As most of you probably know, a federal judge has blocked portions of President Trump’s executive order pertaining to refugees from 7 Muslim majority nations. Josh Blackman has published a good summary of what this injunction accomplishes, as well as a copy of the temporary restraining order itself. According to reports, it applies to a few hundred foreigners who were either on American soil or on their way to the United States before the EO was issued. Although these individuals have temporary avoided the fate of the character portrayed by Tom Hanks in The Terminal, it’s worth noting that there are much bigger issues at stake in this debate.

The open borders know nothings have deftly exploited the ignorance of large swathes of the American public to score a public relations victory against a man whom they’ve impotently warred against for over a year. Ironically, one of the refugees Democratic partisans claimed to be rescuing was able to succinctly explain why our new President’s immigration policies were in fact pretty reasonable. Beyond the simple observation that this executive order is not a ban on Muslim refugees, we have to confront the truly bizarre notion that our current refugee resettlement policy is somehow beneficial to American citizens. While some armchair analysts on social media have made the assertion that this is not the point of refugee resettlement-a point on which we agree-others have claimed that not importing tens of thousands of Muslim refugees from abroad poses a risk of future terrorism. By this token, Japan-which has a de facto ban on Muslim immigration-should be as unlivable as Afghanistan or Pakistan. Or, at the very least, have as many terrorist attacks as Turkey.

It’s a patently absurd suggestion, yet one which is repeated without shame by open borders apologists who have no rational justification for our country’s bizarre refugee resettlement program. Just as the beliefs of Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande-two European leaders who have presided over an unprecedented spree of Muslim terror within their countries-is a laughable excuse to invite in potential security risks, so to is the misguided notion that we’re creating terrorists by not letting potential terrorists onto American soil. Nearly half of the refugees admitted to the United States, and over 30% of those admitted since the 9/11 attacks, are Muslim. To comprehend why this is such a problem you need only scroll through a week’s worth of posts on Refugee Resettlement Watch.

Leaving aside the potential for terrorism-both domestically and abroad-exploitation of the welfare system, and crime, there’s the fundamental incompatibility of cultures. As the economist Nassim Taleb has pointed out, Americans expect foreigners who come here to accept American values and customs-and at a bare minimum, not to impose their values upon us. Whether or not this is a realistic expectation is another matter, but the idea that every person coming here does so because they want to become part of American society-a notion regurgitated endlessly by open borders advocates-is simply preposterous.

Even those who don’t pose a direct threat to the health and safety of American citizens-who don’t engage in honor killings, as dozens of Muslims families in the United States do each year-hold beliefs that are fundamentally at odds with those which shaped this nation. While those views are normal in Iraq, Somalia, or Syria, they are not in the United States, and we should not attempt to normalize them-to borrow a phrase from the unhinged left. President Trump’s order, however crudely executed, was the right thing to do. Hopefully, it’s just the beginning of a completely new approach to this vital issue.

Fidel Castro, like his psychopathic patsy Ernesto Guevara Lynch, was a man who relished terrorizing civilians-in Cuba, the United States, throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, and even in Sub-Saharan Africa-even if it meant the immolation of millions in a nuclear holocaust. Unlike Che-who in addition to being a sadist and mass murderer was a complete and utter failure-Castro was able to watch his experiment unfold on his 11 million guinea pigs over the course of half a century.

He lived to see a million and a half Cubans flee the tropical gulag he had created, including his sister and daughter. He inherited a country that had one of the best healthcare systems in the Western Hemisphere, as well as a positive net migration rate, and turned it into the sort of dystopian hellscape you can only experience in a state controlled solely by Communists. A country where even the upper middle class remain mired in the sort of entrenched poverty that those living in the most decrepit housing projects here would blanche at. Castro lived long enough to immure tens of thousands of his opponents in brutal slave labor camps and dungeons-including some of his most devoted Marxist comrades-and bury thousands more beneath Cuban soil. After all, dead men speak no tales.

Of course, this hasn’t prevented a rogue’s gallery of Marxist cretins and useful idiots, including most of the Canadian political establishment judging by my Twitter feed, from heaping praise upon a man who murdered more innocent people than Augusto Pinochet by a factor of 10. While this headline from The People’s Cube might be satirical, the message it conveys is completely accurate. Namely, the ruling class continues to valorize the life of someone responsible for democide simply because he shared its affection for socialism. Although some writers in the mainstream press are brave enough to describe the destructiveness of this vile ideology and explain how Fidel Castro’s victims are a direct result of its implementation on a mass scale, this awareness hasn’t reached the rest of our culture’s opinion-shapers.

They continue to lie not only about pre-Castro Cuba but also about the innate and ineluctable brutality of socialism, because if they were forced to tell the truth it would mean the death of their worldview. Egalitarianism and altruism are the first steps on the path to the guillotine, which is why the charnel house created by the Castro regime was so predictable. For those of you who’d like to learn more about trail of tears left behind by the left’s favorite monster, I’d recommend reading the following books:

Against All Hope: A Memoir Of Life In Castro’s Gulag, by Armando Valladares

Exposing The Real Che Guevara: And The Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him, by Humberto Fontova

 Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant, by Humberto Fontova

 Before Night Falls: A Memoir, by Reinaldo Arenas

The idea that the latest all-American jihadi acted alone defies credulity, so it’s no surprise that authorities are already investigating the possibility he was part of a terror cell. The bizarre, impromptu press conference held by the perpetrator’s father merely adds to suspicions that Ahmad Khan’s jihadist intentions were known before this weekend’s terror jaunt across the Tri-State Area. Some of the best coverage has, unsurprisingly, come from overseas.

This article in the Daily Mail explores some aspects of this story which are being curiously underplayed, including the fact that the terrorist in custody tried to bring his Pakistani wife to the United States-something he has in common with David Headley, the architect of the Mumbai massacre and thwarted Jyllands Posten assassination plot. This case is also reminiscent of the Omar Mateen fiasco in the sense that the FBI had previously investigated Ahmad Khan for possible links to terrorism, but apparently those concerns were allayed when his father said, “my bad, my son’s not really a murderous jihadi,” to paraphrase.

The fact that Khan visited Pakistan several times without attracting the notice of federal authorities only serves to highlight the gross ineptitude of our government. Yet instead of reevaluating our country’s masochistic immigration policies-and hat’s off to this Saudi newspaper for crafting a more accurate headline than anything coming from the American press-we have public officials and pundits calling for the curtailment of rights belonging to actual Americans. For the record, in addition to mistakenly granting citizenship to 800 aliens with deportation orders, our government has also taken in over 2,000 Afghan refugees this year.

How exactly is funneling more money to a federal agency whose inability to investigate domestic Islamic terrorism is legendary, and whose failures are manifold, going to ensure Americans safety? Keep in mind, this is the same FBI which caused former Marine Brandon Raub to be thrown into a mental institution because of controversial rap lyrics he posted online, even as it gave Omar Mateen a clean bill of health and said the architect of the San Bernardino massacre was not on its radar.

Although the FBI diligently targets those who threaten to tarnish the shield, forcing out talented agents who could prevent atrocities like 9/11, it rewards this country’s sworn enemies. The answer to our terrorism is not to empower unaccountable bureaucracies which don’t even recognize what America is-and have no interest in ensuring our safety, much less preserving the American way of life. Contrary to the neoconservative scribes at National Review, Islam does not have a problem. We have an Islam problem, and it’s time that we start addressing it.

If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

As if we needed a reminder that the Augean Stables of our federal government need to be cleansed from top to bottom, this week brought news of an FBI agent encouraging a would-be Muslim assassin in the days leading up to the jihadist assault on Garland, Texas. I’m not one prone to conspiracy theories, but combined with the acknowledgement that Pamela Geller, the primary target of this assassination attempt, has not been contacted by law enforcement authorities in the wake of this latest development, you have to wonder what exactly is going on in Quantico.

We have a Justice Department which refuses to indict a woman who’s probably committed grievous crimes simply because she is the wife of a former President and the current nominee of the Democratic Party. An individual whose negligence-or malfeasance, if we’re being less frank-not only compromised national security, but may have led to the execution of an Iranian nuclear scientist. We have an FBI which believes it did its job by closing the file on Omar Mateen after concluding that his contacts with a suicide bomber had been minimal.  We all remember what that brilliant casework led to, don’t we?

Of course, we also have an Attorney General who believes that the solution to domestic jihadist networks and terrorists-which we have in every single state, for those of you who are keeping track-is to prosecute those who have the audacity to hurt Muslim feelz. We have a Department of Homeland Security which views right wingers, i.e. anyone to the right of Andrea Mitchell, as a greater domestic threat than ISIS, even as our government welcomes scores of refugees who might turn out to be actual terrorists.  Now it turns out that there are FBI agents who believe it’s within their purview to incite those whose sole job is plotting the deaths of critics of Islam.

I have some unpleasant news for the people reading this. Barring a monumental change, this is not going to get any better. In fact, contra The Weekly Standard’s stable of pro-Hillary shills, it will likely get much, much worse. The rancid corruption you’ve seen from the Obama administration and the Hillary Clinton campaign is merely a foretaste of what’s to come if the American public doesn’t wake up very soon. The Democratic Party nominee embraces the imposition of blasphemy laws-protecting only one religion, naturally-upon free men and women in the United States. She blatantly and persistently lied about who was responsible for the attacks on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and endangered the life of the filmmaker who committed the crime of not genuflecting before the most intolerant religion on the planet.

If you thought the Obama administration was corrupt, hostile to free speech, and unable to come to grips with the threat posed to our civilization by Islamic ideology, then you’re not going to like what the next 4 years have in store for this nation. America needs to wake up and realize that there are bigger threats to our future than a candidate who makes uncharitable comments about sleazy Muslim immigration lawyers with whom the media is enamored. Otherwise, we have some unpleasant years ahead of us.

It seems as if the alternative media has rallied around the flag, which in Hillary’s case was probably purchased by benefactors like Goldman Sachs and the Gulf Arab slave state of Qatar. After all, who can resist GIRL POWER, even if it’s marshaled on behalf of someone who’s spent much of her career destroying the reputations of Bill Clinton’s comfort women? To get a sense of the cognitive dissonance at work, it’s worth reading this week’s Village Voice, which all but admits its preferred candidate is an inveterate liar, albeit one who can answer that 3 A.M. call!

By the way, does anyone else recognize the absurdity of Clinton backers running a variation on an ad which was universally panned-from a race which she lost-in order to lambast the purported shortcomings of Donald Trump? If there are any calls being made to a Clinton White House after midnight, I’m almost certain they will be made at the behest of sleazy foreign donors who want a return on their investment. That is indeed the purpose of the single greatest legal money laundering scheme on the planet, one which would make even El Chapo green with envy.

With all her seemingly disqualifying character traits and extensive history of semi-criminal actions, not to mention, thralldom to corporate interests, you would expect sincere leftists to express some reservations about her candidacy. You would think that even those who believe her to be the best choice in a binary election have enough integrity to admit that she is a dreadful choice, one who cares not so much about being a progressive as the acquisition and retention of power. The problem is that that is what progressivism, at its core, has become. The Faustian bargain the left has made in this election involves sacrificing its purported principles, including its increasingly hypocritical rhetoric about the underclass, in order to achieve its immediate political aims, e.g. importing millions of immigrants from the third world, cauterizing the 1st and 2nd Amendment to the Constitution, and crushing any remaining opposition to the cultural domination of social progressivism.

Fortunately, there are a handful of leftists who have some degree of integrity, including Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, who was one of only public figures on the left to publicly admit that her Democratic opponent should have been indicted. Her honesty about the deficiencies of Hillary Clinton the candidate-as well as the human being-stand in stark contrast to the pathetic fealty liberal media outlets and talking heads have shown towards a woman who, were she a Republican, would probably be sitting in a federal penitentiary instead of seeking the most powerful office in the world.

Another voice remarkable for its clarity is incendiary cartoonist Ted Rall, who’s pointed out 3 of the biggest reasons why Hillary Clinton does not belong in the Oval Office. Although there are many, many more-including a capacity for deception that is boundless and a wholly repellent personality-the 3 enumerated by Rall should be of particular interest to liberals, who tout their intellectual superiority and routinely hector insufficiently feminist public actors. The fact that most are seemingly unconcerned with these very problematic issues makes one question their purported convictions.

Finally, Doug Henwood has published a book, My Turn: Hillary Clinton Targets The Presidency, which should be required reading for any leftist tempted to ignore the consequences of their alliance with the Clinton machine. It begins, appropriately enough, with an epigram by Brad DeLong describing Hillary’s most relevant Executive experience, i.e. her disastrous oversight of health care reform during the first year of the Clinton presidency. Although he has also been brought to heel, this is his description of HRC’s signature issue back then:

My two cents’ worth–and I think it is the two cents’ worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994–is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life. Heading up health-care reform was the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it. She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given. And she wasn’t smart enough to realize that she was in over her head and had to get out of the Health Care Czar role quickly. 

“Hillary Rodham Clinton has already flopped as a senior administrative official in the executive branch–the equivalent of an Undersecretary. Perhaps she will make a good senator. But there is no reason to think that she would be anything but an abysmal president. 

To quote another former FLOTUS, Just Say No.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, the value of a moving image is incalculable. That’s why the impact of a website like Youtube should never be underestimated. Although often marginalized as an endless repository for cat videos and dwindling supply of unlicensed songs and films, the truth is that Youtube, especially since its takeover by the Internet hydra known as Google, exercises a profound influence upon how we view the world. It’s why the people behind that website devote enormous resources to sponsor presidential debates, interview the President, and generally influence the tenor of political debate within this country. Which makes its record of discrimination against unfashionable points of view all the more troubling to those of us among the non-leftist untermenschen.

Although the nature of its reporting system lends itself to abuse, especially by adherents to the Religion of Grievance, it can no longer be denied that Youtube has gone out of its way to make itself inhospitable to heterodoxy. The temporary ban of a channel documenting ISIS atrocities can be explained away as an overzealous reaction to graphic images, but it’s harder to intellectually justify the removal of a video which satirizes jihadists. Or, for that matter, videos which use fragments of news footage in order to illustrate the gravity of the refugee crisis engulfing Europe.

It’s certainly true that many right wing Youtube channels, even those critical of mass immigration, multiculturalism and Islam, still exist. That said, many others, whose foci range from the right to bear arms to Christian ministry,  have been temporarily or permanently banned. If you really want to incur the wrath of YT though, you should probably explore the less than positive aspects of open borders-particularly as it relates to the hijra which Europe is currently undergoing. An inventory of my own favorited videos exploring these subjects revealed that nearly 70% of them had been removed. Gee, I wonder how that happened.

Pat Condell, whose video critiquing Saudi Arabia-otherwise known as ISIS 1.0-was removed for unspecified reasons is a perfect illustration of the selective censorship exercised by Youtube. However, he is far from alone. While a cursory search would reveal hundreds of pro-Islamist and even explicitly jihadist videos, the mere existence of channels critical of this planet’s most destructive ideology is too jarring for those in charge. It cannot stand. Just ask MEMRI TV, or Palestinian Media Watch, or many, many others who have run afoul of that website’s peculiar interpretation of its own terms and conditions. I marvel at the continued existence of SyeTenAtheist, even as I delight in his channel, although perhaps I should temper my enthusiasm, given the history of both Youtube and its parent company.

Even if you could shrug off all of the aforementioned incidents as unpersuasive anecdotal evidence, how do you explain the fact that in any given year none of the official Youtube channels represent conservative points of view, even as a vociferous denier of the Armenian genocide has earned the company’s seal of approval? Is that merely coincidence, or is it perhaps part of a pattern? Don’t expect an answer from Youtube HQ, or anyone working for Youtube or Google for that matter, because that’s just not what they do.

It’s their world, we just live in it.

The right is blessed in its opponents, who have never truly appreciated how deeply unappealing their platform is, at least to non-millennials, i.e. individuals who aren’t complete ignoramuses. A perfect illustration of this political tone deafness can be found in the mass demonstrations held in front of the Grand Hyatt Hotel during the pre-primary GOP Gala. Our good friend Pamela Hall has a fantastic photo essay which chronicles the concerns expressed by the assorted dregs of humanity, which can be boiled down to “give us free shit” and “stop being mean to criminals.” She also snapped a few photos of the counter-demonstrators, from both the non-partisan NY ICE contingent and the pro-Trump faction.  It’s worth reading in its entirety, if only to gaze into our dark, dystopian future.

Even as we tackle subjects that pose imminent challenges to the American public,  it’s always worthwhile to step back and look at the broader picture. The cornerstone of this nation, regardless of what you’ve been led to believe, is liberty. And some of the greatest exponents of liberty are people for whom the United States is an adopted homeland. A great illustration of this principle is Francisco Pohole, a good friend of mine whose family fled Argentina many years ago because of the encroaching collectivism which had slowly but surely destroyed a once prosperous, independent nation.

Frank’s perspective is worth hearing because he exemplifies the attitude that made this country into a beacon of freedom for other oppressed individuals throughout the world, a perspective that has sadly fallen out of fashion. The relentless delegitimization of the values that built this country, combined with decades of unrestricted mass immigration, has created an environment where future American citizens will not think of themselves as either Americans or citizens. It’s a parlous state of affairs, which needs to be addressed if we’re ever to become anything more than a random, balkanized collection of warring identities. That is why Frank’s voice needs to be heard.

This week’s thwarting of a plot to behead Pamela Geller by a jihadist cell in Massachusetts might have surprised those of you who aren’t familiar with the deep roots that Islamists have sunk into the Bay State. Even though the Boston Marathon bombing by the Tsarnaev brothers has shed some light on this disturbing phenomenon, leading some to investigate links the Islamic Society of Boston has to Islamic terrorists operating both domestically and overseas, there is still a lack of awareness among the general public about this threat. 

That’s why the work of patriotic, anti-Islamic extremist organizations like Americans for Peace and Tolerance is so vital at this moment. Created by anti-slavery, pro-Israel activist Dr. Charles Jacobs, APT has spent many years educating the public about the dangers posed by extremist clerics preaching envenomed sermons at local mosques in Boston and surrounding suburbs, even if it has meant bucking entrenched political and religious interests in order to alert citizens to the threats within their midst.

While the deceased jihadist might have been supported by Islamic State actors outside of the United States, we need to discover who and what prompted him to begin this journey, and whether or not the focus of this investigation should include the mosque whose alumni read like a Who’s Who of ambitious jihadis.