August 9, 2024

Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.

 

Battle for the Soul of America

By Rick Manning

There is a battle for the soul of America.

The first shots of a long simmering revolt were fired when Democratic Party candidate Barack Obama pledged to “fundamentally transform” America five days prior to his winning the presidency in 2008.

Twelve years later, in President-elect Joe Biden’s victory speech on November 8, 2020, Obama’s oath was spun into the battle-cry to “restore the soul of America.”

Last year, this refrain was more ominously stated as President Biden spoke in front of a red-lit backdrop of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and gave his infamous “Continued Battle for the Soul of the Nation” speech.

And Biden continued the assault in his 2023 State of the Union speech before Congress where he began by defining supporters of President Trump as ‘domestic enemies’ which must be fought against as robustly as foreign ones.

But it was breathtakingly audacious for President Biden to usurp the symbolic meaning of the building where liberty was conceived in America.

The choice to give this speech at the same location where 56 colonists met declared a new nation, conceived in liberty, that individuals had God-given rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness felt like Lady Liberty had been slapped in the face.

Those who created a nation governed by the consent of the governed, rather than a people provided indulgences and favors from an all-powerful king must have shuddered in their graves.

For generations, Independence Hall has stood as a monument to the clarion call for freedom issued by the 56 brave men who “For the support of this declaration, with firm reliance on the protection of the divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

And in doing so, birthed a new nation that has stood as a beacon of freedom for oppressed people around the world.

When Christians think of the word soul, we think of the eternal essence of each person that can only be saved through the blood of Jesus Christ.

And when politicians talk about the soul of the country, they are referring to the DNA that makes us America. That DNA was declared at Independence Hall in a hot summer of 1776, and it is now under attack.

The battle for the soul of America is real. The war has been engaged for decades by the left, but in spite of warnings, has only recently been joined by those who would defend America’s history of ever expanding individual liberty and the freeing of more people from tyranny than any nation in the history of the world.

To those who wish fundamental transformation, many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, including its primary author, Thomas Jefferson, are irredeemably tarnished as evil slaveholders. As such, the nation they brought forward is not only unexceptional, but it is irrevocably evil with the original sin of slavery extinguishing the idea of America as a shining city on a hill as false and illegitimate.

In his famous 1989 Shining City on a Hill - Farewell to the Nation, President Ronald Reagan warned about the educational system moving away from teaching “an unambivalent appreciation of America.” And worried that while “our spirit is back,… we haven’t reinstitutionalized it. We’ve got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom – freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It’s fragile; it needs protection. So, we’ve got to teach history based not on what’s in fashion but what’s important – why the Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant.”

And today, Ronald Reagan’s worse nightmare has come true. Many in our nation have either forgotten or never learned the basic precepts and the actions that flowed for more than 400 years from the soul of America.

We are in a battle for not only what America is and hopes to become, but also over what America was, with every sacrifice for the freedom of others negated by those who only see the struggle but never the expanded liberty that came out of it.

Americans who stood for traditional values became defensive and more and more unwilling to stand for common sense virtues and the Judeo-Christian ethos of all being equal under the law that underpins western civilization. Cowed and shouted down by an academia intent on the destruction of those values and a complicit media and entertainment industry, people across the land longed for someone who would fearlessly defend our great nation without fear or apology.

John Wayne was dead, replaced by angst-ridden movies like the Deerhunter and Apocalypse Now, and the people were worried about our national future.

It was shocking to discover not only that what were once commonly shared values were not only under attack, but our political class seemed either unable or unwilling to defend them.

Until Donald Trump, the most unlikely warrior for American culture, entered the political arena.

Donald Trump is a man born to the wealthy class. He is a man who spent much of his life being saluted by the entertainment and political elites in venues as far flung as partying at Studio 54 to receiving the Ellis Island Medal of Honor along with Mohammed Ali, Rosa Parks and others. Donald Trump is the developer who saved the Central Park Ice Rink free of charge after its restoration was mired in the bureaucracy of the City of New York.

Donald Trump has lived the advantages of the wealthy, yet it is through those experiences that he has become a champion of those whose jobs were shipped overseas and whose communities have been ravaged by drugs.

Donald Trump has become the champion of the American Dream, an unlikely hero fighting to maintain the promise of America that all can achieve based upon their ability, hard-work and ingenuity.

There is a battle. It is not lost. It is a battle for religious liberty as Christians find those who preach tolerance don’t practice it when confronted by Biblical truths. It is a battle for a way of life where the people expect to be left alone, and not have their family’s values assaulted in public schools.

It is a battle that cannot be lost as it would mean the end of this great uniquely American experiment in declaring that individual rights and basic liberties are inviolable as they are not privileges handed down by government, but indeed endowed by our Creator.

As we are now three months from election day 2024, the question is simple? Will you stand up for the American dream by dedicating yourself to identifying friends, neighbors and relatives who share your vision, but don’t realize what is at stake and encouraging them to vote for America.

If you are not willing to stand up for America, then who will?

Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government. 

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/08/battle-for-the-soul-of-america/

 

Working Class Minorities Liked Obama's Vice President More than They Like Kamala Harris

By Bill Wilson

Before being shuttled aside and replaced with the terrifyingly extremist Kamala Harris-Tim Walz duo, President Joe Biden was already running into deep trouble with swing voters this year including working class Black and Hispanic voters.

As we noted this spring, “older white liberals who favor abortion” were the few Democratic leaning voters that remained loyal to Biden until the end. Younger voters, minorities, and the working class were walking out the door.

What was driving Biden defectors away long before the president’s sobering debate performance against former President Donald Trump revealed his grave health concerns? The economy, largely.

As we noted in May, “according to a breakdown of the New York Times data on Biden loyalists compared to Biden defectors, voters who do not support Biden are highly economically driven, with 71 percent of Biden defectors compared to just 16 percent of Biden loyalists saying the economy is currently in poor condition. In addition, 29 percent of Biden defectors compared to 15 percent of Biden loyalists say inflation and the economy are the reasons behind their vote choice in November.”

In other words, unless Harris pivots from her current fixation with “diversity, equity and inclusion” to proposing a plan to bring down inflation and breathe life into the economy, the fact that she is “unburdened” by Biden’s health issues is not likely to move the needle with working class voters.

As of early August, Harris is polling better than a barely functional Biden was leading into the debate against Trump, but Biden lost a lot of ground with swing voters over the past four years and Harris is still below Biden’s 2020 numbers.

The latest New York Times poll has Harris polling five points below Biden’s 2020 exit poll numbers with Hispanics, with 60 percent of Hispanics planning to vote for her in November compared to 65 percent who supported Biden in 2020.

Harris has also failed to garner the same support that Biden did in 2020 among Black voters, with 72 percent of Black voters intending to support Harris in November while 87 percent supported Biden in 2020. That means Harris is still polling fifteen points below what Biden earned in 2020. In addition, even with Harris on the ballot, nineteen percent of Blacks intend to vote for Trump according to the Times poll. This is a six-point gain for Trump among Blacks compared to 2020.

Harris is polling about seven points below what Biden earned with independent voters as well. The Times poll has Harris earning 47 percent of the independent vote, compared to the 54 percent that Biden earned in 2020. Trump has incrementally gained against his 2020 numbers with independents, going from 41 percent of their vote in 2020 to 45 percent in the latest Times poll.

Left-wing pundits no doubt hope Harris is just getting started and will continue to make up the ground Biden lost with swing voters through election day – and that is a possibility. However, it is also possible we are seeing renewed interest in Harris during the “Harris honeymoon” period, and once voters are acquainted with her radical social agenda and recognize her inaction on the border and the economy, those numbers will drop back down.

One group Harris is likely to continue to struggle with is working-class voters, particularly minorities. Harris pulls 29 percent of white-no college voters against Trump, a number that is three points shy of what Biden earned in 2020. Her numbers among working class voters of color are substantially worse, ten points below what Biden’s were in 2020. Harris is pulling only 62 percent of the minority non-college vote, compared to the 72 percent Biden won in 2020. Meanwhile, Trump has gained seven points with non-college minorities compared to his 2020 numbers.

The destabilized Biden Administration was already suffering vast double-digit deficits compared to Biden’s 2020 vote returns among swing voters this spring. So far, Harris/Walz are polling marginally better than Biden did, but they are still trailing Biden’s actual returns from 2020.

Biden himself struggled to maintain the “Blue Wall” among working class voters in the Midwest in 2020, and polling had him on track to lose blue collar voters to Trump at an even higher rate this year. Harris trails both Biden’s 2020 numbers and his recent polling numbers among white working-class voters.

Notably, Harris suffers even greater among working class minorities compared to Biden. By choosing a far more radical version of Sen. Bernie Sanders as her running mate and steering her campaign directly into the perilous waters of diversity, equity, and rioting while the economy struggles for breath, Harris is likely to continue to lose working class voters regardless of race.

Bill Wilson is the former president of Americans for Limited Government. 

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/08/working-class-minorities-liked-obamas-vice-president-more-than-they-like-kamala-harris/