Core Principles

Since its foundation in 1843, the College of the Holy Cross has dedicated itself to educating young men and women in the Jesuit tradition. The core of the Jesuits’ humanistic mission has been to educate people in a variety of subjects, theories, and points of view. Through this community of open expression and free intellectual debate, students and people learn not only about opposing views, but also how to question and strengthen their own deeply held beliefs. 

Without this free exchange of ideas, the liberal arts mission becomes corrupted, as students self-censor their speech or become reluctant to express their opinions. While this particular trend has not manifested itself strongly on this campus, across the country a growing movement makes it permissible for people to condemn opinions that fail to align with their own.

With the current political environment encouraging activism against the Trump administration, opposite views get drowned out by the overwhelming presence of protesters. Acts of resistance immediately arise after the latest uproar at a Trump administration policy, tweet, or cultural issue.  This trend has bolstered anti-Trump activists. Seeing these acts of defiance and protests constantly in the news enables liberals who believe that they are a part of a movement that has overwhelming national popularity. Moreover, the protest and activism culture only serves to censor or quiet the voices of those supportive of the administration’s policies, because they feel as if they are vastly outnumbered. More importantly, the presence of progressive-led protests and the absence of conservative marches provide some conservatives with the belief that their views are extreme and not socially acceptable. The liberal activists and protesters who rightfully champion free debate and discussion have led to the subconscious censorship of conservative speech. However, more vocal ways of condemning opposing views have resulted from the production of subliminal messages during protests and marches.

Recently, the American left ridiculed Kanye West for being insufficiently anti-Trump. Facing backlash from the militant thought police of the left, Kanye tweeted that he respects the President because he has energy and can identify with that. Kanye also summed up the view of the liberal censorship with his tweet that said “you don't have to agree with Trump, but the mob can’t make me not love him…I don't agree with everything anyone does. That’s what makes us individuals. And we have the right to independent thought.” He also articulated differences of opinion with President Obama over what his policies did for the city of Chicago and tweeted his support for the African-American critic of Black Lives Matter Candace Owens. Within minutes of offering his opinions, Kanye faced tweets and adverse reactions that questioned his mental health with the goal of undermining and delegitimizing his words.

If the leftist mob dislikes something, they will use any tactic, whether it is false accusations of racism, assertions of sexism, or allegations of unstable mental health, until it is gone. Like Clarence Thomas, Ben Carson, or any non-white supporter of the Trump administration, Kanye is not considered a proper representative of the minorities’ opinions. Additionally, the critics who condemned Kanye’s Twitter dialogue with Present Trump for saying that presidents should not engage in policies debates with celebrities fail to mention President Obama’s relationships with the highest class.  Defenses of free thought, like Kanye’s, are crucial to the survival of the American republic. Without them, Americans will begin making political decisions without thinking critically about the issues.

The vilification of people for deigning to think for themselves contradicts the founding of America. The Founding Fathers created a republic through vigorous debate. That debate has continued throughout American history until the present. Institutionally, the offices of the presidency, the Electoral College, and the Senate were constructed in order to calm passing crazes and prevent popularity from subverting the nation. Now, in America’s current culture, people restrict their opinions or emulate the “popular class” in order to gain approval from others in society. This form of restriction of free discussion is equally dangerous because people lose their sense of individualism and begin the march towards a collective identity. Standing against the winds of popularity and social approval is necessary because difficult decisions, ideas, and policies are required to calm a crisis. While it is difficult to maintain one’s opinions in the face of overwhelming social pressures, it is necessary for effective and authentic discussions.

While Holy Cross maintains free intellectual debates, the world outside of Mt. St. James may not. Threats to one’s identity and beliefs will be ever-present as society will try to manipulate or eliminate them. Pressures to interfere with one’s beliefs emerge from partisan politics, trends in popular culture, and from all religions. However, the College of the Holy Cross has provided the same principles that, for the past 175 years, have succeeded in educating students with a strong sense of civic duty, personal identity, and Catholic principles. These principles—a thirst for knowledge, respect for passionate and free debate, and the strong sense of Catholic identity instilled by the College into every crusader—are essential for the survival and growth of the American republic. Armed with these tools every crusader will, when faced with obstacles to free discussion, conquer in the sign of the cross. 

Sex, Freedom, and California's AB-2943

In recent years, eleven states have passed laws banning the use (on minors) of “conversion therapy,” a medically debunked and morally bankrupt practice which seeks to change the sexual orientations of LGBT people. Most recently, California’s assembly passed a similar bill for adults, AB-2943.  Like the others, it’s enjoyed broad support from the mainstream left and various LGBT lobbying organizations, like the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the psychotherapist association for gender and sexual diversity, Gaylesta. The bill tells us a great deal about how certain factions in this country think about sex, sexual orientation, freedom, and human nature.  And while banning conversion therapy for minors is good policy, what the bill ultimately reveals isn’t pretty.

Every ban of “sexual orientation change efforts” relies on a very similar definition of the term.  In 2009, the American Psychological Association defined this term as “methods that aim to change a person’s same-sex sexual orientation to other-sex, regardless of whether mental health professionals or lay individuals are involved.”  That seems like a workable definition, because it means exactly what the term says. “Sexual orientation change efforts” means, well, actually trying to change a person’s sexual orientation. But the APA, apparently, wasn’t good enough.  According to more than 20 percent of state governments, and the lobbying groups which helped draft the bill, sexual orientation change efforts include “any practices by mental health providers that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation. This includes efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”  This definition implies that human beings are slaves to their desires, and indeed little better than animals.

The devil is in the definition.  Efforts “to change an individual’s sexual orientation” include efforts “to change behaviors or gender expressions.”  In uniting these two efforts, the bills identify an aspect of personal identity—the unchosen sexual orientation—with particular behaviors or expressions.  The two form a logical continuum. If a person has a particular desire—say, being attracted to people of the same sex—acting upon that desire is naturally necessary.  In fact, trying to change the behavior is akin to trying to change the orientation.

That is, to put it nicely, absurd. It makes the human person a slave of sexual desire, entirely compromising any meaningful claim to moral freedom.  To be clear, I suspect that I agree with every one of the bill’s supporters on one point: sexual orientation isn’t freely chosen; nobody elects to be gay or straight or otherwise.  But their schema leaves no place at all for moral choice, the process by which a person chooses to pursue a particular course of action. They would have us believe that if a person is gay, his or her moral choice is already made.  Sexual behavior will inevitably express the orientation; there’s no conception that free choice would involve itself at all. Whether you have sex with someone is a matter of biological necessity, not a moral choice.

But this bit of legalistic mumbo-jumbo isn’t just stupid.  It’s also morally cancerous. What does it say about human beings to claim that sexual orientation inevitably determines—indeed, logically compels—a  person to have sex with someone else? It means the person can be identified simply with desire. Our sexual appetites become who we are, not a minor facet of our richer and more complex identity.  When moral freedom disappears, we have neither control over nor responsibility for our own lives. What separates rational human adults from wind-up toys, marching to the gear ticks of a prefabricated sex drive?  If AB-2943 (and a dozen bills just like it) gets it right, every single one of us is hopelessly imprisoned to our lusts. We can’t choose our behavior without denying who we are. This vision of the person doesn’t make us more ourselves.  Instead, it would reduce us to nothing more than animals. It claims that we’re subhuman, in the full sense of the word.

And yet, we dare to call it “liberation.”  That was the rallying cry of the sexual revolution of the 1960s, re-echoed by its heirs for decades since. With that term, our culture signifies a purely political liberty.  Since the type of person we sleep with is (supposedly) who we are, liberty becomes the right for our sexual desires to express themselves in actions. Freedom is expressive sexuality.  It can only be threatened from outside, either by government actions or by cultural norms which condemn particular sexual behaviors. In this regard, the moral objections of others pose a fundamental challenge to our liberty.  By condemning a behavior, they discourage sexual self-expression. Thus, we’re told that cultural norms imprison us, and prevent us from being authentically free. It gives the left a cudgel to hit the Christians with. So what if it defiles human dignity along the way?

Christianity decries this reduction of the person to his or her sexual orientation, and proposes a fuller understanding of human freedom.  Freedom intervenes in the logical progression from desire to action, claims the philosophical tradition of the Christian church. Freedom falls between sexual orientation and sexual behavior, between who we’re attracted to and whether we have sex with them.  After we experience a desire, but before we act upon it, there is a moment of moral choice. In that moment, the person finds himself addressed by the choice which lies before him. In the silence of the human heart, we come face to face with our consciences, with the stable and uncompromising moral truth.  And we possess the terrible freedom to deny, reject, or ignore that truth, and to live with the consequences of our choice. In the depths of who we are, free from both the pressures of our culture and the insistence of our flesh, we possess the capacity to choose for good or evil.

Assertions of traditional morality seek to influence this choice, but they do not try to undermine it.  For instance, the Catholic Church makes moral arguments, on the basis of scripture, tradition, and moral philosophy, that any sexual activity outside of the relationship of a husband and wife is gravely wrong.  By presenting a rational argument, the Church seeks to shape the moral lives of her people. Nonetheless, each person possesses the ability to reject the Church’s teaching, or to affirm it. The moral act will follow from this choice, whether one chooses to remain chaste or to violate the norm.  But the assertion of a moral claim has another purpose: it calls attention to our freedom, to the choice that we must make. If the Church deems an action illicit, but contemporary culture applauds it, the individual is presented with a moral dilemma, whose final outcome only he or she may determine. Controversial Christian teachings reveal the choices before us, and so they liberate us from enslavement to our appetites.

AB-2943 and its companions across the country don’t speak for every LGBT person, and I don’t claim that they do.  But the logic of these bills is the logic of the sexual revolution. It is the logic of our society, too: that we are freer when we enact our desires, that in fact those same desires make behaviors necessary. This is sexual predestination. The Catholic faith rejects this as the negation of our freedom. So does most anyone afflicted with a drop of common sense. We are not animals, or wind-up toys, or biological automatons. To claim otherwise is morally despicable; it’s the death knell of the trait that makes us human. Virtue or vice? Good or evil? God or nothing? That is the choice before us. We ought to make it freely.

Jumping the Gun

When news of last month’s tragic school shooting in Parkland, FL broke and details surrounding the calamity began to emerge, everyone was left in a state of shock.  We all bemoaned the shooter, we all prayed for the victims and their families, and no one was content.  Despite some Democrats’ assertions that Republicans don’t care about dead children and some Republicans’ claims that members of the media look forward to and secretly commend mass shootings, any loss of life—especially that of innocent children—is appalling and distressing, and everyone, regardless of political leaning, is left with an aching heart.  In times of heightened emotion and grief across our national landscape, it is natural to seek change, and almost all would agree that change in some form is necessary.  However, heightened emotion rarely translates into effective policy, and level of passion has no correlation to one’s level of moral authority or political expertise on any given issue.  Members of both sides of the political aisle are distraught by last month’s shooting: Republicans and Democrats both mourn the loss of the victims’ lives.  Everyone simply wants what they think is best for the country, and we owe it to one other to assume the best in each other’s policy proposals.  Unfortunately, the national conversation on the topic of gun violence has been permeated by the shaming of blameless politicians, the denigration of those with differing viewpoints, and the blatant mischaracterizations of opposing voices.  Nearly every American recognizes the need for change, but change can only prosper when standards of civility and decency are upheld and when we learn to assume the best in others.

Throughout CNN’s town hall on gun violence the week following the Parkland tragedy, survivors of the shooting directly compared Florida Senator Marco Rubio to the shooter himself, suggested that NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch doesn’t care about her own children, and lambasted both figures as “murderers” for refusing to succumb to some of their political demands.  Of course, everyone sympathizes with these children: it is difficult to imagine having to endure what they did.  But they arechildren.  No matter how much sympathy one may have for them, their suffering does not confer to them any sense of knowledge or proficiency pertaining to the gun debate.  They certainly have the right to voice their opinions and I am not claiming that they should be silenced, but the media’s tendency to rely upon the shooting survivors as if they are political experts is irresponsible and manipulative.  When CNN allows Rubio and Loesch to be slandered as “murderers” and equated to a school shooter without any warnings or repercussions, they are failing in their duty as objective and unprejudiced journalists.  Both the students’ falsified sense of authority and the media’s unquestionable one-sidedness are important to note before exploring some of their actual policy proposals, many of which are misinformed and overly broad.

The most common policy proposal advocated by members of the media, Democrats, and shooting survivors has been a ban of AR-15s (“AR” stands for “Armalite Rifle,” not “assault rifle” or “automatic rifle”), the weapon used in the Parkland tragedy as well as in other mass shootings in recent years.  As simple as such proposals may seem, they are utterly impractical and idealistic.  Essentially every rifle currently in circulation in the United States possesses the same key features as the AR-15, there are currently 8 million AR-15s already owned by Americans, and for every death caused by a ‘long’ gun like AR-15s, four deaths are caused by handguns; thus, even if such a ban were implemented, gun violence rates would not change drastically and millions of guns would still be in circulation.  Thus, any attempt to ban AR-15s would have to result in a ban of all semi-automatic weapons, which accounts for nearly every gun currently on the market—leading to what would fundamentally be a full repeal of the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution.  Would a blanket gun ban and full repeal of the Second Amendment have prevented the tragedy in Florida?  A 2007 British Journal of Criminology study and a 2008 University of Melbourne study concluded that Australia’s gun ban had no effect on the gun homicide rate.  Similarly, the Crime Research Prevention Center found that after the implementation of the gun ban in Britain, there was initially a significant increase in the homicide rate, followed by a gradual decline once Britain expanded its police force.  However, there has only been one year where the homicide rate was lower than it was pre-ban, indicating that blanket gun bans are generally ineffective and do not reduce levels of gun violence.

In early March, Florida Governor Rick Scott signed a gun control bill providing nearly half a billion dollars to train certain school officials to carry weapons, raising the age at which Florida residents can legally purchase rifles to 21, extending the mandatory three-day waiting period to both handguns and rifles, and improving the ban on firearms ownership by the mentally ill.  The bill encompasses policies endorsed by both Republicans and Democrats, and emotional and political pressure from families of the victims ultimately coerced Scott into signing the bill.  To be sure, the bill is not by any means ‘bad’ – training of school officials and enhancing the mentally ill’s restrictions to firearms are concrete measures that could prevent shootings in the future.  But, raising the age to purchase guns to 21 and implementing a waiting period are not necessarily constructive.  If an individual is deemed mature enough to serve in the military, to vote, and take on other responsibilities for adults, why should that individual need to wait three years to exercise his constitutional right?  Furthermore, waiting periods have proved to do nothing of consequence to prevent shootings.  The pressure Scott faced to “just do something” and “get something passed” has translated into a half-baked piece of gun legislation that will not only hurt Scott politically, but also do little to prevent shootings like in Parkland.

The point is that when politicians are pressured into passing legislation for the sake of passing legislation – especially when their political popularity is at stake – such legislation will almost always do very little to confront the issue at hand.  Impulse and policy proposals do not mix well, and in an emotionally heated and politically hostile national landscape such as our own, those who rely on instinct tend to mistake the passing of legislation for emotional relief, when in reality, such policies do very little to prevent similar tragedies.  In times of uncertainty and fear, we are best equipped to confront our nation’s most pressing concerns when we all come together, respect one another’s voices, and weigh all possible options.  Meaningful change takes patience, patience takes effort, and effort takes faith.  As we continue this crucial conversation, let’s learn to have a little more faith in each other: after all, we’re all on the same side.

Pope Francis and a Catholic Analysis of Gun Violence

In the memorable phrase of a disgraced conservative pundit, the Mandalay Bay attacks represented “the gruesome downside of American freedom.”  This argument gets trotted out after after every mass shooting: the Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms, and most gun regulations would violate it.  Either tyranny, or 36,000 gun deaths per year. Liberals, on the other hand, call for new a new weapons ban or the repeal of the Second Amendment, and accuse conservatives of wanting kids to die.  The NRA causes mass shootings because it funds a system that ignores violence. Both sides, in their haste to point to blood on the other’s hands, ignore the deepening cultural crisis that produces mass killing after mass killing.  Catholic social teaching, by contrast, recognizes the moral collapse that lies at the heart of the political crisis, and illuminates how we can solve it.

No pope has issued an encyclical about gun violence.  There’s remarkably little in the way of Vatican documents on the subject.  What makes the social teaching of the popes compelling is not their concrete policy proposals, but their integral vision of the problems facing human society.  Benedict XVI and Francis both hold that no problem is purely technical. Instead, every crisis has cultural roots that run deeper than the material ones. That insight informs a Catholic analysis of gun violence in America.  That isn’t to say, however, that material circumstances don’t contribute to the problem of gun violence.

Indeed, advances in weapons technology magnify the impact of mass shootings.  Pope Francis writes of technological advance, “Never has humanity had such power over itself, yet nothing guarantees that it will be used wisely, particularly when we consider how it is currently being used.” It’s an observation that holds true of almost any sphere of technology—-biological, information, genetic and, yes, weapons technology.  The rapid development of weapons technology has placed tremendous power in the hands of almost every citizen who desires it. In terms of pure technical power, modern weapons make it easy for a single person to cause immense suffering.

The shallow logic of American politics meets this technological advance with one of two solutions. On one side is the “conservative” logic, memorably expressed in the wake of the Newtown shooting: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”  To prevent killings, we ought to put armed security guards in schools and give every teacher a Glock 9mm. It’s a deterrent approach to the problem: give good people guns, so they can kill the bad people with guns. On the other side is the liberal logic, demanding repeal of the Second Amendment, or bans on many firearms.  If you make buying guns illegal, people will stop committing murder. Both proposals proceed from the same false assumption: gun violence is a technical problem, and it can be solved by technical means. We assume that Parkland happened because a bad guy got a gun, and a good guy didn’t have one.

A Catholic analysis finds this answer too simplistic.  School shootings don’t happen simply because people can get their hands on more powerful weapons than they could in 1900, 1945, or 1990.   Although not referring to gun violence, the words of Benedict XVI are insightful: “It is man's darkened reason that produces these consequences, not the instrument per se. Therefore it is not the instrument that must be called to account, but individuals, their moral conscience and their personal and social responsibility.”  We cannot put the Second Amendment in the dock for Parkland, or Las Vegas, or Newtown. The problem primarily concerns moral culture. Francis makes the same point: “our immense technological development has not been accompanied by a development in human responsibility, values and conscience.”  Moral culture is collapsing, not developing, and it kills people as it falls.

First, a toxic individualism prevents society from establishing moral ideals, desirable characteristics which individuals ought to pursue.  We believe that the norms toward which society directs us prevent us from being individuals; we must rebel against them to be more authentically ourselves. Society has no right encourage us to be courageous, just, or selfless.  But, since we will nonetheless imbibe these ideals to some degree, society shapes our consciences, and works to constrain us from within. As a result, we can ignore the conscience, too. It is shaped by the preferences of others, and is consequently worthless.  It becomes legitimate, even necessary, to ignore the moral ideals that try to impose themselves upon our lives. In this regard, American culture makes people vicious, and begins to predispose them towards violence.

Second, unbounded individualism makes us consider others valuable only as far as they are useful.  By definition, this trait makes ultimate what is good for me. This applies what Francis calls a “use and throw away logic” to other people.  Because we care about other people only when they’re useful for us, we can ignore their suffering whenever they’re inconvenient. As Francis writes, “This is the same relativistic logic which justifies buying the organs of the poor for resale or use in experimentation, or eliminating children because they are not what their parents wanted.”  When we can ignore the damage done, our culture encourages the worst sorts of violence. We collectively ignore the innocents killed by drone campaigns abroad, the unborn and elderly whose lives are snuffed out by abortion and euthanasia, and the mentally ill whose lives “death with dignity” laws help to end. None of their suffering matters, as long as we can’t see it.  So kill the people who are inconvenient—but keep them out of sight, and call it “choice” or “dignity” or “precision strike.” Our vicious individualism has made killing the innocent a human right, or even a moral necessity.

Finally, and most obviously, our culture exults in blood and death.  The entertainment industry makes a killing by glorifying violence; take a look at cinema, games, or trashy novels to prove the point.  I suspect that all of this desensitizes us, but that’s not the heart of the problem. Most kids who play Grand Theft Auto don’t go shooting up schools.  More dangerously, the fascination with violence inevitably shapes our cultural ideals. It’s one thing to call a veteran’s courage and self-sacrifice heroic.  The trouble is, we don’t do much of that. Instead, in film or in reality, we lionize people for how many people they’ve killed. Americans ogle at the “Mother of All Bombs,” and go gonzo thinking about how many bad guys get zapped when it goes off.  We love people and machines that kill efficiently; they’re our favorite entertainers. Can we really wonder why nineteen-year-olds murder their classmates?

The collapse of American moral culture means that technical solutions won’t cut it.  For the Right, the “good guy with a gun” is worthless after Parkland. It relies on the virtues of courage and self-sacrifice: risk your life to save the lives of others.  But since non-judgmentalism claims freedom from such social norms, it’s impossible for society to inculcate them. The Republican solution relies on a citizenry both armed and virtuous—that is, good people with guns.  There are exceptions, of course, but a moral crisis doesn’t make good people.

In some regard, this explains the appeal of the liberal solution: get assault rifles out of the hands of the citizens.  But since the roots of the crisis are cultural, random killings won’t stop because people can’t buy assault rifles. You don’t need an AR-15 to slaughter dozens; a handgun does just fine.  Substantially reducing crime by banning guns would require banning almost every firearm imaginable, and repossessing the hundreds of millions currently in circulation. Confiscating legally acquired weapons is politically indefensible; banning the sale of the vast majority of guns is politically impossible.  

A Catholic analysis of American gun violence perceives the problem in all its intractable depth.  It makes us eschew the logic which promises utopia through a single policy proposal. At the same time, another Catholic principle forbids inaction.  John Paul II writes, “Every person...can come to recognize the sacred value of human life from its very beginning until its end, and can affirm the right of every human being to have this primary good respected to the highest degree.” The right to life is primary. It makes profound demands of us, and it must shape our freedom.  Furthermore, the infinite value of every life means that no reform that prevents a single death is worthless. Recognizing this, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has called for limitations on high capacity magazines, substantial regulations on the purchase of handguns, universal background checks, and increased resources for mental health.  The right to life demands every possible solution.

American culture makes mass shooters.  In order to “be ourselves”, we deny the authority of any moral ideal, preferring to be who we are than who we ought to be.  Our culture encourages us to be vicious if that expresses who we are. Similarly, our vicious individualism justifies the worst kinds of violence: killing is acceptable so long as it helps me.  Finally, death and violence have become our idols, worshipped almost daily in the news or on television. Parkland, Newtown, and Las Vegas aren’t a problem that minor policy changes can prevent.  Cultural trends of recent decades have destroyed the moral framework of society in the name of liberation, and given us a society uniquely vulnerable to violence. We are paying the price of freedom in the blood of other people.

The Democratic Tea Party

Since the election of Donald Trump as the forty-fifth President of the United States, liberals and Democratic activists have denounced everything the President has said or done. Their zealotry  has resulted in a record number of declared Democratic candidates for the upcoming midterm elections in 2018. However, these candidates, and the vocal #resistance movement, have successfully shifted the Democratic Party even further to the left. As a result, the Democratic Party has dramatically reduced its chances of success in the 2018 elections.

Within the past month the Democratic Party of California demonstrated how hostile its base is towards politicians who even consider working alongside the President. Politicians like California’s senior senator, Dianne Feinstein, are condemned for being insufficiently liberal, and have adapted their policy preferences accordingly. Last month, California’s Democratic Party refused to endorse its senator of twenty-six years at its convention, where her challenger Kevin de León amassed seventeen percent more delegates. Although Senator Feinstein began her career without the expressed approval of her party’s convention delegates, this year’s convention demonstrated that her record—which couldn’t be called anything close to conservative—isn’t sufficiently progressive for her party. The surge leftward by the Democratic Party ensures a hostile primary and general election for their senior senator and the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee. More likely than not, Senator Feinstein will overwhelmingly win re-election, but the resources given to her to ensure her political survival will be allocated from financially strapped candidates who need the party’s support. Additionally, the overwhelming number of declared Democratic candidates for House seats held by Republicans could lead to them losing House seats that they should win.

The overwhelming vigor and ardent activism of California Democrats could potentially lead to them becoming the minority party in the House again due to the California primary system, which states that the top two candidates, regardless of party, advance to the general election. The nightmare scenario for the Democratic Party is that their multiple candidates will split the vote of their base, while only the Republican candidates advance to the general election. This isn’t a baseless fear; according to Politico, there are at least sixty-seven Democratic candidates running in the fourteen Republican-held districts in California. The strongest path Democrats have toward retaking the House is by winning several House races in California.  If that fails to occur, their chances fall dramatically.

Democratic optimism isn’t isolated to California; there’s even talk of a “Blue Wave” in Texas. For weeks leading up to the state’s primaries, media and Democratic activists insisted that their voters would outnumber the Republicans, thanks to their candidates’ newfound liberalism. National Democrats believed that the way to win Texas, and the House, was through a more liberal agenda. However, in the days preceding the vote even Democrats acknowledged that their strategy was not working as the Democratic Party targeted its own House candidate, Laura Moser.

Despite all the propaganda, it turned out that “blue wave” predictions were a wash. Without much effort, Republican Ted Cruz won twice as many votes as his now general election opponent Beto O’Rourke. While Democratic turnout was at a historic high, it failed to overcome the Republican dominance of the state, demonstrating that the liberal strategy of the new Democratic Party needs rethinking if Democrats are to succeed in winning races in Texas this fall.  Although they consider their progressive agenda to be the solution to their electoral woes, the Democratic Party’s radical agenda will bring losses in 2018.

While their animosity to President Trump and his conservative policies can motivate Democratic supporters, their radical liberal agenda will fail to convert moderate voters. Concerning the issue of abortion, the Democratic Party has become intolerant of any positions other than pro-choice. Previously, pro-life Democrats have faced primary opponents and have subsequently lost. The Democratic Party is  currently funding a pro-choice progressive primary challenger to a pro-life Democrat from Illinois, Representative Dan Lipinski. By primarying a moderate Democrat, the Democratic Party officials admit that their party has no place for moderates and asserts that they are willing to risk a House seat for a candidate that supports their uncompromising stances.

Democratic candidates have  also adopted a more radical view on immigration. The party now believes that arbitrary and haphazardly drawn borders are not incongruent with American democracy. Furthermore, while the overwhelming polling  data indicates popular support for action on immigration, public opinion should not be the basis for any policy. The foundation of America’s republican system decries arbitrary and shifting passions in favor of the written law. While Americans recognize the charitable and compassionate aspects of the Democratic immigration plan, they also believe that security from intruders and respect for immigration laws are far more important. The belief that immigration policy should be made out of compassion and not by existing laws or our regard for our national security will not be electorally beneficial to Democrats in 2018.

The ever present lurch of liberalism by the Democratic Party has already alienated voters with moderate views on abortion and immigration. By shifting left and adopting even more radical policies, more voters will be unable to support the new Democratic Party. Like the Tea Party movement, the progressive march leftward will put the Democratic Party at risk of losing seats and with them a very winnable midterm election.

The Mainstream Media Misses the Mark

When a disease breaks out, we analyze data to find a cure.  When a natural disaster strikes, we analyze data to determine how to better prepare for such future disasters.  But what do we do when a mass shooting happens? That’s when we disregard any meaningful data, propose baseless solutions simply because they fit our political agenda, and smear everyone with different solutions as evil bigots who want children to die.

We hear pleas for an open and honest discussion on gun violence in America: something the Republican Party, the NRA, and lawful gun owners sincerely desire.  For an honest conversation on this topic, we must rely on facts and reason.  Facts and reason indicate that gun control is a terrible idea.  From the 141% increase in annual homicide in just sixteen years following a Washington, DC gun ban, to an 89% spike in gun crime in the ten years following the gun ban in Britain, the evidence is not on the side for gun control.  Even in the case of Australia, which instituted a gun buyback so commonly praised by the left, a 2008 study from the University of Melbourne concluded that Australia's gun buyback had no effect on the gun homicide rate; the national homicide rate was already declining prior to this gun control measure. But this evidence is not shown, because instead of featuring highly qualified gun control experts and crime researchers, the mainstream media instead gives airtime to news anchors with absolutely no knowledge about guns, musicians and movie stars who have armed guards protecting them wherever they go, and traumatized seventeen-year-old high school students.

The Democratic Party and the mainstream media do not want a real conversation.  Colion Noir, an NRA commentator and attorney with eleven years of gun advocacy experience, says, “on every issue in this country, we strive to find the most knowledgeable people we can find on the topic, but when it comes to guns, it’s like we pride ourselves on finding the ‘smartest’ dumbasses to talk about guns, and then have the audacity to call it common sense.”  Common sense tells us to base our laws on factual data and logic.  The data discovered by the Center for Disease Control under President Obama showed that guns are used defensively anywhere “from about 500,000 to more than 3 million” times per year in the US.  In contrast to this, according to left-leaning research institute Everytown, there are an average of thirteen thousand gun homicides every year in America.  Even if we take the statistics most favorable for gun control advocates, guns save at least thirty-eight times more lives than they spare each year.  The passage of gun control legislation and gun-free zone laws only affect one group of people: the law-abiding.  We base our gun control laws on the false premise that the same people willing to break the law to kill people will somehow follow laws telling them where and how to do so.  Like sheep among wolves, we leave the law-abiding citizens defenseless against criminals who will go to any measures to cause harm.        

These facts I’ve already presented clearly establish that gun control is in no way the clear answer to preventing gun violence.  Yet, even if the data didn’t line up, and even if it wasn’t as clear that guns deter more crimes than they foster, that would not change the fact that you and I have an inherent right to defend ourselves and our families.  There is no right more precious and fundamental than the right to life, and the best protection against a bad guy with a gun who threatens the lives of others is a good guy with an equally powerful gun in his hand.  Guns serve as great equalizers.  One’s size, strength, and weight are no longer of importance when armed with a firearm.  How is a frail elderly man able to fend off a strong young burglar?  With a gun.  How is a young woman able to fend off a violent male rapist? With a gun.  How is a citizenry able to fend off a tyrannical government?  You guessed it: with guns.

Look no further than the twentieth century for why we need the right to bear arms.  Too many times we have seen governments claim to be the only necessary protector of the people and take away their guns, only to then turn back around and use their monopoly of force against the people in horrible ways.  In fact, gun control is nearly always the first measure governments enact before they begin to strip the citizenry of its natural rights.  It’s why over 100 million people were killed under tyrannical communist regimes in the twentieth century, and it’s why six million Jews were exterminated under Hitler.

Despite all of this, it is the gun-control-supporting Democrats who compare gun advocates to Nazis.  It is the gun-control-supporting Democrats who compare Second Amendment supporters to terrorists.  It is the gun-control-supporting Democrats who compare gun owning Republicans to segregationists.  In a recent panel about a new Disney movie, Oprah compared the gun control movement to the Civil Rights movement.  She is right; there are extraordinary connections between gun rights and racial issues throughout American history.  However, gun control advocates of yesteryear were not on the side she would have expected.  The first US gun control measure in 1640 was not enacted to stop school shootings. Rather, it was a Virginia law that prohibited blacks from owning guns.  Until the mid-twentieth century, gun control in the US was used almost exclusively to disarm African-Americans and other minorities.  The right to keep and bear arms was actually a fundamental force behind the Dred Scott decision; the Chief Justice of the case said that acknowledging the citizenship of blacks “would give them the full liberty to keep and carry arms wherever they went,” and thus the court ruled that blacks were not citizens.  After the Confederates surrendered in 1865, one of the very first things the southerners did was round up all the guns from freed blacks.  As Michael Knowles of The Daily Wire said, “gun control has been the single most important tool of white supremacists for centuries.” 

What was the NRA doing then?  The organization was founded in 1871 by Union soldiers who fought to free the slaves. As blacks continued to be disarmed for the next century by the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist southerners, the NRA was fighting to ensure that the right to keep and bear arms did not exclude African-Americans.  The NRA was possibly the most important organization in the fight for civil rights, as the Second Amendment is the only protection from infringement upon all other rights.  As Chief Organizer of the NAACP’s Jackson Movement in the 1960s, John Salter, said, “no one knows what kind of massive racist retaliation would have been directed against grassroots black people had the black community not had a healthy measure of firearms in it.”

Now, it is important to remind you that it was not the Republican Party that actively attempted to strip black Americans of their right to bear arms.  It was not the Republican Party that fought for the “right” to own slaves.  It was not the Republican Party that enacted the Jim Crow laws.  Contrary to popular belief, it was not even the Republican Party that voted in a larger number against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  No; that was all the Democrats.  Fortunately, these are no longer principles that the Democratic Party subscribes to, but as Delegate and 2018 Senate candidate, Nicholas J. Freitas said in a recent speech on the Virginia House floor, “[we] would really appreciate it if every time you want to make a powerful point, you don’t project the sins, the atrocities, and the injustices [of the Democratic Party] onto us.” 

Support for the Second Amendment is not only on the right side of the political spectrum, but it is also on the right side of history.   If we really want an open discussion about guns in America, the Democrats and the media better start giving us the respect that we deserve.  But until then, Molon Labe. 

State of the Union Bolstered by Tax Reform

Continuing the constitutional duty of informing Congress of the state of the union, President Trump demonstrated that his first year in office was a resounding success. From his inauguration on January 20, 2017, President Trump has accomplished policies on every conservative’ wish list. According to Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank located in Washington D.C., the Trump presidency has accomplished a greater percentage of conservative policies than Ronald Reagan did in 1981. The administration’s policies of cutting costly regulations, nominating conservative jurists to lifelong court tenures, increasing military spending, and enacting a foreign policy aimed at asserting the will of America and its allies have been immensely successful. Since its passage in late December, the Republican tax cut has bolstered the national economy, causing economic optimism to skyrocket. 

Contrary to the apocalyptic rhetoric about the tax bill used by Democratic politicians, emails sent by leaders in higher education to students, and media pundits, the tax bill is becoming a source of victory for the Grand Old Party. Back in December, party elder and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said that the tax breaks would only help the rich while stating that the only benefits received by the middle class would be “crumbs” compared to the rich. Disgraced former Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz expressed a similar sentiment to that of Leader Pelosi when she said that a thousand dollars does not go very far for people. I think college students and people struggling from paycheck to paycheck would appreciate an extra thousand dollars in their pockets. Initially, the apocalyptic rhetoric of ensuing economic doom expressed by the Democrats like Pelosi and Wasserman Schultz was successful in eliminating popular support for Republicans’ tax law. According to several polls conducted before the law was passed in December, nearly a third of Americans had negative opinions of the law. However, as the Democratic rhetoric subsided and reports of investment by companies were published, Americans slowly began to favor the law. 

Since the Republicans passed tax reform in a partisan fashion, several companies have promised greater investment in their workers, charity, or technological advancements. As of January 14, a hundred and forty companies have given raises to their workers as a result of the tax bill passed in the first year of the Trump administration. Companies like Bank of America, Hostess Brands, and Disney have given benefits to their workers which will economically improve their life through raises and stock options. With corporations across America eagerly helping their workers, the economic condition of many people will continue to improve in 2018. As a result of these companies giving thousand dollar “crumbs” to their workers, the American people have swung their support to the law and the Republican Party in manner unprecedented in the Trump Presidency. Polling indicating American voters’ party preference gave the Democratic Party a double-digit advantage over Republicans. However, in recent weeks the same polling has seen the Democratic advantage slip to just a mid-single digit lead, which represents a strong Republican improvement. The combination of both Republican improvement within polling on the generic ballot and President Trump’s increasing poll numbers should raise some alarm for Democrats. While there are nine months until midterm elections and the Republicans are in defense, the Democrats should recognize that some of the political opponents' policies are popular among segments of the American public. As a result of the Democratic Party’s partisan opposition to the tax law, Americans across the nation recognize the Party which economically advanced their lives. 

During the State of the Union, this message was refined as Americans, sitting in their living rooms across the country, saw the Democratic Party refuse to acknowledge the benefits of the law. Concerning African American employment, the economic policies of the current administration has made a modest increase, which should be celebrated. Admittedly, President Obama decreased African American unemployment more significantly than President Trump, but having African American unemployment at an all-time low should have elicited bipartisan cheers. However, it was recognizable that only the Republican half of the chamber applauded while the Democratic Party, along with the Congressional Black Caucus, simply sat there. Throughout his speech, President Trump called for and articulated policies which should have evoked bipartisan support and Congressional unity, but widespread opposition came from the Democratic half of the chamber. The lack of bipartisan intent could be fatal to the Democratic members of Congress. Polling taken after the State of the Union indicated that three-fourths of those polled supported the speech, with a significant percentage believing that Trump acted in a bipartisan manner. 

Admittedly, there are nine months until midterm elections and the political climate will change substantially by then. Furthermore, conservatives and liberals alike argue that the lack of incoming revenue as a result of the lower taxes will lead to an increased national debt. Moreover, critics of deregulation assert that the economic advantages of slashing regulations fail to outweigh the health and environmental benefits. 

Despite the causes for alarm, America’s immediate economic outlook appears prosperous. The tax cuts have emboldened companies to invest in their workers while also allowing those same workers to keep a larger portion of their hard-earned money. As the tax cuts continue to fuel a continually growing economy, Americans of all economic backgrounds will be affected positively. If the economic changes improve the condition of millions of Americans living in poverty, then there should be hope for bipartisan support for the policies that improved the state of the union. 

De-Emotionalizing DACA

If the last six months have indicated anything about the current state of our political discourse, it is that it’s nearly impossible to engage in bipartisan political dialogue without an overload of virtue signaling from members of the left. The left’s dogmatic standard in civic conversation is based upon the notion that feelings trump fact, instinct trumps reason, and emotional impulse trumps logic. This has left a noticeable taint on the way we carry out conversations on public policy. The consequences of such a standard are damaging and destructive. Of course, emotion plays a central role in the human experience and it’s only natural that it has some bearing on one’s political leanings and tendencies, but when it comes to public policy, one must rely on the objective and impartial rather than the infinite and indeterminate. Although emotional bias as a legitimate basis for diplomatic discussion has taken over seemingly every component of our political discourse, it is most prominent in discussions concerning DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Despite the policy’s blatant executive overreach and unconstitutionality, the emotion-infused policy proposals and overly euphemistic language of the DACA debate are ultimately detrimental to the integrity of political discussion on both micro and macro levels in the United States. 

In 2011, one year prior to former president Barack Obama’s reelection, he rightfully acknowledged on his campaign trail the antidemocratic and unconstitutional ramifications that an executive order like DACA would create: “Sometimes when I talk to immigration advocates, they wish I could just bypass Congress and change the law myself. But that’s not how democracy works.” 2011 Obama was correct: surely everyone who has passed a seventh grade social studies class knows that the legislative branch makes laws while the executive branch merely enforces them—to suggest otherwise runs contrary to the sociopolitical and constitutional foundations of the United States government, and the former president was right to clarify the issue in the honest and transparent way he did. 

Come 2012 reelection season, however, in an effort to frame members of the Republican Party as cold-hearted and compassionless (a rather masterful political move), President Obama decided that the integrity of the executive branch ought to take a backseat to his own partisan needs (the Republicans had won the House majority in 2012 as well, so he had to rely upon an executive order to push his agenda through, which stands in stark contrast to the current administration’s lawmaking tactics). His unilateral political maneuvering won, and before anyone knew it, DACA was instituted as a “temporary measure,” and any attempt to question the moral and constitutional foundations of the order was met with snide and pompous remarks from political opponents. What was once “not how democracy works” suddenly became “who we are as a people,” as Obama wrote when President Trump announced plans to end the program in September 2017. What was once considered executive overreach became known as “basic decency,” what was once illegal and unconstitutional became acceptable and encouraged, one who was once called an “illegal immigrant” was suddenly referred to as a “dreamer,” and what was once a desire to uphold the Constitution is now known as “racist” and “xenophobic.” 

Of everything we have learned over the past several months of immigration policy debate, the most striking would be the power of words. Politics and persuasiveness go hand in hand, and it’s no coincidence terms like “dreamer,” “family reunification,” and “undocumented” have been brought to the forefront. The left’s approach to the immigration debate is one of overblown euphemisms and emotionally persuasive language—and to their credit—it has worked quite well. Even the rather partisan Holy Cross administration has given in to such emotionally permeated language (which in and of itself speaks volumes about the school’s political priorities given that the administration rarely, if ever, focuses its attention to critical Catholic issues like abortion and the rise of the anti-Catholic cultural influences, while it does not hesitate to comment on immigration and refugee concerns), with members of the administration saying on multiple occasions that they are “troubled” by what was initially a temporary instance of executive exploitation being repealed. 

Surely, it is difficult to blame these so-called “dreamers” (illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as children) for the wrongdoings of their parents, and even the most far-right politicians and pundits don’t have any real desire to deport hundreds of thousands of innocent and hardworking migrants for something that was no fault of their own. Unfortunately, though, that’s not the point. No matter how much we may sympathize for these individuals, facts are facts: the executive order allowing them to remain in the United States is glaringly undemocratic. Compassion does not hold a candle to constitutionalism, regardless of any political or emotional stakes. 

In more recent weeks, President Trump has held several bipartisan meetings on the future of DACA, and he has made it clear on multiple occasions – most notably in his first State of the Union address—that he is willing to compromise with Democrats on DACA and other pressing immigration issues so that both parties are satisfied. More specifically, the President has proposed his “four pillars” plan that would provide a pathway to citizenship for approximately 1.8 million “dreamers,” $25 billion for border security measures including the construction of a wall, an end to chain migration, and an end to the Diversity Visa Lottery Program. Of course, this proposed plan is quite generous and more than reasonable despite its neglect for the Obama administration’s unconstitutionality—as President Trump himself indicated, it “covers almost three times more people than the [Obama] administration. Under our plan, those who meet education and work requirements, and show good moral character, will be able to become full citizens of the United States over a 12-year period.” To no surprise, most Democrats are not budging: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi suggested that “the plan is a campaign to make America white again” while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer claimed that Trump was using his plan “as a tool to tear apart our legal immigration system and adopt the wish-list by anti-immigration hardliners." This rationale, of course, is ludicrous. As political pundit Ben Shapiro said, “to suggest that allowing in millions of illegal immigrants and millions more legal immigrants is somehow a reflection of underlying racism is pure demagoguery.” The Democrats are, of course, politically posturing to their far-left base, and their inability to even consider a compromise as generous and balanced as President Trump’s sheds light on where their highest priorities truly lie. 

As unavoidable as emotional influence often is when it comes to major public policy issues and as challenging as it can be to resist such influence, if we truly want a shot at preserving the moral and constitutional integrity of our country, it is time to set emotion aside. Likewise, and more importantly, real debate cannot exist in an environment in which those with opposing viewpoints are shut down as “racist” and “bigoted.” When emotion takes the forefront in our public policy debates, it is easy to resort to name-calling, moral patronization, and virtue signaling, but what good do such antics do for the country? Passion and emotion are important, but they have their time and place, and politics is not one of them. The future of the country depends upon our willingness to sacrifice feelings for fact and sentiment for common sense and the rule of law. That journey starts here and now.