CBP agents say new border wall in ‘smuggler’s gulch’ makes a difference

Workers break ground on new border wall construction about 20 miles west of Santa Teresa, New Mexico, Aug. 23, 2019. The wall visible on the left was built in 2018 with money allocated by Congress, while the new construction is funded by money reallocated from Department of Defense funding. (AP Photo/Cedar Attanasio)

According to California Border Patrol agents, new infrastructure in an area known as “smuggler’s gulch” is making a difference. On Thursday, the agent in charge — Justin De La Torre — stated a steep, open canyon between Tijuana and San Diego has been used for decades by immigrants attempting to smuggle drugs into the U.S. from Mexico.
The agent said when he first started working in “smuggler’s gulch” there needed to be at least five agents on patrol. He also noted that effective infrastructure there was lacking. However, De La Torre now says the wall’s formidable features have successfully bolstered Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) security efforts.
“It has an anti-climb feature, it’s made of steel, it also has a concrete base that prevents digging from underneath, and now we’re able to control this area with the new infrastructure,” he stated.
De La Torre added, the agents who patrolled “smugglers gulch” in the past only had a fence made out of landing mat to aid security efforts. He said the fence helped, but it was easy to climb.
President Trump moved to replace the fencing along the San Diego border earlier this year as his administration sped up moves to build taller, stronger border reinforcement. During the State of the Union address, the president stated CBP agents are the ones who see how the wall is helping mitigate the crisis at the border first-hand.
“This is a smart, strategic, see-through steel barrier — not just a simple concrete wall,” said the president. “It will be deployed in the areas identified by border agents as having the greatest need, and as these agents will tell you, where walls go up, illegal crossings go way down.”
Border officials stated they are continuing their efforts to construct several miles of wall along the southwest border. The CBP confirmed several wall construction projects are underway in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.

Numerous wall construction projects are underway across the Southwest border, including projects in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. pic.twitter.com/43OrCdw8J2

— CBP (@CBP) August 25, 2019

CAIR Cartoons

Census Bureau abruptly ends just-announced partnership with Muslim advocacy group CAIR

EXCLUSIVE: The Commerce Department on Thursday terminated its just-announced planned partnership with the nation's largest Muslim advocacy group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, after Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight" asked about the arrangement -- given CAIR's reported ties to the terrorist group Hamas, and its repeated attacks on the president.
"Based on further review, the Census Bureau is no longer partnering with CAIR," the Commerce Department said in a statement to "Tucker."
The plan, according to the group, was to enhance outreach efforts to Muslims using CAIR's network of local offices. The census, conducted once a decade, has been used not only to determine congressional apportionment, but also as a critical planning tool for state, local and federal agencies.
However, CAIR and the Trump administration would have been strange bedfellows -- and tension in the relationship was evident earlier Thursday. Reached by Fox News prior to the Census Bureau's decision, CAIR openly derided the Trump administration as "white supremacist" despite the partnership.
"The Census Bureau, like CAIR, is nonpartisan," the organization said. "CAIR is not receiving any government funding as part of this project to promote Muslim participation in the U.S. census. We continue to believe that President Trump and his administration promote a white supremacist, anti-immigrant and Islamophobic agenda."
In its official statement on Wednesday announcing the partnership, however, CAIR sounded a more positive note.
"CAIR is proud to partner with the U.S. Census Bureau to ensure American Muslims are fairly and accurately counted in the 2020 Census," Nihad Awad, CAIR’s national executive director, said in a news release earlier on Thursday. "Full participation in the census ensures that American Muslims will be better represented in Congress and that their communities receive an equal share in state and federal programs."
The organization added: "CAIR wants to ensure that not only are American Muslim communities being fairly counted, but that their neighbors are getting a fair share in federal and state funding."
In 2009, the FBI severed its once-close ties to CAIR amid mounting evidence that the group had links to a support network for Hamas.
Local chapters of CAIR were shunned in the wake of a 15-year FBI investigation that culminated in the conviction of Hamas fundraisers at a trial in which CAIR itself was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator.
The U.S. government has designated Hamas as a terrorist organization.

Roula Allouch, the board chairwoman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, left, seen speaking in 2016. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

The FBI previously had invited CAIR to give training sessions for agents and used it as a liaison with the American Muslim community.
CAIR's executive director, Nihad Awad, attended a post-Sept. 11 meeting with then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, and he met with other top brass as recently as 2006. That was before Awad was shown to have participated in planning meetings with the Holy Land Foundation, five officials of which were convicted in December of funneling $12.4 million to Hamas.
Prosecutors identified CAIR's chairman emeritus, Omar Ahmad, as an unindicted co-conspirator in that trial, and Special Agent Lara Burns testified that CAIR was a front group for radical organizations operating in the U.S.
CAIR denied it conspired in the case and has sued unsuccessfully to have its name removed from the list of co-conspirators. It also has protested the FBI's decision to sever relations.
"This is an unfortunate legacy of the Bush administration's misguided and counterproductive efforts to marginalize mainstream American Muslim organizations," CAIR's national office said in a statement to Fox News at the time. "It is not surprising that we would be singled out by those in the previous administration who sought to prevent us from defending the civil rights of American Muslims."
In a statement on its website in May 2013, CAIR similarly rejected suggestions it had links to terrorism.
"CAIR is not is [sic] 'the Wahhabi lobby,' a 'front group for Hamas,' a 'fundraising arm for Hezbollah,' '...part of a wider conspiracy overseen by the Muslim Brotherhood...' or any of the other false and misleading associations our detractors seek to smear us with," the organization said. "That we stand accused of being both a 'fundraising arm of Hezbollah' and the 'Wahhabi lobby' is a significant point in demonstrating that our detractors are hurling slander, not fact. Hezbollah and the Salafi (Wahhabi) movement represent diametrically opposed ideologies."
"Tucker Carlson Tonight" investigative producer Alex Pfeiffer contributed to this report.

Hans von Spakovsky: Ilhan Omar protected – for now – against accusations of campaign finance law violations

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who is accused of improperly using political campaign funds to reimburse her alleged lover for travel expenses, doesn’t need to worry for now about a complaint filed against her with the Federal Election Commission. Vacancies on the FEC make it impossible for the commission to take any action.
The FEC, where I served as a commissioner over a decade ago, is supposed to act as a government watchdog against election law violations. But unless it has four members, the watchdog is effectively muzzled and chained, helpless to act. Right now there are three members and three vacancies on the commission.
That’s good news for Omar, who refused Wednesday to answer questions about the allegations filed against her this week by a nonprofit group called the National Legal and Policy Center, which describes itself as “a charitable and educational organization” that seeks to “foster and promote ethics in government and public life.”
Asked by a reporter in Minneapolis why she is refusing to answer questions, Omar said: “Because they’re stupid questions.” Later in the day the married congresswoman told reporters: “I will just say I have no interest in commenting on anything that you are about to ask about my personal life, so you can chase me all you want.”
The FEC will send Omar a copy of the complaint filed against her and she will have 15 days to send a response. But the question of whether to open an investigation of the congresswoman – who has been accused by President Trump and others of anti-Semitism and hatred of the Jewish state of Israel – will have to wait until there are four confirmed FEC commissioners. No one knows when that will happen.
With at least four members, the FEC could levy a fine against Omar if it finds she committed a civil violation of campaign finance law. The commission has the power to determine the amount of such a fine, based on whatever commissioners believe is appropriate.
The complaint filed with the FEC against Omar alleges that her election campaign paid a consultant – Tim Mynett and his E. Street Group, LLC – $230,000 for fundraising consulting, digital communications, Internet advertising and travel expenses.
However, in a divorce case filed by Tim Mynett’s wife, Beth Mynett, she alleges that her husband told her “he was romantically involved with” Omar – a claim Omar denies.
Beth Mynett’s divorce complaint alleges that her husband’s “recent travel and long work hours now appear to be more related to his affair with Rep. Omar than with his actual work commitments.”
The complaint filed with the FEC points out that the payment of Tim Mynett’s travel expenses started the same month that Mynett reportedly told his wife he was having an extramarital affair with Omar.
Thus, according to the complaint filed with the FEC, the travel expenses for Tim Mynett made with funds collected as political campaign contributions “may have been unrelated, or only partially related, to Omar’s campaign” and instead may have been “so that Rep. Omar would have the benefit of Mynett’s romantic companionship.”
If that is the case, then payments by Omar to Tim Mynett were “personal in nature” and not related to the campaign, according to the complaint.
If these allegations are true, Omar may have run afoul of a federal law – specifically, 52 U.S.C. §30114. This law bars the use of campaign funds “to fulfill any commitment, obligation, or expense of a person that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s election campaign.”
Examples of what is prohibited for funding with campaign donations include such items as a personal mortgage, clothing purchases, non-campaign-related car expenses, and vacations and other non-campaign-related trips.
In other words, if Mynett’s travel expense were unrelated to his actual work for the campaign but in furtherance of an affair with Omar, those would be personal expenses. Campaign funds couldn’t be used to pay them.
Omar’s attorneys have dismissed the complaint filed with the FEC as a “political ploy.” But until the FEC gets another commissioner, neither this complaint nor any others will be investigated by the commission to see if there is actually any substance – and any credibility – to the allegations being made.
So while the complaint against Omar is making headlines – both because of the nature of the allegations and her prominence as one of four far-left Democratic freshman congresswomen known as the “Squad” –  all political candidates are getting a free pass on any complaints filed against them with the FEC as long as the commission has three vacancies.
The resignation of Commissioner Matt Petersen (who replaced me) from the FEC earlier this month left the commission in its current state of paralysis, with three vacancies.
The six FEC commissioners are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. There is a long tradition that whenever a seat held by the political party not in control of the White House opens up, the president asks the leader of that political party in the Senate for his choice to fill the seat.
There are currently two empty Republicans seats and one empty Democratic seat on the commission.
The names of FEC nominees are sent to the Senate in pairs – one Republican and one Democrat.
President Trump nominated a Texas lawyer, Trey Trainor, in 2017 to fill an open Republican seat. But there has been no public report that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has given Trump a nominee for the Democratic seat that has been empty since 2017.
Without a quorum – four commissioners on the six-member FEC – the commission can’t hold meetings, initiate audits, vote on enforcement matters, issue advisory opinions, or engage in rulemaking.
As a result, as the 2020 presidential election cycle heats up, the FEC remains unable to carry out the most important duties it was created to perform.
The FEC regulates all of the contributions and expenditures of federal candidates for the presidency and Congress. When it has at least four members, the commission is empowered to go after candidates, political parties, political action committees and others who violate the law, imposing civil penalties consisting of fines.
The vast majority of campaign finance violations are civil matters because they are usually inadvertent violations of the law. The Federal Election Campaign Act is byzantine in its complexity and often ambiguous. Even the commissioners sometime disagree on the proper interpretation and application of the law.
The U.S. Justice Department retains jurisdiction over criminal campaign finance violations, which are “knowing and willful” violations of the law. However, criminal prosecutions are very rare.
As an example, missing the deadline for filing a required campaign finance report on contributions received by a candidate is a civil violation, while knowingly spending campaign funds on personal expenses unrelated to a campaign would be a criminal violation.
That’s why former Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr., D-Ill., went to jail in 2013. He pleaded guilty to spending $750,000 in campaign funds on everything from personal travel and restaurant expenses to a Rolex watch, fur coats for his wife, and memorabilia from Bruce Lee, Eddie Van Halen and Jimi Hendrix, along with mounted elk heads for his office.
Right now the ball is in Sen. Schumer’s court to nominate a Democratic FEC commissioner, and for the Senate to then confirm a Democrat and a Republican to the commission. Until that happens, Ilhan Omar has nothing to worry about from the FEC.

How the DNC is forcing Gillibrand and others to fold their tents

Kirsten Gillibrand and other candidates are essentially being forced out of the race by Democratic leaders.
And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The field has been too swollen in a way that creates overcrowded debate stages and muffles the message of all but the top few contenders. A party would be insane not to try to winnow the competition to those who actually have a shot at the nomination.
Gillibrand was upfront in saying she’s dropping out because she didn’t make the cut for what will now be next month’s single ABC debate in Houston. Losing that visibility makes a viable candidacy all but impossible.
The field, which once numbered two dozen, has already lost Eric Swalwell, Seth Moulton, Jay Inslee and John Hickenlooper.
Others who didn’t make the debate cut—such as Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard—are still hanging on. By a thread, I’d say.
As former DNC official Mo Elleithee, a Fox News contributor, told the New York Times:
“If you are a few months before the Iowa caucuses and you can’t get 130,000 donors and can’t crack 2 percent in a couple of polls, that’s on you. There is an appetite to start being able to focus on the candidates who have demonstrated the most movement in this race.”
Some of those beyond the 10 candidates who will be on the Houston stage are grumbling about the Democratic Party pushing out credible politicians before they have a chance to get traction in, say, Iowa or New Hampshire. But if after several months you’re behind Andrew Yang (who did make the cut), you’re going nowhere fast.
Some people in both parties run for president as a branding exercise, to get a book deal or a cable gig, knowing they have no real prospect of winning. Look how many profiles of Marianne Williamson you’ve had to read.
But Gillibrand is an incumbent senator who hoped she might catch fire by putting women’s issues at the top of her agenda. It didn’t work. The New York lawmaker never broke through the static.
Some, like Rachel Maddow, hailed her mere presence in the race, along with that of Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and the other female candidates, as a gender breakthrough. And it’s good that a single woman no longer has to carry that burden.
But Gillibrand herself blamed her low poll numbers on sexism, telling CNN a few months ago: “I think people are generally biased against women.”
How then to explain Warren’s surge in the polls? Gillibrand also said in that interview that there’s bias against “younger women.”
The Washington Post Magazine recently assessed her struggling candidacy with this headline: “In 2019 It’s Unforgivable for a Presidential Candidate to be Boring.”
I’m not saying Gillibrand was deadly dull, but she never quite had a moment, on the stump or in the first two debates, where she said something that was noteworthy or controversial enough to get voters to take a closer look. I mean, she never even got a Trump nickname, although he did tweet sarcastically about her exit.
The Post piece put it this way: “Maybe it’s that her recalibration on guns and immigration is often framed as pandering. Maybe it’s because her role in Al Franken’s Senate resignation has been cast as inconvenient for Democrats and convenient for her. Maybe it’s sexism: The careful, methodical journey to the presidency seems to read as a natural expression of ambition for the charismatics sweating through oxfords under stadium lights, but somehow feels forced when paired with a blowout.”
Maybe.
But look at how Pete Buttigieg managed to catapult himself into serious contention with a series of provocative interviews and speeches. When you think of the woman who was first appointed to Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat, no personal quality comes to mind, no issue beyond her crusade against sexual harassment, and that wasn’t enough.
Now that the DNC is forcibly shrinking the field, voters—and the media—can focus more intently on those who might actually win the nomination. Gillibrand told the Times that a woman nominee would be “exciting and inspiring,” but didn’t rule out endorsing anyone who could beat Donald Trump.

Former Canadian PM says she's 'rooting for a direct hit' of Hurricane Dorian on Mar-a-Lago

Former Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell said Thursday that she wished for Hurricane Dorian to make a "direct hit" on President Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
The strengthening storm churned over the warm, open waters of the Atlantic on Thursday, upgrading to Category 2 strength late in the day, with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph, the National Hurricane Center reported.
Forecasts showed Dorian tracking toward Florida's east coast — prompting Trump to warn Dorian "will be BIG!"
Forecasters believe the storm will strengthen into a Category 3 hurricane by Friday, and stay well east of the southern and central Bahamas before making a turn toward Florida by Sunday afternoon.
At that time, the latest NHC forecast is for the storm to make landfall Monday as a Category 4 storm.
However, Campbell saw a silver lining in the potential damage that could be caused by the massive storm.
"I'm rooting for a direct hit on Mar a Lago!" she tweeted on Thursday.
The president often makes visits to Mar-a-Lago when he's not in Washington D.C. It has been reported that the resort is the hurricane's path.
Campbell, who served fewer than five months as Canada's prime minister following the resignation of Brian Mulroney in 1993, faced backlash for the tweet, many calling it "embarrassing" and "disgusting."
Campbell doubled down amid the criticism, telling her critics to "get a grip."
"As there are in Puerto Rico- sorry you don’t get snark- but Trump’s indifference to suffering is intolerable!" Campbell said to a critic who pointed out "real people" live and work in and around Mar-a-Lago. "We'd also help if he tackled climate change which is making hurricanes more destructive! Instead, he will remove limits on methane! Get a grip!"
Fox News' Travis Fedschun contributed to this report.

MSNBC Fake News Cartoons

Missouri's gun law should allow cities to require permits, St. Louis mayor says

Mayor Lyda Krewson, a Democrat Idiot

The mayor of St. Louis said Wednesday she’s asking Missouri lawmakers and the state’s Republican governor to reverse a 2017 law that makes it legal for gun owners without a felony record to carry guns without a permit in the state, according to a report.
Mayor Lyda Krewson, a Democrat, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch she asked Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, to support new legislation that would allow some cities over a certain size — or at least St. Louis --- to require concealed weapons permits. She added that a measure at least partially reversing the 2017 law would benefit the St Louis Police Department and its officers.
“This is for our police department. Our police don’t have the tools they need to take guns off the street,” Krewson told the newspaper Wednesday. Krewson also brought up the law at a monthly board planning meeting between St. Louis area political leaders earlier this month. After the meeting, she told the Post-Dispatch: “Having a permit to carry a gun is really not a big ask. It’s for our police officers.”

“Having a permit to carry a gun is really not a big ask. It’s for our police officers.”
— St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson

Her remarks Wednesday came a day after Parson rejected a request from the Missouri Legislative Black Caucus to hold an emergency legislative session to address gun violence following a bloody weekend in St. Louis that left three children dead within 48 hours. At least 13 children have been killed in shootings in St. Louis this year as the city grapples a rising homicide rate, the newspaper reported.
Parson, who voted as a state senator to loosen concealed carry requirements, did not address whether or not he’d work with Krewson in reversing the 2017 statute, saying during a Wednesday news conference that he’s leaving that up to legislative branch. He said he would consider allocating resources from the Missouri State Highway Patrol to help combat gun violence in St. Louis.
“I talked to the mayor about this --- we’ve got to find out some solutions to these kids getting shot in the streets of St. Louis, and Kansas City, or wherever it is in the state of Missouri,” Parson said. “We all better put our best game on right now to find a solution to this problem.”

"We’ve got to find out some solutions to these kids getting shot in the streets of St. Louis, and Kansas City, or wherever it is in the state of Missouri."
— Missouri Gov. Mike Parson

The leader of the state's GOP-run Senate addressed St. Louis gun violence Monday but failed to propose a feasible solution to combatting the issue.
“Obviously, anytime we see a rise in this kind of violence it is a problem,” state Senate President Pro Tem Dave Schatz, a Republican, told the Post-Dispatch. “But I don’t know if anything is on the horizon. I don’t know if anyone has the answer.”
Also Wednesday, the St. Louis comptroller slammed Krewson for allegedly delaying the launch of an emergency crime prevention program within the city. The city’s budgets allocated $500,000 to hire an outside organization to run a crime prevention program under a one-year contract.

“Only after a public outcry did the mayor’s office feel compelled to address the people’s concerns ... another week has passed, and the Comptroller’s Ofc has not received a contract for Cure Violence,” Comptroller Darlene Green wrote on her personal Twitter account.
On Aug. 20, Krewson wrote Comptroller Darlene Green asking her office to bypass the city’s lengthy contract selection process and fast-track a contract for Cure Violence, a Chicago-based non-profit dedicated to crime reduction. Krewson’s office said they submitted a proposed contract to the non-profit for review and are waiting for a response before sending it to the comptroller.

Trump tears into Lawrence O’Donnell, media over ‘totally false’ Russia report: ‘ALL APOLOGIZE!’

President Trump on Thursday blasted Lawrence O’Donnell and the media at large after the MSNBC host was forced to retract an unverified report he shared on his show this week that tied Trump’s finances to Russia.
Calling the report "totally false," the president demanded that the media as a whole apologize for “inaccurate reporting.”
“Crazy Lawrence O’Donnell, who has been calling me wrong from even before I announced my run for the Presidency, even being previously forced by NBC to apologize, which he did while crying, for things he said about me & The Apprentice, was again forced to apologize, this time ... for the most ridiculous claim of all, that Russia, Russia, Russia, or Russian oligarchs, co-signed loan documents for me, a guarantee,” Trump tweeted.
“Totally false, as is virtually everything else he, and much of the rest of the LameStream Media, has said about me for years. ALL APOLOGIZE!” he continued.
Minutes later, he added: “The totally inaccurate reporting by Lawrence O’Donnell, for which he has been forced by NBC to apologize, is NO DIFFERENT than the horrible, corrupt and fraudulent Fake News that I (and many millions of GREAT supporters) have had to put up with for years. So bad for the USA!”
The president’s tweets come after O’Donnell and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow discussed Tuesday night how Trump was “able to obtain loans when no one else would loan him any money.”
O’Donnell then hinted that he “may have some information” that would “add understanding to that, if true.”
“I stress ‘if true,’ because this is a single source who has told me that Deutsche Bank obtained tax returns…this single source close to Deutsche Bank has told me that Donald Trump’s loan documents there show he has co-signers. That’s how he was able to obtain those loans and that the co-signers are Russian oligarchs.”
Maddow, stunned, replied: “What? Really?”
O’Donnell added “that would explain every kind word Donald Trump has ever said about Russia and Vladimir Putin if his information is accurate.”
On Wednesday morning the White House blasted the report, and later in the day Trump’s legal team penned a letter to NBCUniversal demanding a retraction and an apology for the “aforementioned false and defamatory” reporting and threatened to take legal action.
“This is one of the reasons that a majority of Americans have lost trust in the media. Instead of applying ethics and standards to their reporting, journalists and left-wing outlets have weaponized the media, using it to attack and harass people with little to no regard for the truth,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham told Fox News.
Later, O’Donnell kicked off his Wednesday night show by apologizing for running the unverified report, after earlier in the day walking it back and referring to it as an “error in judgment.”
"Last night on this show, I discussed information that wasn't ready for reporting," O'Donnell said.
“I did not go through the rigorous verification and standards process here at MSNBC before repeating what I heard from my source,” he continued. “Had it gone through that process, I would not have been permitted to report it.  I should not have said it on-air or post it on Twitter. I was wrong to do so.”
Fox News’ Brian Flood and Joseph Wulfsohn contributed to this report.

Cal Thomas: 'Lost' generation abandoning traditional American values

There are people in every generation who believe the generation following theirs is either going to the dogs or will ruin the country.
A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll lends credence to that way of thinking, especially where Generation Z/millennials (those born in the mid-1990s to mid-2000s) and Generation X (those born in the early-to-mid 1960s to the early 1980s) are concerned.
The poll of 1,000 adults earlier this month found that “younger generations rate patriotism, religion and having children as less important to them than did young people two decades ago.”
The poll contrasts with a similar survey conducted by the Journal 21 years ago. When asked then which values were most important, respondents sounded like their parents and grandparents, saying “hard work, patriotism, commitment to religion and the goal of having children.”
Not only will these current findings likely impact next year’s election (most of those running for president with more than single-digit polling numbers are much older men and women and thus represent a generation gap), they could also have serious implications for the future of the country.
The founders and subsequent generations — perhaps excepting the Gilded Age and the horrors of slavery — mostly believed in the virtues younger people either now reject or approach with indifference.
How can this be? What has happened between the World War II generation, which gave so much so their children and grandchildren might enjoy the blessings of liberty, and the current generation, which seems cool to what once seemed to matter most?
Generalizations are always problematic, but I have lived long enough and witnessed the general decline to make some.
Prosperity is one explanation. People who make more money than previous generations and possess a lot of stuff seem less inclined to participate in community (how many of us know our neighbors, who are here today and move tomorrow?). Stuff and the personal satisfaction of achievement lead to a decline in one’s need for God — too much money, too little purpose.
Politicians become a god-substitute and politics their religion. Creeping secularism has affected theological truth to the point where people can believe whatever they want — or nothing at all — and escape correction. Heresy, even apostasy, has infiltrated many churches.
Then there is culture. Younger people are exposed to what we collectively call “media” more than any previous generation. Most of what constitutes culture proceeds from a singular worldview that denigrates, or does not promote, patriotism, belief in God and values previous generations not only took for granted, but instilled in their children.
Unrestricted abortion has cheapened how many young people view the value of human life. For growing numbers of the young, marriage has become passé as children witness the pain of their parents’ divorce and decide that living together without a formal, legal or spiritual commitment is better than risking the cost and pain of ending a marriage. For some, children are viewed as a financial burden and an intrusion on adult lifestyles.
Sociologists and historians will tell us these things are cyclical, like weather. That has been true in the past when spiritual revivals often followed a fallow period of faithlessness and a focus on self. I’m not sure that cycle will repeat with younger people, given what they are taught at public schools and in liberal universities.
The values that shaped and sustained America through economic downturns and wars had to be taught and instilled in the next generation. Today’s younger people, as reflected in the poll, seem intent on making their own rules (if they can be called rules) and creating their own gods.
They will eventually learn the impossibility of it all as their substitutions will fail them. The question is can America survive when our moral, spiritual and patriotic foundations are destroyed? If you don’t love your country, what’s the point of having one?