Monday, May 16, 2016
To: Friends & Supporters
From: Gary L. Bauer
Obama Breaches Tradition
The commencement address to the 2016 graduating class of Rutgers University should have been a rewarding event for the students who worked so hard for so long. No doubt it was memorable in that the speaker was the president of the United States. But, sadly, although predictably, President Obama breached all unspoken traditions and protocols.
Usually, high government officials stick to aspirational messages and try to avoid hot button issues that might ruin Graduation Day. After all, the day is about the graduates and their families, not someone else’s ideological agenda.
But demonstrating zero sensitivity to anyone who might survive four years of Rutgers as a conservative, Obama delivered a raw, partisan speech. Don’t take my word for it. Here’s how the Washington Post described the president’s remarks:
“President Obama delivered a commencement address at Rutgers University on Sunday that steered clear of the typical graduation advice and sounded a lot like a tough, aggressive takedown of the Republican presidential front-runner. . . The 45-minute-long address was filled with obvious jabs at [the] presumptive Republican nominee . . . who was a foil for the speech’s most cutting applause lines.”
And this is coming from the man who claims to lament the lack of civility in our political discourse. It seems that he only laments the fact that so many Americans still disagree with him.
Rather than dissect the entire speech, I’ll focus on just one of Obama’s remarks in which the president actually made the point of conservatives. Obama said, “The world is more interconnected than ever before, and it’s becoming more connected every day. Building walls won’t change that.”
Yes, the world is increasingly interconnected through technology. Thus, a nation securing its border isn’t going to change the fact that we’re an interconnected world. It is only going to secure our country. People are not emailing or texting themselves across our borders.
When you go to bed at night do you leave your backdoor unlocked? That is what we are essentially doing with our porous borders. Just as you decide who enters your house, it is well within our rights to decide who gets to enter our country. It is only prudent to ensure that those coming in do not mean us any harm, do not have hidden agendas and are coming to contribute to society.
But perhaps the president was really arguing, like Secretary of State John Kerry recently did, that there shouldn’t be nation-states anymore in an interconnected world. If that is what Obama means, he should say so. Let’s have that debate.
Court Calls For Compromise
The Supreme Court today “punted” on the religious freedom case involving the Little Sisters of the Poor and Obamacare’s contraception mandate. In this case, however, it may be a good thing.
The justices issued a unanimous decision vacating lower court rulings, some of which had gone against the Little Sisters of the Poor, and instructing the parties to work out a compromise.
It is important to note what the court DID NOT do. It did not uphold the Obama Administration’s position that the government could compel religious organizations to violate their deeply held beliefs.
The lead attorney for the group representing the Little Sisters of the Poor hailed today’s ruling as “an important win.” The court essentially instructed the government to accommodate the nuns, and that is preferable to a 5-to-3 decision against the First Amendment.
The downside, however, is that today’s punt was likely the best this court, currently divided 4-to-4, could muster. If Justice Scalia were alive, I am confident we would have a clear 5-to-4 victory in favor of religious liberty today.
That demonstrates the precarious state of our most cherished liberties. If you care about religious freedom, you must vote this November. If you care about the freedom to own a firearm for self-defense,you must vote this November!
Your Reaction
We had a tremendous response to Friday’s message regarding Obama’s transgender order to the nation’s schools. Virtually all of you urged us to keep fighting, and expressed your desire to see Congress push back.
There was strong reaction from a number of officials, such as Rep. John Kline, chairman of the House Education Committee, who blasted Obama’s “edict.”
Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson told his state’s schools to “disregard” Obama’s guidance. Referring to the administration’s threat to cut off federal funding to local schools, money that largely goes to poor and minority students, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick said Texas would not “yield to blackmail,” adding that Obama could “keep his 30 pieces of silver.”
You have my word that, with your continued support, we will continue to fight the good fight for our values. I assure you that efforts are underway to make the congressional leadership feel the heat and act accordingly.
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