By Mike Huckabee
May 29, 2022
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Good morning! Here are the top stories from this week that I think you will want to read:
- Mike Rowe: Targeted for his beliefs
- Michael Moore calls for a repeal of the Second Amendment
- ALLARD: Other People’s Kids: An American Tragedy
- A "Pandemic Treaty"
- Uvalde Tragedy
Sincerely,
Mike Huckabee
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
1 John 4:16
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Mike Rowe: Targeted for his beliefs
This article was originally published on May 27th.
My friend Mike Rowe is the latest to allegedly be targeted by the government for his political beliefs – even though he doesn’t even talk about his political beliefs!
https://www.theblaze.com/news/mike-rowe-dirty-jobs-permit
Mike says he was all set to shoot an episode of his show “Dirty Jobs” on boilermakers when the Government Services Administration suddenly yanked permits they’d had for months, claiming vague “security concerns.” It ruined months of costly preparation, caused his freelance crew to lose work and have no time to line up other jobs, and kept the boilermakers from being able to show America what they do.
Mike said he’s shot shows in all sorts of sensitive government environments, from the Capitol to a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, and never had a problem. Then he said he got a call from someone high up in the GSA, telling him that another GSA higher-up didn’t like his “personal politics” and deliberately strung him along just to yank the permits at the last possible second.
If true, this is not only yet another example of politicized bureaucrats arrogantly abusing their power, it’s also stupid. Mike Rowe doesn’t discuss his personal politics, and he pointed out that his foundation is “aggressively nonpartisan” and gives scholarships to liberals and conservatives alike. All he can figure is that the petty tyrant doesn’t like the fact that his show “How America Works” airs on Fox Business.
I’ll add that his great show “The Story Behind the Story” airs right after “Huckabee” Saturday nights on TBN. Maybe that’s why the GSA jerk’s nose was out of joint. I spend too much time telling you the sleazy stories behind how Washington works. And now, we have another one.
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Michael Moore calls for a repeal of the Second Amendment
This article was originally published on May 27th.
I generally don’t comment on political statements by Hollywood celebrities. But since Michael Moore seems to have some inexplicable influence over the “progressive” left, and I was on “Hannity” last night when this story was brought up but didn’t get the chance to address it, I thought I’d briefly respond to Moore’s call to repeal the Second Amendment (and he’s hardly the only one doing that.)
As one might guess from its name, the Bill of Rights is not a list of privileges that the benevolent government generously grants us. It’s a list of God-given rights that the government can never take away. You can’t repeal the Second Amendment any more than you can repeal the First Amendment. Now, somebody please tell this Administration that they can’t repeal the First Amendment.
It’s also beyond irritating to hear the same people who sided with teachers’ unions on keeping schools closed despite the growing evidence of stress and mental illness it was causing children, and who have promoted a culture that undermines families and erodes respect for the sanctity of life, and who backed “progressive” DA’s who’ve sparked violent crime waves that forced law-abiding citizens to buy guns to protect their families, now blame Republicans for youth violence and demand to take guns away from law-abiding citizens.
Kevin Downey Jr. at PJ Media has more inconvenient truths about school shootings that demolish many of the talking points.
Frankly, I resent being forced to talk about politics at a time like this, but I can’t let outrageous false attacks just pass unanswered. However, this time should be reserved for prayer, mourning and comforting the families, and for coming together to talk about real solutions that would help prevent these senseless assaults on innocent children from ever happening again.
There are things that can and should be done to make schools safer, but leftists actively oppose them. As former Boston, L.A. and New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton pointed out, the “Defund the police” movement included demands that safety officers be removed from schools because somehow, having a police officer on school grounds allegedly made kids feel “unsafe.”
The left accuses Republicans of having an “irrational love of guns.” I certainly don’t love guns, but I love the Constitution, and I don’t see the point of laws that violate the rights of innocent people while doing nothing to prevent crime (we had an “assault weapons” ban for a while; it was allowed to lapse because it made no difference.) But why can’t the left acknowledge that it has an irrational hatred of police?
The father of a school shooting victim has proposed a three-point plan that could actually help prevent such horrors. It could be implemented with some of that “COVID relief” money that was showered on schools that are still trying to find something to spend it on.
Former Attorney General Bill Barr agrees with him…
The points don’t include useless new gun laws, but they do include having an armed guard at schools, the same sort of armed guards that liberal celebrities and politicians rely on for their own security. Would they agree that our children deserve the same level of security that they enjoy themselves? If so, then let’s talk.
PS – Matt Vespa at Townhall.com offers some concrete examples of how school resource officers have prevented potential school shootings.
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ALLARD: Other People’s Kids: An American Tragedy
By Colonel Kenneth Allard
This article was originally published on May 26th.
This Memorial Day may be a good time for Americans to ask ourselves: Do we still deserve our freedom? I’m not talking about our slumping economy nor even descrying our media’s unblinking distortion of issues from our porous southern border to the perfidy of Hillary Clinton. But today we are seeing the tumultuous confluence of two basic decisions reached nearly 50 years ago: the “right” of abortion decided by Roe v Wade in 1973; and the adoption of the All-Volunteer Force (AVF) in 1974. While each choice was made separately, their protagonists could hardly have imagined how those separate choices would evolve to create twin challenges to our way of life.
Barely a year apart, two fundamental norms of American life had changed. The right of an unborn infant to live was now outweighed by the right of the mother to choose life or death for her baby. The historical obligation of the American citizen for wartime service had also changed, now becoming a career choice like pursuing orthodontics or agri-business. The rationales were correspondingly different. Abortion, whether or not guaranteed by the Constitution, needed to be safe and legal; the Vietnam-era draft simply needed to end. Fifty years later, we have an expensive, professional military in which less than half of one (>0.5) percent of Americans defend the other 99%. The death toll since Roe v Wade: at least 60 million infants although no one knows for sure.
As one of the last draftees, my reprieve came too late. But ten years into the AVF experiment, I served on the West Point faculty, once moderating a campus-wide debate on the role of women, The contending advocates: conservative doyenne Phyllis Schlafly versus Sarah Weddington, victorious counsel in Roe V. Wade. Even in West Point’s disciplined environment, the debate was a raucous affair; but at least our cadets witnessed the emotions and intricacies of the constitutional process they would soon defend.
But for me that argument was settled forever the next year, when our newly adopted 4-day-old daughter wrapped her entire hand around my little finger. I was thankful beyond words that her birth mother, finding herself “in trouble,” decided to protect this new life, choosing to set aside every lesser consideration. Thirty years later, a father’s emotions still run strong looking into her eyes and each of my three grand-sons!
Meanwhile, the Army kept getting smaller, post-Cold War reductions leaving the active force with a half-million soldiers. But then came the shock of 9/11. The voluminous memoirs of President George W. Bush, his vice-president, and his secretaries of State and Defense reveal a stunning omission: None of them apparently asked whether the AVF could sustain a long conflict. Rather than mobilizing the nation for war, the National Guard and Reserves were dragooned for extended overseas tours. Ordinary Americans were encouraged to return to the shopping malls or college campuses. “So your kid goes to Kandahar while mine goes to Yale. So what’s your point?”
With the War on Terror dragging on for almost 20 years, manpower became even more scarce and expensive. Meeting combat requirements meant sending the troops back for multiple combat tours to various hell-holes. Not only were our soldiers running exponential risks of PTSD, but they were also becoming increasingly isolated from American society as a segregated warrior caste. And what happened when these Other People’s Kids returned home as veterans? Although the Veterans Administration is unsure of the exact numbers, they estimate that 17-20 veterans commit suicide each day.·
As you may have noticed, the United States is now involved in two separate Cold Wars but is seriously outmanned in each. (Air Force pilots describe this condition as “discovering you’re out of airspeed, altitude and ideas.”) Making matters even worse are our internal contradictions, voices from the left made even more strident by the prospect that Roe v Wade may be reversed. Listening to them, one ponders our national responsibility for the Holocaust of the Unborn, those Other People’s Kids now being aborted.
As I write these words, my friends and neighbors in Uvalde Texas are grief-stricken by the senseless slaughter of 19 elementary school students and 2 teachers by a gun-toting monster quickly dispatched by local law enforcement. Might this latest outrage finally move our secular, prodigal nation to lower our voices, bow our heads and pray for God’s forgiveness?
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A "Pandemic Treaty"
This article was published on May 24th.
I’ve been getting a lot of comments wanting to know more about a “pandemic treaty” that’s being hashed out to expand the role of the World Health Organization. This really took off after Tucker Carlson blasted it last week. There are concerns that proposed changes by the Biden Administration would give the head of the WHO sweeping powers to declare pandemics and impose rights-denying measures like lockdowns on sovereign nations without their consent or even over their objections.
This is a complicated issue, so I’m going to link to a couple of stories with more details than I can provide you here. First, Breitbart explains the objections to the proposed treaty and amendments.
And this article that originally appeared in Fortune argues that those concerns are unfounded: that the WHO would only gain enhanced advisory capabilities to deal more swiftly with health emergencies, but not the power to overrule sovereign governments. They say that because “international law” isn’t really enforceable, such nations could just ignore them anyway.
This is all still in a state of flux, and no matter what the original intention, there’s a good chance that the rising scrutiny and anger will have an effect. My personal view: I certainly don’t think the WHO is deserving of being granted any kind of power over sovereign nations, elected governments or individual citizens. But on top of that, I question the wisdom of expanding their part in dealing with emergencies even in a purely advisory role.
What is there about their botched handling of the COVID-19 pandemic that has earned them the right to greater trust and responsibility? Was it their disgusting and dishonest kowtowing to the communist Chinese government? Or their dogged defense of lockdowns and school closures that have done irreparable harm while studies have since confirmed they had little to no effect on the spread of the virus? In fact, researchers have known for years that lockdowns are useless against airborne viruses. I thought the most basic rule of medicine was "First, do no harm." Here’s just one of many examples of the harm that their policies caused:
Until the WHO cleans up its act and thoroughly reforms and de-policizes itself, it doesn’t deserve more power or even more influence not backed by power. To quote the Who that I respect a lot more, we won’t get fooled again.
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America The Beautiful
God's creation is all around us. To learn more about Mount Rainier National Park, visit its website here.
Uvalde Tragedy
This article was published on May 25th.
At this writing, at least 19 school children and two teachers are confirmed dead in the horrific school shooting yesterday in Uvalde, Texas. The 18-year-old shooter is also dead, thanks to the heroic efforts of law enforcement, particularly one unnamed member of an elite Border Patrol tactical unit called BORTAC. He was injured in the leg while exchanging fire with the shooter, who was barricaded and in body armor.
This is a breaking story, so here’s a link to Fox News’ continually-updated news reports:
https://www.foxnews.com/live-
I know that you will join me and others around the world in praying for the victims and the grieving parents who are experiencing the worst nightmare any parent can face. This is a horrifying and senseless tragedy, and all our attention should be focused on the victims and their families.
Unfortunately, as is always the case, many people rushed to cameras to exploit the tragedy by trying to blame it on their political opponents or use it to push their existing agendas before they even knew who the shooter was, what his possible motives might be, what his politics were or what kind of weapon he used (early reports said a handgun and possibly a rifle, but that’s one of many things we don’t yet know for certain.) Also, as is the case too often, it appears that the killer left red flags on social media that were ignored.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/
There are those calling for ending the Second Amendment, despite the fact that it’s been around since 1791, and these kinds of cold, conscienceless mass murders have only come in recent years, in an era of family breakdown, rejection of God and moral teachings, desensitizing graphic violence as entertainment, and the erosion of respect for the sanctity of human life. As I wrote recently after the tragic shooting in Buffalo, we have welcomed evil in our midst, and we refuse even to acknowledge its existence. I can make a better case for those things being contributing factors than for “the gun did it.”
But this isn’t the time for political arguments. It should be a time to come together, grieve, offer prayers and comfort to the families, and send a message to the entire world, and especially any would-be future attackers, that every one of those victims was a gift from God and the loss of their lives is an unspeakable tragedy for all of us. Stressing that message to everyone in society – that every life matters and is precious -- would do more to end these horrific attacks than passing more ineffective laws or blaming people who had nothing to do with it.
Related: This is a very good commentary by Darvio Morrow on some things that could be done that really would make our schools safer.
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