TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
A Moment for Movement on Guns
by Peggy Noonan
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Opinion in Brief
Michelle Malkin: “Here is my homework assignment for all the fist-clenching, gun control-demanding teenagers walking out of classrooms this week (and next week and next month) to protest school shootings: Ask not what the rest of the country can do for your local school’s safety; ask what your local school boards and superintendents have been failing to do for you. Chances are, the adults closest to you — those most directly responsible for your security — have been shirking their primary duties, squandering scarce resources and deflecting blame. Yes, it’s glamorous and exciting to appear on ‘The Ellen Show,’ rub elbows with Eminem at the iHeartRadio Music Awards, pal around with Anderson Cooper, and soak up praise and donations from George Clooney and nOprah for shouting at the NRA, Republicans and President Trump. Sure, it’s fun to ditch your homework, parade around in ‘March For Our Lives’ swag, and watch your Twitter mentions explode like SpaceX launches every time you indignantly accuse gun-owning moms of hating their own children. … But when the media whirlwind dies down and the Everytown buses ship you back home, mundane realities will set in. … As a famous Chicago community organizer once quipped, ‘Change is hard.’ Selfies with gun control armbands is easy. Cleaning your own house, district and county is hard. Junkets to DC are easy. Digging through audits and public records is hard. Regurgitating Mad Libs-like talking points against the NRA and Second Amendment is easy. Go back to class and look homeward, all you young ‘change agents.’ The faultiest faults are near, not far.”
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/54730-wednesday-opinion
President Trump Explains Reasons
For Firing Tillerson, Promoting Pompeo
{ rickwells.us } ~ President Trump stopped as he was leaving the White House on his way to inspect the border wall prototypes to speak to reporters... The first topic addressed was the firing of globalist Rex Tillerson from his position as Secretary of State. Rather than focusing on the departing Tillerson, Trump led off by speaking of his new Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. Trump said, “I’ve worked with Mike Pompeo now for quite some time, tremendous energy, tremendous intellect, we’re always on the same wavelength, the relationship has been very good and that’s what I need as Secretary of State.” He said, “I wish Rex Tillerson well.” Gina Haspel, by the way, who I have gotten to know very well, who I’ve worked with very closely, will be the first woman director of the CIA. She is an outstanding person who also I have gotten to know very well. So I’ve gotten to know a lot of people very well over the last year and I’m really at a point where we’re getting very close to having the cabinet and other things that I want.”... https://rickwells.us/trump-reasons-tillerson-pompeo/.
Haley Issues Warning to Russia, Iran and
Syria: ‘The United States Remains
Prepared to Act If We Must’
by AARON BANDLER
{ jewishjournal.com } ~ United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley issued a stark warning to Russia, Iran and Syria... on Mar. 12 over the recent bombings in Syria: the United States is ready to take action if need be. At the United Nations Security Council, Haley explained that Russia had been constantly blocking efforts to reach a ceasefire in Syria stopping Bashar al-Assad’s forces from striking the Eastern Ghouta area of Damascus. Russia eventually relented and agreed to a ceasefire, but only because they had a heavy say in each syllable of the agreement. “In the eyes of Russia, Iran and Assad, the neighborhoods of Eastern Ghouta are full of terrorists,” Haley said. “The hospitals are full of terrorists. The schools are full of terrorists. The Syrian and Russian regimes insist that they are targeting terrorists, but their bombs and artillery continue to fall on hospitals and schools and on innocent civilians.”... http://jewishjournal.com/news/nation/231756/haley-issues-warning-russia-iran-syria-united-states-remains-prepared-act-must/ .
He went 'rogue'! Real
reason Trump fired Tillerson
{ wnd.com } ~ Even though tensions had been mounting between President Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for months... a new report indicates the president abruptly fired Tillerson because he went “rogue” and tried to save the Iran nuclear deal. President Trump has repeatedly insisted that the nuclear deal with Iran must be fixed or abandoned by the U.S. The reason for Tillerson’s firing was revealed by the Washington Free Beacon in a report that cited “multiple sources with knowledge of the situation.” The Free Beacon stated: In the weeks leading up to Tillerson’s departure, he had been spearheading efforts to convince European allies to agree to a range of fixes to the nuclear deal that would address Iran’s ongoing ballistic missile program and continued nuclear research... http://www.wnd.com/2018/03/he-went-rogue-real-reason-trump-fired-tillerson/ .
Rex Tillerson urges State Department officials
to forge ahead with ‘honesty and integrity’
by Guy Taylor and Dave Boyer
Sacked Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson said Tuesday he will stay on the job through March 31... and urged his sworn assistants to “remain at their posts” through the transition to his successor Mike Pompeo. In a somber post-firing news briefing at State Department headquarters in Foggy Bottom, Mr. Tillerson thanked the department’s rank and file “for the privilege of serving” as America’s top diplomat. The former ExxonMobil CEO, who left his position at the oil company to join President Trump’s Cabinet, also thanked staffers for “promoting values I think are important” and hailed their work while “treating each other with honesty and integrity and respect for one another.”... https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/mar/13/rex-tillerson-urges-state-department-officials-to-/ .
President Trump Visits San Diego
To Review Border Wall Prototypes
by sundance
{ theconservativetreehouse.com } ~ President Donald Trump traveled to San Diego today for a tour of eight border wall prototypes today... along with a speech to members of the military at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar. This is President Trumps first trip to California as president. The peoples’ president spent about an hour reviewing the 30-foot wall segments near the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump’s promise of building a border wall was the primary visible promise made during the 2016 presidential campaign trail. As president, he has been steadfast in his push for the completed project. https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/03/13/president-trump-visits-san-diego-to-review-border-wall-prototypes-video/.
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A Moment for Movement on Guns
by Peggy Noonan
{ peggynoonan.com } ~ It’s two immovable forces that have to share the same country. Both sides are sincere and have reasons for where they stand.
But this is a promising moment. Some give looks possible.
What is needed to prepare the ground for progress? Squelch your own smugness. Stop needling, patronizing, misstating the other side’s position. Lay down your rhetorical arms. Deweaponize your mouth. It’s not enough to argue in good faith; you have to will yourself to see the good faith on the other side.
And don’t be maximalist.
Something changed with Parkland. In part it is that the young survivors presented themselves not as victims but as warriors. Some flooded the airwaves. They were media-savvy, had no shyness, were full of themselves in the way closely raised children encouraged in a hearty self-esteem can be full of themselves.
But the boy who broke it open was not smooth. In the president’s White House meeting with survivors he spoke with no assumption. He said, “My name is Justin Gruber, and I was at the school at the time of the massacre. I’m only 15 years old. I’m a sophomore. Nineteen years ago, the first school shooting, Columbine—at Columbine High School, happened. And I was born into a world where I never got to experience safety and peace.”
This was a powerfully reorienting statement. We are now in the second generation of public school terror.
And parents throughout the country are saying: We cannot have this anymore.
We can’t have another generation of children who fear going to school, who jump whenever there’s a loud noise in the hall. We can’t have another generation of parents afraid when they drop the kids off in the morning. You can’t ask the parents of a great nation to “get used to this.” You can’t tell them to accept that this is the way it is now. “I have my rights.” Everybody has rights. Children have rights. And they are right to be afraid.
We don’t need to rehearse why Americans have guns. Protection my urban store, my rural home, hunting, sport. History—from the Pilgrims to the Wild West the gun was a tool of survival. Tradition—my grandfather gave me his Remington and it is, truly, a thing of beauty. Orneriness—when fancy people tell you you’re not allowed to have something, you better get it.
And something else, an aspect in which gun-owning Americans are more imaginative, more alive to history and sensitive to its trends, than affluent city and suburban liberals. They know how precarious everything is, how complex and provisional, how if you lose this piece the electrical grid, that piece civilized behavior will give way. The poet James Dickey captured this in his novel “Deliverance,” published in 1970. The character Lewis: “I think the machines are going to fail, the political systems are going to fail, and a few men are going to take to the hills and start over.” He kept his body fit and his weapons oiled.
Or, more recently, a masterpiece, Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2006 novel, “The Road.” A man and his young son are alone at the end of the world. There was a terrible event—“a long shear of light and then a series of low concussions.” They trek south through a ruined landscape—“everything dead to the root”—in hopes of seeing the sun. The man has a revolver with two bullets. He is surrounded by marauders, and worse than marauders, with guns.
“The frailty of everything revealed at last.”
Those who own big guns often hope to survive—and help you survive—dark possibilities. Keep that in mind when you put them down. They may be grim, but only the grim saw 9/11 coming. The giddy censors who run around my beloved city were shocked.
Older gun owners fear the government, it’s true. But those who are not old don’t primarily fear it’s too powerful. They fear it is incapable of protecting them.
I want to go to the promise of this moment. It is that our president is making sense. Donald Trump is jumbling categories as a “right-winger” for tighter gun laws. In meetings with the nation’s governors and with congressional leaders, he said he isn’t afraid of the National Rifle Association and they shouldn’t be either. He would harden the schools, raise to 21 the age limit to buy assault weapons. He would enhance and broaden background checks so “sickos” can’t get guns. He is convincingly alive to the mental-health crisis and its part in the story. He wants cops to have the authority to confiscate temporarily the guns of the dangerous, such as those who go around threatening to shoot up schools.
Importantly, he treated the mass shootings like a crisis, not a tragedy. This country is tired of tragedy, of the weeping president and the high-toned speech. Mr. Trump doesn’t do that because he can’t, and doesn’t know how to mourn. Just as well: We’re all tired of moist and empty vows. Do something. President liar-nObama had a sense of tragedy about the NRA and congressional blocs and those poor, sad Americans who cling to guns. In effect he gave his own party a pass when it stepped away from gun control after Sandy Hook.
Mr. Trump, God bless him, doesn’t know enough about the facts to be fatalistic about them. But he got the big picture right—at least the larger context of voters frozen along battle lines.
His presentations were stream-of-consciousness—undisciplined, scatty. And as always the question is whether he meant any of it. His opinions rest on impulses. He likes to say words. You never know which you can believe, which makes deal-making hard.
But of all recent presidents he is the one who can give cover to congressional conservatives, work with Democrats, and get something done.
As for me, I am where Ralph Peters is. The retired military man wrote a stinging, striking piece in the New York Post last week. He fired his first gun as a child when he was handed an illegal sawed-off shotgun “kept handy for woodchucks and rattlesnakes.” He served in the U.S. Army infantry, has fired automatic weapons, and owns guns: “As I write these lines, there’s an 1858 Tower musket behind me and a Colt on my desk,” he wrote.
“But I believe, on moral, practical and constitutional grounds, that no private citizen should own an automatic weapon or a semi-automatic weapon that can easily be modified for automatic effects. These are military weapons. Their purpose is to kill human beings. They’re not used for hunting unless you want to destroy the animal’s meat. They’re lousy for target shooting. But they’re excellent tools for mass murder.”
No one has the right to “a personal arsenal of weapons designed for mass murder.”
We have an estimated 300 million guns in America. An estimated 50 million of our households keep them.
For now that is enough, even for whatever terrible day comes.
Stop selling military-style weapons now. Just stop. See what happens in America. Revisit the issue in five years. Don’t be maximalist.
The parents are right. We can’t have this anymore.
And we can’t have the world, which is watching, saying, “They kill their own children in the schoolrooms. They have lost their souls.”
