Commentary: Little Outcry over Antifa’s Equal-Opportunity Beatdowns of Journalists Left and Right

From covering displaced refugees around the globe to the obstacles faced by protesters seeking change in America, freelance photojournalist Maranie Staab believes her camera can be a force for truth and social justice. The work of a “conflict photographer” often requires physical courage in places she has reported from, such as Africa and the Middle East. It certainly did so on Aug. 22, while Staab was covering demonstrations in Portland, Ore.

Members of the left-wing group antifa called her a “slut” and then demanded that journalists assembled to cover the protests “get the f— out.” Staab, a 2020 reporting fellow for the liberal Pulitzer Center, tried to calm the situation. She was assaulted. She told the Willamette Week that they grabbed her phone and smashed it. Then they threw her to the pavement and sprayed her with mace. The ugly assault on Staab (below) was filmed and distributed quickly online, resulting in widespread condemnation.  “If we’re on a public street and a newsworthy event is occurring, you’re not going to tell me what I can and cannot film,” Staab told the weekly newspaper.

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Rashida Tlaib Says Opposition to Critical Race Theory Is ‘Rooted in Racism’

General Mark Milley

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib said Thursday that opposition to Critical Race Theory is “rooted in racism.”

“Opposition to critical race theory is obviously rooted in racism and has just become the newest dog whistle for racists,” the Michigan Democrat tweeted Thursday, referring to a video in which Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley defended Critical Race Theory to the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday.

CRT holds that America is fundamentally racist, yet it teaches people to view every social interaction and person in terms of race. Its adherents pursue “antiracism” through the end of merit, objective truth and the adoption of race-based polici

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Commentary: Too Much of a Unity

“The city comes in to being for the sake of life, but it continues for the sake of the good life. ” — Aristotle, Politics

“[The Declaration of Independence] was the word, “fitly spoken” which has proved an “apple of gold” to us. The Union, and the Constitution, are the picture of silver, subsequently framed around it. The picture was made, not to conceal, or destroy the apple; but to adorn, and preserve it. The picture was made for the apple — not the apple for the picture.”—Abraham Lincoln, “Fragment on the Constitution and Union”

The crisis of our time requires clear thinking about political means and ends, and the ways they are connected. The two epigraphs above address this central question of practical wisdom—the first from the general perspective of theory, the second as relates to the particular nation of the United States. Both quotations may be familiar to educated conservatives, and particularly to those students of political philosophy broadly associated with the Claremont school of thought. Yet there is a danger that such familiarity may breed, if not contempt, then the forgetfulness that settles on “sonorous phrases” which lapse into clichés. I would like to reconsider these arguments made by Aristotle and Lincoln—along with some related observations by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson—not as hackneyed commonplaces but as genuine insights that remain relevant and even urgent. Circumstances in the coming years may require new or unusual means to secure the ends of liberty and justice. Our thinking must be appropriately radical.

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Ryan Zinke Blames Radical Environmentalists For Deadly California Wildfires

by Michael Bastasch   Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke blamed “radical environmentalists” for the deadly wildfires raging across California. “When we’re prevented from managing our forests by these radical environmentalists — they’ve had lawsuit after lawsuit, they have somehow promulgated to let nature take its course — this is the consequence of letting nature take its course,” Zinke said in an interview on the Breitbart News Sunday radio show. Wildfires scorched roughly 250,000 acres of California, destroying more than 12,000 structures and taking 80 lives. Authorities say there are still 1,200 people unaccounted for in the wake of the fires. “We need to go back to prescribed burns late in the season so you don’t have these catastrophic burns, remove the dead and dying timber, sustainable harvests, get the small mom and pop mills back where they’re grazing the forest and return to healthy forests,” Zinke said. “You look at Finland. I had an opportunity to live in Germany. Germany has the Black Forest — their forests are healthy, they don’t have the catastrophic burns because they manage the forests.” “And I will lay this on the foot of those environmental radicals that have prevented us from managing the forests for years. And you know…

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