by Bob Barr | Jul 20, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Daily Caller For years there has been developing a deep clash in our country between generations, political parties and personalities. This many-faceted conflict broke to the surface with the election of Donald Trump four years ago, and has remained part of virtually every major public policy issue since Trump’s first day in office. It now has erupted into full violence.Perhaps nowhere in the country is the culture clash more starkly displayed than in Portland, Oregon; not in Minneapolis, not in New York City and not even in Washington, DC. Portland has become ground zero where the battle for the very heart of America’s culture is being played out.Portland has long been known as a city of high-brow culture and far-left politics. For decades, it was a magnet for liberals of all stripes and ages; but in the past few years it has attracted a far more sinister and dangerous element – Antifa. Portland’s soft, left-wing political establishment, led since January 2017 by pacifist Mayor Ted Wheeler, provides a perfect breeding ground for violent protesters.Since joining forces in late May, Antifa and Black Lives Matter have engaged in nightly demonstrations, vandalism, and arson, meeting little resistance from the city. In recent days, however, Wheeler’s strategy of “soft policing” (backed by Oregon’s equally liberal Governor Kate Brown) has run into resistance.President Trump has thrown down the gauntlet in Portland, declaring that while the state’s and the city’s political leaders may not care if vandals desecrate federal buildings and facilities and endanger federal employees in Portland, he does. Reflecting an executive order he signed in late June directing federal law enforcement to proactively protect...
by Bob Barr | Jul 15, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Townhall It did not take the gun control crowd long to find ways to piggy-back onto the COVID-19 pandemic scare and press their extremist agenda. A recently-published article by a college professor, suggesting that COVID-19 contact tracing should be studied seriously as a solution to the problem of gun violence in America, reveals the partisan political agenda underlying much of the ongoing debate about the pandemic.To be sure, the COVID-19 pandemic is a serious health issue. Addressing it requires that government agencies cooperate, act transparently, and focus their efforts on health and medical measures that actually are relevant to the problems presented by the virus. Key to the eventual success of efforts to rein in the pandemic, however, is one additional ingredient very often lacking in measures suggested or mandated by appointed and elected officials: consistency. Whipsawing citizens by alternatively telling them medical masks are not really helpful, and then mandating them, hardly helped to develop the credibility needed to ensure public compliance with meaningful measures to slow the spread of the virus. This gulf was widened further when police began to ticket individuals for not wearing masks while engaged in isolated activities, such as sunning on an empty beach or jogging along an otherwise deserted trail. Shuttering churches but not Black Lives Matter gatherings further illustrated the hypocrisy underlying actions by state and municipal authorities. Any lingering doubt of the hypocrisy or subjectivity underlying many of these government edicts should have been dispelled with pictures of government officials grandstanding for the media, shoulder-to-shoulder with protestors, during the recent spate of riots engulfing many major metropolitan areas.In the midst of all this,...
by Bob Barr | Jul 13, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Daily Caller If there were lingering doubt remaining in the mind of any New York City police officer that the state’s elected leadership is biased against the NYPD, it would have been erased last week.On July 8th Letitia James, the Attorney General for the state of New York, issued a “Preliminary Report on the New York City Police Department’s Response to Demonstrations Following the Death of George Floyd.” The 57-page document makes clear that neither the governor (who requested the report) nor the attorney general “has the backs” of the largest civilian police force in the country.From start to finish, the report illustrates that the lens through which the state’s attorney general views the NYPD is one that presumes the department to be rife with racism, and which repeatedly responded to “peaceful” protests with unnecessary force. Even though the report is deemed “preliminary,” the attorney general exhibits no hesitancy in recommending long-term, systemic “reforms” to the NYPD.At its core, this report is designed to support pre-conceived changes to the NYPD, premised on obvious disdain for the department as it currently exists.The report punches all the right rhetorical buttons. The attorney general states that the office hopes to “reimagine” the role of the city’s police force, and thereby to “rebuild” the “trust” between it and the people of New York that the NYPD itself has destroyed. The report talks grandiosely of how its recommendations will, if implemented, fundamentally “redesign public safety and the role of police in society.”The wording throughout the report reveals its bias in favor of the protesters and against the police. References to actions by the protesters are...
by Bob Barr | Jul 9, 2020 | Uncategorized |
American Action News Five years ago, a single white man walked into Atlanta’s International Airport with a lawfully owned AR-15 rifle; simply making a statement that a law-abiding citizen should be able to lawfully carry a firearm in public places. Notwithstanding the benign nature of the stunt, the Atlanta and national media went into high alert, as did law enforcement, which questioned and followed the man closely to ensure he did not bother anybody (he did not). Nowhere was there reported a word of public support for the gun-toting citizen.Last weekend, between 100 and 200 black men marched along a major Atlanta road to Stone Mountain State Park. Virtually all the marchers conspicuously carried AR-15s or similar style rifles, were dressed in black and wore masks. Most sported ammunition bandoliers and many were festooned also in protective vests.There was nary a peep of criticism or concern expressed by the media or government officials, some of whom gushed over the fact that the armed phalanx was “peaceful” – well, sort of.How times have changed. Or is it something other than the passage of time that distinguishes the one man carrying a single rifle in a public place in 2015, from hundreds doing the same thing just five years later? Oh, did I mention that a number of this past week’s armed marchers engaged in intimidating verbal confrontations with white motorists?The July 4th marchers were led by a foul-mouthed masked man calling himself “Grand Master Jay” in an oh-so-clever play on the manner by which KKK big wigs referred to themselves as “Masters,” “Wizards,” and the like. The marchers’ oft-shouted demands called...
by Bob Barr | Jul 1, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com Donald Trump should delete his Twitter account. He does not need it and it does him more harm than good; continuing to use it only improves the bottom-line for Twitter’s liberal CEO and boosts the credibility of the popular but left-leaning platform.Granted, Twitter is widely used, with more than 150 million active users each day, but is anyone who converses via Twitter really going to change their political views as a result? Some users may turn to Twitter to get their news; but face it, if someone is so shallow as to consider Twitter their news source, it is highly unlikely they would ever vote for Trump or any candidate with similar views. Twitters-gone-wrong can range from inconsequential typos, to real damage; such as the fallout from the President re-tweeting a video this past weekend that contained footage of a Trump supporter shouting “white power” at Black Lives Matter protestors.Some Trump supporters may argue that Twitter is one of the only channels through which Americans can hear from the President directly, without being filtered through the biased lens of the mainstream media. This is not the case, and definitely not a reason to continue using Twitter. The President is the most powerful person in the world, with access to every conceivable communications medium and resource. He can communicate with whomever he wants and whenever he wants — whether to one person or millions. Donald Trump does not need Twitter. In fact, Twitter needs him more than he needs Twitter. Continuing to patronize the site is actually hurting him. Credible polling shows that Trump’s combative tone on Twitter is costing him support among white,...
by Bob Barr | Jun 29, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Daily Caller In 2008, Mark Bauerlein wrote “The Dumbest Generation, How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future.” Judging by events in the intervening dozen years (and especially in recent months), it appears that Bauerlein’s assessment was premature and perhaps even too kind.Bauerlein correctly identified overreliance on the internet and social media (then still in its infancy) as the primary culprits for Millennials losing their ability to think, learn and communicate coherently. What his analysis perhaps did not anticipate is the number of adults who have come to encourage, empower and support Millennials in these efforts. It is almost as if adults in government, the news media and academia are competing with Millennials for the title.Consider, for example, the issue of providing college students with “safe spaces,” where they can shelter from the horrors of people, ideas and principles they consider “offensive.” The students may be the ones pushing for these accommodations, but it is the adult college administrators who cave in and make it happen.Young protestors in Seattle may “occupy” a sector of that once-respected city; they may scream “police brutality” and call for the police department to be “defunded.” Their demands, however, would amount to little were it not for the city’s clueless Mayor Jenny Durken, who lauded the young occupiers as “patriots,” and her namby-pamby police chief, Carmen Best, who decided that barricades which had protected one of her department’s precinct headquarters should be removed as a “gesture of trust” to the mob.While adult elected enablers of today’s young mobs predominate in west coast cities such as Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles, counterparts are found...
