by Bob Barr | Aug 11, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhall From the onset of COVID, the World Health Organization (WHO) proved itself unfit for the task of managing a global pandemic. This was not for lack of funding or of access to international experts on virology and disease; the organization had plenty of both. The WHO’s abject failure stemmed from its decision at the very start that its most important mission was to help Beijing save face over China’s role in the outbreak. With this goal in mind, the leadership intentionally downplayed any critical information about the virus that might be damaging to China’s international reputation. It is impossible for us to ever really know what China’s actions cost the international community, by both initially hiding the COVID-19 outbreak and then interfering with efforts to study the virus during its early spread. A safe guess, however, would be millions of lives and trillions of dollars. As for WHO, it simply watched China set the house on fire, then blocked fire fighters from getting to the scene. WHO’s role in helping China with this cover-up earned it a long-overdue rebuke by the Trump administration, which promised to pull U.S. funding from yet another international forum for anti-Americanism. Predictably, President Joe Biden reversed Trump’s efforts to defund WHO, but not because the organization has finally got its act together. In fact, with a recent announcement from WHO supporting a moratorium on COVID-19 vaccine boosters in the United States, the interests of WHO and those of the United States could not be more divergent. Were WHO a neutral, public health-focused agency not controlled by outside bad actors, the call for a booster moratorium could be viewed...
by Bob Barr | Aug 4, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Ratings for the Olympics are at record lows, and it is no surprise why. Between the anti-American protests of some U.S. athletes, and the empty stands that make the competition feel hollow and flat, Americans are just not catching the Olympic spirit this year. It certainly did not help when Simone Biles, America’s top Olympic gymnast, threw in the towel in the middle of her sport’s biggest competition and on the world’s biggest stage. For America, a country built on hard work, sacrifice, and a “never quit” attitude, Biles’ exit was a slap in the face to the quintessential “grit” that pioneered the very country she represented. Even more ironic, she quit not in an individual event where the fallout would impact only herself, but in the team final when her team was counting on her the most. Some say Biles did not owe “us” anything, and that she was right to do what was “best for her.” Therein lies the problem, reflective of a corrosive selfishness in athletic competition where individual “o.k.-ness” is the highest priority. Contrary to the unsurprising gushing of marshmallow soft liberals, this psychobabble kumbaya spirit does not refect “strength,” but rather textbook weakness which in decades past was afforded no place in American sports. Now, in the Age of Me, this phenomenon is being celebrated; for instance, rewarding tennis pro Naomi Osaka following her sudden withdrawal from the French Open for “mental health” reasons after ditching a press conference. Her actions netted her cover spreads in major magazines, complete with the quintessential woke headline, “IT’S O.K. NOT TO BE O.K.” This fawning coverage...
by Bob Barr | Jul 28, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhall The problem with having a reputation as a political bomb-thrower is that sometimes a good idea gets lost in the dust-up. This was the case last week when, in an interview, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) stated she would “kick out every single Chinese in this country that is loyal to the CCP.” Predictably, critics latched onto the word “Greene,” and immediately discounted the substance of what the freshman congresswoman proposed. In fact, if you brush aside her phraseology, there is something worthwhile and timely in what Greene is saying, and which confronts a serious national security problem most leaders in Washington, D.C. refuse to acknowledge. The dirty little secret is that our national security is being seriously undermined because far too many Chinese nationals are living and working freely here in America, even as their allegiance remains tied to the communist regime in Beijing, our primary adversary on the world stage (as I have noted previously). Federal agents rounding up large numbers of Chinese immigrants holding visas or who have resident alien status, in order to scrutinize their “loyalty” to the Chinese Communist Party, does not make for an effective (or likely constitutional) response to the threat posed by China. As a public policy, it is akin to using a sledgehammer when a scalpel is the far better tool. Moreover, were Republican leaders to adopt such a proposal, China’s leaders would sit back and smile serenely while the media, academia, and U.S. businesses with ties to the communist behemoth soundly bash the idea, thereby ensuring the proposal will fail to materialize as policy, while providing additional camouflage for...
by Bob Barr | Jul 21, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhall To some degree there has been a Cold War waged against conservatives since at least the Soviet infiltration of Hollywood in the 1940s. Under President Biden, however, this war has become red hot and very real. Leftists embedded across political, non-profit, academic, and government institutions are pulling out all the stops to destroy the conservative culture and political movement in America. Never before in our history has such a concerted action been undertaken. It did not spring forth on January 20th when Biden was inaugurated. The left has been imbedding itself into institutions private and public for decades preparing for the right moment to openly launch its war. The January 6th protests on Capitol Hill provided that spark. Earlier attempts by a political party in power to use government agencies to punish political opponents were limited in their impact, largely because they were not able to co-opt major elements of those agencies to join their unlawful plans. Thus, the Nixon Administration’s use of components of the IRS, the CIA, and the FBI to go after its critics in the late 1960s and early 1970s, failed to destroy its perceived enemy — the anti-war Left — because career elements within those agencies refused to join. In the end it was the perpetrators themselves who were destroyed, including the President. Now, a half century later, the situation has changed dramatically, as demonstrated in the fact that Biden’s Department of Justice and the FBI, with their vast arsenal of tools with which to investigate, prosecute, and incarcerate those deemed enemies, are leading the effort to destroy the conservative movement. Moreover, the technological tools...
by Bob Barr | Jul 7, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhall by Bob Barr California’s slide into a socialist wasteland is hardly news. What is somewhat surprising, or at least intriguing, are the depths of stupidity to which local and state officials in the “Golden State” will go to fulfilling their destiny. Take, for instance, San Jose’s latest anti-gun gambit – a compulsory tax to pay for the “costs” of criminal gun violence, coupled with a tax directly on lawful gun owners by forcing them to purchase liability insurance. These ordinances most assuredly will be challenged in court, and all but certain to be eventually struck down, even if they survive appeal to the uber-liberal U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. This means significant public resources will be spent defending mandates not even considered by their proponents to be meaningful. City officials admit as much, saying the ordinances “won’t magically end gun violence,” but vowing to press forward regardless. This should remove any doubt that the city of San Jose considers law-abiding gun owners to be part of the problem and sees them as second-class citizens to be run out of town rather than respect their constitutionally protected rights as Americans. In all their gushing over how smart and innovative they are with their latest anti-gun scheming, Mayor Sam Liccardo and his equally clueless cohorts on the city council fail to explain how punishing 99.9 percent of non-violent, law-abiding gun owners for the misdeeds of the other .1 percent will have any positive effect on crime in the city. If California’s already highly restrictive gun laws could not prevent the horrific mass shooting at the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority rail yard...
by Bob Barr | Jun 30, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhall It is not clear exactly when it became such an awful burden on citizens to vote on one particular day at a pre-assigned polling place, but somewhere along the line it became so difficult that pressures on state governments resulted in wholesale changes to how, when, and where people actually vote. The changes thus wrought has thrown the proverbial monkey wrench into what had been a well-established, universally understood, and simple system of voting. Vast expansion of mail-in balloting, coupled with weeks-long “early voting,” has created a Rube Goldberg-like system that has severely undermined voters’ confidence in elections. It also has planted seeds for myriad legal challenges, such as the one filed last week by the Biden Department of Justice challenging Georgia’s recently enacted ballot reform measures. Attorney General Merrick Garland, who still harbors deep resentment of Republicans for refusing to confirm him as a Supreme Court associate justice in the waning weeks of the Obama Administration, was joined at the Justice Department podium last Friday by Kristen Clarke. Together they announced that Georgia was being sued for violating the Voting Rights Act. Kristen Clarke heads the Department’s Civil Rights Division and has long advocated that America is a deeply racist country. Her current position provides the perfect vehicle with which to drive home her opinions, by alleging that laws designed to make it harder to cheat at the ballot box, are nothing more that disguised measures to perpetuate systemic disenfranchisement of Black voters. The strings for this litigation will be pulled by Justice Department lawyers but the venue will be the federal District Court in Atlanta, which...
