Townhall Review | Conservative Commentary On Today's News

A recent report issued by British Member of Parliament Rupert Lowe documents the grooming and horrific sexual abuse of as many as 250,000 young girls across England,

These girls endured gang rape, brutal abuse, forced abortions and pregnancies, and even coerced Islamic conversion. And it happened while social workers, teachers, police and prosecutors looked the other way.

Now, the victims are being failed again—this time by America’s legacy media. Since the Lowe report was released, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and MSN NOW have devoted virtually no coverage to its findings.

Legacy media journalists often lament Americans’ declining trust in the press. But this is why. Media bias isn't only about how stories are covered. It's also about the stories legacy news organizations choose to ignore.

As America’s 250th birthday approaches, it’s worth taking a moment to celebrate the Declaration of Independence.

Today, many Americans take for granted the idea that all people are created equal and endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights — natural rights that no government may rightfully take away. It’s easy to forget just how revolutionary those ideas were when the Declaration was written.

Grounded in Judeo-Christian principles, the Declaration established the United States not on shared ancestry, geography, or history, but on devotion to a common creed.

Although America has not always lived up to its highest ideals, our Declaration gives voice to our finest aspirations. With it, the Founders drafted the promissory note that generations of Americans have drawn on in the ongoing effort to build an ever more perfect union.

As we celebrate our 250th anniversary as a nation, it is worth reflecting on what got us here and has kept us going, living as we do under the longest-lasting constitution in world history.

From the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution, our country’s Framers set about establishing this most successful of political governing structures because they understood a few truths. Given low polling about American pride these days, they are truths about which we may need to ask: are they still self-evident?

We began this experiment declaring a recognition of something higher than man— “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” and a Creator—endowing us with a right to self-government and a recognition that we human beings are all equal, especially in our inequality before God.  Rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are not given or tolerated by government or man, but God.

Our founding authors all understood and enshrined this for us. But, too many here have forgotten or unlearned this.  Sadly, just now, we need a great re-learning.

“The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb” is a 2016 volume by Neal Bascomb. It tells the harrowing story of Norwegian commandos who attacked the German site at Vemork in World War II. It was the Nazis only plant for mass production of “heavy water,” on which they had placed their primary bet to produce atomic weapons during World War II.

I wish it had been converted to the film that it was optioned to be because it would be a short-cut for those who don’t understand why Donald Trump is singularly focused on ensuring the Islamic Republic of Iran cannot make or buy a nuclear weapon.

Trump is motivated by a conviction similar to that held by Churchill and FDR and knew Hitler would use any weapon he could obtain, even as Trump and Netanyahu know the fanatics in Iran would use any weapon they could build or buy.

Did we achieve enough to end the Iranian regime’s nuclear program?

Time will tell.

The threat has existed for two decades now.

Bravo to Trump for his orders to start destroying it.

Both chambers of the New York state legislature have passed legislation replacing the word mother and father with ‘gestating parent’ and ‘non-gestating parent.

C.S. Lewis famously decried what he called “verbicide” or more technically, “the murder of a word.” We can only imagine what he would think of with this development in New York.

As the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal notes, the effort is part of legislation intended to “purge gendered language from state family law.”

Just ponder that for a moment.

The natural family is predicated upon the fundamental truth that God made human beings male and female, assigned marriage as the union of one man and one woman who would also be fruitful and multiply.

Hence, it’s easy, the male parent is the father and the female parent is the mother. This pattern has been assumed and unconfused throughout most of human history.

Until now. In New York.

The goal of this insanity is nothing less than the collapse of truth, creation order, marriage, morality, and civilization itself. That’s all.

A new poll from NBC reveals another low percentage of Americans who feel proud of their country. One NBC reporter put it that we are seeing “a steady 21st century decline.”  The disappointment in these and similar results is exacerbated by the timing of our birthday as a nation, when national affections should be at their height.

If only more Americans would listen to our foreign visitors.  Ever since Marquis de Lafayette, many a foreigner has come here to show and remind us of our greatness.  In fact, it was another Frenchman—Alexis de Tocqueville—whose two-volume book about us in the 19th Century, still taught today, gave us the best explanation of our politics and our culture. 

Now, we’re seeing reminders from soccer fans coming here—with social media posts and titles like, “World Cup fans embrace American culture.”

They’re reminding us not least of Thomas Paine’s words, “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.”  Let us hope this sinks in.  Too many here still have a lot to learn.

Just recently, Ken Paxton secured the nomination for the GOP looking to represent Texas in the US Senate. Paxton will be facing a state senator and Presbyterian seminarian James Talarico. The question is, as the New York Times put it, are Texans ready for Talarico's kind of Christianity?

Ruth Graham and David Goodman begin by talking about Talarico's pastor, Jim Rigby at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Austin. The article begins, "Jim Rigby, a pastor who rarely uses the word God, is a key to understanding the Senate candidate trying to pull off something unusual in Texas."

Later, the reporters refer to a sermon where Pastor Rigby refers to "the creative impulse of the universe, which can be called God, but doesn't have to be called God." I do not think that the majority of people in Texas understand the Bible in those terms.

 What we're talking about here is light years outside of biblical orthodoxy. So let's ask the question. Is Texas ready for that?

The Iranian regime has waged war against the United States for nearly 47 years.

The president clearly thought that we had sufficiently weakened the regime—and he’d be able to strike a deal. Indeed, he spent 60 days trying.

But the shootdown of our Apache helicopter may have changed things.

The Iranian regime has given Trump plenty of reasons to walk away from the negotiating table, starting from the very first hours of the so-called ceasefire in the Persian Gulf. Vahidi violated the agreement from the very start, imposing an extortionate "fee" system for sailing through the international waters of the Strait of Hormuz and firing on commercial vessels that refused to comply.

Trump has invested a lot of his credibility and trust in the IRGC's negotiations. Now, however, Trump sounds as though he suddenly woke up to the Sunk Cost Fallacy, saying they’ve taken too long and “now they will have to pay the price!!!”

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: This war has to be fought to the finish.

The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is approaching quickly.

The document—as I often point out to my listeners—is, to quote Abraham Lincoln, an “apple of gold” protected by the “frame of silver” that is the Constitution he borrowed from Psalms there.

All Americans—indeed all the free world—have a lot to celebrate in this our 250th year of independence.

The Declaration asserted the existence of "rights" of individuals that exist before any government — no matter the form of that government— comes into being:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The great day of the fourth is, from beginning to end, about love of our country because our country defends our individual rights, rights derived—back to the Declaration— from “the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God.”

It is quite a gift that we have been given—a gift that needs to be defended.

Ronald Reagan used to ask: “if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?”  But to have self-government, we must depend on many things, foremost among them: Trust. Over the past decade, credibility in major institutions has plummeted.

Given the delays and changing results in the recent California elections, we have another exhibit of the growing distrust in our elections. Alleging fraud in seeing Spencer Pratt sink to third place after the now-second place finisher had previously conceded her loss is said to be paranoid. But here comes the New York Times, with a headline: there is “a lack of evidence of any widespread fraud.”  The word “widespread” carries a lot of water in suggesting at least some fraud, no?

Voting day needs to be voting day, not month. ID must be required; ballot harvesting, stopped; mailed ballots, postmarked.  Nothing could undermine our experiment in self-government more than distrust in the legitimacy of our elections.

Over the past couple of weeks, President Trump has shifted pressure for ending the war from Iran to Israel. He pressed for a ceasefire in Lebanon to incentivize the IRGC to make a deal. Hezbollah refused to comply, continuing to launch missile attacks on Northern Israel. That escalated over the weekend, with Iran launching missiles at Israel and the IDF responding.

Trump insists the attacks are distracting from a deal that—for two months—he’s promised is close to completion. Thus far, though, the IRGC refuses to comply with the terms of the current ceasefire.

Israel has waited for 20 years for Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah and for the terrorist proxy to comply with the ceasefire brokered last year.

Trump’s current pressure strategy is misplaced.

Israel is not an obstacle to peace in the region. Trump needs to apply pressure to the regime in Iran, and to Hezbollah and Hamas as well to comply with the agreements they have already made.

Until they do, what value is there in negotiation?

The Maine primary is this Tuesday.

Why is it that Democrats are sticking with their deeply flawed, Nazi-tattoo-wearing Graham Platner?

Drip, drip, drip come the revelations, but Democrats are standing proudly behind the deeply troubled candidate.

On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was pressed by reporters about his backing of Platner after the latest batch of awful headlines about Platner’s increasingly chaotic campaign.

“I met with Graham Platner today. We will beat Susan Collins and take back the Senate.” Shumer went on to repeat that refrain four more times before ending the interview.

“Sunk costs” have crippled many a business and life decision, and they plague politics too. Sunk costs are expenses or investments that have already been incurred and cannot be recovered. Rational decisions focus on future costs and benefits, not past expenditures. Sunk costs can lead to emotional decisions in business and personal finances. And politics.

Both politically—and morally: Democrats are sinking in Maine.

The next few months are anniversary-heavy for our nation.

Before the fireworks of the 250th Fourth of July begin, try with family and friends to agree on what we are celebrating. Try as well to articulate how we defend what our country has long been committed to.

We’re also only three months away from the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda.

The great and the awful anniversaries are connected by that which the first proclaimed and which the second attempted to end: freedom.

We ought also to spend part of this celebration in reflecting on admiration for the courage of not just those who voted “yes” on the Declaration, but also to who had the courage to actually sign their names to it on August 2, 1776.

This brace of anniversaries should remind every American that ours is a unique and enduring commitment to human liberty.

May we all renew our commitment to the country’s first principles.

As we close in on our nation’s birthday, more and more data give us cause for great concern.

As Abraham Lincoln put it in his time, so too is it true today: “At what point is the approach of danger [to us] to be expected? [I]f it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

Look around at our civic health just now.  Article IV of our Constitution guarantees us a republican form of government—but, in our major states and cities, we now see elected leaders and political candidates from one of our two major parties that embrace both national and democratic socialism, fascism and communism—we see a party fully embracing hatred of free enterprise as much as constitutionalism and Americanism. 

And: It all comes with a large dose of antisemitism.

This must be pointed out—and reversed.

.America is celebrating its 250th birthday, but it's been hard to get the party started.

Many Americans remember our bicentennial in 1976. It wasn't long after Watergate and the Vietnam War. It was even a presidential election year, but we put all of that on hold to celebrate our great nation.

How long ago that seems. This year, the administration launched a nonpartisan freedom 250 initiative to give America a spectacular birthday party. But left-wing activist targeted artists scheduled to perform at the national concert, leading some to withdraw and turning what should have been a patriotic event into a political fight.

Instead of bringing Americans together, the celebration has become another arena for political conflict. That's unfortunate and revealing. It shows how much work remains to restore unity in our country, pride in our history and confidence in our future.

California’s progressives are eyeing other people’s money. Again. The proposed “Billionaire Tax Act” would amend the state constitution to impose a one-time five percent tax on residents with a net worth above a billion dollars.

Supporters say it’s just a one-time levy for worthy causes. But experience says “one time” rarely means one time, and the unintended consequences are real.

The measure has yet to go before voters, but the threat alone has already pushed almost forty percent of California’s billionaire wealth out of the state. Gone. Along with it: income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, and the charitable giving those individuals once supported.

Wealth is mobile. It goes where it’s treated well. And it’s not hard to see why.

California should remember that before it drives even more of its tax base away.

We warned repeatedly when Canada began to adopt assisted suicide as part of its government-run health care. Socialized medicine combined with assisted suicide sets up foreseeable economic incentives that reward disposal of patients rather than chronic care.

But even we couldn’t have dreamed that Canada would grow so desperate to reduce costs that they would condone assisted suicide assessments in fast-food parking lots.

Yet that’s exactly what happened in Ontario, where a doctor diagnosed a chronic bowel problem and emotional issues outside a Tim Horton’s coffee shop—and took the ‘patient’ to be euthanized.

Why? The doctor provides their system what it needs: fewer patients. That’s the real standard of care when single-payer systems face the choice of chronic care or pushing patients to end their lives.

This is what they call humane treatment in Canada.

If progressives have their way here, the US will be next. 

With the end of commencement season, it is worth considering what advice a generation of youth more in need of sober and serious advice than at any other time in our history should hear.

Professor Jonathan Haidt has pointed out, having given our children smartphones, we are now engaged in the largest uncontrolled experiment humanity has ever performed on its own children.  Major corporations now spend billions of dollars. Their primary mission? Getting as many children as glued to screens for as long as possible.  Humanity is being stolen from our youth. At great costs and great prices.

Former Senator and university president Ben Sasse, diagnosed with cancer, expected to die this year, is giving every audience he can his final lessons about life. 

It is as beautiful as it is selfless. 

Watch his 60 Minutes interview. 

Everything we need to know about life, and how to live meaningfully, is there. His main concern? “These super devices in our pockets that have distracted us from some of the most fundamental human activities and aspirations of life.”

It’s commencement season again—another class of young Americans heading out into the world. But one statistic says a lot about what they’re leaving behind: at top universities this year, left-wing speakers outnumber others six to one on commencement stages.

That lack of viewpoint diversity point to something deeper: An intellectual climate marked by intolerance and conformity, not curiosity and debate.

There was a time when a college degree signaled that a student had learned how to think—and had encountered the ideas that shaped the Western tradition. Today, that’s no longer a safe assumption.

Too often, higher education has become dominated by a narrow ideological framework, with too few faculty willing—or able—to model real intellectual rigor.

The result is predictable: universities that once fostered inquiry now too often enforce orthodoxy.

That’s not education. It’s indoctrination.

As we watch the president navigate the ongoing interactions with the remaining leadership in Iran, it’s worth reminding ourselves: President Trump has done hundreds of deals. He also walked away from probably three times as many deals.

The thousands of commentators with little to zero knowledge of negotiations are just guessing.

Here’s what we know:

First: President Trump has the crucial experience, and:

Second: the D Team in Iran doesn’t.

No president in 47 years has dealt Iran blows like this. President Trump isn’t going to trade massive leverage for the approval of states that aren’t our allies.

President Trump is very good at the close. He's not going to get taken. He's walked away from a lot of tables. If it's a bad deal or the Iranians do the bait and switch deal, he will walk away again and I hope combat would resume. But right now, we just don't know.

I just don't think the president is going to get fooled.