints on civil libertieseven including those of people who have little respect for liberal values, themselves.

We cannot completely rule out the possibility that there are cases where illiberal immigrants pose a threat to democratic institutions. In my book, I describe potential extreme situations where that could be a real threat. But, in the vast majority of cases, the far greater menace to democracy is that posed by nativist nationalism.

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Nationalists, not Immigrants, are the Real Threat to Liberal Democratic Institutions - Reason

A July 11, 2016 file photo shows a group of leaders of various faiths, including the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, preparing to lead a march from The United Church Of Christ in Cleveland, Ohio, to deliver a Higher Ground Moral Declaration to RNC headquarters. The declaration called on then-presumptive 2016 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and political candidates of both parties to embrace a higher moral ground agenda.

The United Church of Christ (UCC), a vast collection of mainline Protestant Christian churches representing nearly one million parishioners across the United States, is taking precautions after receiving credible threats of violence against so-called liberal churches.

A message posted to the UCCs website on Saturday and addressed to the denominations almost 5,000-strong local churches reads:

While we are hesitant to raise the alarm and/or overreact, recent events compel us to inform you about what we are hearing regarding possible threats that have come to our attention. There are reports that liberal churches will become targets of possible attacks in the coming week, with the dates of Jan. 17 and Jan. 20 featured more prominently. We strongly encourage you to be attendant to all safety concerns for ministers and congregants, even if it means meeting in a way that is other than in person at a church building this week.

We posted this statement after credible threats against government buildings and liberal institutions were received by a couple of Conference Ministers and one of our ecumenical partners, the UCC goes on to note. Mainline churches are among the entities that have been identified by law enforcement as potential targets.

Attacking churches is a federal crime.Several anti-hate crime statutes explicitly criminalize attacks against religious institutions.

The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, which is codified at 18 U.S.C. 249, makes it a federal crime to willfully cause bodily injury, or attempt to do so using a dangerous weapon, because of the victims actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin. The Shepard-Byrd Act, named after a gay man who was beaten to death while he was tied to a fence outside of Laramie, Wyoming, and a Black man who was lynched by being dragged from the bumper of a car in Jasper, Texas, also prohibits crimes committed because of the actual or perceived religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of any person if the crime also affected interstate commerce.

The Damage to Religious Property and Church Arson Prevention Act, codified at 18 U.S.C. 247, makes it a federal crime to deface, damage, or destroy religious real property because of the religious nature of the property if the crime affects interstate commerce, or because of the race, color, or ethnic characteristics of the people associated with the property.

Additional federal laws which protect worshipers include: (1) prohibitions that make it a crime to use, or threaten to use force against someone because of their religion; and (2) prohibitions against any effort to conspire to injure, threaten, or intimidate a person attempting to exercise religious freedom under the First Amendment.

Erring on the side of caution and noting the previous attacks on our churches in the West and, in recent weeks, against like-minded churches in D.C., we decided to ask our congregations to be extra vigilant going into inauguration week, the UCCs statement continues. We do not want to cause undue alarm, but if the threats prove credible, silence would be difficult to reconcile. Let us hold ourselves and our churches in prayer.

In recent days, UCC leaders from Washington and Texas have spoken out against the pro-Trump mob which ransacked the U.S. Capitol Complex on Jan. 6.

Writing in The Eagle, UCC Reverend Dan De Leon offered the following:

The Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has stoked cries for unity. However, there is a difference between being unified as American citizens and being one as citizens of the kingdom of heaven, which Martin Luther King, Jr. called the beloved community the creation of which, he said, will require a qualitative change in our souls, as well as a quantitative change in our lives.

Jesus prayer wasnt concerned with the preservation of normalcy and acquiescence to that status quo; it yearned for the culmination of Gods peaceable kingdom, where all of creation is bonded unto itself by faith, hope and love. That vision of faith in a world where all people are in right relationship with one another, of hope in a society steered and strengthened by compassionate neighborliness and humble servanthood, and of love for all people, no matter who they are or where they come from asks for more than passive peace. It asks that we change.

The UCC is considered among the most accepting Christian groups of LGBTQ individuals, thus putting its beliefs at odds with more conservative denominations. It engaged in litigation to allow same-sex marriage in Tennessee. It also joins most Christian groups to oppose the death penalty.

[Image by Angelo Merendino/Getty Images]

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United Church of Christ Seeks to Meet Away from Church Buildings After Credible Threats of Violence Against Liberal Congregations - Law & Crime

Newfoundland and Labrador voters will head to the polls Feb. 13, a Saturday a first for an election in the province.

Liberal Leader Andrew Furey, at a kickoff rally at Confederation BuildingFriday evening, referenced the province's ballooning debt, struggling oil industry and vast public service spending as he announced the general election.

"[At] no other time in our history has any generation of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians faced such a challenge," he said. "There is no precedent except theone we will set together."

More than 70 candidates have been nominated so far, representing the Liberals, Conservatives, New Democrats and the N.L. Alliance. A number of Independent candidates are also running, vying for one of the 40 seats in the House of Assembly.

New Democratic Party Leader Alison Coffin said Friday she'll campaign on the promise of bringing the priorities of every resident to the forefront, ensuring their needs are addressed in the legislature.

The NDP harbours concerns about affordability and the health-care system, she said. She expects a full slate of candidates by election day.

The provincial Tories, meanwhile,are running a campaign on job growth, which leader Ches Crosbie characterizes as the most efficient way to revive the province's floundering economy.

"As we roll out our plan in the days ahead, people will see the difference. A Progressive Conservative government, led by me, will be a job-creation machine," said Crosbie at a news conference minutes before Furey's election announcement.

"We will roll up our sleeves with investors to get projects rolling and growing. We will slice away the red tape that is tying the hands of the businesses that want to create jobs. We will drive job growth through targeted tax cutsthat make it easier to hire and cheaper to live here."

Crosbie said his party willhave a candidate running in each district by the end of the week.

At about 3 p.m. Friday,Fureyvisited Government House, where he formally asked Lt.-Gov.Judy Footeto dissolve the House of Assembly and trigger the election.

Furey was mandated by law to hold an election within 12 months of his swearing-in last summer, when he took over party leadership from former premier Dwight Ball.

The election call follows days of increased announcements by the provincial government,including new funding and programs, as well as agreements reached with various unions.

In the leadup to the decision, the likelihood ofFureycalling an election nowin the middle of both anunpredictable North Atlantic winter and a pandemic had already come under fire from the Opposition Tories and the NDP, who both said the governing Liberals should wait for the premier's economic recovery team, chaired by Moya Greene, to report first.

A progress report from the recovery team, outlining recommendations for dealing with escalating debt,is not expected until the end of February. Its finalreport is dueApril 30.

"It's a little suspicious that the premier thinks it's a good idea to call the election now, instead of waiting for these recommendations and [letting] the public judge the Liberal government based on those recommendations," Coffin said Friday.

Furey defended his decision, stressing that the non-binding recommendationswill be heavily debated in the House of Assembly.

"There will always be a reason not to have an election," he said."I think now is the best time."

Newfoundland and Labrador, though prone to show-stopping winter weather, has five active cases of COVID-19, having largely avoided the second wave afflicting much of the rest of Canada. There are comparatively few public health restrictions in place, and candidates are permittedto canvass publicly.

The first Liberal campaign event is scheduled for Saturday morning at a farmers' market in St. John's, with Fureydropping in on two more districts in the metro area later in the day.

Elections NLhas issued a long list of COVID-19 guidelines for campaigning candidates.

"The democratic process will continue, just as normal life has continuedin the face of this pandemic," Furey said."It'll be different ... but we can do it safely."

He confirmed that he will tour the province on a campaign bus, as Liberal leaders have in previous elections. The party said in a release Friday night that reporters will not be permitted on the bus "due to COVID-19 protocols."

The template for campaigning during COVID-19 has already been established in this province, with Furey winning both the Liberal party leadership last summer and a byelectionin Humber-Gros Morne in October.

ThreeprovincesSaskatchewan,New Brunswick and British Columbia have already goneto the polls during the pandemic.

As is the case in Newfoundland and Labrador, there had been minority governments in New Brunswick and B.C.

Advance polls are scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 6. Election officials have told CBC News a weekend election allows for the full use of public buildings such as schools and avoids rush-hour voting clusters, in order to facilitate physical distancing.

The last general election took place on May 16, 2019, when the Liberal Party won 20 of 40 seats. The PCs nabbed 15 seatsand the NDPheld three, with Independents making up the remaining two.

The Tories this week harshly criticized the Liberals for an uptick in the number of government announcements and spending pledges.

As of 4 p.m. Friday, the Liberals had issued33 newsreleases in 36 hours.

On Friday alone, various departments made cash commitments to the tune of at least $31,182,500.

Liberal politicians have promised thatmoney to technology start-ups, municipalitiesand tourism operators, among other groups.

The costs related to medical program expansionsalso announced Friday, including an insulin pump subsidy for low-income adults, are not included in that figure.

The amount also doesn't include any costs associated with wage and salary increases in four collective bargaining agreements struck this week, on the brink of an expected election call.

The Liberal government now hasagreements in place with theCanadian Union of Public Employees, the Association of Allied Health Professionals and private ambulance operators, and a tentative agreement with the Newfoundland and Labrador Teachers' Association.

A large portion of the promised money will goto the idled North Atlantic refinery in Come by Chance, which the Liberal Party announced Friday will receive a grant for more than$16 million. In exchange, the refinery must ensure at least 200 jobs.

The Liberals in November suggested the possibility of funding for that refinery with conditions attached, but did not commit to any financial support until around 2 p.m.,just hours before theelection call.

Despite the challenges of campaigning in winter weather and amid COVID-19 restrictions, both the PCs and the NDP have signalled their readiness.

Campaign chairs for the three largest parties have indicated they will rely more on social mediaand less on traditional means of reaching voters, such as door-to-door canvassing. Large-scale rallies will not be happening, nor will such staples as campaign stops at seniors' homes.

During Friday's COVID-19 briefing, Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Janice Fitzgerald told reporters allthe province's political parties are well aware of public health's guidelines.

"I have every confidence that they will abide by those guidelines, and reduce their risk and the risk to the communities as much as possible," she said.

As for election day, Fitzgerald said voting by mail would take away the need for having to attend a polling station, but added Elections Newfoundland and Labrador is prepared to safely administer the polls.

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N.L. heading to the polls on Feb. 13 as Andrew Furey seeks Liberal majority - CBC.ca

Liberal-owned media feeds lies to the American people

First, I would like to commend the Times-News for trying to be fair in regard to printing of letters from both the left and right. This goes for columns and articles from contributing writers. Hopefully the censorship we see starting with the new regime will not filter down to our local news sources.

I would like to call attention to all the Trump haters to the column in the Wednesday, Jan. 13, edition titled Now they tell us Trump was tough on Russia by Byron York. This information should prove to them once and for all how they have been duped into believing all the lies CNN and the other fake news media have made against Trump. I would like to especially point out that CNNs own person admits they were lying about this.

From before Trump was inaugurated culminating in the first fake impeachment claiming Russian collusion, this subject was constantly being hammered on. Now we find, like most else from the left, it was all lies. The really sad part about it is how many people in this country fell for it because of their emotional blindness. And worse yet, I dont believe they realize that their beloved liberal-owned media not only lies to them, but also only tells them what they (the media) want them to know (selective reporting). Combined together this is nothing more than propaganda. And again, they gobble it up by the spoonful.

While hoping that this revelation of being lied to for years (and again, believing it without any real proof), would educate them into what the liberal media is doing, I am afraid they have let their emotions overtake their ability to be able to use their intellect and common sense. I am positive there will be many who will not believe the article and will continue to gobble up the liberal lies being made every day. And with a proven liar and plagiarist being voted in by them, I dont think the situation is going to change.

As the old saying goes, Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice shame on me.

Norman Launi Sr.

Keyser, W.Va.

Group holding annual memorial service Sunday

The Cumberland Historic Cemetery Organization has always honored all Americans who have created our nations great history and heritage. In January each year we honor and pray for Americas aborted children. These are the children claimed by abortion in the United States since 1973.

What is sad is that these victims have no grave sites or monuments at a location to remember them. In the summer of 1993 the CHCO started a project to erect the largest monument in Maryland for the unborn. In one year we had our plan and the funds to build it. The problem was we spent 11 years fighting with local churches to locate it in a local cemetery. Many area churches would not permit us to erect the monument in their cemeteries.

Finally, the great godly people at Davis Memorial Methodist Church invited us to erect the monument in their cemetery next to their church on Uhl Highway. They gave us a deed for the plot for the monument and maintain the lawn around it. God bless Davis Memorial Methodist Church. True Christian heroes they are!

This Sunday, Jan. 17, at 2 p.m., our organization will hold our annual memorial service for these children at the monument. Board member the Rev. Michael Mudge will lead the service. Also in attendance will be Father James Watson. However, we invite all area clergy to attend. This event is open to everyone. For more information on the event and monument, call 301-722-4624 or visit http://www.chco.info.

Edward W. Taylor Jr.,

president,

Cumberland Historic Cemetery Organization Inc.

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Liberal-owned media feeds lies to the people - Cumberland Times-News

Ian Milligan

University of Waterloo and author of History in the Age of Abundance. How the Web is Transforming Historical Research

Lorna Marsden

former President of York University

Paul Axelrod

Professor Emeritus, York University

Paul Gooch

Past president of Victoria University in the University of Toronto and author of Course Correction: A Map for the Distracted University

Qiang Zha

York University professor and co-editor of International Status Anxiety and Higher Education: The Soviet Legacy in China and Russia

TORONTO, Jan. 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The final session in the free, online series of talks tackling the hard issues around the future of education in Canada takes place on January 19, 2021 at 7 p.m. EST.

Series Coordinators are Paul Axelrod, Professor Emeritus, York University and Jason Ellis, Associate Professor, University of British Columbia.

This session turns to higher education, and asks Does Liberal Education Matter in the 21st Century? Lorna Marsden, former President of York University, is joined on the panel by Paul Gooch, past president of Victoria University in the University of Toronto and author of Course Correction: A Map for the Distracted University; the University of Waterloos Ian Milligan, author of History in the Age of Abundance. How the Web is Transforming Historical Research; and Qiang Zha, York University professor and co-editor of International Status Anxiety and Higher Education: The Soviet Legacy in China and Russia. This Session will be chaired by Paul Axelrod, former dean of York Universitys Faculty of Education.

Register for Session Four at http://www.EnochTurnerSchoolhouse.ca! All Sessions are recorded and available to everyone free of charge at http://www.EnochTurnerSchoolhouse.ca.

The Enoch Turner Schoolhouse Foundation is a not-for-profit charity with the registration number 11927 2862 RR0001. Its mission is to support the conservation, interpretation, and public enjoyment of the Schoolhouse; to develop and finance Schoolhouse education programs; to celebrate and promote the Schoolhouse, to build and maintain public support for the Schoolhouse.

Questions about Enoch Turner Schoolhouse Foundation: info@enochturnerschoolhouse.ca. The Schoolhouse is located at 106 Trinity Street Toronto, ON M5A 3C6.

Contacts:Paul Axelrod, paxelrod@edu.yorku.ca647-808-2997 Jason Ellis, j.ellis@ubc.ca @jasone_historyLynne Kurylo, lkurylo@georgebrown.ca 416-415-5000, ext 3298Leonard Knott, PR, leonard.knott@gmail.com 416-988-3290Miriah Bough, miriah.bough@gmail.com 416-327-6997

Photos accompanying this announcement are available at

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/7ff46af7-2eea-4092-865a-e8d4b314a1a8

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/bf351cb1-fed1-4534-92e2-7de83a1259d7

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/05d23b5e-5772-417c-ae59-d3e116d4ccbf

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/7ba933a8-3eb8-4253-99e6-e890a3d56b73

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/8de969f2-dba7-449e-a233-dbb946ff7707

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Does Liberal Education Matter in the 21st Century? - GlobeNewswire

Joanna Cherry mocked by Sir John Hayes in House of Commons

But, inexcusably, instead the Mayor of London decided to finance the formation of the image of a clenched fist in the sky the symbol of Black Lives Matter, whose UK arm is committed to defunding the police. History will record that, when in 2020 most Britons, of all origins, combined to stay safe and protect the NHS, even during the horror of a global pandemic, culture warriors continued their campaign to pull our country apart.

Yet too many people with power, perhaps too timid to do otherwise, have kowtowed.

Perhaps militant activists remain unchallenged by much of the media because, at first glance, they seem plausible.

After all, no reasonable person wants to see others subjected to abuse about their race or gender.

However, anything more than a passing look shows how the culture warriors reinforce stereotypes and promote prejudices. Certainly, they regard with contempt most of what Britons hold dear.

Take those who want to decolonise the curriculum behind the campaign to tear down the statue of Cecil Rhodes from Oriel College Oxford. Its not just Rhodes they despise, but the whole edifice of a university embodying excellence.

Instead of seriously considering the history of empire, advocates of decolonisation are attempting to capture and own education.

They believe that all academic subjects, including maths and the sciences, must be decolonised stripped of white privilege. Uninterested in measured debate, they wish to force their ideology on others.

Such is the ultimate irony of decolonisation, advocates have the same moral certainty about their values as did the 19th-century empire builders they loathe. What is true of the decolonise the curriculum movement is embedded in organisations from the BBC to Parliament itself.

With echoes of Maos cultural revolution, unconscious bias training dictates that, having disowned our national history, recipients discard what was taught by their forefathers and what theyve learned from experience.

Much of the new establishment sees race and gender as far more important than any other human quality. For some, even our shared common humanity is condemned.

Our vocabulary itself is under attack the transgender rights movement reckons describing someone as male or female is itself an example of bigotry.

Those who refuse to be indoctrinated will be silenced by the cancel culture. This new puritanism is narrow, intolerant and spiteful.

The liberal establishments eager embrace is an attempt to justify its own seclusion from perceived untutored mainstream sentiments.

Much of this establishment from the Mayor of London to the National Trust, from the BBC to big corporations such as Starbucks pays lip service to woke dogma, convinced that anyone who believes in traditional norms is either antiquated or simply vulgar.

These are the same haughty elitists who regard those who voted to leave the EU as stupid. The distorted view of our history and society promoted can be countered by simply citing the facts.

For example, it just isnt true that Britain abolished the slave trade because it was no longer profitable, as is often alleged by bourgeois liberals. Historians calculate that the impact of ending and suppressing the slave trade cost 1.8 percent of national income over 60 years.

A huge outlay in the service of a just cause.

Heroic Horatio Nelson, recently targeted by elitist wokes, made all this possible by securing the future of our maritime power.

Thenewyear represents a new chance for a crusade against these woke militants. The outlandish claims made by the culture warriors would be laughable if they did not pose a sinister threat to our freedom.

Some may say, You cant stand in the way of progress, but these are the same kind of people that claimed we would never leave the EU and then predicted that we could not secure a favourable trade deal.

Appeasers are wrong.

Those who oppose tyrannical wokeness have right on their side and, with sufficient resolve, patriots will prevent the imposition of their puritanism on us all.

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This year we will defeat tyranny of liberal wokeness says SIR JOHN HAYES - Express

On January 11, Robin Niblett, Director and Chief Executive of Chatham House, the century-old UK-based policy institute also known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs, published a report proposing a blueprint for Britains future foreign policy after Brexit. Titled Global Britain, Global Broker, the report sketches a bold path ahead for the UK, arguing that post Brexit, Britain can remain internationally influential. Curiously, however, the report gives exceedingly short shrift to India, one of the non-European countries most touted to feature prominently in Boris Johnsons vision of a Global Britain.

Most strikingly, the Chatham House report groups India on the other side of a new divide in international affairs between open societies where citizens have the capacity to fight for their rights and those where these rights are denied. Along with Russia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, India is classed as one of the difficult four countries, destined to count among the UKs rivals or awkward counterparts as it pursues its global goals. Being clubbed together in such company will shock many for its stark contrast with the position of growing importance that Western governments from Washington to Canberra accord to India, in particular, in conjunction with the emerging and implicitly liberal construct of the Indo-Pacific.

The report should be kept in perspective it is after all, in no way a statement on behalf of the UK government. In fact, its advice to deal cautiously with India stands in diametric opposition to Downing Streets current tack on the bilateral relationship. But Chatham House is an institution of consequence in the UK and Western policy landscape, and the reports recommendations demand close scrutiny. The wider portrait that it sketches of a contemporary liberal international order is particularly significant.

First, it is clear that the reports move of labelling India difficult is bound up with quite specific ideas about status and hierarchy in world politics. The reports author places India and other countries in a different normative universe to the liberal West and then confers unequal status upon them.

Part of the justification for labelling India difficult centres on a critique of Indias domestic political developments. The report notes how the overt Hindu nationalism of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is weakening the rights of Muslims and other minority religious groups, leading to a chorus of concern that intolerant majoritarianism is replacing the vision of a secular, democratic India bequeathed by Nehru. This is no trivial observation and it should surprise no one, least of all the Indian government. Behind closed doors across North Atlantic and European capitals, diplomatic concerns usually unspoken in public have been bubbling since 2014 about growing religious and other forms of intolerance and the suppression of critique and dissent in Indias domestic space.

Yet the reports second justification for recommending an arms length relationship with India demands scrutiny, too, and not just by Indians (regardless of their support for the current government) but by anyone keen to see an end to the inequalities of our contemporary, hierarchical world order. Predictably, the report advocates that the UK move to support democracies in the Asia-Pacific region as a means to aid these countries in avoiding political subservience to China. When it comes to India, however, the report prescribes caution: India is a reluctant supporter of liberal democracy, is ambivalent about human rights abuses within other states, and possesses a long and consistent record of resisting being corralled into a Western camp. These black marks against India echo with a well-worn Western liberal playbook, fraught with disappointment that India, despite being the worlds largest democracy, is a weak liberal ally in the international political sphere. It should be noted that this (Western) framing of India as an ambivalent supporter of liberal principles and institutions abroad predates the current Indian leadership by decades. India, along with other non-Western rising democracies, so the familiar charge goes, has long been unwilling to step up on the global stage to the responsibilities of committed democracies.

Rather than framing Indias ambivalent relationship with the international liberal order as a disappointing deviation from a superior European model (ironically, the model the UK has in part turned away from through Brexit), we might look more closely at how the international order of the early 21st century remains grounded on the myth of the formal equality and sovereignty of states. As Adom Getachew has argued in her brilliant and paradigm-shifting book Worldmaking after Empire, todays international order remains an uneven playing field a place of institutionalised structural hierarchy comprising processes of integration and interaction that produce unevenly distributed rights, obligations, and burdens. Post-colonial, non-Western states, even increasingly powerful states such as India, still do not enjoy full political and economic independence in how they make decisions at home, nor in their efforts to shape the agendas of international institutions. If this sounds fantastical to Indian ears in 2021, speak to an Indian representative working in almost any international institution, from the United Nations to Bretton Woods, and ask them if they feel constrained in their foreign policy choices and self-representations, and by whom. Pick up a copy of Hardeep Singh Puris Perilous Interventions, or even Shyam Sarans How India sees the World.

For post-colonial states, sovereignty after independence, far from only being about political and economic independence within state borders, intended to go hand in hand with the project of worldmaking: The shaping of international legal, political and economic institutions that realise the internationalist project that Getachew calls nondominaton. This collective project saw some early successes, but then dwindled into failure. Full and equal membership of the international order remains, as Getachew skilfully shows, hampered by hierarchy and marked by forms of dependence and domination. Former Indian foreign secretary and national security advisor Shivshankar Menon captures this reality succinctly: For him, encouragement by (presumably Western) international partners for India to behave responsibly usually means do[ing] what they would like us to do.

What can be done to resist and challenge the implicit and explicit conceptions of status and hierarchy in the Chatham House report? Getachew cautions against a retreat into a defensive sovereigntist position, which cannot provide adequate critical and normative resources to address the contemporary dilemmas of the international order.

The Chatham House report itself concedes that Indias importance to the UK is inescapable, and it is clear that no nation today can move forward without factoring in India. The next two years will see India move into a critical period of high-profile international activity, both as an elected member of the UN Security Council and as host of the 2023 G20 Summit. India can leverage these positions of influence to centre a more demanding vision of internationalism that disrupts the civilisational and racialised hierarchies that linger from Europes imperial era. But to do that, India needs the critical and normative resources to inspire greater equality, legitimacy and inclusivity in the international sphere. For as long as India practises domination at home, those resources, desperately needed to push through urgent reforms of the global order, will be clear to no one as the Chatham House report, for all its problems, succeeds in showing.

This article first appeared in the print edition on January 15, 2020 under the title A new global playbook. The writer is Associate Professor, International Relations of South Asia, University of Oxford.

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The liberal world order is yet to free itself from imperial bias, as a report that dubs India a difficult country reveals - The Indian Express