American Greatness, Author at The Virginia Star

California Judge Blocks School’s Policy Notifying Parents of Gender Transitions

September 16, 2024 American Greatness

In California, a county judge has issued a ruling forbidding a school district from enacting its policy of requiring teachers and staff to inform parents whenever their child plans on “transitioning” their gender or using different pronouns besides their correct ones.

As reported by Fox News, San Bernardino County Judge Michael Sachs had previously issued his preliminary injunction against the Chino Valley Unified (CVU) school district last year; now, following the passing of a state law that forbids schools statewide from informing parents of such drastic decisions by their students, Judge Sachs has permanently struck down CVU’s policy.

Commentary: Mao’s Missionary, Tim Walz

September 15, 2024 American Greatness

Chinese Communist Chairman Mao Zedong, Tim Walz

According to one of his students, during their 1995 trip to China, vice presidential candidate Tim Walz sought out copies of Chairman Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book to give to American friends.

Anyone who, in 1995 — two decades after the Great Helmsman’s death and the truth about his unconscionable tyranny over the Chinese people had become widely known — wanted to pass on copies of the Little Red Book is not intellectually fit to execute the office of vice president under the Constitution of the United States.

Commentary: Democrats True Meaning of the Phrase ‘Saving Our Democracy’

September 15, 2024 American Greatness

Policy positions are historically key to making the case for one’s presidential campaign, and up until just recently, the Kamala Harris campaign avoided such conversation. Now the Harris-Walz campaign has released a snapshot of how they intend to govern, and we can’t help but notice a lot of lofty promises and empty socialist platitudes with very little detail as to how it will get done. And more importantly, why this “New Way Forward” is now needed after the Democrats’ last four years in the White House. Was that the “Wrong Way Forward?”

Average voters will notice this, so the campaign must now really control access to the candidates to keep them from having to answer tough questions. With less than sixty days remaining in the 2024 election cycle, we expect the Harris-Walz campaign to continue evading unscripted interviews while putting campaign ads in front of the media to try to make sense of that, which is clearly nonsense.

Oversight Committee: Chinese Company’s Machinery Being Used at American Research Lab

September 15, 2024 American Greatness

The House Oversight Committee has claimed that technology created by a Chinese military company is currently being used at one of the top research facilities in the United States.

According to Fox News, a spokeswoman for the committee said that “we are aware that there is a BGI machine at Los Alamos,” referring to the top-secret lab in New Mexico where the atomic bomb was created during the Manhattan Project in the midst of World War II. BGI refers to the BGI Group, Beijing Genomics Institute, a CCP-linked biotech and genomics company, which the Pentagon has described as a “Chinese military company” as well as “China’s biotech national champion.”

Commentary: A Forgettable Warped Debate

September 12, 2024 American Greatness

The September 10th presidential debate went down as expected. Summed up, it was Sappy and the Blob pile on Grouchy.

The swarmy and evasive Kamala Harris preened, posed, and proffered empty platitudes.

Commentary: Kamala Harris’ War on Housing

September 12, 2024 American Greatness

As Kamala Harris campaigns to become the most powerful person in the world, her detractors claim, among other things, that she has no idea how to manage the economy. She has certainly demonstrated that with her recent pronouncements. Even her usual supporters have been critical of her economic policy suggestions. Price controls on groceries. $25,000 grants for first-time homebuyers. A tax on unrealized capital gains. But while Harris backpedals from some of her most economically illiterate schemes, it’s only to attract more votes. Don’t be fooled. She hasn’t changed.

To demonstrate Harris’s long-standing record of waging economic war on productive citizens, consider her actions while serving as California’s Attorney General. She used that office to support policies that made homes unaffordable. Those policies roll out from California and infect the rest of the country.

Kamala Harris Reaffirms Support for Mass Amnesty

September 10, 2024 American Greatness

After finally adding a list of policy positions to her beleaguered campaign website, Vice President Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) has doubled down on her support for giving amnesty to illegal aliens if she is elected in November.

As Fox News reports, a platform has been added to the Harris-Walz campaign website after nearly two months. In an attempt to distance herself from her radical past stances, including supporting giving taxpayer-funded healthcare to all illegals, Harris has tried to portray herself as much more hawkish on the immigration crisis.

Victor Davis Hanson Commentary: The Biden-Harris World Is Afire

September 10, 2024 American Greatness

Somehow the United States ended up this summer with no engaged president and an absent vice president who avoids the missing president and is frantically repudiating everything she co-owned the last three years.

The world was already confused over how President Joe Biden was apparently declared by unnamed Democratic insiders and donors unfit and unable to continue as their presidential candidate — as if he were a dethroned Third-World usurper.

Commentary: Nazis, Marxists, and the History of Ideas

September 8, 2024 American Greatness

In light of recent events and discussions attempting to rehabilitate the historical reputation of Germany’s Nazis, it might be worthwhile to re-examine the foundations of the ideology that underpinned National Socialism and its close cousin fascism. Those who embrace the revisionism that excuses the Nazis’ crimes appear to believe that by doing so, they are defending themselves and their ideological brethren from unfair and ahistorical attacks by the broader left. They think—or at least seem to think—that because fascism is considered a “right-wing” ideology that was specifically pitted against both Communism and Western liberalism, it can hardly be as awful as has been assumed and that its association with unvarnished evil is mere propaganda.

They are wrong. Indeed, the very foundations of their sentiments are mistaken and result from the radical mischaracterization of history and the evolution of ideas in the two centuries after the Enlightenment.

Report: Thousands of Christians Targeted and Killed in Nigeria

September 8, 2024 American Greatness

A new report says that Nigeria has been systematically persecuting Christians, including executing thousands, in an “unrelenting…time bomb.”

As Fox News reports, the claims come from Open Doors International, a faith-based non-profit which focuses on raising awareness of persecutions across the world. Open Doors says that Christians, as well as “Christian communities, their livelihoods, faith leaders, and places of worship” are being “deliberately targeted” in the African nation. It has gotten to the point where Christians are “an endangered species” in Nigeria, Open Doors stated.

Commentary: Banning Guns Is Not the Answer to School Shootings

September 7, 2024 American Greatness

As a mother, I’m horrified by the notion that a child could be placed on a school bus and never come back home. Losing a child is a parent’s worst nightmare, and I’ve had too many friends who’ve walked through that darkness. As a member of a school board, I’m burdened that the decisions I make with my one vote of eleven could impact the safety of 64,000 children. I take those decisions very seriously, but I fear the root causes of this violence that are beyond my control.

The physical structures of schools are more secure than they have ever been. There are now school resource officers (SROs), stricter requirements on who can enter schools, and locked doors to keep the bad guys out. Students are encouraged to speak up: “If you see something, say something.” Yet I don’t believe anything school board members or administrators do can guarantee the safety of children without addressing the underlying cause of these senseless acts of violence—our country’s moral decay.

As Prices Soar, Americans Forced to Choose Between Food and Energy

September 6, 2024September 5, 2024 American Greatness

With inflation remaining stubbornly high, many Americans have been forced to choose whether to pay for more groceries to feed their families, or to pay their energy bills to keep their families cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

According to CBS News, this new trend has been referred to as “energy poverty,” when Americans are unable to pay their energy bills or otherwise afford utilities. On average, households that spend 6 percent of their income or more on energy bills alone are considered to be in “energy poverty.” Currently, 1 in 7 American households spend approximately 14 percent of their income on energy.

Commentary: The Media Lies Add Up

September 6, 2024 American Greatness

The public is exhausted after a decade of chronic untruth from the left-wing and its media.

The 2016 presidential campaign will be long remembered for the false allegation that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to warp the election.

Commentary: The ‘Structural Advantages’ of Democrats

September 5, 2024 American Greatness

A few weeks ago, Congressman Richard Hudson, Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said something in a television interview that has to be the biggest understatement ever made in the context of national politics today. In regards to the work he is doing with the committee to grow the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, he said that the Democrats enjoy several “structural advantages.” It was a short interview, and Chairman Hudson didn’t have time to elaborate. But his statement is true in so many ways and carries with it such profound implications for our future that elaboration is called for.

One of the most significant structural advantages of Democrats is the fact that government unions, heavily involved in politics at every level, invariably favor Democrats. While business interests have collective power much greater than these unions, they have no inherent party preference. They support the politicians who win because those are the politicians who will regulate them. Moreover, there is no monolithic “business community.” Businesses either occupy different sectors of the economy with completely different political priorities or, if not, they are often in direct competition with each other.

33 Percent of K-12 Students Behind Grade Level

September 4, 2024September 3, 2024 American Greatness

A recent study shows that roughly one-third of American K-12 students in the 2023-2024 academic school year are behind their grade level in a variety of subjects.

As Axios reports, the data was compiled by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) through their “School Pulse Panel,” a survey of almost 4,000 grade schools that are considered nationally representative. The data from June of 2024, taken from the responses of 1,651 schools, shows that there has been virtually no change from the 2021-2022 school year, when 33% of students were learning at a level that was below their actual grade.

Commentary: The Fading of Freedom in the Western World

September 4, 2024 American Greatness

The recent arrest of Telegram CEO, Pavel Durov, has been in the news. Anti-Russian westerners cheered these events on, even though Durov had fled Russia years ago in order to pursue his techno-libertarian dreams in peace. Adding to the intrigue, the arrest may have included an element of treachery, as some reports say he was invited to visit France by French President Emmanuel Macron, only to be arrested on the tarmac. Mon Dieu!

The ostensible basis for Durov’s arrest is criminal responsibility for various unsavory things that have happened on his Telegram platform. This kind of vicarious liability for hosting websites, particularly those involving user communications and forums, is not entirely new, but it is controversial and always applied very selectively.

Support for Kamala Harris Declines After Democratic National Convention

September 4, 2024 American Greatness

Vice President Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) has seen her support go down after the Democratic National Convention (DNC), a rare occurrence in modern American politics where the party’s convention did not provide the nominee with a polling bump.

As reported by Breitbart, the poll from Redfield & Wilton Strategies, taken on August 29th and featuring a sample size of 2,500 likely voters, shows just 44% in favor of Kamala and 42% in support of former President Donald Trump. Another 8% of respondents remain undecided, while 4% would vote for one of the remaining third-party candidates.

Commentary: Re-Inventing Kamala in 63 Days

September 3, 2024 American Greatness

In theory, it should be hard for Kamala Harris to win the presidency of the United States.

Under pressure, Harris just completed her first “live interview” — a disastrous performance that was mysteriously taped, edited, and emotionally supported by her co-interviewed running mate. During the interview, she claimed that her values remain the same even though her manifestations of them have admittedly changed. Translated, that means for the next 63 days, she will advocate for popular policies antithetical to her own values, which will inevitably resurface after the election once the current façade fades away.

Commentary: Time and Again, Kamala Harris Demonstrates She is ‘The Committee’s’ Candidate

September 2, 2024 American Greatness

So on Thursday, Kamala Harris was finally allowed out to meet the press.

Well, she was allowed to sit for about 18 minutes for a carefully scripted interview on a Dem-friendly network — CNN — with a partisan media head — Dana Bash — who came with a satchel of softballs. Apparently, Harris has yet to be certified for solo flight, however, since she was chaperoned by her pick for VP, Minnesota governor and serial fantasist Tim Walz.

Federal Appeals Court: Illegal Aliens Do Not Have Second Amendment Rights

September 1, 2024August 31, 2024 American Greatness

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court in New Orleans ruled that illegal aliens do not have the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment, due to the fact that they are not American citizens.

As reported by Fox News, a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined that federal law prohibiting illegal aliens from owning firearms is legal, as the Constitution does not apply to anyone who has entered the United States illegally.

Commentary: Radicals’ Reinvention of Kamala Harris

August 30, 2024 American Greatness

How do accomplished radicals elect a mediocre far-left presidential candidate?

The task might at first seem impossible.

Commentary: The Legacy of California’s Political Impact on America

August 29, 2024 American Greatness

California has finally arrived. A female former California attorney general and U.S. senator is at the top of the Democrat presidential ticket. This is the culmination of generations of California politicians who have heavily influenced American politics and culture and are now, once again, on the verge of taking the top political office in the Free World.

“California is having a moment,” said Don Sipple, a California political strategist. To be more accurate, on a nationwide political basis, California has been having a lot of moments for decades.

Commentary: The Democrats’ Mixed Messages

August 28, 2024 American Greatness

Bearing my cross like the good book counsels us to do, I watched most of the Democratic National Convention last week. Reflecting the party as a whole, it was a mélange of mixed messages.

Back in 2020, the party’s leaders intervened during the primary in order to stop a Bernie Sanders’ victory. Right before Super Tuesday, they rallied around Joe Biden, the excuse being that he could win because he was a likable moderate from Pennsylvania.

California Could Approve $150K in Taxpayer-Funded Home Loans for Illegal Aliens

August 28, 2024 American Greatness

The state of California could soon pass a law that will make illegal aliens eligible to receive as much as $150,000 in taxpayer-funded loans to purchase new homes.

According to Fox News, the “California Dream for All” act is likely to pass through the overwhelmingly Democrat-controlled state legislature. The bill would implement a statewide program that provides 20% in down payment assistance, as high as $150,000, for illegals who seek to buy homes in the state. The only requirements to apply are that one must be a first-time homebuyer and a first-generation homebuyer; the program will also require income levels to be below a certain limit relevant to the county where the applicant lives.

Commentary: The Quiet Before the Storms in Ukraine, Gaza, and Taiwan

August 27, 2024 American Greatness

There are three current hot or cold wars: on the Ukrainian border, in the regions surrounding Israel, and in the strategic space between Taiwan and mainland China. All three conflicts could not only expand within their respective theaters but also escalate to draw in the United States.

And all three involve nuclear powers.

University of Kentucky to Shut Down DEI Office

August 26, 2024 American Greatness

In the latest blow for the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) movement, the University of Kentucky has announced that it will be shuttering its DEI offices.

As reported by Breitbart, the University of Kentucky follows multiple other schools in Texas, Florida, and Alabama who have already taken the step of shutting down official DEI practices on-campus, where school administrators would facilitate the discrimination of student applicants and faculty hires on the basis of race and gender.

Taxpayer-Funded Group Offers $30,000 to Illegal Aliens to Buy Homes

August 25, 2024 American Greatness

A far-left organization that has received funding from taxpayer dollars is offering up to $30,000 to illegal aliens so that they can purchase homes in the United States.

As the Daily Caller reports, the Hacienda Community Development Corp. (Hacienda CDC) is participating in a down payment assistance program in Oregon called “Camino a Casa.” The initiative is explicitly only available for non-citizens, while American citizens are ineligible. The $30,000 handouts are branded as down payment assistance for illegals who are attempting to purchase new homes.

Non-Profit Launches Investigation into Secret Service Use of DEI Policies

August 24, 2024 American Greatness

A non-profit organization has started its own investigation into the Secret Service’s use of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices that many have suggested has compromised the quality of the agency’s protection, following the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump last month.

According to Fox News, the investigation is being carried out by the Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF), a Colorado-based non-profit. MSLF’s probe will take a closer look at how DEI has negatively affected the agency’s hiring, retention, and promotion of agents, prioritizing race- and gender-based identity politics over competence.

Commentary: The Left Is ‘Destroying Democracy in Darkness’

August 23, 2024 American Greatness

The 2023-2024 campaign season is not just the strangest on record, it’s also arguably the most anti-democratic.

Ostensibly, the Democratic Party has claimed over the last decade that Donald Trump posed a continued and existential threat to the republic.

Commentary: Diversity Is a False Religion to Destroy America

August 22, 2024 American Greatness

This week, the National Association of Scholars (“NAS”) and the Heritage Foundation are sponsoring a panel discussion on diversity ideology in higher education. A number of reports have recently been published on the topic, with most documenting monies spent by state universities on “diversity, equity and inclusion” (“DEI“). The Maryland affiliate of the National Association of Scholars released the most recent such report this summer, but the Virginia affiliate issued one last year, while Idaho, North Carolina, Maine, and Tennessee produced similar documents before that.

The Maryland report reminds state officials that “diversity” is usually a cover for race-based practices that are now likely illegal under the 2023 United States Supreme Court case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (or “SFFA”). That opinion found that racial preferences in university admissions were a violation of federal civil rights laws and also the Constitution’s Equal Protection clause. SFFA means that any race-based practice in college is presumptively unlawful. As the Court said, “Eliminating discrimination means eliminating all of it … distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their nature odious.”

Report: RFK Jr. Plans to Drop Out of Presidential Race This Week and Endorse Trump

August 21, 2024 American Greatness

Rumors are swirling that Independent presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. plans to drop out of the race as early as this week and endorse Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Commentary: The Media’s Propaganda Polls Deceptively Favor Kamala Harris

August 20, 2024 American Greatness

Kamala’s “surging” poll numbers are a lot of hot air.

A close analysis of the data shows that Donald Trump continues to maintain a dominant position in this election. After factoring in the systematic pro-Democrat bias in polling data, Trump comes out decisively in the lead. As it stands now, Trump will likely win every swing state and the national popular vote.

Victor Davis Hanson Commentary: The Myriad Projections of the 2024 Campaign

August 19, 2024 American Greatness

“Projection” is a Freudian psychological term. It describes a particular defensive mechanism, when people, often unconsciously, attribute their own (usually undesirable) behaviors to others who do not have them.

Commentary: The Rise of the Red Fascists

August 19, 2024 American Greatness

In the 1920s, a term was coined that is very appropriate for what is taking place in America today: red fascism. It was a term that likely originated with an Italian anarchist, Luigi Fabbri, who wrote in 1922 that “‘red fascists’ is the name that has recently been given to those Bolshevik communists who are most inclined to espouse fascism’s methods for use against their adversaries.” This description and behavior of course should not come as a surprise to anyone. Socialism is intrinsic to both communism and fascism, as both are movements of the left with a massive, oppressive, and powerful State central to achieving their goals.

Consider where we are right now in this country: some people have said that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are the farthest left ticket ever run by the Democrat Party in this country’s history. That’s not quite correct. “Leftist” has lost some of its meaning because more traditional liberals are on the left. Harris and Walz are so far left they’re actually off the charts and into neo-Marxist territory. If for nothing else, their strong advocacy for the Green New Deal plants them firmly in that Marxism camp.

Coalition of 15 States Sues Biden-Harris Regime over Plan to Force States to Provide Public Benefits to Illegals

August 18, 2024 American Greatness

A coalition of 15 states have filed suit against the Biden-Harris regime over its new rule that will require states to pay public benefits to illegal immigrants, including healthcare benefits.

The rule, which is set to go into effect on November 1, would force states “to expend limited resources on illegal immigrants,” said Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey in a press release Thursday.

Commentary: The Weird, Creepy, Surreal—and Dangerous—2024 Campaign

August 16, 2024August 15, 2024 American Greatness

Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, Donald Trump, and JD Vance (composite image)

The already-long 2024 presidential campaign has become the strangest in modern history.

Here are ten unanswered questions that illustrate how and why we’ve entered this bizarro world:

Commentary: 10 Things to Know About Tim Walz and His Ties to Communist China

August 16, 2024 American Greatness

Vice President Kamala Harris’ selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her vice presidential candidate seems to be a case of ideological birds of a feather flocking together. In the wake of the selection, Walz has received considerable criticism for his deception and dissembling regarding his military service. He merits equally great criticism for his ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Here are ten things that you did not know about Tim Walz and the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

First, Walz claimed that he was in the PRC during the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square Massacre. One of the authors interviewed him in 2014 when he made this statement, and he later repeated the same falsehood to the media. In reality, Walz did not enter China until September 1989, several months after the massacre. He entered China from Hong Kong as part of the WorldTeach program, which was sponsored by the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID). HIID was known for being very pro-PRC and had trained many high-ranking Chinese officials. Later, HIID received many millions of dollars from the PRC.

Commentary: The Demographics of Realignment

August 15, 2024 American Greatness

It has become a truism among right-of-center voters in America that as the percentage of non-Hispanic whites in the population decreases, the percentage of registered Democrats increases. This truism is shared, of course, by the progressive left in America. That might lead one to conclude that if Democrats wanted to turn America into a one-party nation, they would do everything in their power to increase the percentage of voters who are not “non-Hispanic whites.”

There is evidence to support this truism. For example, in 1970, the population of California was 80 percent non-Hispanic whites, with Republican governor Ronald Reagan and both houses of the state legislature controlled by Republicans. That was the last year Republicans had a trifecta in the state. Today, California’s population of non-Hispanic whites has declined to 34 percent, and the state is under the absolute control of Democrats. They have held both houses of the state legislature since 1997, and apart from Schwarzenegger’s anomalous presence from 2004 through 2010, the state hasn’t had a Republican governor since 1998.

Seattle Children’s Hospital Segregates Doctors by Race in Leaked Training Materials

August 14, 2024 American Greatness

Newly-leaked training material from Seattle Children’s Hospital reveals how the hospital segregated doctors by race and asked them to invoke “repressed racial memories” and “race-consciousness” during their training.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, the training in question took place in August of 2022, and was mandated for all employees in the gastroenterology department. The training session divided staff into three “racial caucuses:” White, black, and “non-black people of color (POC).” The segregation was justified as being an effort to “minimize harm to our black learners and facilitator.”