As the debate about how to handle applicants for refugee status at the U.S. southern border gained urgency in recent months, Pew Research Religion waded into the social-media fray on July 7 with a tweet about the results of a poll the organization conducted last year. Pew reported, and online commentators quickly noted, that white evangelical Protestants were the least likely group — amid results sorted by age, race, education and religion — to say that the United States “has a responsibility to accept refugees into the country.”
Tech companies control our fate. Or at least our thoughts. That’s the basic premise behind an oddly counterintuitive push for more government regulation of internet companies by the conservative right.
That group recently and rightly cheered FCC Chairman Ajit Pai for putting a stop to Net Neutrality. It’s the same group that lambasted the Fairness Doctrine, and its disguised return under former President Barack Obama.
IsDonald Trump actually a Christian? You may find it unseemly to question the authenticity of Trump’s professed faith. However, this question preoccupies a lot of evangelical leaders in this country.
Despite the fact that support for Trump from evangelical voters is not predicated on his professed Christian beliefs, evangelical leaders have been desperate to paint him as part of the club — a true man of faith — ever since he started leading in the Republican primaries. They’ve gone to great lengths to convince Christians that Trump is a consenting instrument of God’s will.
Restraint is a conservative value. It's also a tremendous tool in strategy and planning. And it's exactly the thing that partisans seem to have in short supply.
In the days leading up to the three hour testimony of former FBI director, James Comey, speculation and anticipation mounted. CNN had an actual countdown clock. Twitter was on fire. But I had some words of caution for those expecting a courtroom drama that ended with Donald Trump being taken away in impeachment handcuffs: Lower your expectations.
When you're in the business of commentary, every day you see hundreds of people speaking authoritatively on subjects they know little about. Usually it's political, but make no mistake as to the capacity people have for not knowing what they're talking about. It's aggressively broad.
For example, despite all the tough guy talk on Twitter, I think most people would be stunned if they were actually punched in the face. No matter how "alpha" you believe you are, that shooting, burning sensation across your face after getting decked is hard to quickly recover from. It's a shock.
The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) takes place this week near Washington, D.C., the first such gathering since Donald Trump took office. The conference purports to be a gathering for like-minded folks who believe, generally, in the well-established principles of the conservative movement, as enunciated by the American Conservative Union.
This year, aside from President Trump himself, activist Milo Yiannopoulos was briefly granted a featured speaking slot, and it caused a lot of disruption, garment-rending, gnashing of teeth, and in-fighting on the right.
Today social media and the D.C. media types who use social media as their barometer have spent the day having a go at flag burning and Donald Trump, after a preposterous, delusional, freedom-hating tweet by the president-elect.
It’s been said over and over this election cycle that strange bedfellows and alliances have formed that would’ve seemed completely insane just a year ago. “Strange new respect” is uttered a lot by lefties about Glenn Beck and by righties about Bill Maher.
What caused all of these new friendships was the climactic explosion of a problem that had been building for years. A problem that was so pervasive and all-encompassing that while we knew it existed, we were too buried in it to understand how much damage it was causing.
The problem was hyper-partisanship.
Last night was the biggest political upset I’ve witnessed in my lifetime. Almost everyone that I’ve spent the last year condemning, distancing myself from, or outright mocking, was right. And I, and a great number of people I respect and admire, were wrong.
Donald Trump is the next President of the United States. As of this writing, he is still behind Hillary Clinton in popular votes, but he won the electoral college votes which is how we have all agreed to elect our presidents.
There’s no point bitching and moaning about the popular vote. It’s done. He won. Fairly.
When I told my sister, a Liberty University alum, that I was writing this post, her objection was that Jerry Falwell Jr. is “the best thing that ever happened to Liberty University.”
Which you would think would give me pause. But it doesn’t. Because what she is referring to is the way he turned the Christian university around as its president. But Falwell’s administrative ability has never been the issue. He may very well be the greatest president the school has ever seen.
It’s the second “job” he’s taken on in recent months that have caused him to disgrace the school.
When I was in my mid twenties, long before I began a career talking politics or making videos & film, there was one voice that seemed to say everything I was thinking. I’d tune in to 1110AM in Charlotte, NC every day at noon to hear the opening beat from “My City Was Gone” by The Pretenders, and Rush Limbaugh’s voice would boom through my car stereo or my home computer while I worked.
As a conservative and a fledgling filmmaker with a few early-stage documentaries in the works, I've long been concerned about conservatism's struggle to relate to the culture. While our ideological opponents are partying with Beyoncé and having action movies made about their foreign policy decisions, the pop-culture portrayals of our party have led many voters to associate us more closely with segregation than economic liberty. As unfair and inaccurate as the characterizations may be, it's our job as a movement to fix the problem.
Unfortunately, a new production by the conservative nonprofit Tea Party Patriots, called A Movement on Fire, looks like it may do more harm than good.
Back in 2009, media bias was hot on all of the right’s lips. We were aghast that racism accusations were hurled at every criticism of the administration. We were appalled at how many people we believed were good upstanding citizens were having their names dragged through the mud.
For a while, it felt as though one couldn’t oppose the president without the full awareness that their life might be destroyed by a media intent on squashing any and all dissent.