Rep. John Lewis Under a Microscope
Posted: January 25, 2017 Filed under: 2016 Presidential Election, Civil Rights, Donald Trump | Tags: Inauguration, John Lewis, President Trump, Russians 2 CommentsRep. John Lewis Under a Microscope
by JBS President Emeritus John F. McManus
On January 13, 2017, Congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.) answered questions on NBC Television’s Meet the Press. When asked if he would attend the inauguration of Donald Trump to be the 45th President of the United States, Lewis stated:
I don’t see the president-elect as a legitimate president. I think the Russians participated in having this man get elected, and they helped to destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. I don’t plan to attend the Inauguration. I think there was a conspiracy on the part of the Russians and others that helped him get elected. That’s not right. That’s not fair. That’s not the open democratic process.

Congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.) boycotted the Trump inauguration and others (Image from Wikimedia Commons. Author is U.S. Congress: public domain).
Lewis has supplied no evidence to back up his claim about Russians arranging for Trump’s victory. Without such evidence, his claim should have been deemed outrageous and ignored. But, because he also said he would boycott the Trump inauguration, he received nationwide media coverage.
The Georgia congressman obviously knows how to gain publicity. And he doesn’t stick to the truth to get it. He stated that boycotting the Trump inauguration would be the first time in his 30 years in Congress that he wouldn’t be present at such an event. The truth is that he stayed away from the 2001 inauguration of President George W. Bush, saying he didn’t believe Mr. Bush to be the real victor. Then he attacked the candidacy of John McCain/Sarah Palin accusing them of “sowing the seeds of hatred and division.” Had they won in 2008, it seems likely that he would have boycotted that inauguration as well.
John Lewis was born in Alabama in 1940. One of ten children, he was educated at a Nashville, Tennessee theological seminary and at that city’s Fisk University. He first met Martin Luther King in 1958. During the 1960s, as the leader of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Lewis was the youngest of the six men who were considered leaders in the King-led Civil Rights Movement. He came to national attention during the 1965 protest march across the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama when his skull was fractured by state troopers.
A diligent student of the King non-violence ruse, Lewis and others were responsible for riots and increased levels of hatred in demonstrations all over the South. Their plan included creating situations where violence would occur. King spelled out this strategy in the April 3, 1965, issue of Saturday Review where he explained that demonstrations would lead to violence and then to subsequent legislation building government power over the entire nation. Without the violence needed by King-led or King-promoted demonstrations, they claimed their cause would achieve little or nothing.
After the Selma riot, John Lewis rose to greater prominence in the Civil Rights Movement. He eventually shifted his efforts toward gaining elected office, losing a 1977 bid for a Georgia congressional seat. By 1981, he had won a place on the Atlanta City Council. Then, in 1986, he became the U.S. Congressman representing Georgia’s 5th Congressional district. He has been reelected ever since.
Lewis is one of the most liberal members of the entire House and unquestionably one of most consistently Democratic congressmen in the Deep South. In recent years, he has used his congressional vote to support costly and unnecessary environmental mandates, continue tax-payer funding of abortion, maintain immigration outrages, block an attempt to rein in presidential legislating by Executive Order, and continue federal control of education. The district he represents is notable for the heavy amount of government funding of its citizens.
Like so many Civil Rights promoters, Lewis frequently blames others for “sowing the seeds of hatred and division.” He pontificates, “We shouldn’t divide people; we shouldn’t separate people.” But he is a leader of a Black Caucus in the Congress (no whites allowed), and he crusaded for 15 years to have the federal government establish an African American museum in the nation’s capital (no whites depicted as heroes). Each of those institutions will perpetuate racial division.
Like too many of his colleagues, John Lewis regularly swears an oath to support the U.S. Constitution. But he then puts it in the bottom drawer where it never gets in the way of his support of the liberal agenda that is harming America.
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Mr. McManus served in the U.S. Marine Corps in the late 1950s and joined the staff of The John Birch Society in August 1966. He has served various roles for the organization including Field Coordinator, Director of Public Affairs, and President. Mr. McManus has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs and is also author of a number of educational DVDs and books. Now President Emeritus, he continues his involvement with the Society through public speaking and writing for this blog, the JBS Bulletin, and The New American.
Hillary’s Plurality Under a Microscope
Posted: January 12, 2017 Filed under: 2016 Presidential Election, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton | Tags: Election 2016, Electoral College, popular vote, Voting 1 CommentHillary’s Plurality Under a Microscope
by JBS President Emeritus John F. McManus
Supporters of Hillary Clinton’s bid to become President can’t get over the fact that she won more votes than did her opponent. Her numbers exceeded Donald Trump’s by more than 2.8 million. “How can it be,” her followers ask, “that she can attract that many more voters and still lose?”

An analysis of the 2.8 million difference shows that it came from the single state of California (image by Ali Zifan (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons).
The November 8, 2016 numbers tell us that Clinton was the choice of 65.8 million voters nationally. Trump was the preference of only 63 million voters. But that’s not the whole story. An analysis of the 2.8 million difference shows that it came from California, which is more and more referred to as the nation’s “left coast.” Clinton’s California margin of victory was 3.4 million. Exclude California from the nationwide totals and Donald Trump was the nation’s choice by more than 500,000 voters.
Even more, look at the areas in California that gave Clinton her largest margins:
Los Angeles County: 1,273,000 votes over Trump
Alameda County: 395,000
Santa Clara County: 346,000
San Francisco County: 278,000
Contra Costa County: 181,000
San Mateo County: 166,000
Sacramento County: 111,000
Orange County: 84,000.
These margins of victory alone add up to 2.8 million — the plurality gained by Clinton nationally.
Other than raising funds to be used elsewhere, Clinton and Trump avoided campaigning in California. Each knew who the victor would be so they went elsewhere. Therefore, we have to ask: Should eight counties (let alone one state) of California decide who shall be the nation’s President? Put another way, what about the states and the people who populate the Midwest, Rocky Mountain areas, South, and Southeast? Should the leftists and so-called progressives who numerically dominate other regions overwhelm the preferences of the smaller states?
Hillary Clinton is not the first candidate who won the popular vote but lost the election. As recently as the year 2000, Al Gore won the popularity contest but lost the presidency to George W. Bush. More than 100 years ago, Grover Cleveland won the popular vote but lost the election to Benjamin Harrison.
The Founding Fathers who gave us the Electoral College system to choose a president believed that the states should decide the winner – not the popular vote. Clinton supporters will seek ways to circumvent this system. Their effort should be blocked. A hard look at the figures given above may be all that’s needed to protect the system that has served the nation so well since 1789.
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Mr. McManus served in the U.S. Marine Corps in the late 1950s and joined the staff of The John Birch Society in August 1966. He has served various roles for the organization including Field Coordinator, Director of Public Affairs, and President. Mr. McManus has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs and is also author of a number of educational DVDs and books. Now President Emeritus, he continues his involvement with the Society through public speaking and writing for this blog, the JBS Bulletin, and The New American.
Liberals In Control of Academia Is Dangerous
Posted: January 11, 2017 Filed under: education, freedom of speech | Tags: academia, conservative professors, liberals, New England Leave a commentLiberals In Control of Academia Is Dangerous
by JBS President Emeritus John F. McManus
Boston Magazine’s senior editor Chris Sweeney found hard evidence to back up what some discerning individuals have groaned about for a good while. His online article “How Liberal Professors Are Ruining College,” posted January 2017, carries a subtitle “In New England, they outnumber conservatives 28 to 1.” And he concludes: “That’s bad for all of us.” He’s correct.

Are conservative professors being pushed to the edge of extinction? (Image from www.pexels.com)
Sweeney’s article mentions Harvard, Yale, Brandeis, Smith, Brown, Mount Holyoke, Wellesley, Hampshire College, and some other New England schools that would happily accept being described as liberal. But the percentages of left-leaners in the faculties of the northeast are somewhat astounding.
Relying on 25 years of research compiled by Sarah Lawrence College Professor Samuel Abrams, Sweeney noted that liberal professors held a 3 to 1 edge over conservatives in the South and Great Plains. Out West, liberal domination came in at 6 to 1. Those figures are bad enough. But within the six states comprising New England, the ratio was an astounding 28 to 1. That includes even some Catholic institutions. His conclusion about the Northeast: “… conservative professors weren’t just rare; they were being pushed to the edge of extinction.” In greater Boston, as one wag regularly concluded, “There are more than 60 institutions of higher leaning.”
The problem stems from the dominance of political correctness about nearly everything, something the proverbial herd is very adept at enforcing once it gains ascendancy. Leftist mentality grew dramatically more than a century ago when socialists from Europe gained teaching roles in the Northeast. But it really took off when Barry Goldwater got swamped in the 1964 presidential contest. Championing a conservative view (meaning smaller government, more freedom) came under increasing attack. Aided by the liberal media (New York Times, Boston Globe, Hartford Courant, and most national news providers), young people found it fashionable to turn leftward. Many never got out of school; they went from one to another institution and became professors. Invariably they tilted leftward, frequently hard left.
Example: A Brandeis professor told students after learning of the death of Phyllis Schlafly, “There’s a special place in hell for people like her.” And that same purveyor of intolerance previously and exuberantly lauded deceased founder Tom Hayden of the Students for a Democratic Society, one of the more raucous leftist groups of the past 50 years.
During the past year, it would have been close to suicidal for a student to let his professor know he or she was unwilling to support Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders – even worse if that stand included an open preference for Donald Trump.
These same individuals will demand “tolerance” for outrageous conduct – as long as it’s left leaning. When some student believers, in their warped idea of tolerance, expressed their intolerance about the Trump victory by burning an American flag at Hampshire College, school administrators reacted by stopping any flying of the flag. The students won – at least for a time. Where tolerance reigns, it’s not just patriotism that suffers; it’s anything resembling virtue.
Professor Abrams himself wrote about the research he compiled. His concluding advice to young people and their parents is: “… if you are looking for an ideologically balanced education, don’t put New England at the top of your list.” Chris Sweeney certainly doesn’t disagree.
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Mr. McManus served in the U.S. Marine Corps in the late 1950s and joined the staff of The John Birch Society in August 1966. He has served various roles for the organization including Field Coordinator, Director of Public Affairs, and President. Mr. McManus has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs and is also author of a number of educational DVDs and books. Now President Emeritus, he continues his involvement with the Society through public speaking and writing for this blog, the JBS Bulletin, and The New American.