While I believe most vaccinations are beneficial to public health, I don’t believe the small group of people who refuse to get their children vaccinated is the sole cause of the recent outbreaks of these new and previously eradicated diseases. Like any trained scientist, I wouldn’t draw a conclusion like that unless I could control for all other reasonably likely causes.
So, when a president suddenly floods his country with immigrants and refugees from countries with high infection rates for tuberculosis and other previously eradicated diseases and there are subsequent outbreaks of those same diseases, I would find it impossible to ignore the possibility the immigrants brought the diseases in. But that is exactly what the CDC did. They were completely disinterested in investigating the origin of the diseases, except in the one case where they were confident the source was tourists.13 For the Disneyland measles outbreak, they were able to trace the source of the disease within weeks, proving it can be done. I should know; I’m a trained epidemiologist.
But for many of the other outbreaks, the source of the disease was a mystery, if the outbreak was acknowledged at all. As of this writing, the CDC still claims it is “concerned about AFM, a serious illness that we do not know the cause of or how to prevent it.”14 AFM stands for acute flaccid myelitis, a condition that causes polio-like symptoms in children and which “in 2014 coincided with a national outbreak of severe respiratory illness among people caused by enterovirus D68 (EV-D68),”15 according to the CDC’s website.
Maybe it’s just a coincidence that disease outbreaks that don’t reflect poorly on Obama’s immigration policies are easy to trace, but those that one would naturally suspect were brought in by Obama’s illegal immigrants and refugees are a complete mystery. But I doubt it.
Trump has always recognized the danger of allowing deadly diseases to enter our country. But he’s going to be under constant pressure to buckle on this issue from anyone with a political or financial interest in destroying our borders. Obama’s “Ebola Czar” Ron Klain has already weighed in,16 criticizing Trump for suggesting we should employ the first rule of infectious disease control: Don’t let the disease into the country in the first place.
We avoided an Ebola outbreak in this country despite Obama’s disregard for that rule, not because of it. But you can be sure this dubious success will be cited over and over to attempt to discredit any attempt by the Trump administration to enact stricter measures on illegal immigration and the more intensive screening or quarantining of persons arriving in the United States from countries with high infection rates of communicable diseases.
In addition to following the first rule of infectious disease control, Trump’s immigration policies should also follow the second: If infected or high-risk individuals do enter the country, contain the infection geographically. In plain English, don’t ship refugees from countries rampant with infectious diseases to every corner of our own. No rational person would believe a president would do such a thing to his own country, if he weren’t here to see it. But Obama did.
Trump’s pick for secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Price, is a solid pick. He is a physician and will oversee the CDC and NIH. But he’s mainly known for his opposition to Obamacare. Repealing and replacing that monstrosity will clearly be his focus. We’ll have to see how much emphasis he puts on reorienting the NIH and CDC back toward doing real science.
SAVAGE SOLUTIONS
Root out the socialist propaganda Obama concealed in the National Defense Authorization Act.
Jail anarchists who cross state lines to incite unrest.
Shield religion from persecution by passing the First Amendment Defense Act.
CHAPTER TEN
TRUMP’S WAR FOR THE FIRST AMENDMENT
Trump’s victory over Clinton has resulted in liberals throwing childlike tantrums all over the world. Since last November 8, we’ve heard a dozen stories about why Trump’s victory wasn’t legitimate. First, it was the Electoral College, an institution liberals have no problem with when a Democrat wins.1 Then it was Russian propaganda, which deceptive left-wing conspiracy theorists alleged co-opted hundreds of conservative and libertarian news outlets to influence voting results.2
And, of course, when all else fails, the left just chalks up rejection of it’s suicidal policies like open borders to racism and bigotry. Anyone who voted for Trump must be a racist or a bigot, even those Trump voters who voted for Obama in 2012.3
What the left-wingers propose to do about this catastrophe for their socialist agenda ranges from the humorous to the ominous. On the humorous side, there is a proposed ballot measure for California to secede from the union.4 “Yes California,” the group that sponsored the measure, has been around for more than two years. But a spokesman for the group said it accelerated its plans to get secession on the ballot because of Trump’s victory.
I put this liberal tantrum in the humorous category because it’s never going to happen. But it’s interesting from a historical perspective because it’s not the first or even the second time a secession movement resulted from a presidential election. In fact, there is a relevance here to my subject in this chapter that you may not be aware of.
The first thing everyone thinks of when they hear the word secession is the Civil War. Everyone knows the first seven states of the Confederacy seceded as a direct result of Lincoln’s election. That was the first time a secession movement succeeded at the state level, but it wasn’t the first time several states considered leaving over the election of a president.
The first time it happened was 1800, when Thomas Jefferson was elected. That election and subsequent secession movement is much more relevant to 2016 than the Civil War. In 1800, it was the big-government party, the Federalists, who lost. And the control freaks in New England, the original “progressives,” threw the same kind of tantrum liberals are throwing now. They eventually had a convention to vote on secession during Madison’s administration, but they were already talking about it immediately after Jefferson’s election, just as Yes California is talking about it now.
Jefferson addressed the controversy during his first inaugural with some of the greatest words in any speech ever given by a U.S. president. He said, “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”5
Take a moment to consider those immortal words. Here was a president who had just taken office after what remains one of the most controversial elections in history. His party had won a resounding victory, but Jefferson himself had finished in a tie with a rival from his own party, Aaron Burr. It took dozens of ballots in the House of Representatives and some political intrigue by Jefferson’s fiercest rival, Alexander Hamilton, just to get him elected.
So, the 1800 election was at least as contentious as 2016, probably more so. But Jefferson still sought to unite the country, just as Trump did on election night when he said, “For those who have chosen not to support me in the past, of which there were a few people, I’m reaching out to you for your guidance and your help so that we can work together and unify our great country.”6
Contrast that with Obama’s speech7 after the 2012 election, which he won. Did you hear him asking Republicans for their guidance and help? Of course not. He did the obligatory sit-down with the losing opponent and then, even after losing the Senate in 2014, arrogantly legislated around the wishes of Congress with his “pen and phone.”
But the main reason I brought up Jefferson’s speech was his principled defense of free speech. Here was a president facing the possibility of states seceding from the Union, just as Lincoln did later, but still did not seek to use government power to silence them, so long as “reason is left free to combat it.”
That last part is important. Everyone is a staunch supporter of their own free speech, but not of those who disagree
with them. Free speech doesn’t mean you have a right to immunity from disagreement. You have a right to say whatever you wish, but so do those who may vilify you for what you’ve said.
Let me spell it out for the liberals. When you say something idiotic and someone replies, “That’s idiotic,” that’s not suppressing your freedom of speech. It’s him exercising his own.
I’ve been on the radio for more than twenty years and believe me, I’ve been called a lot worse than idiotic. I’ve never shied away from responding to my detractors, sometimes in devastating fashion, but I’ve never tried to silence them, even though my opponents have not granted me the same respect.
Trump has also endured false accusations, insults, and slanders of all sorts since announcing his run for the presidency in 2015. They’ve called him a dictator. They’ve made up fake news about him. They’ve boycotted his inauguration. But despite all of it, when push came to shove, Trump stood up for free speech and freedom of the press, just as I have so many times in the past.
Trump called his first news conference in several months on January 11. The briefing and Q&A session covered many topics, but one of them was the “fake news” published by BuzzFeed8 and CNN9 regarding sexually depraved acts Russian intelligence supposedly filmed Trump engaging in while in a hotel in Russia. By the time of the news conference, the story had been completely discredited by all but the most delusional of Trump’s opponents.
In that context, a reporter asked Trump what he wanted to do about it. The first part of the question is inaudible, but it reads, “(inaudible) published fake news and all the problems that we’ve seen throughout the media over the course of the election, what reforms do you recommend for this industry here?”10
Liberals love the word reform. So do RINOs. It’s invariably their euphemism for some new form of government theft or regulation. Whenever you hear a progressive or a RINO use the word reform, you can bet your wealth or your freedom will soon be under attack.
This was no exception. I’m not sure whether the reporter was trying to bait Trump or just didn’t know any other way to respond, as most liberals don’t, to behavior he didn’t approve of, other than bringing government power to bear against it. Trump’s answer probably surprised some of those in attendance, but it didn’t surprise me.
“Well, I don’t recommend reforms. I recommend people that are—that have some moral compass… They’re very, very dishonest people, but I think it’s just something we’re going to have to live with.”11
Of course, we heard nothing about this moment in the media. The man with more incentive to attack freedom of the press than virtually anyone on the planet made a principled stand in its defense, just as I have so many times in the past.
I’ve actually been banned from an entire nation—Britain—just for telling truths its government didn’t want to hear. But that only affected me personally. What Obama and Congress did to us last December is much more ominous.
THE NEW MINISTRY OF TRUTH
By late December in the last year of any other president’s second term, respect for the electorate usually outweighs activism, but not for Emperor Barry or the sellouts who remain in Congress. Christmas fell on a Sunday last year and late on the Friday preceding it, when no one was paying attention, Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2017 into law.12
That might not sound controversial, as Congress passes an NDAA every fiscal year. It’s the congressional authorization to fund the military. But funding the military isn’t why Obama waited until just before a holiday to sign it. Hidden within the bill was a provision that for all intents and purposes creates a U.S. government Ministry of Truth, right out of Orwell’s 1984.
Fanatical liberal Rahm Emanuel famously said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.”13 The crisis Emanuel was talking about at the time was the 2008 financial meltdown. The opportunity for Obama was to impose his socialist economic policies on a nation in shock from the mostly government-caused Great Recession.
Well, if you haven’t noticed, Trump’s election itself is a crisis for the liberal power structure. But since they can’t come out and admit that they don’t really care about democracy when the other side wins, they have manufactured a crisis called “Russia hacked the election.” We’re supposed to believe Trump is president only because Russian intelligence hacked the Democratic National Committee email server and basically confirmed what we already knew about Hillary Clinton: that she is an unprincipled, opportunistic liar who cares little for the people who vote for her or what they want her to do in office.
Just as the neoconservatives dusted off the already-written provisions of what became the Patriot Act after 9/11, the neoconservative ventriloquists and their liberal fellow travelers have dusted off a bill creating a de facto Ministry of Truth introduced last summer,14 well before the “fake news” narrative was even scripted, and used this latest, completely phony “crisis” to get it through Congress and signed by the president.
The new law15 begins by basically codifying the anti-Russia propaganda the Obama administration and his liberal and neoconservative supporters spouted for the past eight years. It then authorizes Congress to create a “Center for Information Analysis and Response,” the purpose of which is “whole-of-government initiatives to expose and counter foreign information operations.”
There is more lawyerly doubletalk about what this center will do, but I’ll translate it for you. It’s supposed to counter anything it deems as foreign propaganda with propaganda of its own, using the vast resources of the federal government put at its disposal by the bill.
That might not sound so bad until you remember the Establishment has decided that any support for Trump in the media is de facto Russian propaganda. For them, this means my radio show, The Savage Nation, may need to be “exposed and countered.”
Where does countering end? I don’t know. I don’t particularly want to find out. U.S. government-funded propaganda campaigns against my show or other conservative media sounds bad enough. Had Hillary Clinton been elected, I’m sure it wouldn’t have stopped there. But just because Trump is in the White House, don’t think there won’t be pressure to enforce this chillingly Orwellian law. As Trump tries to keep the promises that got him elected, particularly repairing our relationship with Russia, expect accusations of foreign influence aimed at any conservative media supporting him.
The Establishment will try to make everyone believe that to support Trump’s 2016 campaign platform is to support foreign adversaries trying to influence U.S. policy. In other words, “War is Peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” We are going to have to push back hard at any sign Congress is trying to pressure the Trump administration to enforce this unconstitutional provision of the NDAA.
SOROS’ BROWNSHIRTS
Just as the First Amendment does not allow the government to suppress dissent, it does not sanction using violence to promote one’s message. It specifically protects “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Yet Obama and his cohorts in the media have repeatedly characterized the domestic terrorism perpetrated by groups like Black Lives Matter as peaceful protest, even when innocent bystanders have been assaulted, shops looted, and whole neighborhoods burned to the ground.16
When liberals of all races and creeds began rioting after Trump’s election, O did the same thing. He actually stood on foreign soil and called the riots “one of the great things about our democracy.”17 I’m not fabricating this. This divisive serpent had become so arrogant, so unafraid of any consequences for the damage he’d done to this nation, that he would look into the camera and say outrageous things like that, knowing an adoring media would back him up.
He had the media and half the electorate
so hypnotized for eight years that I don’t doubt many people have trouble distinguishing his progressive fantasies from reality. Many well-meaning people no doubt believe that what we’ve seen over the past few years in Ferguson, Baltimore, New York, and elsewhere has something to do with free speech or the First Amendment.
It doesn’t. When you write an article or a blog, appear on a television show, or even assemble peacefully in a public forum meant for that purpose, you are exercising rights the First Amendment protects. But the moment you pick up a brick and throw it through a window, or join a mob blocking an expressway, which violates someone else’s right to liberty, or especially when you commit a violent act against an innocent bystander, you are no longer exercising your First Amendment rights. You are now violating the rights of others, something the First Amendment does not allow you to do.
Let’s not forget who is starting the riots. These are not spontaneous demonstrations by people who live in the neighborhoods where the riots occur. They are paid agents provocateurs, sometimes brought in from outside to riot, loot, and assault innocent victims. They represent the same threat to freedom of speech as the original Brownshirts and Blackshirts in 1920s Germany and Italy, respectively. Like those fascist paramilitary groups, the new brownshirts don’t seek to exercise free speech but to repress it.
If you doubt what I’m saying, I invite you to attend a Black Lives Matter rally and express a dissenting opinion. Try to point out to those “peaceful protesters” that most of the police shootings reported in the media as racially motivated turned out to be justified, not to mention the millions of unreported police interactions that occur every day without inappropriate force or bias.
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