Trump Vs. A Media “Rock Star”
Posted: October 24, 2017 Filed under: Donald Trump, Politics, Unconstitutional Wars | Tags: mass media, military, Niger 1 CommentTrump Vs. A Media “Rock Star”
by JBS President Emeritus John F. McManus
It seems as though our nation’s left-leaning mass media will find grist for their anti-Trump crusade no matter what the President or his top aides say or do. If the President assured someone that the sun would rise in the East tomorrow morning, some media star would cite the ravings of a confirmed anti-Trump crusader insisting Donald Trump has no love for the West.
Four American soldiers were recently slain in Africa’s Niger. While performing their mission to train local military personnel, they were ambushed and never had a chance. Most likely, they were targeted because they were Americans.
President Trump sought advice about what to say in the calls he would make to the members of the grieving families. He turned to someone who knew from first-hand experience how to handle such a tragic responsibility: Retired Marine Corps General John Kelly, his Chief of Staff. A few years earlier while Kelly was still serving on active duty, his close friend General Joseph Dunford had delivered to him the awful news that his son had been killed while serving in Afghanistan.
Dunford brought the terrible news to General Kelly, and Kelly recalled that message when asked by the President what he could say to a devastated family member in a telephone call. Referring to the death of young Lieutenant Robert Kelly who died in Afghanistan, that message to the lieutenant’s father stated:
He was doing exactly what he wanted to do when he was killed. He knew what he was getting into by joining that one percent. He knew what the possibilities were because we’re at war and when he died, he was surrounded by the best men on earth, his friends.
That’s precisely what President Trump copied and said to each of the families of the four men who died in Niger. We know this because Chief of Staff Kelly told a news conference first about Mr. Trump’s inquiry to him and then about the President’s subsequent calls to the families. The President did his duty but a member of Congress from Florida sought to gain some publicity for herself by attacking Mr. Trump. After overhearing the President’s call to the wife of one of the slain soldiers, Representative Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) characterized the president’s message as insensitive, especially the portion that Kelly himself had once received – and accepted. He said to Sergeant La David Johnson’s widow that her husband had died “doing exactly what he wanted to do” by serving honorably in Niger.
John Kelly said he was “stunned” by Representative Wilson’s comments. She has reveled in the amount of publicity she has received when she should have been ignored. She now claims to be the equivalent of a “Rock Star,” and delights in the fact that Chief of Staff Kelly has criticized her attack on the President. When Kelly responded to her outburst and likened her remarks to the noise emanating from an “empty barrel,” she played the race card, calling his response a “racist term.” That should have been laughed at, but even though it is a gross absurdity, it gained wide coverage.
Congresswoman Wilson’s record demonstrates that she’s no friend of those who wear the uniform. She has repeatedly voted against measures that would help veterans and their families. One of her votes saw her oppose a measure designed to ensure that families of some slain soldiers would receive death benefits. Yet she gets treated like a “Rock Star” by the same media that delights on finding fault with everything – good or bad – coming from the White House.
In his remarks about this incident, Chief of Staff Kelly recalled that important national attitudes have changed from his youth. His list included: “women were sacred; the dignity of life was sacred; religion seems to be gone as well.“ Most Americans agree that such changes have occurred. It appears that Mr. Kelly was targeting the mass media, the powerful force within our nation that has played a sinister role in altering basic American standards. It is the same mass media that rarely says anything complimentary about President Trump but delights in making a “Rock Star” out of a despicable publicity seeker who happens to be a member of Congress.
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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.
Let’s Continue to Celebrate Columbus
Posted: October 17, 2017 Filed under: Civil Rights, Slavery | Tags: Catholic, Christian, Christopher Columbus, Columbus Day, Indigenous Peoples' Day 1 CommentLet’s Continue to Celebrate Columbus
by JBS President Emeritus John F. McManus
More than 50 of our nation’s local governments cancelled Columbus Day celebrations. This is obviously part of the ongoing war against our nation’s culture, an insult directed at the memory of Christopher Columbus that strongly indicates which side is winning this war. It isn’t the side that brought Christian values and practices to the Western Hemisphere.
In place of celebrating – or at least acknowledging Columbus and his contribution to the Americas – the cultural iconoclasts have convinced some authorities to celebrate “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.” Therefore, we should take a hard look at what Columbus and his men found when they landed in the new world. The courageous Italian sailor and navigator never set foot on what became the United States. In each of his four voyages to the West, he landed in areas south of what became our nation, mostly in what is now known as the West Indies.
Throughout the area populated by the “indigenous people” in the late 15th century could be found headhunting, torture, cannibalism, human sacrifice to false gods, barbarous treatment accorded to war prisoners, mutilation of fellow man, sacrificing infants, and more. Is all or even some of this what today’s culture warriors seek to celebrate?
Columbus wasn’t a perfect individual and he never claimed perfection for himself. One of his goals in making four dangerous voyages across the Atlantic sought to bring Christian civilization to whomever he encountered. He succeeded in that pursuit though only partially. Other like-minded explorers, emboldened by his findings, piled up numerous successes as they spread Christianity throughout the West. Yes, there were instances of criminal activity perpetrated on natives, but these were not the norm. Further, some common practices in the Columbian era such as slavery were practiced by Columbus.
Today, there is the state capital of Columbus, Ohio. The state of Georgia has a city named after Columbus. South Carolina’s capital Columbia is named after the Genoese sailor. There is a Columbia University in New York City. And there are numerous other places and institutions whose names can be traced to the man whose voyages proved there was a whole new world west of Europe. Do the culture warriors intend to change or remove them?
Columbus persuaded Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain to finance his voyages. It was they who encouraged him to spread Catholicism in the lands he discovered. Being militant Catholics, Isabella and Ferdinand would never tolerate the practices commonly found among the indigenous peoples encountered by Columbus. That the two Spanish leaders would provide the ambitious navigator with funding for his several voyages meant that they found him to be neither a scoundrel nor a hopeless dreamer.
It was never a mistake for our country to honor Columbus. Tearing into his name and reputation causes this writer to ask what will come next. What Columbus and successor explorers generally found was customarily condemnable. It deserved to be replaced. Darkness began to give way to light. Reverting back to the darkness practiced by many of the indigenous peoples would certainly be a terrible mistake. Americans of today should keep such a travesty from occurring, or even from being celebrated.
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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.
Battle of Lepanto
Posted: October 17, 2017 Filed under: Military, Religious Persecution | Tags: battle, Christian, history, Muslim, Western Europe Leave a commentBattle of Lepanto
by JBS President Emeritus John F. McManus
On October 7, 1571, the decisive Battle of Lepanto saw Catholic forces under the overall command of Don Juan of Austria defeat a larger and more experienced Ottoman fleet led by the seemingly invincible Ali Pasha. The victory of the numerically smaller force and its fewer fighting men has long been considered the savior of Western Europe from the designs of militant Islam.
Even in our day, commemoration of this remarkable event is marked by historians, especially in countries undoubtedly saved by the victory of the Western forces. During this very year, church leaders in Poland called for a massive rosary procession involving as many as a million people lining their nation’s eastern border. Their goal: letting neighboring countries and potential refugees know that Poland remains determined to retain its independence and its Catholic religion.
The famous one-day battle in 1571 won its name from proximity to the Strait of Lepanto, a portion of the Ionian Sea close to Western Greece. Historians tell us that the struggle was the last naval battle fought between vessels propelled by oarsmen. Warships then relied on sails for propulsion. The forces led by Don Juan numbered slightly more than 200 ships and 68,000 men while Ali Pasha commanded 250 vessels and 81,000 men. Some chroniclers of the battle attribute Don Juan’s victory to the efforts of his loyal rowers. Ali Pasha relied on his Janissaries, many of whom were captured and enslaved Christians. They weren’t as reliable as the free men who propelled Don Juan’s fleet.
By the end of it, it was little more than a single day of conflict with troops from either side boarding their enemy’s vessels and engaging in hand-to-hand combat, the Christians lost 10,000 men and 17 ships. The Turkish-led forces lost approximately 40,000 of their number, and 200 of their ships were sunk or captured. A noteworthy aside saw the victors freeing 12,000 Christian oarsmen, all victims of enslavement and, as a result, undependable.
The victory at Lepanto put an end to further advancement westward by Islam’s naval forces. But it did not end Islam’s territorial designs on the non-Muslim West. In 1683, a force of 200,000 Turkish ground troops commanded by Mustafa surrounded Vienna where they sought to starve the city’s occupants into submission. Polish King John Sobieski arrived in time with 80,000 troops and defeated the numerically superior Muslim force in a surprise attack. For his remarkable deed, King John has long been known as the “Savior of Vienna and Western Europe.” The defeat constituted Islam’s last major ground incursion westward. But Islam’s determination to control all of mankind has never ceased.
Defeated in naval and land campaigns, today’s descendants of Mohammed are carrying out their long-range plan to win the West with immigration, population increases, and an undermining of Western culture. Western leaders would be wise to understand this development. There is less a need for military giants like Austria’s Don Juan and Poland’s Jan Sobieski. There is, instead, a need for realism.
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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.
Murder in Las Vegas: Is it the Largest Mass Murder?
Posted: October 12, 2017 Filed under: Abortion | Tags: abortion, Las Vegas, Planned Parenthood, prolife, Second Amendment Leave a commentMurder in Las Vegas: Is it the Largest Mass Murder?
by JBS President Emeritus John F. McManus
The slaughter in Las Vegas has been labeled the “worst” mass murder in our nation’s last century. Is it worthy of such a classification? Reporters and commentators obviously insist that it is. Ordinary citizens, justifiably shocked by the deliberate killing of more than 59 and the wounding of hundreds more, have been persuaded to classify the grisly event by using the handiest superlative available. From coast to coast, in print and over the airwaves, nothing has ever been deemed more deserving of the term “worst.”
But wait! The most recent annual report produced by the London-based International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) admits that the IPPF was responsible for 1,094,679 abortions in 2016 alone. In the United States, Planned Parenthood snuffed out the life of 887 yet-to-be-born infants every day. Is this not worse than Stephen Paddock’s deadly rampage?
Planned Parenthood’s fans and pro-abortion partisans everywhere always claim that abortion isn’t murder. Life begins at birth, they insist, and extracting what can be found in a womb prior to birth is considered a relatively simple medical procedure. But these individuals, properly designated “pro-aborts,” produce no credible evidence to back up such claims. And science continues to demonstrate the terrifying absurdity of their falsehoods.
We are all supposed to be outraged at what occurred in Las Vegas – and in Orlando, San Bernardino, and Fort Hood where fewer were murdered. Okay, these murderous sprees are completely condemnable. But we’re also expected to demand that lawmakers outlaw private possession of weapons – not just semi-automatic military-style rifles but any weapon capable of firing a bullet into a fellow human’s body. Overlooked is the fact that no weapon ever shot a bullet by itself. Shootings are the work of shooters, not weapons.
We are also expected to accept the lies issued by PP leaders who insist that they are in business to provide “health care for women.” Aren’t half of abortion’s victims females? What kind of health care is it that deliberately terminates the lives of human beings? Overlooked in this discussion is the other PP practice whereby organs harvested from aborted fetuses are sold for profit. That these organs are taken from a live – yet to be born babe – and are salable only because they were extracted from living individuals lends credence to the argument that abortion is the taking of a life.
There’s even more to consider when assessing PP and its primary function. The organization receives approximately $500 million per year in federal funding. PP President Cecile Richards alone takes home close to $600,000 per year. This means that all U.S. taxpayers are forced to support an organization and its leader who terminate the lives of close to 900 innocent and yet-to-be-born infants every year. The killer in Las Vegas received no such handouts. And, as evil as his deed surely was, the average daily abortion toll racked up by PP exceeds the number of deaths caused by Paddock. Consider for a moment the momentous outrage if Paddock had been discovered to be a beneficiary of federal funding. The financing of his murderous spree was done with his own money. In contrast, government forces all taxpayers to finance PP and its leader.
During a 2016 hearing about taxpayer dollars being supplied to Planned Parenthood, Representative Diane Black (R-Tenn.) stated her outrage:
As a nurse for more than 40 years, I know that abortion is not healthcare and I am incensed that, year after year, my constituents see their money sent to Washington and distributed to organizations that promote or perform abortions all under the guise of “healthcare” services.
Ms. Black is as qualified as anyone to know that abortion takes the lives of innocent babes. Yet, federal funding for Planned Parenthood continued.
What happened in Las Vegas was absolutely horrible. But, as bad as it unquestionably was, designating it as the past century’s worst killing overlooks a far more deadly termination of innocent life – not in a single day, but daily.
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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.